Another Attack on Libertarianism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Alternet.org, a liberal (i.e., progressive) website, has published another of its periodic attacks on libertarianism, this time an article entitled “What America Would Look Like If Libertarians Got Their Way?” by R.J. Eskow.
Two things struck me about Eskow’s article: one, his lack of faith in free people and, two, his lack of focus on the causes of wealth.
The implicit assumption underlying Eskow’s article is that people simply cannot be trusted to engage in voluntary charitable activity. That’s why liberals feel that the government must force people to care for others. If there were no mandatory welfare programs, the liberal mindset goes, the poor, needy, disadvantaged, and unemployed people would die in the streets because free people wouldn’t help them out.
That’s, of course, one of the major differences between libertarians and liberals. We libertarians believe in freedom. That is, we not only believe that people should be free to decide for themselves what to do with their own money, we also believe that people can be relied upon to help others who are in need, be it their parents, neighbors, and other people they don’t even know.
Whenever liberals say that people are too self-centered, greedy, and selfish to help others, they’re implicitly accusing their fellow liberals of falling into that category. Just ask a liberal whether he would help others in need if he weren’t forced to do so. He will inevitably respond, “I would but no one else would.” By that he means he’s the only good, caring, and compassionate person in society and that all his liberal friends and acquaintances are lying when they say the same thing.
Look around us. There are always Americans giving to all sorts of causes. Consider just the churches of America. They have bills to pay. Electricity. Heating. Landscaping. Repairs. Improvements. Salaries. Debt. How are all those things paid? Through the voluntary donations of private individuals. Churches are not permitted to receive government subsidies.
Or look at all the donations that billionaires and millionaires make to worthy causes. And also the donations that the middle class and poor make. Consider all the people who are helping ailing and aging parents. Think about all the donations made to cancer hospitals and other such facilities where the donor doesn’t personally know the beneficiaries.
Voluntarily giving is all around us. But liberals just don’t want to recognize it. It flies in the face of their mindset that favors forcing people to be good and caring.
In fact, it’s ironic that at the very moment that Alternet published Eskow’s article, it was engaged in an end-of-year fundraising drive asking people to voluntarily donate to Alternet. I wonder what Eskow would say about people who donate to Alternet without being forced to do so.
Eskow never focuses on the causes of wealth. Like other liberals, for him wealth is just a given. As such, it simply becomes a matter of having the government forcibly seize money from those who have it and giving it to the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Since liberals cannot stand the fact that somebody might have more than another person, in their ideal liberal case all wealth and income would be equalized by the government.
But happens if a society is totally impoverished? What then? How do liberals propose that wealth be seized and given to the poor if there is no wealth in the first place? What good are economic regulations if there are no businesses in existence?
So, the obvious question arises: How does a society get wealthy and prosperous? The answer is simple but profound: A society in which government is not interfering with economic activity through welfare and regulation (and warfare) will be a dynamic, wealthy, and prospering society. Genuine free enterprise (that is, enterprise that is free from government control and plunder) brings savings, which is converted into capital, which makes people more productive, which increases revenues, which increases wage rates.
Wealth and higher standards of living are also produced through the simple act of trade. When people enter into trades with each other, both sides benefit because they are both giving up something they value less for something they value more.
As a society becomes wealthier and more prosperous, the people who benefit the most are the poor. For one thing, they have a chance to become wealthy. For another, a poor person living in a wealthy and prosperous society is going to live a much nicer life than his counterpart in an impoverished society.
Compare a nun who has taken a vow of poverty here in the United States to a nun who has done the same in Guatemala. The American nun will have a much higher standard of living than her counterpart in Guatemala. She will drive a nicer car. Her living facilities will be better. Her meals will be healthier.
Why is that? Well, for one because when there is more wealth in a society, the donations to worthy causes will naturally be higher. After all, if Alternet were based in Cuba, its donations would be tiny compared to what they are here in the United States, notwithstanding the fact that most Cuban socialists wholeheartedly agree with Alternet’s welfare-state, regulated-economy philosophy. The reason that donations to Alternet would be tiny in Cuba, compared to here in the United States, is because Cubans are living in an impoverished society and, therefore, can’t make big donations.
Two, a wealthy and prospering society will provide a much broader array of inexpensive consumer items for the poor, such as groceries, clothing, housing, automobiles and other things that are essential to life. The more businesses catering to the needs of the poor, the better off the poor are.
So, what happens when government is prohibited from interfering with economic activity is that societies become wealthy and prosperous.
The problem is that liberals then see that enormous pool of wealth and can’t control themselves. Rather than leaving things alone, immediately they say, “Let’s have the government grab it and give it to the poor! Let’s equalize wealth and income! We’ll all be good, caring, compassionate people if we do this. Let’s also regulate economic activity to help the poor, like with minimum-wage laws.”
But then the inevitable happens. For a while, the tax-spend-and-regulate system looks like some great big party. But then economic activity starts to slow. Firms start to go out of business. Economic activity starts to contract. People are laid off. The pool of wealth starts to shrink. Donations are reduced. The society starts tending toward impoverishment.
Of course, liberals blame all the resulting problems on “free enterprise.” The solution, they say, is to just keep taxing, spending, and regulating. Finally, everyone ends up impoverished, which causes liberals to say, “Well, that’s okay. At least we’re now all equal, just like people in Cuba and North Korea are.” Never mind that the poor are now starving to death, as they are doing in North Korea, which adopted liberal economic principles many decades ago.
The shining light in all this welfare-regulatory-state (and warfare-state) darkness is libertarianism. We have the solution to poverty. It lies in freedom, freedom of choice, free enterprise, and economic liberty.
Perhaps that’s one reason that so many people are now self-identifying as libertarians, especially young people. They’re realizing that (rejecting?) the welfare-state, regulated-economy way of life (and the warfare-state way of life) is the key to attaining a free, prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious society.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why liberals are now periodically going on the attack against libertarianism. Perhaps they realizing that it’s just a matter of time that a critical mass of people, including the poor, finally realize that libertarianism is the best thing that could ever happen to the poor and everyone else.
Link:
http://fff.org/2013/12/31/another-attack-on-libertarianism/
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Insider talks about drone attacks...
Drone operator speaks out: “This is what you are not told”
by Clark Kent
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist claim that this is an expert program, but it’s curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.
It’s also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in danger physically.
But here’s the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.
Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren’t reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.
Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain’s secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.
The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.
Link:
http://www.hangthebankers.com/drone-operator-speaks-out-this-is-what-you-are-not-told/
by Clark Kent
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist claim that this is an expert program, but it’s curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.
It’s also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in danger physically.
But here’s the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.
Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren’t reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.
Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain’s secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.
The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.
Link:
http://www.hangthebankers.com/drone-operator-speaks-out-this-is-what-you-are-not-told/
The Russian bombing: Try to explain this one...
Volgograd Bomber’s Mysterious Passport
One of the more curious and controversial aspects of the Volgograd bombing was how quickly the Russian media released the passport of Naida Asiyalova, the suicide bomber. Life News tweeted an image of Asiyalova’s passport within hours of the bombing. The state channel NTV also broadcast the image. The photo, which quickly appeared throughout Russian media, immediately raised eyebrows. Why did Asiyalova have her passport on her if she was going to carry out a terrorist attack? And more importantly, if the passport was found at the blast site, then why was it undamaged? And what’s up with a picture of her in a hajib!?
As David Burghardt wrote in the Moscow News:
Though there was literally nothing left of the suicide bomber and the bus was practically gutted by the explosion, the alleged suicide bomber’s passport found on the scene miraculously survived without any damage whatsoever: No torn or burnt pages, no blood, no visible clue that that particular document was even on the bus. The pages of the passport are still bright and shiny as if it had never been in an explosion. Considering the fact that she had her passport on her, one would expect that it would have had some form of damage to it.
Another curious thing about Asiyalova’s passport is that her photograph shows her in a hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women. This is an official document and Russia doesn’t allow headgear for pictures in passports (just as any other country). So how did that picture end up in that passport? How did that passport survive the blast? Was this the actual suicide bomber?
Good questions. Burghardt wasn’t the only one. Russian bloggers asked even more pointed questions based on close scrutiny of the image. Slon.ru povided some answers. One of which settled the hijab mystery. Since 2003, Russia allows people to take passport photographs with hajibs as long as the face is visible. Still, it’s pretty clear that this hajib photo was placed up top of another photo.
As for why the passport wasn’t damages in the blast, well, perhaps because it wasn’t the Asiyalova’s actual passport. At least it wasn’t the passport found at the blast scene. Clearly this first passport was doctored.
This is “real” one:
So why the initial fake passport? True, the Russian media is under the same pressures media from other countries. They have to get information out fast, and the fastest juiciest news the better. However, Life News is an animal on its own. It’s known for its half-truths, police connections and general subterfuge. It’s well known that the siloviki use Life News to generate black PR to smear oppositionists. Clearly they–Life News and/or the police wanted to get “proof” of Asiyalova’s identity out there. But why? I’m sure there’s a much more surly back story to all this. But on the surface in releasing this counterfeit passport, Life News, the cops, or whoever once again undermined what the Russian police have little of: public trust. Could’ve that been the point?
Link:
http://seansrussiablog.org/2013/10/22/volgograd-bombers-mysterious-passport/
Explosion in ceiling??? Therefore, no suicide bomber???
One of the more curious and controversial aspects of the Volgograd bombing was how quickly the Russian media released the passport of Naida Asiyalova, the suicide bomber. Life News tweeted an image of Asiyalova’s passport within hours of the bombing. The state channel NTV also broadcast the image. The photo, which quickly appeared throughout Russian media, immediately raised eyebrows. Why did Asiyalova have her passport on her if she was going to carry out a terrorist attack? And more importantly, if the passport was found at the blast site, then why was it undamaged? And what’s up with a picture of her in a hajib!?
As David Burghardt wrote in the Moscow News:
Though there was literally nothing left of the suicide bomber and the bus was practically gutted by the explosion, the alleged suicide bomber’s passport found on the scene miraculously survived without any damage whatsoever: No torn or burnt pages, no blood, no visible clue that that particular document was even on the bus. The pages of the passport are still bright and shiny as if it had never been in an explosion. Considering the fact that she had her passport on her, one would expect that it would have had some form of damage to it.
Another curious thing about Asiyalova’s passport is that her photograph shows her in a hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women. This is an official document and Russia doesn’t allow headgear for pictures in passports (just as any other country). So how did that picture end up in that passport? How did that passport survive the blast? Was this the actual suicide bomber?
Good questions. Burghardt wasn’t the only one. Russian bloggers asked even more pointed questions based on close scrutiny of the image. Slon.ru povided some answers. One of which settled the hijab mystery. Since 2003, Russia allows people to take passport photographs with hajibs as long as the face is visible. Still, it’s pretty clear that this hajib photo was placed up top of another photo.
As for why the passport wasn’t damages in the blast, well, perhaps because it wasn’t the Asiyalova’s actual passport. At least it wasn’t the passport found at the blast scene. Clearly this first passport was doctored.
This is “real” one:
So why the initial fake passport? True, the Russian media is under the same pressures media from other countries. They have to get information out fast, and the fastest juiciest news the better. However, Life News is an animal on its own. It’s known for its half-truths, police connections and general subterfuge. It’s well known that the siloviki use Life News to generate black PR to smear oppositionists. Clearly they–Life News and/or the police wanted to get “proof” of Asiyalova’s identity out there. But why? I’m sure there’s a much more surly back story to all this. But on the surface in releasing this counterfeit passport, Life News, the cops, or whoever once again undermined what the Russian police have little of: public trust. Could’ve that been the point?
Link:
http://seansrussiablog.org/2013/10/22/volgograd-bombers-mysterious-passport/
Explosion in ceiling??? Therefore, no suicide bomber???
What is in store for liberty in 2014???
Life in the Emerging American Police State: What’s in Store for Our Freedoms in 2014?
John W. Whitehead
In Harold Ramis’ classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight into his life but changes his priorities. Similarly, as I illustrate in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the same set of circumstances over and over again—egregious surveillance, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.—although with far fewer moments of comic hilarity.
What remains to be seen is whether 2014 will bring more of the same or whether “we the people” will wake up from our somnambulant states. Indeed, when it comes to civil liberties and freedom, 2013 was far from a banner year. The following is just a sampling of what we can look forward to repeating if we don’t find some way to push back against the menace of an overreaching, aggressive, invasive, militarized government and restore our freedoms.
Government spying. It’s hard to understand how anyone could be surprised by the news that the National Security Agency has been systematically collecting information on all telephone calls placed in the United States, and yet the news media have treated it as a complete revelation. Nevertheless, such outlandish government spying been going on domestically since the 1970s, when Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the NSA’s breaches, warned the public against allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers “at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.” Recent reports indicate that the NSA, in conjunction with the CIA and FBI, has actually gone so far as to intercept laptop computers ordered online in order to install spyware on them.
Militarized police. With almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participating in a military “recycling” program, community police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware—tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield—in droves. Keep in mind that once acquired, this military equipment, which is beyond the budget and scope of most communities, finds itself put to all manner of uses by local law enforcement agencies under the rationale that “if we have it, we might as well use it”—the same rationale, by the way, used with deadly results to justify assigning SWAT teams to carry out routine law enforcement work such as delivering a warrant.
Police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve. Sadly, it is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, such as the 16-year-old teenager who skipped school only to be shot by police after they mistook him for a fleeing burglar. Then there was the unarmed black man in Texas “who was pursued and shot in the back of the neck by Austin Police… after failing to properly identify himself and leaving the scene of an unrelated incident.” And who could forget the 19-year-old Seattle woman who was accidentally shot in the leg by police after she refused to show her hands? The lesson to be learned: this is what happens when you take a young man (or woman), raise him on a diet of violence, hype him up on the power of the gun in his holster and the superiority of his uniform, render him woefully ignorant of how to handle a situation without resorting to violence, train him well in military tactics but allow him to be illiterate about the Constitution, and never stress to him that he is to be a peacemaker and a peacekeeper, respectful of and subservient to the taxpayers, who are in fact his masters and employers.
The erosion of private property. If the government can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home, whether it relates to what you eat or what you smoke, you no longer have any rights whatsoever within your home. If government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property. If school officials can punish your children for what they do or say while at home or in your care, your children are not your own—they are the property of the state. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if police can forcefully draw your blood, strip search you, and probe you intimately, your body is no longer your own, either. This is what a world without the Fourth Amendment looks like, where the lines between private and public property have been so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.
Strip searches and the loss of bodily integrity. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to protect the citizenry from being subjected to “unreasonable searches and seizures” by government agents. While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity. Unfortunately, court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. For example, during a routine traffic stop, Leila Tarantino was allegedly subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. No contraband or anything illegal was found.
Invasion of the drones. As corporations and government agencies alike prepare for their part in the coming drone invasion—it is expected that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, ushering in a $30 billion per year industry—it won’t be long before Americans discover first-hand that drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to middle-sized copter drones that can deliver pizzas to massive “hunter/killer” Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high. Police in California have already begun using Qube drones, which are capable of hovering for 40 minutes at heights of about 400 ft. to conduct surveillance on targets as far as 1 kilometer away. Michael Downing, the LAPD deputy chief for counter-terrorism and special operations, envisions drones being flown over large-scale media events such as the Oscars, using them to surveil political protests, and flying them through buildings to track criminal suspects.
Criminalizing childish behavior. It wouldn’t be a week in America without another slew of children being punished for childish behavior under the regime of zero tolerance which plagues our nation’s schools. Some of the most egregious: the 9-year-old boy suspended for allegedly pointing a toy at a classmate and saying “bang, bang”; two 6-year-old students in Maryland suspended for using their fingers as imaginary guns in a schoolyard game of cops and robbers; the ten-year-old Pennsylvania boy suspended for shooting an imaginary “arrow” at a fellow classmate, using nothing more than his hands and his imagination; the six-year-old Colorado boy suspended and accused of sexual harassment for kissing the hand of a girl in his class whom he had a crush on; and the two seventh graders in Virginia suspended for the rest of the school year for playing with airsoft guns in their own yard before school.
Common Core. There are several methods for controlling a population. You can intimidate the citizenry into obedience through force, relying on military strength and weaponry such as SWAT team raids, militarized police, and a vast array of lethal and nonlethal weapons. You can manipulate them into marching in lockstep with your dictates through the use of propaganda and carefully timed fear tactics about threats to their safety, whether through the phantom menace of terrorist attacks or shooting sprees by solitary gunmen. Or you can indoctrinate them into compliance from an early age through the schools, discouraging them from thinking for themselves while rewarding them for regurgitating whatever the government, through its so-called educational standards, dictates they should be taught. When viewed in light of the government’s ongoing attempts to amass power at great cost to Americans—in terms of free speech rights, privacy, due process, etc.—the debate over Common Core State Standards, which would transform and nationalize school curriculum from kindergarten through 12th grade, becomes that much more critical. These standards, which were developed through a partnership between big government and corporations and are being rolled out in 45 states and the District of Columbia, will create a generation of test-takers capable of little else, molded and shaped by the federal government and its corporate allies into what it considers to be ideal citizens.
The corporate takeover of America. The corporate buyout of the American political bureaucracy is taking place at every level of government, from the White House all the way to the various governors’ mansions, and even local city councils. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors, have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. The average American has no access to his or her representatives at any but the lowest level of government, and even then it’s questionable how much really gets through. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives. Yet one of the key ingredients in maintaining democratic government is the right of citizens to freely speak their minds to those who represent them. In fact, it is one of the few effective tools we have left to combat government corruption and demand accountability. But now, even that right is being chipped away by laws and court rulings that weaken our ability to speak freely to the politicians who govern us.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, put it best: “Take alarm,” he warned, “at the first experiment with liberties.” Anyone with even a casual knowledge about current events knows that the first experiment on our freedoms happened long ago. Worse, we have not heeded the warnings of Madison and those like him who understood that if you give the government an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately, the government has not only taken a mile, they have taken mile after mile after mile after mile with seemingly no end in sight for their power grabs.
If you’re in the business of making New Year’s resolutions, why not resolve that 2014 will be the year we break the cycle of tyranny and get back on the road to freedom. As I’ve said before, it’s time for a second American revolution.
Link:
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/life_in_the_emerging_american_police_state_whats_in_store_for_our_free
John W. Whitehead
In Harold Ramis’ classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight into his life but changes his priorities. Similarly, as I illustrate in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the same set of circumstances over and over again—egregious surveillance, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.—although with far fewer moments of comic hilarity.
What remains to be seen is whether 2014 will bring more of the same or whether “we the people” will wake up from our somnambulant states. Indeed, when it comes to civil liberties and freedom, 2013 was far from a banner year. The following is just a sampling of what we can look forward to repeating if we don’t find some way to push back against the menace of an overreaching, aggressive, invasive, militarized government and restore our freedoms.
Government spying. It’s hard to understand how anyone could be surprised by the news that the National Security Agency has been systematically collecting information on all telephone calls placed in the United States, and yet the news media have treated it as a complete revelation. Nevertheless, such outlandish government spying been going on domestically since the 1970s, when Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the NSA’s breaches, warned the public against allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers “at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.” Recent reports indicate that the NSA, in conjunction with the CIA and FBI, has actually gone so far as to intercept laptop computers ordered online in order to install spyware on them.
Militarized police. With almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participating in a military “recycling” program, community police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware—tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield—in droves. Keep in mind that once acquired, this military equipment, which is beyond the budget and scope of most communities, finds itself put to all manner of uses by local law enforcement agencies under the rationale that “if we have it, we might as well use it”—the same rationale, by the way, used with deadly results to justify assigning SWAT teams to carry out routine law enforcement work such as delivering a warrant.
Police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve. Sadly, it is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, such as the 16-year-old teenager who skipped school only to be shot by police after they mistook him for a fleeing burglar. Then there was the unarmed black man in Texas “who was pursued and shot in the back of the neck by Austin Police… after failing to properly identify himself and leaving the scene of an unrelated incident.” And who could forget the 19-year-old Seattle woman who was accidentally shot in the leg by police after she refused to show her hands? The lesson to be learned: this is what happens when you take a young man (or woman), raise him on a diet of violence, hype him up on the power of the gun in his holster and the superiority of his uniform, render him woefully ignorant of how to handle a situation without resorting to violence, train him well in military tactics but allow him to be illiterate about the Constitution, and never stress to him that he is to be a peacemaker and a peacekeeper, respectful of and subservient to the taxpayers, who are in fact his masters and employers.
The erosion of private property. If the government can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home, whether it relates to what you eat or what you smoke, you no longer have any rights whatsoever within your home. If government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property. If school officials can punish your children for what they do or say while at home or in your care, your children are not your own—they are the property of the state. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if police can forcefully draw your blood, strip search you, and probe you intimately, your body is no longer your own, either. This is what a world without the Fourth Amendment looks like, where the lines between private and public property have been so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.
Strip searches and the loss of bodily integrity. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to protect the citizenry from being subjected to “unreasonable searches and seizures” by government agents. While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity. Unfortunately, court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. For example, during a routine traffic stop, Leila Tarantino was allegedly subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. No contraband or anything illegal was found.
Invasion of the drones. As corporations and government agencies alike prepare for their part in the coming drone invasion—it is expected that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, ushering in a $30 billion per year industry—it won’t be long before Americans discover first-hand that drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to middle-sized copter drones that can deliver pizzas to massive “hunter/killer” Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high. Police in California have already begun using Qube drones, which are capable of hovering for 40 minutes at heights of about 400 ft. to conduct surveillance on targets as far as 1 kilometer away. Michael Downing, the LAPD deputy chief for counter-terrorism and special operations, envisions drones being flown over large-scale media events such as the Oscars, using them to surveil political protests, and flying them through buildings to track criminal suspects.
Criminalizing childish behavior. It wouldn’t be a week in America without another slew of children being punished for childish behavior under the regime of zero tolerance which plagues our nation’s schools. Some of the most egregious: the 9-year-old boy suspended for allegedly pointing a toy at a classmate and saying “bang, bang”; two 6-year-old students in Maryland suspended for using their fingers as imaginary guns in a schoolyard game of cops and robbers; the ten-year-old Pennsylvania boy suspended for shooting an imaginary “arrow” at a fellow classmate, using nothing more than his hands and his imagination; the six-year-old Colorado boy suspended and accused of sexual harassment for kissing the hand of a girl in his class whom he had a crush on; and the two seventh graders in Virginia suspended for the rest of the school year for playing with airsoft guns in their own yard before school.
Common Core. There are several methods for controlling a population. You can intimidate the citizenry into obedience through force, relying on military strength and weaponry such as SWAT team raids, militarized police, and a vast array of lethal and nonlethal weapons. You can manipulate them into marching in lockstep with your dictates through the use of propaganda and carefully timed fear tactics about threats to their safety, whether through the phantom menace of terrorist attacks or shooting sprees by solitary gunmen. Or you can indoctrinate them into compliance from an early age through the schools, discouraging them from thinking for themselves while rewarding them for regurgitating whatever the government, through its so-called educational standards, dictates they should be taught. When viewed in light of the government’s ongoing attempts to amass power at great cost to Americans—in terms of free speech rights, privacy, due process, etc.—the debate over Common Core State Standards, which would transform and nationalize school curriculum from kindergarten through 12th grade, becomes that much more critical. These standards, which were developed through a partnership between big government and corporations and are being rolled out in 45 states and the District of Columbia, will create a generation of test-takers capable of little else, molded and shaped by the federal government and its corporate allies into what it considers to be ideal citizens.
The corporate takeover of America. The corporate buyout of the American political bureaucracy is taking place at every level of government, from the White House all the way to the various governors’ mansions, and even local city councils. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors, have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. The average American has no access to his or her representatives at any but the lowest level of government, and even then it’s questionable how much really gets through. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives. Yet one of the key ingredients in maintaining democratic government is the right of citizens to freely speak their minds to those who represent them. In fact, it is one of the few effective tools we have left to combat government corruption and demand accountability. But now, even that right is being chipped away by laws and court rulings that weaken our ability to speak freely to the politicians who govern us.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, put it best: “Take alarm,” he warned, “at the first experiment with liberties.” Anyone with even a casual knowledge about current events knows that the first experiment on our freedoms happened long ago. Worse, we have not heeded the warnings of Madison and those like him who understood that if you give the government an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately, the government has not only taken a mile, they have taken mile after mile after mile after mile with seemingly no end in sight for their power grabs.
If you’re in the business of making New Year’s resolutions, why not resolve that 2014 will be the year we break the cycle of tyranny and get back on the road to freedom. As I’ve said before, it’s time for a second American revolution.
Link:
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/life_in_the_emerging_american_police_state_whats_in_store_for_our_free
Killing us softly...
Soft Killing The American People Using Toxic Food, Toxic Water And Toxic Vaccines
Michael Snyder
Have you noticed that there has been an absolute explosion in the number of people developing chronic illnesses, heart disease, diabetes and cancer? If you are like most Americans, you probably have quite a few family members and friends that are seriously ill right now. Sadly, most Americans have absolutely no idea why this is happening. Most of them just assume that all of this sickness is just “normal”.
But that is not the case at all. The truth is that we are slowly killing ourselves by what we eat, by what we drink and by what we allow to be injected into our bodies. The vast majority of people out there have never even heard about the dangers posed by aspartame, fluoride, genetically-modified food, pesticides, high fructose corn syrup, pharmaceutical drugs, cell phones and toxic vaccines. Most of them have no idea that our food is toxic, our water is toxic and our vaccines are toxic. Right now, it is estimated that approximately70,000 chemicals are being used for commercial purposes, and as a result of our “modern lifestyles” we are literally being endlessly bombarded with toxins. This has resulted in a massive tsunami of death, disease and chronic illness in America. But very few people actually understand what is being done to all of us. The following are just a few of the ways that the “soft killing” of the American people is taking place…
Toxic Food
Do you believe that “you are what you eat”?
Well, have you ever considered what the animals that you eat are being fed?
If you are like most Americans, you will probably eat beef several times this week. But most Americans have no idea that our cows are being fed sawdust, chicken poop, candy, crab guts, limestone and dead cows that have been ground up on a regular basis.
Of course this is not true of all beef that you purchase at the grocery store.
But how do you tell which is which? And if you go for the lowest price beef, there is a greater chance that you are getting beef from cows that have literally been fed garbage.
And of course it isn’t just cows that are being fed poop. The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of it in many of our food products. If you doubt this, just check out this article: “There Is A Staggering Amount Of Feces In Our Food“.
Sometimes, it is the ingredients that are actually listed on the side of the box that are the most dangerous. Take aspartame for example. Once upon a time, it was listed as a biochemical warfare agent by the Pentagon. But now it is in thousands of food products in our grocery stores.
So is it safe for us to eat? According to an article on Mercola.com, it has a long track record of causing adverse reactions and the government refuses to do anything about it…
Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame include: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.
According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting of aspartame: Brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, parkinson’s disease, alzheimer’s, mental retardation, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes.
Toxic Water
Do you know what is in the water that you drink?
If not, perhaps you should do some investigating. According to one recent survey, our drinking water is absolutely littered with dangerous contaminants…
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that an astounding one-third of U.S. water systems contain traces of at least 18 unregulated and potentially hazardous contaminants, many of which are linked to causing endocrine disruption and cancer.
Based on a nationwide survey of 25 unnamed water utilities, scientists found traces of the herbicide metolachlor, for instance, a pesticide commonly applied to conventional corn, soy, cotton, safflower, potato and other crops, as well as the heavy metal strontium, which is linked to causing bone problems. Other chemicals identified include so-called perfluorinated compounds like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which numerous scientific studies have found can cause thyroid disease and various types of cancer.
After reading all this, you may never look at water the same way again.
Do you remember Erin Brockovich? Well, according to the Washington Postthe carcinogen that she was so concerned about has been found in the drinking water of most U.S. cities…
An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”
Lovely, eh?
Not only is there hexavalent chromium in our drinking water, the reality of the matter is that there are thousands of other chemicals and prescription drugs in our water supply as a Time Magazine article from a while back detailed…
All told, there are about 3,000 prescription pharmaceuticals in use in the U.S. and thousands more over-the-counter drugs, not to mention creams and ointments we smear on and then shower off. “Between cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other sources,” says John Spatz, commissioner of Chicago’s department of water management, “there are 80,000 potential combinations of chemicals.” It’s impossible to keep our drinking supply safe from a gusher like that.
And I haven’t even gotten to fluoride yet, which is purposely being put into the water supplies of most U.S. cities.
So precisely how dangerous is fluoride? Well, the Fluoride Dangers blog puts it this way….
Even small amounts of fluoride consumed from tap water can damage your bones, teeth, brain, disrupt your thyroid function, lower IQ and/or cause cancer, according to evidence revealed in a groundbreaking 2006 National Research Council (NRC) fluoride report produced by a panel of experts who reviewed hundreds of published fluoride studies.
That certainly does not sound good.
So is fluoride in the water that you are drinking?
Perhaps you should find out.
The Natural Health and Longevity Resource Center has published a list of ten of the most significant health problems that scientific studies have shown that fluoride causes…
1. Fluoride exposure disrupts the synthesis of collagen and leads to the breakdown of collagen in bone, tendon, muscle, skin, cartilage, lungs, kidney and trachea.
2. Fluoride stimulates granule formation and oxygen consumption in white blood cells, but inhibits these processes when the white blood cell is challenged by a foreign agent in the blood.
3. Fluoride depletes the energy reserves and the ability of white blood cells to properly destroy foreign agents by the process of phagocytosis. As little as 0.2 ppm fluoride stimulates superoxide production in resting white blood cells, virtually abolishing phagocytosis. Even micro-molar amounts of fluoride, below 1 ppm, may seriously depress the ability of white blood cells to destroy pathogenic agents.
4. Fluoride confuses the immune system and causes it to attack the body’s own tissues, and increases the tumor growth rate in cancer prone individuals.
5. Fluoride inhibits antibody formation in the blood.
6. Fluoride depresses thyroid activity.
7. Fluorides have a disruptive effect on various tissues in the body.
8. Fluoride promotes development of bone cancer.
9. Fluorides cause premature aging of the human body.
10. Fluoride ingestion from mouth rinses and dentifrices in children is extremely hazardous to biological development, life span and general health.
For much, much more on this, please watch a documentary entitled “An Inconvenient Tooth” that you can find on YouTube right here.
Toxic Vaccines
Are the vaccines that you are allowing the doctors to inject into your children safe?
Today, in some areas of the country more than 30 vaccines are being given to young children before the age of 3.
30 vaccines.
That is absolute madness.
They are overloading the systems of these young babies with massive amounts of toxins and the results are predictable.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children in the United States with autism has risen by 78 percent over the past decade.
I have personally read hundreds of testimonies of mothers losing their babies right after being vaccinated and children developing autism right after being vaccinated. Yet the medical community continues to vigorously deny the connection.
But without a doubt, the evidence is mounting. The following is an excerpt from a Huffington Post article about the danger of vaccines…
It’s a fact that many children with ASD regressed following normal development just as they were receiving multiple vaccines at regular doctor visits. Health officials say the timing is entirely coincidental.
Regression usually occurs between 12 and 24 months, thoughone study found that some children show signs of autism as early as six months, but never before that age.
By six months of age, most U.S. children have received about 18 inoculations containing 24 vaccines against nine diseases. Over the next two years or so, they will receive another nine shots containing 14 vaccines against 12 diseases.
So whether a child regresses at six months, or 18 months, the tragedy happens during a period of intensive vaccination. In many cases, parents report that the child had an abnormal reaction after being vaccinated (seizures, spiking-fevers, diarrhea, lethargy, high-pitched screaming and/or other symptoms).
Of course there will be many angry comments following this article denying that any of this is true.
And many of those making these comments will not even know what thimerosal is or why countries all over the planet have banned thimerosal from their vaccines. The following comes from an article by Dawn Prate….
“In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, suffered brain damage years later. Studies on thimerosal poisoning also describe tubular necrosis and nervous system injury, including obtundation, coma and death. As a result of these findings, Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines in 1980. Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have also banned the preservative”
So why is thimerosal not banned in the United States?
That is a very, very good question.
Unfortunately, in most states the authorities have doubled down on their efforts to force people to take these dangerous vaccines. In fact, a pregnant nurse in Pennsylvania was just fired for refusing to take a flu vaccine.
It is time that the American people heard the truth. You can find dozens of vaccine horror stories right here. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Don’t just blindly accept whatever the mainstream media tells you to believe.
And I don’t even have the space in this article to get into the study that showed a 40 percent increased risk of brain tumors from using cell phones, the connection between Wi-Fi and cancer, the chemtrails being sprayed all over the planet, or the incredible danger that genetically-modified food represents.
Without a doubt, an entire book could be written on how we are all being systematically poisoned.
So what do you think?
Is there anything that you would like to add to this discussion?
Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…
Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/soft-killing-the-american-people-using-toxic-food-toxic-water-and-toxic-vaccines
Michael Snyder
Have you noticed that there has been an absolute explosion in the number of people developing chronic illnesses, heart disease, diabetes and cancer? If you are like most Americans, you probably have quite a few family members and friends that are seriously ill right now. Sadly, most Americans have absolutely no idea why this is happening. Most of them just assume that all of this sickness is just “normal”.
But that is not the case at all. The truth is that we are slowly killing ourselves by what we eat, by what we drink and by what we allow to be injected into our bodies. The vast majority of people out there have never even heard about the dangers posed by aspartame, fluoride, genetically-modified food, pesticides, high fructose corn syrup, pharmaceutical drugs, cell phones and toxic vaccines. Most of them have no idea that our food is toxic, our water is toxic and our vaccines are toxic. Right now, it is estimated that approximately70,000 chemicals are being used for commercial purposes, and as a result of our “modern lifestyles” we are literally being endlessly bombarded with toxins. This has resulted in a massive tsunami of death, disease and chronic illness in America. But very few people actually understand what is being done to all of us. The following are just a few of the ways that the “soft killing” of the American people is taking place…
Toxic Food
Do you believe that “you are what you eat”?
Well, have you ever considered what the animals that you eat are being fed?
If you are like most Americans, you will probably eat beef several times this week. But most Americans have no idea that our cows are being fed sawdust, chicken poop, candy, crab guts, limestone and dead cows that have been ground up on a regular basis.
Of course this is not true of all beef that you purchase at the grocery store.
But how do you tell which is which? And if you go for the lowest price beef, there is a greater chance that you are getting beef from cows that have literally been fed garbage.
And of course it isn’t just cows that are being fed poop. The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of it in many of our food products. If you doubt this, just check out this article: “There Is A Staggering Amount Of Feces In Our Food“.
Sometimes, it is the ingredients that are actually listed on the side of the box that are the most dangerous. Take aspartame for example. Once upon a time, it was listed as a biochemical warfare agent by the Pentagon. But now it is in thousands of food products in our grocery stores.
So is it safe for us to eat? According to an article on Mercola.com, it has a long track record of causing adverse reactions and the government refuses to do anything about it…
Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame include: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.
According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting of aspartame: Brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, parkinson’s disease, alzheimer’s, mental retardation, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes.
Toxic Water
Do you know what is in the water that you drink?
If not, perhaps you should do some investigating. According to one recent survey, our drinking water is absolutely littered with dangerous contaminants…
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that an astounding one-third of U.S. water systems contain traces of at least 18 unregulated and potentially hazardous contaminants, many of which are linked to causing endocrine disruption and cancer.
Based on a nationwide survey of 25 unnamed water utilities, scientists found traces of the herbicide metolachlor, for instance, a pesticide commonly applied to conventional corn, soy, cotton, safflower, potato and other crops, as well as the heavy metal strontium, which is linked to causing bone problems. Other chemicals identified include so-called perfluorinated compounds like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which numerous scientific studies have found can cause thyroid disease and various types of cancer.
After reading all this, you may never look at water the same way again.
Do you remember Erin Brockovich? Well, according to the Washington Postthe carcinogen that she was so concerned about has been found in the drinking water of most U.S. cities…
An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”
Lovely, eh?
Not only is there hexavalent chromium in our drinking water, the reality of the matter is that there are thousands of other chemicals and prescription drugs in our water supply as a Time Magazine article from a while back detailed…
All told, there are about 3,000 prescription pharmaceuticals in use in the U.S. and thousands more over-the-counter drugs, not to mention creams and ointments we smear on and then shower off. “Between cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other sources,” says John Spatz, commissioner of Chicago’s department of water management, “there are 80,000 potential combinations of chemicals.” It’s impossible to keep our drinking supply safe from a gusher like that.
And I haven’t even gotten to fluoride yet, which is purposely being put into the water supplies of most U.S. cities.
So precisely how dangerous is fluoride? Well, the Fluoride Dangers blog puts it this way….
Even small amounts of fluoride consumed from tap water can damage your bones, teeth, brain, disrupt your thyroid function, lower IQ and/or cause cancer, according to evidence revealed in a groundbreaking 2006 National Research Council (NRC) fluoride report produced by a panel of experts who reviewed hundreds of published fluoride studies.
That certainly does not sound good.
So is fluoride in the water that you are drinking?
Perhaps you should find out.
The Natural Health and Longevity Resource Center has published a list of ten of the most significant health problems that scientific studies have shown that fluoride causes…
1. Fluoride exposure disrupts the synthesis of collagen and leads to the breakdown of collagen in bone, tendon, muscle, skin, cartilage, lungs, kidney and trachea.
2. Fluoride stimulates granule formation and oxygen consumption in white blood cells, but inhibits these processes when the white blood cell is challenged by a foreign agent in the blood.
3. Fluoride depletes the energy reserves and the ability of white blood cells to properly destroy foreign agents by the process of phagocytosis. As little as 0.2 ppm fluoride stimulates superoxide production in resting white blood cells, virtually abolishing phagocytosis. Even micro-molar amounts of fluoride, below 1 ppm, may seriously depress the ability of white blood cells to destroy pathogenic agents.
4. Fluoride confuses the immune system and causes it to attack the body’s own tissues, and increases the tumor growth rate in cancer prone individuals.
5. Fluoride inhibits antibody formation in the blood.
6. Fluoride depresses thyroid activity.
7. Fluorides have a disruptive effect on various tissues in the body.
8. Fluoride promotes development of bone cancer.
9. Fluorides cause premature aging of the human body.
10. Fluoride ingestion from mouth rinses and dentifrices in children is extremely hazardous to biological development, life span and general health.
For much, much more on this, please watch a documentary entitled “An Inconvenient Tooth” that you can find on YouTube right here.
Toxic Vaccines
Are the vaccines that you are allowing the doctors to inject into your children safe?
Today, in some areas of the country more than 30 vaccines are being given to young children before the age of 3.
30 vaccines.
That is absolute madness.
They are overloading the systems of these young babies with massive amounts of toxins and the results are predictable.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children in the United States with autism has risen by 78 percent over the past decade.
I have personally read hundreds of testimonies of mothers losing their babies right after being vaccinated and children developing autism right after being vaccinated. Yet the medical community continues to vigorously deny the connection.
But without a doubt, the evidence is mounting. The following is an excerpt from a Huffington Post article about the danger of vaccines…
It’s a fact that many children with ASD regressed following normal development just as they were receiving multiple vaccines at regular doctor visits. Health officials say the timing is entirely coincidental.
Regression usually occurs between 12 and 24 months, thoughone study found that some children show signs of autism as early as six months, but never before that age.
By six months of age, most U.S. children have received about 18 inoculations containing 24 vaccines against nine diseases. Over the next two years or so, they will receive another nine shots containing 14 vaccines against 12 diseases.
So whether a child regresses at six months, or 18 months, the tragedy happens during a period of intensive vaccination. In many cases, parents report that the child had an abnormal reaction after being vaccinated (seizures, spiking-fevers, diarrhea, lethargy, high-pitched screaming and/or other symptoms).
Of course there will be many angry comments following this article denying that any of this is true.
And many of those making these comments will not even know what thimerosal is or why countries all over the planet have banned thimerosal from their vaccines. The following comes from an article by Dawn Prate….
“In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, suffered brain damage years later. Studies on thimerosal poisoning also describe tubular necrosis and nervous system injury, including obtundation, coma and death. As a result of these findings, Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines in 1980. Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have also banned the preservative”
So why is thimerosal not banned in the United States?
That is a very, very good question.
Unfortunately, in most states the authorities have doubled down on their efforts to force people to take these dangerous vaccines. In fact, a pregnant nurse in Pennsylvania was just fired for refusing to take a flu vaccine.
It is time that the American people heard the truth. You can find dozens of vaccine horror stories right here. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Don’t just blindly accept whatever the mainstream media tells you to believe.
And I don’t even have the space in this article to get into the study that showed a 40 percent increased risk of brain tumors from using cell phones, the connection between Wi-Fi and cancer, the chemtrails being sprayed all over the planet, or the incredible danger that genetically-modified food represents.
Without a doubt, an entire book could be written on how we are all being systematically poisoned.
So what do you think?
Is there anything that you would like to add to this discussion?
Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…
Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/soft-killing-the-american-people-using-toxic-food-toxic-water-and-toxic-vaccines
Alternative media in 2013...
Mikael Thalen
While some see the year’s countless political scandals as a negative example of western society’s current state, continued revelations and increased public knowledge of government corruption has undoubtedly made 2013 the year of awakening.
Although many of the year’s major news stories can be linked to the alternative media, several in particular are undoubtedly connected to a surge in the public’s awakening.
Western Governments Run Al Qaeda
Even with a small portion of the public being aware of Al Qaeda’s 1979 creation by the United States government, the idea of the West continuing to run and control Al Qaeda into the modern day has been brushed off and ridiculed by most mainstream media outlets. Now, with the continued rise of alternative media, mainline sources have been forced to admit or become aware of the fact, bringing “Al-CIA-Da” to the mainstream in 2013.
As President Obama forged ahead with the admitted decade long plan to destabilize the middle east, as revealed by General Wesley Clark in 2007, the United States’ support of Al Qaeda became increasingly evident. Although the presence of Al Qaeda jihadists in Libya made some headlines, President Obama’s public support of Al Qaeda in the Syrian conflict has forced major outlets to finally state the obvious.
“While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front,” said Robert Fisk of The Independent.
The alternative media’s relentless coverage of the situation in Syria, which exposed the hypocrisy and lies from the beginning, ultimately helped block the establishment’s attempt to launch a major war.
‘False Flag’ Goes Mainstream
Despite the historical reality of false flag operations, the establishment has continued to paint the highly documented military tactic as a figment of the imagination. Although the issue has received some coverage by mainstream media, including an ABC News report on Operation Northwoods, the term remained mostly unknown. Following the alternative media’s widely viewed coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and the Syrian chemical attacks, false flag became a phrase uttered throughout the public in 2013.
Following the tragic Boston bombing, the establishment narrative of alleged facts and information quickly began to unravel. Confirming local news reports, Anthony Gucciardi’s exclusive interview with veteran marathon runner and track coach Alastair Stevenson, who overheard loudspeaker announcements informing runners of bomb drills being carried out at the finish line, shattered the media’s initial stranglehold on the event’s coverage.
“You know, that just concerned me that that’s the only race that I’ve seen in my life where they had dogs sniffing for explosions, and that’s the only place where there had been explosions,” Stevenson said.
With critical information in hand, Infowars reporter Dan Bidondi made international news by demanding answers regarding drills and a possible false flag during three official press conferences. Media attempts to demonize Bidondi and legitimate questions regarding the incident immediately backfired, as Google searches for “false flag” skyrocketed following his appearance.
Despite denying any knowledge of the suspected bombers, the FBI were later forced to admit that both Tsarnaeva brothers were on CIA and FBI terror watch lists since 2011. Information that the Russian government asked the FBI to investigate one of the brothers only six months before the bombing was uncovered soon after.
Similarly, following the federal government’s attempts to blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for several chemical attacks, false flag saw another resurgence after information pushed out by the alternative media pointed to US backed Al Qaeda as the primary suspects. Major political figures such as Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan specifically referred to the attacks as false flags on major news outlets while Rush Limbaugh and Seymour Hersh followed with similar statements.
The Fraudulent War On Terror
Despite years of warning from prominent figures in the alternative media regarding the alleged war on terror, mainstream news has continued to champion the cause of eroding liberties for safety. Now, with the government’s anti-terror apparatus admittedly aimed at peaceful Americans, the public has finally begun to understand the war on terror’s true target.
Most notably, the emergence of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has validated claims made by the alternative media for over two decades. Despite other prominent NSA employees such as William Binney and Wayne Madsen blowing the whistle over 10 years ago, mainstream media largely ignored the revelations, instead opting to push the growing surveillance state.
With the knowledge of all emails, phone calls, text messages and internet activity being recorded, a public once willing to give up privacy in the name of protection has now begun to shift. Exclusive documents released by the alternative media, including documents exposing Seattle’s Homeland Security funded mesh network, have prompted national attention as well. Unfortunately, the surveillance state is only one part of the war on terror’s multipronged attack on the American public.
Despite the establishment’s attempts to twist and downplay the discovery, investigative reports by Infowars uncovering the federal government’s purchase of more than two billion rounds of hollow point ammunition were forced into the mainstream earlier this year. The story, reaching millions and even prompting a congressional investigation, garnered the attention of several military figures, who quickly refuted the government’s claim of needing the ammunition for training.
“We never trained with hollow points, we didn’t even see hollow points my entire four and a half years in the Marine Corps,” retired Marine Richard Mason told reporters in Pennsylvania.
In a letter to Texas Sen. John Cornyn, United States Army Captain Terry M. Hestilow voiced concern over the massive stockpiling of ammunition as well.
“It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America,” the letter states.
While excuses regarding the ammunition purchases were echoed by some, few excuses could explain the federal government’s acquisition of “No More Hesitation” shooting targets.
Spending more than $5.5 million, $2 million of which came from the Department of Homeland Security, government agencies were found to be training against pregnant women, the elderly and families in playgrounds.
Coupled with the government’s major ammunition purchases, few could continue to deny the disturbing trend laid out by the alternative media. Following considerable outrage, the producer of the targets, Law Enforcement Targets, Inc., issued a public apology on their Facebook page.
Countless other stories regarding the government’s targeting of American citizens has only increased the public’s distrust, revealed in several polls conducted throughout 2013.
A poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind showed that 29 percent of the public believes an armed rebellion may soon be necessary to protect civil liberties. Just last November, a separate poll found the public’s approval of Congress to be only six percent, a historic low. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media is now only trusted by 23 percent of the country, showing the establishment’s continued failure at controlling public debate.
Given comments made by major political figures such as former US National Security Adviser and Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, who continues to warn of the alternative media fueled “global political awakening,” 2014 is set to be one of the most important years facing humanity.
link:
http://www.storyleak.com/2013-year-awakening/
Is it time for peaceful secession???
Parting Company
By Walter E. Williams
Here’s a question that I’ve asked in the past that needs to be revisited. Unless one wishes to obfuscate, it has a simple yes or no answer. If one group of people prefers strong government control and management of people’s lives while another group prefers liberty and desires to be left alone, should they be required to enter into conflict with one another and risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences on the other group? Yes or no. My answer is no; they should be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways.
The problem our nation faces is very much like a marriage in which one partner has an established pattern of ignoring and breaking the marital vows. Moreover, the offending partner has no intention to mend his ways. Of course, the marriage can remain intact while one party tries to impose his will on the other and engages in the deviousness of one-upsmanship and retaliation. Rather than domination or submission by one party, or domestic violence, a more peaceable alternative is separation.
I believe our nation is at a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage where vows are broken, our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. These constitutional violations have increased independent of whether there’s been a Democrat-controlled Washington or a Republican-controlled Washington.
There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways. You say, “Williams, what do you mean by constitutional abrogation?” Let’s look at the magnitude of the violations.
Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is there authority for Congress to tax and spend for: Medicare, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food stamps and thousands of other activities that account for roughly two-thirds of the federal budget. Neither is there authority for congressional mandates to citizens about what type of health insurance they must purchase, how states and people may use their land, the speed at which they can drive, whether a library has wheelchair ramps, and the gallons of water used per toilet flush. The list of congressional violations of both the letter and spirit of the Constitution is virtually without end. Our derelict Supreme Court has given Congress sanction to do just about anything for which they can muster a majority vote.
James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.” Our founder’s constitutional vision of limited federal government has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Americans have several options. We can like sheep submit to those who have contempt for liberty and our Constitution. We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed and death in an attempt to force America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and Constitution. A superior alternative is to find a way to peaceably separate into states whose citizens respect liberty and the Constitution. My personal preference is a restoration of the constitutional values of limited government that made us a great nation.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/walter-e-williams/peaceful-secession/
By Walter E. Williams
Here’s a question that I’ve asked in the past that needs to be revisited. Unless one wishes to obfuscate, it has a simple yes or no answer. If one group of people prefers strong government control and management of people’s lives while another group prefers liberty and desires to be left alone, should they be required to enter into conflict with one another and risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences on the other group? Yes or no. My answer is no; they should be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways.
The problem our nation faces is very much like a marriage in which one partner has an established pattern of ignoring and breaking the marital vows. Moreover, the offending partner has no intention to mend his ways. Of course, the marriage can remain intact while one party tries to impose his will on the other and engages in the deviousness of one-upsmanship and retaliation. Rather than domination or submission by one party, or domestic violence, a more peaceable alternative is separation.
I believe our nation is at a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage where vows are broken, our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. These constitutional violations have increased independent of whether there’s been a Democrat-controlled Washington or a Republican-controlled Washington.
There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways. You say, “Williams, what do you mean by constitutional abrogation?” Let’s look at the magnitude of the violations.
Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is there authority for Congress to tax and spend for: Medicare, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food stamps and thousands of other activities that account for roughly two-thirds of the federal budget. Neither is there authority for congressional mandates to citizens about what type of health insurance they must purchase, how states and people may use their land, the speed at which they can drive, whether a library has wheelchair ramps, and the gallons of water used per toilet flush. The list of congressional violations of both the letter and spirit of the Constitution is virtually without end. Our derelict Supreme Court has given Congress sanction to do just about anything for which they can muster a majority vote.
James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.” Our founder’s constitutional vision of limited federal government has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Americans have several options. We can like sheep submit to those who have contempt for liberty and our Constitution. We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed and death in an attempt to force America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and Constitution. A superior alternative is to find a way to peaceably separate into states whose citizens respect liberty and the Constitution. My personal preference is a restoration of the constitutional values of limited government that made us a great nation.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/walter-e-williams/peaceful-secession/
Still hope for liberty???
13 Good Things for Liberty in 2013
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
As 2013 draws to a close, let’s pause to recall some important developments for the cause of liberty – some of which you already know well, and others you’ll be hearing about for the first time.
Edward Snowden. After sitting on the Bush-era warrantless wiretapping story for 18 months, the New York Times revealed a portion of the surveillance activities of the US government in 2005. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that the National Security Agency’s spying activities vastly exceeded anything we heard about in the media.
The Snowden revelations served two functions from the point of view of public enlightenment. First, the regime in DC was once again exposed as untruthful, even sinister. But second, the bipartisan condemnation of Snowden on the part of the political establishment – both Nancy Pelosi and John McCain denounced him, unsurprisingly – reminds us that there is, after all, one party: the state party. Whatever cosmetic differences separate politicians otherwise, when push comes to shove, they rally to one another in the face of a truth-teller.
New President for the Mises Institute. At the end of 2013 the Mises Institute named Jeff Deist, former as chief of staff to Ron Paul, as its new president. Jeff is a significant figure in so many ways – smart, well spoken, principled, and knowledgeable about money, banking, the Fed, and indeed the entire edifice of Austrian economics.
“Ron Paul’s congressional staff viewed the Mises Institute as our intellectual home,” Jeff recalls. “We applied Austrian principles and scholarship to virtually everything Ron did as a member of Congress. I’m honored to join an organization Ron has enthusiastically supported from the very beginning, and excited about dedicating myself to furthering the Austrian message.”
Ron, for his part, says he’s thrilled that Jeff “is fighting for liberty again.”
Obamacare. Everybody knows about the Obamacare fiascoes – the useless website and “if you like your plan, you can keep it” chief among them. But what a disaster the rollout of this program has been for the regime, which hates nothing more than looking ridiculous and incompetent, and being the butt of the people’s jokes. Meanwhile, supporters of the president think they’re helping matters by casually pointing out that of course the president knew he was lying when he said people could keep health plans they liked; he had to lie to them in order to get this program passed.
It’s rare to encounter such refreshing candor from the political and media classes.
The Austrian School. Meanwhile, interest in the Austrian School continues to grow, and demands for our resources and services have never been greater. Our Austrian Economics Research Conference, which attracts the best scholars from around the world working in the Austrian tradition, promises to be among our best ever, with an illustrious list of named lecturers and scores of papers advancing the Austrian School in new and exciting ways.
The Great Deformation. David Stockman’s gripping book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America is more than a devastating blow to the conventional narrative of the financial crisis and the geniuses who supposedly put things right. It is a sweeping, revisionist account of 20th-century US history, bristling with insights and little-known history. Imagine reading a book on 20th-century America without a systematic pro-Fed bias, and without the usual deference to the “great presidents.” I reviewed it for LRC. I urge you to read it.
The growth in peace and noninterventionist sentiment. Polls show the public growing war weary, and consistently less convinced of the need for the US government to involve itself in this or that part of the world. This wonderful result owes nothing to Obama and the so-called progressives who follow him.
The Obama years proved what most people had long suspected: the leftist so-called peace movement had been a trick all along. Their outrage was selective: only aggression perpetrated by Republican presidents was worthy of protest, or sometimes even of notice. To observe Obama’s supporters defend the Libya intervention, and try to show how very different it was from Bush’s interventions, was to be reminded of how many people seriously believe the real conflict in America is between the red team and the blue team.
You’d think the Democrats would have learned something when the crazed John McCain said he had more in common with Obama on foreign policy than with some members of his own party, but Obama voters turned out to be not nearly as far from McCain as they pretended to be.
So it is not to the Left that we may attribute this wonderful polling data. Once again, it’s Ron. Everyone suddenly sounded like Ron when the debate over the Syria intervention arose. And the neocons still can’t get a war going with Iran. Ron is winning, which means the cause of peace is winning.
Ron was the one who kept bringing up foreign policy again and again in the 2008 and 2012 primary seasons, and for decades before. His arguments ranged from the pragmatic to the intensely moral. Intervention itself is a good portion of the reason the US government is despised around the world. An open-ended policy of intervention will contribute to the country’s financial ruin. Intervention could well result in the triumph of even less friendly regimes than before.
Today, who can doubt even one of these statements, for which Ron was pilloried not so long ago?
Ron was the only candidate in recent memory to speak of the human toll of the US war machine. Dead Iraqis don’t vote, and the constituency one must appeal to in a GOP primary has not distinguished itself by a profound concern for the fate of enemy civilians, so Ron took this stance on principle alone. This, and not meticulously parsing his words to please the general public, is how Ron secured himself a place in history.
And incidentally, how many times can a man be vindicated in his lifetime? Ron predicted the housing bubble and collapse on the House floor all the way back in 2001. (His opponents, by contrast, were oblivious to the very end – Herman Cain gave the economy a clean bill of health just one week before the Panic of 2008 set in.) Ron warned about government surveillance and the curtailment of civil liberties, and was told he was being paranoid. Today, even right-wing radio is outraged at revelations of what the NSA has been doing. And Ron said the foreign policy of McCain would be counterproductive, not to mention enormously expensive in terms of money and lives. In 1974, Ron was speaking out about the Fed, and where its evils would lead. Today, Ron is joining our board.
No one in his right mind denies any of this any longer.
The ongoing militarization of the police. Whether it’s SWAT attacks, no-knock raids, military-style equipment, or the centralization of crime control, the militarization of the police has spooked people across the ideological spectrum into action. It’s such a talked-about issue these days that we’ve made it the theme of 2014’s Mises Institute event in Houston. (Join us on January 18!) People are especially waking up to the routine dog-shooting—even puppies in crates—by the police.
The Ron Paul Channel. This year witnessed the launch of still another Ron Paul initiative: the Ron Paul Channel. Of all his current projects, this is the one dearest to his heart. Here is unfiltered, 100 octane Ron Paul. It’s Ron’s take on the news, plus guests whom the mainstream would rather ignore. And the channel is about to expand to welcome new contributors and programming, all chosen and guided by Ron.
The Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum. In tandem with the book, Ron’s homeschool curriculum was announced this year. Ron said in a recent interview with the Mises Institute, “The curriculum I’ve designed, and which I refer to in the book, is more than just history and economics. It’s math and the sciences, it’s literature, it’s writing, it’s public speaking, it’s learning how to start your own business, and above all, it’s learning how to learn. All of these are skills that will serve a young person well. If a substantial number of libertarian young people have these skills, I believe things begin to change.” Check out Ron’s column “Why This Homeschool Curriculum Matters to Me.”
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Ron was especially pleased this year to be able to found an organization dedicated to peace and international understanding, and opposed to the juvenile propaganda of the Bush/Obama axis of evil. The Institute’s executive director is the brilliant Daniel McAdams, who advised Ron on foreign affairs and civil liberties issues from 2001 until 2012. Daniel and his colleagues keep us informed about the state of the world from a noninterventionist perspective. But my favorite part of the Institute’s website is “Neocon Watch.”
Ron and Daniel hope to sponsor a summer school for students who support peace and oppose the war machine.
The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System. Ron also found time to publish another book this year, this one on how to carry the Ron Paul Revolution forward. Education, naturally, is the key. Technology has pushed costs lower than before, and is mounting the greatest challenge to the existing education bureaucracy ever posed. We have a critical opportunity to seize, and Ron lays it out step by step.
The Tom Woods Show. Tom Woods, whom you may know from his books, his public speaking, or his YouTubes, now has a weekday podcast that covers a vast array of topics. If there’s an argument against libertarianism, you can bet Tom has a show in response to it. Here are the first 65 episodes, one of which is an interview with me.
Thanks for making 2013 another great year for Liberty! Happy New Year!
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/lew-rockwell/13-good-things-for-liberty-in-2013/
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
As 2013 draws to a close, let’s pause to recall some important developments for the cause of liberty – some of which you already know well, and others you’ll be hearing about for the first time.
Edward Snowden. After sitting on the Bush-era warrantless wiretapping story for 18 months, the New York Times revealed a portion of the surveillance activities of the US government in 2005. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that the National Security Agency’s spying activities vastly exceeded anything we heard about in the media.
The Snowden revelations served two functions from the point of view of public enlightenment. First, the regime in DC was once again exposed as untruthful, even sinister. But second, the bipartisan condemnation of Snowden on the part of the political establishment – both Nancy Pelosi and John McCain denounced him, unsurprisingly – reminds us that there is, after all, one party: the state party. Whatever cosmetic differences separate politicians otherwise, when push comes to shove, they rally to one another in the face of a truth-teller.
New President for the Mises Institute. At the end of 2013 the Mises Institute named Jeff Deist, former as chief of staff to Ron Paul, as its new president. Jeff is a significant figure in so many ways – smart, well spoken, principled, and knowledgeable about money, banking, the Fed, and indeed the entire edifice of Austrian economics.
“Ron Paul’s congressional staff viewed the Mises Institute as our intellectual home,” Jeff recalls. “We applied Austrian principles and scholarship to virtually everything Ron did as a member of Congress. I’m honored to join an organization Ron has enthusiastically supported from the very beginning, and excited about dedicating myself to furthering the Austrian message.”
Ron, for his part, says he’s thrilled that Jeff “is fighting for liberty again.”
Obamacare. Everybody knows about the Obamacare fiascoes – the useless website and “if you like your plan, you can keep it” chief among them. But what a disaster the rollout of this program has been for the regime, which hates nothing more than looking ridiculous and incompetent, and being the butt of the people’s jokes. Meanwhile, supporters of the president think they’re helping matters by casually pointing out that of course the president knew he was lying when he said people could keep health plans they liked; he had to lie to them in order to get this program passed.
It’s rare to encounter such refreshing candor from the political and media classes.
The Austrian School. Meanwhile, interest in the Austrian School continues to grow, and demands for our resources and services have never been greater. Our Austrian Economics Research Conference, which attracts the best scholars from around the world working in the Austrian tradition, promises to be among our best ever, with an illustrious list of named lecturers and scores of papers advancing the Austrian School in new and exciting ways.
The Great Deformation. David Stockman’s gripping book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America is more than a devastating blow to the conventional narrative of the financial crisis and the geniuses who supposedly put things right. It is a sweeping, revisionist account of 20th-century US history, bristling with insights and little-known history. Imagine reading a book on 20th-century America without a systematic pro-Fed bias, and without the usual deference to the “great presidents.” I reviewed it for LRC. I urge you to read it.
The growth in peace and noninterventionist sentiment. Polls show the public growing war weary, and consistently less convinced of the need for the US government to involve itself in this or that part of the world. This wonderful result owes nothing to Obama and the so-called progressives who follow him.
The Obama years proved what most people had long suspected: the leftist so-called peace movement had been a trick all along. Their outrage was selective: only aggression perpetrated by Republican presidents was worthy of protest, or sometimes even of notice. To observe Obama’s supporters defend the Libya intervention, and try to show how very different it was from Bush’s interventions, was to be reminded of how many people seriously believe the real conflict in America is between the red team and the blue team.
You’d think the Democrats would have learned something when the crazed John McCain said he had more in common with Obama on foreign policy than with some members of his own party, but Obama voters turned out to be not nearly as far from McCain as they pretended to be.
So it is not to the Left that we may attribute this wonderful polling data. Once again, it’s Ron. Everyone suddenly sounded like Ron when the debate over the Syria intervention arose. And the neocons still can’t get a war going with Iran. Ron is winning, which means the cause of peace is winning.
Ron was the one who kept bringing up foreign policy again and again in the 2008 and 2012 primary seasons, and for decades before. His arguments ranged from the pragmatic to the intensely moral. Intervention itself is a good portion of the reason the US government is despised around the world. An open-ended policy of intervention will contribute to the country’s financial ruin. Intervention could well result in the triumph of even less friendly regimes than before.
Today, who can doubt even one of these statements, for which Ron was pilloried not so long ago?
Ron was the only candidate in recent memory to speak of the human toll of the US war machine. Dead Iraqis don’t vote, and the constituency one must appeal to in a GOP primary has not distinguished itself by a profound concern for the fate of enemy civilians, so Ron took this stance on principle alone. This, and not meticulously parsing his words to please the general public, is how Ron secured himself a place in history.
And incidentally, how many times can a man be vindicated in his lifetime? Ron predicted the housing bubble and collapse on the House floor all the way back in 2001. (His opponents, by contrast, were oblivious to the very end – Herman Cain gave the economy a clean bill of health just one week before the Panic of 2008 set in.) Ron warned about government surveillance and the curtailment of civil liberties, and was told he was being paranoid. Today, even right-wing radio is outraged at revelations of what the NSA has been doing. And Ron said the foreign policy of McCain would be counterproductive, not to mention enormously expensive in terms of money and lives. In 1974, Ron was speaking out about the Fed, and where its evils would lead. Today, Ron is joining our board.
No one in his right mind denies any of this any longer.
The ongoing militarization of the police. Whether it’s SWAT attacks, no-knock raids, military-style equipment, or the centralization of crime control, the militarization of the police has spooked people across the ideological spectrum into action. It’s such a talked-about issue these days that we’ve made it the theme of 2014’s Mises Institute event in Houston. (Join us on January 18!) People are especially waking up to the routine dog-shooting—even puppies in crates—by the police.
The Ron Paul Channel. This year witnessed the launch of still another Ron Paul initiative: the Ron Paul Channel. Of all his current projects, this is the one dearest to his heart. Here is unfiltered, 100 octane Ron Paul. It’s Ron’s take on the news, plus guests whom the mainstream would rather ignore. And the channel is about to expand to welcome new contributors and programming, all chosen and guided by Ron.
The Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum. In tandem with the book, Ron’s homeschool curriculum was announced this year. Ron said in a recent interview with the Mises Institute, “The curriculum I’ve designed, and which I refer to in the book, is more than just history and economics. It’s math and the sciences, it’s literature, it’s writing, it’s public speaking, it’s learning how to start your own business, and above all, it’s learning how to learn. All of these are skills that will serve a young person well. If a substantial number of libertarian young people have these skills, I believe things begin to change.” Check out Ron’s column “Why This Homeschool Curriculum Matters to Me.”
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Ron was especially pleased this year to be able to found an organization dedicated to peace and international understanding, and opposed to the juvenile propaganda of the Bush/Obama axis of evil. The Institute’s executive director is the brilliant Daniel McAdams, who advised Ron on foreign affairs and civil liberties issues from 2001 until 2012. Daniel and his colleagues keep us informed about the state of the world from a noninterventionist perspective. But my favorite part of the Institute’s website is “Neocon Watch.”
Ron and Daniel hope to sponsor a summer school for students who support peace and oppose the war machine.
The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System. Ron also found time to publish another book this year, this one on how to carry the Ron Paul Revolution forward. Education, naturally, is the key. Technology has pushed costs lower than before, and is mounting the greatest challenge to the existing education bureaucracy ever posed. We have a critical opportunity to seize, and Ron lays it out step by step.
The Tom Woods Show. Tom Woods, whom you may know from his books, his public speaking, or his YouTubes, now has a weekday podcast that covers a vast array of topics. If there’s an argument against libertarianism, you can bet Tom has a show in response to it. Here are the first 65 episodes, one of which is an interview with me.
Thanks for making 2013 another great year for Liberty! Happy New Year!
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/lew-rockwell/13-good-things-for-liberty-in-2013/
Monday, December 30, 2013
The drones are coming to a state near you...
Posted by Joshua Cook
The FAA announced Monday that test sites for drones will be based in Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia.
Drones are mainly used by the military, but businesses and farmers want to use them for commercial use. Law enforcement and universities want to them too.
The FAA is working to develop operational guidelines for commercial use of drones by the end of 2015. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta says safety is the first priority in moving drones into U.S. airspace.
Drones are controversial. Americans are concerned with safety, but have privacy concerns as well.
The DailyCaller asked Sen. Rand Paul about commercial drone use earlier this month.
“Delivering packages, I don’t have a great objection to how packages are delivered other than somebody’s going to have to figure out the flight patterns of these things to make sure its not a risk to airplane,” Paul said in a brief telephone interview with The Daily Caller.
“But I’m also worried about private entities that would want to look into your yard, in your windows, in your mailbox, things like that,” Paul added. “So I do think when we’re looking at privacy, it’s a concern.”
US commercial airspace will be opened to drones in less than two years, and in preparation for such an event, with an eye to the possible abuses of the devices, many states have taken it upon themselves to regulate the use of unmanned aircraft.
Laws and resolutions passed by states are reassuring, but the number of applications to be test sites is increasing.
According to the Hill, a Senate committee will conduct a hearing next year on the commercial use of drones.
“As we move forward toward integrating drones into civilian life and capitalizing on the economic opportunities they offer, we must make certain that these aircraft meet rigorous safety and privacy standards,” said Rockefeller, D-W. Va.
“I plan to hold a hearing early next year to explore the potential economic benefits of unmanned vehicles in our airspace, as well as the potential risks they may create,” he said.
Read more: http://benswann.com/the-drones-are-coming-faa-chooses-6-states-for-test-sites/#ixzz2ozuLbYhE
Don't fall for the Con Con con...
Mark Levin Wants To Play Russian Roulette With The Constitution
Posted by Evan Mulch
Many are starting to question the extremely hard push from many so-called self-proclaimed conservative talk show hosts regarding Mark Levin’s push for a Constitutional Convention. To many of us, it seems that the only time these talk show hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) join together in this manner is when there is a time to bring Americans into another unconstitutional war or when it’s time to persuade Americans that they should support another self-proclaimed “conservative” candidate that believes that the U.S. Constitution is a living document that can be altered without regard to the laws of the Constitution.
So why is it that so many are being called on by self-proclaimed conservative leaders to promote a Con Con (also known as an Article 5 Constitutional Convention)? As cruel as they are, the leaders are often heard pulling on the heart strings of Americans by claiming that that this is a way to immediately put an end to things such as abortion, American flag burning, and an unbalanced federal budget. Mark Levin, leader of the push for a Con Con, pulls on the heart strings of Americans without warning them of the real dangers of a Constitutional Convention. He does this by telling Americans that the Constitution will only be reasonably amended because we can “trust” conservative Republicans to do what is right for us at an Article 5 Constitutional Convention.
No Such Thing In Article V As A “State Convention Process”
According to Washington Times columnist Michael Lotfi’s column titled “Nullification vs. Article V Constitutional Convention: Why Levin Is Wrong“, Mark Levin is incorrect when he says that it authorizes a “state convention process.” This is because Article V only allows states to apply for Congress to call a convention. In other words, Congress gets to choose the delegates not the states. Lotfi told BenSwann.com directly that “The idea that a Congress with a 5% approval rating could effectively choose delegates, which would protect our Constitution, is almost laughable.”
Since Congress is basically controlled by big pocketed lobbyists, most of us can conclude that it would likely be much worse for Congress to pick the delegates rather than our states. But for the purpose of blowing another hole in Mark Levin’s great idea, let’s assume that states get to pick the delegates rather than Congress.
As many of us know, most states have a majority in both state chambers of so-called conservative Republicans. Mark Levin has convinced Americans that the Republicans will basically control the “state convention process.” Although this sounds great to many members of the Republican Party, the vast majority of these Republicans can not be trusted to protect our constitutional liberties or most states would have proceeded long ago to exercise their constitutional right to nullify the NDAA, Obamacare, federal drug laws, and many other things. The majority of Republican state representatives and senators are Republican In Name Only (RINO) and are not the type of people we can trust at a national meeting where the giant risk would be that our whole Constitution could possibly be replaced or re-written.
Why Americans Should Be On High Alert
At this time, Mark Levin and the other so-called conservatives leading the Con Con effort have been able to convince far too many Americans into believing that a Con Con is a safe and easy way to solve most of the problems that America has. According to ConventionofStates.com, this month Virginia, South Carolina and Florida became the first to pre-file an Application for a Convention of the States Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
As Americans, we should not forget our history. Long ago during the last Con Con back in 1787 the leaders of the state of Rhode Island were deeply displeased by the unlawful actions of the representatives that attended the Con Con and therefore hesitated to ratify the new Constitution. According to the rules before the 1787 Con Con, all of the states were supposed to agree to any changes made to the Constitution but this rule was simply not followed and so the rule was made at the convention that only 9 states needed to agree on the changes to the Constitution. At the time, the leaders of Rhode Island considered withdrawing from the union and may have proceeded with doing so had it not been for the fear of facing world tyrants alone.
So will the rules be followed at Mark Levin’s Con Con? In the opinion of many, the rules would likely not be followed but that is not what most are concerned about. The fact of the matter is that entering into a Constitutional Convention at this time in America’s history would basically be like entering a game of Russian Roulette with the Constitution. The morality of our representatives needs to drastically improve before we can ever put our trust in them at an Article 5 Constitutional Convention.
What Should Americans Do?
Right now the best strategy to curing our country’s unconstitutional ills is not through a Con Con but through education, persuasion, and encouragement. Americans need to be better educated on how the U.S. Constitution as it is currently written can be enough for us to return to the glory days of living in a booming economy where civil rights are protected rather than taken away by our federal government.
Overall, there is no easy fix as Mark Levin wants Americans to believe and people need to be very skeptical of his intentions due to his lack of warning of what the dire consequences could actually be if a Con Con were held. As Americans, we should all do ourselves a huge favor in the coming days and make as many phone calls as possible to our local leaders, state representatives, and national representatives to let them know that a Con Con is not in our best interest. Together, let’s tell Mark Levin and his so-called conservative pals that they will not tread on us any longer!
Read more: http://benswann.com/mark-levin-wants-to-play-russian-roulette-with-the-constitution/#ixzz2oztHp1f9
Posted by Evan Mulch
Many are starting to question the extremely hard push from many so-called self-proclaimed conservative talk show hosts regarding Mark Levin’s push for a Constitutional Convention. To many of us, it seems that the only time these talk show hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) join together in this manner is when there is a time to bring Americans into another unconstitutional war or when it’s time to persuade Americans that they should support another self-proclaimed “conservative” candidate that believes that the U.S. Constitution is a living document that can be altered without regard to the laws of the Constitution.
So why is it that so many are being called on by self-proclaimed conservative leaders to promote a Con Con (also known as an Article 5 Constitutional Convention)? As cruel as they are, the leaders are often heard pulling on the heart strings of Americans by claiming that that this is a way to immediately put an end to things such as abortion, American flag burning, and an unbalanced federal budget. Mark Levin, leader of the push for a Con Con, pulls on the heart strings of Americans without warning them of the real dangers of a Constitutional Convention. He does this by telling Americans that the Constitution will only be reasonably amended because we can “trust” conservative Republicans to do what is right for us at an Article 5 Constitutional Convention.
No Such Thing In Article V As A “State Convention Process”
According to Washington Times columnist Michael Lotfi’s column titled “Nullification vs. Article V Constitutional Convention: Why Levin Is Wrong“, Mark Levin is incorrect when he says that it authorizes a “state convention process.” This is because Article V only allows states to apply for Congress to call a convention. In other words, Congress gets to choose the delegates not the states. Lotfi told BenSwann.com directly that “The idea that a Congress with a 5% approval rating could effectively choose delegates, which would protect our Constitution, is almost laughable.”
Since Congress is basically controlled by big pocketed lobbyists, most of us can conclude that it would likely be much worse for Congress to pick the delegates rather than our states. But for the purpose of blowing another hole in Mark Levin’s great idea, let’s assume that states get to pick the delegates rather than Congress.
As many of us know, most states have a majority in both state chambers of so-called conservative Republicans. Mark Levin has convinced Americans that the Republicans will basically control the “state convention process.” Although this sounds great to many members of the Republican Party, the vast majority of these Republicans can not be trusted to protect our constitutional liberties or most states would have proceeded long ago to exercise their constitutional right to nullify the NDAA, Obamacare, federal drug laws, and many other things. The majority of Republican state representatives and senators are Republican In Name Only (RINO) and are not the type of people we can trust at a national meeting where the giant risk would be that our whole Constitution could possibly be replaced or re-written.
Why Americans Should Be On High Alert
At this time, Mark Levin and the other so-called conservatives leading the Con Con effort have been able to convince far too many Americans into believing that a Con Con is a safe and easy way to solve most of the problems that America has. According to ConventionofStates.com, this month Virginia, South Carolina and Florida became the first to pre-file an Application for a Convention of the States Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
As Americans, we should not forget our history. Long ago during the last Con Con back in 1787 the leaders of the state of Rhode Island were deeply displeased by the unlawful actions of the representatives that attended the Con Con and therefore hesitated to ratify the new Constitution. According to the rules before the 1787 Con Con, all of the states were supposed to agree to any changes made to the Constitution but this rule was simply not followed and so the rule was made at the convention that only 9 states needed to agree on the changes to the Constitution. At the time, the leaders of Rhode Island considered withdrawing from the union and may have proceeded with doing so had it not been for the fear of facing world tyrants alone.
So will the rules be followed at Mark Levin’s Con Con? In the opinion of many, the rules would likely not be followed but that is not what most are concerned about. The fact of the matter is that entering into a Constitutional Convention at this time in America’s history would basically be like entering a game of Russian Roulette with the Constitution. The morality of our representatives needs to drastically improve before we can ever put our trust in them at an Article 5 Constitutional Convention.
What Should Americans Do?
Right now the best strategy to curing our country’s unconstitutional ills is not through a Con Con but through education, persuasion, and encouragement. Americans need to be better educated on how the U.S. Constitution as it is currently written can be enough for us to return to the glory days of living in a booming economy where civil rights are protected rather than taken away by our federal government.
Overall, there is no easy fix as Mark Levin wants Americans to believe and people need to be very skeptical of his intentions due to his lack of warning of what the dire consequences could actually be if a Con Con were held. As Americans, we should all do ourselves a huge favor in the coming days and make as many phone calls as possible to our local leaders, state representatives, and national representatives to let them know that a Con Con is not in our best interest. Together, let’s tell Mark Levin and his so-called conservative pals that they will not tread on us any longer!
Read more: http://benswann.com/mark-levin-wants-to-play-russian-roulette-with-the-constitution/#ixzz2oztHp1f9
Once CIA, always CIA...
Washington Post Urged to Disclose New Owner’s CIA Ties
Written by Alex Newman
The Washington Post, one of the premier mouthpieces for the establishment, is facing a tsunami of criticism and calls for full disclosure after the newspaper’s new owner, Amazon CEO and Bilderberg luminary Jeff Bezos, secured a $600 million contract with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for “cloud” services. According to critics, the Washington Post boss’s CIA ties represent a serious conflict of interest that, under basic ethical standards in journalism, must be disclosed to readers — at least whenever the paper is reporting on the “intelligence community” and its activities. So far, however, the Post has not publicly announced whether or not it will acknowledge what analysts say is a cut-and-dry conflict of interest.
Also troubling to critics of Bezos and his budding media empire is the billionaire’s intimate ties to the very pinnacle of the establishment. Bezos, for example, has in recent years become a regular attendee of the annual Bilderberg meetings. The deeply controversial and secretive gatherings feature top international figures in government, the establishment media, military, business, banking, royalty, intelligence, academia, and more. While the outfit is fiendishly obsessed with secrecy — its attendees claim they just want to discuss global issues in private — critics have long pointed to admissions from its luminaries to suggest that Bilderberg plays a crucial but largely hidden role in directing world trends.
Another controversy emerging around Bezos and his acquisition of the Post surrounds Amazon’s treatment of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that helps whistleblowers expose government crimes by releasing secret documents. As the transparency organization was publishing U.S. State Department cables documenting myriad crimes and scandals, Amazon’s web services division infamously pulled the plug on WikiLeaks’ website. The extraordinarily controversial decision came shortly after politicians in Washington, D.C., such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, began hysterically melting down over the public exposure of their machinations.
The alternative media, of course, has seized on the conflict-of-interest story, citing the massive CIA contract with Amazon as yet another example of the establishment press run amok — Big Business and Big Government joining forces against the public. Experts in communications, media, and intelligence have also been slamming the paper and its owner for the controversial and shadowy dealings. As the public learns of the news, meanwhile, anger is growing as well. Tens of thousands of people have already signed a petition calling on the newspaper to provide full disclosure on its links to the shadowy espionage agency — especially when reporting on the CIA and related agencies or activities.
“A basic principle of journalism is to acknowledge when the owner of a media outlet has a major financial relationship with the subject of coverage,” states a petition on RootsAction, a prominent self-styled “progressive” outfit dedicated to mobilizing resistance to what it views as corporatism. “We strongly urge the Washington Post to be fully candid with its readers about the fact that the newspaper’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. The Washington Post’s coverage of the CIA should include full disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of Amazon — and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the CIA.”
Bezos purchased the Post earlier this year for $250 million from its longtime owners, the Graham family. The self-made billionaire, who earned his fortune by founding pro-Internet-taxes book giant Amazon.com in 1994, has avoided any drastic changes at the Post thus far, despite the fact that it has been losing money. Around the same time Bezos was purchasing the newspaper through his private investment company, Amazon’s cloud computing division, known as Amazon Web Services, beat IBM and secured the $600 million contract with the CIA. The billionaire has remained relatively silent on the massive deal so far, other than praising his employees for their work.
From across the political spectrum, the so-called “alternative” media — as opposed to what critics condescendingly refer to as the “mainstream media” (MSM) — have been lambasting the Post over the apparent conflict of interest. Amazon’s CIA contract is to provide “cloud computing” services to the intelligence-gathering outfit, which has led to countless headlines about a CIA “cloud” of suspicion descending over the Post. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the CIA and various other “intelligence” organs serving the U.S. government have a long and sordid history of manipulating the media in a bid to manipulate the public. Operation Mockingbird, for example, is among the best known scandals.
Former CIA analyst and co-founder of “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity” Ray McGovern, whose responsibilities once included chairing National Intelligence Estimates, is among the prominent figures speaking out about the CIA-Post connection. In a statement published by the Institute for Public Accuracy, McGovern said the CIA-Bezos duo offered “compelling proof that the Fourth Estate is moribund, and that defenders of the independence and integrity of the Web must thwart attempts by bozos at CIA and Bezos at the once-independent Washington Post from leaving still more stain on journalism.”
“CIA secret ties with the Post and other Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) go back several decades,” McGovern continued. “After leaving the Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a major story for Rolling Stone (Oct. 20, 1977) showing how the FCM worked hand in glove with the CIA and how this was all covered up by the committee led by [Senator] Frank Church in 1975. What emerges now is what, in intelligence parlance, is called an ‘agent of influence’ owning the Post — with a huge financial interest in playing nice with the CIA. In other words, two main players nourishing the national security state in undisguised collaboration.”
Other respected analysts offered similarly stinging criticism of the troubling relationship between the CIA, Bezos, and one of America’s most influential newspapers. University of Illinois communications Professor Robert McChesney, who has published books dealing with conflicts of interest in the media, for example, also blasted the links. “When the main shareholder in one of the very largest corporations in the world benefits from a massive contract with the CIA on the one hand, and that same billionaire owns the Washington Post on the other hand, there are serious problems,” he explained in a statement.
“The Post is unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news media,” Prof. McChesney added. “Citizens need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of the Post itself. If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation — say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government — the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press. It is time for the Post to take a dose of its own medicine.”
Even former reporters for the Washington Post have criticized the paper and its owner over the conflict of interest. While Bezos’s Bilderberg links have not received much attention thus far, Amazon’s treatment of WikiLeaks has been raising alarms among some media watchdogs as well. However, despite the recent uproar, the Post is hardly the only major U.S. paper to come under fire for controversial relationships with the powerbrokers and officials they are supposed to keep in check.
Indeed, critics of the establishment press come from all across the political spectrum. The major criticism all sides appear to agree on, though, is that the most of the “mainstream media” have failed spectacularly in their supposed job to keep the American people properly informed. The outcry surrounding recent developments at the Washington Post barely scratches the surface of the problem. It remains to be seen if, when, or how the Post will respond to the criticism.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/economy/sectors/item/17261-washington-post-urged-to-disclose-new-owner-s-cia-ties
Minimum wage myth..
Ron Paul: Government Policies Hurt Low-Wage Workers – OpEd
By Ron Paul
Fast-food workers across the county have recently held a number of high profile protests to agitate for higher wages. These protests have been accompanied by efforts to increase the wages mandated by state and local minimum wage laws, as well as a renewed push in some states and localities to pass “living wage” laws. President Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to ten dollars an hour.
Raising minimum wages by government decree appeals to those who do not understand economics. This appeal is especially strong during times of stagnant wages and increased economic inequality. But raising the minimum wage actually harms those at the bottom of the income ladder. Basic economic theory teaches that when the price of a good increases, demand for that good decreases. Raising the minimum wage increases the price of labor, thus decreasing the demand for labor. So an increased minimum wage will lead to hiring freezes and layoffs. Unskilled and inexperienced workers are the ones most often deprived of employment opportunities by increases in the minimum wage.
Minimum wage laws are not the only example of government policies that hurt those at the bottom of the income scale. Many regulations that are promoted as necessary to “rein in” large corporations actually hurt small businesses. Because these small businesses operate on a much narrower profit margin, they cannot as easily absorb the costs of complying with the regulations as large corporations. These regulations can also inhibit lower income individuals from starting their own businesses. Thus, government regulations can reduce the demand for wage-labor, while increasing the supply of labor, which further reduces wages.
Perhaps the most significant harm to low-wage earners is caused by the inflationist polices of the Federal Reserve. Since its creation one hundred years ago this month, the Federal Reserve’s policies have caused the dollar to lose over 95 percent of its purchasing power—that’s right, today you need $23.70 to buy what one dollar bought in 1913! Who do you think suffers the most from this loss of purchasing power—Warren Buffet or his secretary?
It is not just that higher incomes can afford the higher prices caused by Federal Reserve. The system is set up in a way that disadvantages those at the bottom of the income scale. When the Federal Reserve creates money, those well-connected with the political and financial elites receive the newly-created money first, before general price increases have spread through the economy. And most fast-food employees do not number among the well-connected.
It is not a coincidence that economic inequality has increased in recent years, as the Federal Reserve has engaged in unprecedented money creation and bailouts of big banks and Wall Street financial firms. As billionaire investor Donald Trump has said, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policies are a great deal for “people like me.” And former Federal Reserve official Andrew Huszar has called QE “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”
Many so-called champions of economic equality and fairness for the working class are preparing to confirm Janet Yellen as next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet Yellen is committed to continuing and even expanding, the upward redistributionist polices of her predecessors. Washington could use more sound economic thinking and less demagoguery.
By increasing unemployment, government policies like minimum wage laws only worsen inequality. Those who are genuinely concerned about increasing the well-being of all Americans should support repeal of all laws, regulations, and taxes that inhibit job creation and economic mobility. Congress should also end the most regressive of all taxes, the inflation tax, by ending the Federal Reserve.
Link:
http://www.albanytribune.com/29122013-ron-paul-government-policies-hurt-low-wage-workers-oped/
By Ron Paul
Fast-food workers across the county have recently held a number of high profile protests to agitate for higher wages. These protests have been accompanied by efforts to increase the wages mandated by state and local minimum wage laws, as well as a renewed push in some states and localities to pass “living wage” laws. President Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to ten dollars an hour.
Raising minimum wages by government decree appeals to those who do not understand economics. This appeal is especially strong during times of stagnant wages and increased economic inequality. But raising the minimum wage actually harms those at the bottom of the income ladder. Basic economic theory teaches that when the price of a good increases, demand for that good decreases. Raising the minimum wage increases the price of labor, thus decreasing the demand for labor. So an increased minimum wage will lead to hiring freezes and layoffs. Unskilled and inexperienced workers are the ones most often deprived of employment opportunities by increases in the minimum wage.
Minimum wage laws are not the only example of government policies that hurt those at the bottom of the income scale. Many regulations that are promoted as necessary to “rein in” large corporations actually hurt small businesses. Because these small businesses operate on a much narrower profit margin, they cannot as easily absorb the costs of complying with the regulations as large corporations. These regulations can also inhibit lower income individuals from starting their own businesses. Thus, government regulations can reduce the demand for wage-labor, while increasing the supply of labor, which further reduces wages.
Perhaps the most significant harm to low-wage earners is caused by the inflationist polices of the Federal Reserve. Since its creation one hundred years ago this month, the Federal Reserve’s policies have caused the dollar to lose over 95 percent of its purchasing power—that’s right, today you need $23.70 to buy what one dollar bought in 1913! Who do you think suffers the most from this loss of purchasing power—Warren Buffet or his secretary?
It is not just that higher incomes can afford the higher prices caused by Federal Reserve. The system is set up in a way that disadvantages those at the bottom of the income scale. When the Federal Reserve creates money, those well-connected with the political and financial elites receive the newly-created money first, before general price increases have spread through the economy. And most fast-food employees do not number among the well-connected.
It is not a coincidence that economic inequality has increased in recent years, as the Federal Reserve has engaged in unprecedented money creation and bailouts of big banks and Wall Street financial firms. As billionaire investor Donald Trump has said, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policies are a great deal for “people like me.” And former Federal Reserve official Andrew Huszar has called QE “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”
Many so-called champions of economic equality and fairness for the working class are preparing to confirm Janet Yellen as next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet Yellen is committed to continuing and even expanding, the upward redistributionist polices of her predecessors. Washington could use more sound economic thinking and less demagoguery.
By increasing unemployment, government policies like minimum wage laws only worsen inequality. Those who are genuinely concerned about increasing the well-being of all Americans should support repeal of all laws, regulations, and taxes that inhibit job creation and economic mobility. Congress should also end the most regressive of all taxes, the inflation tax, by ending the Federal Reserve.
Link:
http://www.albanytribune.com/29122013-ron-paul-government-policies-hurt-low-wage-workers-oped/
Happy New Year???
2014 Will Bring More Social Collapse
Paul Craig Roberts
2014 is upon us. For a person who graduated from Georgia Tech in 1961, a year in which the class ring showed the same date right side up or upside down, the 21st century was a science fiction concept associated with Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To us George Orwell’s 1984 seemed so far in the future we would never get there. Now it is 30 years in the past.
Did we get there in Orwell’s sense? In terms of surveillance technology, we are far beyond Orwell’s imagination. In terms of the unaccountability of government, we exceptional and indispensable people now live a 1984 existence. In his alternative to the Queen’s Christmas speech, Edward Snowden made the point that a person born in the 21st century will never experience privacy. For new generations the word privacy will refer to something mythical, like a unicorn.
Many Americans might never notice or care. I remember when telephone calls were considered to be private. In the 1940s and 1950s the telephone company could not always provide private lines. There were “party lines” in which two or more customers shared the same telephone line. It was considered extremely rude and inappropriate to listen in on someone’s calls and to monopolize the line with long duration conversations.
The privacy of telephone conversations was also epitomized by telephone booths, which stood on street corners, in a variety of public places, and in “filling stations” where an attendant would pump gasoline into your car’s fuel tank, check the water in the radiator, the oil in the engine, the air in the tires, and clean the windshield. A dollar’s worth would purchase 3 gallons, and $5 would fill the tank.
Even in the 1980s and for part of the 1990s there were lines of telephones on airport waiting room walls, each separated from the other by sound absorbing panels. Whether the panels absorbed the sounds of the conversation or not, they conveyed the idea that calls were private.
The notion that telephone calls are private left Americans’ consciousness prior to the NSA listening in. If memory serves, it was sometime in the 1990s when I entered the men’s room of an airport and observed a row of men speaking on their cell phones in the midst of the tinkling sound of urine hitting water and noises of flushing toilets. The thought hit hard that privacy had lost its value.
I remember when I arrived at Merton College, Oxford, for the first term of 1964. I was advised never to telephone anyone whom I had not met, as it would be an affront to invade the privacy of a person to whom I was unknown. The telephone was reserved for friends and acquaintances, a civility that contrasts with American telemarketing.
The efficiency of the Royal Mail service protected the privacy of the telephone. What one did in those days in England was to write a letter requesting a meeting or an appointment. It was possible to send a letter via the Royal Mail to London in the morning and to receive a reply in the afternoon. Previously it had been possible to send a letter in the morning and to receive a morning reply, and to send another in the afternoon and receive an afternoon reply.
When one flies today, unless one stops up one’s ears with something, one hears one’s seat mate’s conversations prior to takeoff and immediately upon landing. Literally, everyone is talking nonstop. One wonders how the economy functioned at such a high level of incomes and success prior to cell phones. I can remember being able to travel both domestically and internationally on important business without having to telephone anyone. What has happened to America that no one can any longer go anywhere without constant talking?
If you sit at an airport gate awaiting a flight, you might think you are listening to a porn film. The overhead visuals are usually Fox “News” going on about the need for a new war, but the cell phone audio might be young women describing their latest sexual affair.
Americans, or many of them, are such exhibitionists that they do not mind being spied upon or recorded. It gives them importance. According to Wikipedia, Paris Hilton, a multimillionaire heiress, posted her sexual escapades online, and Facebook had to block users from posting nude photos of themselves. Sometime between my time and now people ceased to read 1984. They have no conception that a loss of privacy is a loss of self. They don’t understand that a loss of privacy means that they can be intimidated, blackmailed, framed, and viewed in the buff. Little wonder they submitted to porno-scanners.
The loss of privacy is a serious matter. The privacy of the family used to be paramount. Today it is routinely invaded by neighbors, police, Child Protective Services (sic), school administrators, and just about anyone else.
Consider this: A mother of six and nine year old kids sat in a lawn chair next to her house watching her kids ride scooters in the driveway and cul-de-sac on which they live.
Normally, this would be an idyllic picture. But not in America. A neighbor, who apparently did not see the watching mother, called the police to report that two young children were outside playing without adult supervision. Note that the next door neighbor, a woman, did not bother to go next door to speak with the mother of the children and express her concern that they children were not being monitored while they played. The neighbor called the police.http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mom-sues-polices-she-arrested-letting-her-kids-134628018.html
“We’re here for you,” the cops told the mother, who was carried off in handcuffs and spent the next 18 hours in a cell in prison clothes.
The news report doesn’t say what happened to the children, whether the father appeared and insisted on custody of his offspring or whether the cops turned the kids over to Child Protective Services.
This shows you what Americans are really like. Neither the neighbor nor the police had a lick of sense. The only idea that they had was to punish someone. This is why America has the highest incarceration rate and the highest total number of prison inmates in the entire world. Washington can go on and on about “authoritarian” regimes in Russia and China, but both countries have far lower prison populations than “freedom and democracy” America.
I was unaware that laws now exist requiring the supervision of children at play. Children vary in their need for supervision. In my day supervision was up to the mother’s judgment. Older children were often tasked with supervising the younger. It was one way that children were taught responsibility and developed their own judgment.
When I was five years old, I walked to the neighborhood school by myself. Today my mother would be arrested for child endangerment.
In America punishment falls more heavily on the innocent, the young, and the poor than it does on the banksters who are living on the Federal Reserve’s subsidy known as Quantitative Easing and who have escaped criminal liability for the fraudulent financial instruments that they sold to the world. Single mothers, depressed by the lack of commitment of the fathers of their children, are locked away for using drugs to block out their depression. Their children are seized by a Gestapo institution, Child Protective Services, and end up in foster care where many are abused.
According to numerous press reports, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 year-old children who play cowboys and indians or cops and robbers during recess and raise a pointed finger while saying “bang-bang” are arrested and carried off to jail in handcuffs as threats to their classmates. In my day every male child and the females who were “Tom boys” would have been taken to jail. Playground fights were normal, but no police were ever called. Handcuffing a child would not have been tolerated.
From the earliest age, boys were taught never to hit a girl. In those days there were no reports of police beating up teenage girls and women or body slamming the elderly. To comprehend the degeneration of the American police into psychopaths and sociopaths, go online and observe the video of Lee Oswald in police custody in 1963. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDDuRSgzFk Oswald was believed to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy and murdered a Dallas police officer only a few hours previously to the film. Yet he had not been beaten, his nose wasn’t broken, and his lips were not a bloody mess. Now go online and pick from the vast number of police brutality videos from our present time and observe the swollen and bleeding faces of teenage girls accused of sassing overbearing police officers.
In America today people with power are no longer accountable. This means citizens have become subjects, an indication of social collapse.
Link:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
Paul Craig Roberts
2014 is upon us. For a person who graduated from Georgia Tech in 1961, a year in which the class ring showed the same date right side up or upside down, the 21st century was a science fiction concept associated with Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To us George Orwell’s 1984 seemed so far in the future we would never get there. Now it is 30 years in the past.
Did we get there in Orwell’s sense? In terms of surveillance technology, we are far beyond Orwell’s imagination. In terms of the unaccountability of government, we exceptional and indispensable people now live a 1984 existence. In his alternative to the Queen’s Christmas speech, Edward Snowden made the point that a person born in the 21st century will never experience privacy. For new generations the word privacy will refer to something mythical, like a unicorn.
Many Americans might never notice or care. I remember when telephone calls were considered to be private. In the 1940s and 1950s the telephone company could not always provide private lines. There were “party lines” in which two or more customers shared the same telephone line. It was considered extremely rude and inappropriate to listen in on someone’s calls and to monopolize the line with long duration conversations.
The privacy of telephone conversations was also epitomized by telephone booths, which stood on street corners, in a variety of public places, and in “filling stations” where an attendant would pump gasoline into your car’s fuel tank, check the water in the radiator, the oil in the engine, the air in the tires, and clean the windshield. A dollar’s worth would purchase 3 gallons, and $5 would fill the tank.
Even in the 1980s and for part of the 1990s there were lines of telephones on airport waiting room walls, each separated from the other by sound absorbing panels. Whether the panels absorbed the sounds of the conversation or not, they conveyed the idea that calls were private.
The notion that telephone calls are private left Americans’ consciousness prior to the NSA listening in. If memory serves, it was sometime in the 1990s when I entered the men’s room of an airport and observed a row of men speaking on their cell phones in the midst of the tinkling sound of urine hitting water and noises of flushing toilets. The thought hit hard that privacy had lost its value.
I remember when I arrived at Merton College, Oxford, for the first term of 1964. I was advised never to telephone anyone whom I had not met, as it would be an affront to invade the privacy of a person to whom I was unknown. The telephone was reserved for friends and acquaintances, a civility that contrasts with American telemarketing.
The efficiency of the Royal Mail service protected the privacy of the telephone. What one did in those days in England was to write a letter requesting a meeting or an appointment. It was possible to send a letter via the Royal Mail to London in the morning and to receive a reply in the afternoon. Previously it had been possible to send a letter in the morning and to receive a morning reply, and to send another in the afternoon and receive an afternoon reply.
When one flies today, unless one stops up one’s ears with something, one hears one’s seat mate’s conversations prior to takeoff and immediately upon landing. Literally, everyone is talking nonstop. One wonders how the economy functioned at such a high level of incomes and success prior to cell phones. I can remember being able to travel both domestically and internationally on important business without having to telephone anyone. What has happened to America that no one can any longer go anywhere without constant talking?
If you sit at an airport gate awaiting a flight, you might think you are listening to a porn film. The overhead visuals are usually Fox “News” going on about the need for a new war, but the cell phone audio might be young women describing their latest sexual affair.
Americans, or many of them, are such exhibitionists that they do not mind being spied upon or recorded. It gives them importance. According to Wikipedia, Paris Hilton, a multimillionaire heiress, posted her sexual escapades online, and Facebook had to block users from posting nude photos of themselves. Sometime between my time and now people ceased to read 1984. They have no conception that a loss of privacy is a loss of self. They don’t understand that a loss of privacy means that they can be intimidated, blackmailed, framed, and viewed in the buff. Little wonder they submitted to porno-scanners.
The loss of privacy is a serious matter. The privacy of the family used to be paramount. Today it is routinely invaded by neighbors, police, Child Protective Services (sic), school administrators, and just about anyone else.
Consider this: A mother of six and nine year old kids sat in a lawn chair next to her house watching her kids ride scooters in the driveway and cul-de-sac on which they live.
Normally, this would be an idyllic picture. But not in America. A neighbor, who apparently did not see the watching mother, called the police to report that two young children were outside playing without adult supervision. Note that the next door neighbor, a woman, did not bother to go next door to speak with the mother of the children and express her concern that they children were not being monitored while they played. The neighbor called the police.http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mom-sues-polices-she-arrested-letting-her-kids-134628018.html
“We’re here for you,” the cops told the mother, who was carried off in handcuffs and spent the next 18 hours in a cell in prison clothes.
The news report doesn’t say what happened to the children, whether the father appeared and insisted on custody of his offspring or whether the cops turned the kids over to Child Protective Services.
This shows you what Americans are really like. Neither the neighbor nor the police had a lick of sense. The only idea that they had was to punish someone. This is why America has the highest incarceration rate and the highest total number of prison inmates in the entire world. Washington can go on and on about “authoritarian” regimes in Russia and China, but both countries have far lower prison populations than “freedom and democracy” America.
I was unaware that laws now exist requiring the supervision of children at play. Children vary in their need for supervision. In my day supervision was up to the mother’s judgment. Older children were often tasked with supervising the younger. It was one way that children were taught responsibility and developed their own judgment.
When I was five years old, I walked to the neighborhood school by myself. Today my mother would be arrested for child endangerment.
In America punishment falls more heavily on the innocent, the young, and the poor than it does on the banksters who are living on the Federal Reserve’s subsidy known as Quantitative Easing and who have escaped criminal liability for the fraudulent financial instruments that they sold to the world. Single mothers, depressed by the lack of commitment of the fathers of their children, are locked away for using drugs to block out their depression. Their children are seized by a Gestapo institution, Child Protective Services, and end up in foster care where many are abused.
According to numerous press reports, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 year-old children who play cowboys and indians or cops and robbers during recess and raise a pointed finger while saying “bang-bang” are arrested and carried off to jail in handcuffs as threats to their classmates. In my day every male child and the females who were “Tom boys” would have been taken to jail. Playground fights were normal, but no police were ever called. Handcuffing a child would not have been tolerated.
From the earliest age, boys were taught never to hit a girl. In those days there were no reports of police beating up teenage girls and women or body slamming the elderly. To comprehend the degeneration of the American police into psychopaths and sociopaths, go online and observe the video of Lee Oswald in police custody in 1963. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDDuRSgzFk Oswald was believed to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy and murdered a Dallas police officer only a few hours previously to the film. Yet he had not been beaten, his nose wasn’t broken, and his lips were not a bloody mess. Now go online and pick from the vast number of police brutality videos from our present time and observe the swollen and bleeding faces of teenage girls accused of sassing overbearing police officers.
In America today people with power are no longer accountable. This means citizens have become subjects, an indication of social collapse.
Link:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
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