Monday, February 3, 2014
Shootings by police increase...
How Many People are Killed by Police in U.S.? Who Knows?
Source: All Gov.
Here’s a pitch for a procedural: Cops track down the number of police shootings in the United States in a given year. Why should that require any detective work? It’s that there are currently no national statistics on how many people are shot by police each year.
In some areas, such as Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Massachusetts, police shootings have increased, according to a report in Salon. Whether those numbers can be extrapolated to a national trend is not known though. Police departments are not required to release data on how many civilians are shot by officers each year and many don’t.
Some observers believe that there are more police shootings than there had been five or 10 years ago. Those who want to hold police accountable are stymied by the lack of nationwide statistics on the issue.
So, we’re left to try to find the information on our own. Jim Fisher tried in 2012. According to his True Crime blog, in 2011, 1,146 people were shot by police, with 607 killed. To come up with those numbers, Fisher scoured the Internet for data about every shooting that year. But that system is not comprehensive.
What statistics there are do show that police shootings often involve racial minorities, those with mental illnesses and sometimes victims who fall into both categories. For instance, there were 57 police shootings in Chicago in 2012, according to the city. Fifty of those shot were African-American. A review of police shootings in Maine by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram showed that between 2000 and 2012, 57 people were shot by police in Maine. Of those, at least 24 of the shootings involved victims with mental health issues.
Police shootings may be on the rise because of state laws that empower more firearm use by citizens. Indiana passed a law in 2012 that allowed people to use deadly force against public servants, including law enforcement officers, who illegally enter their homes. Of course, police have no way of knowing whether the occupant of a home thinks the authorities are there legally, so some officers are nervous. “It’s just a recipe for disaster,” Indiana State Fraternal Order of Police president Tim Downs told Bloomberg News. “It just puts a bounty on our heads.”
Steve Straehley
Link:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/How_Many_People_are_Killed_by_Police_in_U.S.%3F_Who_Knows%3F/32553/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Source: All Gov.
Here’s a pitch for a procedural: Cops track down the number of police shootings in the United States in a given year. Why should that require any detective work? It’s that there are currently no national statistics on how many people are shot by police each year.
In some areas, such as Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Massachusetts, police shootings have increased, according to a report in Salon. Whether those numbers can be extrapolated to a national trend is not known though. Police departments are not required to release data on how many civilians are shot by officers each year and many don’t.
Some observers believe that there are more police shootings than there had been five or 10 years ago. Those who want to hold police accountable are stymied by the lack of nationwide statistics on the issue.
So, we’re left to try to find the information on our own. Jim Fisher tried in 2012. According to his True Crime blog, in 2011, 1,146 people were shot by police, with 607 killed. To come up with those numbers, Fisher scoured the Internet for data about every shooting that year. But that system is not comprehensive.
What statistics there are do show that police shootings often involve racial minorities, those with mental illnesses and sometimes victims who fall into both categories. For instance, there were 57 police shootings in Chicago in 2012, according to the city. Fifty of those shot were African-American. A review of police shootings in Maine by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram showed that between 2000 and 2012, 57 people were shot by police in Maine. Of those, at least 24 of the shootings involved victims with mental health issues.
Police shootings may be on the rise because of state laws that empower more firearm use by citizens. Indiana passed a law in 2012 that allowed people to use deadly force against public servants, including law enforcement officers, who illegally enter their homes. Of course, police have no way of knowing whether the occupant of a home thinks the authorities are there legally, so some officers are nervous. “It’s just a recipe for disaster,” Indiana State Fraternal Order of Police president Tim Downs told Bloomberg News. “It just puts a bounty on our heads.”
Steve Straehley
Link:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/How_Many_People_are_Killed_by_Police_in_U.S.%3F_Who_Knows%3F/32553/0/38/38/Y/M.html
"All of the Government Series guitars contain wood that was confiscated in the raid, so supplies are limited. Here’s a bet they sell out – fast."
by Joe Saunders
The Gibson Guitar company is fighting the “powers that be” – making “Government Series” guitars for sale out of wood confiscated in a Justice Department raid but eventually returned to the company.
gibson0202
In a 2011 raid on Gibson facilities in Memphis and Nashville, heavily armed SWAT teams seized up to $3 million worth of wood the Justice Department claimed had been imported illegally from India. It was the second time the company had been targeted in two years, and it started a criminal case that wasn’t resolved until July, 2012, when the government dropped all charges against Gibson and the company agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty and contribute $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
At the time, the raid drew mockery from Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and country singer celebrity Charlie Daniels, as well as an army of Gibson supporters in tea party groups and elsewhere.
As part of the agreement, Gibson demanded the supposedly illegal wood be returned — and last week it unveiled a new guitar line made from it: The Government Series II Les Paul.
The company, owned by no-nonsense conservative Henry Juszkiewicz, made its motives clear in a news release announcing the guitar:
Great Gibson electric guitars have long been a means of fighting the establishment, so when the powers that be confiscated stocks of tonewoods from the Gibson factory in Nashville — only to return them once there was a resolution and the investigation ended — it was an event worth celebrating. Introducing the Government Series II Les Paul, a striking new guitar from Gibson USA for 2014 that suitably marks this infamous time in Gibson’s history.
Even though the Gibson raid was national news, its possible political motivations were largely unexplored by the mainstream media.
Juszkiewicz is a donor to Republicans like U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Sen. Lamar Alexander; his company got invaded by government agents for using wood imported from India. Meanwhile, according to Investor’s Business Daily, competing guitar maker C.F. Martin & Co. made guitars from the exact same wood yet escaped Justice persecution. It’s worth nothing that C.F. Martin CEO Chris Martin is a reliable Democratic donor, according to IBD.
The “Government Series” guitars start at about $1,000 retail and include a certificate of authenticity signed by Juszkiewicz, who maintained from the beginning that the company had done nothing wrong.
“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted …,” he said in a news release announcing the settlement of the criminal case and reported by the Heritage Foundation. “… [T]he Government used violent and hostile means with the full force of the U.S. Government and several armed law enforcement agencies costing the taxpayer millions of dollars and putting a job-creating U.S. manufacturer at risk and at a competitive disadvantage. This shows the increasing trend on the part of the Government to criminalize rules and regulations and treat U.S. businesses in the same way drug dealers are treated. This is wrong and it is unfair.”
All of the Government Series guitars contain wood that was confiscated in the raid, so supplies are limited.
Here’s a bet they sell out – fast.
Link:
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/02/02/gibson-guitars-new-line-is-a-middle-finger-to-holders-unjust-justice-department-98007
Love it...
Super Bowl Hijack Proves Government Cannot Protect You
Man penetrates multi-million dollar security ring with excuses and fake pass
Paul Joseph Watson
The much vaunted multi-million dollar security ring put in place at taxpayer expense for this year’s Super Bowl was easily penetrated by a man with a fake pass and an excuse that he was “late for work,” yet another example of how government security theater cannot protect you and is a colossal waste of money.
Prior to the big game, authorities boasted of their lavish preparations for Super Bowl 2014 – bomb sniffing dogs, 700 extra troopers, a 24-hour FBI command center, a vast network of surveillance cameras, the ‘See Something, Say Something’ snitch program in full force, TSA agents, snipers, no fly zones, helicopter patrols.
The bill for all this – which ran into tens of millions of dollars – was paid for by taxpayers despite the NFL already getting a sales tax break at a further cost of $8 million to residents of New Jersey. Also remember that the NFL is tax exempt and pays no federal income tax on its vast profits.
However, 30-year-old Matthew Mills made a mockery of all this when he crashed a post-game press conference to tell the viewing millions that the 9/11 attacks were, “perpetrated by people in our own government,” urging them to “investigate 9/11,” before being dragged away.
How did Mills penetrate the fearsome ring of steel erected around the MetLife Stadium? He used a fake pass from an old music festival and claimed he was “late for work.”
Mills hopped on board an employee bus headed for the stadium and relied on the same excuse every time he was confronted by security.
“I just said I was running late for work and I had to get in there,” Mills told NJ.com. “It was that simple.”
“I didn’t think that I’d get that far,” Mill said. “I just kept getting closer and closer. Once I got past the final gate and into the stadium, I was dumbfounded.”
Mills’ actions left NJ.com’s A.J. Perez to wonder, “With all of the millions spent on security, how safe is the Super Bowl anyway?”
Although Mills used his opportunity to send a warning about false flag terrorism staged by governments, his actions proved that governments, no matter how much money they spend on invasive and unconstitutional security measures, cannot protect the public from terrorists.
What if Mills had been an Al-Qaeda militant (you know, the kind that the State Department affords VIP access)? What if his intention had not been a ‘truth bomb’ but an actual bomb?
In addition to the ease with which Mills made it through security, Infowars reporters said that their tickets were not even checked at any point of the journey to and inside the MetLife Stadium, despite John Durkin, special agent in charge of the TSA Newark field office, asserting beforehand that only fans who showed a valid ticket would even be allowed to board the train to the game.
It’s unsurprising that authorities have remained silent on how easy it was for Mills to penetrate security, since any admission that they failed would merely reinforce the fact that America’s multi-billion dollar terrorism-fear-security complex is a monumental fraud and a monstrous waste of taxpayer money.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/super-bowl-hijack-proves-government-cannot-protect-you.html
Man penetrates multi-million dollar security ring with excuses and fake pass
Paul Joseph Watson
The much vaunted multi-million dollar security ring put in place at taxpayer expense for this year’s Super Bowl was easily penetrated by a man with a fake pass and an excuse that he was “late for work,” yet another example of how government security theater cannot protect you and is a colossal waste of money.
Prior to the big game, authorities boasted of their lavish preparations for Super Bowl 2014 – bomb sniffing dogs, 700 extra troopers, a 24-hour FBI command center, a vast network of surveillance cameras, the ‘See Something, Say Something’ snitch program in full force, TSA agents, snipers, no fly zones, helicopter patrols.
The bill for all this – which ran into tens of millions of dollars – was paid for by taxpayers despite the NFL already getting a sales tax break at a further cost of $8 million to residents of New Jersey. Also remember that the NFL is tax exempt and pays no federal income tax on its vast profits.
However, 30-year-old Matthew Mills made a mockery of all this when he crashed a post-game press conference to tell the viewing millions that the 9/11 attacks were, “perpetrated by people in our own government,” urging them to “investigate 9/11,” before being dragged away.
How did Mills penetrate the fearsome ring of steel erected around the MetLife Stadium? He used a fake pass from an old music festival and claimed he was “late for work.”
Mills hopped on board an employee bus headed for the stadium and relied on the same excuse every time he was confronted by security.
“I just said I was running late for work and I had to get in there,” Mills told NJ.com. “It was that simple.”
“I didn’t think that I’d get that far,” Mill said. “I just kept getting closer and closer. Once I got past the final gate and into the stadium, I was dumbfounded.”
Mills’ actions left NJ.com’s A.J. Perez to wonder, “With all of the millions spent on security, how safe is the Super Bowl anyway?”
Although Mills used his opportunity to send a warning about false flag terrorism staged by governments, his actions proved that governments, no matter how much money they spend on invasive and unconstitutional security measures, cannot protect the public from terrorists.
What if Mills had been an Al-Qaeda militant (you know, the kind that the State Department affords VIP access)? What if his intention had not been a ‘truth bomb’ but an actual bomb?
In addition to the ease with which Mills made it through security, Infowars reporters said that their tickets were not even checked at any point of the journey to and inside the MetLife Stadium, despite John Durkin, special agent in charge of the TSA Newark field office, asserting beforehand that only fans who showed a valid ticket would even be allowed to board the train to the game.
It’s unsurprising that authorities have remained silent on how easy it was for Mills to penetrate security, since any admission that they failed would merely reinforce the fact that America’s multi-billion dollar terrorism-fear-security complex is a monumental fraud and a monstrous waste of taxpayer money.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/super-bowl-hijack-proves-government-cannot-protect-you.html
It's the government that is paranoid, for good reason...
Revisiting Paranoia
By Bionic Mosquito
I have been thinking a bit more about the musings of Cass Sunstein – describing the libertarian paranoids. I offer again the definition of paranoia:
Paranoia
1. Psychiatry. a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission.
Does this not describe the mental condition of many of those in the US Government as it relates to both Americans and foreigners?
Systematized delusions: the belief that individuals can control the direction of the economy via central planning / central banking is one of the biggest delusions practiced today. Another is the delusion of being able to bring everlasting peace through everlasting war.
The projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others: treating everyone as a potential terrorist; at the airport; pretty much everyone in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia; the Russians and the Chinese.
Sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission: I think no comment here is necessary.
It is many in the government that are paranoid; based on the definition above, a perfect fit to the clinical definition.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/bionic-mosquito/the-war-on-libertarianism-2/
By Bionic Mosquito
I have been thinking a bit more about the musings of Cass Sunstein – describing the libertarian paranoids. I offer again the definition of paranoia:
Paranoia
1. Psychiatry. a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission.
Does this not describe the mental condition of many of those in the US Government as it relates to both Americans and foreigners?
Systematized delusions: the belief that individuals can control the direction of the economy via central planning / central banking is one of the biggest delusions practiced today. Another is the delusion of being able to bring everlasting peace through everlasting war.
The projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others: treating everyone as a potential terrorist; at the airport; pretty much everyone in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia; the Russians and the Chinese.
Sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission: I think no comment here is necessary.
It is many in the government that are paranoid; based on the definition above, a perfect fit to the clinical definition.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/bionic-mosquito/the-war-on-libertarianism-2/
" If you haven’t taken steps to prepare – to insulate yourself for an economic end of the world as we know it – then life for you and your family is going to be horrific."
Celente Warns Of Coming Riots: “The Collapse Is Engulfing The World”
Mac Slavo
He accurately predicted the trends that have shaped the last decade. Ahead of the collapse of 2008 his Trends Journal newsletter issued a forecast that stock markets, which had just hit all time highs, would buckle in the first quarter of the year and that an unprecedented recession would blanket the global economy. He said the decline in financial markets would then be followed by disillusionment in America’s political and economic systems, leading to the rise of a third-party and widespread protests across America. And while officials the country over tried to assuage fears in the populace, he cautioned that the middle class would continue to be destroyed through taxation, regulation and fiscal incompetence.
His foresight was 20/20.
Now, renowned trend forecaster Gerald Celente warns that, despite establishment claims of recovery and growth, things are about to get a whole lot worse.
Celente isn’t suggesting that a massive collapse is going to happen in the future.
He says we’re already in it – and it’s taking hold right before our eyes across the entirety of the globe:
This selloff in the emerging markets, with their currencies going down and their interest rates going up, it’s going to be disastrous and there are going to be riots everywhere…
…So as the decline in their economies accelerates, you are going to see the civil unrest intensify.
If you want to know a business that will thrive in 2014, it may well beguillotines because these are ‘Off with their heads’ moments.
Meanwhile, they just passed laws in Spain to stop people from protesting. But all the laws in the world do not feed starving people. All the laws in the world do not put roofs over people’s heads.
That’s why you are going to see heads roll.
…you can already see chaos engulfing the world as the Fed’s global financial scheme is collapsing. This collapse is engulfing the entire world, from Russia, to South Africa, into China and emerging markets across the globe.
Full Interview at King World News (also available in audio broadcast)
via Steve Quayle
Should protesters in the U.S. threaten the status quo in any way they will be dealt with like the people who took to the streets in the Ukraine, Egypt, Iran, and Greece.
In fact, a Federal court recently upheld Congressional legislation passed in 2012 that allowed the herding of protestors into so-called “free speech” zones, and to charge those who assemble at “official functions” designated as areas of “national significance” with federal crimes punishable by one year in prison.
Under that verbiage, that means a peaceful protest outside a candidate’s concession speech would be a federal offense…
Carefully controlled protests involving individuals who have been bused in by their respective political party or union leaders are often televised by the mainstream media in an effort to give Americans a false sense of freedom.
When these protests turn to uprising and riots because millions of people can no longer keep a roof over their heads or food in their bellies, you can bet that those involved will be dealt with swiftly and behind the cloak of terrorism secrecy laws like the National Defense Authorization Act which essentially gives the government the right to detain anyone, for any reason, for an indefinite amount of time.
But the real question here is, why would the government need laws like this?
Why would they be war-gaming and simulating economic collapse scenarios and civil unrest?
Why are they continuing to borrow trillions of dollars from foreign creditors and injecting the domestic economy with tens of billions of dollars on a monthly basis?
The only plausible answer, given the current economic climate in America and sentiment on Main Street, is that the authorities at the highest levels of our government know that something very bad could happen.
And they confirmed this in two letters issued by two different Treasury Secretaries over the last several years. Most recently, the Treasury department noted that failure to satiate our nation’s never ending appetite for debt would have a “catastrophic effect”on our economy:
Credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, US interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse.
…
Not only might the economic consequences of default be profound, but those consequences, including high interest rates, reduced investment, higher debt payments, and slow economic growth, could last for more than a generation…
The fall-out from our current economic climate is going to be unprecedented. For those who deny this is happening, understand that the above warning comes directly from our Treasury Department. They’re the money guys. And they are telling us what’s going to happen.
And be assured it won’t just be stock markets that drop precipitously.
What we’re talking about here is the collapse of the economy of the United States of America – the richest nation on Earth.
The consequences will be devastating on every level and those of us on Main Street will be taking the brunt of the impact.
Imagine a situation where jobs continue to be shed by the hundreds of thousands every month without abatement. A situation where the price of basic essentials like energy and food rise without restraint. A situation where medical care is so expensive that average Americans will go bankrupt trying to pay for government mandated coverage. A situation where whatever money you do have in savings becomes worthless because our currency loses credibility around the world.
This is what’s happening right now.
The scary version: There is no way to turn this around. It’s just going to get progressively worse.
If you haven’t taken steps to prepare – to insulate yourself for an economic end of the world as we know it – then life for you and your family is going to be horrific.
This is the depression.
Link:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/celente-warns-of-coming-riots-the-collapse-is-engulfing-the-world_01312014
Mac Slavo
He accurately predicted the trends that have shaped the last decade. Ahead of the collapse of 2008 his Trends Journal newsletter issued a forecast that stock markets, which had just hit all time highs, would buckle in the first quarter of the year and that an unprecedented recession would blanket the global economy. He said the decline in financial markets would then be followed by disillusionment in America’s political and economic systems, leading to the rise of a third-party and widespread protests across America. And while officials the country over tried to assuage fears in the populace, he cautioned that the middle class would continue to be destroyed through taxation, regulation and fiscal incompetence.
His foresight was 20/20.
Now, renowned trend forecaster Gerald Celente warns that, despite establishment claims of recovery and growth, things are about to get a whole lot worse.
Celente isn’t suggesting that a massive collapse is going to happen in the future.
He says we’re already in it – and it’s taking hold right before our eyes across the entirety of the globe:
This selloff in the emerging markets, with their currencies going down and their interest rates going up, it’s going to be disastrous and there are going to be riots everywhere…
…So as the decline in their economies accelerates, you are going to see the civil unrest intensify.
If you want to know a business that will thrive in 2014, it may well beguillotines because these are ‘Off with their heads’ moments.
Meanwhile, they just passed laws in Spain to stop people from protesting. But all the laws in the world do not feed starving people. All the laws in the world do not put roofs over people’s heads.
That’s why you are going to see heads roll.
…you can already see chaos engulfing the world as the Fed’s global financial scheme is collapsing. This collapse is engulfing the entire world, from Russia, to South Africa, into China and emerging markets across the globe.
Full Interview at King World News (also available in audio broadcast)
via Steve Quayle
Should protesters in the U.S. threaten the status quo in any way they will be dealt with like the people who took to the streets in the Ukraine, Egypt, Iran, and Greece.
In fact, a Federal court recently upheld Congressional legislation passed in 2012 that allowed the herding of protestors into so-called “free speech” zones, and to charge those who assemble at “official functions” designated as areas of “national significance” with federal crimes punishable by one year in prison.
Under that verbiage, that means a peaceful protest outside a candidate’s concession speech would be a federal offense…
Carefully controlled protests involving individuals who have been bused in by their respective political party or union leaders are often televised by the mainstream media in an effort to give Americans a false sense of freedom.
When these protests turn to uprising and riots because millions of people can no longer keep a roof over their heads or food in their bellies, you can bet that those involved will be dealt with swiftly and behind the cloak of terrorism secrecy laws like the National Defense Authorization Act which essentially gives the government the right to detain anyone, for any reason, for an indefinite amount of time.
But the real question here is, why would the government need laws like this?
Why would they be war-gaming and simulating economic collapse scenarios and civil unrest?
Why are they continuing to borrow trillions of dollars from foreign creditors and injecting the domestic economy with tens of billions of dollars on a monthly basis?
The only plausible answer, given the current economic climate in America and sentiment on Main Street, is that the authorities at the highest levels of our government know that something very bad could happen.
And they confirmed this in two letters issued by two different Treasury Secretaries over the last several years. Most recently, the Treasury department noted that failure to satiate our nation’s never ending appetite for debt would have a “catastrophic effect”on our economy:
Credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, US interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse.
…
Not only might the economic consequences of default be profound, but those consequences, including high interest rates, reduced investment, higher debt payments, and slow economic growth, could last for more than a generation…
The fall-out from our current economic climate is going to be unprecedented. For those who deny this is happening, understand that the above warning comes directly from our Treasury Department. They’re the money guys. And they are telling us what’s going to happen.
And be assured it won’t just be stock markets that drop precipitously.
What we’re talking about here is the collapse of the economy of the United States of America – the richest nation on Earth.
The consequences will be devastating on every level and those of us on Main Street will be taking the brunt of the impact.
Imagine a situation where jobs continue to be shed by the hundreds of thousands every month without abatement. A situation where the price of basic essentials like energy and food rise without restraint. A situation where medical care is so expensive that average Americans will go bankrupt trying to pay for government mandated coverage. A situation where whatever money you do have in savings becomes worthless because our currency loses credibility around the world.
This is what’s happening right now.
The scary version: There is no way to turn this around. It’s just going to get progressively worse.
If you haven’t taken steps to prepare – to insulate yourself for an economic end of the world as we know it – then life for you and your family is going to be horrific.
This is the depression.
Link:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/celente-warns-of-coming-riots-the-collapse-is-engulfing-the-world_01312014
The Continuing Al-Qaeda Threat...
Appearing last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that he could not say the threat from al-Qaeda is any less today than it was ten years ago. It was a shocking admission. Does he mean that the trillions of dollars spent fighting the war on terrorism have resulted in no gains? That those who urged us to give up some of our liberties to gain security have, as Benjamin Franklin warned, lost both?
There may be reasons Director Clapper would want us to believe that the threat from al-Qaeda is as strong as ever. An entire industry has arisen from the government’s war on terror, and for both the government sector and the security-industrial complex the terrorist threat is big business. Economic pressure has thus far not affected the military or intelligence sectors – despite false claims that the sequestration cut military spending. However, emphasizing continued high threat levels without being able to openly explain them due to secrecy requirements is one way to keep the security budget untouched.
Also, emphasizing the continued high threat level from terrorists overseas is a good way to frighten citizens away from their increasing outrage over reports of massive domestic spying by the NSA. Unfortunately Americans may still be more willing to give up their liberties if they are told that the threats to their security remain as high as ever.
What if Clapper is telling us the truth, however? What would this revelation mean if that is the case?
For one, it means that we have gotten very little for the tremendous amount of spending on the war on terrorism and the lives lost. We are told that the military and intelligence community can protect us if they are given the tools they need, but it appears they have not done a very good job by their own admission.
More likely, it may mean that the US government’s policies are causing more al-Qaeda groups to arise and take the place of those who have been defeated by US drone and military attacks. Clapper does mention that there are so many different al-Qaeda franchises popping up it is difficult to keep track of them all, much less defeat them. But why is that? A former State Department official stated last year that every new drone strike in Yemen that kills innocent people results in the creation of 40-60 new enemies. Likewise, the young girl from Pakistan who had been brutally shot by the Taliban for her desire to go to school told President Obama during a White House meeting that “drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people.”
Are there more al-Qaeda groups out there because our policies keep creating new ones?
On that point, Clapper said to the Senate that in Syria the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front “does have aspirations for attacks on the homeland.” It is all the more disturbing, then, to have also read last week that Congress voted in secret to resume sending weapons to the Syrian rebels, who are dominated by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. We have read about US-supplied weapons meant for “moderates” in Syria being seized by radicals on several occasions, and the Voice of America reported last year that our Saudi “allies” are arming the same al-Nusra Front that Clapper identifies as a threat to the US. Is the US Congress arming the very people who will commit the next attack on US soil?
Why is al-Qaeda as much a threat as it was ten years ago? Perhaps it is that we continue to fight the wrong war in the wrong manner. Perhaps because we refuse to consider that many overseas are angry because of our government’s policies and actions. After ten years of no progress, is it not time to try something new? Is it not time to try non-intervention and a strong defense rather than drone strikes and pre-emptive attacks?
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-continuing-al-qaeda-threat.html
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Smoking kills...
by: S. D. Wells
A new report from the surgeon general finds that smoking causes much more collateral damage than previously estimated, and the death toll includes those perishing from diseases like diabetes, colorectal cancer and liver cancer. The report was just released and reveals other diseases and disorders that many haven't correlated so evidently to smoking, such as rheumatoid arthritis, erectile dysfunction and macular degeneration (which leads to blindness). Also mentioned in the report are birth defects, cleft lips and cleft palates. The cold hard facts are in, folks, and 20 million Americans have died thanks to cigarettes just since 1964, when the first surgeon general report on smoking was released. In comes the new science on cigarettes, revealing mothers who smoke and their babies that die of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) or other complications from secondhand smoke.
Currently, one in every five women of childbearing age smoke, and only some of them quit when they become pregnant. Smoking impairs how the body responds to insulin, so diabetics must take heed, even those living in homes with smokers. Secondhand smoke and even third-hand smoke (accumulation of toxins on walls, air filters, tabletops and toys) can lead to serious health conditions for everyone living in a home with a smoker who smokes inside that home.
The "Cigarette Hook" and how Big Tobacco provides the problem and "solution" at the same time
Do you see the big cloud? Why are there huge black clouds around the cure for the smoking addiction? Let's clear out those clouds right now. Cigarettes are loaded with up to 4,000 chemicals to make you feel so horrible that you must have some relief. Every time someone smokes a cigarette, they get a cigarette "hangover" within one hour. Relief for that hangover is another cigarette (aspirin for the chain smoker) and is provided in a super strong vapor form of nicotine, loaded and juiced up by ammonia, pesticide, formaldehyde and bleach. There is a cure for the cigarette hangover, and 45,000,000 Americans should know, because knowledge is power.
Get ready to understand how Big Tobacco hooks smokers after just ONE cigarette and how you or a loved one can become "unhooked" and stay that way for life. Mike Adams interviews Sean Cohen, author and teacher of "14AndOut," a course that helps smokers quit the addiction by learning innovative techniques and strategies never before heard. These strategies don't involve transferring addictions - they help smokers learn how the "hook" works so they can free themselves from the addiction for the rest of their life. 14AndOut has proven results and a high success ratio for getting smokers to stop smoking forever.
Don't become a statistic
One in every 13 children could see their lives shortened by smoking, says the U.S. Surgeon General. Every day, about 3,000 youths smoke their first cigarette. It only takes one cigarette to start the full-on addiction, and any pack-a-day smoker can tell you that. Even though tobacco damages nearly every part of the body, people think that they're invincible when they start smoking, but then they can't stop. Most people cannot quit cold turkey, either; in fact, 95% of those who try on their own will return to smoking within six months. "Quitting smoking is one of the most difficult things that anyone does in terms of a lifestyle change," says a nurse practitioner at Cleveland Clinic's Tobacco Treatment Center. But just because the habit has been ingrained in your daily life doesn't mean that you can't get rid of it. You can end the habit, once and for all.
Do not become a statistic. Don't be one of the half a million deaths from cigarettes in the U.S. per year. Be proactive. Don't sit and wait for some health doomsday to come. Defend your health. Be proactive. Knowledge is power, and action is King! Make that change and learn from the best how to quit. It's never too late to "change your mind."
To learn how to stop smoking without medications, nicotine patches or hypnosis, check out the Health Ranger's Skype interview with the "Stop Smoking King" about the natural way to stop smoking in 14 days:
(http://tv.naturalnews.com).
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043702_cigarettes_death_statistics_health_consequences.html#ixzz2sBGTZLZI
"Only whites 'guilty' of hate crime?"
'Knockout' game is a hate crime, but only if you're white?
by: J. D. Heyes
It is already being labeled as one of the biggest cases of racial hypocrisy in recent times.
Many Americans have heard of a sick game played largely by teenagers called the "Knockout Game." The goal of the "game" is for someone to pick out a victim at random and try to knock them out with one punch.
The game - which , of course, is not really a game at all but a huge crime - has been responsible for hospitalizing scores of people. It has also been blamed for at least one death.
The Associated Press recently reported on another incidence of the Knockout Game:
A federal grand jury in Houston indicted 27-year-old Conrad Alvin Barrett on Thursday.
Investigators say Barrett slugged the 79-year-old victim, breaking his jaw in two places, in a Nov. 24 attack in Katy. They say he laughed and shouted "knockout" as the man fell to the ground.
Investigators say Barrett videoed the attack on his cellphone and shared the recording.
Barrett, by the way, is white, and while that should not matter, it might in this case, because the vast majority of Knockout Game cases that have been reported for the past year or so have involved black youths striking white victims.
Only whites 'guilty' of hate crime?
Only, none of those perpetrators have been charged with any crime, much less indicted on federal hate crime charges by a Justice Department led by an attorney general who has made race - wittingly or not - the primary driver behind other prosecutorial decisions.
In a column entitled, "The Holder Effect," which alludes to Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general and head of the Justice Department, Russ Vaughn notes:
The Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department are deliberately disinclined to prosecute hate crimes where blacks are the perpetrators and whites are the victims. It is becoming increasingly disturbing that it is not just the Obama administration and the brown-nosed media that have attempted to sweep this new criminal activity under the rug, but [also] local police departments. It's happening all over the country, and not just in the major urban centers. I call this racialization of the law and criminality the Holder Effect, for it was the relatively new attorney general who famously announced that his Justice Department would side with his people.
Adds Colin Flaherty, author of the book White Girl Bleed A Lot, who has been following and documenting this trend over at WorldNetDaily:
Vaughn's column alludes to the Knockout Game, a violent trend wherein young thugs deliver unsuspecting victims a single blow to the head in an attempt to "knock out" the target. Dozens of examples in recent months have shown the Knockout Game is particularly popular among black youths targeting white or Jewish victims.
History of racial preferences
Both writers noted that, in large part, the mainstream media has downplayed or ignored the fact that the crimes are largely being committed by black youths targeting white victims.
As for the "Holder Effect," there is other anecdotal evidence to suggest that Holder and his boss, President Obama, have differed to African-Americans:
-- Shortly after Obama and Holder took power in 2009, the Justice Department dropped charges against members of the New Black Panther Party, over their alleged intimidation of white voters in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008, despite damning video evidence [http://www.foxnews.com];
-- Later that year, Obama claimed that a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer "acted stupidly" when he arrested Henry Louis Gates, a prominent black Harvard professor and the president's friend, at Gates' home. Obama suggested that race played a part in the incident, as did Gates, but it was clear from the officer's police report that he was acting appropriately, stating that he was responding to reports of a series of break-ins in the area.
-- Obama has become infamous for injecting himself into the Trayvon Martin case, siding early on with the victim and stating, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."
When Obama won his first term, it was hailed in some quarters of society as a victory for American-style diversity. But now, nearly six years after he first took office, some could argue that race relations in the country are worse now than they were before he became president.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043728_knockout_game_hate_crime_racial_hypocrisy.html#ixzz2sBFcdzp3
by: J. D. Heyes
It is already being labeled as one of the biggest cases of racial hypocrisy in recent times.
Many Americans have heard of a sick game played largely by teenagers called the "Knockout Game." The goal of the "game" is for someone to pick out a victim at random and try to knock them out with one punch.
The game - which , of course, is not really a game at all but a huge crime - has been responsible for hospitalizing scores of people. It has also been blamed for at least one death.
The Associated Press recently reported on another incidence of the Knockout Game:
A federal grand jury in Houston indicted 27-year-old Conrad Alvin Barrett on Thursday.
Investigators say Barrett slugged the 79-year-old victim, breaking his jaw in two places, in a Nov. 24 attack in Katy. They say he laughed and shouted "knockout" as the man fell to the ground.
Investigators say Barrett videoed the attack on his cellphone and shared the recording.
Barrett, by the way, is white, and while that should not matter, it might in this case, because the vast majority of Knockout Game cases that have been reported for the past year or so have involved black youths striking white victims.
Only whites 'guilty' of hate crime?
Only, none of those perpetrators have been charged with any crime, much less indicted on federal hate crime charges by a Justice Department led by an attorney general who has made race - wittingly or not - the primary driver behind other prosecutorial decisions.
In a column entitled, "The Holder Effect," which alludes to Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general and head of the Justice Department, Russ Vaughn notes:
The Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department are deliberately disinclined to prosecute hate crimes where blacks are the perpetrators and whites are the victims. It is becoming increasingly disturbing that it is not just the Obama administration and the brown-nosed media that have attempted to sweep this new criminal activity under the rug, but [also] local police departments. It's happening all over the country, and not just in the major urban centers. I call this racialization of the law and criminality the Holder Effect, for it was the relatively new attorney general who famously announced that his Justice Department would side with his people.
Adds Colin Flaherty, author of the book White Girl Bleed A Lot, who has been following and documenting this trend over at WorldNetDaily:
Vaughn's column alludes to the Knockout Game, a violent trend wherein young thugs deliver unsuspecting victims a single blow to the head in an attempt to "knock out" the target. Dozens of examples in recent months have shown the Knockout Game is particularly popular among black youths targeting white or Jewish victims.
History of racial preferences
Both writers noted that, in large part, the mainstream media has downplayed or ignored the fact that the crimes are largely being committed by black youths targeting white victims.
As for the "Holder Effect," there is other anecdotal evidence to suggest that Holder and his boss, President Obama, have differed to African-Americans:
-- Shortly after Obama and Holder took power in 2009, the Justice Department dropped charges against members of the New Black Panther Party, over their alleged intimidation of white voters in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008, despite damning video evidence [http://www.foxnews.com];
-- Later that year, Obama claimed that a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer "acted stupidly" when he arrested Henry Louis Gates, a prominent black Harvard professor and the president's friend, at Gates' home. Obama suggested that race played a part in the incident, as did Gates, but it was clear from the officer's police report that he was acting appropriately, stating that he was responding to reports of a series of break-ins in the area.
-- Obama has become infamous for injecting himself into the Trayvon Martin case, siding early on with the victim and stating, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."
When Obama won his first term, it was hailed in some quarters of society as a victory for American-style diversity. But now, nearly six years after he first took office, some could argue that race relations in the country are worse now than they were before he became president.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043728_knockout_game_hate_crime_racial_hypocrisy.html#ixzz2sBFcdzp3
Be careful who you give your sperm to...
by: David Gutierrez
A Kansas court has ordered a man who volunteered to act as a sperm donor to a lesbian couple to pay child support, despite a contract he and the couple signed absolving him of any parental obligations.
In March 2009, William Marotta answered a Craigslist ad from a lesbian couple seeking donated sperm. Marotta replied and eventually donated three cupfuls. He and the mothers signed a contract in which Marotta waived any parental rights and was correspondingly absolved of any parental responsibilities.
"I donated genetic material, and that was it for me," he said.
Many women take a "do it yourself" approach to artificial insemination in order to avoid the costs associated with going through a doctor or sperm bank. Each artificial insemination attempt through official channels costs about $3,000, and it can take several such attempts before a pregnancy results.
"It's a lot cheaper to get someone to come on over with their donation, and then do it yourself at home," CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen said.
State seeks payments
One of the women, Jennifer Schreiner, became pregnant from Marotta's sperm and gave birth to a daughter in December 2009. When she appealed for public assistance in 2012, the Kansas Department for Children and Families launched an investigation and declared that Marotta was the child's father and was therefore responsible for the costs. It ordered him to reimburse the state for $4,000 in public assistance payments, and to make back-payments on child support.
In the resulting lawsuit, Marotta's attorney, Ben Swinnen, argued that Marotta was a sperm donor and therefore not liable for child support. But Shawnee County District Judge Mary Mattivi ruled against him, saying that Marotta and Schreiner had failed to follow a 1994 law mandating that all artificial insemination be performed by a licensed physician.
According to the law, Mattivi said, no artificial insemination took place, and therefore Marotta is the child's father, contract notwithstanding.
"In this case, quite simply, the parties failed to perform to statutory requirement of the Kansas Parentage Act in not enlisting a licensed physician at some point in the artificial insemination process, and the parties' self-designation of [Marotta] as a sperm donor is insufficient to relieve [Marotta] of parental right and responsibilities to the child," Mattivi wrote.
'Important social implications'
Swinnen condemned the court's ruling and its implication that his client is a deadbeat dad.
"We stand by that contract," Swinnen said. "The insinuation [that the contract is faked] is offensive, and we are responding vigorously to that. ... There was no personal relationship whatsoever between my client and the mother, or the partner of the mother, or the child. Anything the state insinuates is vilifying my client, and I will address it."
Swinnen accused the state of prosecuting the case for political motives, noting that the state has spent more money on the case than it has ordered Marotta to pay.
"The cost to the state to bring this case far outweighs any benefit the state would get," Swinnen said.
He accused the state of hiding behind a narrow interpretation of the statute in order to sidestep the issues actually at play in the case.
"From a very narrowly crafted statute, the court has made a very broad rule - that is the issue," Swinnen said.
He warned that the case has "important social implications" and could affect "many other families."
Marotta is planning to appeal the decision, and expects the case to reach the Kansas Supreme Court.
"If enough noise gets made about it, at this point, maybe things will change for the better," he said.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043738_sperm_donor_lesbian_couple_child_support.html#ixzz2sBEQ8Yoc
"And surely the next time this young lady hears “The Star-Spangled Banner,” she will cringe a little at the notion that the United States is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” No, we’re a bunch of micromanaged drones so fearful of the slightest risk that a girl with traits we should be encouraging instead sees her dreams shattered the moment she gets her first taste of success."
Written by Michael Tennant
Until Monday, 11-year-old Chloe Stirling of Troy, Illinois, was an American success story. She goes to school, plays soccer, and has — or, rather, had — not one but two part-time businesses, one of which brought in about $200 a month. The success of her cupcake business, Hey, Cupcake!, caught the attention of the Belleville News-Democrat, which published a story about it on Sunday.
This being 21st-century America, however, such achievement could not go unpunished. And so, on Monday, the Madison County Health Department “called and said they were shutting us down,” Chloe’s mother, Heather Stirling, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Chloe had been selling her cupcakes primarily to friends and family for $10 a dozen or $2 for a specialty cupcake. Her treats proved so popular that she occasionally donated them for fundraisers, including one for a classmate who was suffering from cancer in 2012. Helped by her mom’s generous offer to double whatever she earned, she was saving up for a car at age 16 and, eventually, her own bakery. (She also has a pet-sitting business with about a dozen clients.)
Health department spokeswoman Amy Yeager told St. Louis’ KMOV that her department shuttered Hey, Cupcake! because it violated the county’s food ordinance and the Illinois State Food Sanitation Code. It seems that Chloe, under the mistaken assumption that she lives in a free country, had not first paid for the privilege of selling her cupcakes by getting a permit.
That’s not all. Heather Stirling told the Post-Dispatch that she was willing to pay for a permit or any other licenses necessary to keep Chloe in business. Then the health department bureaucrats dropped another bomb: In order for Chloe to continue hawking her wares, the family would have to “buy a bakery or build her a kitchen separate from the one we have,” Stirling said.
The Stirlings had already gone to the expense of buying a second refrigerator and extra shelving for the business, and Chloe’s grandparents had given her a stand mixer.
“But a separate kitchen?” Stirling asked incredulously. “Who can do that?”
Stirling’s remark inadvertently highlighted one of the main reasons for such regulations: They stifle competition against large, established businesses, who can afford expensive permits and separate kitchens.
Yeager, in typical bureaucrat fashion, insisted the health department was just doing its job in shutting down Hey, Cupcake! “The rules are the rules. It’s for the protection of the public health,” she told the Post-Dispatch, dismissing concerns over the public’s response to her department’s actions.
Not everyone is buying the public-health rationale, however.
Post-Dispatch columnist Pat Gauen dug into the Illinois Food Handling Regulation Act and discovered a loophole: A person is permitted to prepare food, including cake, in his home kitchen for sale to the public provided he sells it at a farmers’ market. “Where is the logic in a law that prevents the sale of Chloe’s cupcakes in one venue but seems to make it perfectly legal to sell them in another?” Gauen perceptively inquired.
Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, also found Yeager’s excuse a bit wanting. “If you are buying cupcakes from a kid, you KNOW they’re not being baked at Entenmann’s headquarters,” she wrote. “And that’s a ‘risk’ you are taking.” Even if one is taking a very small gamble in consuming homemade cupcakes, she added, “a society that doesn’t even allow microscopic risks is a society more obsessed with rules and liabilities than gumption and frosting.”
Besides, if Chloe’s cupcakes ever did start sickening people, they would stop buying from her, and she’d be out of business in a hurry, health department or no health department. Meanwhile, despite the existence of the bureaucracy, people still occasionally get bad food from places that have jumped through all the mandated hoops. Gauen recalled that he’d “suffered a nasty case of food poisoning on Thanksgiving — probably from buffet food at a very nice restaurant in Wisconsin,” though, oddly, he hastened to praise the health department “watchdogs” for “keeping us safe.”
It is to be hoped that Chloe can get her business up and running again in spite of the government’s hurdles. But time is money, and she’s already lost out on some significant business. Her mom told KMOV that Chloe “received an additional 12 or 14 orders on Sunday after the article ran, and she couldn’t fill any of them” after the health department’s crackdown. In the future, customers may be wary of placing orders that might also go unfilled should the bureaucrats take a notion to cite Chloe for some other infraction of their Byzantine regulations.
And surely the next time this young lady hears “The Star-Spangled Banner,” she will cringe a little at the notion that the United States is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” No, we’re a bunch of micromanaged drones so fearful of the slightest risk that a girl with traits we should be encouraging instead sees her dreams shattered the moment she gets her first taste of success.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/17521-frosted-health-department-shuts-down-11-year-old-s-cupcake-business
Military Industrial complex??? What Military Industrial Complex???
Military Industrial Complex Raked $395 Billion in 2012
The Express Tribune Reports:
The global top 100 list had 42 companies from the US and six from Russia. The total sales of arms and military services by these hundred companies in 2012 amounted to no less than $395 billion.
“Sales by the 42 US-based arms producers amounted to 58 per cent of the total arms sales of the Top 100, with 30 companies based in Western Europe making up another 28 per cent of the total,” SIPRI says.
The US-based Lockheed Martin was followed by Boeing (also US-based) and United Kingdom’s BAE Systems on number three.
Japan, France and Italy were among the other big players in the list, which also features India’s Hindustan Aeronautics and Bharat Electronics.
Link:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Military_Industrial_Complex_Raked_%24395_Billion_in_2012/32540/0/38/38/Y/M.html
The Express Tribune Reports:
The global top 100 list had 42 companies from the US and six from Russia. The total sales of arms and military services by these hundred companies in 2012 amounted to no less than $395 billion.
“Sales by the 42 US-based arms producers amounted to 58 per cent of the total arms sales of the Top 100, with 30 companies based in Western Europe making up another 28 per cent of the total,” SIPRI says.
The US-based Lockheed Martin was followed by Boeing (also US-based) and United Kingdom’s BAE Systems on number three.
Japan, France and Italy were among the other big players in the list, which also features India’s Hindustan Aeronautics and Bharat Electronics.
Link:
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Military_Industrial_Complex_Raked_%24395_Billion_in_2012/32540/0/38/38/Y/M.html
No beer commercial for these guys...
Some People Anheuser-Busch Didn't Bring to the Parade
Economic Policy Journal
During the Super Bowl, you will see the below Budweiser ad of an Anheuser-Busch staged parade for a government trained killer, with attractive wife and all.
For some reason, Budweiser didn't pick these two for the commercial:
War is ugly and evil, especially when conducted by an empire advancing evil special interests.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/some-people-anheuser-busch-didnt-bring.html
Economic Policy Journal
During the Super Bowl, you will see the below Budweiser ad of an Anheuser-Busch staged parade for a government trained killer, with attractive wife and all.
For some reason, Budweiser didn't pick these two for the commercial:
War is ugly and evil, especially when conducted by an empire advancing evil special interests.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/some-people-anheuser-busch-didnt-bring.html
Saturday, February 1, 2014
NYT attack on libertarians provides cover for those who support tyranny in America...
NYT Smears Rand Paul with Claims of Racism, Religious Fanaticism
Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Maybe it was Senator Rand Paul's perceived influence on the Republican National Committee’s recent denouncement of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance that prompted the New York Times to publish a major hit piece on him and the intellectual company he keeps.
Late last month, by a voice vote, the RNC approved adoption of a “Resolution To Renounce The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program.”
The resolution calls the NSA’s dragnet, warrantless collection of metadata of millions of Americans “an invasion into the personal lives of American citizens that violates the right of free speech and association afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” Declaring also that “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Many regard the resolution as a rejection of Bush-era expansion of the federal domestic surveillance apparatus, and consider Senator Paul the primary motivation for the shift in philosophy.
During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in June of last year, Paul announced plans to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration, demanding it provide legal justification for the recently revealed wholesale watching of millions of citizens not suspected of any crime.
“I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” Paul said, according to the show transcript. He continued, “I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying, "We don’t want our phone records looked at," then somebody will wake up and say things will change in Washington."
When asked by host Chris Wallace why he considered the NSA’s surveillance unconstitutional, Paul responded:
Well, you know, they're looking at a billion phone calls a day is what I read in the press and that doesn't sound to me like a modest invasion of privacy. It sounds like an extraordinary invasion of privacy. The Fourth Amendment says you can look at and ask for a warrant specific to a person, place and the items.
This is a general warrant. This is what we objected to and what our Founding Fathers partly fought the revolution over is they did not want generalized warrants where you could go from house to house with soldiers looking for things or now from computer to computer, to phone to phone, without specifying who you're targeting.
Specifically, the Fourth Amendment states that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In a recent article entitled "Rand Paul's Mixed Inheritance," the New York Times, the oldest of the Establishment’s mouthpieces, slammed Paul for such “libertarian” policy positions, and took shots at The John Birch Society, the Tea Party, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and Lew Rockwell for good measure. (The article was posted online January 25, and a version of the article appeared the following day on page A1 of the Sunday print edition.)
Accusing Paul of being “steeped in a narrow, rightward strain” of libertarianism, the New York Times begins the race-baiting in the seventh paragraph.
Paul and those like him, the article claims, “have formulated provocative theories on race, class and American history, and routinely voice beliefs that go far beyond the antiwar, anti-big-government, pro-civil-liberties message” of the larger libertarian movement.
Then, speaking of the Mises Institute, the Times makes sure readers realize that not only are libertarians such as Paul possessed of questionable racial biases, but they’re religious nuts, too.
“Some scholars affiliated with the Mises Institute have combined dark biblical prophecy with apocalyptic warnings that the nation is plunging toward economic collapse and cultural ruin,” write Sam Tanenhaus and Jim Rutenberg, authors of the hit piece.
When, one wonders, was the last time the New York Times considered it a necessary part of its journalistic due diligence to delve into the religious beliefs of other nationally prominent scholars it regularly quotes and promotes in its pages?
Now that the racism and religious fanaticism of Rand Paul’s influences have been made clear, the authors (or, as Thomas diLorenzo called them, “lying propagandists for the state”) move on to tying the albatross of slavery and the Confederacy to the distinguished group, as well.
"Others have championed the Confederacy. One economist, while faulting slavery because it was involuntary, suggested in an interview that the daily life of the enslaved was “not so bad — you pick cotton and sing songs,'" they write.
Walter Block, the “one economist” misquoted above, did not, to his credit, just sit back and let the take him out of context and paint him as a neo-confederate who longs for the good old days of slavery. Block writes:
Here is what I actually published about slavery not being “so bad,” and precisely what I was trying to convey to Mr. Tanenhaus in the several hours of interviews I did with him in an effort to explain libertarianism to him:
“Free association is a very important aspect of liberty. It is crucial. Indeed, its lack was the major problem with slavery. The slaves could not quit. They were forced to ‘associate’ with their masters when they would have vastly preferred not to do so.
Otherwise, slavery wasn’t so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory. It violated the law of free association, and that of the slaves’ private property rights in their own persons. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, then, to a much smaller degree of course, made partial slaves of the owners of establishments like Woolworths.”
The point is that free association, one of the bedrocks of the entire libertarian edifice, is a bulwark against slavery. On the other hand, the so-called Civil Rights Act of 1964 undermines free association. It forces Woolworths to associate with people against their will. Thus, very paradoxically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 supports slavery. It does so by undermining free association, the violation of which allows slavery.
Thomas DiLorenzo says he was interviewed by the authors of the Paul piece, as well. He, it seems, is one of the senator’s questionable “defenders of the Confederacy.” And DiLorenzo didn’t take kindly to this brand of bashing, either. He writes:
I told him [Tanenhaus] that criticizing Lincoln does not make one a defender of the Confederacy any more than criticizing FDR makes one a defender of Hitler. (I mention the Confederacy in one half of one page in The Real Lincoln.) He ended up ignoring everything I said, did not quote anything I’ve ever written, and simply accused all of us as being “defenders of the Confederacy,” i.e., of slavery. As Lew [Rockwell] has said, he was not interested in informing anyone about our scholarship, only libeling us.
Of course, Tanenhaus and Rutenberg try meekly to cover themselves, writing, “Mr. Paul says he abhors racism, has never visited the institute and should not have to answer for the more extreme views of all of those in the libertarian orbit.”
Did you catch that? Senator Paul says he abhors racism. That’s not quite the same as saying, “Mr. Paul is not a racist.” If the authors were riding to the defense of any of their patrons on the Left, however, they undoubtedly would have been a lot more assertive in their disclaimer.
Most of the rest of the article takes similar shots at Senator Paul’s iconic father and his influences.
Anyone interested in reading between the lines of the New York Times article need only count the number of references (direct or indirect) to racism, religious fanaticism, the Confederacy, isolationism, and Paul's purported two-faced treatment of his libertarian-leaning followers and the GOP powers that be. That will tell you all you need to know about the journalistic value of the article.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/17535-nyt-smears-rand-paul-with-claims-of-racism-religious-fanaticism
Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Maybe it was Senator Rand Paul's perceived influence on the Republican National Committee’s recent denouncement of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance that prompted the New York Times to publish a major hit piece on him and the intellectual company he keeps.
Late last month, by a voice vote, the RNC approved adoption of a “Resolution To Renounce The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program.”
The resolution calls the NSA’s dragnet, warrantless collection of metadata of millions of Americans “an invasion into the personal lives of American citizens that violates the right of free speech and association afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” Declaring also that “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Many regard the resolution as a rejection of Bush-era expansion of the federal domestic surveillance apparatus, and consider Senator Paul the primary motivation for the shift in philosophy.
During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in June of last year, Paul announced plans to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration, demanding it provide legal justification for the recently revealed wholesale watching of millions of citizens not suspected of any crime.
“I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” Paul said, according to the show transcript. He continued, “I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying, "We don’t want our phone records looked at," then somebody will wake up and say things will change in Washington."
When asked by host Chris Wallace why he considered the NSA’s surveillance unconstitutional, Paul responded:
Well, you know, they're looking at a billion phone calls a day is what I read in the press and that doesn't sound to me like a modest invasion of privacy. It sounds like an extraordinary invasion of privacy. The Fourth Amendment says you can look at and ask for a warrant specific to a person, place and the items.
This is a general warrant. This is what we objected to and what our Founding Fathers partly fought the revolution over is they did not want generalized warrants where you could go from house to house with soldiers looking for things or now from computer to computer, to phone to phone, without specifying who you're targeting.
Specifically, the Fourth Amendment states that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In a recent article entitled "Rand Paul's Mixed Inheritance," the New York Times, the oldest of the Establishment’s mouthpieces, slammed Paul for such “libertarian” policy positions, and took shots at The John Birch Society, the Tea Party, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and Lew Rockwell for good measure. (The article was posted online January 25, and a version of the article appeared the following day on page A1 of the Sunday print edition.)
Accusing Paul of being “steeped in a narrow, rightward strain” of libertarianism, the New York Times begins the race-baiting in the seventh paragraph.
Paul and those like him, the article claims, “have formulated provocative theories on race, class and American history, and routinely voice beliefs that go far beyond the antiwar, anti-big-government, pro-civil-liberties message” of the larger libertarian movement.
Then, speaking of the Mises Institute, the Times makes sure readers realize that not only are libertarians such as Paul possessed of questionable racial biases, but they’re religious nuts, too.
“Some scholars affiliated with the Mises Institute have combined dark biblical prophecy with apocalyptic warnings that the nation is plunging toward economic collapse and cultural ruin,” write Sam Tanenhaus and Jim Rutenberg, authors of the hit piece.
When, one wonders, was the last time the New York Times considered it a necessary part of its journalistic due diligence to delve into the religious beliefs of other nationally prominent scholars it regularly quotes and promotes in its pages?
Now that the racism and religious fanaticism of Rand Paul’s influences have been made clear, the authors (or, as Thomas diLorenzo called them, “lying propagandists for the state”) move on to tying the albatross of slavery and the Confederacy to the distinguished group, as well.
"Others have championed the Confederacy. One economist, while faulting slavery because it was involuntary, suggested in an interview that the daily life of the enslaved was “not so bad — you pick cotton and sing songs,'" they write.
Walter Block, the “one economist” misquoted above, did not, to his credit, just sit back and let the take him out of context and paint him as a neo-confederate who longs for the good old days of slavery. Block writes:
Here is what I actually published about slavery not being “so bad,” and precisely what I was trying to convey to Mr. Tanenhaus in the several hours of interviews I did with him in an effort to explain libertarianism to him:
“Free association is a very important aspect of liberty. It is crucial. Indeed, its lack was the major problem with slavery. The slaves could not quit. They were forced to ‘associate’ with their masters when they would have vastly preferred not to do so.
Otherwise, slavery wasn’t so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory. It violated the law of free association, and that of the slaves’ private property rights in their own persons. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, then, to a much smaller degree of course, made partial slaves of the owners of establishments like Woolworths.”
The point is that free association, one of the bedrocks of the entire libertarian edifice, is a bulwark against slavery. On the other hand, the so-called Civil Rights Act of 1964 undermines free association. It forces Woolworths to associate with people against their will. Thus, very paradoxically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 supports slavery. It does so by undermining free association, the violation of which allows slavery.
Thomas DiLorenzo says he was interviewed by the authors of the Paul piece, as well. He, it seems, is one of the senator’s questionable “defenders of the Confederacy.” And DiLorenzo didn’t take kindly to this brand of bashing, either. He writes:
I told him [Tanenhaus] that criticizing Lincoln does not make one a defender of the Confederacy any more than criticizing FDR makes one a defender of Hitler. (I mention the Confederacy in one half of one page in The Real Lincoln.) He ended up ignoring everything I said, did not quote anything I’ve ever written, and simply accused all of us as being “defenders of the Confederacy,” i.e., of slavery. As Lew [Rockwell] has said, he was not interested in informing anyone about our scholarship, only libeling us.
Of course, Tanenhaus and Rutenberg try meekly to cover themselves, writing, “Mr. Paul says he abhors racism, has never visited the institute and should not have to answer for the more extreme views of all of those in the libertarian orbit.”
Did you catch that? Senator Paul says he abhors racism. That’s not quite the same as saying, “Mr. Paul is not a racist.” If the authors were riding to the defense of any of their patrons on the Left, however, they undoubtedly would have been a lot more assertive in their disclaimer.
Most of the rest of the article takes similar shots at Senator Paul’s iconic father and his influences.
Anyone interested in reading between the lines of the New York Times article need only count the number of references (direct or indirect) to racism, religious fanaticism, the Confederacy, isolationism, and Paul's purported two-faced treatment of his libertarian-leaning followers and the GOP powers that be. That will tell you all you need to know about the journalistic value of the article.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/17535-nyt-smears-rand-paul-with-claims-of-racism-religious-fanaticism
" As the old saying goes: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you."
By Michael Walsh
Between the NSA’s power and the IRS’s revenge, how can Americans not be worried about the opinions they express?
Feel like Big Brother is watching you these days? You’re not alone.
“This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario,” wrote the late William Safire of The New York Times in 2002, in the panicky aftermath of 9/11. “Here is what will happen to you: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive . . . will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database.’ ”
Twelve years on, this is the world we live in, but worse. Through a combination of fear, cowardice, political opportunism and bureaucratic metastasis, the erstwhile land of the free has been transformed into a nation of closely watched subjects — a country of 300 million potential criminals, whose daily activities need constant monitoring.
Once the most secret of organizations, the NSA has become even more famous than the CIA, the public face of Big Brother himself. At its headquarters on Savage Road in Fort Meade, Md., its omnivorous Black Widow supercomputer hoovers up data both foreign and domestic, while its new $2 billion data center near Bluffdale, Utah — the highly classified Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center — houses, well, just about everything. As James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine two years ago, as the center was being completed:
“Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private e-mails, cellphone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’ ”
The question is: To what end?
The administration says: Trust us, we’re only after the bad guys.
But considering President Obama’s track record, how is “trust us” a consoling argument?
The IRS admitted targeting conservative groups before the 2012 election, subjecting them to extra scrutiny and delaying their nonprofit status. One group, Friends of Abe, says its application was held up for two years and they were asked to hand over a list of its members. Another, the National Organization for Marriage, alleged that the IRS leaked its 2008 tax return and donor lists.
Meanwhile, a number of Obama’s critics have noticed how audits seem to follow their outspokenness — a coincidence, to be sure.
But how about conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who was charged with a felony for allegedly making illegal campaign contributions — something that warranted a much lesser charge for other defendants? Is his prosecution just a coincidence?
Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz doesn’t think so. “The idea of charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” he said. “I can’t help but think that [D’Souza’s] politics have something to do with it . . . It smacks of selective prosecution.”
One could conclude that the administration can’t keep private information private — and is happy to seek retribution on those who disagree with it.
The irony is, all this snooping may not really be necessary. These days, Americans can’t expose themselves enough: Their smartphones constantly broadcast their whereabouts to law enforcement, while millions cheerfully post intimate personal details and embarrassing photographs of themselves and their families on social media.
The fact is, privacy has become a thing of the past, destroyed by the rise of information technology, the force of government, and the willing surrender of the citizenry.
But how many Americans’ hands are pausing over a keyboard these days, wondering if posting their opinion over Facebook isn’t putting themselves at risk?
The NSA revelations and the IRS scandal have sent a chill through freedom of speech and expression in this country.
“Trust us” cannot be the answer.
As the old saying goes: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Link:
http://nypost.com/2014/02/01/welcome-to-the-united-states-of-paranoia/
Obama worse than Bush...
Michael Bastasch
Could we be in the midst of an “imperial presidency”? That’s the question the Christian Science Monitor posed in a recent cover story.
It’s generally former President George W. Bush that gets hammered for overreaching his executive authority, but the CSM article lays out evidence showing that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond his predecessor.
While Bush and Obama have issued roughly the same number of executive orders in their first five years as president, the scope of Obama’s actions are more far-reaching than Bush’s.
“It’s really the character of the actions, and their subject,” Jonathan Turley, a constitutional scholar at George Washington University, told the CSM. “In my view, Obama has surpassed George W. Bush in the level of circumvention of Congress and the assertion of excessive presidential power. I don’t think it’s a close question.”
Read the rest here:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/31/bastasch-obama-has-done-more-to-circumvent-congress-than-bush/
"Anyone who is serious about goodness becomes an enemy of the system. Anyone who is serious about liberty is already an enemy of the system. We can either accept that or evade that, but it will not go away."
What Would You Do for “Truth”?
Paul Rosenberg
I closed a recent post by saying this:
If you’re not willing to suffer for your beliefs, you’re not much of a believer.
To that I will add that the statement remains true, no matter what types of beliefs we’re talking about. Either we have the guts to stand by our beliefs or we don’t. (Which is why a lot of people avoid them – they haven’t the guts to choose.) Holding to our beliefs under fire is the crucial test – not of our beliefs, but of ourselves.
Anytime you move the world forward in some way, you will receive a backlash. In a world like ours – a world neurotically devoted to stasis – that is almost unavoidable.
Have you ever noticed that when people complain about tax collectors or the police, they look around first and lower their voices? The reason why is ultra-obvious: They expect those groups to seek out and hurt people who oppose them.
Why We Suffer
In societies that dedicate themselves to law and punishment, people learn to neurotically avoid all blame. That’s the big problem with “law” – it demands that you remember tens of thousands of rules and punishes you if you fail to obey them. That leaves all of us subject to punishment at every moment of our lives. And that’s a recipe for stress and neurosis.
On top of that, people very well understand that by changing their opinions or actions, they are judging their previous choices as “bad.” And bad, of course, means that you can expect punishment.
Since everyone in a “modern society” grows up learning that changing opinions invites punishment, they come to instinctively avoid it.
What all of this means is this:
For all practical purposes, progress is grounds for punishment, and talk of progress is both suspicious and dangerous.
Yet here we are… and here all sane, healthy people are… trying to move forward.
The sad truth is this:
If you wish to progress, those people who’ve bought into the system will instantly see you as a threat and will therefore oppose you.
Sure, these people should grow up and do better, but the system has trained them in this behavior all their lives. My dad, for example, was a very bright man and definitely not a coward. But when he once asked me what I was doing that evening, I mentioned that I might attend a meeting of libertarians, and he said, “Ah, crap. You’re gonna go to jail.”
My dad may have leapt to a conclusion, but he very rightly understood that going against the status quo brings trouble.
(I didn’t actually go that night, and believe it or not, I’ve only attended one or two official libertarian meetings ever.)
The Price We Must Pay
As I say, in the current situation, moves forward will be opposed, and that means you’ll have to accept pain. That sucks, but it doesn’t suck worse than the alternative, which is a neutered stasis in a permanent semi-slavery.
And please don’t think you can avoid the pain and still make any meaningful progress. What’s going on when we move forward is that we suffer for our virtues. The only way to avoid that is to turn away from those virtues. And that means diminishing ourselves.
Don’t do it – your life is worth more than that.
We may as well accept that we’re enemies of the status quo, and our lives therefore involve risk.
Anyone who is serious about goodness becomes an enemy of the system. Anyone who is serious about liberty is already an enemy of the system. We can either accept that or evade that, but it will not go away.
If we accept it, we make ourselves better and we eventually make the world better.
If we evade it, we degrade ourselves and we degrade the world.
Let’s choose not to be harmless serfs. We’re so much better than that.
Link:
http://www.freemansperspective.com/meaningful-progress-truth/
Paul Rosenberg
I closed a recent post by saying this:
If you’re not willing to suffer for your beliefs, you’re not much of a believer.
To that I will add that the statement remains true, no matter what types of beliefs we’re talking about. Either we have the guts to stand by our beliefs or we don’t. (Which is why a lot of people avoid them – they haven’t the guts to choose.) Holding to our beliefs under fire is the crucial test – not of our beliefs, but of ourselves.
Anytime you move the world forward in some way, you will receive a backlash. In a world like ours – a world neurotically devoted to stasis – that is almost unavoidable.
Have you ever noticed that when people complain about tax collectors or the police, they look around first and lower their voices? The reason why is ultra-obvious: They expect those groups to seek out and hurt people who oppose them.
Why We Suffer
In societies that dedicate themselves to law and punishment, people learn to neurotically avoid all blame. That’s the big problem with “law” – it demands that you remember tens of thousands of rules and punishes you if you fail to obey them. That leaves all of us subject to punishment at every moment of our lives. And that’s a recipe for stress and neurosis.
On top of that, people very well understand that by changing their opinions or actions, they are judging their previous choices as “bad.” And bad, of course, means that you can expect punishment.
Since everyone in a “modern society” grows up learning that changing opinions invites punishment, they come to instinctively avoid it.
What all of this means is this:
For all practical purposes, progress is grounds for punishment, and talk of progress is both suspicious and dangerous.
Yet here we are… and here all sane, healthy people are… trying to move forward.
The sad truth is this:
If you wish to progress, those people who’ve bought into the system will instantly see you as a threat and will therefore oppose you.
Sure, these people should grow up and do better, but the system has trained them in this behavior all their lives. My dad, for example, was a very bright man and definitely not a coward. But when he once asked me what I was doing that evening, I mentioned that I might attend a meeting of libertarians, and he said, “Ah, crap. You’re gonna go to jail.”
My dad may have leapt to a conclusion, but he very rightly understood that going against the status quo brings trouble.
(I didn’t actually go that night, and believe it or not, I’ve only attended one or two official libertarian meetings ever.)
The Price We Must Pay
As I say, in the current situation, moves forward will be opposed, and that means you’ll have to accept pain. That sucks, but it doesn’t suck worse than the alternative, which is a neutered stasis in a permanent semi-slavery.
And please don’t think you can avoid the pain and still make any meaningful progress. What’s going on when we move forward is that we suffer for our virtues. The only way to avoid that is to turn away from those virtues. And that means diminishing ourselves.
Don’t do it – your life is worth more than that.
We may as well accept that we’re enemies of the status quo, and our lives therefore involve risk.
Anyone who is serious about goodness becomes an enemy of the system. Anyone who is serious about liberty is already an enemy of the system. We can either accept that or evade that, but it will not go away.
If we accept it, we make ourselves better and we eventually make the world better.
If we evade it, we degrade ourselves and we degrade the world.
Let’s choose not to be harmless serfs. We’re so much better than that.
Link:
http://www.freemansperspective.com/meaningful-progress-truth/
The collapse of the GOP. Now, if we could only get rid of the Democrats as well...
How the GOP Lost Middle America
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Out of the Republican retreat on Maryland’s Eastern shore comes word that the House leadership is raising the white flag of surrender on immigration.
The GOP will agree to halt the deportation of 12 million illegal aliens, and sign on to a blanket amnesty. It only asks that the 12 million not be put on a path to citizenship.
Sorry, but losers do not dictate terms. Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO says amnesty is no longer enough. Illegal aliens must be put on a path to citizenship and given green cards to work — and join unions.
Rep. Paul Ryan and the Wall Street Journal are for throwing in the towel. Legalize them all and start them on the path to citizenship.
A full and final capitulation. Let’s get it over with.
To understand why and how the Republican Party lost Middle America, and faces demographic death, we need to go back to Bush I.
At the Cold War’s end, the GOP reached a fork in the road. The determination of Middle Americans to preserve the country they grew up in, suddenly collided with the profit motive of Corporate America.
The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship production abroad — where unions did not exist, regulations were light, taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in America.
Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American work force, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign labor.
While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.
Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all.
U.S. factories in the scores of thousands were shut down, shedding their American workers. Foreign-made goods poured in, filling U.S. stores and killing the manufacturers who had stayed behind, loyal to their U.S. workers.
The Reagan prosperity was exported to Asia and China by the Bush Republicans. And the Reagan Democrats reciprocated by deserting the Bush Republican Party and going home. But this was not the end of what this writer described in his 1998 book, “The Great Betrayal.”
As those hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, fast-food shops, car washes, groceries and other service industries also relished the rewards of cheap foreign labor, they got government assistance in replacing their American workers.
Since 1990, some 30 to 40 million immigrants, legal and illegal, have entered the country.
This huge increase in the labor force, at the same time the U.S. was shipping factories abroad, brought massive downward pressure on wages. The real wages of Middle Americans have stagnated for decades.
What was wildly wonderful for Corporate America was hell on Middle America. But the Republican Party had made its choice. It had sold its soul to the multinationals. And as it went along with NAFTA, GATT, fast track and mass immigration, to appease Corporate America, it lost Middle America.
The party went with the folks who paid for their campaigns, only to lose the folks who had given them their landslides.
When Republicans accede to the demand for amnesty, and immigration without end, it does not take a political genius to see what is going to happen. For it is happening now.
Almost all of those breaking our laws, crossing the border, and overstaying their visas are young, poor or working class. Between 80 and 90 percent are from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
They are Third World peoples. They believe in government action and government programs that provide their families with free education, health care, housing, food, and income subsidies. They are not Bob Taft or Barry Goldwater conservatives.
Perhaps 85 percent of all immigrants, legal and illegal, more than a million a year now, are people of color. And while over 70 percent of Hispanics and Asians voted Democratic for Obama, among voters of African descent, the Obama vote was well above 90 percent.
Four of every five U.S. citizens of Asian, African and Hispanic descent vote Democratic in presidential elections. And it is their numbers that are growing. Already they are well over a third of the U.S. population.
As has been observed often, America, demographically, is going to look like California. And while Nixon won California all five times he was on a national ticket, and Reagan won California in landslides all four times he ran, California has not gone Republican in six straight presidential elections.
Democrats outnumber Republicans there by more than two-to-one in the Congressional delegation and in the state assembly, and not a single Republican holds statewide office.
If Bush I had built that border fence back in 1992 and declared a moratorium on legal immigration that fall, as many implored him to do, the party of the Bushes would not be facing its demise well before midcentury.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/patrick-j-buchanan/why-the-gop-is-rotten/
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Out of the Republican retreat on Maryland’s Eastern shore comes word that the House leadership is raising the white flag of surrender on immigration.
The GOP will agree to halt the deportation of 12 million illegal aliens, and sign on to a blanket amnesty. It only asks that the 12 million not be put on a path to citizenship.
Sorry, but losers do not dictate terms. Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO says amnesty is no longer enough. Illegal aliens must be put on a path to citizenship and given green cards to work — and join unions.
Rep. Paul Ryan and the Wall Street Journal are for throwing in the towel. Legalize them all and start them on the path to citizenship.
A full and final capitulation. Let’s get it over with.
To understand why and how the Republican Party lost Middle America, and faces demographic death, we need to go back to Bush I.
At the Cold War’s end, the GOP reached a fork in the road. The determination of Middle Americans to preserve the country they grew up in, suddenly collided with the profit motive of Corporate America.
The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship production abroad — where unions did not exist, regulations were light, taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in America.
Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American work force, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign labor.
While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.
Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all.
U.S. factories in the scores of thousands were shut down, shedding their American workers. Foreign-made goods poured in, filling U.S. stores and killing the manufacturers who had stayed behind, loyal to their U.S. workers.
The Reagan prosperity was exported to Asia and China by the Bush Republicans. And the Reagan Democrats reciprocated by deserting the Bush Republican Party and going home. But this was not the end of what this writer described in his 1998 book, “The Great Betrayal.”
As those hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, fast-food shops, car washes, groceries and other service industries also relished the rewards of cheap foreign labor, they got government assistance in replacing their American workers.
Since 1990, some 30 to 40 million immigrants, legal and illegal, have entered the country.
This huge increase in the labor force, at the same time the U.S. was shipping factories abroad, brought massive downward pressure on wages. The real wages of Middle Americans have stagnated for decades.
What was wildly wonderful for Corporate America was hell on Middle America. But the Republican Party had made its choice. It had sold its soul to the multinationals. And as it went along with NAFTA, GATT, fast track and mass immigration, to appease Corporate America, it lost Middle America.
The party went with the folks who paid for their campaigns, only to lose the folks who had given them their landslides.
When Republicans accede to the demand for amnesty, and immigration without end, it does not take a political genius to see what is going to happen. For it is happening now.
Almost all of those breaking our laws, crossing the border, and overstaying their visas are young, poor or working class. Between 80 and 90 percent are from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
They are Third World peoples. They believe in government action and government programs that provide their families with free education, health care, housing, food, and income subsidies. They are not Bob Taft or Barry Goldwater conservatives.
Perhaps 85 percent of all immigrants, legal and illegal, more than a million a year now, are people of color. And while over 70 percent of Hispanics and Asians voted Democratic for Obama, among voters of African descent, the Obama vote was well above 90 percent.
Four of every five U.S. citizens of Asian, African and Hispanic descent vote Democratic in presidential elections. And it is their numbers that are growing. Already they are well over a third of the U.S. population.
As has been observed often, America, demographically, is going to look like California. And while Nixon won California all five times he was on a national ticket, and Reagan won California in landslides all four times he ran, California has not gone Republican in six straight presidential elections.
Democrats outnumber Republicans there by more than two-to-one in the Congressional delegation and in the state assembly, and not a single Republican holds statewide office.
If Bush I had built that border fence back in 1992 and declared a moratorium on legal immigration that fall, as many implored him to do, the party of the Bushes would not be facing its demise well before midcentury.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/patrick-j-buchanan/why-the-gop-is-rotten/
Kill the minimum wage???
Help Teens by Killing the Minimum Wage
By G. Joseph McLiney
Business owners know when a product is not selling, regardless of whether it’s apples or automobiles, they must lower the price.
Sometimes they’re forced to cut it severely and take a loss. Most reasonable people would contend that it’s a right of the owner to sell his product at whatever level the owner determines is in his best interest.
When the federal government steps in and fixes prices above the market, the products don’t sell and an oversupply is created. We currently have an overabundance of a product known as labor, especially among teenagers.
The overall unemployment rate for this group is 19.3 percent. In spite of this large surplus, politicians are pushing to increase the hourly rate 39 percent to $10.10, making these youngsters even more unaffordable.
It is routine for the self-employed to work grueling hours for little or no pay. Also consider the unpaid intern who gladly trades low, or no wages, for the experience in a profession the intern deems to have upside potential.
Both groups elect to sacrifice the price of their labor for the potential of future, higher payoffs. There is no government entity protecting the entrepreneur or the intern from trading his labor for the prospect of a brighter future.
Our universities charge teenagers tens of thousands of dollars to supposedly train them to enter the working world. Students pay vast sums, and incur massive debts for this privilege and the chance at better opportunities, much like the entrepreneur.
It seems contradictory that the University of Missouri can charge youngsters $22,000 annually for tuition, room and board, yet it’s not OK for that same teenager to voluntarily sell his labor at a cost he and his employer deem fair.
Contrast this with a Kansas City youth lowering his hourly wage to $5. After a year, he’d have $4,680 less than he may have received, assuming he could have secured a job at the higher $7.25 government wage.
He’d also have a year’s worth of actual job training, experience and a track record to build upon. A year later at the university, and he’d have $22,000 in debt, three more years ahead and an additional $66,000 to borrow.
The minimum wage is not only an affront to common sense, it should be considered a civil rights issue. Look no further than U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The black teen unemployment rate is 38 percent. Why not eliminate the minimum wage and see whether we can get the 38 percent who are unemployed working?
If this isn’t palatable, and if our leaders are actually sincere, why not eliminate taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, on both the employer and the low-wage workers?
This would reduce a 25.3 percent tax bite on each dollar earned.
If implemented, the net benefit to minimum wage employees, regardless of age, would be the equivalent of $8.35 an hour for the first $5,900, and $9.70 thereafter.
This is not nearly as good of a solution as killing the minimum wage but would be a positive step in helping the employer and the low-wage earner.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/g-joseph-mcliney/kill-the-minimum-wage/
By G. Joseph McLiney
Business owners know when a product is not selling, regardless of whether it’s apples or automobiles, they must lower the price.
Sometimes they’re forced to cut it severely and take a loss. Most reasonable people would contend that it’s a right of the owner to sell his product at whatever level the owner determines is in his best interest.
When the federal government steps in and fixes prices above the market, the products don’t sell and an oversupply is created. We currently have an overabundance of a product known as labor, especially among teenagers.
The overall unemployment rate for this group is 19.3 percent. In spite of this large surplus, politicians are pushing to increase the hourly rate 39 percent to $10.10, making these youngsters even more unaffordable.
It is routine for the self-employed to work grueling hours for little or no pay. Also consider the unpaid intern who gladly trades low, or no wages, for the experience in a profession the intern deems to have upside potential.
Both groups elect to sacrifice the price of their labor for the potential of future, higher payoffs. There is no government entity protecting the entrepreneur or the intern from trading his labor for the prospect of a brighter future.
Our universities charge teenagers tens of thousands of dollars to supposedly train them to enter the working world. Students pay vast sums, and incur massive debts for this privilege and the chance at better opportunities, much like the entrepreneur.
It seems contradictory that the University of Missouri can charge youngsters $22,000 annually for tuition, room and board, yet it’s not OK for that same teenager to voluntarily sell his labor at a cost he and his employer deem fair.
Contrast this with a Kansas City youth lowering his hourly wage to $5. After a year, he’d have $4,680 less than he may have received, assuming he could have secured a job at the higher $7.25 government wage.
He’d also have a year’s worth of actual job training, experience and a track record to build upon. A year later at the university, and he’d have $22,000 in debt, three more years ahead and an additional $66,000 to borrow.
The minimum wage is not only an affront to common sense, it should be considered a civil rights issue. Look no further than U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The black teen unemployment rate is 38 percent. Why not eliminate the minimum wage and see whether we can get the 38 percent who are unemployed working?
If this isn’t palatable, and if our leaders are actually sincere, why not eliminate taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, on both the employer and the low-wage workers?
This would reduce a 25.3 percent tax bite on each dollar earned.
If implemented, the net benefit to minimum wage employees, regardless of age, would be the equivalent of $8.35 an hour for the first $5,900, and $9.70 thereafter.
This is not nearly as good of a solution as killing the minimum wage but would be a positive step in helping the employer and the low-wage earner.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/g-joseph-mcliney/kill-the-minimum-wage/
Who really started World War II???
Stalin, Communism, and World War II
By Jonathan Goodwin
The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, by Viktor Suvorov
The standard, accepted story of World War II, especially for those in the west, goes as follows: Hitler wanted to take over the world; Japan committed an unprovoked and despicable act by bombing the US at Pearl Harbor. The United States, minding its own business until the day that will live in infamy, was forced into war against all efforts of Roosevelt to the contrary. The United States then saved the world from Nazi and Japanese tyranny, and then altruistically aided in the rebuilding efforts of former enemies.
It is a fantasy that lies behind the emotion shed at sporting event during the singing of the national anthem and the flyover of military jets; it undergirds countless July 4, veterans day, and memorial day parades. It was the good war.
Over the years, I have worked to shed myself of this dream. Much of that work is buried in dozens of posts in this blog. One of the more complete, summary examples is here. Most of my effort has been focused on the perspective of the west generally – the culpability of Britain, France, and the United States in the century of war. Of course, there is much culpability to share amongst actors employed by these three states.
There are, of course, other viewpoints. Perhaps the first one I looked into was one from Germany, through a book by Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, “1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers.” I have written several posts on this topic; for those unfamiliar with this work and interested in the perspective, I offer my introductory post to this work.
So, now on to Suvorov. His perspective is from the view of the Soviets and Stalin. I will likely write several posts on this book and this topic; I will also use details from this book to update my running “Timeline to War.” However, for now, I will offer the summary version of this book (in this summary, I will not go into detail from the book; I will develop this in subsequent posts).
Suvorov suggests that Stalin’s objective was conquest for the sake of expanding communism. In this, Stalin followed a very cohesive strategy; ultimately, he achieved partial success, but not to the extent desired.
Stalin Prepares for War
During the 1930s, the Soviet Union produced the most advanced weaponry and military in the world. This included heavy tanks and bombers – weapons scarcely (if at all) available in Germany at the time, for example. Much of the focus was in producing weaponry and strategies for offense – defense was not contemplated as Stalin’s plan was to mop-up all of Europe after the western powers pummeled each other for a time.
Stalin Baits Hitler
Stalin required that governments in the west fight each other as prelude to his conquest. He felt his best avenue was through instigating the Germans and Hitler. Stalin took two paths: 1) he provided certain military technologies to the Germans during the time that such were prohibited due to the terms of Versailles, and 2) he urged Hitler to agree to the Molotov- Ribbentrob treaty regarding the division of Poland – thus ensuring that Britain and France would be drawn into war. This, of course, occurred shortly after Germany invaded Poland (Stalin ensuring that Hitler went first).
The Soviet Union Invades Finland
Many point to the difficulties of this Soviet invasion of Finland as evidence of the lack of capability of the Soviet military; on the contrary, given the winter conditions and the elaborate defenses established, it was one of the most impressive offensive showings of the war. Stalin demonstrated that he would pay any price to achieve his objectives.
Stalin Prepares for Attack
While still under treaty with Germany and after the partition of Poland and various other regions between Germany and Russia, Stalin positions the bulk of his military hardware and forces on the new borders in the west. This positioning is offensive, not defensive – Stalin is preparing to attack after Britain and Germany have been in active combat for an extended period.
Hitler Fears for Romanian Oil
Due to various advancements of the Soviet military and other political actions, Stalin has control over certain regions of Romania. Hitler is concerned regarding continued access to Romanian oil – a major source for the German military. Hitler concludes that he must attack Russia in an attempt to protect access.
Stalin Caught by Surprise
As mentioned, Stalin by this time was preparing his own attack – the Germans, French, and British have softened each other up substantially. Stalin knew that Hitler knew that a successful attack by the Germans against the Russians was impossible; Stalin therefore believed that Hitler would not attempt such folly. Stalin did not adequately consider Hitler’s desperation regarding oil.
Hitler attacked while Stalin, not quite ready for his own surprise attack, was still bringing weaponry and troops to the border. The offensive firepower was overwhelming: there was no Soviet preparation for defense; there were no secondary lines. It wasn’t due to poor Soviet defenses, but the fact that there were purposely no Soviet defenses.
For these reasons, the Germans went quickly through the Soviet lines. By the thousands, tanks, airplanes and ammunition were destroyed in place; and military personnel killed and wounded. Further countless tons of weaponry, ammunition, and personnel were captured by the Germans, providing for additional capability in the coming weeks.
Stalin’s Objectives Thwarted
Certainly, the only state to gain substantial territory as a result of the Second World War was the Soviet Union – and more broadly, the communists (when considering Asia as well). In this regard, Stalin was the sole “victor” of any of the combatants.
However, on the day of the German attack, Stalin knew his objective of conquering all of Europe and eventually bringing the entire world into war as required for global revolution was no longer in reach – too much of his military capability was destroyed or taken by the Germans, and no longer could a surprise attack be possible.
Summary
As mentioned, I intend to provide a more thorough review through several posts – perhaps following the outline above. I also will consider this narrative in the context of actions taken by Churchill and Roosevelt – that they (especially Roosevelt) sided with Stalin in this conflict (as opposed to Hitler, or preferably neither side) was already a curious decision; in light of the evidence presented in this book – the substance of which could not have been totally lost to US and British intelligence at the time – the choice is even more astonishing.
Stalin’s objectives were to spread communism. When it came to military might at the start of the war, the Soviets were far more capable of projecting power over distance than were the Germans. When it came to murderous regimes, again Stalin had Hitler beat at the start of the war by perhaps 1000 to 1.
The pact to divide Poland was between the Germans and the Soviets, yet Britain and France declared war on only the Germans. No action was taken against the Soviets even for the invasion of Finland.
Communists were present throughout the Roosevelt administration. This fact was apparent to outsiders at the time – it could not have been lost on Roosevelt.
Did Britain (and ultimately the United States) choose Stalin so as to prevent the Soviets attacking the west once done with Germany? Or did they look to increase the spread of communism for whatever reasons?
Toward the stated objective, to combat tyranny, certainly Russia was a greater global threat than were the Germans – so the answer doesn’t lie here.
I have no further conclusions at the moment beyond what I have previously written on these speculations. This is one reason I am developing the above-mentioned timeline. Perhaps through it, there will someday come more clues.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/jonathan-goodwin/stalins-grand-design/
By Jonathan Goodwin
The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, by Viktor Suvorov
The standard, accepted story of World War II, especially for those in the west, goes as follows: Hitler wanted to take over the world; Japan committed an unprovoked and despicable act by bombing the US at Pearl Harbor. The United States, minding its own business until the day that will live in infamy, was forced into war against all efforts of Roosevelt to the contrary. The United States then saved the world from Nazi and Japanese tyranny, and then altruistically aided in the rebuilding efforts of former enemies.
It is a fantasy that lies behind the emotion shed at sporting event during the singing of the national anthem and the flyover of military jets; it undergirds countless July 4, veterans day, and memorial day parades. It was the good war.
Over the years, I have worked to shed myself of this dream. Much of that work is buried in dozens of posts in this blog. One of the more complete, summary examples is here. Most of my effort has been focused on the perspective of the west generally – the culpability of Britain, France, and the United States in the century of war. Of course, there is much culpability to share amongst actors employed by these three states.
There are, of course, other viewpoints. Perhaps the first one I looked into was one from Germany, through a book by Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, “1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers.” I have written several posts on this topic; for those unfamiliar with this work and interested in the perspective, I offer my introductory post to this work.
So, now on to Suvorov. His perspective is from the view of the Soviets and Stalin. I will likely write several posts on this book and this topic; I will also use details from this book to update my running “Timeline to War.” However, for now, I will offer the summary version of this book (in this summary, I will not go into detail from the book; I will develop this in subsequent posts).
Suvorov suggests that Stalin’s objective was conquest for the sake of expanding communism. In this, Stalin followed a very cohesive strategy; ultimately, he achieved partial success, but not to the extent desired.
Stalin Prepares for War
During the 1930s, the Soviet Union produced the most advanced weaponry and military in the world. This included heavy tanks and bombers – weapons scarcely (if at all) available in Germany at the time, for example. Much of the focus was in producing weaponry and strategies for offense – defense was not contemplated as Stalin’s plan was to mop-up all of Europe after the western powers pummeled each other for a time.
Stalin Baits Hitler
Stalin required that governments in the west fight each other as prelude to his conquest. He felt his best avenue was through instigating the Germans and Hitler. Stalin took two paths: 1) he provided certain military technologies to the Germans during the time that such were prohibited due to the terms of Versailles, and 2) he urged Hitler to agree to the Molotov- Ribbentrob treaty regarding the division of Poland – thus ensuring that Britain and France would be drawn into war. This, of course, occurred shortly after Germany invaded Poland (Stalin ensuring that Hitler went first).
The Soviet Union Invades Finland
Many point to the difficulties of this Soviet invasion of Finland as evidence of the lack of capability of the Soviet military; on the contrary, given the winter conditions and the elaborate defenses established, it was one of the most impressive offensive showings of the war. Stalin demonstrated that he would pay any price to achieve his objectives.
Stalin Prepares for Attack
While still under treaty with Germany and after the partition of Poland and various other regions between Germany and Russia, Stalin positions the bulk of his military hardware and forces on the new borders in the west. This positioning is offensive, not defensive – Stalin is preparing to attack after Britain and Germany have been in active combat for an extended period.
Hitler Fears for Romanian Oil
Due to various advancements of the Soviet military and other political actions, Stalin has control over certain regions of Romania. Hitler is concerned regarding continued access to Romanian oil – a major source for the German military. Hitler concludes that he must attack Russia in an attempt to protect access.
Stalin Caught by Surprise
As mentioned, Stalin by this time was preparing his own attack – the Germans, French, and British have softened each other up substantially. Stalin knew that Hitler knew that a successful attack by the Germans against the Russians was impossible; Stalin therefore believed that Hitler would not attempt such folly. Stalin did not adequately consider Hitler’s desperation regarding oil.
Hitler attacked while Stalin, not quite ready for his own surprise attack, was still bringing weaponry and troops to the border. The offensive firepower was overwhelming: there was no Soviet preparation for defense; there were no secondary lines. It wasn’t due to poor Soviet defenses, but the fact that there were purposely no Soviet defenses.
For these reasons, the Germans went quickly through the Soviet lines. By the thousands, tanks, airplanes and ammunition were destroyed in place; and military personnel killed and wounded. Further countless tons of weaponry, ammunition, and personnel were captured by the Germans, providing for additional capability in the coming weeks.
Stalin’s Objectives Thwarted
Certainly, the only state to gain substantial territory as a result of the Second World War was the Soviet Union – and more broadly, the communists (when considering Asia as well). In this regard, Stalin was the sole “victor” of any of the combatants.
However, on the day of the German attack, Stalin knew his objective of conquering all of Europe and eventually bringing the entire world into war as required for global revolution was no longer in reach – too much of his military capability was destroyed or taken by the Germans, and no longer could a surprise attack be possible.
Summary
As mentioned, I intend to provide a more thorough review through several posts – perhaps following the outline above. I also will consider this narrative in the context of actions taken by Churchill and Roosevelt – that they (especially Roosevelt) sided with Stalin in this conflict (as opposed to Hitler, or preferably neither side) was already a curious decision; in light of the evidence presented in this book – the substance of which could not have been totally lost to US and British intelligence at the time – the choice is even more astonishing.
Stalin’s objectives were to spread communism. When it came to military might at the start of the war, the Soviets were far more capable of projecting power over distance than were the Germans. When it came to murderous regimes, again Stalin had Hitler beat at the start of the war by perhaps 1000 to 1.
The pact to divide Poland was between the Germans and the Soviets, yet Britain and France declared war on only the Germans. No action was taken against the Soviets even for the invasion of Finland.
Communists were present throughout the Roosevelt administration. This fact was apparent to outsiders at the time – it could not have been lost on Roosevelt.
Did Britain (and ultimately the United States) choose Stalin so as to prevent the Soviets attacking the west once done with Germany? Or did they look to increase the spread of communism for whatever reasons?
Toward the stated objective, to combat tyranny, certainly Russia was a greater global threat than were the Germans – so the answer doesn’t lie here.
I have no further conclusions at the moment beyond what I have previously written on these speculations. This is one reason I am developing the above-mentioned timeline. Perhaps through it, there will someday come more clues.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/jonathan-goodwin/stalins-grand-design/
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