Onslaught of Illegal Immigrants Lining Up For Amnesty

Senate Bill 744, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, promises the most prolific invasion of America since Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.  But with one deadly difference: those storms subsided so we could repair the damage.

If S744 passes, we face endless immigration numbers to the tune of a minimum of 33 million immigrants within the first decade.  Passing that bill means an increase of legal immigration from its current 1 million annually to 1.5 million annually. All totaled with immigrants, their offspring, chain migration and diversity visas, a mind numbing 100 million immigrants will land on America within 37 years—by 2050. (Source: www.NumbersUSA.org ; US Population Projections by Fogel/Martin ; PEW Research Center)

Even more sobering, we face a total population growth via “population momentum” of 138 million people to grow from 316 million in 2013 to 438 million people by 2050.

Their horrific impact on our schools, medical systems, infrastructure, water, resources, energy and environment cannot be calculated, but will exceed anything anyone can imagine.  The impact of 100 million immigrants can and will degrade our quality of life and standard of living beyond anyone’s understanding.  Their impact upon our environment cannot be measured, but it will be catastrophic for all Americans.

“Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass. This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable.” Dr. Albert Bartlett, www.albartlett.org , University of Colorado, USA.

Dennis Lynch created one of the most powerful films on illegal immigration. (six minutes) The number of Asian/Chinese coming across the border is rarely mentioned. But if you stop and consider the implications you will likely come to the same conclusion as many of us. An unsecured southern border presents a clear and present danger to all of us and this specific threat has little to do with cheap labor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU3BL8O5Gac&feature=youtu.be

These immigrants bring incompatible cultures, religions and political clout.  They displace American citizens, utilize welfare, housing and food stamps.  They overwhelm villages, towns and cities.

Today, California pays over $10 billion in services annually for its estimated 3 to 4 million illegal aliens and its countless legal immigrants.

“Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

Still Believe Nature Got It Wrong? Top 10 Health Benefits of Marijuana

There is no plant on Earth more condemned than marijuana. We’re talking about a living organism which governments have taken upon themselves to designate as an illegal substance. Despite no existing evidence of anyone ever dying of a marijuana overdose, possession of this plant is still illegal in many parts. Marijuana has been found to suppress cancer, reduce blood pressure, treat glaucoma, alleviate pain and even inhibit HIV. It is an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective. Can you understand more now why it’s illegal?

No Independent Study Has Ever Linked Marijuana To Psychosocial Problems

Cannabis is one of the most powerful healing plants on the planet. Dozens of studies have made pseudoscientific attempts to indicate that young people who use cannabis tend to experience psychological, social problems and mental decline. However, there is no evidence that marijuana use is directly linked with such problems, according to the results of a study published in The Lancet.

“Currently, there is no strong evidence that use of cannabis of itself causes psychological or social problems,” such as mental illness or school failure, lead study author Dr. John Macleod of the University of Birmingham in the UK told Reuters Health.

“There is a great deal of evidence that cannabis use is associated with these things, but this association could have several explanations,” he said, citing factors such as adversity in early life, which may itself be associated with cannabis use and psychosocial problems.

Macleod and his team reviewed 48 long-term studies, 16 of which provided the highest quality information about the association between illicit drug use reported by people 25 years old or younger and later psychological or social problems. Most of the drug-specific results involved cannabis use.

Cannabis use was not consistently associated with violent or antisocial behavior, or with psychological problems.

In another study, Scientists from King’s College, London, found occasional pot use could actually improve concentration levels.

The study, carried in the American Journal of Epidemiology, tested the mental function and memory of nearly 9,000 Britons at age 50 and found that those who had used illegal drugs as recently as in their 40s did just as well, or slightly better, on the tests than peers who had never used drugs.

‘Overall, at the population level, the results seem to suggest that past or even current illicit drug use is not necessarily associated with impaired cognitive functioning in early middle age,’ said lead researcher Dr Alex Dregan.

Dr Dregan’s team used data on 8,992 42-year-olds participating in a UK national health study, who were asked if they had ever used any of 12 illegal drugs. Then, at the age of 50, they took standard tests of memory, attention and other cognitive abilities.

Overall, the study found, there was no evidence that current or past drug users had poorer mental performance. In fact, when current and past users were lumped together, their test scores tended to be higher.

The Age of Deception is Ending 

In 2003, the U.S. Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services filed for, and was awarded a patent on cannabinoids. The reason? Because research into cannabinoids allowed pharmaceutical companies to acquire practical knowledge on one of the most powerful antioxidants and neuroprotectants known to the natural world.

The U.S. Patent 6630507 was specifically initiated when researchers found that cannabinoids had specific antioxidant properties making them useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.

In a historic and significant moment in American history, last November, Colorado became the first US state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The impact of the decision could ripple across the entire country with vast opportunities to educate millions on the top health benefits of marijuana.

With the passage of I-502 in the 2012 Washington State election, marijuana also became legal in Washington–not just for medical use, but also for recreational use. Weed is still illegal as far as the United States government is concerned, but Washington and Colorado both have yet to figure out how that will work. It’s certain that this issue will continue to evolve and smooth out as time goes by, but the remaining states will eventually follow suit or be left behind with outdated laws.

Top Health Benefits

It’s no surprise that the United States has decreed that marijuana has no accepted medical use use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. Accepting and promoting the powerful health benefits of marijuana would instantly cut huge profits geared towards cancer treatment and the U.S. would have to admit it imprisons the population for no cause. Nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana.

According to MarijuanaNews.com editor Richard Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition “…there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values,” Cowan notes.

Besides the top 10 health benefits below, findings published in the journalPLoS ONE, researchers have now have now discovered that marijuana-like chemicals trigger receptors on human immune cells that can directly inhibit a type of human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) found in late-stage AIDS.

Recent studies have even shown it to be an effective atypical anti-psychotic in treating schizophrenia, a disease many other studies have inconsistently found it causing.

1. Cancer

Cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals and also kill cancer cells. Western governments have known this for a long time yet they continued to suppress the information so that cannabis prohibition and the profits generated by the drug industry proliferated.

THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids, which are cannabinoids that are naturally produced in the body and activate these receptors. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

2. Tourette’s Syndrome

Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological condition characterized by uncontrollable facial grimaces, tics, and involuntary grunts, snorts and shouts.

Dr. Kirsten Mueller-Vahl of the Hanover Medical College in Germany led a team that investigated the effects of chemicals called cannabinols in 12 adult Tourette’s patients. A single dose of the cannabinol produced a significant reduction in symptoms for several hours compared to placebo, the researchers reported.

3. Seizures
Marijuana is a muscle relaxant and has “antispasmodic” qualities that have proven to be a very effective treatment for seizures. There are actually countless cases of people suffering from seizures that have only been able to function better through the use of marijuana.

4. Migraines
Since medicinal marijuana was legalized in California, doctors have reported that they have been able to treat more than 300,000 cases of migraines that conventional medicine couldn’t through marijuana.

5. Glaucoma
Marijuana’s treatment of glaucoma has been one of the best documented. There isn’t a single valid study that exists that disproves marijuana’s very powerful and popular effects on glaucoma patients.

6. Multiple Sclerosis
Marijuana’s effects on multiple sclerosis patients became better documented when former talk-show host, Montel Williams began to use pot to treat his MS. Marijuana works to stop the neurological effects and muscle spasms that come from the fatal disease.

7. ADD and ADHD A well documented USC study done about a year ago showed that marijuana is not only a perfect alternative for Ritalin but treats the disorder without any of the negative side effects of the pharmaceutical.

8. IBS and Crohn’s
Marijuana has shown that it can help with symptoms of the chronic diseases as it stops nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

9. Alzheimer’s
Despite what you may have heard about marijuana’s effects on the brain, the Scripps Institute, in 2006, proved that the THC found in marijuana works to prevent Alzheimer’s by blocking the deposits in the brain that cause the disease.

10. Premenstrual Syndrome
Just like marijuana is used to treat IBS, it can be used to treat the cramps and discomfort that causes PMS symptoms. Using marijuana for PMS actually goes all the way back to Queen Victoria.

Mounting Evidence Suggests Raw Cannabis is Best

Cannabinoids can prevent cancer, reduce heart attacks by 66% and insulin dependent diabetes by 58%. Cannabis clinician Dr. William Courtney recommends drinking 4 – 8 ounces of raw flower and leaf juice from any Hemp plant, 5 mg of Cannabidiol (CBD) per kg of body weight, a salad of Hemp seed sprouts and 50 mg of THC taken in 5 daily doses.

Why raw? Heat destroys certain enzymes and nutrients in plants. Incorporating raw cannabis allows for a greater availability of those elements. Those who require large amounts of cannabinoids without the psychoactive effects need to look no further than raw cannabis. In this capacity, it can be used at 60 times more tolerance than if it were heated.
Raw cannabis is considered by many experts as a dietary essential. As a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, raw cannabis may be right u there with garlic and tumeric.

About the Author

Marco Torres is a research specialist, writer and consumer advocate for healthy lifestyles. He holds degrees in Public Health and Environmental Science and is a professional speaker on topics such as disease prevention, environmental toxins and health policy. 

Sources: 
scribd.com
bigbudsmag.com
berkeleypatientscare.com
washingtonpost.com
about.com
safeaccess.ca

Source: Waking Times

Saddam Hussein Offered To Leave Iraq In November of 2002. Guess Who Persuaded Him To Stay

Why Drones, foreign and domestic, became necessary to establishment politicians and corporations…

In the autumn of 2002 America was rushing toward the War in Iraq, orchestrated by the Bush Administration, especially Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Though most people did not yet realize this, Bill Clinton already had a very cooperative relationship with the Bush family. He and Hillary were poised to become seriously monied working for the same folks who had taken over the Republican Party in the 1960s.

You don’t need to be a Straussian to embrace the strategy.

NeoConservative is the term coined by Irving Kristol, a student of Leo Strauss. The philosophy Strauss originated justifies any act which achieves the desired goal in the pursuit of power. When you understand this is a philosophy which absolutely justifies deceit and abuse of power, and extending control, the corollary becomes clear. Those using Straussianism will, ultimately, take steps to make their control perpetual because, otherwise, they will suffer at the hands of their victims.

Those accepting Straussianism knew they needed to evade exposure.

This explains the enthusiasm of both Bush and Obama for Executive Orders. Although ordinary Americans think in terms of a divide between right and left, this is an illusion. The divide has been carefully created to stymie effective corrective action by the people.

Notice how many of the measures now being put into place were being planned years ago. Homeland Security, the NSA, the militarization of our police and introduction of drones and biometrics, and the CIA and FBI do nothing to increase the security of ordinary Americans – but they are useful for controlling us.

Controlling America, and Americans, was necessary to perpetuating their power and defending them from the consequences of their deceit, beginning before the War in Iraq.

The Highly Disordered in Power

If you watched the documentary on Dick Cheney, now playing broadly on television, titled, “The World According To Dick Cheney,” you find a chilling insight into the mind of someone who is focused on centralizing and increasing the power of the presidency using all available means. Cheney has long been a self-proclaimed adherent of Leo Strauss, along with Don Rumsfeldt and most of the cadre of individuals who came in to power with the Bush Administration.

Cheney, appointed to find a vice-presidential candidate for Bush in 2000, conducted a carefully scripted process which disqualified everyone except himself. Cheney knew he could never be elected president because he lacks the social skills necessary and, if he ran, his questionable health and DUIs, among other issues, would have been exposed to the media and the public.

Always described as a ‘take-charge’ kind of man, Cheney’s entire career is defined by treating politics as war.

Karl Rove had a different agenda. While the Bush family certainly wanted the War in Iraq and had been planning for it since W. was still governor of Texas, Rove wanted a permanent hegemony over politics in America. To accomplish this, he suborned the electoral system of the United States using several different techniques.

Beginning in the late 70′s, he displaced the growing power of women moving toward social justice within the GOP, displacing this with an artificially created presence of politicized Evangelicals, galvanized and trained for political action.

For this enterprise, he enlisted Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, long time associates through Young Republicans.

Rove spread out a network of political operatives, both within the GOP and elsewhere, in think tanks and the media. John Fund, formerly on the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal, is an example of this, as is Matt Drudge. This allowed Rove to plant disinformation at will in any part of the country. Both Rove and Cheney’s cell numbers are on Fund’s speed dial.

Rove also centralized the state Republican Parties, displacing community-based candidates in the primaries with chosen and well funded Rove functionaries. This was taking place in California in the early 90s. Many of these targeted candidates were social justice-oriented women.

To lock down his control, Rove ensured the move to electronic voting, which he could control remotely. This worked for him fairly smoothly from 2000 until last year.

The next level of strategy was the media. The media has been controlled through the CIA since the time of the Kennedy assassination, according to Peter Janney, in his book Mary’s Mosaic. In exhaustive detail, the book lays out how a free media was silenced through control of those who owned the media.

Planting operatives in the media, who supplied CIA approved spin and planted stories, became standard operating procedure. Continuing this practice, Rove assigned the job of deflecting questions on the visible problems with electoral fraud to John Fund, placed at the Wall Street Journal by Robert Novak in 1984.

John Fund was essential to deflecting attention from the issue of the ongoing electoral fraud because Fund wrote, “Stealing Elections,” which muddied the water on this issue. While he was only one of many operatives, he was not easily replaced because of his position at the Wall Street Journal. Therefore, political capital was expended on his protection in 2002.

People forget scandals and willingly accept explanations, given a modicum of manufactured proof. Victims and witnesses can be silenced so they can no longer defend themselves. Major events distract public attention, which, properly managed, may never be renewed.

In early September, 2001 John Connolly of Vanity Fair published, “Sex, Lies, and the Tape.” Included was ataped conversation, known as the WeaselSearch Tape, between Fund and His girl friend, Morgan Pillsbury.

As you listen to this tape, made in September, 1999, and read the accompanying article you realize both Fund and his girl friend, my disordered daughter, Morgan, lie, and are not to be trusted.

I am the individual the two are discussing. Later, in 2001 – early 2002, Fund battered and nearly killed Morgan.

All of the individuals discussed here were involved in the evolution of events surrounding this tape.

By winter 2002 Rove and associates probably believed they had managed to defuse the problem Fund’s battery of Morgan had caused. But the situation devolved because of computer hacking, leaking Saddam’s willingness to leave later the same year.

The Oncoming War in Iraq – Autumn 2002

Cheney and Rove, both Straussians, had common ground in the drive for perpetual war in 2001 – 2002, had both adopted the ideas of Strauss. Their joint commitment to a campaign of deceit was natural to each and relatively easy to carry out through 2004 since the full array of government tools were available to them and they were united.

The rush to war started with the lies you likely remember about weapons of mass destruction. In the autumn of 2002 a juggernaut for war was launched and moving.

Then, in November, an unanticipated problem raised its head.

In November of 2002 Saddam let it be known he would gladly leave, if he was paid. An email correspondence began. Max Blumenthal, for his father, Sidney Blumenthal, and through him to the Clintons, persuaded Saddam Bush was only blustering and would not invade. They did not know, at the time, someone else was reading their emails.

For me, this part of the story started when Morgan called me from the basement where she was hiding in Georgia and asked, “Mother, is Uday something like E-Bay?“ Morgan did not pay much attention to things not directly effecting her.

The John Fund Scandal, briefly, was followed by some, then dropped in the wake of 9/11. But for myself, it was a continuing problem.

Fund, an old friend of mine, had begun a sexual relationship with my daughter, lied to her, tried to dump her, and suffered the consequences anyone in the family could have told him were in the cards.

Morgan is a psychopath.  So is Fund. The reason the Weaselsearch tape was made was because I had found, to my grief, her word was not to be trusted. She made it to persuade me she had told the truth and changed her ways. This last was a lie, but she hooked me into believing her for a while.

The previous spring, 2002, I was still renting an apartment for Morgan in NY, and she had not yet fled NY, which she was forced to do because of the attempt to kill her by John Fund, aided, she was told, by Rove and Cheney.

About that time, she had put a keylogger on Sidney Blumenthal’s computer. Blumenthal was, if you remember, Clinton’s assistant and senior adviser.

This, I told her, was illegal. But she said it was payback because Blumenthal had had her computer hacked and stolen information from her about John Fund and others, to be used in his book, “The Clinton Wars.”

Someone with power had gotten to the court in New York. Ignoring the evidence, and witnesses, they had sidelined the case, though we were told Morgenthau personally held the file on his desk. If Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney in Manhattan, what could we do? Thwarted, Morgan returned the favor and put a keylogger on Blumenthal’s computer.

Morgan is disordered.  Ten years ago the problem of sociopathy and psychopathy were not nearly as widely understood as today by any of us. The disordered create chaos. But earlier the chaos Morgan created was at least localized to her family and friends. When she broadened her associations to the NeoCons, who are  also disordered,  things got worse.

In 2012 I realized psychopaths never change. I also understood much more about what had been going on with attempts to bring about the War in Iraq and why Fund, Rove, and Cheney felt endangered by Morgan’s hacking.The Bush Administration knew Morgan knew about their efforts to keep Saddam in Iraq so the war could go forward.

What Morgan Found in Sid’s Email Box

Morgan had been getting emails between Sidney and his son, Max, which were forwards from someone named Uday. She read them to me and sent one on, with the identifying origin. This email went on to a friend who could tell us where the email to Max had originated. The word came back it had originated in the Saudi Arabian Emirates, and very well could have come from Baghdad.

The emails urged Saddam to stay in Iraq, saying Bush would not invade as Saddam expressed his willingness to be paid to leave.

Morgan kept reading these messages and the husband of the couple, with whom she was staying, also saw these emails. When Morgan decided to put a keylogger on Uday’s computer this was accomplished by using the subject line, “Women without Veils,” which was the husband, Eric’s, idea. It worked. Reading the emails continued, and included emails directly from Uday. I did not ask for copies and none were sent to me.

I contacted a friend’s husband who worked at the CIA and left the matter in Morgan’s hands. She told me the FBI had gotten in touch with her and asked her to continue to monitor the correspondence, also following Uday with the new keylogger she had installed in the computer in Baghdad.

When the bunker-buster hit Saddam’s headquarters Morgan reported seeing the ‘ping’ move from Baghdad to Virginia. She was not contacted again. But they knew we knew.

There had been no release of information regarding the activities of Blumenthal and the Clintons in holding Saddam in Iraq in the media. The War in Iraq was building. I had a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Now we know Saddam had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. If Saddam had been paid off to leave there would have been no war. But, of course, trillions of dollars would have been lost to the war contractors and bankers.

As you dig, the lies only get worse. If you read John Perkins’, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” it is clear you see what people will do to other human beings for money. Not a pretty picture.

Drones, militarized police, along with biometrics for tracking individuals, and control through the GPS component, now standard in our cell phones, are each essential to suppressing the ability of Americans to resist and fight back. These are paid for by Americans, but produced by private contractors. Today, contractors have become an essential part of government.

The world of government contractors is murky and hard to follow. We know little enough about politicians, nothing about contractors, who are unelected and nearly invisible. We need to know, we need transparency. Along with knowing who they are, we need to hold them accountable. Each of us is liable for doing harm to others. This is also true of contractors.

For the purpose of understanding one drone contractor we have chosen Green Hills Software, Inc., a silver member of the Association for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems International.

They have been involved in this story since, at least, 2002. Read my previous article, “How a Transparent World Protects us,” for details on Green Hills and their Management Team.

The company provides encryption and guidance, without which drones would not work. Green Hills is the best possible example of an errant contractor. Their relationship with John Fund began in 1999. It is likely Green Hills knew Saddam Hussein had offered to leave Iraq.

Green Hills assisted in silencing myself and Morgan with curious haste, beginning with sending the uncertified deposition, given by Morgan in 2001, to John Fund. When this took place their profits were skyrocketed with government contracts. The War in Iraq was starting.

The world would be very different today if the FED had simply printed up a billion dollars and sent it to Saddam. He would have retired and troubled us no more. Better yet, we could have looked for the real perpetrators of 9/11 and held them accountable.

What did not happen is history. Now, we understand far more clearly what the problems are we face. Out of control contractors are only one of these, but one which must be solved.

Green Hills contact information, and evidence, has been provided to attorneys in England and Pakistan who are now filing law suits. Since Green Hills is international collecting should not be a problem.

A small step, but useful in setting a new direction for America.

Airline Passenger Detained For Being A Jerk

The bigger the government, the greater the opportunity to seek revenge by state action. This has been demonstrated throughout history, and now current events are teaching the same lesson.

The latest example involves 52-year-old California businessman Salvatore Bevivino, who was detained after a Virgin America flight in April, 2013 for, he reports, refusing to flush a toilet and arguing with a stewardess over a soda. Writes The Smoking Gun:

A flight attendant told cops that Bevivino argued with her over the ordering of a soda via a computer touchscreen. “My time is precious, you are here to serve me,” Bevivno [sic] said, according to the flight attendant.

Following the soda confrontation, the flight attendant told police, Bevivino “went to the restroom, came back out with a smile on his face and began using profanities.” When the flight attendant passed by the lavatory, she “saw that Bevivino left the door open and did not flush the toilet.”

Despite the airplane captain saying that “at no time did he or his flight crew feel threatened regarding this passenger,” Bevivino was detained upon disembarkment and questioned by six uniformed officers. He is now suing the airline for $500,000 minimum damages for the inducement of “apprehension, embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, fright, shock, mental anguish and emotional distress.”

Now, first let me say that I wouldn’t give Bevivino a dime. I’m also quite sure that he acted like a jerk and that those who really suffer mental anguish and emotional distress are the people unfortunate enough to be in his sphere of effluence. Yet the real issue here isn’t Bevivino, but something else: do we want a government that detains citizens for being jerks?

The truth is that, increasingly, Americans are using the state to exact vengeance on people who rub them the wrong way. And we’ve seen this before. In Nazi Germany or any number of communist countries, claiming that a neighbor criticized the leader or state could be a good way to cause him serious anguish — or worse.

Of course, we’re not at that point yet, but our ever-metastasizing government brings us closer to 1984 every year. For the more laws you have, the more opportunities there are to snitch on a neighbor for violating the law. Have an axe to grind with the guy down the street? Just report him for child abuse to CPS. Aren’t getting along with your ex? Accuse him of abuse or making threats and perhaps get a restraining order. Or maybe there’s an annoying boss you could accuse of sexual harassment or racial discrimination or someone you could report to the IRS for tax evasion. And New York has now even instituted a tip line through which you can finger fellow residents who violate the state’s new gun-control law — and get 30 pieces of silver ($500, actually) in the process. It’s the grown-up equivalent of “telling daddy.”

But when you do grow up, you’re supposed to be able to live as a true adult. This means that we shouldn’t create a paternalistic government that a person can run to every time he has a squabble with his brothers. Unfortunately, this can’t be avoided when a good part of the electorate are nothing more than children in oversized bodies.

As for airline employees, they now know that they can leverage the hair-trigger apparatus created to combat terrorism to retaliate against difficult passengers. This is highly unprofessional, and, frankly, there should be consequences for it. This doesn’t mean the Bevivinos of the world should receive monetary awards, but shouldn’t filing a false police report be a crime no matter who does it? Shouldn’t we take the wasting of limited law-enforcement resources seriously, especially in this age of terrorism? And if the authorities really are acting based on nothing more than a passenger being a jerk, then the onus belongs on them.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for common sense in this uncommon time. When too many jerks are voting, the inevitable result is knee-jerk reactions and a government of the jerks, by the jerks, and for the jerks.

Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, And Diane Sawyer: The Three Stooges

I think, at the very least, YouTube should censor them. Well, wait a minute. Not censor, but put up a notice on all their videos:

“It’s come to our attention that these three characters are as annoying as a bad case of fleas. Caution: watch and listen at your own risk.”

The three stooges. Three schmucks in the fountain. Send in the clowns, don’t bother, they’re here.

If people are beginning to get the idea I’m waging a war against against elite media, they’re right.

At the same time, I’m fascinated. How do these anchors do it? How do they lie so consistently, and with such aplomb, day in and day out, without going up in puff of smoke and vanishing?

The Big Three anchors are a miracle, in the sense that they need a whole construction company to build the walls that permanently separate them from the truth…so they can sit in a television studio in New York and believe they’re in the wheelhouse of Real News.

When you see the Big Three are discussing their own footage, but you find visual clues as big as the moon that their analysis is 180 degrees away from actual fact—as has been happening from Aurora to Sandy Hook to Boston—and the Stooges just sit there and drone on…well, that’s a CSI or a Law&Order you just can’t get if you pay the best scriptwriters in the world to come up with it.

“The bomb was a pressure cooker.”

Right, and the Twin Towers went down because two planes flew into them.

Because the Web has been alive and humming, media coverage of every major catastrophe since 9/11 has been rejected by extraordinary numbers of people.

The elite network anchors have been trying to hold the fort, but they’re failing.

Their long-running stage play is closing down.

Despite their traditional skills and technological backup, they’re coming across like cartoon hacks.

These days, it’s better to be a marginally believable doofus like Diane Sawyer, who chooses to affect a persona based on depression, than to be the eternal boy wonder, Brian Williams. Williams, the smoothest of the smooth, comes across like the biggest liar, because he’s the most dedicated of the lot when it comes to defending the indefensible.

And Scott Pelley is Scott Pelley, the hospital doctor you’d least like to show up at your bedside. He might tell you you need an amputation just because he’s having a bad day.

“Who do we need for the most important anchor’s job in the world?”

“How about Pelley? He’s utterly convinced the lies we feed into the propaganda machine are the last word.. He’s sold. He couldn’t look outside the box if we drilled holes in it and let him see a mountain of gold bars and 50,000 naked bureaucrats running down Broadway at high fucking noon.”

The Big Three strut their stuff on the evening news, executing well-oiled, high-priced transitions from one completely false/basically deceptive story to another completely false/basically deceptive story.

Recall the often-quoted George Burns pearl? “In acting, sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” But suppose the sincerity isn’t faked? Then, the schmuck becomes king.

My late friend and colleague, hypnotherapist Jack True, described the television-news audience: “Mind control is accepting what you know to be false. You do it because you think the only other alternative is a vacuum: you either buy the news or you’re left with nothing.”

Once in a while, you can see cracks. Scott Pelley, stewing in his juices, looks like he’s ready to pull his uncle’s old revolver out of his pocket and fire a few rounds at the teleprompter.

Diane Sawyer appears to be on the verge of sagging to her right and collapsing out of her chair, on her way to a fit of copious weeping.

Brian Williams wants to say, more than anything, “Live From New York, it’s Saturday night!” Then a few coiled springs pop out of the top of his head and he winds down and stops moving.

Subliminally, the three stooges are announcing: “We’re showing you the most important stories of our time, and each one has a television lifespan of ninety seconds, after which they no longer exist.”

Television news is really all segue all the time. That’s what it comes down to.

The word “segue,” pronounced “segway,” refers to a transition from one thing to another, a blend.

Ed McMahon once referred to Johnny Carson as the prince of blends, because Carson could tell a clunker of a joke, step on it three times, and still move to the next joke without losing his audience.

Television news is very serious business. A reporter who can’t handle segues is dead in the water. He’s a gross liability.

The good anchors can take two stories that have no connection whatsoever and create a sense of smooth transition.

Brian Williams can say, “The planes were recalled later in the afternoon. And a man was castrated in a horrific accident in Idaho today…” And no one says, WHAT? WAIT!

You take an elevator up to the 15^th floor in an office building. The door opens and you step into a medieval dungeon. That doesn’t compute in real life, but it does on the news.

The networks basically have, on a daily basis, fragmented stories, and they need an anchor who can do the blends, the segues, and get away with it, to promote the sense of one continuous flow.

So the audience doesn’t say, “This is just an odd collection of crap.”

The news is all segue all the time.

Not just nationally. On the local level, too. The pounding lead-in music at the top of the show is a segue, to prepare the audience. A) Music. B) “Tonight, our top story: a man ate a hot dog and died …”

The voice of the anchor is the non-stop blending machine that ties all news stories together. That’s why the elite network stars earn their paychecks.

Good segue people are stage magicians. They can move the viewer’s attention from item A to item B without a tremor or a doubt.

It’s often been said of certain actors, “He could read from the phone book and you’d listen.” Well, an elite anchor can hold the viewer’s mind as he reads a sentence from the phone book, another one from a car-repair manual, a third from a cookbook, and a fourth from a funeral-home brochure. Without stopping.

And afterward, the viewer would have no questions.

The news is surreal because the stories are mostly fool’s gold to begin with; and they’re unrelated. They’re rocks lying around on the floor. The anchor picks them up and invents the illusion of One Flowing Stream.

This is what the audience wants. It feels like a story. It feels like unity. It feels like a stage play or a movie. It feels, when all is said and done, good.

The anchor (as his title suggests) holds the fragments together in one place. For the audience, he’s the focus. He’s the maestro. The hypnotist.

You can’t pull anyone off the street and have him describe car crashes, murders, storms, threats of war, political squabbles, 300 cats living in a one-room apartment, a new piece of Medicare legislation, genitalia picture tweets, and the dedication of a library, while placing and keeping millions of people in a light trance.

Katie Couric couldn’t do it. People were waiting for her to break out into an attack of Perky and giggle and cross her legs. Diane Sawyer does it poorly. She seems to be affecting somber personal grief as her basic segue-thread. Scott Pelley is competent, but he sits like a surgeon ready to signal the anesthesiologist to clamp a mask on your face, before he cuts into your stomach.

Brian Williams is the current king of segue. He does smooth-serious-affable-employee-of-the-month-I-know-all-the-news-is-true.

None of these elite anchors can hold a candle to Cronkite or Chet Huntley, the past masters. Ed Murrow was the first star-practitioner of the television-news form. He was working a kind of sepulchral spin-off of Hemingway prose.

Murrow got his first break, right out of college, working for the Institute of International Education, a pathetic front for what they used to call “internationalists” (aka globalists). Elihu Root founded the organization. Root was also founding chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In other words, one world together actually meant: all you peons down there and we wise men on top…

Anyway, all anchors can do segue. They are dedicated to The Blend. They put their souls, such as they are, into transitions.

“What do you want to do when you grow up, Brian?”

“I want to take people from A to B.”

Whereas, a true version of the news would go something like this: “Today, in fact just now, I moved from a tornado in Kansas to the removal of restrictions on condom sales, and I’m blending into penguins in Antarctica. I’m doing Salvador Dali and you’re not noticing a thing.”

What does all this tell us? The news, if it were taken apart into its component pieces, would look quite surreal. And the anchor, by blending, manufactures a hypnotic illusion of interconnection.

The audience wants to be put in a trance. Even a several-day event, like the Boston bombing, with all its twists and turns, doesn’t mitigate that basic big sleep. Television news, with a good anchor, with the television screen itself, with the electromagnetic emissions and frequencies, can attain and hold the hypnotic state.

Therefore, the content of the news sinks in below the level of the rational mind.

But with each shift in story line, with each new breaking bit of revelation, with each disturbing image, the anchor must be there to execute the segues.

He is basically saying to the audience, “I’m a few feet inside your personal landscape, your mind, feeding you all the turns in the river, and I’ll always be here, so things are all right…”

Elite anchors invent and maintain certain tones of voice, certain rhythms, certain cadences, certain variations of musical pitch, throughout the stage play, in order to sustain the sense of continuity.

They’re mechanics of voice.

They use their skills to report the false facts handed down to conceal ops and staged events.

They need to believe in what they’re doing. They need to be that stupid. Talent search: 130 IQ, inherently stupid.

They can know they’re actors on television, but they have to believe they’re acting out the truth. Ends justify the means. Of course, “truth” often means to them: that which will bind us all together.

What is the role they’re cast in? It’s: Normal. It’s a heavy part in the play, because this joke of a society has a prime-cut value called Normal.

“Okay, look,” the Broadway director says to the veteran actor he’s interviewing for the lead, in a billion-dollar production. “This may sound strange, but you’re going to have to do Normal as it’s never been done before. That’s what the audience wants. You’ve got to come across as very, very smart and very, very Normal. Get it? I mean, you can emit a few rays of Elite here and there, but you have to do that Normal dance. The audience has to believe you somehow fit in with being a solid American, whatever the hell that is. You can be the news boy down the street, riding his bike, tossing papers on front porches (Brian Williams), wholesome as Wonder Bread, or you can be a socialite on the Upper East Side teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown (Diane Sawyer), or you can be a doctor moving briskly through his morning hospital rounds telling the interns trailing behind him what incompetent assholes they are (Scott Pelley)…but it has to be Normal at the same time. You’re the brain of every other brain. You’re the conscience of every other conscience. You’re just as walled off from the conspiracy to own every inch of America and grind down the people into dust-bowl hell as all Americans are walled off from knowing about it. You know as little as they do. You’re just as clueless as the great unwashed, but you put your stupidity on display with some measure of grace and style. Got it? You’re clean, sanitary, loyal as a dog, dumb as fog but very smart. You spew absolute nonsense every second of your time on stage, but it sounds plausible, and again, Normal. You constantly change subjects, and the subjects are in no way related to each other, but you make it all seem sensible. It’s a joke. But you’re serious. And you have to Believe, as if you’ve always believed, from the moment you emerged out of your mother’s body.

“And if you need a model for all this, just watch the news every night on the three major networks and focus on these geniuses.”

See the bomb exploding, the one that emits a puff of smoke straight up in the air? The one that was built in a pressure cooker? The bomb that didn’t tear the flags to pieces and didn’t shred the blue canopy right next to it? The bomb that didn’t cause the men in yellow jackets standing in front of it to even blink? That bomb vectored at a very low angle and took out people’s legs in the Boston street. That right, America. It did. I swear it did.

See the purple and pink pigs flying over the White House? They’re bringing food from Mars for all the bureaucrats who push paper in the city every day, the people who can’t be fired during the Sequester, while flights all over the country are delayed. That food from Mars keeps the paper pushers going. It does. It has special vitamins in it. See how fat the pigs in the sky are? How do you think they got that way? They ate the food. It’s so healthy. It’s mystical and magical. It’s just part of the largesse coming to you from your eternal government. Wait a little while longer. It’ll be here. There are lots more flying pigs. They’ll drop off little bags of Martian tasties on your street any week now. It’s the new Normal. Get used to it. We know what you want, and we’re going to give it to you.

We know what you want and we’re going to give it to you.

If you have any doubts and need more information and assurance, just watch Brian, Scott, and Diane every night. They’re narrating the Days of Our Lives. They’re from Mars. They’re the advance scouts for the pigs.

Brian’s the happy pig. Diane’s the sad pig. Scott’s the cold pig.

They’re America. The best of America.

This is why the Colonies fought a revolution against the British. So you could suck up stories, like a vacuum cleaner, from the three little pigs.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

Source: Jon Rappoport’s Blog

A Storm In A Korean Teacup

On April 4 the Pentagon announced that it was sending a mobile missile defense system to Guam as a “precautionary move” to protect the island from the potential threat from North Korea. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) comprises ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, as well as naval vessels capable of shooting down missiles.

On the same day, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that North Korea posed a “real and clear danger” to the island, to U.S. allies in the region, and even to the United States. Its leaders have “ratcheted up their bellicose, dangerous rhetoric,” Hagel told the National Defense University in Washington. Areas at risk include South Korea and Japan, he added, as well as Guam, Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States. “We have to take those threats seriously,” he said.

It is the job of defense secretaries to take all threats seriously, but there is less than meets the eye to this one. While media coverage of tensions with North Korea makes it appear that its recent threats in response to the ongoing “Foal Eagle” U.S.-South Korean military exercises came unexpectedly, Pyongyang has a long history of objecting vehemently to such war games. North Korea is using bizarre rhetoric—as it has done many times before—but there is no “real and present danger,” because the country’s nuclear and missile delivery capabilities are rudimentary now and will remain so for years to come. Its three nuclear tests thus far—in 2006, 2009 and on February 12 of this year—amounted to a total yield of around 10 kilotons, or less than one-half the power of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in August 1945. At least two, and possibly all three, of those tests used plutonium as the fissile material. Crude and bulky, plutonium devices cannot be fitted onto a missile.

North Korea’s claims to have miniaturized its latest device are unproven and probably untrue: no tell-tale isotopes indicative of weapons-grade uranium have been detected. In addition, at the moment, its uranium-enrichment facilities are not producing requisite quantities of highly-enriched uranium (HEU). The Yongbyon site—the country’s main nuclear facility—has been limited to electricity generation for the past five years, as part of a disarmament-for-aid deal signed in September 2005. The agreement’s implementation was always wrought with difficulties, however. Last month, the regime vowed to restart all facilities at Yongbyon—presumably including uranium enrichment to weapons-grade levels (HEU). They have the technical ability to do this, but even if the enrichment program proceeds immediately North Korea will be several years away from producing a deliverable device on a reliable missile.

In the final months of Kim Jong-il’s life it appeared that the talks with the U.S. on the control of North Korea’s nuclear facilities would be restarted. After he died in December 2011, his young son and successor Kim Jong-un soon shifted emphasis from hoped-for cooperation to confrontation. In February 2012, Pyongyang unexpectedly announced that it would suspend nuclear activities and observe a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests in return for American food aid. That agreement was suspended after North Korea unsuccessfully launched a rocket carrying a satellite a year ago, which caused major embarrassment to the regime. A successful launch came last December, swiftly followed by the tightening of international sanctions in January (this time supported by China), a third nuclear test in February, and the ongoing escalation of warlike rhetoric since early March.

That rhetoric is a mix of bluster and bravado. Even if it had the theoretical wherewithal to threaten the United States—which it does not have—North Korea could not do it credibly: a single missile, or two, or five, would be fairly easy to intercept and destroy, and the ensuing retaliation would turn much of the People’s Democratic Republic into a parking lot. In the fullness of time the North may develop a device capable of fitting into a warhead, but it will have no guidance system necessary for accuracy and no re-entry technology to bring an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) back to Earth. According to the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, North Korea has something that can hit American shores, but a “functioning nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile is still at least several years away.”

Even if it were to miniaturize a half-dozen nuclear weapons and perfect some form of functioning delivery system, North Korea would not be able to use them as a means of blackmail to alter the regional balance of power. The U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, and Israel have possessed nuclear weapons for decades. None of them has ever been able to change the status quo in its favor by threatening to use the bomb. The possession of nuclear weapons by one of the parties did not impact the outcome in Korea in 1953, or Suez in 1956, or prevent the two superpowers’ defeats, in Vietnam and Afghanistan respectively. It makes no difference to China’s stalled efforts to bring Taiwan under its control. South Africa had developed its own nuclear arsenal in the 1980s—it has been dismantled since—but this did not enhance its government’s ability to resist the pressure to dismantle the Apartheid in the early 1990’s. The political effect of a country’s possession of nuclear weapons has been to force its potential adversaries to exercise caution and to freeze the existing frontiers. There is no reason to think that North Korea will be an exception to the rule.

The root causes of North Korea’s apparently reckless behavior are predominantly domestic, as usual. Kim Jong-un, the third absolute ruler in the dynasty established by his late grandfather Kim Il-sung, is young (29), untested and insecure. When his father Kim Jong-il died on December 17, 2011, the military and Party leadership accepted his third son as the designated successor, but it was not immediately clear whether Jong-un would in fact take full power right away. A cult of personality started developing right away. With no track record of achievement and no sign of outstanding talent, he was hailed as the “great successor to the revolutionary cause,” “outstanding leader of the party, army and people,” “respected comrade identical to Supreme Commander Kim Jong-il,” even as “a great person born of heaven”—an eccentric metaphor for a society nominally based on the teaching of dialectical materialism. The titles followed: within days of his father’s death, Kim Jon-un was declared Supreme Commander of the Korean Peoples Army, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and “supreme leader of the country.” In March of last year, he was appointed first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea; three months later, he was awarded the rank of a field marshal.

The plethora of titles does not mean that Kim Jong-un automatically commands the same level of authority and unquestioning obedience enjoyed by his father and grandfather before him. According to a psychological profile put together by U.S. intelligence, Kim Jong-un may feel compelled to prove just how tough he is in order to make up for his inexperience. One of the CIA’s former top experts on North Korea, Joseph DeTrani, regards him as a young man insufficiently well prepared for the position, with limited foreign exposure, who has the urge to prove his toughness to his own military by emulating his grandfather, Kim Il-sung. But the heir is unlikely to start a general war, which he knows he cannot win, and in which China—his often reluctant backer—would likely remain aloof. “It would probably mean his defeat, and his defeat would probably mean the downfall of his regime and, very probably, the end of him as well,” according to the Telegraph’s David Blair. “Assuming that he’s not suicidal, he is very unlikely to start a general conflagration.” The danger remains, however, that North Korea, having ratcheted up the rhetoric for so long and having issued so many blood-curdling threats, feels that it has to do something.

My hunch is that in the end Kim the Third will do nothing. South Korea refrained from retaliation when one of its naval vessels was sunk under mysterious circumstances in disputed waters in March 2010, or when North Korea bombarded the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in November of that year. This time the leaders in Seoul appear determined to respond to any hostile act. While China is urging all sides to tone it down, its warnings are primarily directed at North Korea. Beijing has conveyed a warning to Pyongyang that any incident would subject the North to swift and vigorous retaliation. It is noteworthy that there are no significant troop movements along the 38^th parallel, and the feverish tone of North Korea’s state media appears to have abated in recent days. The specific warnings that preceded the Yeonpyeong attack are now absent. The regime is well aware of North Korea’s inadequacies in the nuclear and missile technologies. Economically it is a mess. According to the CIA economic assessment issued last month, North Korea’s industrial and power output have receded to pre-1990 levels, while frequent crop failures since the catastrophic 1995 famine have produced chronic food shortages and malnutrition. Its people depend for survival on international food aid deliveries, mainly from China.

Once this latest teacup storm is over, a coherent long-term American response should address the question as to why North Korea feels it needs nuclear weapons in the first place. This is not because Kim Jong-un plans to reunify the peninsula by force—that he cannot do, with or without the bomb—but because Pyongyang regards the United States as a real threat. North Korea is one of the tightest despotisms in existence, but ever since it was designated the eastern pivot of the “Axis of Evil” in President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address its leaders have rational grounds to feel threatened. According to President Obama, the nuclear test offered only an illusion of greater security to North Korea. This is incorrect. The possession of nuclear weapons, far from providing an “illusion” of greater security, is the only reliable insurance policy to those states that Washington may deem fit for regime change. Had Serbia had the bomb in 1999 or Iraq in 2003, they would not have been subjected to illegal American attacks on patently spurious grounds.

Some imagination is needed in Washington, including a rethink of the old orthodoxy that nuclear proliferation is inherently dangerous. It is not. Since 1945, there have been many wars, but no catastrophic ones on par with 1914-1918 or 1939-1945. This long peace—lasting for close to seven decades thus far—is due almost entirely to the existence of nuclear weapons and to their possession by an expanding circle of powers. Contrary to the will of the United States—whose leaders do not want other countries to possess what America has possessed, and used, since 1945—nuclear proliferation has been a major factor in the preservation of peace. The “Balance of Terror” is a grim term which denotes a comforting reality, and its logic applies to the lesser powers, such as India and Pakistan, which went to war three times after the Partition—in 1947, 1965, and 1971—but not since then. On previous form, the violence in Kashmir in March 2008 and the Pakistani-linked terrorist attacks in Bombay in November of that year would have reignited the conflict—but they did not. The possession of nuclear weapons by both adversaries has been a major war-inhibiting factor for over four decades, and it will likely remain so for many years to come.

What is valid for the Subcontinent should apply to the North Korean peninsula. Sanctions or no sanctions, Pyongyang will not give up its bomb. For the sake of regional peace and stability, South Korea should acquire one as well—and there is no reason for Japan not to follow suit. Back in the 1970’s, the Ford Administration induced South Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for not withdrawing American soldiers. Now is the time to reverse the sequence. Washington should grant a free nuclear hand to Seoul in return for the mutually agreed U.S. troop withdrawal. The latest crisis strengthens the case for the long-overdue withdrawal of the remaining 28,000 American troops from the Korean peninsula. It is high time to let the countries directly affected by Pyongyang’s actions—South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia—deal with North Korea themselves, to the best of their abilities.

Drone World

In the not so distant future, America’s skies will be full of . . . drones.

What could go wrong?

“Although the prospect of drones flying over U.S. cities is generating cries of spies in the skies,” writes the Los Angeles Times, “groups from California to Florida are fiercely competing to become one of six federally designated sites for testing how the remotely piloted aircraft can safely be incorporated into the nation’s airspace.”

It’s just technology and technology is neutral, or so the forces of mainstream capitalism assure us. Drones are an emerging market, with worldwide sales expected to double in the next decade, to $11 billion, if not much more. And these will be good drones, the kind that look for lost children or leaks in pipelines, the kind that catch criminals.

What disturbs me about all this — what feels utterly unexamined in the mainstream coverage of this looming techno-makeover of our world — is:

A. Why is there such an emerging market for drones?

B. Why does the fact that some people will make lots of money on drones make their domestic mega-debut a done deal and what are the implications of the fact that potential profit for the well-connected is the lodestar of our future?

C. What might Drone World look like 10 or 20 years — or seven generations — down the road? And why does that not seem to be a concern of government; that is to say, why in an alleged democracy is there so little public discussion about the world we’re creating for our children and all succeeding generations?

Even the red flags of concern — about privacy or “Big Brother” — that some people are waving about domestic drone proliferation seem depressingly limited, especially because this is the only downside the corporate media bother to acknowledge. Passing legislation that prohibits drone surveillance without a warrant is a good idea, of course, but I have no faith in the power of law to protect us from the sort of social forces that drones enable.

Even unarmed drones are extraordinary tools of domination. But how strange, how naïve, to ponder the future of domestic drones without bothering to notice their current widespread usage as tools of murder and terror.

They’ve seduced the Obama administration into playing video game war in Central Asia on the pretense that killing alleged terrorists, and anyone else in the vicinity, is keeping America safe. Drones are more than just useful tools; the fact that they bestow such remarkably precise power on those who control them makes them truly dangerous appendages if the controllers are smitten with their own righteousness.

And righteousness combined with lethal power is militarism — which Jeff Cohen, in a recent speech at the National Conference on Media Reform in Denver, called “the elephant in the room” and “arguably our country’s biggest problem.” Only the rest of the world is aware of the U.S. addiction to militarism. In the circles of consensus power that govern the United States, including the mainstream media, there’s no such thing. In those circles, there are only our economic interests and our security, which add up to perpetual war.

We live in a society that requires enemies, and my guess is that, however much the promoters of drone technology extol the positive uses of drones — finding lost children and lost hikers, aiding in wildfire containment, natural disaster rescue assistance, monitoring the weather, scouting film locations (!) — their primary use will be in us-vs.-them situations. People who live in gated communities, secure in their “us” status, may see no problem with this, but for members of oft-targeted groups, the concerns about domestic drone usage, and the possibility of what the ACLU called “mission creep,” are hardly abstract.

“Even when laws do apply, constraints on law enforcement have a tendency to slacken when communities of color are the subjects of observation,” Seth Freed Wessler and Jamilah King note on the website Colorlines.

Citing a warning from digital watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation, they add that “there’s currently no legal firewall stopping the government from equipping drones with rubber bullets, tasers or other so-called ‘non-lethal weapons’ that research suggests get deployed on people of color at higher rates and that mirror other kinds of police violence.”

How hard is it to imagine the “war on terror” going domestic? It already has, of course, by other names. My point is that it’s absurdly naïve to envision domestic Drone World without factoring the dark side of U.S. militarism into the mix. Drones do not empower empathy. They empower its opposite.

Even the LA Times story quoted above, about the competition among states to get selected by the FAA as a drone test site, alludes — humorously — to the militarism lurking behind the drone craze. The story pointed out that Ohio’s pitch to get a test site included the fact that the state “was home to development of the ‘world’s first unmanned aerial system,’ a sort of flying bomb known as an ‘aerial torpedo’ developed in 1918.”

The fun is just beginning.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book,Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.

Source: Common Wonders

The Wall Street Ticking Time Bomb That Could Blow Up Your Bank Account

Derivatives turn the financial system into a casino. And the House always wins.

Cyprus-style confiscation of depositor funds has been called the “new normal.”  Bail-in policies are appearing in multiple countries directing failing TBTF banks to convert the funds of “unsecured creditors” into capital; and those creditors, it turns out, include ordinary depositors. Even “secured” creditors, including state and local governments, may be at risk.  Derivatives have “super-priority” status in bankruptcy, and Dodd Frank precludes further taxpayer bailouts. In a big derivatives bust, there may be no collateral left for the creditors who are next in line.  

Shock waves went around the world when the IMF, the EU, and the ECB not only approved but mandated the confiscation of depositor funds to “bail in” two bankrupt banks in Cyprus. A “bail in” is a quantum leap beyond a “bail out.” When governments are no longer willing to use taxpayer money to bail out banks that have gambled away their capital, the banks are now being instructed to “recapitalize” themselves by confiscating the funds of their creditors, turning debt into equity, or stock; and the “creditors” include the depositors who put their money in the bank thinking it was a secure place to store their savings.

The Cyprus bail-in was not a one-off emergency measure but was consistent with similar policies already in the works for the US, UK, EU, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as detailed in my earlier articles here and here.  “Too big to fail” now trumps all.  Rather than banks being put into bankruptcy to salvage the deposits of their customers, the customers will be put into bankruptcy to save the banks.

Why Derivatives Threaten Your Bank Account

The big risk behind all this is the massive $230 trillion derivatives boondoggle managed by US banks. Derivatives are sold as a kind of insurance for managing profits and risk; but as Satyajit Das points out in Extreme Money, they actually increase risk to the system as a whole.

In the US after the Glass-Steagall Act was implemented in 1933, a bank could not gamble with depositor funds for its own account; but in 1999, that barrier was removed. Recent congressional investigations have revealed that in the biggest derivative banks, JPMorgan and Bank of America, massive commingling has occurred between their depository arms and their unregulated and highly vulnerable derivatives arms. Under both the Dodd Frank Act and the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, derivative claims have super-priority over all other claims, secured and unsecured, insured and uninsured. In a major derivatives fiasco, derivative claimants could well grab all the collateral, leaving other claimants, public and private, holding the bag.

The tab for the 2008 bailout was $700 billion in taxpayer funds, and that was just to start. Another $700 billion disaster could easily wipe out all the money in the FDIC insurance fund, which has only about $25 billion in it.  Both JPMorgan and Bank of America have over $1 trillion in deposits, and total deposits covered by FDIC insurance are about $9 trillion. According to an article on Bloomberg in November 2011, Bank of America’s holding company then had almost $75 trillion in derivatives, and 71% were held in its depository arm; while J.P. Morgan had $79 trillion in derivatives, and 99% were in its depository arm. Those whole mega-sums are not actually at risk, but the cash calculated to be at risk from derivatives from all sources is at least $12 trillion; and JPM is the biggest player, with 30% of the market.

It used to be that the government would backstop the FDIC if it ran out of money. But section 716 of the Dodd Frank Act now precludes the payment of further taxpayer funds to bail out a bank from a bad derivatives gamble. As summarized in a letter from Americans for Financial Reform quoted by Yves Smith:

Section 716 bans taxpayer bailouts of a broad range of derivatives dealing and speculative derivatives activities. Section 716 does not in any way limit the swaps activities which banks or other financial institutions may engage in. It simply prohibits public support for such activities.

There will be no more $700 billion taxpayer bailouts. So where will the banks get the money in the next crisis? It seems the plan has just been revealed in the new bail-in policies.

All Depositors, Secured and Unsecured, May Be at Risk

The bail-in policy for the US and UK is set forth in a document put out jointly by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England (BOE) in December 2012, titled Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.

In an April 4th article in Financial Sense, John Butler points out that the directive does not explicitly refer to “depositors.”  It refers only to “unsecured creditors.”  But the effective meaning of the term, says Butler, is belied by the fact that the FDIC has been put on the job. The FDIC has direct responsibility only for depositors, not for the bondholders who are wholesale non-depositor sources of bank credit. Butler comments:

Do you see the sleight-of-hand at work here? Under the guise of protecting taxpayers, depositors of failing institutions are to be arbitrarily, de-facto subordinated to interbank claims, when in fact they are legally senior to those claims!

. . . [C]onsider the brutal, unjust irony of the entire proposal. Remember, its stated purpose is to solve the problem revealed in 2008, namely the existence of insolvent TBTF institutions that were “highly leveraged and complex, with numerous and dispersed financial operations, extensive off-balance-sheet activities, and opaque financial statements.” Yet what is being proposed is a framework sacrificing depositors in order to maintain precisely this complex, opaque, leverage-laden financial edifice!

If you believe that what has happened recently in Cyprus is unlikely to happen elsewhere, think again. Economic policy officials in the US, UK and other countries are preparing for it. Remember, someone has to pay. Will it be you? If you are a depositor, the answer is yes.

The FDIC was set up to ensure the safety of deposits. Now it, it seems, its function will be the confiscation of deposits to save Wall Street. In the only mention of “depositors” in the FDIC-BOE directive as it pertains to US policy, paragraph 47 says that “the authorities recognize the need for effective communication to depositors, making it clear that their deposits will be protected.” But protected with what? As with MF Global, the pot will already have been gambled away. From whom will the bank get it back? Not the derivatives claimants, who are first in line to be paid; not the taxpayers, since Congress has sealed the vault; not the FDIC insurance fund, which has a paltry $25 billion in it. As long as the derivatives counterparties have super-priority status, the claims of all other parties are in jeopardy.

That could mean not just the “unsecured creditors” but the “secured creditors,” including state and local governments. Local governments keep a significant portion of their revenues in Wall Street banks because smaller local banks lack the capacity to handle their complex business. In the US, banks taking deposits of public funds are required to pledge collateral against any funds exceeding the deposit insurance limit of $250,000. But derivative claims are also secured with collateral, and they have super-priority over all other claimants, including other secured creditors. The vault may be empty by the time local government officials get to the teller’s window. Main Street will again have been plundered by Wall Street.

Super-priority Status for Derivatives Increases Rather Than Decreases Risk

Harvard Law Professor Mark Row maintains that the super-priority status of derivatives needs to be repealed. He writes:

. . . [D]erivatives counterparties, . . . unlike most other secured creditors, can seize and immediately liquidate collateral, readily net out gains and losses in their dealings with the bankrupt, terminate their contracts with the bankrupt, and keep both preferential eve-of-bankruptcy payments and fraudulent conveyances they obtained from the debtor, all in ways that favor them over the bankrupt’s other creditors.

. . . [W]hen we subsidize derivatives and similar financial activity via bankruptcy benefits unavailable to other creditors, we get more of the activity than we otherwise would. Repeal would induce these burgeoning financial markets to better recognize the risks of counterparty financial failure, which in turn should dampen the possibility of another AIG-, Bear Stearns-, or Lehman Brothers-style financial meltdown, thereby helping to maintain systemic financial stability.

In The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences, David Skeel agrees. He calls the Dodd-Frank policy approach “corporatism” – a partnership between government and corporations. Congress has made no attempt in the legislation to reduce the size of the big banks or to undermine the implicit subsidy provided by the knowledge that they will be bailed out in the event of trouble.

Undergirding this approach is what Skeel calls “the Lehman myth,” which blames the 2008 banking collapse on the decision to allow Lehman Brothers to fail. Skeel counters that the Lehman bankruptcy was actually orderly, and the derivatives were unwound relatively quickly. Rather than preventing the Lehman collapse, the bankruptcy exemption for derivatives may have helped precipitate it.  When the bank appeared to be on shaky ground, the derivatives players all rushed to put in their claims, in a run on the collateral before it ran out. Skeel says the problem could be resolved by eliminating the derivatives exemption from the stay of proceedings that a bankruptcy court applies to other contracts to prevent this sort of run.

Putting the Brakes on the Wall Street End Game

Besides eliminating the super-priority of derivatives, here are some other ways to block the Wall Street asset grab:

(1) Restore the Glass-Steagall Act separating depository bankingfrom investment banking. Support Marcy Kaptur’s H.R. 129.

(2) Break up the giant derivatives banks.  Support Bernie Sanders’ “too big to jail” legislation.

(3) Alternatively, nationalize the TBTFs, as advised in the New York Times by Gar Alperovitz.  If taxpayer bailouts to save the TBTFs are unacceptable, depositor bailouts are even more unacceptable.

(4) Make derivatives illegal, as they were between 1936 and 1982 under the Commodities Exchange Act. They can be unwound by simply netting them out, declaring them null and void.  As noted by Paul Craig Roberts, “the only major effect of closing out or netting all the swaps (mostly over-the-counter contracts between counter-parties) would be to take $230 trillion of leveraged risk out of the financial system.”

(5) Support the Harkin-Whitehouse bill to impose a financial transactions tax on Wall Street trading.  Among other uses, a tax on all trades might supplement the FDIC insurance fund to cover another derivatives disaster.

(5) Establish postal savings banks as government-guaranteed depositories for individual savings. Many countries have public savings banks, which became particularly popular after savings in private banks were wiped out in the banking crisis of the late 1990s.

(6) Establish publicly-owned banks to be depositories of public monies, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to completely escape the 2008 banking crisis. North Dakota does not keep its revenues in Wall Street banks but deposits them in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota by law.  The bank has a mandate to serve the public, and it does not gamble in derivatives.

A motivated state legislature could set up a publicly-owned bank very quickly. Having its own bank would allow the state to protect both its own revenues and those of its citizens while generating the credit needed to support local business and restore prosperity to Main Street.

For more information on the public bank option, see here. Learn more at thePublic Banking Institute conference June 2-4 in San Rafael, California, featuring Matt Taibbi, Birgitta Jonsdottir,Gar Alperovitz and others.

Source: Ellen Brown | Alternet

Wikileaks Has Done It Again

Would you believe that the United States tried to do something that was not nice against Hugo Chávez?

Wikileaks has done it again. I guess the US will really have to get tough now with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.

In a secret US cable to the State Department, dated November 9, 2006, and recently published online by WikiLeaks, former US ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to destabilize the government of the late President Hugo Chávez. The cable begins with a Summary:

During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of Venezuelan society.

USAID/OTI = United States Agency for International Development/Office of Transition Initiatives. The latter is one of the many euphemisms that American diplomats use with each other and the world – They say it means a transition to “democracy”. What it actually means is a transition from the target country adamantly refusing to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs to a country gladly willing (or acceding under pressure) to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs.

OTI supports the Freedom House (FH) “Right to Defend Human Rights” program with $1.1 million. Simultaneously through Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), OTI has also provided 22 grants to human rights organizations.

Freedom House is one of the oldest US government conduits for transitioning to “democracy”; to a significant extent it equates “democracy” and “human rights” with free enterprise. Development Alternatives Inc. is the organization that sent Alan Gross to Cuba on a mission to help implement the US government’s operation of regime change.

OTI speaks of working to improve “the deteriorating human rights situation in” Venezuela. Does anyone know of a foreign government with several millions of dollars to throw around who would like to improve the seriously deteriorating human rights situation in the United States? They can start with the round-the-clock surveillance and the unconscionable entrapment of numerous young “terrorists” guilty of thought crimes.

“OTI partners are training NGOs [non-governmental organizations] to be activists and become more involved in advocacy.”

Now how’s that for a self-given license to fund and get involved in any social, economic or political activity that can sabotage any program of the Chávez government and/or make it look bad? The US ambassador’s cable points out that:

OTI has directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through over 3000 forums, workshops and training sessions delivering alternative values and providing opportunities for opposition activists to interact with hard-core Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo. We have supported this initiative with 50 grants totaling over $1.1 million.

“Another key Chavez strategy,” the cable continues, “is his attempt to divide and polarize Venezuelan society using rhetoric of hate and violence. OTI supports local NGOs who work in Chavista strongholds and with Chavista leaders, using those spaces to counter this rhetoric and promote alliances through working together on issues of importance to the entire community.”

This is the classical neo-liberal argument against any attempt to transform a capitalist society – The revolutionaries are creating class conflict. But of course, the class conflict was already there, and nowhere more embedded and distasteful than in Latin America.

OTI funded 54 social projects all over the country, at over $1.2 million, allowing [the] Ambassador to visit poor areas of Venezuela and demonstrate US concern for the Venezuelan people. This program fosters confusion within the Bolivarian ranks, and pushes back at the attempt of Chavez to use the United States as a ‘unifying enemy.’

One has to wonder if the good ambassador (now an Assistant Secretary of State) placed any weight or value at all on the election and re-election by decisive margins of Chávez and the huge masses of people who repeatedly filled the large open squares to passionately cheer him. When did such things last happen in the ambassador’s own country? Where was his country’s “concern for the Venezuelan people” during the decades of highly corrupt and dictatorial regimes? His country’a embassy in Venezuela in that period was not plotting anything remotely like what is outlined in this cable.

The cable summarizes the focus of the embassy’s strategy’s as: “1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally.” 1

The stated mission for the Office of Transition Initiatives is: “To support U.S. foreign policy objectives by helping local partners advance peace and democracy in priority countries in crisis.” 2

Notice the key word – “crisis”. For whom was Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela a “crisis”? For the people of Venezuela or the people who own and operate United States, Inc.?

Imagine a foreign country’s embassy, agencies and NGOs in the United States behaving as the American embassy, OTI, and NGOs did in Venezuela. President Putin of Russia recently tightened government controls over foreign NGOs out of such concern. As a result, he of course has been branded by the American government and media as a throwback to the Soviet Union.

Under pressure from the Venezuelan government, the OTI’s office in Venezuela was closed in 2010.

For our concluding words of wisdom, class, here’s Charles Shapiro, US ambassador to Venezuela from 2002 to 2004, speaking recently of the Venezuelan leaders: “I think they really believe it, that we are out there at some level to do them ill.” 3

The latest threats to life as we know it

Last month numerous foreign-policy commentators marked the tenth anniversary of the fateful American bombing and invasion of Iraq. Those who condemned the appalling devastation of the Iraqi people and their society emphasized that it had all been a terrible mistake, since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein didn’t actually possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is the same argument we’ve heard repeatedly during the past ten years from most opponents of the war.

But of the many lies – explicit or implicit – surrounding the war in Iraq, the biggest one of all is that if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had had those WMD the invasion would have been justified; that in such case Iraq would indeed have been a threat to the United States or to Israel or to some other country equally decent, innocent and holy. However, I must ask as I’ve asked before: What possible reason would Saddam Hussein have had for attacking the United States or Israel other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? He had no reason, no more than the Iranians do today. No more than the Soviets had during the decades of the Cold War. No more than North Korea has ever had since the United States bombed them in the early 1950s. Yet last month the new Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, announced that he would strengthen United States defenses against a possible attack by [supposedly] nuclear-equipped North Korea, positioning 14 additional missile interceptors in Alaska and California at an estimated cost of $1 billion. So much for the newest Great White Hope. Does it ever matter who the individuals are who are occupying the highest offices of the US foreign-policy establishment? Or their gender or their color?

“Oh,” many people argued, “Saddam Hussein was so crazy who knew what he might do?” But when it became obvious in late 2002 that the US was intent upon invading Iraq, Saddam opened up the country to the UN weapons inspectors much more than ever before, offering virtually full cooperation. This was not the behavior of a crazy person; this was the behavior of a survivalist. He didn’t even use any WMD when he was invaded by the United States in 1991 (“the first Gulf War”), when he certainly had such weapons. Moreover, the country’s vice president, Tariq Aziz, went on major American television news programs to assure the American people and the world that Iraq no longer had any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons; and we now know that Iraq had put out peace feelers in early 2003 hoping to prevent the war. The Iraqi leaders were not crazy at all. Unless one believes that to oppose US foreign policy you have to be crazy. Or suicidal.

It can as well be argued that American leaders were crazy to carry out the Iraqi invasion in the face of tens of millions of people at home and around the world protesting against it, pleading with the Bush gang not to unleash the horrors. (How many demonstrations were there in support of the invasion?)

In any event, the United States did not invade Iraq because of any threat of an attack using WMD. Washington leaders did not themselves believe that Iraq possessed such weapons of any significant quantity or potency. Amongst the sizable evidence supporting this claim we have the fact that they would not have exposed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground.

Nor can it be argued that mere possession of such weapons – or the belief of same – was reason enough to take action, for then the United States would have to invade Russia, France, Israel, et al.

I have written much of the above in previous editions of this report, going back to 2003. But I’m afraid that I and other commentators will have to be repeating these observations for years to come. Myths that reinforce official government propaganda die hard. The mainstream media act like they don’t see through them, while national security officials thrive on them to give themselves a mission, to enhance their budgets, and further their personal advancement. The Washington Post recently reported: “A year into his tenure, the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, has proved even more bellicose than his father, North Korea’s longtime ruler, disappointing U.S. officials who had hoped for a fresh start with the regime.” 4

Yeah, right, can’t you just see those American officials shaking their heads and exclaiming: “Damn, what do we have to do to get those North Korean fellows to trust us?” Well, they could start by ending the many international sanctions they impose on North Korea. They could discontinue arming and training South Korean military forces. And they could stop engaging in provocative fly-overs, ships cruising the waters, and military exercises along with South Korea, Australia, and other countries dangerously close to the North. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The first show of force came on March 8, during the U.S.-South Korean exercise, known as Foal Eagle, when long-range B-52 bombers conducted low-altitude maneuvers. A few weeks later, in broad daylight, two B-2 bombers sent from a Missouri air base dropped dummy payloads on a South Korean missile range.

U.S. intelligence agencies, as had been planned, reviewed the North’s responses. After those flights, the North responded as the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had expected, with angry rhetoric, threatening to attack the South and the U.S.

On Sunday, the U.S. flew a pair of advanced F-22s to South Korea, which prompted another angry response from the North. 5

And the United States could stop having wet dreams about North Korea collapsing, enabling the US to establish an American military base right at the Chinese border.

As to North Korea’s frequent threats … yes, they actually outdo the United States in bellicosity, lies, and stupidity. But their threats are not to be taken any more seriously than Washington’s oft expressed devotion to democracy and freedom. When it comes to doing actual harm to other peoples, the North Koreans are not in the same league as the empire.

“Everyone is concerned about miscalculation and the outbreak of war. But the sense across the U.S. government is that the North Koreans are not going to wage all-out war,” a senior Obama administration official said. “They are interested first and foremost in regime survival.” 6

American sovereignty hasn’t faced a legitimate foreign threat to its existence since the British in 1812.

The marvelous world of Freedom of Speech

So, the United States and its Western partners have banned Iranian TV from North America and in various European countries. Did you hear about that? Probably not if you’re not on the mailing list of PressTV, the 24-hour English-Language Iranian news channel. According to PressTV:

The Iranian film channel, iFilm, as well as Iranian radio stations, have also been banned from sensitive Western eyes and ears, all such media having been removed in February from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform serving the United States and Canada.

In December the Spanish satellite company, Hispasat, terminated the broadcast of the Iranian Spanish-language channel Hispan TV. Hispasat is partly owned by Eutelsat, whose French-Israeli CEO is blamed for the recent wave of attacks on Iranian media in Europe.

The American Jewish Committee has welcomed these developments. AJC Executive Director David Harris has acknowledged that the committee had for months been engaged in discussions with the Spaniards over taking Iranian channels off the air. 7

A careful search of the Lexis-Nexis data base of international media reveals that not one English-language print newspaper, broadcast station, or news agency in the world has reported on the PressTV news story since it appeared February 8. One Internet newspaper, Digital Journal, ran the story on February 10.

The United States, Canada, Spain, and France are thus amongst those countries proudly celebrating their commitment to the time-honored concept of freedom of speech. Other nations of “The Free World” cannot be far behind as Washington continues to turn the screws of Iranian sanctions still tighter.

In his classic 1984, George Orwell defined “doublethink” as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” In the United States, the preferred label given by the Ministry of Truth to such hypocrisy is “American exceptionalism”, which manifests itself in the assertion of a divinely ordained mission as well in the insistence on America’s right to apply double standards in its own favor and reject “moral equivalence”.

The use of sanctions to prevent foreign media from saying things that Washington has decidedshould not be said is actually a marked improvement over previous American methods. For example, on October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: “Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.” 8 And in Yugoslavia, in 1999, during the infamous 78-bombing of the Balkan country which posed no threat at all to the United States, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage. 9

Notes

1. Read the full memo. ↩
2. USAID Transition Initiatives Website ↩
3. Washington Post, January 10, 2013 ↩
4. Washington Post, March 16, 2013 ↩
5. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2013 ↩
6. Ibid. ↩
7. PressTV news release ↩
8. Index on Censorship online, the UK’s leading organization promoting freedom of expression, October 18, 2001 ↩
9. The Independent (London), April 24, 1999, p.1 ↩

Private Prisons And The Enslavement Society

What more time-honored practice in the long history of state sponsored servitude than the institutionalization of prisoners? Incarceration for offenses against government laws is a cornerstone for power and survivability of any regime. Prisons may have been hellholes over the centuries, but seldom has the internment of convicted lawbreakers been a growth industry for private profit. It almost makes one wonder exactly who are the crooks. While most hard-pressed citizens want a safe and secure society, few ever give even a passing thought to the insatiable corporatist criminalization of the criminal justice system. Just how many Americans agree with the proposition, if you did the crime, you need to serve the time.

All loyal law and order proponents can take pride in the one area where the imperium of government discipline still ranks first among nations. A Global Research article - The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery? – points out some staggering facts.

“There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.”

Just imagine the hidden solution to the high unemployment economy is staring in our faces without even a hint of public reaction. The ultimate entrepreneurial partnership allows for corporate security firms to house government dissenters or rebellious non-conformers.

“Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America(CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, “the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners.” The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for “good behavior,” but for any infraction, they get 30 days added – which means more profits for CCA.”

The dramatic increases in prison population are not from violent convicts or rapists and killers. The majority of offense categories are property, drug and especially public-order related. The goal of social rehabilitation is a quaint concept of another era. The pretense of reclamation from a conviction of prosecutorial discretion is a standard that few DA’s or judges ever consider. Sentencing guidelines are based upon retribution and punishment, in order to keep the prisons filled with a growing number of new inmates. The supposition is that if you are charged with a crime, the suspect will plea bargain or the jury will follow the directions of the government and convict.

For 2011, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate. Such a record implies a culture of criminalization or a hard road for an innocent suspect to navigate. No wonder, the private company screws are such staunch supporters of the transgression and disorder society.

The video, Private prisons - the most profitable real estate in the US? – provides a distressing analysis of the consequences of incentivizing revenue return motivated companies as the jailer overseers.

From the report Prison Labor and Crime in the U.S. - Industry, Privatization, Inmate Facts and Stats – Prison Industries and Inmate Labor – section:

“Many companies are now directly involved in some form of profiting off of incarceration or the labor of inmates. Since 1980 when there was only one prison industry operating as a privatized entity, there are now thirty eight states and at least five county jails with privatized prison industry productions or factory operations. Together state and federal factories now number over three hundred nationwide with between six hundred thousand and one million inmates working in some form of manufacturing or services. Hundreds of companies using inmate labor for manufacturing, services and other duties are now partnered with these operations. This is done under the federal Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) under 18 USC 1761(c).

Clearly companies, businesses and corporations have become heavily invested in, and dependent upon incarceration for cheap labor and profit. In 2009 total sales of prisoner made products totaled $2.4 billion. Some research places that figure as high as $5 billion and this is in addition to the “prison industry” figure of $34 billion used previously.”

Another RT video details the Prison labor booms in US as low-cost inmates bring billions. Is society really safer from the dramatic increase in the prison population, or is this method of crowding a growing herd of cheap labor simply a strategy to enrich politically connected companies?

As the rapid implosion of the economy accelerates, the prospect of even greater numbers of government prosecutions will surely increase. How many Jean Valjean’s are there in Les Misérables penal confines baking bread?

Now if you are sympathy challenged and are as hard as the rocks that need to be broken, why is the political class virtually exempt from accountability. Remember the once popular bumper sticker; “I’ll Buckle Up When Ted Bundy Does”. Well, no compassion for a serial killer is certainly understandable and proper.

However, where is the justice when a professional bankster felon like Jon Corzine skates after his crimes in the MF Global theft? The rules for ex Goldman Sacks predators allows for financing publicly traded private jail companies, but are exempt of ever working on the assembly line making license plates. What is next: a hedge fund totally devoted to the management of a privatized infrastructure of FEMA camps.

Michael Snyder writes in The Economic Collapse article, Private Prisons: The More Americans They Put Behind Bars The More Money They Make.

“If you can believe it, three of the largest private prison companies have spent approximately $45,000,000 combined on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade.

Just look at what has happened to the U.S. prison population over the past several decades. Prior to 1980, there were virtually no private prisons in the United States. But since that time, we have seen the overall prison population and the private prison population absolutely explode.

For example, between 1990 and 2009 the number of Americans in private prisons grew by about 1600 percent.

Overall, the U.S. prison population more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2007.”

Hard core criminals that violate civic community standards and endanger public safety should pay a price for their transgressions. Conversely, political prisoners that challenge the crony corruption within the governmental hierarchy do not deserve a sentence in a sweatshop.

With the abandonment of a police ethic that was dedicated to keeping the peace for an apparatus of law enforcement for arbitrary and dishonest statutes, which only serve the privileged elites; our society is sentenced to a death penalty. Slavery was eliminated a century ago, right? Thus far, that message has not filtered down to the penal plantation. An inmate deserves the solitude of solitary confinement.

The most effective private prison is the one that interns the personal guilt of wicked deeds. If public officials would act upon the moral judgments of their conscience, the perversion within the laws that they pass, adjudicate or administer, would exempt or reduce the unequal application of legitimate legislation, now deemed as criminal acts.

Human nature being what it is; evil acts are instinctive within malevolent souls. Accepting a corrosive punitive system, that enriches private companies, is a horrible departure that prison is a valid tool that protects society. The most dangerous and violent forfeit their social freedom by their predatory actions. However, the sheer numbers of confined prisoners does not justify a structure that exploits a captured population for forced labor.

Do we really need to criminalize society as the price to coexist in the era of Guantanamo justice? America once strived to maintain a balance among competing factions. Today there are only Statists that absolve government transgressions as acceptable and the dissenters that are now in the sights for retribution and eventual arrest. The criminalization of citizens for capricious infractions is the sign of a doomed society. When the hacks patrol the halls to enforce proper public behavior, the entire country becomes a prison.

The Burning of Judas and the Problem of Evil

Last night, the people of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas gathered in the town square to witness the traditional burning of Judas. The burning of Judas in effigy is a local custom taking place at the end of Holy Week (“Semana Santa”). The square behind the Palacio Municipal was packed with thousands of locals, who climbed onto stairways and shimmied up columns in order to get a better look at the symbolic end of evil.

Earlier in the day, ten large plastic sculptures by local artists, depicting perpetrators of social and political injustice, were placed on display in the square. The theme for this year’s depiction of our current Judases was “Mistreatment of babies.” Not to be harnessed by literal constraints, the artwork depicted a wide range of perpetrators of harm and injustice, including Uncle Sam, a bankster holding aloft a large bag of money and a reptilian sort of dragon which seemed intent on global domination.

At the stroke of ten, the burnings commenced. One by one, each piece of art was pyrotechnically exploded into flames, while pinwheels of fireworks arched up into the sky above the square. The crowd itself exploded into applause, while depictions of oppression and corporate greed transmogrified into ten pyres of burning annihilation.

One of the art works was apparently seeded too heavily with explosives and at the time of detonation, huge sparks rained down on the crowd. A stampede ensued, as the crowd rushed for the cover of the Palacio Municipal. There were no reports of injuries sustained.

Symbolically, the destruction of evil and the triumph of good laces all our myths, our religious texts and our modern day political constructs, not to mention the celluloid outspewings of Hollywood. The thirst for justice and the conquest of evil seems basic to the human story. In the United States, this thirst for justice has assumed again a nearly mythic stature, as our populace is waking up to history: Our history, the truth behind the dream of America, the truth of imperial greed and slaughter, the killing of the indigenous, the enslavement of people of color, of wars based on lies and contempt for human life and the mockery of justice which is now taking place every day in our halls of justice.

But behind this thirst for justice lies a deeply disturbing question. How does one conquer evil without oneself using the tools and methods of evil? Does a guillotine chopping off the head of a king or prince actually end the reign of corruption or does it simply confirm and perpetuate violence as a means of asserting self- will? And —this question cuts to the core–does the one manning the guillotine soon use this power to become the very oppressor he sought to defeat?

In a recent interview (http://youtu.be/BKCVmJoS2PU), Howard Nema and I discussed the burning of Judas and also some recent revelations of corruption in a county in Southern California, as well as the apparently successful intimidation of a brave and beloved San Bernardino county activist by ….well, those manning the guillotine. These days, one sees lights being extinguished, dampened and diminished everywhere one looks. Telling the truth and acting upon that knowledge of right vs. wrong is becoming an increasingly perilous endeavor.

The light we should seek and applaud is not, to my way of thinking, the pyre of a burning Judas. The flames that should be drawing us into town squares, into virtual meeting places on the web, into our spiritual sacred spaces and into our political meeting halls are the lights carried by each and every one of us who still knows wrong from right and has the courage to speak out. These are the sparks of the Divine flame which need to be honored and these are the lights which will be passed and carried through the generations.

Fear has a way of darkening the light. If it is any comfort, no one gets out of here alive. Not a Judas, not a Christ, and certainly not you or me. What will remain behind us is our light and what we have done during our brief tenure on this embattled planet. Whether this legacy pushes back the darkness or, out of fear and a sense of self preservation instead solidifies and strengthens the darkness is entirely up to us.

Yes, there is indeed a battle going on and the battlefield is in the hearts and minds of every one of us. As the old Indian legend tells it, each of us contains two wolves—the good wolf and the bad wolf. Which wolf gains ascendancy depends on which one we feed. The Judas burning last night in the central square may have been the externalization of the Judas that lurks in each of us. It may be time to confront him, face to face and without illusions.

The Supreme Court and Faux-marriage Fallacies

With cultural defenders such as some of our conservatives, who needs liberals? One could draw this conclusion when observing the Proposition 8 case currently before the Supreme Court.

So far we have we heard arguments about the “sociological” impact of faux marriage and, from pro-marriage (conservative) lawyer Charles Cooper, about awaiting “additional information from the jurisdictions where this experiment is still maturing,” as if the case is just a matter of whether the Court should be an agent of social engineering at this time and in this instance. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who could be the swing vote in the case, weighed in on both sides of the debate, saying, “There’s substance to the point that sociological information is new. We have 5 years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more.” But he also claimed that California’s “40,000 children with same-sex parents…want their parents to have full recognition and full status” and asked Cooper, “The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?” My answer?

No, it isn’t.

The only voice that matters is the Constitution’s. The whole point in having rule of law is that its application is not dependent upon what the “voice” of a given group of Americans might say at any given time (or upon some smaller group’s conception of what that voice demands), regardless of how sympathetic that group may be. Would you want First Amendment rights to be negotiable based on how a compelling “voice” may be able to tug on heartstrings?

And the Constitution is silent on marriage, meaning that the issue is the domain of the states. What, though, if the states legislate a marriage standard that has negative “sociological” impact? Well, what if a state institutes a poorly conceived driver’s test or productivity-stifling tax laws and regulations? The proper remedy is the ballot box. The Constitution prohibits unconstitutional ideas — not merely bad ones — and these two categories often don’t intersect. Thus, a justice’s legitimate role is not arbiter of sociological impact, but only of constitutionality. Yet many today behave as if “bad” is synonymous with “unconstitutional” and as if both are defined as “whatever I don’t happen to like.”

But then we come to the equal-protection matter. Shouldn’t homosexuals have the right to marry if other Americans enjoy that right? Yes, they should.

They have a right to form that union with a member of the opposite sex that we call marriage.

This isn’t just rhetoric. It is in fact a point that gets to the very heart of the matter, and traditionalists ignore it at their own peril.

Before you can debate whether or not there is a right to a thing, you have to know what that thing is. What is marriage? If we agree that it’s the union between a man and woman, then there is no argument because no one is trying to stop any adult American from entering into such a union. Ah, but the anti-marriage (liberal) side will reject this time-honored definition, and this brings us to the point: the marriage debate is not a matter of rights.

It is a matter of definitions.

It is also brings us to the Achilles heel of the anti-marriage side. They attack traditionalists with the notion that the time-honored definition of marriage is exclusive and discriminatory, but then defend themselves by saying that their agitation for faux marriage won’t lead to polygamy and other conceptions of “marriage” being legalized. But what is implicit in these claims is contradictory. For if they’re putting forth an alternative definition — such as marriage being the union of any two adults — they’re also being exclusive and discriminatory, as any definition excludes what doesn’t meet it. Yet if they don’t put forth an alternative definition and exclude something, they are including everything. And everything encompasses every conception of “marriage” imaginable. This definitional failure would also contribute to the destruction of the institution because the closer marriage gets to meaning anything, the closer it gets to meaning nothing.

This brings us to traditionalists’ great mistake: falsely accusing the other side of redefining marriage. They’ve done no such thing because they haven’t, in fact, consistently propounded any alternative definition. To do this would be, once again, to relinquish their illusory high ground of inclusivity and the bigotry hammer they use against traditionalists. So if the anti-marriage side isn’t redefining the institution, what are they actually doing?

They are “undefining” it.

To reiterate, this is a process by which marriage is rendered meaningless and is ultimately destroyed. This definitional problem is why the left has very smartly framed this issue as a matter of rights. And, tragically, traditionalists have fallen into the trap of arguing it on this basis, of letting the left define nothing — except the debate.

So the relevant questions here are obvious. If the left cannot say what marriage is, how can they be so sure about what it isn’t? If they cannot put forth what they’re sure is the right definition of it, how can they say with credibility that the time-honored one is wrong?

This also should inform judicial decisions. If the Supreme Court were to reflexively accept the time-honored definition of marriage, it would simply say that homosexuals already have a right to marry — to form a union with a member of the opposite sex — and that’s that. Barring this, however, it seems that before the justices could rule on laws pertaining to this thing called marriage, they’d have to rule on what this thing is in the first place, something clearly beyond their scope. And why should they even consider redefining the institution when the movement represented by the plaintiffs before them hasn’t even bothered to do so?

This is also why, when crafting pro-marriage laws and amendments, framers should not use language stating that “marriage will be limited to a man and a woman”; rather, it should read, “Marriage is defined as the union between one man and one woman.” This makes clear that it isn’t people being limited — but an institution. This matters because people have rights; institutions don’t. If you extend legal recognition to some Americans’ marriages, you may have to extend it to all marriages. But this doesn’t mean that if you extend legal recognition to one conception of marriage, you have to extend it to all conceptions.

Of course, winning the debate in the realm of reason won’t hold sway with people awash in the effluent of emotion. But it certainly doesn’t help if conservatives conserve nothing but yesterday’s liberals’ victories, one of which is to convince us to speak of “gay marriage” and “traditional marriage,” as if the former actually exists and the latter isn’t a redundancy. So remember that this debate isn’t about rights but definitions, and something that doesn’t meet the definition of “marriage” doesn’t exist as a marriage. And you cannot have a right to that which doesn’t exist.

Refuse To Buy Or Sell With The Federal Government

That infamous mark of the beast is a regular condition of doing business with the federal government. How long have we gone, and how far we have strayed, from simple barter for trade transactions. The mercantilism that exists today, based upon the premise that our “Washington Godfather”, is our silent partner in occupational endeavors, has failed miserably. According to the system, the government makes an offer you cannot refuse. However, is this really the plight of rational and creative citizens determined to maintain their personal dignity and financial integrity?

If only, there was an easy and uncomplicated method for boycotting any business with the federal government. While many may question the wisdom for refusing economic trade with one of the biggest customers on the planet, careful examination reveals that a grassroots level protest is one of the few pragmatic options left to influence the working of the existing state marriage with the corporatization economy. The media flagship of the cheer leadership globalist economic model, CNBC, seeks to promote strategies on, How to Sell to the Federal Government.

The crooked bailout of failed automobile manufacturers illustrates the intent of the federal government to collectivize industry under the banner of state technocrat control. The initial populace response from the GM bailout triggers calls for boycott.

“Complicating matters, the bailout is triggering a harsh reaction from the conservative end of the political spectrum, with some high-profile pundits calling for an outright boycott of what many are calling “Government Motors.”

Allowing government to be an equity stakeholder in a public company is a dangerous practice that few people understand and less care about.

The recent rage of the, Gun Makers Boycott Governments Hostile To Second Amendment, is getting traction. However, without a widespread and national citizen revolt against conducting business with especially the federal government, the effort will have limited victory.

“Liberty minded gun makers and companies that supply firearms, accessories and ammunition have determined that they have had it with anti-gun governments at the city, state and Federal levels, even if it means lost revenue. Several companies have announced that they will no longer be supplying equipment to hostile governments, police forces or first responders. New York and California have become the prime targets, making an example of out-of-touch politicians.”

In this and other areas, the despotic response from the central bureaucracy will be to set up state run enterprises that only supply products for official use. While this is the sinister reaction to authentic public outrage, the political “Foggy Bottom” culture has all but abandoned, even the appearance, that the country is based upon individual liberty and constitutional protections.

Commerce with federal agencies usually requires well-funded firms to submit bids, access to bureaucratic practices and often influence from the lobbying process. Those companies that envision such business as the path to success are more concerned with financial reward than national preservation.

The uninterrupted growth of government is a direct result of businesses providing the infrastructure and technological innovations that create the systems and wares that allow for the entrenchment of state sponsored oversight of every component of our society.

The permanent causality of this methodical migration away from economic independence is the loss of self-esteem. Without economic choice, free enterprise is impossible.

Boycotting companies that rely and promote government sales and services is a logical preliminary step, when making your purchase selections. No doubt, this approach is difficult, when the media reinforces the “so called” benefits of buying from a titan of commerce such as GE. Nonetheless, the real sacrifice will need to come from the companies that submit bids with the federal authorities, as a clear message that the union apparatus of oppression is not a fit customer for businesses of conscience.

Local and regional economies are in dire conditions from the burdensome regulatory imposition that targets small business, while exempting favorite corporatists. Those same preferred partners in governmental supplies and administration also dominate the consumer market. As long as this relationship excludes independent enterprises from the bulk of commerce, the only intelligent response by enterprisers is to forge an alternative economy that excludes trade with both government entities and crony conglomerates.

At stake is the literal survival of essential domestic commerce.

This innovative approach is in orthodox keeping with the commercialism that built most local communities. A society that foregoes the coerced conformity of an elitist globalism must start with breaking the ties with the very internationalist government, which hates true free enterprise and loves selected monopolies.

Cars are necessaries to most of our population and selecting a brand is still a choice. Merely, by buying GM is actually condoning the phony financial maneuvers that prevented an unavoidable bankruptcy, means that the traveler should have the guts to embargo their vehicles. Conversely, purchasing a firearm from a manufacturer that refuses to sell to government thugs is a badge of courage.

The point of isolating as many business transactions that involve the federal government is that an attitude of individual dissent can build into a culture of despotic disgust. Reversing regime tyranny is no leisurely task. It takes dedicated hard work and starts with the simple idea of demonstrating your protest in the way you spend your money.

Even more important is the refusal to do business in any way possible, with the very thieves that run the criminal syndicates, under the names of their corporate logos. Establishment officials condemn a true free market, as a contraband crime. Piety to the fool, that believes that their livelihood is inevitably dependent, upon doing business with the counterfeiter of record. While legal tender laws force the use of Federal Reserve notes for most conventional transactions, the choice of how, what and where you buy still has a degree of freedom.

The federal government is “Extortion Inc.” Until the masses fully appreciate the significance of this reality, the cozy corporate economy will deplete the net worth of ordinary citizens, as government servants obey the dictates of their elite masters.

Conservator Seeks To Overturn Court’s Ruling That Man Can Keep His Own House

A San Bernardino probate judge recently denied a highly unusual petition to revoke a 28 year- old notarized and recorded deed of sale and to return the property into the estate of the seller. In a stunningly bold move, the petitioner, conservator Melodie Scott, has moved for another trial on this matter.

This case potentially redefines the very concept of property ownership and as such may be seen as a precedent setting case.

The revocation of the deed of sale was sought by the conservator of an elderly woman, Lois Risse, who nearly three decades sold her home to a friend of hers, Glenn Neff, with the understanding that she could live in the house—rent free—for the rest of her life. Lois Risse was in her early seventies at the time of the sale.

Fast forward to 2012. Risse, then 101 years old, was being preyed on financially by a bevy of individuals who were accessing her bank accounts, buying vehicles with her money and apparently even living in her house, robbing her under the pretext of caring for her.

When Melodie Scott was appointed Risse’s guardian by Judge Michael Welch in San Bernardino Superior Court, she inherited a Pandora’s Box of predation and financial abuse which had greatly reduced the size of Risse’s estate.

At that point, Scott made some legally questionable decisions. Rather than filing police reports against the people who appear to have taken off with over $70,000 of Risse’s assets, she chose to try to persuade a judge to revoke the deed of sale to Risse’s friend, Glenn Neff. Neff, who now lives in Northern California, has been maintaining the property and paying the taxes and insurance on the Yucaipa home. Scott has made it clear that she wishes to get a reverse mortgage on the property in order to pay for her services as Risse’s guardian.

This reporter has reviewed papers from Melodie Scott’s own files which indicate that several individuals withdrew tens of thousands of dollars from Risse’s bank accounts in fall of 2011 as well as cashed checks from her accounts for thousands of dollars for inexplicable expenses. Apparently, one of these individuals purchased a couple of vehicles with Risse’s money.

In her quest to make a case that Neff had committed financial elder abuse, Scott had to go back nearly thirty years. She found some checks that Risse had written to Neff back in the early eighties and ponied up these checks as evidence that three decades ago, Neff financially abused Lois Risse.

Neff has claimed that he took these checks to the bank and cashed them for Lois. Scott also claims that, nearly thirty years ago, Neff stole a gun collection belonging to Lois Risse. Both Risse and Neff have asserted that Risse sold her guns to someone else years ago.

In January, after depositions and a trial, Judge Raymond Haight decided that the deed of sale was legal and that Neff would be allowed to keep his house.

In an odd misattribution of responsibility, a distraught Melodie Scott subsequently emailed this reporter:

“Hey you have another notch for your belt. We lost our trial to keep Mrs. Risse’s home and she has to go to a convalescent home. And no I was never paid in this file. Go see who else’s life you can ruin.”

After the judge ruled against giving Melodie Scott the house belonging to Glenn Neff, an outburst from Melodie Scott was overheard in the courtroom in which she cried, “What am I gonna do now? She’s out of money and she’s gotta go! She’s gotta go!”

It was unclear to those overhearing this where exactly Lois Risse had to go. Glenn Neff is honoring his promise that Lois can live in the house and is still carrying the financial burden of the insurance and taxes on the property. Given Melodie Scott’s propensity to withhold medical care from her clients when they run out of money, one might wonder if Risse might soon be scheduled for a trip to the Big Retirement Home in the sky.

Not content with the judge’s ruling, Scott turned around and has filed for a new trial. In her application for this trial, she alleges that the initial agreement between Neff and Risse stated that the deed would not be recorded until Risse died and therefore when Neff recorded the deed in 2012 he breached the contract and thus de facto nullified the original deed of sale. The crux of her motion for a new trial lies in a legal dispute as to whether the early recording of this document is an incidental or material breach of contract.

Neff has stated that when he realized that Lois’s assets were under attack, he recorded the deed.

“My lawyers are already into me for thirty thousand dollars,” states a battle-weary Glenn Neff. According to Neff, he asked attorney Jack Osborn, who is the lawyer he initially hired to defend his house against conservator Scott’s petition, whether he could redeem his attorney’s fees if he is successful in derailing Scott’s efforts to take the house away from him. Curiously, Neff reports that Osborn has told him he will be stuck with the bill no matter who wins in court. In fact, this is not necessarily true.

Osborn’s affiliations have already been questioned in this matter. When Neff learned that Osborn had previously represented Melodie Scott, he confronted the lawyer with this potential conflict of interest. At that point, a new lawyer was substituted in from the same firm of Brown, White and Newhouse. Neff states that Osborn never explained the change of lawyers to him and he suspects that Osborn’s failure to disclose the conflict of interest resulted in Osborn bolting from the case.

Oddly, his lawyers are also billing Mr. Neff for reading the articles being published about this case. An entry on the attorney’s bill for December 10, 2012, notes that Neff was charged for the following: “received and analyzed article …regarding conservatorship of Lois Risse.”

“I think I am getting screwed every time I turn around here,” stated Neff in a recent interview. His lawyers have also billed him over $1500 for a deposition of Lois Risse. There is scant legal precedent which allows for deposing a mentally incapacitated party and the centenarian Risse has been medically deemed to be what us normal folks would call “deeply confused.”

On March 6, the motion for a new trial will be heard at 9 a.m. in Dept. S15P of San Bernardino Superior court. The underlying implications of this protracted effort to reverse a decades- old deed of sale has reverberations for the whole concept of property ownership and levitates the common understanding of “who owns what” into a stratospheric legal grey zone. Conservatorships constitute a Constitutional loophole whereby simply the assertion made before a judge that someone has mental incapacity may result in his losing most of his civil rights and all access to his property and funds.

Does Religion Use People Or Do People Use Religion

God’s Role In The World…

In an interview about his book “Suicide of a Superpower” Dr. Kevin Barrett confronted Pat Buchanan with evidence of a manipulation involving the tragedy of 9/11.  Buchanan said he would never consider a false flag operation involving his friend former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?  Isaiah 2:22.

Quoting this scripture, R. J. Rushdoony writes, “It is God the Lord who alone is infallible, omnipotent, and all wise.  He alone should command our trust and our faith.  The generations of old looked to Him, and they were strengthened and made blessed, God has not grown old since the days of Moses and David, nor has His arm grown short with the years.  As far as our feet will stretch and as far as our feet will carry us, He is there.” R. J. Rushdoony, “A Word in Season”

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” – Psalm 146:3

Using this scripture in a Blog entitled “The Fallibility of All Men” Christine Smith writes, “There is turmoil among some Catholics due to the announced resignation of Pope Benedict. It reminds me of the sadness, dismay, disappointment and sometimes shock I saw in many a Christian following the 2012 presidential election. Yet both reactions, from those who profess a faith in God, demonstrates not the strength of God within them but the weakness of men who, though claiming God as almighty, actually behave as if man on earth is the most powerful.”  (Emphasis mine)

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 2 Timothy 3:5

America is being prepared for a system of control that will make feudalism look like freedom.  We watch helplessly as our government uses questionable events to destroy our freedom under the aegis of protecting us from terrorism  Over eight years ago I wrote an article comparing our government with the government of Nazi Germany, “America – The Fatherland”. Today there are many comparisons being made between the rise of the Third Reich and Twenty First Century United States of America. Technology that was not available in Hitler’s Germany is now commonplace and offers tyrants the ability to impose ever more frightening controls.

My Merriam Webster dictionary defines “religion” as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith”.   That definition describes religion but does not define religious practice.  There is a link to “Rely” which is defined as “to be dependent”,” to have confidence based on experience” a better definition of religion as it is practiced.

For many years I believed that people who said they were atheists or agnostics had rejected religion by denying or rejecting the existence of god.  I thought of them as devoid of religion.  I also believed that the First Amendment to our constitution created a religiously neutral government.  This was my belief until in the latter third of my life I was disabused from the Charismatic Movement and confronted with R. J. Rushdoony’s “Institutes of Biblical Law”, a book that matured my theology and filled the gaping hole that had plagued my Christian outlook from the beginning.

Dr. Rushdoony’s Institutes begins by establishing all law as religious because it sets the meaning of justice and righteousness in society.  The source of law is the god of a society.  Any change in law is a change of religion.  He writes that, “—no disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society.  A church can be disestablished, and a particular religion can be supplanted by another, but the change is simply to another religion.  Since the foundations of law are inescapably religious, no society exists without a religious foundation or without a law system that codifies the morality of its religion.”

There cannot be a religious void!  Every person and every society places ultimate confidence in someone or something.

A nation that wishes to be Christian must zealously guard its legal codes.  Reverend Rushdoony writes, “—there cannot be tolerance in a law system for another religion.  Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance.

The United States began with at least a passing regard for Biblical Law.  For several decades the Puritans and Pilgrims lived under Biblical mandates.  Blackstone’s Commentaries retained a modified dependence on the Laws God gave to Moses.  For instance the description of marriage made a husband and wife one and suspended a woman’s legal existence during marriage.  He modified the parent child relationship but retained some obligation of a child to a parent.   His writings are still used but have been replaced in the classroom with Black’s Law Dictionary a more secular document.  .

Up into the 1930s some states still enforced the Blue Laws which among other sinful practices prohibited fornication, adultery, and sodomy.  Blasphemy against God was also listed as a crime as was defiling the Sabbath.  These laws provided our country with a palpable Christian flavor.  They are now forgotten.  A list of these statues is difficult to find on the internet; any reference to them is filled with mocking and jeering.   Many of these Biblical standards remained in state statutes long after they were ignored.

Now, we are witnessing the accelerated introduction of a new legal system. President Obama is following in the steps of President George W. Bush in writing Executive orders that allow the state to exert divine control over citizens.  Feminism successfully defied Biblical law and now homosexuality is being imposed. States have murdered millions of their own citizens but Christians become more aroused at the idea that a single reprobate should be stoned to death than they do over the cruel and useless deaths of millions of innocent civilians by their own governments.

Our President is urging California to approve homosexual marriage which would amount to a state sanction of sodomy a practice condemned by the God of the Bible. We are being returned to the days of Rex Lex with Obama, whose religious affiliation is as cloudy as his background, as the king.

Pat Buchanan’s needs to revise his priorities; esteem for Dick Cheney makes it impossible for him to entertain the possibility Cheney might be involved in nefarious activities.  Friendship and loyalty are important virtues but they should never hold truth and righteousness hostage.  The tendency of people to think well of their friends and of their government is often used for evil purposes.  Human beings are fragile, sinful, and unreliable, placing ultimate faith in their performance and behavior will end in regret.

Christine Smith points to a pivotal flaw: Christians talk the talk but fail to walk the walk.  While claiming God is still on His throne and in control of His creation they behave as if man is more powerful than God.

As our government becomes more aberrant and dangerous to its citizens Christians, not noticing their continual failure, continue to work as if the government is outside God’s control.

The State has become a major idol that draws the primary dependence of the majority of American Christians and their leaders.  We attribute tyrannical laws and dissolute government to political parties instead of realizing that a sovereign God is allowing these evils to come upon us in response to our own evil actions..

Yesterday I listened to a YouTube video of a well-known leader of the truth telling movement interviewing a highly intelligent, Christian, women with a Doctor’s degree from our highest rated Ivy League school. She claimed that the end times are coming and there is nothing we can do about it.  She could be right; but I don’t think she is.  Such talk is anathema to proper role of God’s people in these evil times.  This influential lady is nullifying her effectiveness by promoting a theology that paralyzes Christians and defies God’s exclusive right to such actions.

Arminianism and Dispensationalism are not only heretical theologies but they are insidious forces against the effectiveness of the Christian religion.  Arminianism injects humanism into Christianity and Dispensationalism created an entirely new system of theology that distorts the Biblical narrative and promotes heretical doctrines.

By predicting the end times this influential Christian lady usurps God’s sovereignty and attempts to occupy His throne.  Because Dispensationalism has robbed her of her God given Christian mission her entire testimony consists of her healing and warning about the end times.  What if she is entirely wrong?  What if it is not the end times but God’s judgment?  What if our sins have found us out?   What if there are numerous other grievous sins besides the millions of babies that we have murdered?  What if these sins involve our people, our fathers, and our nation?  What is we have distorted the Christian religion so that we are no different than the Pharisees?  What if the same judgment that Jesus made toward the Pharisees He has made toward us as Christians?  What if we are hypocrites?  What if?

Instead of urging repentance which is the Biblical antidote to captivity she commits the disastrous error of blaming it on the end times leaving Christians helpless in the face of Satanic darkness. We are often urged to pray for our leaders.  Over the years I have often prayed for our nation and its leaders.  Those prayers and the prayers of thousands of other Christians have gone unanswered, God answers prayers that conform to His Will but He ignores those that do not.  We are missing the mark!

It is time for Christians to stop using religion and allow religion to use them.  God is not our servant!  We are His servants and it is our role to obey His Commandments and work to bring about His peace and order in His creation.  Instead of blaming our present dilemma on the end times we need to understand that these events might be God’s response to our sins and what is needed is repentance and proper behavior.   We need to scrutinize our lives and the actions of our nation and repent from our sins so that if He does come again soon we will be ready.

God will not be mocked.  We cannot ignore His Law, falsely profess His Will, destroy His creation, murder His creatures, elect and obey a pagan government, and arrogantly claim His blessing on our sin.  When we do these things we can expect to suffer His wrath.

Gun Rights: Are There Any Peaceful Solutions Left?

Throughout history, citizen disarmament generally leads to one of two inevitable outcomes:  Government tyranny and genocide, or, revolution and civil war.  Anti-gun statists would, of course, argue that countries like the UK and Australia have not suffered such a result.  My response would be – just give them time.   You may believe that gun control efforts are part and parcel of a totalitarian agenda (as they usually are), or, you may believe that gun registration and confiscation are a natural extension of the government’s concern for our “safety and well-being”.  Either way, the temptation of power that comes after a populace is made defenseless is almost always too great for any political entity to dismiss.  One way or another, for one reason or another, they WILL take advantage of the fact that the people have no leverage to determine their own cultural future beyond a twisted system of law and governance which is, in the end, easily corrupted.

The unawake and the unaware among us will also argue that revolution or extreme dissent against the establishment is not practical or necessary, because the government “is made of regular people like us, who can be elected or removed at any time”.

This is the way a Republic is supposed to function, yes.  However, the system we have today has strayed far from the methods of a Free Republic and towards the machinations of a single party system.  Our government does NOT represent the common American anymore.  It has become a centralized and Sovietized monstrosity.  A seething hydra with two poisonous heads; one Democrat in name, one Republican in name.  Both heads feed the same bottomless stomach; the predatory and cannibalistic pit of socialized oligarchy.

On the Republican side, we are offered Neo-Con sharks like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, who argue for “conservative” policies such as limited government interference and reduced spending, all while introducing legislation which does the exact opposite.  The recent passage of the “Safe Act” in New York with extensive Republican support proves that Republicans cannot be counted on to defend true conservative values.

The Democrats get candidates like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, who claim to be anti-war and against government abuse of civil liberties, and yet, these same “progressive and compassionate” politicians now froth at the mouth like rabid dogs sinking their teeth into the flesh of the citizenry, expanding on every tyrannical initiative the Republicans began, and are bombing more civilian targets in more foreign countries than anyone with a conscience should be able to bear.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the government is not our buddy.  It is not our ally or friend.  It is not a “part of us”.  It is now a separate and dangerous entity.  A parasite feeding off the masses.  It has become a clear threat to the freedoms of average Americans.  It is time for the public to grow up, snap out of its childish delusions, and accept that there is no solace or justice to be found anymore in Washington D.C.

Once we understand this fact, a question then arises – What do we do about it?  If we cannot redress our grievances through the election process because both parties favor the same authoritarian direction, and if our street protests are utterly ignored by the mainstream media and the establishment, and if civil suits do nothing but drag on for years with little to no benefit, then what is left for us?  Is the way of the gun the only answer left for the American people at this crossroads?

I cannot deny that we are very close to such a conclusion.  Anyone who does deny it is living in a candy coated fantasy land.  However, there are still certain options that have not been exhausted, and we should utilize them if for no other reason than to maintain the moral high ground while the power elite continue to expose their own despotic innards.

State And County Nullification

The assertion of local authority in opposition to federal tyranny is already being applied across the country.  Multiple states, counties, and municipalities are issuing declarations of defiance and passing legislation which nullifies any future federal incursions against 2nd Amendment protections.  For instance, the Gilberton Borough Council in PA in conjunction with Police Chief Mark Kessler has recently adopted a resolution defending all 2nd Amendment rights within their municipal borders up to and including the denial of operations by federal officers:

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2013/02/03/first-molon-labe-town-in-america/

Approximately 283 county Sheriffs and multiple police officers have taken a hard stand, stating that they will either not aid federal enforcement officials with gun control related activities, or, that they will not allow such activities within their county, period:

http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/

This trend of dissent amongst law enforcement officials debunks the nihilistic view promoted by disinformation agents that “no one in law enforcement will have the guts to stand up to the government no matter how sour it turns”.   It has also shaken the Obama Administration enough that the White House is struggling to counter it by wining and dining police unions and sheriffs departments in order to form their own “coalition of the willing”.  Obama seems to believe that holding press conferences using children or police as background props will somehow earn him political capital in the battle for gun rights, but I have my doubts:

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-asks-police-help-pass-183056466.html

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/55716645-90/com-congress-doing-enforcement.html.csp

Multiple states have legislation on the table to nullify as well, and it would seem that the violent push by the establishment to extinguish the 2nd Amendment has actually sharply rekindled the public’s interest in States Rights and the 10th Amendment.

This does not mean, though, that we should rely on nullification alone.  While the gun grabbers are stumbling into severe resistance at the national level, some representatives are attempting to supplant gun rights at the state level, including New York, California, Washington State, and Missouri.  The goal here is obvious; counter states rights arguments by using anti-gun legislators to impose federal controls through the back door of state legislation.

They will claim that if we support states rights, then we have to abide by the decisions of regions like New York when they ban and confiscate firearms.  It’s sad how gun grabbers lose track of reality.  Neither federal authority, nor state authority, supplants the legal barriers of the Constitution itself, meaning, no federal or local authority has the right or power to remove our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly, our freedom of privacy, OR our freedom to own firearms (including firearms of military utility).  The Constitution and the Bill of Rights supersede all other legal and political entities (including treaties, as ruled by the Supreme Court).  At least, that’s what the Founding Fathers intended when they established this nation.  The point is, a state is well within its rights to defy the Federal Government if it is enacting unconstitutional abuses, and the people are well within their rights to defy a state when it does the same.

Economic Nullification

There is actually a fantastic economic opportunity to be had by states and counties that nullify gun control legislation.  Many gun manufacturers and retail businesses are facing financial oblivion if the establishment has its way, and moving operations outside the U.S. is not necessarily practical for most of them (gun manufacturing is one of the last business models we still do better than the rest of the world).  Municipalities could offer safe haven to these businesses, allowing them to continue producing firearms and high capacity magazines, fulfill expanding public demand, and create a surging cash flow into their area while at the same time giving the federal government the finger.

This strategy does not come without dangers, though.  Many states and counties are addicted to federal funding, and some would go bankrupt without it.  The obvious first response by the feds to protesting local governments will be to cut off the river of cash and starve them into subservience.

This brand of internal financial warfare can be countered by local governments by nullifying a few other unconstitutional regulations, including those issued by the EPA and the BLM.  States and counties could easily disable federal land development restrictions and begin using resource development as a means to generate supplemental income.  North Dakota is essentially doing this right now in the Bakken Oil Fields, becoming one of the few states in America that is actually creating legitimate high paying jobs (instead of part time wage slave jobs), and growing more prosperous every year.

This tactic is not limited to state governments either.  Counties also have the ability, with the right officials involved, to regain control of their economic destinies anytime they want.  All it takes is the courage to rock the establishment boat.

Refuse All Registration Schemes

National firearms registration and gun databases are almost always followed by full gun confiscation.  The process is usually done in a standardized manner:  First demand extensive registration and cataloging of gun owners.  Second, ban more effective styles of weaponry, including semi-automatics and high capacity rifles (Let the sport hunters keep their bolt actions for a time, and lure them onto your side with the promise that they will get to keep their .270 or their 30-06).  Then take all semi-auto handguns.  Then, ban high powered magnum style bolt actions by labeling them “sniper rifles”.  Then demand that the gun owners that still remain allow official “inspections” of their home by law enforcement to ensure that they are “storing their weapons properly”.  Then, force them to move those weapons to a designated “warehouse or range”, locked away for any use other than recreational shooting.  Then, when the public is thoroughly disconnected from their original right to bear arms, take everything that’s left.

Keep in mind that the federal government and certain state governments are acting as if they would like to skip ALL of the preliminary steps and go straight to full confiscation.  I am not discounting that possibility.  But, they may feign certain concessions in the near term in order to get the one thing they really want – full registration.

Registration must be the line in the sand for every single gun owner in this country, whether they own several semi-automatics, or one pump action shotgun.  Once you give in to being registered, fingerprinted, photographed, and tracked wherever you decide to live like a convicted sexual predator, you have shown that you have no will or spirit.  You have shown that you will submit to anything.

After a full registration has been enacted, every gun (and maybe every bullet) will be tracked.  If confiscation is utilized, they know exactly what you have and what you should not have, and exactly where you are.  Criminals will still acquire weapons illegally, as they always have.  The only people who will suffer are law abiding citizens. It’s a recipe for dictatorship and nothing more.

Gun Barter Networks

The retail firearms and ammo markets are Sahara dry right now, and will probably remain that way in the foreseeable future.  Anything that is available for purchase is usually twice the price it was last year.  Extremely high demand is removing retail from the picture before any legislation is even passed.  Enter barter…

Cash will remain a bargaining tool for as long as the dollar remains the world reserve currency and holds at least some semblance of value (this will end sooner than most people think).  That said, as gun items become scarce, the allure of cash may be supplanted.  The signs of this are already evident.

Gun owners are now looking more to trade firearms and accessories for OTHER firearms and accessories, because they know that once they sell an item, they may never see it again, and the usefulness of cash is fleeting.  Gun Barter is not only a way for firearms enthusiasts to get what they need, it is also a way for them to move around any future gun sale restrictions that may arise.  Private gun sales are legal in some states, but do not count on this to last.  Barter leaves no paper trail, and thus, no traceable evidence of transaction.  For those who fear this idea as “legally questionable”, all I can do is remind them that an unconstitutional law is no law at all.  If it does not adhere to the guidelines of our founding principles, our founding documents, and our natural rights, then it is just a bunch of meaningless words on a meaningless piece of paper signed by a meaningless political puppet.

3D Printing And Home Manufacturing

3D Printing is now available to the public and for those with the money, I recommend they invest quickly.  Unless the establishment wants to make the possession of these printers illegal, as well as shut down the internet, there will be no way to stop data streamers from supplying the software needed to make molds for every conceivable gun part, including high capacity mags.  This technology has been effectively promoted by the Wiki Weapons Project:

http://defensedistributed.com/

According to current ATF law, the home manufacture of gun parts is not technically illegal, as long as they are not being produced for sale.  But in a state or county where federal gun laws have been nullified, what the ATF says is irrelevant.

Home manufacturing of gun parts and ammo would be a highly lucrative business in such safe haven areas.  And, the ability to build one’s own self defense platform is a vital skill in a sparse market environment.  The ultimate freedom is being able to supply your own needs without having to ask for materials or permission from others.  It should be the goal of every pro-gun activist to reach this independence.

Force The Establishment To Show Its True Colors

While some in the general public may be incensed by the trampling of our freedoms by government, many (including myself) would view direct action and aimless French Revolution-style violence as distasteful and disastrous.  The moral high ground is all that any dissenting movement has.  It will be hard enough to keep this ground with the constant demonization of liberty minded people that is being espoused by propaganda peddlers like the SPLC and numerous media outlets.  We do not need to help them do their jobs.

Now, to be clear, I have NO illusions that the above strategies will defuse a confrontation between those who value freedom, and those who desire power.  The hope is that enough people within our population will refuse to comply, and that this will make any future despotism impossible to construct.  However, it is far more likely that these acts of defiance will elicit a brutal response from the government.  And in a way, that is exactly what we want…

The Founding Fathers went through steps very similar to those I listed above and more to counter the tightening grip of the British Empire during the first American Revolution.  The idea is simple:

Peacefully deny the corrupt system’s authority over your life by supplying your own needs and your own security, rather than lashing out blindly.  Force them to show their true colors.  Expose their dishonor and maliciousness.  Make them come after you like the predators they are, and then, once they can no longer play the role of the “defending hero” in the eyes of the public, use your right to self defense to send them a message they won’t forget.

Skeptics will claim that physical defense is useless against a technologically advanced enemy.  They will claim that we need a “majority” we do not have in order to prevail.  These are usually people who have never fought for anything in their lives.  They do not understand that the “odds” are unimportant.  They mean nothing.  No revolution for good ever begins with “majority support”.  Each is fought by a minority of strong willed and aware individuals.  When all other methods of protest have been dismantled, the system leaves us with only two options: stand and fight, or kneel and beg for mercy.  All you need to know is what YOU would do when faced with that choice.

There is no other culture on earth that has the capacity, like Americans currently do, to defeat centralists, defend individual liberty, and end the pursuit of total global power in this lifetime.  We are the first and last line.  If freedom is undone here, it is undone everywhere for generations to come.  This is our responsibility.  This is our providence.  There can be no complacency.  There can be no compromise.  There can be no fear.  It ends on this ground.  One way, or another.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

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