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.

FBI To Spend $100 Million On Ammo

Quarter-billion new rounds also slated for DHS…

WND recently reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased well over a billion rounds of ammunition over the past year.

The magnitude of the federal government’s ammunition buildup has made headlines as members of the military, police departments and consumers find shelves bare.

But the full impact may yet to be seen, as WND has uncovered a plan by the FBI to spend up to $100 million over five years on millions of rounds for its machine guns and pistols.

According to a solicitation revised and released March 25 that WND discovered during routine database research, the FBI is gathering the ammunition “to be carried and fired [by FBI Special Agents] in defense of life” as well as for training purposes.

The ammunition includes a combination of field-ready Glock 9mm rounds as well as reduced-lead training ammo. Weapons listed in the Statement of Work, or SOW, are Glock Model 17, Glock Model 19, Glock Model 26, SIG Sauer P226, SIG Sauer P228, Heckler and Koch MP5 9mm submachine gun (K, A2, A3, SF and SD versions).

“The FBI is the federal government’s principal agency responsible for investigating violations of more than 260 federal statutes,” the SOW points out. “As the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI Special Agents (SA), in the pursuit of duty, may be involved in high threat assignments where deadly force may be used in the face of violent confrontations.”

Contractors are peppering the bureau with questions as they jockey for position to secure the lucrative contract, the amended solicitation indicates. Once the FBI decides on a provider, that contractor will deliver the ammunition within 60 days to FBI facilities and “other approved federal government locations” in the continental U.S. as well as Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico.

Hundreds of millions of rounds likewise are being ordered by the Department of Homeland Security, with more than a quarter-billion of them slated specifically for Customs and Border Protection training over five years.

Although DHS has not yet awarded contracts in that proposed CBP acquisition, late last year it revealed its intention to buy 250 million rounds of Smith & Wesson .40 ammunition over the life of a five-year contract.

DHS yesterday separately issued a revised solicitation to buy a combination of 100,000 handgun and rifle rounds destined for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, or FLTC, in Artesia, N.M. It did not disclose the estimated cost.

The department today additionally released another amended procurement notice for 360,000 rounds of jacketed hollow-point .40 caliber training ammo also destined for the Artseia FLTC.

InfoWars.com reported on the initial release of that particular procurement earlier this week.

Although the estimated cost of the solicitation, likewise, has not been disclosed, DHS last month awarded a $49,000 contract to Grace Ammo LLC for a similar batch of ammo for the Artesia facility.

DHS in January purchased an additional 200,000 rounds of jacketed hollow-point .40 caliber rounds. It awarded a $46,000 contract to Evian Group Inc. in that instance.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/fbi-plans-to-spend-100-million-on-ammo/#KH38UIpkyBGbMXyi.99

Source: WND

The EU’s Iffy Eastern Partners

One variant of a well-known law of bureaucracy says that the amount of time spent discussing a budgetary decision is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the budget in question. Judging by what I witnessed on March 20 at the European Parliament—at the Committee on Budgets’ hearing on the “Financing of the Eastern Partnership”—the Brussels machine functions entirely in accordance with this adage.

The money involved is substantial: 2.8 billion euros ($3.6 billion) over 5 years. The project’s stated purpose is to promote “shared values”—democracy, human rights and the rule of law—in six former Soviet states deemed to be of “strategic importance” to the European Union: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, andUkraine. Promoting the principles of market economy, sustainable development, civic society and “good governance” is also among the objectives.

In their opening remarks, the officials involved in running the Eastern Partnership Program were self-congratulatory about its alleged achievements. That much was to be expected: lots of sinecures, cushy jobs and expense-padded missions can be extracted from a few billion. Nevertheless, the entire construct’s numerous problems and shortcomings could not be concealed:

• Conceptually, there is no clear consensus within the EU on what exactly it is trying to promote in its eastern neighborhood under the bombastic slogans of “shared values, collective norms and joint ownership.” What does it all mean, if anything, in the real world?
• Empirically, the program has followed, and still follows, a “top-down” approach of deciding in Brussels what are the goals, then telling the eastern “partners” what they need to do, and finally rewarding them accordingly—rather than developing genuine partnerships based on those countries’ real needs and attainable objectives.
• Managerially, in order for the funds allocated to the “Partnership” to be optimally utilized, they would require elaborate apparatuses of deployment, supervision and evaluation. On the basis of the presentations last Wednesday, it is clear that the EU has neither the institutional mechanisms nor the supervisory bodies capable of insuring that this is the case.
• Substantially, the elephant in the room was the issue of EU enlargement—or, rather, the extreme unlikelihood of further enlargement after Croatia’s accession next July. Without the realistic prospect of an eventual path to full membership, the EU lacks meaningful leverage over the political elites in the six eastern countries to make them change their ways.

Far from being addressed, these problems are bypassed by the tendency of the EU bureaucracy to close its eyes to the reality on the ground in the countries concerned—or, worse, still, to misrepresent that reality for reasons of institutional self-preservations. The result, to put it succinctly, is that billions of European taxpayers’ cash are poured into a bottomless pit of post-Soviet corruption, graft, and pork-barrel politics. “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us,” went the old Soviet joke. Its modern-day “Eastern” equivalent should be “We pretend to reform, and they pretend that we are doing a good job.” Instead of being properly perceived as part of the problem, terminally corrupt political “elites” are treated as partners in finding solutions.

Moldova is the prime example. On per-capita basis, this backwater squeezed between Romania and Ukraine—the poorest country in Europe—has received far more money than the other five “partners,” and the EU pretends that its objectives are being met. While I was at the European Parliament, the European Commission presented its own regional report on the implementation of the Eastern Partnership. It asserted that “significant progress was made in the implementation of the Eastern Partnership” and singled out Moldova for “showing significant progress,” “stepping up efforts to implement judicial and law enforcement reform,” and “continuing to implement reforms in the areas of social assistance, health and education, energy, competition, state aid and regulatory approximation to the EU acquis.” Moldova’s government was asked to “continue to vigorously advance reforms in the justice and law enforcement systems” as well as intensify the fight against corruption.

This is surreal, on par with the Soviet Communist Party congresses exalting the great and glorious achievements of socialism in the years of terminal decline under Brezhnev. In reality, Moldova is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, according to independent analysts, who also claim that the majority of EU assistance is being misused by local officials. The Warsaw-based EaP Institute warns that the EU is devoting considerable sums to Moldova for very little return in terms of progress in the country’s reform process: “It begs the question: Why is the EU throwing money like this at a black hole of corruption, when there is so much to do in the EU’s own member states?”

It does, indeed. Moldova has already received some €482m from the EU Eastern Partnership, which is about 110 euros ($145) for every man, woman and child in the dirt-poor country—the equivalent of an average two-weekly wage. Nobody knows for certain where it went, but we have a fair idea. Recent opinion polls say that the majority of citizens of Moldova consider their current coalition government as “totally corrupt.” According to the Transparency International 2012 report, Moldova is among the most corrupt places in Europe, with Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia topping the list. But the EU says it is doing well, because an unhealthy symbiotic relationship has been developed between the unelected and mostly unaccountable bureaucrats managing enormous funds earmarked for nebulous purposes and their foreign “clients” who gloat at the mouth-watering prospect of placing a major portion of those funds into their own pockets.

After last Wednesday’s introductory presentations, several experts and members of European Parliament (MEPs) expressed misgivings about the Eastern Partnership policy. Olaf Osica, director of the centre for eastern studies in Warsaw, declared that “in four years the policy had failed to produce any tangible political or social results.” A prominent Polish MEP and former senior government minister, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, said the entire edifice should be “completely revised”:

There are a whole multitude of projects which, as we have heard at the hearing, no one seems able to follow or understand… What we are doing is creating the illusion that the EU is helping to transform these eastern European countries when, in fact, the naked truth is that the EU is losing its eastern neighbors. What is actually needed is for the EU—and that means both the Commission and Parliament—to totally revise and revisit its Eastern Partnership policy.

All this was in stark contrast to the earlier assurances by senior officials that the current picture was “confused,” but the EU was nevertheless “doing quite well” in addressing concerns about the transparency and accountability of its funding for the six countries (Marcus Cornaro); or that the EU was determined to push ahead with closer cooperation with those countries that have “demonstrated a commitment to the reform process” (Richard Tibbels).

The lenient attitude of EU officials regarding the patchy record of their “Eastern partners” on corruption, democratisation, and the rule of law is in stark contrast with the ever-moving goal posts for a half-dozen aspiring EU members in the Western Balkans. None of them will join the EU for a decade at least, of course, and a realistic reassessment of their political and economic policies is long overdue. The EU is in a state of chronic institutional and financial crisis, and trying to get on board at this point is equal to betting on Romney last November 5. Alternatives do exist, but they call for the cold-blooded diversification of long-term strategies. Belgrade and Kiev in particular should take note.

The Sick Man On The Senne

Contrary to popular belief, Brussels is not the only major European capital which is away from the seacoast as well as devoid of a river. The Senne is a far cry from the similar-sounding Seine further south, however: it is a nasty, brutish, mercifully short waterway. By the mid-1800’s it had become so putrid and unstable that the city elders decided to cover it—the massive project was known as the voûtement de la Senne—and to build boulevards and public edifices on top. The city did not gain much in charm, but its denizens’ life expectancy was instantly improved. (Whether living a long life in Belgium’s capital is a blessing or a curse is a separate issue.)

There is an equally nasty but infinitely more brutish monstrosity in today’s Brussels that cannot be dealt with so neatly. The European Union today is like the “Socialist Community” under Leonid Brezhnev in his dotage: totalitarian yet inefficient, glorified by its self-serving nomenklatura yet unloved by its subjects, devoid of any unifying ideology beyond the worn-out phrases and platitudes parroted by the absurd men and repulsive women in dull suits.

For the reality of this “United Europe,” as it is today, let us be dryly empirical for a moment and look at a few EU-related news items reported on one day—Thursday, March 14, 2013:

• EU leaders gathered in Brussels for a two-day summit in an attempt to negotiate the dilemma between austerity and growth. Thousands of protestors from all over the 27 member nations converged outside the EU HQ.

• Eurozone employment dropped by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared with the third, despite the Christmas shopping season. Experts say the unemployment rate will remain above 11% until early 2018.

• European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi says that “generally unsatisfactory economic developments in Europe” will improve in the course of 2013, but only if governments implement austerity measures and structural reforms. His fellow-Eurocrat, EU-appointed Italian prime minister Mario Monti, nevertheless says he will have to ask his EU partners to grant Italy more “flexibility” in its budget deficit reduction targets.

• The troika of international lenders—the EU, the ECB, and the IMF—left Greece without resolving a dispute with the government in Athens over further budgetary cuts. In the meantime, Greek shipyard workers protested outside the development ministry and hundreds of Greek students blocked up the education ministry to protest cuts resulting from EU-imposed austerity measures.Unemployment in Greece is 26%, up from 24.8% in the third quarter of 2012. Among under-24’s it is 57.8%. The percentage of unemployed Greeks who have been looking for a job for more than one year is 65.3%.

• In Spain, eviction proceedings against defaulters have soared since 2007 to 450,000. The number of repossessions ending in evictions increased by 135% in 2012 from the year before, indicating worsening trends. Spanish retail sales dropped 10.2% in the year to January, continuing the decline of the past 31 months.

• Cyprus bailout talks are crucial to next stage of crisis, but deep divisions remain over how to manage a bailout. Without a cut in the €17bn cost, Cypriot sovereign debt will reach 145% of GDP, by far the highest in the eurozone except for Greece.

• President François Hollande has said that France won’t be able to cut the public deficit to the EU limit of 3% of GDP this year; it was more likely to reach 3.7%. Amazingly, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble subsequently corrected Hollande, saying not that he “hoped,” or “expected,” but that he was “sure that France would, like us, respect the rules” on the public deficit. (Perhaps Herr Schäuble knows a thing or two about France’s future finance policy that Monsieur le Président de la République does not!)

• Germany, meanwhile, smugly claims that its finances are the model for all humanity. Its 2014 budget plans, revealed on March 13, show the structural deficit dropping to zero. “With all modesty [sic!], this is a result of historic proportions,” economy minister Philipp Rösler declared on that occasion. “Germany is in the vanguard in Europe. Our success with a policy of growth-oriented consolidation is the envy of the world.” Ach, modesty—the quintessential German weakness…

This is but a quick selection on a randomly selected day—the day of this writing. The tenor and substance have not changed much in recent months and years; and things will likely change for worse—OK, with that oneenviable exception, perhaps—in the months and years ahead.

Unsurprisingly, anti-EU feeling is escalating all over the continent. On March 1, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party was beaten into third place in the Eastleigh by-election, in southern England, by a party that wants Britain to leave the EU. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) supporters were once described by Cameron as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”—but they accounted for 28 percent of the vote in the traditionally Tory constituency. UKIP leader Nigel Farage declared the vote “a protest against an entire political class.” Under pressure from UKIP, Cameron had earlier promised to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU by the end of 2017 if he wins the next election, but many British Euro-skeptics see this as a mere ploy to deflect the threat from UKIP.

Marine Le Pen, who finished third in the French presidential election, also demands a referendum on France’s membership. On Mach 3 she declared that the FN wants France to leave the EU unless four reforms are agreed: the return to the franc; the abolition of the Schengen single-borderarea; the primacy of France’s economic interests over “Europe’s”; and the primacy of national law over EU law. Otherwise, Le Pen has promised to transform the European elections a year from now into a referendum for or against Europe. Having polled 18% of the vote in the presidential election last year, Mlle Le Pen has a solid base to build upon.

In Italy, two anti-austerity, anti-euro parties—led by Silvio Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo—captured over half the vote and paralyzed the political system. Berlusconi returned from the dead to take just over 29% of the vote, less than one half of one percentage point behind the first-placed Center-Left. Newcomer Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement), entirely created via the web outside the traditional party system, took just over 25% of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies—and demolished Italy’s balance of political forces. Pro-EU Monti’s coalition came fourth with a paltry ten percent.

Even in Germany, the apparent hegemon, there is little popular enthusiasm for the Euro-project. The recently-founded Alternative for Germany (AfD) is not even a political party yet, but expects to be a serious player come federal elections on September 22. It demands dissolution of the “coercive euro association,” an orderly end of the monetary union, and a referendum to decide if “the Basic Law, the best constitution that Germany ever had,” was violated to allow the transfer of sovereignty to the EU. Dr. Bernd Lucke—the AfD co-founder, economics professor and a life-long CDU supporter until he turned against Merkel in 2011 over her bailout policies—is adamant that Germany “has a government that has failed to comply with the law… and has blatantly broken the word that it had given to the German people.” With 14,000 paid members thus far, the AfD is respectable and distinctly upper-middle-class, with a higher concentration of PhDs than any party. Among its early supporters is Hans-Olaf Henkel, ex-president of the Federation of German Industry representing 100,000 businesses. Let it be added that as of now 26% of Germans say they would consider voting for a party committed to leaving the monetary union.

It will be a tough fight. Political, media and cultural elites in the leading countries of the Union are overwhelmingly pro-EU, pro-euro, pro-immigration, and vehemently opposed to any sign of national or ethno-linguistic coherence. If those elites have their way, there will be many more “Europeans” by the end of this century than today—some atheist, but mostly Muslim; some black, but mostly brown—but there will be precious few great-grandchildren of Europeans. The native populations are aborting and birth-controlling themselves into minorities. If Euro-elites have their way, disused churches will be converted into teeming mosques. Just over a decade ago, they refused to acknowledge Christian heritage as an element of European identity—but today they insist Islam is essential to that identity. Brussels rejects the notion that Europeans are defined by blood ties, collective memories, emotional bonds, culture, and kinship. Instead, “Europe” marches along the path of “civilization, progress and prosperity, for the good of all its inhabitants, including the weakest and most deprived… to deepen the democratic and transparent nature of its public life, and to strive for peace, justice and solidarity throughout the world…”

This is the mindset of 1792 and 1917 all over again. Its derivative expressions are foreseeable. The EU relentlessly encourages abortion, sexual deviancy, and population replacement as “basic human rights.” Its political process means the manufacture of ideologically correct outcomes as defined by the unelected Brussels machine, before the quasi-democratic machine of the European Parliament and the member countries’ institutions are set in motion. The preamble of the EU Charter on Human Rights claims to be “based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law” (implying the two were not in conflict), and concludes that “Enjoyment of these rights entails responsibilities and duties with regard to other persons, to the human community and to future generations.” Those rights are naturally demarcated by those who reserve the right to decide what exactly one’s obligations to “the human community” and “future generation” happen to be.

The true meaning of “the rule of law” is defined by the European Arrest Warrant, a hideous device created by the Lisbon Treaty, under which any citizen of a member country—or even a visitor from outside the Union—is liable to arrest and extradition at the behest of a judge in any other EU member country, under one of 32 categories of “crime.” Those offenses include murder, terrorism, as well as “racism and xenophobia.” The EU thus came to equate beliefs, opinions and sentiments with the worst of actual crimes, in the best tradition of Soviet and Nazi jurisprudence.

The workings of the machine are mainly in the hands of the European Commission (EC), whose members are appointed by the 27 prime ministers who make up the Council. The EC has the authority to create and impose policies, but it cannot be removed or held accountable by any electorate. Its duty is to uphold the interests of the Union as such: its members swear that they will discard any vestige of loyalty to any nation. The only EU institution that has any claim to democratic credentials is the European Parliament, the least powerful of the three key bodies.

How and why did the monstrosity get this way? Gradually at first, with a great deal of patience and cunning exercised by its visionary creators. In 1945 Western Europe was in ruins, a shadow of what it had been only four decades previously. The old, pre-1914 balance-of-power system had collapsed, and the interwar mechanisms of collective security were neither collective nor secure. The beginnings were seemingly pragmatic: the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community—as engineered by Robert Schuman—seemed like a sound idea, a plus-sum-game if there ever was one. But the upholders of Euro-federalism had a bigger fish to fry. From the outset they held that a sense of common history had to be developed, as well as a sense of an existing and growing common identity, to complement those early economic integration mechanisms. As Jean Monnet, the father of the project (and, significantly, a man never elected to a public office), admitted six decades ago, “Europe has never existed; one has genuinely to create Europe.”

Monnet and his disciples had a long way to go. The initial ideological basis for the project was de Gaulle’s distinctly non-federalist vision of l’Europe des patries. A concert of nation-states, brought together by a common interest, would seek the withering away of their old hostilities—with France and Germany leading the way—but all of them would retain their substance and identity regardless of the institutional arrangement. This was the “Europe” of the Six, a logical heir to the pragmatic Coal and Steel Community. Euro-integralists—notably Belgium’s prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak and Monnet himself—nevertheless kept their powder dry for a more opportune moment when the European Economic Community might be steered in the direction of a political union. De Gaulle and his immediate successor, Georges Pompidou, did not want that; and until the early 1970’s the institutional framework remained essentially the same.

Then came the notion of Europe’s unity in diversity, the reverse of the Europe of the Fatherlands. (In 2000 In varietate concordia was adopted as the official motto of the European Union.) The new concept coincided with the European Community’s expansion to the Nine, then to the Twelve. Its proponents claimed that Europe was not only a mosaic of cultures but an organic whole. The implication that this whole required a single source of decision-making authority gave rise to the method of European integration Monnet had advocated from the outset: a series of gradual yet regular transfers of small slices of national sovereignty—in ostensibly technical areas—from national capitals to Brussels. The Community apparat made a quantum leap toward this goal with the Single European Act (SEA, July 1987). It was a thorough revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, but in the direction of a super-authority rather than a superstate.

The distinction is essential. The standard Eurosceptic accusation that the Brussels machine is plotting the creation of a single federal state is incorrect. The people who run the Brussels machine have never wanted the end result to be a superstate modeled after the United States. In the context of pan-European federal statehood they would be held more accountable and would come under far greater public scrutiny than if they remained faceless and continued to operate from the corridors of the monstrous EU HQ at Barleymont. The strategy was for the states to be drained gradually of statehood and their power transferred to Brussels, but without the unwelcome trappings and limitations of statehood itself. Its guiding spirit was then-Commission PresidentJacques Delors, a French Socialist. From the SEA on, the EU became—in the words of British MEP Roger Helmer—“a slow-motion coup d’etat.” In addition to the creation of the eurozone 12 years ago, which has grown to 17 member-states since, the Schengen Agreement (1990), the Maastricht Treaty (1992), the Amsterdam Treaty (1998), the Treaty of Nice (2000), and the Treaty of Lisbon (2009) have transferred vast powers from national capitals to Brussels.

The era of Delors coincided with the rise of the Generation of 1968 to the positions of power. The activists had cut their hair, put on suits and ties, and discovered that it was more fruitful and comfortable to take the Gramscian long road through the institutions than to blow them up. The veterans of the hard-left era, like Catherine Ashton and Jose Manuel Barroso, still subscribe to the concept of permanent revolution, but it is wrapped into the open-ended evolution of the EU that they now control. The result is a European Union in a state of indeterminacy and permanent flux, a postmodern edifice within which the meaning of sovereignty is relativized and the separation of foreign and domestic policies blurred to the point of interchangeability. What all of these Euro-enthusiasts share—as John Laughland has noted—is a love of indeterminacy and permanent change, and a hostility to what they regard as inadequate, old-fashioned, and simplistic certainties of classical sovereign statehood.

Far from being the “capital of Europe,” Brussels is the regional HQ of the post-Christian anti-Europe, just as Washington DC has morphed into the global HQ of the same project. The goals of the project managers are the same because their degenerate minds are the same. They cannot be shamed into changing their ways through arguments or defeated through the ballot box any more than a malignant cancer can be arrested with aspirin. A stronger medicine is needed.

To paraphrase a bad man from a time much better than our own, écrasez l’infâme!

Pope Francis

Many of us non-RC traditionalist all over the world had awaited the news from Rome with some trepidation. In the end it turned out to be rather good. Pope Francis, the first non-European Bishop of Rome since Gregory III (d. 741), is universally described as “modest” and “moderate”—which is much preferred to the dreaded “bold” or “courageous,” in the sense that those words are used by the global media.

“He lives like a monk in a small apartment, travels by bus, and detests all vanity,” Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro told me when he heard the news. His Grace has visited Buenos Aires repeatedly in recent years as the Orthodox Diocesan Administrator, but he has not met Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who was mostly in Rome on those occasions. “I’ve heard from many local people, however, both lay and clergy, that he radiates a burning faith,” says the Metropolitan and adds that his simplicity and compassion for the poor go hand in hand with doctrinal firmness.

Two examples illustrate this dichotomy. When Pope John Paul II appointed him a cardinal in 2001, Bergoglio appealed to affluent Argentines not to fly to Rome to celebrate his investiture but instead to donate to charity the money they would have spent on air fare. In 2010 he furiously opposed Argentina’s legalization of same-sex “marriages,” arguing that children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother. In a letter to the faithful he spoke strongly: “Let us not be naïve, we are not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner reacted by saying that his tone was reminiscent of “medieval times and the Inquisition.”

After an unprecedented 35 years of non-Italian pontificates, many observers had expected the Italian contingent in the College of Cardinals to insist on one of their own. Jorge Bergoglio is as close to being an Italian, however, as is possible for a straniero. He was born in Argentina in 1936 to first-generation Italian immigrants, speaks Italian without an accent, and has a deep grounding in Italian culture, arts and literature. At 76, Pope Francis is significantly older than expected by laity or predicted by punditry. His election is a compromise which will keep most traditionalists contented, if not exactly enthused, while giving the reformist zealots another decade or so to select a strong, charismatic candidate for their long-planned onslaught. Pope Benedict’s sudden decision has caught them off-guard and unprepared.

Among the congratulatory messages sent to Francis, the one from France’s President Francois Hollande was remarkable for its cold, Christophobic rudeness. Hollande said that France, “faithful to its universal principles of liberty, equality and fraternity,” would continue its “dialogue” with the Holy See for “peace, justice, solidarity and human dignity.” That country used to be Christian, once. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, on the other hand, made an innocent mistake when stating that the new pope’s “choice of the name Francis suggests that he wants to call us all back to the transformation that St Francis knew and brought to the whole of Europe.” As a Jesuit—the first ever to become pope—Bergoglio was guided in his choice of the name by the co-founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Francis Xavier.

The SPLC Is At It Again

Well, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is at it again. In their typical obsessive hate-filled paranoia, the SPLC has issued another baseless assassination piece against anyone whom they consider to be “right-wing.” They call their hit piece, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.” Of course, only “right-wing” leaders are so characterized. According to the SPLC, left-wing leaders are always the voices of reason and goodness. Barf!

The SPLC article lists several conservative leaders as examples of “hate and extremism.” They include Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), U.S. Representative Trey Radel (R-FL), former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel, FOX News radio host Todd Starnes, and ConservativeDaily.com’s Tony Adkins. “Even further to the right,” according to the SPLC, are Oath Keepers (founded by Stewart Rhodes), Judicial Watch’s Larry Klayman, and, yes, yours truly.

I take special delight in knowing that the SPLC ALWAYS puts me on or near the top of their most “dangerous” patriot lists. (Richard Mack and Stewart Rhodes also seem to merit this same attention.) I can’t tell you what a relief this is to me! I would hate to think that all of this work that I’m doing would somehow be overlooked by an extremist left-wing hate group like the SPLC. Plus, every time the SPLC puts me on one of their lists, donations, contributions, and support for my work always skyrocket. So, if you want to put your money behind a man who especially irritates the SPLC, you can donate to Chuck Baldwin Live here:

Donate To Chuck Baldwin Live

The SPLC maintains that 2012 saw a dramatic increase in the number of right-wing “hate groups.” Again, according to the SPLC, there are no left-wing hate groups. Of course, the SPLC doesn’t bother to name or locate these groups. Everyone is just supposed to take their word that they exist.

In addition, the SPLC maintains that anyone who opposes the UN’s Agenda 21 is also part of the “radical right,” as is anyone who belongs to the John Birch Society. Predictably, the SPLC report associates any and all of the above with neo-Nazis. This is a typical tactic of the SPLC (and other ultra-liberal organizations) to discredit conservatives by associating them with Nazis.

See the SPLC report at:

SPLC: The Year In Hate And Extremism

Back in 2010, the SPLC issued its list of 40 patriot leaders: people whom they consider to be part of the “radical right.” And, yes, Chuck Baldwin is at the very top of the list. Others who made the list in 2010 include Stewart Rhodes and Richard Mack (again), Alex Jones, Devvy Kidd, Cliff Kincaid, Jack McLamb, John McManus, Daniel New, Larry Pratt, Joel Skousen, Edwin Vieira, Jr., Andrew Napolitano, and Ron Paul.

See my column on this report at:

SPLC Publishes Patriot Hit List

The SPLC is such a paranoid, extremist, ultra-liberal organization it would seem that only those who are the most biased and prejudiced in their liberal philosophy could even take them half-way seriously. Unfortunately, however, the SPLC is one of the most-often quoted sources by the mainstream media. Of course, most Americans realize that the mainstream media, for the most part, is itself extremely biased in favor of a left-wing agenda, so it is not surprising that they would gravitate to the left-wing paranoia that emanates from the SPLC.

However, even more unfortunate is the fact that the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., also gives credence to the SPLC’s ultra-left-wing propaganda. This is the most disturbing part of the SPLC hysteria: the nation’s law enforcement agencies that receive instructions, bulletins, memos, briefs, etc., from the DOJ are watching the feds regurgitate the left-wing propaganda of the SPLC. This is why State police agencies, such as what we saw happen in Missouri’s MIAC report, end up characterizing conservatives as “extremist hate groups.” They got it from the DOJ, which got it from the SPLC.

So, how is it that a private extremist organization such as the SPLC is given this kind of notoriety and credibility by the federal government?

In a previous column, I pointed out that the SPLC and DOJ enjoy a very cozy relationship. In that column I said, “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama, has long been used by the federal government and the national press corps to paint conservative organizations as ‘extremists,’ ‘anti-government,’ ‘hate groups,’ etc. No sooner would the SPLC issue some attack piece in their newsletter and police agencies all over the country would be issuing bulletins to their officers regurgitating what the SPLC had just spewed out. No private organization has this kind of connection to, and influence over, police agencies nationwide without collaboration with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. Well, now, we have evidence that such a collaboration exists.

“Brietbart.com has just released a report by Judicial Watch confirming that the DOJ and the SPLC are intricately tied to the hip. The report states, ‘Judicial Watch (JW), a Washington D.C. based non-partisan educational foundation, released some two dozen pages of emails it obtained on Tuesday revealing connections between the Department of Justice Civil Rights and Tax divisions and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).’”

See the column at:

If You Are Going To Take A Stand, You Must Take It Now!

That the DOJ has such a cozy relationship with this type of ultra-liberal organization should be cause for concern by all Americans. After all, justice is supposed to be adjudicated equally to all men–conservatives or liberals–according to the rule of law, not parceled out with the taint of bias and prejudice.

So, the SPLC is at it again. And, once again, I am flattered to be included in their list, because a man is known as much by his enemies as he is his friends. If the SPLC is attacking me, I must be doing something right.

Hugo Chávez

I once wrote about Chilean president Salvador Allende:

Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but genuine independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume – a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power.

There was no one in the entire universe that those who own and run “United States, Inc.” wanted to see dead more than Hugo Chávez. He was worse than Allende. Worse than Fidel Castro. Worse than any world leader not in the American camp because he spoke out in the most forceful terms about US imperialism and its cruelty. Repeatedly. Constantly. Saying things that heads of state are not supposed to say. At the United Nations, on a shockingly personal level about George W. Bush. All over Latin America, as he organized the region into anti-US-Empire blocs.

Long-term readers of this report know that I’m not much of a knee-reflex conspiracy theorist. But when someone like Chávez dies at the young age of 58 I have to wonder about the circumstances. Unremitting cancer, intractable respiratory infections, massive heart attack, one after the other … It is well known that during the Cold War, the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace. I would like to see the Venezuelan government pursue every avenue of investigation in having an autopsy performed.

Back in December 2011, Chávez, already under treatment for cancer, wondered out loud: “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?” The Venezuelan president was speaking one day after Argentina’s leftist president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This was after three other prominent leftist Latin America leaders had been diagnosed with cancer: Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff; Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo; and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Evo take care of yourself. Correa, be careful. We just don’t know,” Chávez said, referring to Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, both leading leftists.

Chávez said he had received words of warning from Fidel Castro, himself the target of hundreds of failed and often bizarre CIA assassination plots. “Fidel always told me: ‘Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what.” 1

When Vice President Nicolas Maduro suggested possible American involvement in Chávez’s death, the US State Department called the allegation absurd. 2

Several progressive US organizations have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, asking for “any information regarding or plans to poison or otherwise assassinate the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has just died.”

I personally believe that Hugo Chávez was murdered by the United States. If his illness and death were NOT induced, the CIA – which has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, many successfully 3 – was not doing its job.

When Fidel Castro became ill several years ago, the American mainstream media was unrelenting in its conjecture about whether the Cuban socialist system could survive his death. The same speculation exists now in regard to Venezuela. The Yankee mind can’t believe that large masses of people can turn away from capitalism when shown a good alternative. It could only be the result of a dictator manipulating the public; all resting on one man whose death would mark finis to the process.

It’s the end of the world … again

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recent convention in Washington produced the usual Doomsday talk concerning Iran’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons and with calls to bomb that country before they nuked Israel and/or the United States. So once again I have to remind everyone that these people – Israeli and American officials – are not really worried about an Iranian attack. Here are some of their many prior statements:

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.” 4

2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington”, reported the Washington Post (March 5), asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.”

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”

January 2012: US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” 5

Later that month we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts – the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz – all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.

In an April 20, 2012 CNN interview Barak repeated this sentiment: “It’s true that probably [Iranian leader] Khamenei has not given orders to start building a [nuclear] weapon.” 6

And on several other occasions, Barak has stated: “Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel.” 7

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a January 2012 report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead.8

So why, then, do Israeli and American leaders, at most other times, maintain the Doomsday rhetoric? Partly for AIPAC to continue getting large donations. For Israel to get massive amounts of US aid. For Israeli leaders to win elections. To protect Israel’s treasured status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power.

Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem. 9

Osama bin Laden, Bradley Manning, & William Blum

Bradley Manning has the charge of “Aiding the enemy” hanging over his head. This could lead to a sentence of life in prison. As far as can be deduced, the government believes that the documents and videos that Manning gave to Wikileaks, which Wikileaks then widely distributed to international media, aided the enemy because it put US foreign policy in a very bad light.

Manning’s attorneys have asked the prosecution more than once for specific examples of how “the enemy” (whoever that may refer to in a world full of people bitterly angry at the United States because of any of many terrible acts carried out by the US government) has been “aided” by the Wikileaks disclosures. Just how has the enemy made use of the released material to harm the United States? The government has not provided any such examples, probably because what really bothers Washington officials is the embarrassment they have experienced before the world resulting from the documents and videos; which indeed are highly embarrassing even to genuine war criminals; filled with violations of international law, atrocities, multiple lies to everyone, revelations of gross hypocrisy, and much more.

So our splendid officials are considering putting Bradley Manning in prison forever simply because they’re embarrassed. Hard to find much fault with that.

But now the prosecutors have announced that a Navy Seal involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden is going to testify at the court martial that bin Laden possessed articles about the Wikileaks documents that Manning leaked. Well, there must be a hundred million other people in the world who have similar material on their computers. The question remains: What use did the enemy make of that?

The Iraqi government made use of the material, inducing them to refuse immunity to US troops for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the cold-blooded murders revealed by the Wilileaks videos; this in turn led the US to announce that it was ending its military engagement in Iraq. However, Manning was indicted in May 2010, well before the Iraqi decision to end the immunity.

In January, 2006 bin Laden, in an audio tape, declared: “If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State’ [by William Blum], which states in its introduction … ” He then went on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions – including the awful bombings – have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

“That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.”

Thus, Osama bin Laden was clearly making use of what I wrote, and the whole world heard it. And I was thus clearly “aiding the enemy”. But I was not prosecuted.

The United States would like to prove a direct use and benefit by “the enemy” of the material released by Wikileaks; but so far it appears that only possession might be proven. In my case the use, and presumed propaganda benefit, were demonstrated. The fact that I wrote the material, as opposed to “stealing” it, is irrelevant to the issue of aiding the enemy. I knew, or should have known, that my criticisms of US foreign policy could be used by the foes of those policies. Indeed, that’s why I write what I do. To provide ammunition to anti-war and other activists.

The Department of Justice and socialism

For many years when I’ve been asked to explain just what I mean by “socialism” I’ve usually replied simply: “Putting people before profits”. There are a thousand-and-one details that would have to be considered in a transformation from a capitalist society to a socialist society, but rather than going into all that it’s much simpler to leave it with just that motto, which expresses theessence of my socialist society. In any event, in that glorious future world things will evolve in ways that could not be wholly predicted. The structure could take any one of many forms, but the essence must remain the same if it’s going to be called socialist.

Thus was I both surprised and amused in reading a news article about the current trial in New Orleans which is attempting to determine, amongst other things, the extent of blame of various companies, particularly BP, involved in the 2010 historic accident which took the lives of 11 workers and dumped an estimated 172 million gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The US Justice Department attorney declared in his opening statement: “The evidence will show that BP put profits before people, profits before safety and profits before the environment.” 10

Well, imagine that. The Justice Department certainly captured the essence of corporate behavior. The attorney chose such words because he knew that the sentiments expressed would appeal to the average American sitting on a jury. The members of the jury would understand that BP had blatantly ignored and violated certain cherished ideals like people, safety and the environment. Prosecuting the corporation would sound fair and just to them.

Yet, when someone like me expresses such sentiments – and I have used the exact same words on occasion – I run the risk of being written off as an “extremist”, a “radical”, and other bad-for-you labels; not long ago it was “commie”.

The irony runs even deeper. If a corporation flagrantly ignores putting profits before everything else, stockholders can sue the executives.

This just in! The real reason the Pope resigned!

He’s losing his mind.

In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with Pope Benedict XVI to receive his blessing. Afterward, Panetta said the pontiff told him, “Thank you for helping to keep the world safe.” 11

The precious art of assassinating legally

Obama hopeium addicts can soon be expected to call for support of the president’s increasing use of drones for assassination on the ground of their being good for the environment. My White House agent informs me that Obama is going to announce that all American drones will soon be composed 85% of recyclable material and will be solar-powered. And each drone missile will have the following painted on its side: “He was a bad guy. Just take our word for it!”

1. The Guardian (London), December 29, 2011 ↩
2. Huffington Post, March 7, 2013 ↩
3. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm ↩
4. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26 ↩
5. “Face the Nation”, CBS, January 8, 2012 ↩
6. Washington Post, August 1, 2012 ↩
7. Iran Media Fact Check, “Does Israel Consider Iran an ‘Existential Threat’?” ↩
8. The Guardian (London), January 31, 2012 ↩
9. Political Correction, “American Enterprise Institute Admits The Problem With Iran Is Not That It Would Use Nukes” ↩
10. Associated Press, February 26, 2013 ↩
11. Washington Post, January 17, 2013 ↩

Haiti, Baby Doc, GWB & Obama: Let The Punishment Fit The Crime?

David Pratt, my favorite war correspondent (besides myself, of course), just wrote an excellent article describing the BBC’srecent interview with Tony Blair – wherein Blair repeatedly made embarrassingly ineffective attempts to excuse and defend his indefensible and inexcusable actions regarding the illegal invasion of Iraq ten years ago.

But one particular thing that Pratt wrote caught my eye bigtime.  ”Challenged in the interview [emphasis mine] on what kind of mandate or legal basis would be required for military action in Syria,” wrote Pratt, “Mr. Blair dismissed the role of the UN as readily now as he did back in the days leading up to the Iraq war.”

Might this actually mean that somebody in the British mainstream media actually came up with the integrity and guts to actually challenge Tony Blair live on nationalTV?  That’s amazing.

But where, exactly, was this brave and intrepid reporter back when we needed him most — back in 2003,when nobody in the mainstream media ever challenged Tony Blair or even thought of challenging him.  Nobody. And also, where were the intrepid reporters back then who had the cojones to challenge George W. Bush as well?  2003 was definitely not our mainstream media’s finest hour.

But it’s still not too late.  Our mainstream media canstill spring into action and demand the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from Mr. Blair (and also from Mr. Bush and even from Mr. Obama as well) –and win a Pulitzer Prize doing it too.

And then perhaps some intrepid souls in the mainstream media might even demand that the punishment fit the crime as well.

But Bush, Blair and Obama aren’t the only ones who have happily murdered folks for fun and profit — and gotten away with it too.  Various courts in Haiti are, even as we speak, still trying to bring Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier into the dock of justice for his crimes – and are equally having no luck.

27 years after committing innumerable horrible atrocities between 1979 and 1986, Baby Doc is finally being subpoenaed for his crimes.  Hey, maybe 27 yearsfrom now, Blair, Bush and Obama may finally get subpoenaed for their crimes too!

However, Baby Doc’s lawyers are apparently trying to postpone his trial, claiming that Duvalier’s statute of limitations are up.  According to IPS News Service, “Duvalier was first indicted for crimes against humanity in 2008 and then again in 2011.  But last year, the court suddenly ruled that he would only be tried for embezzlement, saying that the alleged abuses had taken place too long ago.”

No, no, no and no.

The statute of limitations for torture and murder are never, ever up — no matter what “Zero Dark Thirty” might lead us to believe.  Baby Doc must pay for his crimes.  And so must Blair, Bush, Cheney and even Obama.

I’m still trying to get to Haiti by the end of March, but so far things aren’t looking so good.  Why?  Because of problems with money, transportation, in-country contacts and even hotel accommodations.  But wouldn’t it be any(non-mainstream-media) reporter’s dream come true to sit in on Baby Doc’s trial for murder in Haiti?  That would be almost as good as being here in an American courtroom when Cheney, Bush and Obama go on trial for murder in the Middle East!

Since War Street has so obviously screwed up our own American interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine and Syria, what makes us think that a war on Iran is gonna go any better?

War Street, however, has not screwed up their own interests in these countries at all — only ours.  Trillions of dollars in profits have been pouring into War Street as a result of these cruel and unnecessary invasions.  “Keep it coming!” cries War Street.  And so Iran is now next.  And once again all of us poor ”sequestered” fools in America will be paying for this whole new war adventure for the rest of our lives as well.

Here’s an article from the Washington Post that a friend of mine just sent me – her sons have served in Iraq and Afghanistan as Marines so she keeps on top of this kind of stuff.  The article’s headline reads, “The U.S. may not have money for infrastructure repairs, but Afghanistan does.”  Maybe some people in the MSM are finally getting it right after all.

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.

The United States of Propaganda (What We’re Up Against)

“The 20th century (was) characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”- Alex Carey

Recently, while at an event marking the 1,000th day of imprisonment for Bradley Manning, I began to ponder the long and storied role of propaganda that led up to his demonization and incarceration.

Yes, propaganda…

“A scientific method of managing behavior”

Given the unspeakable lessons learned from Joseph Goebbels and Nazi Germany, propaganda has long been a dirty word. But when public relations pioneer Edward Bernays got his start in the early 20th century, it was a word less charged but equally as potent. In fact, Bernays unabashedly named one of his books Propaganda.

“Edward Bernays was surely one of the most amazing and influential characters of the twentieth century,” explains PR watchdog, John Stauber. “He was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and helped to popularize Freudianism in the United States. Later, he used his relation to Freud to promote himself. And from his uncle’s psychoanalysis techniques, Bernays developed a scientific method of managing behavior, to which he gave the name ‘public relations.’”

The Vienna-born Bernays was heavily influenced, of course, by his uncle’s work, but it was in the service of war that he helped shape what we call “PR” today.

“Liberty Cabbage”

In what Stauber calls “perhaps the most effective job of large-scale war propaganda which the world has ever witnessed,” the Committee on Public Information, run by veteran newspaperman George Creel with the help of others like Bernays, used all available forms of media to promote the noble purpose behind World War I: To keep the world safe for democracy.

The average American was notoriously wary of any hint of their country entering the bloody conflict. As a result, men like Creel and Bernays were called upon to change some minds with some good old-fashioned propaganda and persuasion.

The Creel Committee (as it came to be known) was the first government agency for outright propaganda in U.S. history; it published 75 million books and pamphlets, had 250 paid employees, and mobilized 75,000 volunteer speakers known as “four minute men,” who delivered their pro-war messages in churches, theaters, and other places of civic gatherings.

The idea, of course, was to give the war effort a positive spin. To do so, the nation had to be convinced that doing their part to support global military conflict on a scale never before seen was indeed a good idea.

“It is not merely an army that we must train and shape for war,” President Woodrow Wilson declared at the time, “it is an entire nation.” The age of manipulated public opinion had begun in earnest.

Although Wilson won reelection in 1916 on a promise of peace, it wasn’t long before he severed diplomatic relations with Germany and proposed arming U.S. merchant ships — even without congressional authority. Upon declaring war on Germany in December 1917, the president proclaimed, “conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.”

In time, the masses got the message as demonstrated by these (and other) results:

• Fourteen states passed laws forbidding the teaching of the German language.

• Iowa and South Dakota outlawed the use of German in public or on the telephone.

• From coast to coast, German-language books were ceremonially burned.

• The Philadelphia Symphony and the New York Metropolitan Opera Company excluded Beethoven, Wagner, and other German composers from their programs.

• Irish-American newspapers were banned from the mails because Ireland opposed England — one of America’s allies — as a matter of principle.

• German shepherds were renamed Alsatians.

• Sauerkraut became known as “liberty cabbage.”

Buoyed by the indisputable success of the Creel Committee and armed with the powerful psychoanalytical techniques of his Uncle Sigmund, Bernays set about shaping American consciousness in a major way.

“Torches of Freedom”

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,” Bernays wrote in Propaganda. “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Bernays’ vision had a dominant economic component. As described by Tim Adams of the London Observer, Bernays “thought that the safest way of maintaining democracy was to distract people from dangerous political thought by letting them think that their real choices were as consumers.”

A fine illustration of Bernays’ approach involves his efforts — for the American Tobacco Company — to persuade woman to take up cigarette smoking. His slogan, “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet,” exploited women’s fear about gaining weight (arguably a fear manufactured through previous advertising and/or public relations work).

While Lucky Strike sales increased by 300 percent in the first year of Bernays’ campaign, there was still one more barrier he needed to break down: smoking remained mostly taboo for “respectable” women.

This is where some watered-down Freud came in handy. As Bernays biographer Larry Tye said, he basically wanted to take his uncle’s works and “popularize them into little ditties that housewives and others could relate to.” With input from psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, Bernays conjured up the now legendary scheme to re-frame cigarettes as a symbol of freedom.

“During the 1929 Easter Parade,” explains New York Times reporter Ron Chernow, “he had a troupe of fashionable ladies flounce down Fifth Avenue, conspicuously puffing their ‘Torches of Freedom,’ as he had called cigarettes.”

As Chernow reports, Bernays augmented this successful stunt by lining up “neutral experts” to “applaud the benefits of smoking, all the while concealing the tobacco company’s sponsorship of his activity.”

Bernays was also concealing his knowledge of tobacco’s deleterious effects. “As he hypocritically seduced American women into smoking, he was trying to wean his own wife from the nasty habit,” Chernow continues.

His daughter Anne Bernays, the novelist, recalls that whenever he discovered a pack of his wife’s Parliaments, ‘he’d pull them all out and just snap them like bones, just snap them in half and throw them in the toilet. He hated her smoking.’”

“Insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny”

With the legislative ground made fertile by men like Bernays and Creel, the Espionage Act was passed in June 1917. It read in part:

“Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both.”

This act cast a wide net and, predictably, civil liberties were trampled. In Vermont, for example, a minister was sentenced to 15 years in prison for writing a pamphlet, distributed to five persons, in which he claimed that supporting the war was wrong for a Christian.

Perhaps the best-known target of the act was noted socialist Eugene V. Debs who, after visiting three fellow socialists in a prison in June 1918, spoke out across the street from the jail for two hours. He was arrested and found guilty, but, before sentencing, Debs famously told the judge:

“Your honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Eugene Debs remained in prison until 1921 and roughly 900 others also did time thanks to the Espionage Act.

While some of more controversial sections were repealed in 1921, the Espionage Act remains on the books today and has been used against, for example, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Daniel Ellsberg, and yes, Bradley Manning.

Never forget, comrades: This is what we’re up against.

#shifthappens

NYC Event Note: To continue conversations like this, come see Mickey Z. in person on Mar. 19 in NYC for Occupy for All Species: Social Justice in the Age of Climate Change.

Take Action: End The Threat of Drones Overhead

We all know about the kind of threat represented by the purchase and use of drones in our communities. We also know the potential for profit with drone technology is measured in the billions of dollars.

Visit this site and see how many such contractors there are today.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International shows you just how serious a threat this is to our real security and freedom. When this many corporations are lined up, hands out, to grab the largess, you know the money available is only beginning.

What kind of people would, today, be ready to sell their fellow Americans down the river and into bondage so they can profit? The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International provides a list of their members, to which we linked. At Drone Free Zone we would like to google map these ‘businesses,’ making them visible in their communities so their fellow Americans, congregants, club members, neighbors, and family members with conscience, can let them know, face to face what they think of how drone enablers make their money. They must be stopped. We must do this in every way possible, including direct, personal, confrontation.

It takes integrity to be willing to stand up for what we believe. It is not always easy. There are over 2,000 contractors and we need a team to find and catalog locations and other contact information.

Additionally, we need to research the people in positions of authority within these corporations. Are they persons of rectitude? Or are they the kind of people who will do anything for the buck? We need the evidence.

Please help us roll out a protest to close the doors of those who are locking down our skies and lives. We need to expose those whose lives lack integrity.

The meaning of the word, Integrity.

in·teg·ri·ty

n.
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.

The word has profound meaning. Many attempt to hide behind words, which is true of the man we use as an example, Dan O’Dowd, owner of Green Hills Software, Inc., a drone contractor.

If a man engages in a scheme to violate the law, suborning the justice system to gain power and wealth, while destroying the lives of an entire family and putting some of them at risk of their lives, does he have any claim to ‘integrity?’

And what if the list of crimes the man enabled and covered for includes placing uncounted women and girls at  risk?  What if he is known to have paid off victims, or intimidated them into silence?

And if such a man hides behind the cloak of power to cover his crimes, what is he then?  And who if such a man had the audacity to name his technology, INTEGRITY?

Our country, today, is waking up to question those who have been entrusted with power.  One of the first questions to be asked is what can be proven of their integrity?  Have  they honored their obligation to follow the law, used power in ways which made all of us safer, more secure in our homes and lives?  The evidence will speak for itself.

Go to “Craig Franklin and Green Hills Software“

Contact me through DroneFreeZone.com” if you can help. It will be very much appreciated.

Banning the drones locally is already happening, as you see below.

According to this article, ”Thomas Jefferson’s Home Town First to Ban Drone Surveillance,“ the movement to stop drones, used domestically, is now launched.

Banning drones is a defensive move, important, but it does not deliver the slap down so desperately needs to be delivered to those now profiting or prevent the next scheme from being rolled out.

For those without INTEGRITY it is  all about the money, greed, and an unbridled lust for power and control.  If one scheme fails, they will more on to the next.

America needs individuals who use their discernment to question what they are asked to do and theintegrity to say, ‘no,’ even when they stand to profit.  For this to happen we need to ensure only those with integrity are entrusted with power.

Our institutions, government, courts, commerce, should be always in the hands of those possessing only the highest integrity.  This must be true in government and in corporations.

As you read about what one man, Dan O’Dowd, did, using one corporation, you will understand the urgency of this project.

If any man guilty of such offenses then uses the word, INTEGRITY, for his main product, what does that say about him? Yet this man became enormously wealthy through his actions.

The use of the word could well be an attempt to cover, even possibly, to himself, the full import of his actions.

This is the question we will answer, starting with drone corporations.

Christian: It’s Time To Vote With Your Feet

I confess right out of the gate that this column is not going to be enjoyable for me to write. It may not be enjoyable for some to read. But the time has come that it has to be said. If Christians truly have any intentions of helping to preserve liberty for their children and grandchildren, they must put rhetoric, tradition, friendship, and personal feelings aside and take action. Christian: it is time to vote with your feet.

And while many people who never darken the doors of a church love to cast stones at preachers and churches, I have been in the Gospel ministry all of my adult life. I have pastored for over 37 years. I know the inner workings of church work; I personally know hundreds of preachers; I understand how preachers think; I have attended hundreds of church meetings and fellowships, and hundreds of pastors’ conferences and seminars. I know what it’s like to balance a church budget, counsel families in need, stand with a congregation in good times and bad. There isn’t an area of church work with which I am not very familiar. And I can also say that for over 37 years, I have never desired or attempted to harm another man’s ministry. And that is not the intention of this column.

However, the time has come in America to tell it like it is. These are not ordinary times. Our country is on the precipice of tyranny and oppression like we have not seen since the days of Colonial America before our War for Independence. It is no hyperbole to say that what we do–or don’t do–now will determine the state of freedom in America for the next 50 years or more. To make no decision is to decide for tyranny. We can no longer pretend that what we do doesn’t matter.

One of the most glaring differences between Colonial and modern America is the attitude of our pastors.

In 1770-1776 (and actually for many years previous to this period), Colonial pastors (of all denominations) lit the fire of freedom in the hearts of their congregants like no generation has ever seen–before or since. The British Crown was so frustrated with these patriot-pastors that they coined a moniker for them. They were called, “The Black (or Black-Robed) Regiment.” In truth, Colonial pastors were more influential in the “holy cause of liberty” (Patrick Henry) from their pulpits than any military regiment on the battlefield. And, yes, many pastors in Colonial America also fought on the battlefields in our War for Independence.

Today’s pastors, on the other hand, are mostly noted for saying absolutely NOTHING about the attacks that are currently being waged against our liberties. And when I say NOTHING, I mean absolutely NOTHING. About the only thing they seem to be able to do is pass out some slanted “voter guides” every Presidential election. But most don’t even do that. A few (a very few) will encourage their congregations to protest abortion; some (again, a very small number) will preach a “pro-life” sermon on “Sanctity of Life” Sunday each January. But most deliberately and stubbornly refuse to take a public position on any subject that has the air of being “political.”

Should we really wonder why our country is teetering on the precipice of oppression and slavery?

When Bible stories such as Daniel And The Lion’s Den, The Three Hebrew Children And The Burning Fiery Furnace, or the stories of Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson are told, they are taught simply as allegories or explained away as being for “another time.” The practical application of myriads of Bible examples of resistance to tyranny is NEVER TAUGHT in the vast majority of most churches today. NEVER!

I preached a message last Sunday to the people of Liberty Fellowship entitled, “Shepherd Or Hireling?” The text was John 10. To watch the video of this message, go to:

“Shepherd Or Hireling?”

In this chapter, Jesus said, “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.” (John 10:12, 13 KJV)

Jesus made it clear that the central difference between a true shepherd and a hireling (hired hand) was that the shepherd was willing to fight and die for the protection of the sheep, while the hired hand was not willing to risk his life for the sheep.

Pastors are depicted as being shepherds. Is it not then the central duty of the pastor to be willing to fight and die for the protection of his people? When he sees the wolves approaching, does he run away and leave the sheep to the slaughter or does he confront the wolves and fight to the death to protect them?

Ladies and gentlemen, the wolves are attacking the flock! Those mangy, mad, maniacal monsters are attacking the lives and liberties of the American people (including the Christian people in our churches) with a vengeance. When they attempt to strip us of our right to defend ourselves with arms, they are attacking the very lives and liberties of our homes and families. Life is a precious gift of Almighty God, and anyone who would make our children and families vulnerable to death and destruction by wicked and evil men is tantamount to a mad wolf that attacks the life of a little lamb.

How dare our shepherds (pastors) stand silent and mute in the face of such evil? How dare they refuse to sound the alarm? How dare they piously proclaim that God “has not called” them to perform this most fundamental duty of a shepherd? Does not their refusal to fight, does not their silence, does not their fear and inaction prove that they are not really shepherds at all, but merely hirelings? I believe so.

And knowing that what I am about to say will be misinterpreted by some, I say it still: preaching the Gospel, by itself, will NOT save America. And these preachers who hide behind the mantra that the only thing God has called them to do is preach the Gospel, and that only preaching the Gospel will save America, are either themselves seriously deluded or are despicable cowards hiding behind the veil of pretended spirituality.

America has had more Gospel preaching during the last 50 years than any nation in history. There are more churches, more Christian schools, more Gospel radio and television programs, more missionary endeavors, more inner-city missions and shelters, more Bible publications, and more Gospel influence in America during the last 50 years than in any country in the history of the world.

And what has happened to America over the last 50 years? Our historic Christian culture has been turned into rank hedonism and licentiousness; legal abortion has taken the lives of over 60 million innocent unborn babies; a blatant police-state is proliferating; more babies are being born out of wedlock than at any time in history; and now we are facing the tyrannical attempt to ban and confiscate America’s premier self-defense tool: the semi-automatic rifle. And all of this happened, and is happening, while hundreds of thousands of pastors and churches across the land “preach the Gospel.”

Again I say, preaching the Gospel, by itself, will not save America. Christians have to be taught how to understand; how to discern the difference between good and evil; the principles of law and justice; jurisdictional authority; and the principles of Christian resistance. As long as pastors refrain from teaching these essential and necessary truths, our nation will continue its slide into tyranny and oppression–all the Gospel preaching going forth notwithstanding.

I ask you: if the only thing God expected us to do was preach the Gospel, why did He give us a voluminous Bible, which is filled with examples, principles, teachings, and truths relating to virtually every important area of life? If one takes only those Scriptures that deal specifically with the Gospel, he or she is going to have a very small Bible, my friends. The stories of the Old Testament, for example, were written for “our learning.” (Romans 15:4) Hebrews 11 challenges us with the examples of Old Testament men and women who were “not afraid of the king’s commandment,” who did not fear “the wrath of the king,” who “subdued kingdoms,” “waxed valiant in fight,” and who “turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”

Furthermore, the Apostle Paul spent about as much time in jail as he did out of jail. And, of course, he was thrown in jail for breaking the unjust, evil laws of men. Every apostle except John was killed by tyrannical governments because they refused to submit to unjust laws. How First Century Christians chose to resist versus how free men and women in Colonial America chose to resist is material for another day. The point is, THEY ALL CHOSE TO RESIST.

The story of God’s people, from the beginning of time, is the story of people who refused to submit to tyrannical, unjust laws and chose to “obey God rather than men.” Yet, modern American pastors refuse to resist. They choose to sheepishly comply with the unjust laws of evil, wicked men. And they refuse to be the courageous shepherds for their people. It’s time to say it: any pastor who will not warn his church of the impending tyranny that is sweeping our land, any pastor who refuses to take a stand for the right of the people in his congregation to keep and bear arms–and, therefore, be able to protect the precious gift of life that has been given by God–and any pastor who stands silent while evil men trample the God-given liberties that were purchased at so awful a cost by our Christian forebears must be regarded, not as a shepherd, but as a hireling. It really doesn’t matter how nice he is, or how educated he is, or how charming he is, or how inspirational his sermons are, or how sincere he is: if he refuses to stand and fight the wolves, he is a hireling, not a shepherd.

By the way, to see the list of pastors around the country who have vowed to fight for the right of their flocks to keep and bear arms, go to:

Second Amendment Pastors

It’s time to speak plainly. The time for politeness and timidity is behind us. Any pastor who refuses to take a stand of resistance to the evil forces of tyranny that are now sweeping as a horde of locusts upon us is as guilty of the loss of our nation’s freedoms and liberties as are the evil despots who perpetrate these atrocities. He is as guilty of the death and destruction of his people as the hireling who flees in the face of the wolf is guilty of the death and destruction of the sheep.

Let me ask you a question: would you vote for a legislator or senator who would strip you of your right to keep and bear arms? Would you passively and indifferently continue to support such a one simply because of his or her political party or nice personality or inspirational speeches? Would you not determine such a one to be a dangerous threat to your liberties, and to the safety and security of your children, and reject him or her with your vote? Sure you would. So, why would you continue to support a pastor who facilitates these ravenous beasts?

Christian, it’s time to vote with your feet and leave these silent, sheepish pastors and find a shepherd-pastor who will fight for the lives and liberties of your homes and children.

It’s time for a reality check: if your pastor is not warning the flock, alerting the flock, and fighting for the life and freedom of the flock, he is helping to put the chains of slavery and oppression upon the necks of your children and grandchildren. If he is not engaged in the fight to preserve the liberties of our nation, he is helping to put the chains of slavery and oppression upon the necks of your children and grandchildren. If your pastor refuses to publicly take a stand against the wolves of our land, he is facilitating and enabling those wolves to tear and shred the life and flesh of our country.

As I studied what God said about His shepherds in the Old Testament, I came upon this fascinating passage from the book of Amos: “Thus saith the LORD; As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children of Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed, and in Damascus in a couch.” (Amos 3:12 KJV)

Do you see the picture of the shepherd God paints in this passage? The shepherd fights for his sheep so fiercely and ferociously that he fights the lion even when the sheep is half-devoured. If he is only able to save two legs or an ear, he fights like a wild man for every part of the sheep. This is how a true shepherd is supposed to fight.

We need pastors to stand up and fight for the lives and liberties of their flock like wild men (figuratively speaking). We need pastors to scratch and claw and bite for every last little bit of life and liberty of our country. Anything less is to wear the mark of a hireling for all eternity.

Christian, cast your vote! Choose a side! The line in the sand is being drawn between liberty and tyranny. Your pastor cannot be neutral, and neither can you!

I dare say that if every Christian across America who, in his or her heart, truly believes in liberty were to flee these say-nothing hirelings and run to shepherds who are genuinely standing for truth and liberty in our land, we could turn the ship of state around almost overnight. This is more important than the “youth program” or “children’s ministry” or “senior-saints program” or “music program,” or nice buildings or “my friends are there,” or any number of other things that so many people seem to think is so important about which church they attend.

Ladies and gentlemen, the survival of our republic is at stake! For God’s sake, and for the sake of your children, don’t just complain, VOTE WITH YOUR FEET!

P.S. Remember, too, that my attorney son and I are now in the process of publishing a blockbuster new book entitled, “To Keep Or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns.” This book conclusively shows that nowhere does the Bible teach that God’s people are supposed to sheepishly give up their arms in the face of tyranny. In fact, the Bible teaches just the opposite. This book is absolutely must-reading for every Christian (or non-Christian) who desires to know the truth about what the Bible teaches relative to the right of people to keep and bear arms. We are taking pre-orders now. It’s possible that the first printing of this book will be sold out even before it is printed. Orders are coming in feverishly. If you want a first edition copy of this new book, go to:

Keep Your Arms

Israel Instructs Obama: “Iranian And Syrian Sanctions Are Not Painful Enough!”

Damascus – Iran is expected to meet with other world powers in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss its nuclear program. Discussions that the occupiers of Palestine fervently hope will not be successful. It is toward this end that their key demand this week to the US Congress, the White House and the European Union is “to cast responsibility on the Iranians by blaming them for the talks’ failure in the clearest terms possible.”

According to the Al-Monitor of 3/19/13, Israel also demands that the countries meeting in Kazakhstan “make it perfectly clear that slogans such as ‘negotiations can’t go on forever’ are their marching orders to the White House, and they want the Kazakhstan attendees to act “so severely that the Iranians realize that they face a greater threat than just Israeli military action.”  “The message must be that this time the entire west, behind Israel’s leadership, is contemplating the launch of a massive military action.”   Unsaid is that “the entire West” is expected to confront Iran militarily while Tel Aviv’s forces will mop up Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Syria if necessary.

Pending the above arrangements, Israel this week is further demanding that the Obama White House issue another Executive Order dramatically ratcheting up the US-led Sanctions against Iran and Syria while it prepares for a hoped for “ game changing international economic blockade, including no-fly zones enforced by NATO.

To achieve yet another lawyer of severe sanctions, and at the behest of AIPAC, a “legislative planning” meeting was called by Congressman Eliot Engel, who represents New Yorks 17^th District (the Bronx) and who is the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (Florida’s 27^th District), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. The session was held in a posh Georgetown restaurant and participant’s included representatives from AIPAC, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain plus half a dozen Congressional staffers.

Congressman Engel has co-sponsored virtually every anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Palestinian, anti-Iran, and anti-Syrian Congressional broadside since he entered Congress a quarter-century ago. His campaign literature last fall stated: “I am a strong supporter of sanctions against those who repeatedly reject calls to behave as responsible nations. (Israel excepted-ed).  I have authored or helped author numerous bills which have been signed into law to impose sanctions against rogue states including Iran and Syria.” Ros-Lehtinen and Engel led all members with AIPAC donations on the House side in last fall’s Congressional elections. They are ranked number one and two respectively as still serving career recipients of Israel-AIPAC’s “indirect” campaign donations.

Some Congressional operatives accuse Rep. Ros-Lehtinen of being a bit lazy and neglecting the bread and butter needs of her Florida constituents. But others argue that it depends on which constituents one has in mind. Her election mailings and her Congressional website claim that the Congresswoman  “led all Congressional efforts tirelessly to generate votes to block what she views as anti-Israel resolutions offered at the former UN Commission on Human Rights.”

A big fan of US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen introduced the Iran Freedom Support Act on January 6, 2005, which increased sanctions and expanded punitive measures against the Iranian people until the Iranian regime has dismantled its nuclear plants. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen also introduced H.R. 957, the Iran Sanctions Amendments Act, which she claims “will close loopholes in current law by holding export credit agencies, insurers, and other financial institutions accountable for their facilitation of investments in Iran and sanction them as well.”  In addition, H.R. 957 seeks to impose liability on parent companies for violations of sanctions by their foreign entities.  She also co-sponsored H.R 1357 which requires “U.S. government pension funds to divest from companies that do any business with any country that does business with Iran.”  Her campaign literature states that, “She was proud to be the leading Republican sponsor of H.R. 1400, the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. This bill applies and enhances a wide range of additional sanctions.”

In addition, last year Illeana introduced H.R. 394, which enlarges US Federal Court Jurisdiction regarding claims by American citizens their claims in U.S. courts. Unclear is whether she realizes that one consequence of her initiative would be to open even wider US courtroom doors to Iranian-Americans and Syria-Americans who today are being targeted and damaged by the lady’s ravenous insatiable craving for civilian targeting economic sanctions.

But Ileana and Elliot appear to be fretting.

So is Israel.

The reasons are several and they include the fact that the US-led sanctions have failed to date to achieve the accomplishments they were designed to produce. These being to cripple the Iranian economy, provoke a popular protest among the Iranian people over inflation and scarcity of food and medicines,  weaken Iran as much as possible before adopting military measures against it, and, most essentially, achieving regime change to turn the clock back to those comfortable days of our submissive, compliant Shah.

Zionist prospects for Syria aren’t any better at the moment.  Tel Aviv’s to intimidate the White House into invading Syria have not worked. Plan A has failed miserably according to the Israeli embassy people attending the Engel-Ros Litinen’s informal conflab.  Neither did the “how about we just arm the opposition” plan that originated last year with David H. Petraeus and was supported by Hillary Clinton while being pushed by AIPAC. The goal was to create allies in Syria that the US and Israel could control if Mr. Assad was removed from power. Moreover, the White House believes that there are no good options for Obama. It has vetoed 4 recent Israeli proposals including arming the rebels and is said to believe that Syria is already dangerously awash with “unreliable arms.”

The recent shriveling of Israeli prospects for a dramatic Pentagon intervention  in Syria reflect White House war weariness.  And also Israel’s predilection to bomb targets itself in Syria, as it did recently to assassinate a senior Iranian officer in the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hassan Shateri. Contrary to the false story that Israel attacked a missiles convoy, some unassembled equipment was damaged but that was not the primary target according to Fred Hof, a former U.S. State Department official. Gen. Shateri was.

Making matters worse for Tel Aviv, the Israeli military is reportedly becoming skittish due to its deteriorating political and military status in the region and its troops have recently completed subterranean warfare drills to prepare them for a potential clash with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post reported on 2/20/13. “Today during training, we simulated a northern terrain, that included what we might encounter,” Israeli Lt. Sagiv Shoker, commander of a military Reconnaissance Unit of the Engineering Corps, based at the Elikim base in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon explained. Shoker added that his units spent a week focused on how to approach Hezbollah’s alleged underground bunkers and tunnels  in South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley quietly and quickly.  Israeli forces commander Gantz has been complaining recently to the Israeli cabinet that Hezbollah Special Forces are gaining much valuable experience in Syria fighting highly skilled and motivated al Nusra jihadists and his troops may not be prepared to face them on the battlefield if a conflict erupts. It has been known since 2006 that Israeli soldiers “are having motivation deficits” as Gantz and others have complained.

Ordinary citizens in Iran and Syria with whom this observer met recently, including some with whom he has shared lengthy conversations while posing many questions, cannot ignore the burden of the US-led sanctions in various aspects of their lives.  Nor can the Iranian or Syrian governments or their economic institutions. At the beginning of the summer of 2010, and even more so since the summer of 2012, the US-led civilian targeting sanctions imposed were significantly tightened by the Obama administration and its allies. The administration realized that the sanctions imposed on Iran until then were ineffective and understood that Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear power capability would quickly leave the US with no alternative than the acceptance of a nuclear Iran. But the administration, according to former State Department official Hof, believed that unless it took more drastic measures against Iran, Israel would launch a military strike against Iran which would likely destroy Zionist Israel- a prospect not every US official and Congressional staffer privately laments. Congressional sources report that the White House now feels that Iran has achieved deterrence and that Israel would be dangerously foolhardy to attack the country.

While Israel advocates an economic blockade of Iran and Syria, under binding rules of international and US law, economic blockades are acts of war. They are variously defined as surrounding a nation with hostile forces, economic besieging, preventing the passage in or out of a country of civilian supplies or aid. It is an act of naval warfare to block access to a country’s coastline and deny entry to all vessels and aircraft, absent a formal declaration of war and approval of the UN Security Council.

All treaties to which America is a signatory, including the UN Charter, are binding US law. Chapter VII authorizes only the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, or act of aggression (and, if necessary, take military or other actions to) restore international peace and stability.” It permits a nation to use force (including a blockades) only under two conditions: when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 allowing the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member….until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.”

As International law Professor Francis Boyle reminds us, Customary International Law recognizes economic blockades as an act of war because of the implied use of force even against third party nations in enforcing the blockade. Writes Boyle, “Blockades as acts of war have been recognized as such in the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the Declaration of London of 1909 that delineate the international rules of warfare.” America approved these Declarations, thereby are became binding US law as well “as part of general international law and customary international law.”  US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy, called economic blockades acts of war.

So has the US Supreme Court.

In Bas v. Tingy (1800), the US Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of fighting an “undeclared war” (read extreme economic sanctions). It ruled the seizure of a French vessel (is) an act of hostility or reprisal. The Court cited Talbot v. Seaman (1801) in ruling that “specific legislative authority was required in the seizure. In Little v. Barreme (1804), the Court held that “even an order from the President could not justify or excuse an act that violated the laws and customs of warfare. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that a captain of a United States warship could be held personally liable in trespass for wrongfully seizing a neutral Danish ship, even though” presidential authority ordered it.

“The Prize Cases” (1863) is perhaps the most definitive US Supreme Court ruling on economic blockades requiring congressional authorization. The case involved President Lincoln’s ordering “a blockade of coastal states that had joined the Confederacy at the outset of the Civil War. The Court….explicitly (ruled) that an economic blockade is an act of war and is legal only if properly authorized under the Constitution.”

Iran and Syria pose no threat to the US or any peaceful law abiding nation. Imposing a blockade against either violates the UN Charter and settled international humanitarian laws as well as US law. It would constitute an illegal act of aggression that under the Nuremberg Charter is the designated a “supreme international crime” above all others. It would render the Obama administration and every government of other participating nations criminally liable.

Contrary to what the occupiers of Palestine may fantasize, if the White House wants an economic blockade of Iran or Syria it must declare war, letting the American people be heard on the subject and convince the UN Security Council to pass a UNSCR under Chapter 7.

The White House cannot legally, morally or consistently with claimed American humanitarian values continue to target civilian populations with economic sanctions on the cheap.

CNN Panelists Defend Murderer Dorner

“Modern liberalism is moral dysfunction.” When I recently made that statement after citing leftist social-media support for murderer Christopher Dorner, some readers thought I’d gone overboard. Surely, the twisted rooting for a paranoid killer on Facebook and elsewhere is just the rambling of an odd minority; there are radicals “on both sides” and one in every bunch, right? But now more evidence has surfaced vindicating my statement that such feelings aren’t at all unusual among the passionate left — evidence provided courtesy of the “professionals” at CNN.

The network’s Brooke Baldwin hosted a panel discussion on Dorner’s support involving MC Lyte of Café Mocha Radio; Buzzfeed sports editor Jack Moore; Lauren Ashburn, editor-in-chief at The Daily Download; and frequent O’Reilly Factor guest Marc Lamont Hill. The consensus?

Dorner’s actions were understandable.

What follows are relevant excerpts of the conversation. When Ashburn — the only guest shocked by the support for the murderer — said that there has been tremendous waste (lives, police manpower, etc.) because of Dorner’s actions, Hill replied, “There’s no waste here, though; this has been an important public conversation we’ve had about police brutality, police corruption, about state violence.”

This is a bit like saying that wars can be beneficial because they help the economy (which is also a myth). Mr. Hill, was Sandy Hook not a waste because it sparked a conversation about guns? Perhaps it would have been good if Dorner killed 400 people instead of 4. Then we could’ve really had a talk.

Hill then said, “As far as Dorner himself goes, he’s been like a real-life superhero to people. Don’t get me wrong; what he did was awful; killing innocent people is bad. But when you read his manifesto, the message he left, he wasn’t entirely crazy; he had a plan and a mission here.”

So did Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao.

Hill continued, “And many people aren’t rooting for him to kill innocent people; they’re rooting for somebody who was wronged to…to get some kind of revenge against the system. It’s almost like watching Django Unchained in real life; it’s kind of exciting.”

Yep, just get the popcorn and soda and sit back. You don’t even have to spring for a theater ticket.

What you’re seeing here is The Liberal Mind Unchained. It’s kind of sickening.

When Baldwin then asked, “Do you think this should serve as a catalyst for a conversation, talking about ‘racism’ in the LAPD?” Lyte (in the head, I suppose) chimed in “Absolutely!” Moore then said, “But I think there’s also something to it [the support] in that the narrative of Christopher Dorner doesn’t… I mean, in some ways it resembles a Denzel Washington movie where someone is wronged and stands up for himself and goes down in a blaze of glory. It’s hard for it not to turn into a movie.”

Ashburn then said that such grievances should be addressed through the law, at which point Hill interjected, “Not if the law is broken! Not if the law is broken! …The proper channels don’t work.”

I wonder, can conservatives apply this to Democratic politicians who violate the Constitution, the supreme law of the land? I mean, if the proper channels don’t work….

Shortly thereafter Lyte lent her support, saying “Absolutely. Um, everyone’s making a point that needs to be heard, I’m sure.” She then took at face value Dorner’s claim that he was fired from the LAPD for reporting police brutality and said, “It’s [the support is] an uproar because people are being brutalized.”

Note here that the nonjudgmental liberals take ideological soulmate Dorner’s claims at face value, including the claim that he was wronged. It doesn’t matter that he was an obviously unhinged man who, according to an ex-girlfriend, was “severely emotionally and mentally disturbed,” “twisted,” and “super paranoid.” This mentality isn’t hard to recognize, either, if you’ve ever dealt with a paranoid individual. Such a person will imagine out of left field that you did him dirty and then make taking vengeance an all-consuming, tunnel-vision goal. You do not want to be on a paranoid’s radar screen. It would be a measure of justice, however, if that’s exactly where the CNN panelists would one day find themselves (though it’s unlikely they’d make the connection and learn anything).

We also can only imagine what Dorner might have done had he been allowed to remain on the LAPD. And had he engaged in police brutality, the same leftists now impugning the LAPD in his defense would be doing so in his condemnation.

The truth, however, is that two factors are in play here. First, in the cases of Hill and Lyte, who are both black, there is the “black code”; this includes the injunction “Thou shalt not criticize another black person” — especially in front of whites or when he can be seen an opponent of society.

But then there is what’s characteristic of all leftists: a pathological inability to condemn one’s own. When Republican congressman Mark Foley was found to have engaged in sexual impropriety, he had to resign, and his conservative constituents were so disenchanted that a Democrat won his seat; when GOP senator Larry Craig was guilty of same, he wouldn’t run again as it would only have resulted in a primary loss. Contrast this with Democrat politicians such as Gerry Studds (there’s a reason his name sounds like a porn star’s), Barney Frank, and Bill Clinton, all of whom could remain in office for as long as their little reprobate hearts desired. Why, Noam Chomsky even defended the Khmer Rouge while they were in the midst of killing off a third of Cambodia, and leftists generally don’t even muster passionate denunciations of Joseph Stalin. But there’s a reason for this. I think you’ll find it interesting.

It’s always hard to condemn those to whom we have an emotional attachment or whose actions we find emotionally pleasing. The perfect example is a mother who is told her son committed heinous crimes and then goes into denial, saying “He’s a good boy.” Yet we’ve all experienced this phenomenon. Just think about how it’s harder to take a friend to task for a minor transgression than it would be an enemy, or how there’s generally a reluctance to criticize those next to us in the phalanx of a cherished cause. But what increases the chances that you’ll stifle emotion and stand on principle?

You first must have principle to begin with. When you believe in Truth — either explicitly or just in the sense of operating under the assumption that there is a transcendent “right” — it will be your yardstick for behavior and decision-making. This is when the head can intervene and begin to compete with the seductive heart. It’s when you’re more likely to tell an errant friend, “Look, you know I like you, but what you did there was wrong.” What, though, if you’re a relativist and thus don’t believe in transcendent morality? What then will be that yardstick for behavior and decision-making?

There is only one thing left: emotion.

Sure, the consensus “values” of the wider society may influence you — but in a relativistic age they’ll largely be the product of emotion, too — and you certainly will see them as such absent a belief in Truth. And then why should you defer to other people’s emotions? You’ve got your own, and other people aren’t gods.

This is why liberals — who are defined by relativism — are so emotion-driven (think of Clinton and “I feel your pain”). And it is why they will virtually never condemn those they like. After all, what is there to inform that an emotional attachment is wrong when emotion is all there is? A yardstick cannot fail to measure up to itself, and the head won’t likely trump the heart when the heart is the governing part.

And this is why liberals are so dangerous. To use a play on a Ben Franklin line, liberals are passion that governs, and they never govern wisely.

A failure to believe in Absolute Truth is, by definition, denial of moral reality. And to tolerate people so delusional in control of government, the media, and academia is to allow the transformation of your land into a mental asylum writ large.

A Guide To Obama’s Sales Pitch For Corporate Profits – Or ReBilking America

The visual above is the short story. Barack Obama smooching Charles Koch, who with his brother, David, very much wants American taxpayers to pay for the XL Keystone pipeline, which will save them money and the trouble of redesigning their present refineries, deep in the heart of Texas. The Koch refinery is configured to take heavy crude, available only from Venezuela and Canada.

And along with the distasteful issue of going hat in hand to Hugo Chavez, and paying $100 (£64) a barrel, the oil the Kochs need is available far more thriftily from Canada, selling at around $67 (£42) a barrel. Even billionaires take thrift into consideration. Getting Americans, now struggling to feed their families, to pay doubtless stuck them as a much better idea.

You can’t say the Brothers Koch are not consistent. I coined the name, ‘Greedville,’ to ID them and their many co-conspirators. Together, they have been bilking America for years and have now formed a coalition with President Obama to Rebilk America using ideas which first say light of day in the unlikely environs of Libertarianism, for which I must apologize. I tried to stop them, but what do you do with a bunch of wild-eyed Randroids, including the ever avaricious Ed Crane?

Crane, and Cato Institute, eventually saw the full potential of privatization, borrowed from Reason Foundation.

Privatization, the lodestone of the Obama message, should strike horror into the hearts of an American. Privatization has grown our prisons into factories intended only to produce money through incarceration, many of these for crimes which are, arguably, not crimes at all, harming no one. The same “public – private” cooperation, also known as fascism, is steadily encroaching on every part of our lives and, sadly, can be credited directly to a Libertarian.

Dr. Robert Poole, who originated the idea of privatization in his 1975 book, “Cutting Back City Hall,” laid the tracks for the railroading Obama is ‘fast-tracking’ for the Kochs, who are large donors to Reason Foundation and actually founded Cato Institute. These supposedly Libertarian think-tanks have long since become the means of quieting objections from the ‘Right’ intelligent enough to understand what was actually going down.

Using the fiction of ‘privatization,’ actually corporatization, corporations intend to own America’s entire infrastructure, mining it, and us with the cost-plus contracts for ‘rebilking’ which helped make the Kochs billionaires in the first place. I’m sure Bob Poole did well on the deal.

Bob retired to Florida where he spends his time playing with, would you believe, his model trains.

Obama’s pitch for corporate welfare can usefully be considered as two parts. The cake, which are the direct largess to be handed out to the Kochtapus and friends, and the frosting of promises, including “quality day-care,” which was to sugar-coat the impending flow of funds to Greedville with promises for programs which, if precedent is to be believed, are in reality intended to put ordinary Americans under tighter control and provide earlier access to children for purposes of ensuring they emerge from ‘schooling’ properly propagandized.

What any reasonable person would have asked is, “why not policies which return prosperity to Americans so mothers and fathers can raise their own children, instilling their own values?

Since such ‘policy reforms,’ as changes in student loans actually should address the fraudulent nature of the loans in the first place, why is an investigation into this by the DOJ not included? Answer: These loans resulted in enormous corporate profits.

Every proposal has the same unchanging outcome, increasing corporate profits while making it look like they are doing ordinary Americans a favor.

The gloss of frosting also included the continued demand for gun control, intended to leave Americans unable to defend themselves against this assault of fascism.

In fact, along with Obama’s use of ‘not for profits,’ and a steady roll of propaganda, there was not a leaf left out of the book also used by Karl Rove. Perhaps Karl loaned it to him.

When Obama uses the phrase ‘rebuilding America, he actually means rebilking America. The only solution is taking the power back, directly to the people. Get the real thing. Rebuild America, starting in your own local community by returning to our founding principles.

Instead of more bilking start rebuilding America for real.

The Declaration of Independence affirms the rights of all people to life, liberty, and happiness.

The Preamble to the Constitution says, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

One of the first steps to securing the blessings of liberty and ensuring justice hinges on an electoral system which we can trust, the very thing Karl Rove has worked so hard to extinguish, with the help of the people named above, and many, many more like him.

Over the last decade a general agreement on several points has coalesced in the Election Integrity Movement.

First, we need to dump the voting machines.

Second, we need to return control of balloting to the most local level, voting on paper ballots, tallying transparently and openly at the precinct and then publishing the results.

To return power to the people we need to move the nexus of control closer to home.

We can also ensure states can bypass Congress by proposing Constitutional Amendments and ratifying among themselves, thus returning power to the states, closer to the people who are the government. The Madison Amendment.

We need to return representation of the people to the levels mandated by the Constitution, this being no more than 30,000 for a member of the House of Representatives and no more than 1,000 locally. Our present system violates the Constitution. This must be corrected. Doing so must take place through local organizing, original shoe-leather activism, which brings us together past the divisions politics has imposed.

Local organizing will also allow us to pass ordinances banning the use of drones, along with other essential measures for returning control to the people. Strong communities, concern for those around us, and individual initiative, made America a shining light on the horizon for people around the world once. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. The choice is each of ours make.

At Rebuild America, we supply information, tools, and a meeting point for sharing what works so local action can flower as the people do it themselves.

See you there, and then in your home town.

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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