Are Black Friday Riots A Preview Of The Civil Unrest That Is Coming When Society Breaks Down?

If Americans will trample one another just to save a few dollars on a television, what will they do when society breaks down and the survival of their families is at stake?  Once in a while an event comes along that gives us a peek into what life could be like when the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is stripped away.  For example, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey there was rampant looting and within days people were digging around in supermarket dumpsters looking for food.  Sadly, “Black Friday” also gives us a look at how crazed the American people can be when given the opportunity.  This year was no exception.  Once again we saw large crowds of frenzied shoppers push, shove, scratch, claw, bite and trample one another just to save a few bucks on cheap foreign-made goods.  And of course most retailers seem to be encouraging this type of behavior.  Most of them actually want people frothing at the mouth and willing to fight one another to buy their goods.  But is this kind of “me first” mentality really something that we want to foster as a society?  If people are willing to riot to save money on a cell phone, what would they be willing to do to feed their families?  Are the Black Friday riots a very small preview of the civil unrest that is coming when society eventually breaks down?

Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was not really a commercial holiday.  It was a time to get together with family and friends, eat turkey and express thanks for the blessings that we have been given.

But in recent years Black Friday has started to become even a bigger event than Thanksgiving itself.

Millions of Americans have become convinced that it is fun to wait in long lines outside retail stores in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night to spend money that they do not have on things that they do not need.

And of course very, very few “Black Friday deals” are actually made in America.  So these frenzied shoppers are actually killing American jobs and destroying the U.S. economy as well.

The absurdity of Black Friday was summed up very well recently in a statement that has already been retweeted on Twitter more than 1,000 times…

It has gotten to the point where it is now expected that there will be mini-riots all over the country early on Black Friday morning each year.  The following are a few examples of the craziness that we saw this year…

-”Fights break out when stores open on Black Friday”

-”Black Friday madness at Georgia Wal-Mart”

-”Black Friday Frenzy: 2 Run Down in Washington, Man Pulls Gun in Texas”

-”Black Friday 2012: Rush at Victoria’s Secret Pink at Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kan.”

-”Black Friday shoppers smash door at Urban Outfitters”

-”Black Friday Shopping Hysteria From Around The Country [PHOTOS]”

-”Disturbance leads to scare at Westroads Mall”

-”Teens In Custody After Woodland Mall Fight”

-”Boy Robbed During Black Friday Shopping At Arundel Mills”

-”Shoppers Were So Obsessed With Black Friday Deals They Left Their Infants Unattended”

Fortunately, many Americans are starting to get fed up with Black Friday.  In fact, one activist named Mark Dice actually went out and heckled Black Friday shoppers this year.  I found the following You Tube video to be very funny, and I think most of you will too…

In the end, it is not that big of a deal that people want to fight with one another to save 50 dollars on a cell phone.

But this kind of extreme selfishness and desperation could become a massive problem someday if society breaks down and suddenly millions of extremely selfish and desperate people are scrambling for survival.

With each passing day our economy is getting even weaker, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.  What are people going to do when the next spike in unemployment hits us and nobody can find work?

To get an idea of where things are headed, just look at Europe.  In both Greece and Spain the unemployment rate is over 25 percent and civil unrest has become almost a constant problem in both of those countries.

So what kind of riots will we see in the United States when the economy gets much worse than it is now?

Already there are signs of social decay all around us, and most Americans are completely unprepared for what will happen if a major disaster or emergency does strike.

Sadly, the reality is that most Americans live on a month to month basis.  Most families do not have any emergency savings to speak of, and one recent poll found that 55 percent of all Americans only have enough food in their homes to survive for three days or less.

To me, that is an absolutely insane number.

We just came through a summer of extreme drought and global food supplies have dropped to a 40 year low.  Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and the global financial system could fall apart at any time.  Most of us just assume that there will always be huge amounts of very cheap food available to us, but unfortunately that simply is not a safe assumption.  The following is from a recent article in the Guardian…

Evan Fraser, author of Empires of Food and a geography lecturer at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, says: “For six of the last 11 years the world has consumed more food than it has grown. We do not have any buffer and are running down reserves. Our stocks are very low and if we have a dry winter and a poor rice harvest we could see a major food crisis across the board.”

“Even if things do not boil over this year, by next summer we’ll have used up this buffer and consumers in the poorer parts of the world will once again be exposed to the effects of anything that hurts production.”

When I watch my fellow Americans trample one another to get a deal on a television or a video game, it makes me wonder what they would be willing to do if they went to the store someday and all the food was gone.

Desperate people do desperate things, and someday if there was a major economic breakdown in the United States I think the level of desperation in this country would be extremely frightening.

Source: The Economic Collapse

Farewell To A Giant

On this Thanksgiving, I am reminded of how blessed I have been to be able to rub shoulders with many of the political and religious giants of the Twentieth (and now Twenty-First) Century. During the past 30-plus years, I have been allowed to get to know a good many of the men and women that would have to be regarded as giants in the fields of religion and politics. Many of these have already passed on; a few remain. In the field of politics, the giant of them all is Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

There is no doubt in my mind that history will regard Dr. Paul as the greatest congressman in US history. Ron Paul has done more to guard and defend liberty and constitutional government than perhaps any man since Thomas Jefferson. Dr. Paul’s legacy and influence will remain after most congressmen and senators have been long forgotten. What Patrick Henry was to Colonial America, Ron Paul has been to modern America. I am so grateful for the opportunity to get to personally know this man and to be able to call him my friend.

I was honored to be his personal representative in several notable gatherings in South Carolina during the 2008 Republican primary. I was honored to campaign with him in Iowa during that same primary. I’ve spoken on the same platform with him on numerous occasions. I was honored to be the speaker directly in front of him (and was honored to introduce him) in giant rallies stretching from Washington, D.C., to Reno, Nevada. I have been in private meetings with him and gotten to know him on a personal level. In my estimation, America has never known a more honest and genuine man. His integrity is impeccable, his honor unscathed.

It was with the utmost sadness that I watched Ron Paul give his Farewell Address to Congress last week. As he concluded his remarks and walked away from the Well of the House, I wept. I thought to myself: “There goes the greatest champion of liberty in a century; we may never see his likes again.” I wasn’t weeping for Dr. Paul though; I was weeping for America.

Unfortunately for us, Ron’s one weakness was his oratorical skills–or lack thereof. Then again, it’s my observation that most geniuses are much better writers than they are speakers. And make no mistake about it: Ron Paul is a genius. As I understand it, Thomas Jefferson was no great orator either. But as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, there was certainly nothing shabby about his writing. And in those days, the American citizenry was more acutely attuned to the principles of liberty than is this generation. I don’t think it is much of a stretch to suggest that had Jefferson lived in this generation, he would never have been elected President either. Ron’s failure to obtain the Presidency is not a testament to his failure; it is a testament to the failure of this generation to recognize and appreciate the principles of liberty for which Ron stood.

Furthermore, in my opinion, Dr. Paul’s Farewell Address last week (which was delivered from a prepared, written text) is second in greatness only to George Washington’s Farewell Address. It was magnificent! As was Washington’s, Ron Paul’s Farewell Address should be regarded as the blueprint for liberty for the next 100 years. If anyone is looking for a platform upon which to mount a future political campaign (if he or she is interested in preserving liberty, that is), study and memorize Ron Paul’s Farewell Address.

I initially intended to use this column to expound upon the points Dr. Paul addressed in his remarks. But it came to me, for me to try and give commentary on Ron’s remarks, would be to seriously reduce their quality. How could someone such as me improve upon what someone such as Ron Paul said?

Accordingly, with all of the earnestness in my being, I urge readers to watch and read Congressman Ron Paul’s Farewell Address. See it at:

http://www.thedailybell.com/28295/Ron-Paul-Farewell-to-Congress

In all honestly, I have never heard anyone on Capitol Hill make such an intelligent, reasoned, passionate, and trenchant argument for the cause of liberty than Dr. Paul made in his Farewell Address. The principles set forth in that address would literally restore liberty and prosperity to America. Furthermore, following those principles would certainly avert the calamity that is soon coming to this country. Unfortunately, neither major party in Washington, D.C., has any intention on subscribing to those principles, because, for the most part, our federal government is led by corrupt, self-serving men who are void of any sense of honor and integrity.

Dr. Paul began his address lamenting that by outward appearances it didn’t appear that his nearly 24 years of service in Congress had accomplished much. I know that feeling! I often feel as did our Lord’s disciples, “We have toiled all night and taken nothing.” However, had Ron Paul lived during the formative years of our nation, there is no question we would be referring to him as President Paul. But make no mistake about it: Ron’s life has influenced tens of millions of freedom-loving people, both here and around the world. As I said at the Ron Paul Festival in Tampa, Florida, recently, “Ron Paul is bigger than Ron Paul!”

See my speech at Paul Fest at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aajr3zLqCzQ

Ron Paul has reignited the spirit of liberty in the hearts and minds of millions of us. His zeal and passion for freedom will resonate in the hearts of Americans for generations to come.

Unfortunately, not all of those who claim association with Ron Paul truly share his vision and passion for liberty. Many of them are self-serving opportunists, who want to personally profit from Dr. Paul’s name and reputation. Be careful of them! One thing Ron Paul never did was compromise. Did you see him endorsing the neocon John McCain? No. Did you see him endorsing the neocon Mitt Romney? No. If I’m not mistaken, I might have been the only man since Ronald Reagan whom Ron Paul endorsed for President of the United States. If so, that is an honor I will cherish unto my dying breath.

Beware of those who claim association with Ron Paul, but who promote compromise and appeasement. Beware of those who would trade on Ron Paul’s name for their own personal agendas. Beware of those who claim Ron Paul’s pedigree, yet who are nothing more than establishment insiders–or who want to be. Ron Paul was never intimidated by, or enamored with, the establishment. He could not be bullied or bribed. He was an indefatigable, courageous champion of liberty. And those who claim his legacy, but who seek the approbation of the establishment elite, never understood the first thing about Ron Paul.

As I watched Dr. Paul’s Farewell Address last week, I was reminded of how fortunate I was to be his friend and how blessed this generation of Americans was to be touched by his life and work. But as is the case with so many great men, Ron Paul has never truly received the honor that is due him. I pray one day he will.

Hurricane Sandy’s Austerity Lessons

Teaneck,N.J.  — The damage incurred by Hurricane Sandy – the largest Atlantic super-storm on record — is second only to New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina in terms of magnitude and cost.  Occurring just before Halloween and dubbed “Frankenstorm,” Sandy demolished coastal communities in the Caribbean, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States.

One hundred-mile winds and powerful high tide waters ripped into coastal barriers and the landscape, causing an estimated $60 billion dollars in damages 1.  Flooding and power outages were commonplace, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and millions without electricity, heat and/or provisions.  Others devastated by the storm included the sick, elderly, handicapped, and poor who could not get vital medicines by pharmacy or mail; those who lost life savings because the damage to their homes were not insured against certain eventualities; and those who lost their livelihoods through destruction. And although there was no gas shortage by cause of resource depletion, the lack of electricity prevented filling stations from dispensing fuel, resulting in long lines and rationing.

While the level of distress among storm casualties should not be underestimated, and many Good Samaritans rushed to the aid of the less fortunate and continue to selflessly volunteer right up until today, there were those in the Northeastern United States who were wholly unprepared to be inconvenienced by ensuing power outages. It is to “the inconvenienced” that this article is dedicated.

Following are bona fide statements made by some New Yorkers and New Jersey-ites during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

• “I couldn’t take living in a cold house, so checked into a hotel.”

• “The storm has been devastating. No Internet and TV for two days.”

• “I’m dying to wash my hair, but it’s too much work to heat the water on my stove top.”

• “It was murder waiting in line for three hours this morning for gas.”

• “How am I supposed to survive without eggs?”

Now let’s compare these to comments made by authentic casualties of the super-storm:

• “Our house got washed out into theAtlantic, but we’re glad to be alive and will make a fresh start.”

•  “A tree fell on our roof and other neighborhood homes, so we’ve gathered the downed limbs and hosted an outdoor bonfire to build morale.”

•  “Winds were whipping through my windows when I heard screams for help. I saw my neighbor clutching a fence as water surged around her. If I didn’t open our door and drag her in, she would have been swept out to sea.”

• “I’ve stayed behind to chainsaw down a tree that fell on our house, but the worst hasn’t happened. The important thing is that my wife and children are out of harm’s way.”

• “Floods displaced almost everyone on the block, so we hosted a Hurricane Party to offer a safe place and serve the food that was going to spoil without refrigeration.”

The latter category of commentaries demonstrate that there are many who know the meaning of life-and-death circumstances, and can even uplift others in the wake of hardship.

While surely unintentional, this natural disaster has afforded those affected by it a small taste of how countless others around the rest of the world live – and many not just during a crisis, but on a regular basis. Perhaps the most ironic here is that a great number of the deprived in less fortunate lands have been disenfranchised or “bombed back into the Stone Age” as a result ofUSforeign policy.

According to a 2009 report in Scientific American magazine, more than one quarter of the world’s population does not have electricity 2. Obviously, since that estimate was recorded three years ago, it does not include the more recent destruction, sometimes of entire infrastructures, in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, or Gaza.  And a World Watch Institute report notes that the United States, with less than five percent of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s natural resources 3.

Perhaps Americans — especially younger generations who have not experienced war, shortages or poverty — are unaware of the above statistics and the privileged lifestyles that they themselves enjoy. More than 1.5 billion people around the world live in absolute poverty, with scarce access to food, shelter, water or sanitation 4.  In many countries, people customarily wait on lines for the distribution of food and fuel.  Kenyans, among many other nationals around the globe, boil untreated water for cooking and drinking. As Peace Corps volunteers will attest, firewood remains a primary everyday source of heat and method of cooking in many countries where reliable electricity and gas supplies are still not always available 5.  Families in Armenia with the means to do so salt their meats, pickle their vegetables, and preserve their fruits to cope with the absence of refrigeration or food in winter.   According to an Aleppo native who only wanted to be identified as “Takouhi,” and who, like her neighbors, roams for food while dodging indiscriminate shelling in Syria, “we eat what ever we can find at this point.” The above are where austerity lessons are to be learned.

If Hurricane Sandy has helped those inconvenienced by the storm begin to identify the however temporarily missing privileges they have taken for granted, the storm’s damage may provide a ‘teachable moment.’ But if a college-educated, foreign-born-but-local acquaintance of mine is any barometer (she was nonplussed that her grocery store stocked no bananas in the immediate aftermath of the Hurricane), let us not be surprised if cognitive dissonance persists among some who can’t or won’t gain insight from adversity.   As such, I welcome the notion of a lawful requirement that every American perform volunteer humanitarian work, particularly abroad, to get a sense of how many others must live.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is among those who consider climate change “the new normal,” and calls for fresh approaches to protect the environment and public 6. As natural resources continue to deplete and pundits debate the reality of global warming and its effect on the planet, will Americans wake up to the realities and necessities of conservation? Are we prepared to survive amid hardship if and when we cannot simply retreat to the nearest hotel, restaurant or safe house? Do we know how to deal with scarcity, practice self-reliance, and band together?  While municipalities are increasingly on the alert, it would be circumspect for individuals to also prepare for future environmental disasters, and interrupted or altogether eliminated conveniences down the line.

A woman slated to participate in the New York Marathon was interviewed on CBS News Radio, saying, “As soon as Mayor Bloomberg cancelled the Marathon in the face of Sandy, I donated my hotel room to someone displaced by the storm, and volunteered with relief workers to help those in need. 7”  Once electrical power returned to her home in Queens, civic-minded Rocio Duque immediately joined with the “Occupy Sandy” volunteers to help the dispossessed in Staten Island 8.  “We want to teach our children that while there may always be somebody more fortunate in life than they are, there will also be those who are less fortunate, too,” said Wendy Loszynski of Bergenfield, New Jersey, who, with her husband and three children, helped out at a hurricane relief center in Moonachie. “Volunteering this way can help our children better appreciate what they have in life, whether possessions or good health, instead of worrying about what they don’t have,” Loszynski continued.

Particularly as Thanksgiving approaches, may these and other examples of altruism, charity and solidarity in the face of adversity continue to emerge, inspire, and even guide us if and when disaster comes along.

1         http://business.time.com/2012/10/31/hurricane-sandy-estimated-to-cost-60-billion/

2         https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electricity-gap-developing-countries-energy-wood-charcoal

3         http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810

4         http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/gaef3313.doc.htm

5         http://www.teachkidspeace.org/the-importance-of-the-work-of-the-peace-corps-volunteers.html

6         http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/cuomo-on-climate-change-extreme-weather-new-york-governor-daily-news-op-ed_n_2137559.html

7         http://www.wtop.com/1211/3105123/NYC-marathon-runners-donate-hotel-rooms-to-Sandy-victims

8         http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

 

Is Now The Time To Move Away From Major U.S. Cities?

As the U.S. economy falls apart and as the world becomes increasingly unstable, more Americans than ever are becoming “preppers”.  It is estimated that there are at least two million preppers in the United States today, but nobody really knows.  The truth is that it is hard to take a poll because a lot of preppers simply do not talk about their preparations.  Your neighbor could be storing up food in the garage or in an extra bedroom and you might never even know it.  An increasing number of Americans are convinced that we are on the verge of some really bad things happening.  But will just storing up some extra food and supplies be enough?  What is going to happen if we see widespread rioting in major U.S. cities like George Soros is predicting?  What is going to happen if the economy totally falls to pieces and our city centers descend into anarchy like we saw in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?  In some major U.S. cities such as Detroit, looting is already rampant.  There are some sections of Detroit where entire blocks of houses are being slowly dismantled by thieves and stripped of anything valuable.  Sadly, the economy is going to get a lot worse than it is at the moment.  So is now the time to move away from major U.S. cities?  Should preppers be seeking safer locations for themselves and their families?  Those are legitimate questions.

According to a recent Gallup poll, satisfaction with the government is now at an all-time low.  Americans are rapidly losing faith in virtually every major institution in society.

Anger and frustration are rising to very dangerous levels, and we are rapidly approaching a boiling point.

When people feel as though they have lost everything, they get desperate.

And desperate people do desperate things.

In many communities in the United States today, crime has become so terrifying that people are literally sleeping with their guns.

The following is a story from Rancho Cordova, California that one of my readers recently sent me….

When I first moved here, it was not a bad place, it was quiet and clean.

However, over the past three years this place has gone to the dumps there are thugs and unruly people everywhere.

I have prevented two car break-ins by scaring these thugs away.

While I was home on thanksgiving weekend, someone decided to break into my apartment.

They trashed my place stole all my items and even took my law enforcement (LE) vehicle to include my equipment.

I m sure they had been watching me for a while because they did not take items that contained my identification.

Thank god, I had my weapon with me.

In many areas of the country, law enforcement resources are being dramatically cut back due to budget problems at the same time that crime is rapidly rising.

Right now, the city of Detroit is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.  Officials there recently announced that due to budget constraints, all police stations will be closed to the public for 16 hours a day.  From now on, they will only be open to the public from 8 AM to 4 PM.

But in Detroit the police are needed now more than ever.  The following is what one British reporter found during his visit to Detroit….

Much of Detroit is horribly dangerous for its own residents, who in many cases only stay because they have nowhere else to go. Property crime is double the American average, violent crime triple. The isolated, peeling homes, the flooded roads, the clunky, rusted old cars and the neglected front yards amid trees and groin-high grassland make you think you are in rural Alabama, not in one of the greatest industrial cities that ever existed.

The population of Detroit is less than half of what it used to be.  Over the past few decades people have left in droves, and large sections of the city are in an advanced state of decay.

Not too many people want to buy homes in Detroit now.  At this point, the median price of a home in Detroit is just $6000.

The following video contains some video footage of the “ruins of Detroit” that is hard to believe….

Detroit has become a very scary place.  100 bus drivers in Detroit recently refused to drive their routes out of fear of being attacked on the streets.  The head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, said that the drivers were literally “scared for their lives“….

“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

But it is not just Detroit that is having these kinds of problems.

In Cleveland, over 50 percent of all children are living in poverty and abandoned houses are everywhere.

The city has already demolished about 1,000 homes, and there is a plan to demolish 20,000 more homes.  The following comes from a recent CBS News report by Scott Pelley….

Perfectly good homes, worth 75, 100 thousand dollars or more a couple of years ago, are being ripped to splinters in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Here, the great recession left one fifth of all houses vacant. The owners walked away because they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep paying on a mortgage debt that can be twice the value of the home. Cleveland waited four years for home values to recover and now they’ve decided to face facts and bury the dead.

Down in St. Louis they have a different problem.  In some of the worst areas of the city, roving packs of wild dogs are a serious threat to children that are walking to school.  A recent report by the local CBS affiliate in St. Louisdescribed the situation this way….

…Lewis Reed is sounding the alarm. “I’ve witnessed packs of dogs, 10 and 15 dogs running together, and I’ve seen all these dogs I’m talking about they don’t have collars, they don’t have tags, these are truly wild dogs,” he said.

Reed says stray dogs are terrorizing the north side. “It’s obscene that parents have to walk their kids to school, in some parts of the city, with a golf club to fend off wild dogs.”

How would you feel if you had to fend off wild packs of dogs as you walked your child to school?

These kinds of conditions can be found out on the west coast as well.

For example, there is an area of San Francisco that is known as “Hunter’s Point” that is an absolute nightmare.  In Hunter’s Point, over half of the population lives in poverty and more than half of all children live in a home where there is no father present.  The following is what one reporter discovered on a visit to Hunter’s Point….

Abernathy and I cut through the complex, tromping over an expanse of dirt and concrete toward the northeast end of the development, where a row of apartments looked down from a grassy hill. We paused next to a vacant, boarded-over unit to take in the scene: A stream of ****, piss, tampons, and toilet paper spewed from a dark hole in the sidewalk, poured down the hill, and formed a sort of **** lagoon next to the street. Weeds, about six inches tall, were growing in the little lagoon.

Raw ****, obviously, is not cool. Beyond the fact that it smells and looks nasty, fecal matter provides a haven for dangerous bacteria, most notably E. coli, a virulent pathogen that can sicken and even kill humans, especially infants.

When conditions like this reign, it is a prime breeding ground for crime.

In major U.S. cities all over the United States, drug dealing, gang activity and prostitution are on the rise.  The following comes from a recent article in the New York Times….

In November, a terrified 13-year-old girl pounded on an apartment door in Brooklyn. When a surprised woman answered, the girl pleaded for a phone. She called her mother, and then dialed 911.

The girl, whom I’ll call Baby Face because of her looks, frantically told police that a violent pimp was selling her for sex. He had taken her to the building and ordered her to go to an apartment where a customer was waiting, she said, and now he was waiting downstairs to make sure she did not escape. She had followed the pimp’s directions and gone upstairs, but then had pounded randomly on this door in hopes of getting help.

In some major U.S. cities, the gangs have virtually taken over.  In an article entitled “City of Ruins“, Chris Hedges described what life is like today in Camden, New Jersey….

There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13. Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city’s few thriving businesses. A weapon, police say, is never more than a few feet away, usually stashed behind a trash can, in the grass or on a porch.

As I wrote about the other day, the FBI says that there are now 1.4 million gang members inside this country.  That number has increased by 40 percent since 2009.

Organized criminal behavior by groups of young people is on the rise all over the nation.  Just check out this video which shows a flash mob robbery happening in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

This country is still enjoying a tremendous amount of prosperity.  We still have a very high standard of living compared to most of the rest of the world.

So how nightmarish are things going to get when the economy gets really bad?

The most frightening thing is when these criminals start invading private homes.

The following home invasion story from Sacramento, California was sent to me by one of my readers a while back….

Somebody got into my sister’s house last night while she was out. My mom was upstairs, but didn’t hear anything. Whoever it was, they ate some chips and sorted through a stack of maternity clothes my sister had ready for selling on ebay. He left a dirty pair of boxer shorts and a bottom dentures on the dining room table. Fortunately, he was gone when she got home. I’m amazed, but the police actually came out and collected fingerprints and his boxers and false teeth. Probably a homeless guy. He may have switched his dirty boxers for a clean pair of maternity jeans, so the police just have to look for a guy wearing women’s maternity pants with no lower teeth. 

Because of stuff like this, an increasing number of Americans have decided that it is better to be armed.

The truth is that you never know when you will get jumped.

For example, in Pennsylvania the other day one 65-year-old man was suddenly knocked off his bicycle by three teen thugs.

The 65-year-old man responded by pulling out his gun and shooting two of them.  One of the teens was killed.

Down along the border with Mexico, many ranchers have discovered that a gun battle could potentially erupt on any night.  The federal government has refused to protect the border, and so millions of illegals just keep streaming on in.  The following was recently posted on standwitharizona.com….

Barbed wire fencing doesn’t keep illegal aliens off the property anymore. One Starr County, TX rancher doesn’t have time to worry about the illegals these days. He now worries about the smugglers protecting their loads.

“I don’t think they would have any conscience of taking someone’s life,” the rancher says.

He saw that will to kill firsthand. A smuggler shot at him on his own land.

“One round was fired at me, and it missed my head by about two feet,” says the rancher.

He says there’s only way to react.

“Fire all the rounds you have, reload, and do it again,” says the rancher.

The more stories like this you read, the easier it is to understand why more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States during 2011.

The truth is that you never know when you may need to defend yourself.

This past New Year’s Eve, a single mother named Sarah McKinley was home alone with her three-month old son when she discovered that two armed men were trying to invade her home.  If she had not had a gun, there is no telling what might have happened.  The following is from a news story  about that incident….

An Oklahoma woman was recently home with her 3 month old son when two men tried to break in.  Armed with a shot gun and a pistol she called 9-1-1.

Operator: “Are your doors locked?”

Caller: “Yes, I’ve got two guns in my hand.   Is it ok to shoot him if he comes in this door?”

Operator: “I can’t tell you what you can do but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.”

The mother did shoot killing one of the intruders.  Oklahoma police called the shooting justified.

What would you have done in that situation?

America is rapidly changing, and we all need to adapt to the new reality all around us.

The truth is that America is not the same place it used to be.  In some U.S. cities, authorities are actually dumping dead bodies into mass graves.

Just check out what the Daily Mail says has been going on in Chicago….

It’s a practice more closely associated with third world countries, but in bleak times in a Chicago-area suburb, 30 people were buried in a mass grave on Wednesday.

The pauper’s burial section at Homewood Memorial Gardens was established for those who could not afford to pay for a burial plot.

And it is a problem that’s sweeping America as tough economic times have led to an increase in the number of indigent burials the morgue must perform.

All over the country, major U.S. cities are flat broke and are rapidly decaying.  They are filled with impoverished people that are rapidly becoming angrier and more frustrated.

There simply are not enough jobs for everyone.  Millions of ordinary Americans spend their days agonizing over the fact that they cannot provide even a basic living for themselves and their families.

And as the economy gets even worse, the economic despair in this country is going to grow to unprecedented levels.

So is now the time to move away from major U.S. cities?

In the end, each of us is going to have to answer that question for ourselves.

Jobs are scarce, so if you have a good job right now it may not be wise to give it up.  It can be incredibly challenging to move to a new area when you don’t have a job.

One solution may be to move farther away from your current job so that you are in a more rural setting.  But the rising cost of gasoline can make that a very expensive proposition.

Some families are purchasing second homes that they can “bug out” to in the event of a major disaster or emergency.  But if your financial resources are limited that may not be an option for you.

In the final analysis, you have just got to do the best you can with what you have.

But if you are able to move, it is better to do it while times are relatively stable (like now) than when times are very unstable.

So what do all of you think?

Do you think that now is the time to move away from major U.S. cities?

Source: The American Dream

US-Israeli Spring Will Bring Deployment of Thousands of US Soldiers

This spring, Israel and US will showcase the largest ever missile defense exercise and establish US command posts in Israel and Israeli Forces will occupy EUCOM headquarters in Germany.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Lt.Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US’s Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel and finalized the plans for “Austere Challenge 12”.

This misguided action will deploy several thousand American soldiers in Israel and establish joint task forces that further entwine US-Israeli policies that favor military muscle over diplomacy, equal human rights and justice.

Presidential candidates pontificate over the dangers of nuclear weapons in Iran and are oblivious to the danger to the American people because of US support of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and collusion in Israel’s nuclear ambiguity/deceptions.

As the West was adopting more sanctions against Tehran claiming Iran is manufacturing WMD, Iran responded in a 10-day war game naval exercise near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

All of the oil output of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Iraq and Iran run through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is well equipped with missile boats and land-based missiles. It doesn’t require much intelligence to comprehend that Iran would close off the Strait of Hormuz as soon as the first plane from Israel or US entered Iranian airspace.  The blowback to the world’s economy with the elimination of nearly a fifth of the industrial nations’ supply of oil would lead to the end of the world as we all now know it.

What we all need to know is what Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s nuclear whistle-blower said just prior to Israel sending him back to solitary confinement for 78 days in 2010-the outcome of his historic freedom of speech trial and punishment for speaking to foreign media in 2004:

“Everyone knows Israel has 200 bombs-hydrogen, nitrogen…No one wants atomic weapons in the Middle East….No one wants Israel or the Middle East to have atomic weapons, because if Israel has the bomb Iran will have the bomb.”

What Americans desperately need to know is what Vanunu told me in 2005:

“President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

“Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago. Back then,the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.

“Kennedy demanded inspections. When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.” [1]

On 2 October 2009, The Washington Times reported that Obama agreed to keep Israel’s nukes ‘secret’ and reaffirmed a 4-decade-old understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections.” [2]

Three officials spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, but all said Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May 2009.

Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.

This nuclear deception was reached at a summit between President Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on 25 September 1969, with “the United States passively accepting Israel’s nuclear weapons status as long as Israel does not unveil publicly its capability or test a weapon.”[Ibid]

In 2007, the Nixon library declassified a 19 July 1969, memo from Henry Kissinger, the then national security adviser stating: “While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”

The “established international facts” were exposed in 1986, when Mordechai Vanunu told the truth and provided the photographic proof of Israel’s seven story underground WMD Facility that can be viewed on You Tube:

Another established international fact occurred on 17 April 2010, when Iran hosted a conference in Tehran on nuclear disarmament with sixty countries represented.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement delivered at the conference stating that nuclear weaponry was “haram” meaning prohibited under Islam and he also blew the doors off Israel’s and America’s nuclear deceptions:

“If America’s claims of fighting the proliferation of nuclear weapons were not false, would the Zionist regime be able to turn the occupied Palestinian lands into an arsenal where a huge number of nuclear weapons are stored while refusing to respect international regulations in this regard, especially the NPT?

“There is only one government that has committed a nuclear crime so far. Only the government of the United States of America has attacked the oppressed people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs in an unfair and inhumane war…using or even threatening to use such weapons is a serious violation of the most basic rules of philanthropy and is a clear manifestation of war crimes.

“The greatest violators of the NPT are the powers who have reneged on their obligation to dispose of nuclear weapons mentioned in Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. These powers have even surpassed other countries with respect to promoting nuclear weapons in the world. By providing the Zionist regime with nuclear weapons and supporting its policies, these powers play a direct role in promoting nuclear weapons which is against the obligations they have undertaken according to Article 1 of the NPT.

“We believe that besides nuclear weapons, other types of weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons also pose a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation, which is itself a victim of chemical weapons, feels more than any other nation the danger that is caused by the production and stockpiling of such weapons and is prepared to make use of all its facilities to counter such threats. We consider the use of such weapons as haram (religiously forbidden) and believe that it is everyone’s duty to make efforts to secure humanity against this great disaster.”[3]

In 1987, from Ashkelon prison, Vanunu wrote:

“The passive acceptance and complacency with regard to the existence of nuclear weapons anywhere on earth is the disease of society today.

“This struggle is not only a legitimate one – it is a moral, inescapable struggle.

“Already now there are enough nuclear missiles to destroy the world many times over [and] this issue should unite us all, because that is our real enemy.

“Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?” [4]

In 1961, John F. Kennedy warned:

“Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

The ties that bind US-Israeli policies are not in the best interests of Americans-or anyone else in the world.

1. BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

2.http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/02/president-obama-has-reaffirmed-a-4-decade-old-secr/

3. http://www.juancole.com/2010/04/khamenei-us-only-nuclear-criminal-for-hiroshima.html

4. BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

Hollywood Unraveling the Fabric of Society

Liberal Hollywood is intentionally corrupting children’s morals via the movies and TV programs they produce for public consumption.  Dictionary.com defines the word intentional in this way: done with intention or on purpose.  In my opinion the harm Hollywood is doing to the minds and hearts of the next generation, which includes people of faith, is on purpose — and it’s criminal.

In my last article, Kids are being exposed to shocking levels of sexual content, I alerted parents to one of the plot lines in the popular TV show ‘Glee.’:

Fox Entertainment’s prime time Emmy nominated musical series ‘Glee’ is viewed by tens of thousands of teens, especially girls.  On November 8 the hit show featured two high school age couples losing their virginity.  One couple was heterosexual, the other homosexual.  Not surprisingly the ‘gay’ couple was featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly with the headline: Gay Teens On TV – How a bold new class of young gay characters on shows like ‘Glee’ is changing hearts, minds and Hollywood.” The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) nominated ‘Glee’ for best TV comedy series that promotes homosexuality. 

The Parents TV Council recently alerted the public to the Worst TV Show of the Week. Guess which TV show they picked?  Yep, ‘Glee.’  Here’s why:

In a previous episode, Puck expressed his infatuation for Shelby in a fantasy-musical number of Van Halen’s “Hot for the Teacher.” In this episode, he basically serenades her with his classroom rendition of Melissa Etheridge’s “I’m the Only One.” Shelby rebuffs his advances until a medical emergency sends her reeling. Puck comes to her rescue, comforting her at the hospital after her adopted daughter (Puck and Quinn’s child) needs stitches due to an accidental fall. Suddenly, in Shelby’s vulnerable state, Puck ends up in her bed. Post coitus, Puck tells her, “You know, the advantage of a relationship with a younger dude is that I still got four more rounds in me before I need a steak sandwich and a Coke Zero.” Shelby immediately regrets what they’ve done and ushers him out.

Student-teacher sexual abuse has been spotlighted in the news lately due to recent legislation passed in Missouri designed to curtail contact between students and teachers via social networking. The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, named after a student who was repeatedly assaulted by a middle school teacher, was signed into law in July, and has prompted school districts across the country to reconsider their social networking policies amid a rash of high-profile allegations of sexual misconduct between teachers and students. Just this past October an Ohio gym teacher, Stacy Schuler, was convicted of sexual battery for having sex with five male students.

Against this backdrop, the Puck-Shelby storyline is the height of irresponsibility. The show tries to skirt the legal issues by stating that Puck is 18 years old. But the show glosses over the inherent power imbalance of a student-teacher relationship. Regardless of who is the aggressor, any sexual relationship between a high-school student and a teacher is exploitative. (Online source) 

You ask, why would the producers/writers of ‘Glee’ make light of a teacher and a student having casual sex?  The answer is obvious.  These people have no scruples!  They couldn’t care less if young people in middle school have sex.  The producers/writers simply lack a moral compass.  You’d think adults would be aware of the downside of immature teens engaging in sexual relations.  Does it not occur to them that market share and advertising revenue isn’t worth a story line that potentially will result in girls 15 and younger becoming pregnant?

At a very young age an unwed pregnant girl whose lover wants no part of the mess they’re in is forced to make some life changing decisions that require maturity beyond her years.  Decisions such as: 1) Should I abort my baby; 2) Should I go through with the pregnancy; 3) If I go through with the pregnancy should I then allow a couple to adopt my baby;  4) Should I keep my baby and raise it myself; 5) Should I drop out of school.

Is it possible that this actually does occur to Hollywood elites but for them it’s all about pushing the envelope, making oodles of money, receiving awards — and most importantly, becoming famous.  After all, it’s famous faces that get splashed across the covers of magazines, right?

There are other ramifications when teens engage in casual sex.  For example, the ones who have loose morals are far more likely to contract diseases such as HIV/AIDS, human papillomavirus (genital warts or HPV), genital herpes, Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis.

Instead of encouraging young people to abstain from having sex, Tinseltown’s message to them is to practice ‘safe sex.’  In other words, use a condom.  Problem is most teens (and a large number of adults) are unaware that condoms do not provide 100% effectiveness against some STDs.

So – is it any wonder that 25% of American teenage girls ages 14-19 have at least one STD?  Currently there’s no cure for HPV.  Moreover, this dreadful virus can lead to cervical cancer!  Girls who have sexual intercourse before the age of 18 are unaware that they have an increased risk for developing cervical dysplasia which can lead to cervical cancer.  That’s not all.  Giving birth before the age of 16 increases the risk of developing cervical dysplasia.  And for all you Gardasil fans, the vaccine protects against the types of HPV infection that cause most cervical cancers but it does not protect against all infections.  Here’s more bad news.  Many STDs have vague or no symptoms.

As if the health risks aren’t bad enough a recent study conducted by Ohio State University College of Medicine reports that teen sex may impair brain development!   The study reveals, how social experiences during adolescence when the brain is still developing can have broad consequences. … Specifically, the animals that mated earlier in life had higher levels of depressive behaviors, changes to the brain and smaller reproductive tissues compared to those that had intercourse later or not at all.

“Having a sexual experience during this time point, early in life, is not without consequence,” study co-author John Morris, a doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State, said in a statement. (Online source)

Those who work in the entertainment industry are most responsible for sexualizing young people so I find it ironic that they promote safe sex!  Earth to Tinseltown !  The so-called safety measures are not all that safe. And we now learn that teen sex may affect brain development!

Brent Bozell wrote a piece titled Hollywood’s Soda-Pop Statism.  Bozell informs us that on a far left blog, former entertainment executive Laurie David offered this pre-holiday piece of encouragement:

“Thanksgiving Conversation Starter: Is It Time to Ban Soda Ads on Prime Time Television?”At the same time that the broadcast networks are allowing – even advocating – the removal of all limitations on nudity or profanity on TV, at any hour of the day, David is most upset about those old polar bear ads for Coca-Cola:

“Knowing what I know now about the effects of sugary drinks on children, the image of kids chugging down a Coke (or in this case polar bear cubs) evokes the same feelings I’d get if they were taking a deep drag on cigarettes.”

One wonders if a high school student engaging in sex with his/her history teacher would evoke a raised eyebrow from Laurie David.  One also wonders if she’s concerned that students are learning about ‘gay’ sex despite the fact that sodomy is a high risk behavior.

Instead of children learning reading, writing and arithmetic in our tax funded public schools, teachers all across America are mandated to teach children that sodomy is “normal and natural.”  Many Students graduate from high school unable to spell simple words or write a basic sentence, yet valuable class time is taken up to teach them the ends and outs of oral and anal sex?

Borrowing again from my last article, some of the health risks I pointed out inherent in ‘gay’ sex bear repeating.  For one thing, the homosexual community is the most severely affected by HIV/AIDS and are the only risk group in which new HIV infections have been steadily increasing since the early 1990s.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report titled HIV among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men, in 2006 homosexuals accounted for 53% of all new HIV infections in the U.S.  And Lorie David worries about youngsters imbibing soft drinks?

Getting back to ‘Glee’ the executives and sponsors of the show need to tune into the news once in a while. The program that spotlighted a teenage student having sex with his adult teacher was aired about the time that the story of former football coach Jerry Sandusky’s arrest for alleged child rape was making headlines.   Which begs the question: Why is ‘Glee’ playing with fire by showing teacher-student sex?  Okay, the student was 18. But a senior in high school nonetheless.

Hollywood…pushing the envelope…breaking taboos… desensitizing the public…tearing down the moral construct this country was built on…mocking the traditional family…rewriting history…disrespecting Judeo-Christian values…even blaspheming God.  Where do they plan to go next?  Could it be the normalization of pedophilia?   No, they wouldn’t go that far, would they?  Former child star Cory Feldman told CBS that pedophilia is Hollywood’s biggest problem.   (Online source)

The larger question is why do people, especially those who self-identify as Christians, allow the entertainment industry and product advertiser’s filth into their homes?   I believe it is because many parents are clueless as to what their children are being exposed to.

The apostle Paul wrote, And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Rom 12:2)

There’s not enough space to cover what perverts are doing behind the scenes to normalize pedophilia.  For those who want to know more about what the pervs are up to read Janet Shaw Crowse’s article Normalizing Penn State Pedophilia.

Being an outspoken Bible-believing Christian I’m bound to receive a flood of emails from pedophiles who feel the need to point out that Jesus Christ never mentioned the sick twisted perversion of man-boy sex (homosexuals use this argument too) so I’ll address what the Bible says here.

First off, the Apostle John states that Jesus said many things that were not written down (John 21:25).  For example, our Lord didn’t mention abortion, homosexuality, rape, incest, or cannibalism.  However, just because he didn’t address every sin throughout the Bible doesn’t mean He would approve.  Secondly, Jesus considered the writings of the Old Testament to be both trustworthy and authoritative.  Thirdly, Jesus addressed sex outside of marriage in Matthew 19:4-6.  He said marriage is between one man, the husband and one woman, the wife.  The bottom line is that the Bible condemns sex outside of marriage.

That said, anyone with an ounce of common sense understands that adult-child sex is an egregious sin.  Men and women who rob children of their innocence for their deviant self gratification should not be free to prowl school yards for innocent victims.  Moreover, anyone with an ounce of common sense will acknowledge that child rapists must be incarcerated.

I’ll close with some sage advice from Sam Blumenfeld in ‘Does God Exist?’:

“Imagine an America in which every child has a Bible and can study it in school! Do you think we’d have the moral chaos among teens we have today? That ought to be the great task of Christian missionaries today: to put a Bible in the hands of every child in America. Some won’t read it. But many others will.”

Recommended Reading:

Santa’s Claws: How OWS Is Being Drowned In A Bathtub

My friend Michael’s nephew Jake has been camping at Liberty Park since its inception — and now Jake has pneumonia.

 American heroes like Jake should be appearing on Letterman and leading the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and throwing out the first ball at Yankee Stadium and guest-starring on CSI New York and feted everywhere as the American heroes that they are.

Jake should be invited to dinner at the White House!

For standing up for the American people against the evil empire of corporatocracy that now runs our country, Jake has become another Paul Revere, another Nathan Hale, another Patrick Henry, another Benjamin Franklin.  But instead the media is treating him like he was another Aaron Burr.

Jake — and other valiant young people like him who are still holding out at Zucotti Park — are the absolute cream of America’s next generation and are endangering their very lives in order to save America from the corporatist Grinches who now own us lock, stock and Black Friday — but instead of becoming national heroes, the rest of America merely stands by while Wall Street shows its horrible red claws and tries to drown these young heroes of the OWS movement in a bathtub — just like it has tried to drown our economy, our liberty, our morals and our democracy as well.

There will be no presents under Jake’s tree in Liberty Park this year, only pneumonia, danger and scorn — unless all the rest of us Americans finally wake up, begin to actually fight for our country despite what the mainstream media is telling us, become more like Santa and start bearing gifts down to Jake and the rest of our new young national heroes bravely holding out at Zucotti Park — starting with bringing long underwear, chicken soup and penicillin!

Give us Liberty — or give us Wall Street — for Christmas.  We can’t have both.

Within the week, I expect to see Jake on TV reading Letterman’s top-ten list of things that Americans must do in order rescue democracy back from the evil bloody claws of Wall Street.

Occupy Oakland is setting up occupations in front of various foreclosed homes there — bringing the spirit of Christmas back to families victimized by Wall Street loan sharks.

Black Friday 2011: The Violence Continues

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Black Friday took a turn for the worse this year as shoppers in stores around the country resorted to fighting, shooting and even pepper-spraying their way to the most coveted deals.

The violence began even before Thanksgiving was technically over. Moments after a Walmart in Los Angeles opened its doors at 10 p.m., one woman reportedly used pepper spray on at least 20 customers – some of whom were children – to keep them away from the discounted electronics she planned to buy.

As if the pepper spray incident weren’t bad enough, shoppers elsewhere in California had to contend with something even more frightening: an actual shooting.

A man was found shot and bleeding in the parking lot of a Walmart in the Bay Area just before 2 a.m. The man and his family had apparently been the victim of an attempted mugging, as “several” people with guns tried to take the family’s purchases by force.

Meanwhile, police in Fayetteville, N.C., reported gunshots fired near the food court of a local mall at 2 a.m., but no injuries were reported.

And then there were the fights – after all, what Black Friday would be complete without the fights?

In Kissimmee, Fla., two men fought at a jewelry counter at a Walmart, and one of them had to be dragged away by the police, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Other customers captured videos of shouting matches in line, skirmishes in stores and showdowns between shoppers and protestors affiliated with Occupy Wall Street and put them up on YouTube.

Sadly, Black Friday violence is nothing new, though the actual number of injuries this year seems higher.

In 2010, one shopper in California was arrested for carrying a handgun and ammunition to stores and another was arrested for threatening to shoot those in line, though neither actually hurt other customers.

Then, of course, there was the infamous stampede at a New York Walmart on Black Friday three years ago that resulted in the death of one employee.

Moral of the story: sometimes it pays to shop from home.

Source: mainstreet.com

When hard work does NOT pay off: Ukrainian POWs in Canada

Billionaire fat cats always keep telling us that if we, the great unwashed, unemployed uncouth 99%, would just stop grumbling, get off our fat asses, go out and Get A Job, then everything would be all right and we would all be fat cats like them.  Nah.  The deck has already been stacked against us — and by the very same fat cats who are dealing the cards.  Obviously.

In real life, hard work doesn’t necessarily pay off.  Just look at what happened to Ukrainians in Canada for instance.

Up in Banff National Park, there is a small bronze monument out in the middle of nowhere, by the side of the road.  It is a statue of a single Ukrainian farmer — but it could have been a statue of any one of the rest of us 99%.

“Back in the 1880s,” someone in Banff recently told me, “Canadian railroad companies began an advertizing campaign in Britain that glowingly portrayed the wonders of life on the Canadian prairies to the gullible Brits — and then a bunch of British settlers were unceremoniously dumped off out in the middle of nowhere after having been promised free farmland.  But one year later, when railroad officials came back to see how the settlers were doing, half of the Brits were dead and the other half never wanted to see Canada again.”  So much for truth in advertizing.

“Not deterred, however, the railways then made the same promises to a bunch of farmers in Ukraine and they too got dumped out on the cold windy prairie.  But when railroad officials came back a year later, this time the prairies were thriving, everyone was happy and there was even extra produce to sell.  Their hard work had paid off.”

Or had it?

“By the time World War I arrived, British-Canadians had become so jealous of Ukrainian-Canadians that large numbers of Ukrainian-Canadians had been rounded up and thrown into concentration camps near Banff.”

There’s a moral here somewhere — that hard work doesn’t necessarily pay off?  Or that one should never trust the fat cats.

So next time that the oligarchs start calling us lazy because we’re not rich like them, think about all those poor hard-working Ukrainian-Canadians who lost their land because someone else, not them, was in charge of their government.  And then act accordingly.

PS:  After visiting the upscale town of Banff (aka “Be Aware — Nothing’s For Free”), I headed off to the legendary Lake Louise, which is, actually, surprisingly small.  And then I actually walked on top of an actual glacier.  Amazing.  Peaceful.  Awesome.  Now I understand why Tibetans are so spiritual.  You can’t help but think about Love and Beauty and the Mystery of Life when you’re surrounded by the stunning silence of an ice field.

After that, I stopped by Jasper, another Canadian version of Aspen or Vail.  And its acronym is “Just Another Shopping Paradise Extracting Revenue.”  Then on to Kamloops and Sun Peaks, aka “Sales Up, New Property Expensive, Please Erase Austerity, Keep Spending”.

PPS:  While many of our One Percent are happily off taking High Tea or heli-skiiing in Banff, what are the rest of us up to?  Fighting to preserve the pensions and Social Security benefits that our hard work has earned us?  Looking for work in an economy where there are four job-seekers for every one job?  Watching our homes go into foreclosure?

What, for instance, is Scott Olsen doing right now?

PPPS:  I’m still trying to find some mainstream media outlet to sponsor me to go over to Iraq and write about troop withdrawals.  The military won’t let me in without a mainstream sponsor — even though the Lone Star Iconoclast is willing to sponsor me and I’ve been there before.  Come on, MSM, man up and sponsor me!  How is America’s 99% going to ever know what is truly going on over there if coverage is only limited to media giants controlled by the good old One Percent?  Or is that exactly the point.

I’ve still got until Thanksgiving to find a sponsor and get over there.  Come on, guys!  Send me!  And I promise to send back all the news fit to print!

With Liberty & Justice For All: My Dude Ranch Experience In Montana

America really is one freaking large country.  Just driving across Montana has completely worn me out.  Plus they’ve got lots of cowboys and Indians in Montana.  And buffalo too.  I met an Indian in Glacier National Park the other day and asked him what he preferred to be called.  “Probably Native American would be best,” he replied.

“How about ‘First American’ instead?”

“Works for me.”

Then I went off to this dude ranch near Kalispell and the dude in charge there made me recite the Pledge of Allegiance before I was allowed to eat my dinner.  Sure, why not.  Actually, I just LOVE America’s wonderful Pledge of Allegiance — especially the part that says, “With liberty and justice for all”.  Liberty and justice for everyone!  Yay.  Liberty and justice for all First Americans — and liberty and justice for everyone else who has come here ever since.  Liberty and justice for all of us.

“Liberty and Justice for all”.  Now is that such a hard concept to grasp?

And if you’re still having trouble grasping the concept, check out this article on the subject from Forbes Magazine:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2011/10/16/the-contrasting-psychologies-of-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party/2/

It also seems to me that the more people here in America claim to be flag-waving patriots and the more that they try to shove the Pledge of Allegiance down our throats — the more likely these very same people, in direct inverse ratio to their proclaimed patriotism, will deliberately ignore the part of the Pledge that says, “With liberty and justice for all”.  But guess what, guys.  You can’t have it both ways.

And then I crossed the border over into Canada.  Apparently some newspaper in Canada recently took a big survey regarding who Canadians themselves would pick as the most wonderful Canadian of all.  And guess who Canadians picked hands-down by a huge margin?  Tommy Douglas.  “Tommy who?” you might ask.  Do Americans even know who Tommy Douglas even is?  Heck, do Americans even know who Canada’s current prime minister even is?

I myself thought for sure that Canadians would pick Wayne Gretzky to be Number One — but apparently not.

Anyway, Tommy Douglas was the man who was single-handedly responsible for creating Canada’s national single-payer healthcare system.  See?  Travel broadens.

And travel broadens literally too, of course, because Canada’s Thanksgiving is celebrated a whole month earlier than America’s Thanksgiving due to the fact that Canada’s growing season is shorter than ours and their harvests come in earlier than ours — and, as a result, I get to celebrate TWO Thanksgivings this year.  And eat two pumpkin pies.

My next stop is Banff National Park.

PS:  As I was sitting in a honky-tonk dive bar on Montana/Alberta border that was trying desperately to pass itself off as a duty-free shop, and eating a Magnum bar and listening to Willie Nelson, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

“What if, during the Reagan administration, our Ronnie had actually decided to be a true patriot instead of the sell-out he was, and he had stood up to Big Business and said, ‘For every job that gets outsourced to some third-world country for cheap labor, America should impose a tariff on the resultant returning products equal to the difference in the amount of wages paid to their guys instead of to our guys?’”

That would have been a brilliant thing for Reagan to do — or for Nixon, both Bushes or Clinton to do.  Or even All Gore for that matter (if his election hadn’t been stolen by corporatists, the unholy one percent).  And not only that, but imposing these tariffs would have been totally and completely patriotic.

But it’s still not too late.  Obama could still do it.  “Liberty and Justice for All,” Obama!  Liberty and justice for the people who voted for you.  Yeah right.

Yes, It Is Immoral to Vote for Obama

Mike Whitney wrote a great column recently titled “Is It Immoral to Vote for Obama?” Based on Obama’s predilection to kill large numbers of people around the Middle East in pursuit of foreign policy objectives, Whitney argued, it would indeed be immoral to vote for him. He isn’t the lesser of two evils. He is worse than Bush, which makes him evil, period.

I would argue that it is immoral to vote for Obama because he is guilty of the negligent homicide of 70,000 American citizens every year.

Consider what negligent homicide is. Legally it means that somebody died, and that the defendant should reasonably have been aware of the risk and instead of doing something to stop it, he “intentionally, knowingly or recklessly” acted in such a way that the death occurred.

Ethically, it means that you could have prevented a death at little or no risk to yourself, and you chose not to. It means that if you see a child crawl into a refrigerator and shut the door, and you don’t let him out, you bear responsibility for his death.

Now consider what Obama did on September 2. It was Friday before Labor Day, an infamous date almost every year because politicians use it to announce things that make them look bad. Most voters are traveling for the long weekend and aren’t paying attention. So just the choice of date proves he was aware that his decision was rotten, just as flight indicates consciousness of guilt.

He announced that day that he would not implement new regulations recommended by his own Environmental Protection Agency that would have cut the amount of smog we all inhale with every breath.

He could have done so on his own authority. The Republicans in Congress did not have to vote on it. Instead of standing with the throngs of environmentalists who voted for him, he said the regulations would be a burden for business and chose to stand with American Petroleum Institute, which gloated that “the President’s decision was good news for the economy and Americans looking for work.”

How? If the President had gone with the new regulations, it would have cost $19-to-$90 billion, depending on how they were enforced. It would have mandated that energy companies, which are swimming in money, build new cleaner power plants and install scrubbers in the power plants already built. The new regulations would have forced the energy companies to create jobs, not cut them. What could be better for the economy than forcing rich people to give some money to people who want to work?

Ethically, the important thing to remember is this: 70,000 Americans die every year from air pollution. They die of lung cancer and emphysema. They die of heart attacks and strokes that are more likely to occur on hot, high-smog days. They die of other forms of cancer that smog exacerbates.

Nobody disputes the 70,000 figure. It’s from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Obama could have cut that number significantly by following the science (which he promised to do in his campaign) and adopting the new regulations. If he had done that, he could have had a big White House ceremony on a day other than Friday before Labor Day and everyone who voted for him in 2008 would have felt more inclined to vote for him again. Instead he chose to insult everyone who voted for him and hand the Republicans a stick to beat him. The $19-to-$90 billion that the energy companies would have had to spend to kill fewer people with their product is $19-to-$90 billion that the Koch brothers and other sociopathic coal barons will have to spend on destroying democracy.

Maybe it’s good for the employment rate if 70,000 workers die and 70,000 people who don’t have cancer yet take their jobs. Doesn’t seem like a big applause line on the campaign trail, though.

“I will continue to stand by the hardworking men and women at the EPA as they strive every day to hold polluters accountable and protect our families from harmful pollution,” said Obama.

Jesus Christ.

I don’t care if Obama is a traitor, or a coward, or a Manchurian candidate from the fascist right, or a lizard from Mars. I refuse to psychoanalyze him.

What matters is the 70,000 Americans who die every year from air pollution. I myself have two friends who died of heart attacks on hot, smoggy days. I know four people who have cancer, and everyone I know seems know four more people with cancer. Worldwide, 40% of all deaths are caused by pollution, according to the World Health Organization. Obama could have done something about this. If he had, it would have been to his political benefit. He chose not to. Intentionally, knowingly and recklessly, he chose to side with those who value money more than life.

Therefore, it is immoral to vote for Obama. The only moral path right now is nonviolent revolution. Until then, watch for an announcement that he’s going to build the tar sands pipeline on Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Or maybe Christmas eve.

Source: This Can’t Be Happening

9/11: Even If the Official Story Is True, the Official Response Is Still Wrong

I am going to assume, for the sake of this article, that 9/11 happened exactly according to the official story. Even if this story is entirely true, the official response has still been totally wrong, as have been the oft-repeated clichés of those who believe the official story.

Some examples:

1.     The terrorists hate us for our freedom. Even in 2001, America had the world’s highest incarceration rate. Were we that free? They far more likely hate us for our invasions, occupations, coups, bombings, sanctions and the resulting deaths. You reap what you sow. And when you throw your weight around militarily the way America does, it is inevitable that a goodly number of people will hate you.

2.     9/11 was an act of war. There was no invading army, no naval armada in New York Harbor, no aerial bombing raids by a terrorist Luftwaffe and no jihad jarheads staging amphibious assaults on Battery Park. It was a private sector crime.

3.     9/11 was grounds for war. If 19 Americans went overseas and committed some horrific crime, would that justify war on America? The proper, moral, constitutional response was a Letter of Marque and Reprisal, i.e. a warrant to pursue the specific perpetrators.  Since it is wrong for foreigners to kill innocent Americans, how can it be “right” for Americans to kill innocent foreigners?

4.    Radical Islam is at war with us. Islam is a decentralized religion with no pope or Vatican. It has numerous sects. Militarily and politically, it has no Berlin, Tokyo or Moscow.A football team with six quarterbacks on the field wouldn’t score very often.

5.     9/11 was an attack on our freedom. The 19 hijackers are dead. You cannot take over a country, impose Shari’a law, convert everyone to Islam, make everyone speak Arabic and force Sports Illustrated to do a burqa issue when you are … I am going to say this one more time for those of you in Rio Linda … DEAD!!!!!!

6.     Islam’s stated goal is world conquest. I, Douglas Frazier Newman, hereby state that my goal is to be the winning pitcher in Game 7 of this fall’s World Series. So much for stated goals. It has been several centuries since a Muslim country conquered a non-Muslim country. Yes, the Caliphate had military triumphs centuries ago. Lots of countries that you have never heard of have been world powers. Mongolia was once the mightiest empire on earth. Empires always collapse. The Muslim world lost its imperial mojo a long time ago.

7.     If we don’t fight the terrorists over there, we will fight them over here. After the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, Ronald Reagan brought the surviving marines home. Was he a “cut-and-run liberal?” Did the terrorists “follow us here?” Have terrorists ever followed imperialists home?

8.     If we oust the current rulers of these countries and install new ones, we will spread freedom and they won’t hate us anymore. We ousted Saddam and oversaw the implementation of a new constitution which states in Article 2: “Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation.” And they are still shooting and killing American troops.

And why have we not invaded the most Islamofascist state of all: Saudi Arabia? It was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers. There are no elections, opposition press or rights for women. Christians are ruthlessly persecuted. Beheading and amputation are accepted forms of punishment.

9.     If Al-Qaeda wins, it is lights out for western civilization. Let me get this straight: a few thousand gangbangers who have no ships, planes, tanks or even uniforms are going to defeat a nation with an $800 billion military budget, 300 ships, thousands of planes, tanks and nuclear warheads as well as 300 million firearms in private hands.

10.   We need a Department of Homeland Security to keep us safe. Weren’t the world’s largest military and intelligence establishments enough to stop 19 guys with box cutters? Can’t 300 million firearms in private hands protect us from a few thousand gangbangers?

11.    We cannot allow people to carry guns on board planes. Any fool knows that you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. My .357 versus your box cutter: guess who wins.

12.    We need to profile Arabs as potential terrorists. While we are at it, let’s profile unmarried men as potential violent criminals. After all, they have a greater history of violence than any other demographic in America. On second thought, let’s not. I am an unmarried man. It is always easy to say that your government should “do something” … to someone else.

13.     We need to torture terrorists to get them to talk. Jesse Ventura once said that if you give him Dick Cheney and a water board, it would be just minutes before Cheney would confess to murdering Sharon Tate.

14.     Terror suspects should not have the rights of other suspects. I hereby accuse you, reader, of being a terrorist. Your rights to defend yourself will be subject to the whims of  prosecutors and media pimps. What goes around comes around.

15.     We have to give up some freedoms in the interest of security. Why not give up all freedom and have total security? North Korea doesn’t have a terrorism problem. (It doesn’t have an immigration problem either.)

16.    We need to have ourselves – and our children – photographed naked and sexually assaulted to stop terrorism. If terrorists really wanted to kill a lot of people and disrupt aviation, they wouldn’t go to the trouble of smuggling bombs onto planes. They would set off bombs in terminals. Where? In those serpentine lines entering the little North Koreas we have established at airports to keep us safe and free. When? In a coordinated series of attacks on the day before Thanksgiving.

And why stop with airports? Why not also do this at train stations, bus stations, stadiums, shopping malls, grocery stores and schools? I mean, like, you never know where they will strike next.

17.     If you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. In a nation with 2 million laws on the books, how do you know you are not breaking some law somewhere?

18.     9/11 changed everything. We need the Constitution and Bill of Rights more than ever in times of crisis. In these times, governments are most likely to tighten the screws on liberty and people are most likely to panic and surrender this liberty.

19.     America is an exceptional nation. Says who? There is a God and He is not going to extend any blessing or protection to a nation that aborts a million babies each year.

20.     We are giving up some freedom now, but we will get it back later. The German people gave up their freedom in 1933. They got it back in 1945.

21.     Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Didn’t they sing this song in Germany in 1933?

And my favorite:

22.     In order to preserve freedom, we have to give up some freedoms. Let us now fornicate in the name of virginity.

Croatian Generals Sentenced at The Hague

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Zagreb and other Croatian cities over the past week to protest the conviction of two Croatian generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The ICTY sentenced Ante Gotovina to 24 years in jail and Mladen Markač to 18 years for their role in the August 1995 Operation Storm, which resulted in the exodus of up to a quarter of a million Krajina Serbs. The tribunal found that the generals were part of an elaborate conspiracy headed by Croatia’s then president, Franjo Tudjman.

It would have been preferable for the Croatian domestic courts to deal with the legacy of the Storm. The reaction to the verdict indicates that a trial of men so widely considered national heroes was literally unimaginable, however, which is unfortunate. (The Croatian Army chief chaplain, Bishop Juraj Jezerinac,compared the predicament of Gotovina and Markač to the suffering of Jesus Christ.) The Tribunal’s proponents will use the reaction in Croatia as evidence that the ICTY remains relevant and necessary. Additionally problematic is the Tribunal’s use of the concept of Joint Criminal Enterprise—thus far used only against the Serbs—which is a blunt legal tool with Kafkaesque implications.

The political objectives of the Croatian state leadership in launching the attack are evident from a transcript of Tudjman’s meeting with his top military commanders and civilian aides at the Adriatic island of Brioni on July 31, 1995, five days before the attack. “We have to inflict such blows,” Tudjman announced, “that the Serbs will to all practical purposes disappear.” “It is important that those [Serbian] civilians set out, and then the army will follow them, and when the columns set out they will have a psychological impact on each other,” Tudjman went on. “This means giving them a way out, while pretending to guarantee their civil rights etcetera.”

The verdict at The Hague is a potential embarrassment for Bill Clinton’s national security team, including a number of “Balkan experts” who remain influential in his wife’s State Department.  According to a prominent Croatian investigative journalist, the late Ivo Pukanic, the United States was actively involved in the preparation, monitoring and initiation of Operation Storm: the green light from President Clinton was passed on by the US military attaché in Zagreb and the operations were transmitted in real time to the Pentagon:

The US was thrilled with the how fast and clean the operation was conducted, and with its outcome, which permitted the lightning fast entry of HV [the Croatian Army] into Bosnia-Herzegovina and … Belgrade’s consent to sign the Dayton Accords. [This] was later confirmed in the statements that the operation was carried out properly, and tthe US-Croatian cooperation in intelligence and military matters intensified. General Patrick Hughes, Clapper’s successor as director of DIA, visited Croatia, intensified cooperation in the sector of electronic monitoring of Serbia and Montenegro, other intelligence was swapped, MPRI began its intensive training of the Croatian military…

As Croatian troops launched their assault on August 4, U.S. aircraft operating under NATO command destroyed Serbian radar and anti-aircraft defenses. Croatian planes then carried out attacks on Serbian towns and positions and strafed refugee columns. Thousands of Serbs lost their lives during the exodus; hundreds of those too old or infirm to move were killed by the Croatian forces. It was the biggest act of ethnic cleansing in post-1945 Europe.

Most of the refugees ended up in Serbia and the Serbian part of Bosnia (Republika Srpska). Massacres continued for several weeks after the fall of Krajina. UN patrols discovered numerous fresh unmarked graves and bodies of murdered civilians well after the ‘Storm’ was over. A suppressed EU report stated, “The corpses, some fresh, some decomposed, are mainly of old men. Many have been shot in the back of the head or had throats slit, others have been mutilated… Serb lands continue to be torched and looted.” Following a visit to the region the Zagreb Helsinki Committee reported that virtually all Serb villages had been destroyed: “In a village near Knin, eleven bodies were found, some of them were massacred in such a way that it was not easy to see whether the body was male or female.”

As the reaction to Gotovina’s and Markač’s sentences indicate, the war in remains controversial, many years after its end in 1995. To the Croats, it was a war of Serbian aggression and Croatian Defence of the Motherland, plain and simple. To the Serbs the war was a reaction to what they perceived as intolerable provocation, an existential response to the revamping of Ustašism in rhetoric, symbols, and substance. They were reacting to Tudjman’s escalating political ploys in Zagreb and his minions’ terrorist acts on the ground. The establishment of autonomous regions, and the subsequent proclamation of the Republic of the Serbian Krajina, was seen as an act of rebellion by most Croats and as necessary response by most Serbs.

Tudjman’s strategic objective behind Operation Storm was a Serb-free Croatia. That much is no longer in doubt. While circumstantial evidence had always been there, the Brioni transcript of July 31, 1995, provides the smoking gun. A week later, at a rally in Knin, Tudjman announced, “There can be no return to the past, to the times when [Serbs] were spreading cancer in the heart of Croatia, a cancer that was destroying the Croatian national being.” He then went on to speak of the “disappearance” of the Krajina Serbs, “so it is as if they have never lived here!”

Former U.S. Ambassador in Zagreb Peter Galbraith, testifying at The Hague, dismissed claims that Croatia had engaged in ethnic cleansing, “because most of the population had already fled when the Croatian army and police arrived.” But Galbraith was being disingenuous: Tudjman’s objectives had included ethnic cleansing all along. His objectives were stated with perfect clarity at a meeting with his closest aides on 23 August 1995, in the aftermath of Operation Storm:

[M]ilitary force can be a most effective means for solving the internal needs of the state. Considering the situation we face with the liberation of occupied territories, the demographic situation, it is necessary for military command precisely to become one of the most efficient components of our state policies in solving the demographic situation of Croatia. […] We have the fortunate situation that the liberation demands a distribution of military units that would simultaneously solve the demographical [problem].”

Croatia still celebrates August 5 as Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day. Almost sixteen years later, as Gotovina and Markač prepare their appeals, it seems likely that they will spend many years in jail, but they were the operation’s executors rather than masterminds. The key political leaders—starting with Franjo Tudjman, who died in bed in 1999—are immune or out of reach. The Hague verdict notwithstanding, the crimes of 1995—not unlike the Ustaša horrors that had preceded them in 1941-45—remain unacknowledged and unatoned for.

Wikileaks – The Tel Aviv Connection

What is Tel Aviv to do now that it’s known Israelis and pro-Israelis ‘fixed’ the intelligence that induced the U.S. to war in Iraq?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Con me consistently for six decades and the relationship is over, as is Israel’s credibility as a legitimate nation state.

Tel Aviv knows this. But what can the Zionist state do about it? Answer: Wikileaks.

Why now? Misdirection. Shine the spotlight on Washington to take it off Tel Aviv. That’s good old-fashioned psy-ops.  And challenge the credibility of the U.S. That’s Wikileaks.

Any credible forensics would start by asking: to whose benefit? Then look to means, motive and opportunity plus the presence of stable nation-state intelligence inside the U.S.

Other than Israel, who else is a credible candidate? Notice how quickly Israel’s role in the peace process vanished from the news. Now it’s Iran, Iran and more Iran. To whose benefit?

Tel Aviv knows that the phony intelligence on Iraq leads to those skilled at waging war “by way of deception”—the motto of the Israeli Mossad. Wikileaks are noteworthy for what’s missing: the absence of any material damaging to Israeli goals.

But still Tel Aviv faces an unprecedented peril: transparency. Americans know they were duped. And Israel rightly fears that Americans will soon realize by whom.

Tepid Support will not Suffice

Obama has behaved as anticipated by those who produced his presidency. Anyone surprised at the lack of change in U.S. policy in the Middle East fails to grasp the power of the Israel lobby.

Did he hesitate to support their latest Israeli strategy for scuttling peace negotiations? Absent peace, the U.S. will continue to be the target of those outraged at America’s unflinching support for Israel’s thuggish behavior in pursuit of its expansionist goals.

Confirming the lobby’s influence, Netanyahu announced he would not agree to halt settlements on Palestinian land until Obama reduced to writing a $3 billion bribe.

In return for a proposed 90-day freeze, what form of bribe will America provide? Twenty F-35 jets at $150 million each plus parts, maintenance, training and armaments.

That’s $231 million per week or $1,373,626 per hour. What will the U.S. receive in return? A temporary partial freeze on settlements. How many more times can this ruse work?

Israel has evaded a peace agreement since it drove Palestinians from their land in 1948 and seized more land in 1967 to shape today’s geopolitics.

Should Israel reach an agreement with the Palestinians, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposes a “comprehensive security agreement.” At what cost no one knows. The U.S. Congress has already budgeted $30 billion for Israel over 10 years. This latest $3 billion is on top of that.

That doesn’t include the cost to American credibility posed by an offer to veto U.N. recognition of Palestine as a state. And a pledge Never Again to pressure Israel on settlements. Plus the freeze omits East Jerusalem where Tel Aviv insists on moving ahead with new housing starts.

Timing Is Everything

By scheduling its latest incursion into Gaza between Christmas 2008 and the January 2009 Obama inaugural, Tel Aviv ensured only muted opposition during political down time in the U.S. Thus it came as no surprise to see an agent provocateur operation on Thanksgiving Day 2010 as Israel demolished a West Bank Mosque and a Palestinian village.

After seven hours of nonstop talks, Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu as a “peacemaker.” In return, he agreed only to “continue the process.” Meanwhile, U.S. elections marked a major victory for Israel when incoming Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Jewish Zionist, announced that the new majority would “serve as a check on the Obama administration.”

The Israel lobby has good reason to gloat. Confirming ongoing duplicity, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proclaimed: “a permanent agreement is impossible.”

Wikileaks’ release of confidential diplomatic cables provides Israel an opportunity to undermine U.S. relations worldwide while also inflicting lasting damage on U.S. interests in the Middle East. After this, what nation would trust the U.S. to maintain a confidence?

In October, Turkey asked that the U.S. not share intelligence with Israel. Now who dares share intelligence with the U.S.?

This may signal the beginning of the end for the Obama presidency his domestic policy failures are eclipsed by his failures in foreign policy.

This may also signal pre-staging for the 2012 presidential primary with a weakened Obama forced to name Clinton as his running mate or stepping aside so she can lead the ballot.

Her 2008 presidential campaign promised recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” and promised an “undivided Jerusalem as the capital.” Tel Aviv was elated. A second Clinton presidency would ensure another victory for Israel—and no peace.

Israeli psy-ops typically serve multiple purposes. Wikileaks is no exception.

VAT Tax Ends the Consumer Economy

Are you ready for the end of the consumer economy? Well, your voice needs to sound loud and clear if you want to save the last remnants of a middle class existence. Forget about upward mobility or affluence, the basic elements of a respectable life is being targeted for extinction. That is the stark and certain consequence of a VAT Tax. Just look to Europe for the beleaguered life aftermath of this incremental method of extracting additional tribute on every level of production and distribution. Everyone must oppose this overt attempt to impoverish Middle America, unless your goal is to break the back of consumers and lower permanently the standard of living of our country.

The recent trial balloon to place a VAT on the table for a new additional tax is indefensible. Note the notion of comprehensive tax reform is seldom heard in the managed media. The idea of replacing the income tax with a consumption levy would be a legitimate debate. However, all you hear is that the government needs more revenue to offset historic deficits. Please! Who among us with command of their mental faculties believe that bleeding the public more will stop the political class from spending even more money?

The Tax Foundation’s Nick Kasprak reports on the Value-Added Tax (VAT) included in the Bipartisan Policy Center’s deficit reduction proposal:

“The plan from the BPC Debt Reduction task force, headed by former CBO director Alice Rivlin and former Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) would cut federal spending in many areas, and would dramatically simplify the federal income tax by lowering rates, eliminating most itemized deductions and replacing others with simplified tax credits, and reducing the number of income tax brackets. In what is sure to be a controversial proposal, the plan calls for making up some of this lost revenue by imposing what it calls a “Deficit Reduction Sales Tax” – in other words, a national sales tax imposed on top of existing state and local sales taxes. To combat tax evasion, it is likely that the tax would take the form of a Value-Added Tax, or VAT- a system where a portion of the sales tax is collected at each stage of production, rather than all at the final sale.

According to the document released by BPC, the VAT would be phased in over two years, beginning with a 3% rate in 2012 and a 6.5% rate for 2013 and beyond. BPC states that this would raise $3,048 billion dollars from 2012 to 2020; according to some quick calculations, I estimate that the tax base for the VAT would have to be approximately 29% of GDP – this assumes the BPC rates are tax-exclusive (the standard for sales taxes) and no tax evasion”.

Up to this point, the Deficit Commission ignores the VAT in their proposal. “Both co-chairs of the bipartisan commission had floated the idea of recommending a VAT prior to the final report being released. In the end, however, they chose to simply tweak the already convoluted tax code”. Proponents for a VAT like Michael Graetz, a Yale University law professor, spin the yarn that “such a plan would lower taxes for each and every tax bracket and could allow taxpayers to exempt their first $100,000 from income taxes each year”. Only in an ivory tower would such naivety be considered as a serious possibility, when tax legislation emerges from the sausage grinder.

Holding the wolves at bay before they knock down the door is a matter of time. After the next financial implosion, the bubble of bad debt will look to a VAT as easy tax money. Forget about reductions in IRS taxes. The deductions will evaporate while the obligations expand. This is the history of government extortion.

The reason that spending cuts are seldom even whispered is that professional political criminals want respect (from their den of thieves). They know that the dumbed down public is stupid but not completely ignorant. The federal government consortium takes your earned wealth and only dispenses conditional hand-outs. So what will happen to jobs and economic growth? A VAT will shut down consumer spending for all but the most basic of survival goods and services.

This bleak outlook would take a toll on all retailers, credit card banking and every level of manufacturing. The push back will come from the usual usurpers. Wal-Mart would demand an exemption, their Chinese suppliers would require a rebate and Visa and Master Card will jack up service fees to offset the loss in volume. The burden from an economic system of selective enforcement will result in Main Street closing the few remaining merchant shops still in business.

The Cato Institute explains the dangers of a VAT Tax that impairs the economy. Watch the video – A Hidden New Tax to Finance Much Bigger Government.

Jim Powell argues in Investor’s Business Daily,

“Supposedly a value-added tax is a magic elixir for curing budget deficits and excessive debt. Quack remedy would be more like it. If it worked, you’d observe that countries with a VAT had budget surpluses and no debt problems. But almost every country that has a VAT is plagued with budget deficits and excessive debt. … No surprise that the worst financial basket cases all have a VAT. Iceland has the highest VAT rates, but this didn’t prevent its financial crisis and the near bankruptcy of its government. Italy’s VAT rates are almost as high, and its debt exceeds its GDP. Financial crises are looming in Spain and Portugal, and of course they have a VAT. Greece has a VAT, too, and when politicians ran out of money to pay government employees for more than a year’s worth of work every year, they rioted in the streets. Great Britain has a VAT, and its government finances are in the worst shape since World War II — its budget deficit is expected to be bigger than that of Greece. Moreover, the OECD has acknowledged that “(VAT) tax and transfer wedges have discouraged firms from offering employment and individuals from taking it, reduced employment and increased inequality.”

In a rush for additional revenues, the Federal Government is poised to slam another stick up the derrière of the public. Don’t be fooled with the claims that a VAT Tax will replace the oppression of the income tax. When interest rates inevitably rise because government bonds will not sell without a higher return, the cries will become deafening that only additional revenue will forestall default. The Socialism of Europe becomes complete with the integration of America into the central controlled managed economy.

The consumer is absent from their excessive spending since the meltdown of 2008. Attempts of debt-ridden consumers to clean up their personal balance sheets are laudable. However, a VAT will just slow that process and will create a disincentive to resume future purchases.

This result is not all bad. No doubt, families would be better off with a rejection of an impulse consumer society. But can the domestic based manufacturers survive another drop in sales? The consumer culture will not die easily. The denial mindset of most customers resists the pain from hitting the brick wall that blocks their spending. The thrill of racking up the Black Friday Holiday sales has a new twist – Thanksgiving Day open store hours. Will a VAT stop this drive for immediate satisfaction or will this tax just hasten the wait to process your bankruptcy filing?

National wealth is sinking and most people are hurting. The top echelon of corporate bosses, political patrons and financial crooks are running the real economy into the ground. The bereaved consumers dug their own hole. However, they had a lot of help from the likes of Bank of America. An additional tax from a VAT on top of all the service fees, tariffs and duties invariably widens the gap between the penniless and the billionaires. How likely is it that you will leap into the jet set or is it more probable that you will be joining the indigent class?

Taxes are universally destructive when governments waste the revenue on obscene and destructive causes and programs. A proposed VAT is the next insult. How much more will you take? Your standard of living is vanishing before your eyes. If a burglar broke into your home to steal your money, your best friend would be a 357 magnum. Not so, for “Pavlovian” trained serfs! They willing accept being cast into a vat of boiling oil with not so much as a whimper. What kind of American are you? One who obeys orders and walks through the full radiated body scanner or do you have the courage to draw the line of having your genitals fondled? Even a TSA full body cavity search is temporary, you can refuse to fly, however; a VAT Tax will be a permanent invasion and assault on your wealth. The choice is yours, be a dog and submit, or resist, if you have the balls.

Will Liberty Continue To Have A Home In America?

Only the most willingly ignorant people (most of whom are educated beyond their intelligence, as my dad used to say) would argue with the fact that the generation who founded this great country believed that God had providentially established and protected what became known as the United States of America. The public sentiments in this regard are irrefutable.

In his first inaugural address, President George Washington said, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.”

In Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Address (1789), he said, “That we then may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war.”

Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence and America’s 3rd President) said, “God who gave us life gave us liberty,” and, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” He also said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

Virtually everyone at the time of America’s founding attributed divine blessing and protection to the establishment of these States United. That fact is undeniable–at least by any honest and objective student of history.

Indeed, Jefferson’s warning is as germane today (perhaps even more so) as it was when he wrote it: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” Meaning: The God who gave and protected our liberties is the same God who can remove and overthrow them in His wrath and judgment. Some would even argue that this is what God is currently doing: removing His hand of protection from America and turning us over to divine judgment. I must confess that I wonder about this in my own mind.

The signs that America is fast losing her freedoms and is falling into the throes of socialism, agnosticism, humanism–and maybe even fascism–are ubiquitous. It is to the point that even the Constitution and Bill of Rights, which were supposed to protect the rights and liberties of the American people, have been so neglected or abused by our civil magistrates in Washington, D.C., that those foundational documents have, for all intents and purposes, been relegated to museum-status.

Add to the abandonment of constitutional governance the advent of European-style socialism in the US, the collapse of Christian virtue and morality (even by professing Christians), the repudiation of sound money principles, and a preoccupation with globalism, and it is easy to see the handwriting on the wall (to borrow from the Old Testament Book of Daniel).

Nowhere is it written that a free republic is promised perpetuity. In fact, if history is any teacher, it indicates that the propensity of free nations is for them to–after the brave and heroic efforts of their founders–apathetically allow freedom’s gradual (or not so gradual) decline. And that is exactly what this generation, and every generation since “The Greatest Generation,” has done and is doing.

That America seems destined for a fall (how far and how fast is yet to be determined) appears inevitable. Therefore, the real questions seem to me to be, Will liberty continue to have a home in America? And, if so, WHERE will liberty continue to have a home in America?

I think it is safe to say that many Americans today are not only unwilling to fight for their own liberty (and I am not talking about fighting unconstitutional, unprovoked wars in the Middle East), they do not even seem to be able to discern what true liberty is. To many avant-garde Americans, freedom is whatever Uncle Sam (or Big Brother, as he is better known today) determines freedom to be. If one of the 3 branches of the federal government (especially the Supreme Court) determines that a God-given liberty is not a God-given liberty after all, but only a temporary and transient “privilege of the state,” many Americans seem to have no personal knowledge, wisdom, discernment, or fortitude to even remotely resist it. The fact that their Creator, via Natural and Revealed Law, endows them with certain “unalienable” rights and liberties never seems to dawn on them. It’s as if the only god they know is the god of government. Even many pastors and Christians are carried away with this fallacy.

If Daniel Webster was right (and he was) when he said, “God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it,” then liberty’s future is suspect indeed. There is another principle, however, that is equally true: there will always remain a remnant of people who value freedom enough to never surrender it.

During the past two years, I have traveled over 60,000 miles to virtually every crack and corner of this country, and I can tell you without hesitation or equivocation: not every place (or State) understands–or is prepared to fight to defend–freedom. All men may be created equal, but all men are not equally discerning or determined. If I observed anything, I observed the great disparity between people when it comes to their willingness to draw a line in the sand for liberty–especially when that line is being drawn against their own federal government. Oh, there may exist pockets of such people scattered here and there in certain geographical regions, but I’m talking about a concentration of determined citizenry armed and alert to the usurpations of their liberties. There are only a few places where I observed such a spirit. And if you have read my last 3 columns, you know that I have been led to the studied conclusion that the Mountain States region of America’s great Northwest is certainly one of those places, if not the most notable of those places.

Granted, there is a sizeable freedom spirit in many local communities around the country. I have especially found the freedom spirit scattered throughout Texas, Arizona, South Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, Vermont, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and eastern Tennessee (and several other places), but not in the concentrated aggregation as in states such as Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Utah, South Dakota (maybe even North Dakota), and eastern Washington State.

Accordingly, I am absolutely convinced that God is calling a determined remnant of freedom-lovers to the Mountain States. And as most of my readers now know, that is exactly where God has called us–my family and me. (We are in the process of moving to the Flathead Valley [Kalispell area] of Montana.) I am personally convinced that this relocation of patriots to the Mountain States is as inevitable and divinely inspired as was the relocation of the Pilgrims to colonial America.

Not all of America’s Pilgrims were Christians, of course, but most were. And not all of these modern-day Patriot-Pilgrims who answer the western call today will be Christians (but probably most will be). And quite frankly, I would much rather share a foxhole with a patriot-unbeliever who acknowledges the Creator-God, and who accepts the Natural Laws of his Creator, and who is willing to fight and defend these freedom-principles than with these brain-dead, Big-Government centralists who call themselves “Christians” that we seem to be inundated with today.

Granted, not all of America’s patriots will be led to relocate to the Mountain States. And I would never try to presume upon God’s will for another man! In reality, the Lord may lead His freedom-loving children to a variety of locations and to a variety of actions. Others will be led to “stay in Crete” to be the “salt” and “light” where they are. After all, God is much too big to confine to one place or idea.

However, it is abundantly clear to me that each of us who call ourselves patriots (Christian or not) must begin answering these questions for ourselves: Will liberty continue to have a home in America? And, if so, Where will liberty continue to have a home in America? And I suppose the logical follow-up question is, What should I do about it? My family and I have answered that question for ourselves. I therefore urge each reader to also answer that question, because the fate of our posterity likely hangs in the balance.

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