Flash Point

The Daily Show Telling the Truth ?!?

2011-08-18T00:13:00.005+09:00

Osama... Obama?

2011-05-03T00:06:00.002+09:00

Back from the grave. I came out of retirement to mention some thoughts on things.

One: Osama has probably been dead for a very long time. Two: this is the same kind of stunt Bush Jr. would have pulled. Three: .... F this the whole thing is staged. Osama if he was still alive at tora bora, died there. Obama has worse opinion polls that bush ever had and this is just what Obama would need to be relevant again. Just like Rudy Giuliani was unelectable after his first term and saved by 9/11 obama is using this as his ace up the sleeve. This whole thing is BS. Do some research and look into it yourselves.

New York town to flip the lever six times for one candidate

2010-06-22T12:03:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

The court-ordered election that allowed residents of one New York town to flip the lever six times for one candidate — and produced a Hispanic winner — could expand to other towns where minorities complain their voices aren't being heard.

But first, interested parties will want to take a look at the exit surveys.

The unusual election was imposed on Port Chester after a federal judge determined that Hispanics were being treated unfairly.

The 2010 Census is expected to show large increases in Latino populations and lawsuits alleging discrimination are likely to increase, said Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote, a nonprofit election research and reform group.

"The country's been changing in a lot of places, with minority growth in exurbs and commuter cities, and there will be a realization that those minorities can't elect candidates of choice," Richie said.

That will leave minority groups, federal prosecutors and municipalities looking for ways to keep elections from violating the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities' constitutional right to equal protection under the law.

In Port Chester, trustees had been elected two at a time every two years, with conventional at-large voting. Most voters were white, and there were always six white trustees even though Hispanics made up half the population and nearly a quarter of the voters. Judge Stephen Robinson concluded the system violated U.S. law by diluting Hispanics' votes.

The standard remedy was to break a municipality into districts, with one district including many from the minority, thereby increasing the chances for a candidate backed by the minority group. The Justice Department proposed that solution for Port Chester.

But the village of about 30,000 objected to districts. It suggested instead a system called cumulative voting. All six trustees would be elected at once and the voters could apportion their six votes as they wished — all six to one candidate, one each to six candidates or any combination.

The system, which has been used in Alabama, Illinois, South Dakota and Texas, allows a political minority to gain representation if it organizes behind specific candidates. Judge Robinson went for it, and cumulative voting was used for the first time in a New York municipality.

Peruvian immigrant Luis Marino, 43, finished fourth, making him Port Chester's first Hispanic trustee.

"It helped me get elected," said Marino, a Democrat who works in maintenance at the Scarsdale schools. "I will be representing all the people of Port Chester, but I am aware that I can help Hispanics bring their concerns to the board."

Voters also elected a black trustee for the first time: Joseph Kenner, a Republican who was already on the board as an appointee.

The village said Friday that 3,278 residents voted, about 31 percent of those registered, a slightly higher turnout than usual. Hispanic turnout had not been analyzed, but Richie said about a quarter of all votes went to Hispanic candidates.

Marino's victory might prompt other judges to consider cumulative voting as a remedy.

"The way this election was implemented in Port Chester can be an example for other jurisdictions with similar problems," said Randolph McLaughlin, a lawyer who has represented plaintiffs in several voters' rights cases, including Port Chester's. He cautioned, however, that the success was not just due to the unusual election system, but "was the result of the work that went in before the election."

That work — an extensive voter education program — was the principal subject of exit surveys. The questions, in Spanish and English, weren't about whom they voted for but about how well they understood the system and what strategy they used in voting.

The survey also asked which of Port Chester's outreach programs — a website, radio and TV commercials, voter forums, handouts — were helpful.

Voter education was a requirement of the settlement, but Port Chester officials believe they went beyond their obligation.

"We put so much emphasis on education — we may have spent $100 a voter — because we knew it would be critical to success," said village spokesman Aldo Vitagliano. "We also know that the next community can point to Port Chester and say `That's how it's done.'"

Two political science professors — David Kimball of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Martha Knopf of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte — were hired to analyze the Port Chester data. Kimball said their report would take a few weeks.

"There's a very important issue here: Were voters comfortable? Did they understand how it works?" Kimball said. "Did they plump (give more than one vote to a candidate)? Did they know they could plump?"

Until there's a separate analysis of the votes, including who did well in Hispanic neighborhoods, it won't be known for sure if Marino was actually the preferred candidate of Latino voters.

"The election of a Hispanic candidate does not necessarily mean that a Hispanic-supported candidate was chosen," McLaughlin said. "But it's definitely a step forward."

Say Goodbye To Your Vitamins and Herbs

2010-06-18T22:09:00.003+09:00

Full Executive order HERE at the whitehouse.gov

Here is the entire Executive Order:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

June 10, 2010

Executive Order– Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council

EXECUTIVE ORDER

ESTABLISHING THE NATIONAL PREVENTION, HEALTH PROMOTION, AND PUBLIC HEALTH COUNCIL

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 4001 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148), it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment. There is established within the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council (Council).

Sec. 2. Membership.

(a) The Surgeon General shall serve as the Chair of the Council, which shall be composed of:

(1) the Secretary of Agriculture;

(2) the Secretary of Labor;

(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services;

(4) the Secretary of Transportation;

(5) the Secretary of Education;

(6) the Secretary of Homeland Security;

(7) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;

(8) the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission;

(9) the Director of National Drug Control Policy;

(10) the Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council;

(11) the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs;

(12) the Chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service; and

(13) the head of any other executive department or agency that the Chair may, from time to time, determine is appropriate.

(b) The Council shall meet at the call of the Chair.

Sec. 3. Purposes and Duties. The Council shall:

(a) provide coordination and leadership at the Federal level, and among all executive departments and agencies, with respect to prevention, wellness, and health promotion practices, the public health system, and integrative health care in the United States;

(b) develop, after obtaining input from relevant stakeholders, a national prevention, health promotion, public health, and integrative health-care strategy that incorporates the most effective and achievable means of improving the health status of Americans and reducing the incidence of preventable illness and disability in the United States, as further described in section 5 of this order;

(c) provide recommendations to the President and the Congress concerning the most pressing health issues confronting the United States and changes in Federal policy to achieve national wellness, health promotion, and public health goals, including the reduction of tobacco use, sedentary behavior, and poor nutrition;

(d) consider and propose evidence-based models, policies, and innovative approaches for the promotion of transformative models of prevention, integrative health, and public health on individual and community levels across the United States;

(e) establish processes for continual public input, including input from State, regional, and local leadership communities and other relevant stakeholders, including Indian tribes and tribal organizations;

(f) submit the reports required by section 6 of this order; and

(g) carry out such other activities as are determined appropriate by the President.

Sec. 4. Advisory Group.

(a) There is established within the Department of Health and Human Services an Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health (Advisory Group), which shall report to the Chair of the Council.

(b) The Advisory Group shall be composed of not more than 25 members or representatives from outside the Federal Government appointed by the President and shall include a diverse group of licensed health professionals, including integrative health practitioners who are representative of or have expertise in:

(1) worksite health promotion;

(2) community services, including community health centers;

(3) preventive medicine;

(4) health coaching;

(5) public health education;

(6) geriatrics; and

(7) rehabilitation medicine.

(c) The Advisory Group shall develop policy and program recommendations and advise the Council on lifestyle-based chronic disease prevention and management, integrative health care practices, and health promotion.

Sec. 5. National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy. Not later than March 23, 2011, the Chair, in consultation with the Council, shall develop and make public a national prevention, health promotion, and public health strategy (national strategy), and shall review and revise it periodically. The national strategy shall:

(a) set specific goals and objectives for improving the health of the United States through federally supported prevention, health promotion, and public health programs, consistent with ongoing goal setting efforts conducted by specific agencies;

(b) establish specific and measurable actions and timelines to carry out the strategy, and determine accountability for meeting those timelines, within and across Federal departments and agencies; and

(c) make recommendations to improve Federal efforts relating to prevention, health promotion, public health, and integrative health-care practices to ensure that Federal efforts are consistent with available standards and evidence.

Sec. 6. Reports. Not later than July 1, 2010, and annually thereafter until January 1, 2015, the Council shall submit to the President and the relevant committees of the Congress, a report that:

(a) describes the activities and efforts on prevention, health promotion, and public health and activities to develop the national strategy conducted by the Council during the period for which the report is prepared;

(b) describes the national progress in meeting specific prevention, health promotion, and public health goals defined in the national strategy and further describes corrective actions recommended by the Council and actions taken by relevant agencies and organizations to meet these goals;

(c) contains a list of national priorities on health promotion and disease prevention to address lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings) and the prevention measures for the five leading disease killers in the United States;

(d) contains specific science-based initiatives to achieve the measurable goals of the Healthy People 2020 program of the Department of Health and Human Services regarding nutrition, exercise, and smoking cessation, and targeting the five leading disease killers in the United States;

(e) contains specific plans for consolidating Federal health programs and centers that exist to promote healthy behavior and reduce disease risk (including eliminating programs and offices determined to be ineffective in meeting the priority goals of the Healthy People 2020 program of the Department of Health and Human Services);

(f) contains specific plans to ensure that all Federal health-care programs are fully coordinated with science-based prevention recommendations by the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and

(g) contains specific plans to ensure that all prevention programs outside the Department of Health and Human Services are based on the science-based guidelines developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under subsection (d) of this section.

Sec. 7. Administration.

(a) The Department of Health and Human Services shall provide funding and administrative support for the Council and the Advisory Group to the extent permitted by law and within existing appropriations.

(b) All executive departments and agencies shall provide information and assistance to the Council as the Chair may request for purposes of carrying out the Council’s functions, to the extent permitted by law.

(c) Members of the Advisory Group shall serve without compensation, but shall be allowed travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by law for persons serving intermittently in Government service (5 U.S.C. 5701-5707), consistent with the availability of funds.

Sec. 8. General Provisions.

(a) Insofar as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C App.) may apply to the Advisory Group, any functions of the President under that Act, except that of reporting to the Congress, shall be performed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in accordance with the guidelines that have been issued by the Administrator of General Services.

(b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(1) authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or

(2) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,

June 10, 2010

In other words, ALL prevention programs, even those outside of the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, must align with CDC guidelines, which are “science-based.” What do we take for prevention? Herbs and vitamins. Herbs that you grow in your backyard and vitamins that are not approved by your doctor do not fall under these “science-based” guidelines, and are not allowed. Therefore, this will effectively open the door to outlawing ALL disease prevention practices that use herbs and vitamins not prescribed by a doctor, and implement CODEX ALIMENTARIUS right here in the good old U.S.A. Thank you, Semra Orhon Hughes, for the heads up!

Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website

2010-06-12T12:00:00.001+09:00

Article HERE

American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders.

The Daily Beast, a US news reporting and opinion website, reported that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange – an Australian citizen who moves frequently between countries – after the arrest of a US soldier last week who is alleged to have given the whistleblower website a classified video of American troops killing civilians in Baghdad.

The soldier, Bradley Manning, also claimed to have given WikiLeaks 260,000 pages of confidential diplomatic cables and intelligence assessments.

The US authorities fear their release could "do serious damage to national security", said the Daily Beast, which is published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and New Yorker magazines.

Manning, 22, was arrested in Iraq last month after he was turned over to US authorities by a former hacker, Adrian Lamo, to whom he boasted of leaking the video and documents.

As an intelligence specialist in the US army, Manning had access to assessments from the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as frank diplomatic insights into Middle East governments.

In one of his messages to Lamo, obtained by Wired magazine, Manning said: "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available."

Although it is likely that WikiLeaks has broken US laws in de-encrypting the video from Baghdad and publishing secret documents, the tone of an American official who spoke to the Daily Beast sounded more desperate than threatening. "We'd like to know where he is; we'd like his cooperation in this," the official said.

It is, in any case, not clear what legal measures US officials could use to stop publication of the cables. Assange has created an elaborate web of protection – with servers in several countries, notably Sweden, which has strong laws protecting whisteblowers.

WikiLeaks' response to the news that the Americans are trying to track down Assange came on Twitter. "Any signs of unacceptable behaviour by the Pentagon or its agents towards this press will be viewed dimly," it said.

After Manning was arrested, WikiLeaks said in a Twitter message that allegations "we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect".

Before his arrest, Manning told Lamo he was in part motivated to leak the video and documents by being ordered to look the other way in the face of injustice.

Messages from Manning, obtained by Wired, say he found that 15 Iraqis arrested by Iraqi police for printing "anti-Iraq" literature had merely put together an assessment of government corruption.

"I immediately took that information and ran to the [US army] officer to explain what was going on. He didn't want to hear any of it. He told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the [Iraqi police] in finding MORE detainees," Manning wrote.

"Everything started slipping after that. I saw things differently. I had always questioned the [way] things worked, and investigated to find the truth.

"But that was a point where I was … actively involved in something I was completely against."

The Pentagon has declined to comment on the grounds that what is in the documents is classified.

Simple Fix to BP's Problem

2010-06-05T19:19:00.002+09:00

BP's most recent failures come as no surprise to Texas businessman and colorful character Daniel E. Davis. The CEO of the D.E. Davis Group, a consortium of construction, heavy equipment and pipeline companies based in Harlingen, Davis claims that neither BP nor the government is listening to those who have expertise in dealing with oil spills (namely, him).

"You're damn right it failed," stated Davis. "I have tried for weeks to get them to listen and implement my idea to fix the leak. They finally try to take my idea for themselves and they foul it up. It takes a bit of expertise, and they don't have it."

So Davis took to the Internet and launched a website: Oil Spill Fix.

On the site, Davis links to schematics that outline his proposed solutions. Davis believes his solution, when executed properly, will cap the gushing leak in only two weeks.

"I called the White House and was directed to a BP website that directs back to the White House," said Davis. "I tried to reach my congressman, Solomon Ortiz, but I don't think he gives a damn. You think with him being a Democrat and Obama also being a Democrat (Solomon) would want to help that sucker out."

Britain bans doctor who linked autism to vaccine

2010-05-27T11:25:00.002+09:00

Article Here

LONDON – The doctor whose research linking autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella influenced millions of parents to refuse the shot for their children was banned Monday from practicing medicine in his native Britain.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study was discredited — but vaccination rates have never fully recovered and he continues to enjoy a vocal following, helped in the U.S. by endorsements from celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy

Wakefield was the first researcher to publish a peer-reviewed study suggesting a connection between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. Legions of parents abandoned the vaccine, leading to a resurgence of measles in Western countries where it had been mostly stamped out. There are outbreaks across Europe every year and sporadic outbreaks in the U.S.

"That is Andrew Wakefield's legacy," said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "The hospitalizations and deaths of children from measles who could have easily avoided the disease."

Wakefield's discredited theories had a tremendous impact in the U.S., Offit said, adding: "He gave heft to the notion that vaccines in general cause autism."

In Britain, Wakefield's research led to a huge decline in the number of children receiving the MMR vaccine: from 95 percent in 1995 — enough to prevent measles outbreaks — to 50 percent in parts of London in the early 2000s. Rates have begun to recover, though not enough to prevent outbreaks. In 2006, a 13-year-old boy became the first person to die from measles in Britain in 14 years.

"The false suggestion of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine has done untold damage to the UK vaccination program," said Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. "Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that it is safe."

On Monday, Britain's General Medical Council, which licenses and oversees doctors, found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and stripped him of the right to practice medicine in the U.K. Wakefield said he plans to appeal the ruling, which takes effect within 28 days.

The council was acting on a finding in January that Wakefield and two other doctors showed a "callous disregard" for the children in their study, published in 1998 in the medical journal Lancet. The medical body said Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, paying them 5 pounds (about $7.20) each and later joked about the incident.

The study has since been widely rejected. From 1998-2004, studies in journals including the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics and BMJ published papers showing no link between autism and the measles vaccine.

Wakefield moved to the U.S. in 2004 and set up an autism research center in Austin, Texas, where he gained a wide following despite being unlicensed as a doctor there and facing skepticism from the medical community. He quit earlier this year.

Offit said he doubted Britain's decision to strip the 53-year-old Wakefield of his medical license would convince many parents that vaccines are safe.

"He's become almost like a Christ-like figure and it doesn't matter that science has proven him wrong," Offit said. "He is a hero for parents who think no one else is listening to them."

Wakefield told The Associated Press Monday's decision was a sad day for British medicine. "None of this alters the fact that vaccines can cause autism," he said.

"These parents are not going away; the children are not going to go away and I most certainly am not going away," he said on NBC's "Today Show."

Wakefield claimed the U.S. government has been settling cases of vaccine-induced autism since 1991.

However, two rulings by a special branch of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in March and last year found no link between vaccines and autism. More than 5,500 claims have been filed by families seeking compensation for children they claim were hurt by the vaccine.

Wakefield has won support from parents suspicious of vaccines, including Hollywood celebrities.

McCarthy, who has an autistic son, issued a statement in February with then boyfriend Carrey asserting Wakefield was "being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign."

"It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers," the actors said.

McCarthy, whose best-seller "Louder Than Words" details her search for treatments for her son Evan, wrote the foreword for a new book by Wakefield about autism and vaccines.

In Monday's ruling, the medical council said Wakefield abused his position as a doctor and "brought the medical profession into disrepute."

At the time of his study, Wakefield was working as a gastroenterologist at London's Royal Free Hospital and did not have approval for the research. The study suggested autistic children had a bowel disease and raised the possibility of a link between autism and vaccines. He had also been paid to advise lawyers representing parents who believed their children had been hurt by the MMR vaccine.

Ten of the study's authors later renounced its conclusions and it was retracted by the Lancet in February.

At least a dozen British medical associations, including the Royal College of Physicians, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust have issued statements verifying the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

This verdict is not about (the measles) vaccine," said Adam Finn, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol Medical School. "We all now know that the vaccine is remarkably safe and enormously effective... We badly need to put this right for the sake of our own children and children worldwide."

Congress preparing quadruple tax on oil

2010-05-26T02:38:00.000+09:00

Article Here

WASHINGTON - Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11 billion over the next decade.

The tax is levied on oil produced in the U.S. or imported from foreign countries. The revenue goes to a fund managed by the Coast Guard to help pay to clean up spills in waterways, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

The tax increase is part of a larger bill that has grown into a nearly $200 billion grab bag of unfinished business that lawmakers hope to complete before Memorial Day. The key provisions are a one-year extension of about 50 popular tax breaks that expired at the end of last year, and expanded unemployment benefits, including subsidies for health insurance, through the end of the year.

The House could vote on the bill as early as Tuesday. Senate leaders hope to complete work on it before Congress goes on a weeklong break next week.

Lawmakers want to increase the current 8-cent-a-barrel tax on oil to make sure there is enough money available to respond to oil spills. At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since a drilling rig exploded April 20 off the Louisiana coast.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders have said they expect BP to foot the bill for the cleanup.

"Taxpayers will not pick up the tab," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday.

BP executives told Congress last week they would pay "all legitimate claims" for damages. But the government needs upfront money to respond to spills, as well as money to pay for cleanups when the responsible party is unable to pay, or is unknown. Money spent from the fund can later be recovered from the company responsible for the spill.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund has about $1.5 billion available. Under current law, only $1 billion can be spent from the fund on a single incident. The bill would increase the spending limit to $5 billion.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the tax increase was hastily put together, without adequate study, to help pay for an unrelated bill. The tax increase was unveiled Thursday, without any congressional hearings to study its impact.

Even with the tax increases, the bill is projected to add $134 billion to the federal budget deficit.

"I have seen no analysis on how this would impact energy security, how this would impact domestic production, how this would impact the overall economics in the country," said Christopher Guith, vice president of the chamber's energy institute. "There hasn't been any sort of deliberation on this."

The American Petroleum Institute has not taken a position on the tax increase, though a spokeswoman said Congress should study the ramifications before acting.

"We understand we need to have an insurance policy in order to cover people in the event of a spill," said the spokeswoman, Cathy Landry. "At the same time we need to have a vital oil and gas industry."

The bill does not address a federal law that caps liability at $75 million for economic damages beyond direct cleanup costs. Democratic Senators tried to pass a bill last week that would have increased the cap to $10 billion, but they were blocked by Republicans.

The oil industry says such a high cap would make it difficult, if not impossible, to insure oil rigs.

BP said Monday its costs for responding to the spill had grown to about $760 million.

Chaff anyone?

2010-05-23T01:45:00.000+09:00

Watch at about the minute mark

U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade

2010-05-20T09:45:00.000+09:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE59E0Q920091015

(Reuters) - The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.

The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush's administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would support the talks as long as the negotiating forum, the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, "operates under the rules of consensus decision-making."

"Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the Treaty and to avoid loopholes in the Treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly," Clinton said in a written statement.

While praising the Obama administration's decision to overturn the Bush-era policy and to proceed with negotiations to regulate conventional arms sales, some groups criticized the U.S. insistence that decisions on the treaty be unanimous.

"The shift in position by the world's biggest arms exporter is a major breakthrough in launching formal negotiations at the United Nations in order to prevent irresponsible arms transfers," Amnesty International and Oxfam International said in a joint statement.

However, they said insisting that decisions on the treaty be made by consensus "could fatally weaken a final deal."

"Governments must resist US demands to give any single state the power to veto the treaty as this could hold the process hostage during the course of negotiations. We call on all governments to reject such a veto clause," said Oxfam International's policy adviser Debbie Hillier.

The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.

Supporters say it would give worldwide coverage to close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.

Nations would remain in charge of their arms export control arrangements but would be legally obliged to assess each export against criteria agreed under the treaty. Governments would have to authorize transfers in writing and in advance.

The main opponent of the treaty in the past was the U.S. Bush administration, which said national controls were better. Last year, the United States accounted for more than two-thirds of some $55.2 billion in global arms transfer deals.

Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.

The proposed treaty is opposed by conservative U.S. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which said last month that it would not restrict the access of "dictators and terrorists" to arms but would be used to reduce the ability of democracies such as Israel to defend their people.

The U.S. lobbying group the National Rifle Association has also opposed the treaty.

A resolution before the U.N. General Assembly is sponsored by seven nations including major arms exporter Britain. It calls for preparatory meetings in 2010 and 2011 for a conference to negotiate a treaty in 2012.

LA Times Poll on the Arizona Boycott

2010-05-14T23:55:00.001+09:00

Best news I have heard all week

2010-05-14T20:31:00.002+09:00

Just a thought about this thing with teachers being screwed because they have these college educations and student loans and OOPS what do you know. NO JOBS!

Ever since I was a kid, college was pushed on me. Not just me but everyone. I was one of the brightest kids in my STATE and I went the opposite direction. I dropped out. I saw what was written on the wall way back then. The job percentages will always be the same no matter what the education level of people are. Translation: There are a certain percentage of service jobs, there are a certain percentage of engineering jobs, and there are a certain percentage of executive jobs, etc, etc. so on and so forth. If 300 million americans had a bachelors degree you still need someone to flip burgers.

Some of the wealthiest men in the world today never completed college. Ted Turner and Bill Gates are the first two that come to mind, and I know there are bunches more.

My favorite comic character comes to life

2010-05-12T23:48:00.004+09:00

I have been a fan of Deadpool since 1993 !?!?!?! I just looked up the comic I first saw him in WOW the better part of 20 years! Thats freaking Creepy.

I am not so sure about Ryan Reynolds playing the part. Nothing against Ryan. Extremely talented and definitely qualified. But I just don't see his brand of humor matching quite right. He nailed Wade in X men Origins so he might have this in the bag.

My hope for the story line continuation from Origins is that what the wolverine killed was not wade but indeed weapon x. I like the idea of Wade not making the cut and being in the dredges of some experimental hell hole. Katana's coming out of the arms? cyclops opticals? teleport? Nope kill off weapon x and let Deadpool climb back from hell to become the badass he is.

Don't forget the nice rendezvous with death even if its only a flashback.

The Merc with the Mouth. One extreme to the next, breaking down the 4th wall on brick at a time.

'Smart dust' aims to monitor everything

2010-05-09T21:42:00.000+09:00

Article HERE

In the 1990s, a researcher named Kris Pister dreamed up a wild future in which people would sprinkle the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains of rice.

These "smart dust" particles, as he called them, would monitor everything, acting like electronic nerve endings for the planet. Fitted with computing power, sensing equipment, wireless radios and long battery life, the smart dust would make observations and relay mountains of real-time data about people, cities and the natural environment.

Now, a version of Pister's smart dust fantasy is starting to become reality.

"It's exciting. It's been a long time coming," said Pister, a computing professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"I coined the phrase 14 years ago. So smart dust has taken a while, but it's finally here."

Maybe not exactly how he envisioned it. But there has been progress.

The latest news comes from the computer and printing company Hewlett-Packard, which recently announced it's working on a project it calls the "Central Nervous System for the Earth." In coming years, the company plans to deploy a trillion sensors all over the planet.

The wireless devices would check to see if ecosystems are healthy, detect earthquakes more rapidly, predict traffic patterns and monitor energy use. The idea is that accidents could be prevented and energy could be saved if people knew more about the world in real time, instead of when workers check on these issues only occasionally.

HP will take its first step toward this goal in about two years, said Pete Hartwell, a senior researcher at HP Labs in Palo Alto. The company has made plans with Royal Dutch Shell to install 1 million matchbook-size monitors to aid in oil exploration by measuring rock vibrations and movement, he said. Those sensors, which already have been developed, will cover a 6-square-mile area.

That will be the largest smart dust deployment to date, he said.

"We just think now, the technology has reached a point where it makes basic sense for us ... to get this out of the lab and into reality," Hartwell said.

Smart dust (minus the 'dust')

Despite the recent excitement, there's still much confusion in the computing industry about what exactly smart dust is.

For starters, the sensors being deployed and developed today are much larger and clunkier than flecks of dust. HP's sensors -- accelerometers like those in the iPhone and Droid phone, but about 1,000 times more powerful -- are about the size of matchbooks. When they're enclosed in a metal box for protection, they're about the size of a VHS tape.

So what makes a smart dust sensor different from a weather station or a traffic monitor?

Size is one factor. Smart dust sensors must be relatively small and portable. But technology hasn't advanced far enough to manufacture the sensors on the scale of millimeters for commercial use (although Berkeley researchers are trying to make one that's a cubic millimeter).

Wireless connections are a big distinguisher, too. A building's thermostat is most likely hard-wired. A smart dust sensor might gauge temperature, but it would be battery-powered and would communicate wirelessly with the internet and with other sensors.

The sheer number of sensors in the network is what truly makes a smart dust project different from other efforts to record data about the world, said Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who works in the field.

Smart dust researchers tend to talk in the millions, billions and trillions.

Some say reality has diverged so far from the smart dust concept that it's time to dump that term in favor or something less sexy. "Wireless sensor networks" or "meshes" are terms finding greater acceptance with some researchers.

Estrin said it's important to ditch the idea that smart dust sensors would be disposable.

Sensors have to be designed for specific purposes and spread out on the land intentionally -- not scattered in the wind, as smart dust was initially pitched, she said.

'Real-world web'

Despite these differences, researchers say the smart-dust theory that monitoring everything will benefit humanity remains essentially unchanged.

And there are a number of real-world projects that, in one way or another, seek to use wireless sensors to take the Earth's vital signs.

Wireless sensors currently monitor farms, factories, data centers and bridges to promote efficiency and understanding of how these systems work, researchers said in interviews.

In all of these cases, the sensor networks are deployed for a specific purpose.

For example, a company called Streetline has installed 12,000 sensors on parking spots and highways in San Francisco. The sensors don't know everything that's going on at those parking spots. They are equipped with magnetometers to sense whether or not a huge metal object -- hopefully a car -- is sitting on the spot.

That data will soon be available to people who can use it to figure out where to park, said Tod Dykstra, Streetline's CEO.

It also tells the cities if the meters have expired.

Other sensors are equipped to measure vibration in factories and oil refineries to spot machine problems and inefficiencies before they cause trouble. Still others might pick up data about temperature, chemistry or sound. Tiny cameras or radars also can be tacked onto the data-collecting network to detect the presence of people or vehicles.

The power of these networks is that they eventually can be connected, said David Culler, a computer science professor at UC Berkeley.

Culler says the development of these wireless sensor networks is analogous to the creation of the World Wide Web. What's being created with the smart dust idea is a "Real World Web," he said.

But he said we're still early on in that progression.

"Netscape [for the wireless sensor network] hasn't quite happened," he said.

Big Brother effect

Even when deployed for science or the public, some people still get a Big Brother feeling -- the uncomfortable sense of being under constant, secret surveillance -- from the idea of putting trillions of monitors all over the world.

"It's a very, very, very huge potential privacy invasion because we're talking about very, very small sensors that can be undetectable, effectively," said Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocate.

"They are there in such numbers that you really can't do anything about them in terms of easy countermeasures."

That doesn't mean that researchers should stop working on smart dust. But they should be mindful of privacy as the work progresses, he said.

Pister said the wireless frequencies that smart dust sensors use to communicate -- which work kind of like Wi-Fi -- have security built into them. So the data is public only if the person or company that installed the sensor wants it to be, he said.

"Clearly, there are security concerns and privacy concerns," he said, "and the good news is that when the radio technology was being developed for this stuff, it was shortly after all of the big concerns about Wi-Fi security. ... We've got all the security tools we need underneath to make this information private."

Further privacy concerns may arise if another vision for smart dust comes true. Some researchers are looking into making mobile phones into sensors.

In this scenario, the billions of people roaming the Earth with cell phones become the "smart dust."

Bright future

Smart dust researchers say their theory of monitoring the world -- however it's realized -- will benefit people and the environment.

More information is better information, Pister said.

"Having more sensors improves the efficiency of a system and reduces the demand and reduces waste," he said. "So all of that is just straight goodness."

Hartwell, the HP researcher, says the only way people can combat huge problems like climate change and biodiversity loss is to have more information about what's going on.

"Frankly, I think we have to do it, from a sustainability and environmental standpoint," he said.

Even though the first application of HP's "Central Nervous System for the Earth" project will be commercial, Hartwell says the motives behind smart dust are altruistic.

"People ask me what my job is, and I say, well, I'm going to save the world," he said.

What do you think this means?

2010-05-08T00:18:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.

The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush's administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

However, they said insisting that decisions on the treaty be made by consensus "could fatally weaken a final deal."

The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.

Supporters say it would give worldwide coverage to close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.

Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.

The U.S. lobbying group the National Rifle Association has also opposed the treaty.

FCC trying to get back authority over the net.

2010-04-29T10:48:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

Stung by a court ruling earlier this month that it lacks authority to regulate the Internet, the Federal Communications Commission will seek and likely get such power from Congress. However, it may be next year before lawmakers pass a bill granting the FCC’s wish.

The agency’s push for legislation is sure to spark a major clash between Internet service providers (ISPs), such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and AOL, and leading providers of content over the Web, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Amazon.

The FCC also wants the legislation to allow it to require ISPs to be more transparent in letting customers know what actual broadband speeds they’re working with at any given time.

Moreover, the agency is asking lawmakers to allow it to redirect money from the Universal Service Fund -- an FCC-created kitty for the advancement of universal service -- to the deployment of broadband service.

The court’s ruling that the FCC lacks authority to regulate the Web may slow the Obama administration’s ambitious national broadband plan, which seeks to connect 100 million households with broadband capability of at least 100 megabits over the next decade, as well as its moves to require truth-in-advertising rules for ISPs.

The controversial court case dates to 2005, when the FCC set up a number of net neutrality rules, requiring ISPs to treat all Internet traffic equally, no matter the source. In 2008, the agency found that Comcast, an ISP, was violating those regulations because it was slowing the speed of BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file sharing program, which allowed users to share very large files, such as movies and television shows.

Though it denied the charge at first, Comcast later admitted that it was slowing that program, but only to protect customers from network congestion caused by the volume of BitTorrent traffic.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the FCC “lacked any statutorily mandated responsibility” to impose its net neutrality rules on the Internet.

The decision “means there are no protections in the law for consumers’ broadband services,” says Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights group that brought Comcast’s slowing of BitTorrent traffic to the attention of the FCC. “Companies selling Internet access are free to play favorites with content on their networks, to throttle certain applications or simply block others,” she adds.

The FCC could appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, but that’s unlikely because the appeals court relied heavily on Supreme Court precedents in its decision.

It could also move to declare the Internet “a communications service” and therefore subject to its legal authority. In 2002, the Internet was declared an information service rather than a communications service and therefore subject to light regulation.

But reclassifying it as a communications service would subject it to the same rules designed for the then-monopolistic landline telephone systems, which are onerous and could stifle Internet innovation.

“We hope the issue would be referred to the U.S. Congress, which alone confers the Commission’s legal authority,” says Jim Cicconi, AT&T executive vice president.

For its part, Comcast -- which has stopped the practice of slowing peer-to-peer traffic -- says it “remains committed to the FCC’s existing broadband principles, and we will continue to work constructively with the FCC as it determines how best to increase broadband adoption and preserve an open and vibrant Internet.”

REALLY SCARY ISH!!!!!

2010-04-27T01:22:00.002+09:00

Article HERE and HERE

By Steve Green

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

History

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry. Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization “WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and centralized meat into their control. Monsanto promoted HACCP.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as part of her campaign for president. Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller*, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto. Clinton lost, but Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsanto as a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced early versions of S 510.

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency. It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

2. It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security. It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection. Instead, S 510 says:

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.

4. It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food. It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements. Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.

5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.

6. It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals. The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease. Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents. Animal diseases can be falsely declared. S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

7. It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.

8. It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer. The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.

9. It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe. The five items listed — the Five Pillars of Food Safety — are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control. The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied. It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review. It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Law in the US.

For further information, watch these videos:

Food Laws – Forcing people to globalize
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia-P4rL2IWc

State Imposed Violence … to snatch resources of ordinary people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onw_PkVvpts&feature=related

Corporate Rule
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PwqUQ_HIlg&feature=related

Reclaiming Economies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXoJHG-er7A&feature=related

The Sky is Falling.... Yea Sure It Is.

2010-04-21T01:32:00.003+09:00

Article HERE

There’s a wonderful little nugget in today’s Telegraph, where Professor Mike Lockwood, a space physicist at Reading University, predicts that we’re about to go through the coldest winters for 300 years. But, he says, they’d be even colder if it weren’t for global warming. So the climate changers get to have their cake and eat it.

I call it the Managed Expectations Device (MED for short), a classic tool for making unbeatable arguments: “Yes, we lost the war,” said Mr Hitler, shortly before blowing his brains out, “but imagine how much worse the destruction of Berlin would be if we hadn’t started the war in the first place”; “Yes, I shot JFK,” said Mr Oswald, shortly before himself being shot dead by a minor gangster, “but imagine how badly wounded he would have been if I hadn’t gone to all that trouble in the first place.”

Evelyn Waugh used the MED, too, but to comic effect. After he had been appallingly rude to a French fan, Nancy Mitford asked him how he could be so cruel when he was such an avid Christian. “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I were not a Catholic,” Waugh said, “Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.”

I noticed Ed Miliband was up to the same trick in the Labour manifesto this week. “Unemployment has, so far, risen by over 500,000 less than people expected this time last year,” he wrote. That’s not the same as saying unemployment has fallen by 500,000, but that’s the impression he’s trying to give.

No, it’s not smoke and mirrors; it’s a fine bit of MED work.

More on Paul

2010-04-21T01:15:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

The news that a Rasmussen poll has Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) running in a dead heat against President Barack Obama in a hypothetical Paul-Obama face-off for the White House has the pundits fuming. Ben Smith, over at Politico, can hardly contain his annoyance: the poll "is a useful reminder of how totally flaky early polling is," he rants, and "this is the Ron Paul who polled, literally, thousands of votes placing fifth in the Iowa caucuses," and then only breaking ten percent after everyone but McCain had bailed. This evaluation depends on a static model, however: back then, there was no bank bailout, no insurance industry takeover, no tea party movement, and Ron had no real public record to run on – the 2008 campaign, in short, was a way for the country to get to know Rep. Paul, and the Rasmussen poll is a clear indication they liked what they saw. Instead of invoking Paul’s showing in the Iowa caucus, it’s more useful to compare this poll to the results of another similar Rasmussen poll taken in 2008, in which, as the pollster reported, "For Ron Paul, 10% of all voters would definitely vote for him. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say it’s No, no matter what."

Voter sentiment is now completely reversed: today, he’s in a dead heat with a sitting President. No matter how hard you try to minimize that, it’s an astonishing fact.

What Smith has to say about the perils of early polling would normally be accepted as beyond dispute: after all remember when Fred Thompson was the man to beat for the GOP nomination? However, we are not living in normal times, which I define as any period when Americans abandon their traditional attitude toward politics: i.e. indifference bordering on contempt. These days, the indifference has given way to not only awareness but also to active engagement, and the contempt for politicians has turned into a burning hatred, i.e. the very stuff and fuel of politics.

What makes it possible for Paul to ride this untamed mare is that he isn’t a politician at all: he is, in fact, the archetypal anti-politician, a professorial figure who lectures Republicans on the gravity of their fiscal and foreign policy sins, and is about as charismatic as plain oatmeal served without milk and sugar. What’s more, he tells the public what politicians have been loath to tell their constituents, and that is the necessity of deflation and the bearing of economic pain. In Paul’s view, the economic bubble generated by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies has led to the current downturn, and nothing less than gritting our teeth, cutting spending radically, and allowing the market to correct itself from government-induced distortions, is the cure.

His message, in short, is eat your spinach – not something any politician who hopes to keep his job (or get one) would normally say. But then again, as I said above, these are not normal times: far from it. The crisis of the American republic is acute, as we teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and our overseas empire shows every sign of imploding, just like the old Soviet Union – and, what’s more, the American people know it.

As our corporatist masters feast on our tax dollars in Washington, out in the provinces voters faced with economic ruin are looking for some explanation, a conceptual framework that gets at the root of the problem and provides some solution. Paul’s rising popularity is due to the fact that he does indeed have a consistent philosophical approach, one that has propelled him from being a mere marginal figure – a "gadfly," as they said – to a very real contender. Yes, that’s right, I said a contender for the White House: it’s real, it’s possible, and here’s why.

Paul has consistently emphasized two themes that successfully capture the sentiments of the average American voter, and address the top two issues on their minds: 1) Fiscal sanity, and 2) A non-interventionist foreign policy. As regards the first point, Ron is the foremost opponent of government spending in Congress, and has earned the sobriquet "Dr. No" many times over. But of course practically all Republicans at least pay lip service to this ideal, although none that I know of lives up to it like Dr. Paul. However, it’s the second point – opposition to imperialism, and especially opposition to our crazed post-9/11 foreign policy of perpetual war – that is the key.

As Paul explained at the CPAC conference – where he won the presidential preference poll – and on many other occasions, we can’t have our old republic back unless and until we rid ourselves of the empire we’ve acquired along the way to bankruptcy. Lecturing them on the evils of Woodrow Wilson’s "progressivism," and the virtues of the Old Right’s Robert A. Taft, he received a standing ovation (as well as a few boos from the minuscule-but-loud David Frum Fan Club). A similar reception occurred at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where he came within a single vote of winning the presidential poll (losing only because the SRLC officials closed registration early, betting correctly that Paul’s youthful supporters wouldn’t show up until it was time to address the convention).

What’s interesting about this, from the perspective of my readers – a majority of whom are not libertarians, I dare say, and are not generally sympathetic to my "anti-government" views – is that the more Ron talks about the one subject that is supposed to rile Republicans – his foreign policy views – the more popular he gets. It was the leitmotif of his CPAC speech, and a main theme of his SRLC speech: his opposition to what he calls "the Empire" inveigles its way into most of his public utterances: even if he’s asked a specific question about, say, the economy, he emphasizes the impossibility of ever getting out of the economic slough we’re in unless we throw off the burden of empire.

Paul’s candidacy is interesting to the antiwar movement, because he has managed to mainstream ideas that were long considered too radical for the ordinary American to even bear hearing about. To even raise the idea that the 9/11 attacks were "blowback" – in CIA parlance, an unintended consequence of US policies – was once considered a cardinal, self-marginalizing sin. Yet Paul took this view from the beginning: that the attacks were the boomeranging after-effects of playing "king of the hill" in the Middle Eastern sandbox and succoring the Afghan "freedom fighters" (as Ronald Reagan called them) who later morphed into al-Qaeda.

When Paul bravely brought this up at a Republican primary debate, the thuggish Rudy Giuliani said he’d "never heard" such an analysis, and demanded that Paul withdraw his statements. Paul refused, and cited the 9/11 Commission’s own words to back up his point, and yet the pundits in the peanut gallery crowed that Dr. No was finished, a "gadfly" who had been swatted by the thuggish Giuliani.

After spending millions in the GOP primaries, Giuliani was rewarded with exactly one delegate. Paul went to the GOP convention with a small but respectable platoon of elected delegates, and in spite of being thoroughly locked out the Paulians stayed in the party and worked at the precinct level, educating activists and recruiting lots of independents and conservatives previously disdainful of the GOP. The Paul movement was really the GOP’s lifeline to the emerging "tea party" movement, of which it was always an essential – and certainly a founding – element.

Again, what’s distinctive about the Paul movement within the tea party phenomenon is that they always bring their entire politics with them wherever they go: they raise the issue of the costs of war, and, as such, are currently the most active – and certainly the most successful – antiwar formation in this country. Here we have Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin offering to join in common cause with the tea partiers, and I think they should take her up on it. the Paulians are the logical mediators between what would, on the surface, appear to be oil and water.

As I said in a recent issue of The American Conservative, however, I don’t think the prospects for a left-right alliance on the issue of war and peace are all that bright, to begin with because what used to be the left has essentially been absorbed into the Obama cult, and co-opted by power. In the end, all liberals really care about is getting their "fair share" of the spoils, for themselves and their supposed constituencies. So what if the price they have to pay is going along with mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan? We all have to die sometime.

I harp on Ron Paul for all sorts of reasons, but the one of most interest to my readers is the fact that he is by far the most successful antiwar politician in recent American history. Derided as being one of those dreaded "isolationists," and attacked even by some alleged "libertarians" precisely for that – and because he appeals to the common man – he not only insists on raising this issue, for him it is central to his analysis of what he calls the "Welfare-Warfare State," a phrase coined by the late Murray Rothbard. Dr. Paul’s diagnosis of a nation fast exhausting itself in an orgy of spending and militaristic adventurism has the stark ring of truth about it – an alarm bell ringing in the night.

When Paul and others first sounded that alarm, back in the early formative years of the libertarian movement, very few were heeding the call. We were looked on as eccentrics, and, for example, the libertarian enthusiasm for gold was viewed as indicative of our archaic perspective, put down as an ideological curiosity and nothing more than a "crackpot" notion and a bad investment. Today, of course, those libertarian doomsayers who said the crisis was coming have been vindicated – and all that gold they bought way back in the 1970s, and kept buying in spite of the disdain of more worldly investors, today adds up to quite a bundle. Which is one way to get around to saying that a great deal of Paul’s newfound political authority and credibility comes out of his having predicted the current economic downturn. Virtually every speech made in Congress, and wherever he appeared, was dotted with references to the coming collapse if we didn’t mend our ways. Well, we didn’t, and it’s here.

That’s one factor the learned Ben Smith, and the rest of the "experts" and media know-it-alls fail to take into consideration. What fuels the tea party phenomenon and the vast anger animating the American public at the moment is the series of bailouts: the banks, the auto industry, the government workers, the Afghan government of our erstwhile ally, Hamid Karzai, not to mention the Israelis, the nation of Iceland, and maybe even the Greeks, for all we know.

As ordinary people see their homes foreclosed, their jobs evaporate, and their savings disappear, the rich get richer – not because of capitalism, or even "socialism," as the tea partiers describe the Obama administration’s philosophy, but due to corporatism, as Ron Paul recently explained. Corporatism is, in essence, socialism for the rich, that is, for the benefit of certain big corporations over other big corporations, and a raft of would-be smaller competitors. That would seem to be a precise definition of what’s going on in the country today, one that fits nicely in with the left-right synthesis the Paul movement represents, and for which the country yearns. Paul sweeps the independents in the Rasmussen poll, with an astonishing 47-28. Add to this Paul’s appeal to what a recent Pew poll characterized as rising "isolationist" sentiment, and what you have is a new American majority based on the proposition that the US government should start minding its own business, both at home and abroad.

So much, by the way, for those "libertarian" academics and ivory tower Deep Thinkers who pointedly snubbed Ron, and his supporters, just as they had been doing for years, constantly denigrating his chances of making a significant difference and echoing the orchestrated smear campaign launched by neoconservatives against Paul’s personal character and that of his supporters. Accurately tracing the Paulian strategy to a series of articles by Murray Rothbard written in the 1990s in favor of cultivating "right-wing populism" as a vehicle for the introduction of libertarian ideas into the national discourse, these self-styled ultra-sophisticates sneered at the "rednecks" and rubes the Rothbardian strategy would attract: and they specifically turned up their noses at Ron Paul.

Instead of following the Paulian star, as most other libertarians were doing outside of Washington, D.C., they sought to recruit their liberal friends and fellow cocktail party goers – or at least make themselves less unacceptable in the Washington social circuit, where the Obama cult reigns supreme. In a self-conscious rebuff to libertarians outside the Imperial City, these worthies – mostly subsidized by a certain eccentric billionaire, owner of the largest family-owned corporation in the United States – launched their own "liberal-tarian" movement, as they dubbed it, which, so far, consists of either three, or perhaps four, stalwart cadre, all of them employed by the same eccentric billionaire or one of his satellites.

To even compare the respective achievements of Ron Paul and these sub-political pygmies is to diminish Ron’s astonishing success: the latter don’t want to create a real movement. Their goal is to suck up to whoever’s in power, and somehow convince them to let us have a little more liberty, and a little less warfare, all the while ensuring their own career prospects and social status in the Washington pecking order.

They said it couldn’t be done: that the Paul movement would go nowhere, and that it would hurt the libertarian cause to have the Good Doctor become known as the fountainhead and symbol of the freedom movement in America. They gave money to his worst critics – and to his son’s opponent running in the GOP Senatorial primary in Kentucky – and used their mouthpieces to defame him. They did everything they could to destroy him – and now he’s running even with Obama in the polls.

These bare facts should tell libertarians everything they need to know about what kind of leadership they need, and who is going to provide it. At this crucial juncture – the libertarian moment – these losers will pardon our dust as the rest of us move confidently into a future when we can truly raise that old libertarian slogan, "Freedom in our time," and really believe it as if for the first time.

State Funded Militia in Oklahoma To Protect Against The Federal Govt

2010-04-21T00:53:00.003+09:00

Article HERE

Reporting from Oklahoma City

In the 15 years since a truck bomb blew apart the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building here, the determined people of Oklahoma City have remodeled the local airport and opened a new "Bricktown" area of shops and restaurants. They lured a professional basketball team, and they crowned the state Capitol with a new dome and a bronze statue called "The Guardian."

The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum now occupies the site of the Murrah building, and it honors the 168 people killed that April 19 and the many others injured. Very little is mentioned there about the bomber, Timothy J. McVeigh, and his distrust of the federal government.

But last week, fear of federal power was a noisy side note as the city prepared to mark Monday's anniversary.

For two days, thousands of "tea party" members gathered on the Statehouse grounds shouting anti-government slogans and waving flags with slogans such as "Don't Tread on Me" and "End the Fed!" A proposal expected to be introduced soon in the Legislature to create a new state militia, out of the control of federal authorities and staffed by armed and uniformed volunteers, drew praise.

"That is how we can protect ourselves," said John Slocum, in the crowd at a Thursday rally. "We're real big on states' rights. We want to bring back the balance of power."

Most tea party members have no love for McVeigh.

"McVeigh, that guy was insane. He was a monster," said Al Gerhart, a local cabinetmaker and head of the 2,000-member Sooner Tea Party, one of more than 40 tea party organizations around the state.

But Gerhart supports the creation of the militia, which he said would be a counterweight to federal authority. "We do think it's a scary thing that the federal government has done nothing to check its power," he said.

He said he and others are deeply concerned that President Obama and a liberal Washington administration will toughen gun laws, so they have been stocking up.

"I had an old shotgun," Gerhart said. "Now I've got a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol. Everybody did that. We had to have enough arms in private hands in America since it was obvious Obama was going to be elected."

"We've got to get enough people to fight and stand up to the federal government," he said.

Some local officials point out that there are about 20 other states with limited volunteer militias that back up National Guard units, but many of the families of bombing victims are angry that the militia idea has surfaced now -- in advance of the anniversary and with Oklahoma City back in the national spotlight.

"That idea is awful. All they are doing is triggering more hatred," said Jannie Coverdale, who lost two grandsons in the Murrah building's day-care center.

Joseph Thai, a professor at the University of Oklahoma law school, said that the increased hype and anger could be enough to prompt someone to act in a dangerous way.

"Most tea party people are peaceful," Thai said. "But it only takes one person to choose violence, just one person to be another Timothy McVeigh."

Politicians are split on the idea of establishing a militia outside federal control.

Republican state Sen. Randy Brogdon, who is running for governor, initially endorsed the idea. Then he said it would work only if its focus was to back up the National Guard. His GOP opponent, U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin, said that if volunteers want to get involved they should join the Guard.

State Sen. Steve Russell, a Republican and former Army lieutenant colonel, said a militia was not needed. "We've already got the best National Guard in the country," he said.

Paul Sund, spokesman for Democratic Gov. Brad Henry, said, "I have no idea why there is a sudden interest in a state militia."

Frank Keating, a former top federal law enforcement official in Washington who was the GOP governor of Oklahoma when the bomb went off, said: "We can always use a second pair of hands filling sandbags," but said that the militia would have to be tightly controlled by the governor's office.

One of the deepest anti-federal sentiments was expressed at a news conference inside the Capitol building.

A group of conspiracy theorists charged that McVeigh had been acting on behalf of the U.S. government, and that Washington had sent secret federal agents here to help him destroy the Murrah building.

V.Z. Lawton, a federal housing employee who was injured in the blast, said that as many as four federal agents had been on hand to assist McVeigh. "The building was already coming down before McVeigh's truck bomb went off," Lawton said.

Bud Welch lost his daughter in the bombing. He does not believe that McVeigh had help igniting the truck bomb.

"Those people are all nuts," Welch said.

80% of America does not trust the Government!

2010-04-21T00:39:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

America's "Great Compromiser" Henry Clay called government "the great trust," but most Americans today have little faith in Washington's ability to deal with the nation's problems.

Public confidence in government is at one of the lowest points in a half century, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans say they don't trust the federal government and have little faith it can solve America's ills, the survey found.

The findings illustrate the ominous situation President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party face as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall's elections. Midterm prospects are typically tough for the party in power. Add a toxic environment like this and lots of incumbent Democrats could be out of work.

Released Sunday, the survey found that just 22 percent of those questioned say they can trust Washington almost always or most of the time and just 19 percent say they are basically content with it. Nearly half say the government negatively affects their daily lives, a sentiment that's grown over the past dozen years.

This anti-government feeling has driven the tea party movement, reflected in fierce protests this past week.

"The government's been lying to people for years. Politicians make promises to get elected, and when they get elected, they don't follow through," says Cindy Wanto, 57, a registered Democrat from Nemacolin, Pa., who joined several thousand for a rally in Washington on April 15 — the tax filing deadline. "There's too much government in my business. It was a problem before Obama, but he's certainly not helping fix it."

Majorities in the survey call Washington too big and too powerful, and say it's interfering too much in state and local matters. The public is split over whether the government should be responsible for dealing with critical problems or scaled back to reduce its power, presumably in favor of personal responsibility.

About half say they want a smaller government with fewer services, compared with roughly 40 percent who want a bigger government providing more. The public was evenly divided on those questions long before Obama was elected. Still, a majority supported the Obama administration exerting greater control over the economy during the recession.

Only twice since the 1950s has public skepticism dipped this deeply — from 1992 to 1995 during which time it hit 17 percent, and 1978 to 1980, bottoming out at 25 percent. The nation was going through economic struggles during both of those periods.

"Trust in government rarely gets this low," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan center that conducted the survey. "Some of it's backlash against Obama. But there are a lot of other things going on."

And, he added: "Politics has poisoned the well."

The survey found that Obama's policies were partly to blame for a rise in distrustful, anti-government views. In his first year in office, the president orchestrated a government takeover of Detroit automakers, secured a $787 billion stimulus package and pushed to overhaul the health care system.

But the poll also identified a combination of factors that contributed to the electorate's hostility: the recession that Obama inherited from President George W. Bush; a dispirited public; and anger with Congress and politicians of all political leanings.

"I want an honest government. This isn't an honest government. It hasn't been for some time," said self-described independent David Willms, 54, of Sarasota, Fla. He faulted the White House and Congress under both parties.

The poll was based on four surveys done from March 11 to April 11 on landline and cell phones. The largest survey, of 2,500 adults, has a margin of sampling error of 2.5 percentage points; the others, of about 1,000 adults each, has a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points.

In the short term, the deepening distrust is politically troubling for Obama and Democrats. Analysts say out-of-power Republicans could well benefit from the bitterness toward Washington come November, even though voters blame them, too, for partisan gridlock that hinders progress.

In a democracy built on the notion that citizens have a voice and a right to exercise it, the long-term consequences could prove to be simply unhealthy — or truly debilitating. Distrust could lead people to refuse to vote or get involved in their own communities. Apathy could set in, or worse — violence.

Democrats and Republicans both accept responsibility and fault the other party for the electorate's lack of confidence.

"This should be a wake-up call. Both sides are guilty," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. She pointed to "nonsense" that goes on during campaigns that leads to "promises made but not promises kept." Still, she added: "Distrust of government is an all-American activity. It's something we do as Americans and there's nothing wrong with it."

Sen. Scott Brown, a Republican who won a long-held Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts in January by seizing on public antagonism toward Washington, said: "It's clear Washington is broken. There's too much partisan bickering to be able to solve the problems people want us to solve."

And, he added: "It's going to be reflected in the elections this fall."

But Matthew Dowd, a top strategist on Bush's re-election campaign who now shuns the GOP label, says both Republicans and Democrats are missing the mark.

"What the country wants is a community solution to the problems but not necessarily a federal government solution," Dowd said. Democrats are emphasizing the federal government, while Republicans are saying it's about the individual; neither is emphasizing the right combination to satisfy Americans, he said.

Obama Dodd financial bill would further enrich Goldman Sachs

2010-04-21T00:35:00.001+09:00

Article Here

Today, the SEC charged giant investment bank Goldman Sachs with more than $1 billion worth of securities fraud for its dealings in the subprime mortgage market.

Ironically, at the same time the SEC is seeking justice for Goldman’s alleged victims, President Obama and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) are pushing a bill would reward the firm with potentially billions of dollars by instituting a so-called “resolution authority” that would, in practice, be a permanent bailout fund.

Supporters of Dodd’s bill maintain that it does not create bailouts because the failing firm’s shareholders would be wiped out and its managers would be fired. But what they don’t say is that the money from the $50 billion resolution fund would be used to frequently give creditors of this firm a better deal than they would have in bankruptcy.

Recall that during the financial implosion of late 2008, Goldman was not bailed out directly by taxpayers, but instead received tax dollars as a creditor of AIG. Goldman received $12.9 billion in the “backdoor bailout” of AIG because of the credit default swaps it owned that AIG had insured. Goldman and other of AIG’s counterparties were paid by the government 100 cents on the dollar in this bailout, whereas creditors in bankruptcy court often get less than 50 cents on the dollar.

So as American Enterprise Institute scholar and Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission member Peter Wallison puts it: “That act—paying off the creditors when the government takes over a failing firm—is a bailout. It doesn’t matter that the management lose their jobs, or that the shareholders get nothing. When the creditors are aware that they will get a better deal with the failure of a large company than they will get with a small one that goes the ordinary route to bankruptcy, that is a bailout.”

To top it off, the fees for the Dodd bill’s resolution fund that would pay off a failing firm’s creditors would come not just from banks but from a broad array of Main Street businesses. Stable life, auto and home insurance companies would have to pay into this fund to subsidize the failure of the next high-roller, and the fees they pay would likely be passed on in the premiums their policy holders pay. And the bill’s definition of “nonbank financial company” is so broad that it could cover manufacturers only tangentially involved in extending credit, such as those that lease equipment to their customers. This would raise prices and cost Main Street jobs.

All in all, the Goldman indictment should serve as a wakeup call to those who want to ram a bill through Congress without looking at who both its victims and beneficiaries would ultimately be.

McCHRYSTAL LOST IN AFGHANISTAN

2010-04-21T00:15:00.001+09:00

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Article HERE

As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple “drum beating” for an Israeli attack in Iran to get at the gas supplies needed for her secret pipeline deals, her “shill” in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is simply no longer credible.

It all fell apart with the phony Marjah operation, a “joint operation” against a town of 80,000 Taliban fighters that turned out to be a couple of small villages in the middle of poppy fields that McChrystal decided needed protection. Surprise, Surprise.

While Karzai, our disastrous ally, hated by his own people, tried to bully the United States into letting him consolidate control, not over Afghanistan but control over “certain enterprises,” that he has been operating with his partners, India and Israel, McChrystal has been buckling under, “kissing up” to Karzai’s brother, believed by every informed source to be the largest narcotics trafficker in the world.

Now, McChrystal is placing the blame on Iran for financing and arming the Taliban and, at the same time, pointing out that nearly 100,000 “contractors” in Afghanistan, 94% of them armed are “too many.” He could, if he thought about it a second, also point out that most of them are Taliban. In fact, he could also point out that he is paying up to $3000 per truck that comes into Afghanistan, thousands of trucks per month, to the Taliban as ransom.

He could also point out that the years and years he has been training and arming the Afghan army, their utterly ineffective Army, and the Afghan police force, their utterly ineffective police force, the ammunition and weapons they get have been flowing to the Taliban also.

Were he more honest, he could point out that the reason he is trying to negotiate with the Taliban is that, if fact, they really aren’t the Taliban at all. You have a country full of drug lords, the allies that America used in their initial attack against, well, we aren’t so sure anymore. See, we never found Al Qaeda training camps, we never found Osama bin Laden, in fact, we have absolutely no reliable information that bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11.

We do know that thousands of Indian “security personnel” are organizing, arming and financing terrorist operations against Pakistan and that, of the hundreds of European contractors and UN officials in Afghanistan, hundreds are Israeli agents, some of them training terrorists themselves, who have crossed into Iran and have murdered hundreds. All of this is going on under McChrystal’s nose, while Pakistan suffers daily terrorist attacks from groups trained and financed in Afghanistan but stays quiet about it because their very survival depends on US aid. You can’t tell the US the truth.

Lying has become second nature to us.

OUR IRANIAN “GADFLY”

Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, knows where our weaknesses are, he knows where the bodies are buried. If you are watching the press, you are seeing “holocaust denialists” being jailed, fined and attacked daily. The emails coming out of Israeli financed sources, many originating from former “Pentagon pundits,” the former officers who lied continually to help justify the disastrous invasion of Iraq, are all warning about attacks on Israel and a new “holocaust,” with Iran building gas chambers, and making soap, lampshades, the whole Hollywood thing that Israel uses to guilt out the Europeans when they need a few billion, when they have blown up a school and haven’t hunted down all the journalists who could report on it yet or, well, there are so many games now.

Ahmadinejad invited the world’s scholars to Iran a bit ago, to study the holocaust. He knew Israel was going to yell “Auschwitz” when they came after Iran’s oil and gas with their massive military forces supplemented by the United States. Now there is a massive move by Israel to build up a frenzy about the holocaust. Since it is against the law to say any more, I have to move on.

Last week, Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations requesting a couple of things:

A new and comprehensive 9/11 investigation
An international commission to address terrorist attacks on Iran that are staged from bases in Afghanistan and Baluchistan
A plan to address that massive flood of narcotics coming out of Afghanistan

Why has Ahmandinejad chosen 9/11? Since most of the members of the 9/11 Commission have either rescinded their approval of the report they were forced to submit though incomplete, asked for criminal investigation or stated outright that the report is a cover-up and 5 years of new evidence, “leaks” and “cooler heads” has brought informed people around the world to accept the idea that 9/11 may have been conceived in an office and not a cave. The mainstream news in the United States is no longer able to keep it all quiet, what is likely to be the worst crime of the last hundred years.

DRUG MONEY, WHERE DO THE BILLIONS GO?

Recent reports have shown that only some of the money, billions of dollars, coming from the Afghan drug trade has bought the following governments:

Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Tajikistan
Kyrgyzstan

What we aren’t saying is that billions in narcotics trafficking money has seriously influenced policy in these other countries:

United States
Afghanistan
Germany
Israel
Belgium
Pakistan
Switzerland
Spain
Poland
Kazakhstan
India
Canada
Russia
Italy
France

Americans remember the flood of narcotics that filled America’s cities during the 1980s. Dozens of movies have been made describing CIA involvement in drug trafficking, it has become a major part of our pop-culture. Every muscle-bound super hero has fought the CIA and their drug importing from Southeast Asia, Columbia or Afghanistan. Now that we have reliable reports and testimony that this is actively going on with full complicity from, not only foreign governments, but multiple US administrations, not just Reagan but continuing on today, we have no excuse for looking away. When FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, broke the story, finally able to testify when her “national security” gag orders were overturned, no network nor major paper would report it. It is still on the record, though.

General Stanley McChrystal knows. He has seen her testimony. He has been told it is reliable. He knows that tons of heroin are flown out of Afghanistan and distributed around the world and he knows that nearly everyone around him is either involved or afraid to speak up. Is he only a puppet himself? This is how things are beginning to look. Compared to the real power of the “narco-billions,” one American general is nothing.

EVERYTHING IN AFGHANSITAN IS A LIE

I have spent dozens of hours meeting with and talking to people who know about Afghanistan, from members of their royal families, to tribal leaders to activists. We all agree on a few things:

Unless all opium production is immediately eradicated in Afghanistan, any attempt to build an economy or organize the country will fail, overwhelmed by the “gun culture” built to support a massive narcotics operation that is growing by 20% or more a year.
A massive program of economic realignment supported by powerful military operations will be necessary when the opium crops are destroyed or the country will erupt into full scale civil war. Estimates are that it will take two years for America to accomplish what the Taliban did, eliminating opium production, the biggest threat Afghanistan poses to the world, a thousand times bigger than any imaginary terrorist training areas.
Karzai is weak, too tied to corruption to be credible, too close to India to be trusted by Pakistan and too unstable to manage even the few miles around Kabul he has “ruled” for all these years. He must go, replaced by a strong ruler with blood ties to a tribal groups across the nation. There are several potential candidates far more qualified than Karzai, who has been abandoned by the Jirga’s and is likely to get another “no confidence” vote in May
The Afghan army needs to be disbanded, as it is a mercenary army that doesn’t represent the country. Afghanistan has always had universal compulsory military service and has strong military traditions based on that.
The current concept of a national police force has failed. Until a force based on regional ethnic lines that received broad support from regional/tribal leaders, where such systems are still operating, the current “abomination” must go. It has become little more than a Mafia.
A substantial region along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border is under the control, not of terrorists but criminal elements, even worse than those ruling the country.

It is entirely possible that, with a real president in Afghanistan, perhaps not in Kabul but Kandahar, and a rational policy to end narcotics production, replacing it with a program that will provide education, medical care and needed local services such as cold storage for food along with solar/wind based power systems, Afghanistan can reach a sustainable level of “disorder” in 24 months, not 10 years. With opium production left as it is, in accordance with McChrystal’s wishes, the chaos will continue indefinitely. Is this the plan? Was it the plan all along?

CLEANING OUT THE RATS NEST

Afghanistan has attracted vermin from around the world. We have half a dozen intelligence agencies training terrorists in Afghanistan, all financing the efforts by taking part in the narcotics trade. Attacks on both Iran and Pakistan are being staged in Afghanistan with full complicity on the part of MI-6, the Indian RAW, the Mossad, the CIA and dozens of contractor groups. All have become so enmeshed in narco-trafficking that nobody can be trusted. Billions of dollars are floating around in an area with no law, no accountability, just mayhem, chaos and brutality. We have created a nightmare.

Every gangster in the world that can get there, is there, working for the UN, passing out bibles or Koran’s or pretending to advise someone on something. Most advice is where to put laundered drug money, the second largest industry in Afghanistan.

GOING IN WAS ALWAYS SUBTERFUGE

If you can judge a policy by its results Afghanistan was invaded to rebuild its drug infrastructure and overthrow the government of Pakistan.

9/11 provided cover, that and the fiction of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, fantasies about terrorists that never existed. It was all made up. When the Bush administration needed to arrest terrorists, they went to the drug lords and had them kidnap people off the streets. This is how we got Dr. Aafia and her children, one of whom may have been released by her kidnappers, American or Pakistani gangsters, we aren’t sure. She had been missing for 7 years and suddenly, dropped off on the street. We still aren’t sure if this is one of Aafia’s missing children.

The White House ordered these kidnappings and covered up their phony “Al Quada” arrests by hiding innocent people in secret prisons, torturing them for years and, eventually releasing 95% of them.

This was our real war on terror, a farce, at least to those who weren’t kidnapped and tortured. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Our entire military and intelligence networks were tasked with one thing, to invent a cover story to justify two invasions, invent terrorist groups, capture “suspects” and play along. When the real CIA and military couldn’t do it, we hired foreign gangsters and mercenaries, all for one thing, “cover.”

With the controlled press at home, the phony 9/11 cover-up going full steam and troops in combat, well, you know how it ended up. The criminal gangs responsible are still trying to cover their trail. The GOP is trying to stop financial reforms meant to end the looting or our economy, the “tea baggers” are trying to blame “liberals” for the acts of the Bush criminal dictatorship and AIPAC is working overtime, trying to start a new war while the last two they pushed America into are still going on. Who is AIPAC? Are they American or Israeli?

NASTY OLD HISTORY

I got an email yesterday telling me about how Israel barely survived when all the Arab countries went after them in 1967. This is the story we are still telling but it is a total lie. The 1967 war was planned by Israel to seize land and was a sneak attack, first destroying the entire Egyptian air force on the ground, then wiping out their army, an army with no air cover. Syria was a walkover then. To get away with it, Israel attacked the American spy ship, USS Liberty, bombing, strafing and torpedoing it, murdering 34 Americans.

Anyone who tries to tell you the 1967 war was anything but a “blitzkrieg” by Israel, a sneak attack on her neighbors with no warning, kept secret by the the planned attack on the USS Liberty is a liar.

Israel had tried the same thing, attacking Egypt in1956, with the help of France and Britain. Israel send tanks across the Sinai, just like in 1967, this time backed by air power from France and Britain. This “blitzkrieg” was called Operation Kadesh. Moshe Dyan and Ariel Sharon planned the attack with friends in Paris and London. However, the United States, under President Eisenhower, wouldn’t allow it. The UN Security council drafted a resolution condemning the invasion but Britain and France vetoed it.

Then America threatened to economically destroy France and Britain if they didn’t withdraw troops and end support for Israeli aggression. Eventually this led France to leave NATO, if that is something you wondered about. We call this, “the Suez crisis” but, frankly, we don’t call it anything at all because it makes a good case for Israel’s history of aggression and its capability to get western governments to support its policies of conquering the Middle East.

How has this history worked out? Any patterns appear here? The myth of the 1967 war no longer holds water once we learn it wasn’t their first try, once we accept they learned from being caught during the Suez Crisis, and decided to attack the American ship that would have discovered their lie. Israel invaded Egypt with a sneak attack, 1956 and 1967.

DRUGS, NATURAL GAS AND WORLD CONQUEST

Is there a vast plot out there, one capable of pushing the United States into war, bankrupting the world’s financial system or taking over oil and gas supplies? Do nations like Israel, India, Pakistan, Britain and the United States train terrorists? Was the invasion of Afghanistan really the result of 9/11? History says otherwise.

Was the invasion of Iraq the result of 9/11 or “weapons of mass destruction?” History says otherwise.

Did Bush “make America safe?” Maybe, what’s left of it anyway, depending on what you call safe. Safe from what? I am not entirely sure we are safe from him, even though he is gone. We still have his wars, his drugs, his Supreme Court justices, his trillions in debt and the Bush economic collapse. We still have the controlled press, a divided nation and the reputation around the world as a brutal pawn of Israel and a total economic failure. You don’ t think this is how we look, not just in Africa, Asia and the Middle East but Europe as well?

General Stanley McChrystal is simply, like Karzai is now, like Bush was then, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. When we needed leaders, people of vision, we got small men, with small hearts and small brains. They told themselves they were wolves but were driven like sheep. As is often said now, was there never any plan or are things as they are because the plan was chaos and death?

Who won the war? That’s easy. Israel won and will win again. Not the people of Israel but the criminal conspiracy that has taken over that country like Bush and Cheney took over America. This is a rabid gang, backed by the news media, playing decent Jews around the world for fools. Who is going to lose? The people, Israeli, American most of all, but all people will lose. All of this planning, the lying, the total lack of honor and decency won’t buy anything but big homes, fast cars, expensive wine and the ability to live the sexual sickness that so many of our power seekers are driven by.

Today Stanley McChrystal has shown us that he believes his failures, failures of conscience, failures of intellect, failures of duty can be blamed on Iran. As the darling of the press, he may be able to help Israel push America into another war, one we can’t even begin to think about winning. It never was about winning, it was about chaos, it was always about money.

Is it that simple?

Harding

2010-04-19T11:14:00.002+09:00

I have read a lot of Thomas Woods work in the past and I agree with about 99% of it. To be honest he is smarter than me so the 1% I disagree with is probably because I am wrong.

This piece HERE dovetails with a piece from William T. Still's documentary "The Money Masters" That being said I hate Mr. Still's views on Fiat Currency but he does provoke one to some new thoughts and ideas. If you decide to watch the video its 3 1/2 hours long. The part dealing with Harding is at about the 2:23 mark.

So ANYWAYYYYYYS on with the article:

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones – and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as “unpredictable.”

For this reason, we should not be surprised that our political leaders have made such transparently ideological use of the past in the wake of the financial crisis that hit the United States in late 2007. According to the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom, the Great Depression of the 1930s was the result of capitalism run riot, and only the wise interventions of progressive politicians restored prosperity. Many of those who concede that the New Deal programs alone did not succeed in lifting the country out of depression nevertheless go on to suggest that the massive government spending during World War II is what did it. (Even some nominal free-marketeers make the latter claim, which hands the entire theoretical argument to supporters of fiscal stimulus.)

The connection between this version of history and the events of today is obvious enough: once again, it is claimed, wildcat capitalism has created a terrific mess, and once again, only a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus can save us.

In order to make sure that this version of events sticks, little, if any, public mention is ever made of the depression of 1920–21. And no wonder: that historical experience deflates the ambitions of those who promise us political solutions to the real imbalances at the heart of economic busts. The conventional wisdom holds that in the absence of government countercyclical policy, whether fiscal or monetary (or both), we cannot expect economic recovery – at least, not without an intolerably long delay. Yet the very opposite policies were followed during the depression of 1920–21, and recovery was in fact not long in coming.

The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover – falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics – urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored.

Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. The Federal Reserve’s activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.” By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.

It is instructive to compare the American response in this period to that of Japan. In 1920, the Japanese government introduced the fundamentals of a planned economy, with the aim of keeping prices artificially high. According to economist Benjamin Anderson, “The great banks, the concentrated industries, and the government got together, destroyed the freedom of the markets, arrested the decline in commodity prices, and held the Japanese price level high above the receding world level for seven years. During these years Japan endured chronic industrial stagnation and at the end, in 1927, she had a banking crisis of such severity that many great branch bank systems went down, as well as many industries. It was a stupid policy. In the effort to avert losses on inventory representing one year’s production, Japan lost seven years.”

The U.S., by contrast, allowed its economy to readjust. “In 1920–21,” writes Anderson, “we took our losses, we readjusted our financial structure, we endured our depression, and in August 1921 we started up again. . . . The rally in business production and employment that started in August 1921 was soundly based on a drastic cleaning up of credit weakness, a drastic reduction in the costs of production, and on the free play of private enterprise. It was not based on governmental policy designed to make business good.” The federal government did not do what Keynesian economists ever since have urged it to do: run unbalanced budgets and prime the pump through increased expenditures. Rather, there prevailed the old-fashioned view that government should keep spending and taxation low and reduce the public debt.

Those were the economic themes of Warren Harding’s presidency. Few presidents have been subjected to the degree of outright ridicule that Warren Harding endured during his lifetime and continues to receive long after his death. But the conventional wisdom about Harding is wrong to the point of absurdity: even the alleged “corruption” of his administration was laughably minor compared to the presidential transgressions we have since come to take for granted.

In his 1920 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, Harding declared:

We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the renewal of the practice of public economy, not alone because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in private life.

Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nationwide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic. There hasn’t been a recovery from the waste and abnormalities of war since the story of mankind was first written, except through work and saving, through industry and denial, while needless spending and heedless extravagance have marked every decay in the history of nations.

It is hardly necessary to point out that Harding’s counsel – delivered in the context of a speech to a political convention, no less – is the opposite of what the alleged experts urge upon us today. Inflation, increased government spending, and assaults on private savings combined with calls for consumer profligacy: such is the program for “recovery” in the twenty-first century.

Not surprisingly, many modern economists who have studied the depression of 1920–21 have been unable to explain how the recovery could have been so swift and sweeping even though the federal government and the Federal Reserve refrained from employing any of the macroeconomic tools – public works spending, government deficits, inflationary monetary policy – that conventional wisdom now recommends as the solution to economic slowdowns. The Keynesian economist Robert A. Gordon admitted that “government policy to moderate the depression and speed recovery was minimal. The Federal Reserve authorities were largely passive. . . . Despite the absence of a stimulative government policy, however, recovery was not long delayed.” Another economic historian briskly conceded that “the economy rebounded quickly from the 1920–21 depression and entered a period of quite vigorous growth” but chose not to comment further on this development. “This was 1921,” writes the condescending Kenneth Weiher, “long before the concept of countercyclical policy was accepted or even understood.”⁷ They may not have “understood” countercyclical policy, but recovery came anyway – and quickly.

One of the most perverse treatments of the subject comes at the hands of two historians of the Harding presidency, who urge that without government confiscation of much of the income of the wealthiest Americans, the American economy will never be stable:

The tax cuts, along with the emphasis on repayment of the national debt and reduced federal expenditures, combined to favor the rich. Many economists came to agree that one of the chief causes of the Great Depression of 1929 was the unequal distribution of wealth, which appeared to accelerate during the 1920s, and which was a result of the return to normalcy. Five percent of the population had more than 33 percent of the nation’s wealth by 1929. This group failed to use its wealth responsibly. . . . Instead, they fueled unhealthy speculation on the stock market as well as uneven economic growth.

If this absurd attempt at a theory were correct, the world would be in a constant state of depression. There was nothing at all unusual about the pattern of American wealth in the 1920s. Far greater disparities have existed in countless times and places without any resulting disruption. In fact, the Great Depression actually came in the midst of a dramatic upward trend in the share of national income devoted to wages and salaries in the United States – and a downward trend in the share going to interest, dividends, and entrepreneurial income. We do not in fact need the violent expropriation of any American in order to achieve prosperity, thank goodness.

It is not enough, however, to demonstrate that prosperity happened to follow upon the absence of fiscal or monetary stimulus. We need to understand why this outcome is to be expected – in other words, why the restoration of prosperity in the absence of the remedies urged upon us in more recent times was not an inconsequential curiosity or the result of mere happenstance.

First, we need to consider why the market economy is afflicted by the boom-bust cycle in the first place. The British economist Lionel Robbins asked in his 1934 book The Great Depression why there should be a sudden “cluster of error” among entrepreneurs. Given that the market, via the profit-and-loss system, weeds out the least competent entrepreneurs, why should the relatively more skilled ones that the market has rewarded with profits and control over additional resources suddenly commit grave errors – and all in the same direction? Could something outside the market economy, rather than anything that inheres in it, account for this phenomenon?

Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek both pointed to artificial credit expansion, normally at the hands of a government-established central bank, as the non-market culprit. (Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on what is known as Austrian business cycle theory.) When the central bank expands the money supply – for instance, when it buys government securities – it creates the money to do so out of thin air. This money either goes directly to commercial banks or, if the securities were purchased from an investment bank, very quickly makes its way to the commercial banks when the investment banks deposit the Fed’s checks. In the same way that the price of any good tends to decline with an increase in supply, the influx of new money leads to lower interest rates, since the banks have experienced an increase in loanable funds.

The lower interest rates stimulate investment in long-term projects, which are more interest-rate sensitive than shorter-term ones. (Compare the monthly interest paid on a thirty-year mortgage with the interest paid on a two-year mortgage – a tiny drop in interest rates will have a substantial impact on the former but a negligible impact on the latter.) Additional investment in, say, research and development (R&D), which can take many years to bear fruit, will suddenly seem profitable, whereas it would not have been profitable without the lower financing costs brought about by the lower interest rates.

We describe R&D as belonging to a “higher-order” stage of production than a retail establishment selling hats, for example, since the hats are immediately available to consumers while the commercial results of R&D will not be available for a relatively long time. The closer a stage of production is to the finished consumer good to which it contributes, the lower a stage we describe it as occupying.

On the free market, interest rates coordinate production across time. They ensure that the production structure is configured in a way that conforms to consumer preferences. If consumers want more of existing goods right now, the lower-order stages of production expand. If, on the other hand, they are willing to postpone consumption in the present, interest rates encourage entrepreneurs to use this opportunity to devote factors of production to projects not geared toward satisfying immediate consumer wants, but which, once they come to fruition, will yield a greater supply of consumer goods in the future.

Had the lower interest rates in our example been the result of voluntary saving by the public instead of central-bank intervention, the relative decrease in consumption spending that is a correlate of such saving would have released resources for use in the higher-order stages of production. In other words, in the case of genuine saving, demand for consumer goods undergoes a relative decline; people are saving more and spending less than they used to. Consumer-goods industries, in turn, undergo a relative contraction in response to the decrease in demand for consumer goods. Factors of production that these industries once used – trucking services, for instance – are now released for use in more remote stages of the structure of production. Likewise for labor, steel, and other nonspecific inputs.

When the market’s freely established structure of interest rates is tampered with, this coordinating function is disrupted. Increased investment in higher order stages of production is undertaken at a time when demand for consumer goods has not slackened. The time structure of production is distorted such that it no longer corresponds to the time pattern of consumer demand. Consumers are demanding goods in the present at a time when investment in future production is being disproportionately undertaken.

Thus, when lower interest rates are the result of central bank policy rather than genuine saving, no letup in consumer demand has taken place. (If anything, the lower rates make people even more likely to spend than before.) In this case, resources have not been released for use in the higher-order stages. The economy instead finds itself in a tug-of-war over resources between the higher- and lower-order stages of production. With resources unexpectedly scarce, the resulting rise in costs threatens the profitability of the higher-order projects. The central bank can artificially expand credit still further in order to bolster the higher-order stages’ position in the tug of war, but it merely postpones the inevitable. If the public’s freely expressed pattern of saving and consumption will not support the diversion of resources to the higher-order stages, but, in fact, pulls those resources back to those firms dealing directly in finished consumer goods, then the central bank is in a war against reality. It will eventually have to decide whether, in order to validate all the higher-order expansion, it is prepared to expand credit at a galloping rate and risk destroying the currency altogether, or whether instead it must slow or abandon its expansion and let the economy adjust itself to real conditions.

It is important to notice that the problem is not a deficiency of consumption spending, as the popular view would have it. If anything, the trouble comes from too much consumption spending, and as a result too little channeling of funds to other kinds of spending – namely, the expansion of higher-order stages of production that cannot be profitably completed because the necessary resources are being pulled away precisely by the relatively (and unexpectedly) stronger demand for consumer goods. Stimulating consumption spending can only make things worse, by intensifying the strain on the already collapsing profitability of investment in higher-order stages.

Note also that the precipitating factor of the business cycle is not some phenomenon inherent in the free market. It is intervention into the market that brings about the cycle of unsustainable boom and inevitable bust. As business-cycle theorist Roger Garrison succinctly puts it, “Savings gets us genuine growth; credit expansion gets us boom and bust.”

This phenomenon has preceded all of the major booms and busts in American history, including the 2007 bust and the contraction in 1920–21. The years preceding 1920 were characterized by a massive increase in the supply of money via the banking system, with reserve requirements having been halved by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and then with considerable credit expansion by the banks themselves. Total bank deposits more than doubled between January 1914, when the Fed opened its doors, and January 1920. Such artificial credit creation sets the boom-bust cycle in motion. The Fed also kept its discount rate (the rate at which it lends directly to banks) low throughout the First World War (1914–18) and for a brief period thereafter. The Fed began to tighten its stance in late 1919. Economist Gene Smiley, author of The American Economy in the Twentieth Century, observes that “the most common view is that the Fed’s monetary policy was the main determinant of the end of the expansion and inflation and the beginning of the subsequent contraction and severe deflation.” Once credit began to tighten, market actors suddenly began to realize that the structure of production had to be rearranged and that lines of production dependent on easy credit had been erroneously begun and needed to be liquidated.

We are now in a position to evaluate such perennially fashionable proposals as “fiscal stimulus” and its various cousins. Think about the condition of the economy following an artificial boom. It is saddled with imbalances. Too many resources have been employed in higher order stages of production and too few in lower-order stages. These imbalances must be corrected by entrepreneurs who, enticed by higher rates of profit in the lower-order stages, bid resources away from stages that have expanded too much and allocate them toward lower-order stages where they are more in demand. The absolute freedom of prices and wages to fluctuate is essential to the accomplishment of this task, since wages and prices are indispensable ingredients of entrepreneurial appraisal.

In light of this description of the post-boom economy, we can see how unhelpful, even irrelevant, are efforts at fiscal stimulus. The government’s mere act of spending money on arbitrarily chosen projects does nothing to rectify the imbalances that led to the crisis. It is not a decline in “spending” per se that has caused the problem. It is the mismatch between the kind of production the capital structure has been misled into undertaking on the one hand, and the pattern of consumer demand, which cannot sustain the structure of production as it is, on the other.

And it is not unfair to refer to the recipients of fiscal stimulus as arbitrary projects. Since government lacks a profit-and-loss mechanism and can acquire additional resources through outright expropriation of the public, it has no way of knowing whether it is actually satisfying consumer demand (if it is concerned about this at all) or whether its use of resources is grotesquely wasteful. Popular rhetoric notwithstanding, government cannot be run like a business.

Monetary stimulus is no help either. To the contrary, it only intensifies the problem. In Human Action, Mises compared an economy under the influence of artificial credit expansion to a master builder commissioned to construct a house that (unbeknownst to him) he lacks sufficient bricks to complete. The sooner he discovers his error the better. The longer he persists in this unsustainable project, the more resources and labor time he will irretrievably squander. Monetary stimulus merely encourages entrepreneurs to continue along their unsustainable production trajectories; it is as if, instead of alerting the master builder to his error, we merely intoxicated him in order to delay his discovery of the truth. But such measures make the eventual bust no less inevitable – merely more painful.

If the Austrian view is correct – and I believe the theoretical and empirical evidence strongly indicates that it is – then the best approach to recovery would be close to the opposite of these Keynesian strategies. The government budget should be cut, not increased, thereby releasing resources that private actors can use to realign the capital structure. The money supply should not be increased. Bailouts merely freeze entrepreneurial error in place, instead of allowing the redistribution of resources into the hands of parties better able to provide for consumer demands in light of entrepreneurs’ new understanding of real conditions. Emergency lending to troubled firms perpetuates the misallocation of resources and extends favoritism to firms engaged in unsustainable activities at the expense of sound firms prepared to put those resources to more appropriate use.

This recipe of government austerity is precisely what Harding called for in his 1921 inaugural address:

We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate the immediate task of putting our public household in order. We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring for the future. . . .

The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained. We must seek the readjustment with care and courage. . . . All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the oldest lesson of civilization. I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved. No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven system.

Harding’s inchoate understanding of what was happening to the economy and why grandiose interventionist plans would only delay recovery is an extreme rarity among twentieth-century American presidents. That he has been the subject of ceaseless ridicule at the hands of historians, to the point that anyone speaking a word in his favor would be dismissed out of hand, speaks volumes about our historians’ capabilities outside of their own discipline. The experience of 1920–21 reinforces the contention of genuine free-market economists that government intervention is a hindrance to economic recovery. It is not in spite of the absence of fiscal and monetary stimulus that the economy recovered from the 1920–21 depression. It is because those things were avoided that recovery came. The next time we are solemnly warned to recall the lessons of history lest our economy deteriorate still further, we ought to refer to this episode – and observe how hastily our interrogators try to change the subject.

Freaking Awesome!!! The Darknet Plan

2010-04-15T01:11:00.002+09:00

Ok the link is here, However Firefox says this is dangerous site. I viewed it via IXQUICK proxy just in case and had no problems then without it still no problems. I think this may be dangerous to the powers that be so they are trying to make it hard to view. But I am giving fair warning so be careful if you visit. Ok what this means is that we could truly have an uncontrolled network, completely private, and free from government intrusion!!! THIS IS THE BEST NEWS I HAVE HEARD ALL YEAR!!! So Check It Out Below!

Creating an full featured Meshnet is a huge and difficult task to accomplish, especially when the users are separated by extreme distances, and not everyone is an expert in the Field.

So there is need for a strategy how we can establish our parallel structure to the Internet.

The Darknet Plan is a possible strategy.

[hide]

[edit] The Goal

The Goal is to establish our own Internet-like net without ISPs using Wifi, which will exist parallel to the Internet. To avoid influence of governments or the content mafia aka RIAA, the traffic will be encrypted, using a VPN net to net Technology, thus making Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) impossible.

[edit] The Plan

Divide and Conquer.

We split the goal in the net and the carrier.

[edit] Stage 1: The Net

The net is the heart of the plan, 75% of the whole cake. The net will be a cable bound encrypted MESH-NET. We will build up a decentralized VPN network through the Internet, then establish services within the net, like Game servers, Filesharing hubs, Websites, Messaging, VoIP you name it. To do so we must find an easy to use router Operating system that allows you to connect your home network to the net as your internet router connects you to the internet. And we need to cope with routing issues and general security as well as overall availability and speed. When this is done we move on.

[edit] Stage 2: The Carrier

Once the Net is alive and kicking, we will change our carrier. The carrier of our net is still the Internet, and we need to become independent. At this point, we will need to get our asses up to our roofs and begin to install our wide range Wifis. There are several possibilities to do so, and new challenges will rise, but it has been done before by small communities, and if they can, so can we. We will need to forge antennas get appropriate firmware and software for our WiFi Routers and access points, that allow the net to be routed over our new build connections. When we have accomplished this, we are truly independent.

[edit] The Tools

At the moment, following tools are available to to this:

[edit] to build the net

tinc - a decentralized VPN software
- pro:
- + decentralized
- + multi Operating system support
- + net to net connections possible
- con
- - configuration is not entirely easy, done by config file

OpenWRT - an alternative router operating system

first HIT will a Windows Client for danm easy using. to get people in.
Contect will reedit and post soon. Here

[edit] to build our wifi

Ordinary Hardware should suffice, but antennas need to be forged at home

[edit] Visualisation

[edit] Status quo

[edit] Stage 1 visualized

[edit] Stage 2 visualized

[edit] Mindmap

[edit] More Information - see also

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/attachments/1497_darknet.pdf

Google gives the US Government access to Gmail, says iTnews' editor.

2010-04-15T00:52:00.001+09:00

Article HERE

Google should not expect to be beyond international criticism while it offers the US Government access to its data on request but lambasts other governments for interfering with the rights of online users.

It has been telling to watch some of our peers in the press work the controversy over Senator Conroy's criticism of Google's privacy record on ABC radio last week as he was questioned on his internet filtering policy.

The headlines only illustrated the ferocity of opposition to Conroy's nanny-state filter and just how well marketed Google's "do no evil" mantra is. Scribes just couldn't believe a minister would have the nerve to question Google.

Like or loathe his policy, the Senator has grounds to point out the contradiction Google is in. The search company condemns the Chinese Government for censoring its results and Australia for planning to do the same while it breaks faith with its users around the world by sharing their data with the US Government.

The Patriot Act introduced by President Bush - which allows US authorities to search telecommunications and email communications to fight the 'war on terror' - was not designed by Google. But complying with it places the company in an awkward position.

Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt admitted the company is at times compelled to share data with the US Government.

Representatives from Google Australia have since confirmed the company's policy of complying with these United States government regulations.

"We're committed to protecting user privacy when faced with law enforcement requests, and have a track record of advocating on behalf of users in the face of such requests," the company told iTnews in a statement. "We scrutinise each one to ensure that it adheres to both the letter and the spirit of the law before complying, and do our best to notify the subject named in any such requests to give them the opportunity to object.

"Like all law-abiding companies, we comply with U.S. laws and legal processes."

Google is thus in a contradictory position to comment on government interference with a citizen's data. It says, like the government, that it only wants to interfere with a customer's data in the case of suspected child porn - which sounds straight out of the Minister's songbook.

At least Australians have always known where we stand with Senator Conroy and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Whether we like it or not, both of our major political parties have promised their stakeholders an internet filter for some time. And Senator Conroy always has the advantage of leaning back on the fact that the ALP - at a high level - made its "cyber-safety" agenda public before it was elected to government.

I don't expect opponents of the filter are going to let Senator Conroy steamroll filtering legislation through Parliament without a very good and worthy fight. But I'd suggest activists be wary of their allies.

After all, as Australian citizens we can always vote the Rudd Government out if it displeases us.

We have far less power over Google.

Editor's note - This story previously referred to an extract by a local Google engineer recorded at a conference in New Zealand. Google has since made an official response to the issue (as stated in the copy above) conceding that it does indeed provide access to the US Government upon request and the story has been amended with the official response.

Mexican Government Targets Oklahoma; State Lawmaker Calls for Tough Response

2010-04-13T09:58:00.000+09:00

Article HERE

OKLAHOMA CITY (April 9, 2010) – In response to the Mexican government’s efforts to "bully" the people of Oklahoma through a trade war, state Rep. Randy Terrill today called for imposing "much tougher sanctions on illegal aliens."

"This represents an attempt by a foreign nation to interfere with the sovereign actions of a U.S. state," said Terrill, R-Moore. "We clearly not only have the right, but the responsibility to legislate for the public health, safety, morals and welfare of our citizens – not theirs.

"The Mexican government should know that the people of Oklahoma will not be bullied or intimidated by anyone, anywhere."

This week the Mexican House of Representatives passed a resolution denouncing U.S. states that impose remittance taxes and calling upon the Mexican government to take trade measures against those states.

The resolution specifically targets Oklahoma, saying remittance legislation enacted in this state is an "immoral, abusive and harmful" act against "immigrants’ rights."

The resolution calls on the Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry to ask Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry to eliminate the fee (which he does not unilaterally have the authority to do) and urges the Mexican Government to suspend all of its purchases of products originating in Oklahoma.

Last year, Oklahoma lawmakers voted to assess a 1-percent fee on funds wired out of the state. Revenue collected from the fee is deposited in a "Drug Money Laundering and Wire Transmitter Revolving Fund."

The fee does not single out any one group of individuals.

Terrill noted the proposed sanctions on Oklahoma appear to be a violation of the NAFTA agreement that could result in U.S. countermeasures on Mexico as provided under the NAFTA accords, and that Oklahoma lawmakers also have the ability to respond at the state level.

"If they want to talk about trade sanctions, then they need to first start by cutting off all the dope coming into Oklahoma from Mexico and the disaster of Mexican citizens who are being pushed into Oklahoma by the shamefully dysfunctional Mexican government, where they are draining tax dollars in the areas of health care, education, welfare and corrections," Terrill said

"On a daily basis, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics investigates cell groups tied to some of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico. Annually, millions of dollars in illegal drugs are coming into Oklahoma from these Mexican cartels for nationwide distribution, and millions of dollars in illegal drug proceeds are smuggled or wired back to the Mexican bank accounts of drug traffickers. Law-abiding citizens are not negatively impacted by The Wire Transfer Fee. These individuals are able to redeem the fee on their income taxes," said Darrell Weaver, director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics.

"A huge share of the drug problem in Oklahoma is clearly tied to narcotics exported from Mexico along the I-35 corridor," Terrill said.

He said Oklahoma lawmakers would be fully justified under international law to respond to the Mexican government’s provocations with improved countermeasures against drug and alien smuggling from Mexican states.

"If they really want to pick this fight with Oklahoma, then I will be happy to immediately introduce or amend legislation calling for the state’s current asset-seizure and drug-forfeiture laws to be extended to all immigration-related offenses," Terrill said. "I’d also like to have good cause to advance legislation denying state-issued birth certificates to children born to illegal-alien parents. And we should restrict the actions of Mexican consulars in Oklahoma who often assist illegal aliens attempting to establish permanent residence and find employment in the United States.

"I do however, urge the Mexican Congress to support a labor ‘boycott’ of Oklahoma by investing in sustainable job creation at home," added Terrill. "I will encourage our in-state development experts to assist them. It will help improve the employment rate for U.S. citizens and law-abiding immigrants during this national recession."

Polish President Dies in an "Accident" This I Think is Why

2010-04-12T12:50:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

Poland No Longer Needs IMF Credit Line:

The central bank said it could instead provide the IMF with a loan to “help other countries overcome the effects of the global crisis.“

WARSAW, March 29, 2010 (AFP) - Poland's economy is stable and no longer needs its 21.8-billion dollar (16.2-billion euro) credit line from the International Monetary Fund, the Polish central bank said on Monday.

"The situation with the Polish economy and the financial system is sufficiently good ... that it is not necessary to ask the IMF for a further extension of the flexible credit line," the bank said in a statement.

The central bank said it could instead provide the IMF with a loan to "help other countries overcome the effects of the global crisis."

The finance ministry, however, insisted it still wanted to have a reserve at hand if the economy ran into fresh headwinds.

"We are expecting a good deal of shocks in the coming months ... There is still a necessity to ensure that Poland has a supplementary reserve," Deputy Finance Minister Dominik Radziwill said in a statement.

The credit line for Poland was approved in May 2009 and extended for six months in November 2009. It was intended to reassure investors and allow Poland to access credit easily if it needed it, which ultimately it did not.

The announcement came during a visit to Warsaw by the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Poland was the only member of the 27-nation European Union to have experienced growth in 2009 and the IMF this month forecast that its economy will expand by 2.75 percent this year and by 3.25 percent in 2011.

Poland is a former communist-ruled country that joined the EU in 2004.

The IMF introduced the new system of flexible credit lines in 2009 as a safeguard against external shocks during the global economic crisis. Poland and Mexico both secured credit lines under this scheme whilst other countries needed loan arrangements.

Missouri House passes sovereignty resolution

2010-04-10T11:22:00.000+09:00

Article HERE

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri House passed a resolution on Thursday intended to reassert the rights of the state against federal control.

If passed by the Senate and approved by voters in November, the resolution would amend the state’s constitution. The changes would prohibit any branch of Missouri’s government from enforcing any federal restrictions that would exceed the power granted to it by the Constitution, such as regulations prohibiting the right to bear firearms, legalizing or funding abortions, mandating same-sex marriages, increasing penalties for hate crimes and imposing taxes or fees on carbon emissions.

It also prohibits Missouri government from enforcing provisions of a federal health care plan, such as a requirement for businesses to provide health insurance to employees and mandates on health insurance providers for what benefits they can provide.

The resolution, proposed by State Rep. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, and co-sponsored by 52 House Republicans, was approved 87 to 62, mostly along party lines. State Rep. Tom Shively, D-Shelbyville, voted for the measure, and State Rep. Curt Dougherty, D-Independence, voted against the measure.

State Rep. Dr. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, one of the co-sponsors, approved the resolution, and State Rep. Pat Conway, D-St. Joseph, voted against it. State Rep. Martin Rucker, D-St. Joseph, was absent.

Dr. Schaaf said, while the authority of the state’s constitution cannot trump the U.S. Constitution, the resolution would show that the state will “fight for an interpretation” of the U.S. Constitution “that is just.”

Robert Dewhirst, a political science professor at Northwest Missouri State University, said even if the resolution is passed by Missouri voters, it will be “symbolic.”

“The state governments can’t tell the federal government what to do,” Mr. Dewhirst said.

Throughout the legislative session, elected leaders in Jefferson City have worked to establish their dissatisfaction with spending habits and policy agendas of the Democratically-controlled White House and Congress through non-binding resolutions and resolutions that would amend the constitution.

This is the third such resolution to pass the House: the first was a nonbinding resolution to compel Congress to adopt a balanced budget, and the second was a proposed constitutional amendment that would prevent Missourians from being required to participate in a national health care system.

This week, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, the only Republican holding office in the executive branch, said he would join attorneys general and elected leaders from other states in a lawsuit to challenge federal health care legislation, claiming that it oversteps the “commerce clause” of the Constitution, which regulates interstate commerce.

Ashtabula County: Judge tells residents to "Arm themselves"

2010-04-10T11:05:00.001+09:00

Article Here

JEFFERSON -- In the ongoing financial crisis in Ashtabula County, the Sheriff's Department has been cut from 112 to 49 deputies. With deputies assigned to transport prisoners, serve warrants and other duties, only one patrol car is assigned to patrol the entire county of 720 square miles.

"I did the best with what they (the county commissioners) gave me. If it wasn't enough, don't blame me, don't blame this department," said Sheriff Billy Johnson.

Johnson said he is suing the commissioners to get a determination of whether he should use his limited budget to carry out obligations defined by law or put more patrol cars on the streets.

"I just can't do it anymore," he said. "I have to have the court explain to the commissioners and to me what my statutory duties are."

The Ashtabula County Jail has confined as many as 140 prisoners. It now houses only 30 because of reductions in the staff of corrections officers.

All told, 700 accused criminals are on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.

Are there dangerous people free among the 700 who cannot be locked up?

"There probably are," Sheriff Johnson said, "but I'm telling you, any known violent criminal, we're housing them. We've got murderers in there."

Ashtabula County is the largest county in Ohio by land area.

Ashtabula County Common Pleas Judge Alfred Mackey was asked what residents should do to protect themselves and their families with the severe cutback in law enforcement.

"Arm themselves," the judge said. "Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, because we're going to have to look after each other."

Ashtabula County gun dealers and firearms instructors tell WKYC their business has really picked up since the Sheriff's Department cutbacks began some months ago.

"That's exactly why they are coming, so that they can protect themselves," says Tracy Williams, a certified firearms instructor in Jefferson. "They don't feel that they are protected. They want to be able to protect themselves."

Williams says interest in his classes has doubled recently, and many of those coming are people who he would not normally expect to have interest in obtaining a concealed carry permit.

"And as far as him (Judge Mackey) telling you to arm yourselves and protect yourselves, you don't have any other option," Williams told WKYC. "We don't have the law enforcement out here to handle it right now."

Ashtabula County, where unemployment is higher than the state average, is asking voters to approve a one half per cent sales tax increase in May.

The tax hike would raise the tax in the county to seven percent.

If you are Muslim you can opt out of Obamacare with no penalties

2010-04-08T00:49:00.001+09:00

Article Here

Isn't this nice. If you are of the Muslim religion, you don't have to give all the new Obamacare healthcare reform regulations and penalties another thought. Because the concept of being compelled to participate in such a healthcare program offends Islamic sensibilities, Muslims are specifically exempt.

As a matter of fact if you are Amish, American Indian or a Chistian Scientist you do not need to participate or pay the taxes associated with healthcare reform. That means not having to be forced to buy healthcare insurance, not paying the taxes or the penalties if you don't get it. Nice!

Here is what the regulations say:

EXEMPTIONS FROM INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY REQUIREMENTS.

—In the case of an individual who is seeking an exemption certificate under section 1311(d)(4)(H) from any requirement or penalty imposed by section 5000A, the following information:

In the case of an individual seeking exemption based on the individual’s status as a member of an exempt religious sect or division, as a member of a health care sharing ministry, as an Indian, or as an individual eligible for a hardship exemption, such information as the Secretary shall prescribe.”

Senate Bill, H.R. 3590, pages 273-274

There are several reasons why an individual could claim exemption, being a member of a religion that does not believe in insurance is one of them. Islam is one of those religions. Muslims believe that health insurance is “haraam”, or forbidden; because they liken the ambiguity and probability of insurance to gambling. This belief excludes them from any of the requirements, mandates, or penalties set forth in the bill.

This means that if you are Christian and abortion is against your religion tough luck.

If you are Jewish tough luck as well.

We wonder why these certain groups get a free ride. We also wonder why the largest religious block in North and South America, the Christians, are discriminated against like this. Very odd indeed.

There is a lot of food for thought here and a lot of ways to object to this healthcare bill isn't there.

Foreclosure bill would shorten process to 90 days

2010-04-08T00:44:00.001+09:00

Article Here

TAMPA - A controversial bill in the legislature would speed up foreclosures in Florida and remove the process from the court system.

"This would have a profound and dramatic change on the foreclosure landscape," said John Byrne, a Tampa lawyer with Byrne Law Group. "This bill was filed very late and slid under the radar. I see zero benefits to homeowners."

Under current Florida law, a lender can take back a home only if it files a foreclosure lawsuit and is granted one from a judge. There are nearly 500,000 pending foreclosure cases in Florida – among the worst in the nation. Because of the backlog, foreclosures can take months or years.

House bill 1523 would change that by allowing lenders to skip legal proceedings unless the borrower requests the foreclosure goes through the courts. The process could take as little as 90 days.

Critics say the bill is bad news for struggling homeowners because it significantly shortens the foreclosure process, making it more difficult to save their houses. But supporters say this is good for neighbors weary over long-vacant houses in their community.

There are 30 other states that have a non-judicial foreclosure process, allowing some lenders to foreclose on properties in as little as a month.

The bill is sponsored in by Tom Grady, R-Naples. The Naples area is one of Florida's hardest-hit by foreclosure.

Grady has said in published reports that the bill would "expedite the resolution" in foreclosure cases, providing needed protections for lenders and property owners. It would also require mortgage holders to prove that an owner is in default, he has said.

Part of the bill says that borrowers will not be liable for the unpaid portion of the loan if they act in good faith during the foreclosure process.

But Byrne and other lawyers who represent homeowners in foreclosure actions say this bill takes away a homeowner's rights to due process.

"I think this is intended to keep these cases out of court because it's easier for lenders," Byrne said.

While a homeowner can request their case go to court, Byrne said they have only 20 days to do that and would have to file a lawsuit. That, he said, could cost $1,700.

While it's true the bill would streamline the process for banks, Alex Sanchez, president of the Florida Bankers Association, said it would also make it easier on the court system.

"The judges are overwhelmed with foreclosures," Sanchez said. "We actually have homeowners writing to us, asking us to speed up the process so abandoned homes can be sold to someone who can afford it and can fix it up."

Florida has always been a judicial foreclosure state, Byrne said. Unless a state passes a law making foreclosure a non-judicial process, a lender must go through the court system to take possession.

Homeowners in states with non-judicial foreclosure systems don't have as long to try to work something out with their lender. In Georgia, for example, lenders can foreclose in as little as 30 days.

Critics of the bill in Florida fear that could happen in the Sunshine State too.

But just as Georgia has a reputation for being strict on delinquent homeowners, Florida is known for being lenient, said Kevin Caiaccio, of The Caiaccio Law Firm in Atlanta.

"Maybe our system is too much in favor of the lender and your system is too much too much the other way," said Caiaccio, a real estate attorney. "You need to strike a balance because you are taking people's property away. But it's not fair to homeowners who do pay to allow other owners to live for free."

Georgia's law wasn't looked at that closely, Caiaccio said, until the economic downturn. Now, there are proposals in the Georgia legislature, he said, that would soften the law. One would give the borrower more time get caught up on their loan before a foreclosure. Another would allow the borrower to buy back the property after the lender takes it back.

"The law is becoming more controversial," he said. "In this environment, there are some people wanting reform."

Death Camps Warned Being Prepared As Millions In US Left Hopeless

2010-04-07T11:32:00.002+09:00

Article Here

A chilling Russian Space Forces (VKS) report prepared for Prime Minister Putin is warning today the United States is in the process of constructing at least 300 massive “death camps” in 11 of their Western States secret documents had previously revealed President Obama’s Department of the Interior was preparing to take over in a massive 13-million acre land grab against his own people.

VKS satellites had been tasked with overseeing this vast area of the United States after Obama had ordered all of these 13 million acres not to be flown over by aircraft or trespassed upon under threat of life imprisonment.

These reports further state that the US Northern American Command has been put in charge of this “death camp” project and in their largest logistical deployment since World War II are moving massive amounts of equipment from their war zones to America in preparation for “relocating” nearly 30 million of their citizens into them over the next 3 years.

Not being understood by the American people is that their government has used these cruel extermination procedures against them before when in fear of their being toppled from power during the Great Depression they murdered nearly 8 million of their own citizens.

Though this Great American Genocide has been nearly erased from their people’s memories it bears their remembering as a new generation of them are unknowingly about to meet the same fate as their ancestors, and it all began in the spring months of 1932 as the economic collapse of the United States was threatening to topple their elite masters from power…something they would never allow.

Causing this wave of fear to sweep through the corridors of power in the United States was the self-named Bonus Expeditionary Force which was an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers — 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups, who had assembled in Washington D.C. during the spring and summer months of 1932 demanding economic relief and equity from their officials who were protecting the giant banking and financial interests while allowing ordinary Americans to be thrown from their homes by the tens of millions and then letting them starve.

To suppress this rebellion the US Military brutally attacked and destroyed the Bonus Expeditionary Forces in July, 1932 using troops commanded by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, General, later US President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Major George Patton; all three of whom would in the next 13 years defeat the German and Japanese Empires using the same tactics of mass civilian deaths to achieve their war goals.

[Note: Estimated German and Japanese civilian deaths in World War II are estimated between 40-52 million

and were defended by top World War II US General Curtis LeMay who said, “There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”]

The estimated 500 leaders of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces upon being captured by MacArthur’s forces were imprisoned in what the Americans called a Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor camp in Florida where they were all executed by military firing squad. The US, or course, has always maintained that these Bonus Army leaders were not killed by execution but instead were killed by the catastrophic 1935 Labor Day hurricane.

[Note: The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest New Deal agency, employing millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western populations. Expenditures from 1936 to 1939 totaled nearly $7 billion.]

[Note: The Bonus Army leaders were held and executed in Florida’s then nearly abandoned Fort Pickens that had previously held as prisoner of war the Apache Indians including their leader Geronimo.]

After the 1932 destruction of the Bonus Army the new American President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the construction of massive WPA labor camps throughout the United States in order to “contain and suppress” the growing rebellion facing the elites in his country, and which according to archived KGB reports were ordered by General MacArthur to be administered by US Army veterans who had served under General Jacob H. Smith in the Americans war against the Philippine people barely a generation before.

MacArthur’s purpose for using these US Army veterans, these reports continued, was their “outstanding” use of terror tactics against men, women and children, including rape, torture and execution.

[Note: General Smith remains one of the most brutal of all American War leaders after his issuing this order to his troops: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” When asked by his troops if even children down to 10 years of age should be killed, Smith replied, “Yes.”]

Upon their taking control of these WPA labor camps, “Smith’s Dandies”, as they were referred to by President Roosevelt, began a ruthless campaign against the American people put into their charge that was modeled on Belgium’s forced labor regime instituted in the Congo which has been estimated to have caused over 10 million deaths, thus making it one of history’s largest genocides no one in America have been allowed to know about.

To how many Americans died in during the Great Depression in these WPA labor camps and through outright starvation Russian researcher Boris Borisov has estimated at over 7 million, and as we can read:

“Borisov used the official data of the US Census Bureau. Having revised the number of the US population, birth and date rates, immigration and emigration, the researcher came to conclusion that the United States lost over seven million people during the famine of 1932-1933.

“According to the US statistics, the US lost not less than 8 million 553 thousand people from 1931 to 1940. Afterwards, population growth indices change twice instantly exactly between 1930-1931: the indices drop and stay on the same level for ten years. There can no explanation to this phenomenon found in the extensive text of the report by the US Department of Commerce “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” the author wrote.

The researcher points out the movement of population at this point: “A lot more people left the country than arrived during the 1930s – the difference is estimated at 93,309 people, whereas 2.960,782 people arrived in the country a decade earlier. Well, let’s correct the number of total demographic losses in the USA during the 1930s by 3,054 people.”

Analyzing the period of the Great Depression in the USA, the author notes a remarkable similarity with events taking place in the USSR during the 1930s. He even introduced a new term for the USA – defarming – an analogue to dispossession of wealthy farmers in the Soviet Union. “Few people know about five million American farmers (about a million families) whom banks ousted from them lands because of debts. The US government did not provide them with land, work, social aid, pension – nothing,” the article says.

“Every sixth American farmer was affected by famine. People were forced to leave their homes and go to nowhere without any money and any property. They found themselves in the middle of nowhere enveloped in massive unemployment, famine and gangsterism.”

Today another generation of Americans are facing even worse catastrophes than their ancestors, and who aside from being thrown from their homes and facing mass unemployment like their fellow citizens of the Great Depression, are now facing an ecological disaster of biblical proportions as the massive distortions caused to our Earth’s magnetic fields are causing a catastrophic die-off of honey bee and bat populations and destroying the ability of these pollinators to sustain the crops needed to sustain human life on this planet.

As these American people continue to rush headlong towards their own destruction, what remains unknown is if, like their ancestors before them, they will go to these death camps willingly still believing their government lies, or face the stark and brutal truth of what is about to happen to them and begin preparing for their survival?

During the 1930’s when so many of our Sisters risked their lives to warn of the dangers Hitler and his Nazi Regime posed very few even listened, many more mocked and ridiculed us. Most unfortunately for the American people of today they are walking upon the path of denial once trod upon by their German cousins and mocking us too.

Does history repeat itself? Beyond a doubt! And America today is proof positive of it.

IRS Commissioner: Don't Worry, If You Don't Buy Health Insurance You'll Only Lose Your Tax Refund

2010-04-07T11:19:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

Individuals who don’t purchase health insurance may lose their tax refunds according to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.

After acknowledging the recently passed health-care bill limits the agency’s options for enforcing the individual mandate, Shulman told reporters that the most likely way to penalize individuals that don’t comply is by reducing or confiscating their tax refunds.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, Shulman downplayed the IRS’s role in enforcing the recent overhaul of the health insurance industry by claiming the agency would not aggressively target individuals who don’t purchase coverage.

He noted that the health-care bill expressly forbids the agency from freezing bank accounts, seizing assets or pursuing criminal charges, but when pressed said the IRS would most likely use tax refund offsets to penalize those that don’t comply with the mandate.

The IRS uses refund offsets to collect from individuals that owe the federal government a delinquent debt.

“These are not the kinds of things we send agents out about,” Shulman said. “These are things where you get a letter from us. Congress was very careful to make sure there was nothing too punitive in this bill.”

Many reports have claimed that enforcement of the individual mandate will be non-existent, but Shulman’s answers indicate differently.

According to BusinessWeek, starting in 2015 Americans who don’t purchase insurance will be subject to a fine of $325 and that sum increases to $695 in 2016.

However, the commissioner seemed confident that in most cases individuals would either receive subsidies to purchase insurance or simply do so on their own in order to comply with the law.

“The vast majority of American people have a healthy respect for the law and want to be compliant with their tax obligations,” Shulman said, mentioning letters, collection notices and offsets as among the various ways the IRS will reach out to people without coverage.

Here goes the internet.

2010-04-07T11:11:00.002+09:00

Article Here and Here

WASHINGTON -- A federal court threw the future of Internet regulations into doubt Tuesday with a far-reaching decision that went against the Federal Communications Commission and could even hamper the government's plans to expand broadband access in the United States.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.

Supporters of network neutrality, including the FCC chairman, have argued that the policy is necessary to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain Web sites and online services, such as Internet phone programs or software that runs in a Web browser. Advocates contend there is precedent: Nondiscrimination rules have traditionally applied to so-called "common carrier" networks that serve the public, from roads and highways to electrical grids and telephone lines.

But broadband providers such as Comcast, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. argue that after spending billions of dollars on their networks, they should be able to sell premium services and manage their systems to prevent certain applications from hogging capacity.

Tuesday's unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel was a setback for the FCC because it questioned the agency's authority to regulate broadband. That could cause problems beyond the FCC's effort to adopt official net neutrality regulations. It also has serious implications for the ambitious national broadband-expansion plan released by the FCC last month. The FCC needs the authority to regulate broadband so that it can push ahead with some of the plan's key recommendations. Among other things, the FCC proposes to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.

In a statement, the FCC said it remains "firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans" and "will rest these policies ... on a solid legal foundation."

Comcast welcomed the decision, saying "our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation."

The case centers on Comcast's actions in 2007 when it interfered with an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent, which lets people swap movies and other big files over the Internet. The next year the FCC banned Comcast from blocking subscribers from using BitTorrent. The commission, at the time headed by Republican Kevin Martin, based its order on a set of net neutrality principles it had adopted in 2005.

But Comcast argued that the FCC order was illegal because the agency was seeking to enforce mere policy principles, which don't have the force of regulations or law. That's one reason that Martin's successor, Democratic FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is trying to formalize those rules.

The cable company had also argued the FCC lacks authority to mandate net neutrality because it had deregulated broadband under the Bush administration, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005.

The FCC now defines broadband as a lightly regulated information service. That means it is not subject to the "common carrier" obligations that make traditional telecommunications services share their networks with competitors and treat all traffic equally. But the FCC maintains that existing law gives it authority to set rules for information services.

Tuesday's court decision rejected that reasoning, concluding that Congress has not given the FCC "untrammeled freedom" to regulate without explicit legal authority.

With so much at stake, the FCC now has several options. It could ask Congress to give it explicit authority to regulate broadband. Or it could appeal Tuesday's decision.

But both of those steps could take too long because the agency "has too many important things they have to do right away," said Ben Scott, policy director for the public interest group Free Press. Free Press was among the groups that alerted the FCC after The Associated Press ran tests and reported that Comcast was interfering with attempts by some subscribers to share files online.

Scott believes that the likeliest step by the FCC is that it will simply reclassify broadband as a more heavily regulated telecommunications service. That, ironically, could be the worst-case outcome from the perspective of the phone and cable companies.

"Comcast swung an ax at the FCC to protest the BitTorrent order," Scott said. "And they sliced right through the FCC's arm and plunged the ax into their own back."

The battle over the FCC's legal jurisdiction comes amid a larger policy dispute over the merits of net neutrality. Backed by Internet companies such as Google Inc. and the online calling service Skype, the FCC says rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from prioritizing some traffic or degrading or services that compete with their core businesses. Indeed, BitTorrent can be used to transfer large files such as online video, which could threaten Comcast's cable TV business.

But broadband providers point to the fact that applications such as BitTorrent use an outsized amount of network capacity.

For its part, the FCC offered no details on its next step, but stressed that it remains committed to the principle of net neutrality.

"Today's court decision invalidated the prior commission's approach to preserving an open Internet," the agency's statement said. "But the court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end."

The biggest hustle in human history

2010-04-07T10:57:00.002+09:00

Article HERE

In what is being called 'the biggest hustle in human history,' a special investigation has discovered numerous bogus claims on Barack Obama's resume, including the outright lie that he was a 'Constitutional scholar and professor.'

The claim turns out to be false.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

As investigators delve further into the background of Barack Obama, a disturbing picture is emerging of a man who is not who he claims to be. The information the public has been told concerning Obama is turning out to be false--fabrications and inventions of a man and an unseen force behind him that had clear ulterior motives for seeking the highest office in the land.

According to a special report issued by 'the Blogging Professor,' the Chicago Law School faculty hated Obama. The report states that Obama was unqualified, that he was never a 'constitutional professor and scholar,' and that he never served as editor of the Harvard Law Review while a student at the school.

The real truth is that Barack Obama was merely an 'instructor' at Chicago Law School, not a professor. Commonly, instructors are non-tenure-track teachers hired by colleges and universities to teach certain courses for a salary that is well below that of Associate Professors or full Professors.

In the hierarchy of higher education, the status of instructors is below that of associate professors and professors because they lack the credentials.

In fact, it can be safely concluded that the claims of Barack Obama concerning his educational credentials and work history in higher education are a complete sham. The President of the United States is a complete fraud.

According to Doug Ross:

I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back, and he did not have many nice things to say about "Barry." Obama applied for a position as an adjunct and wasn't even considered. A few weeks later the law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put him on the payroll, and give him a class to teach. The Board told him he didn't have to be a member of the faculty, but they needed to give him a temporary position. He was never a professor and was hardly an adjunct.

The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool. According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. He also doubted whether he was legitimately an editor on the Harvard Law Review, because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).

Thus, the question arises, was the claim that Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review a 'put-up job' as well, allowing the student to claim he held this prestigious position without having the qualifications or meeting the requirements of holding that position? And why?

Further,

Consider this: 1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a "lawyer". He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he "fibbed" on his bar application.

2. Michelle Obama "voluntarily surrendered" her law license in 1993.

3. So, we have the President and First Lady - who don't actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.

4. A senior lecturer is one thing. A fully ranked law professor is another. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Obama did NOT 'hold the title' of a University of Chicago law school professor". Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago.

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March, 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) "served as a professor" in the law school, but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

These are highly disturbing facts, verified facts from the people who know at the Chicago Law School.

There is more from Ross, however:

6. "He did not hold the title of professor of law," said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law.

7. The former Constitutional senior lecturer cited the U.S. Constitution recently during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video.

9. In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: "We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in ourConstitution: the notion that we are all created equal."

10. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech?

When you are a phony it's hard to keep facts straight.

Obama has made sure that all of his records are sealed tight. And apart from the courageous souls at the various educational institutions who dared to speak the truth, the schools Obama claimed to attend unanimously refuse to release transcripts, records, or other bits of evidence concerning Obama's presence in their institutions.

BREAKING DEVELOPMENT--just as these disturbing facts come to light about Barack Obama, the White House is busy making deals with numerous 'journalists,' promising unprecedented access to the President in exchange for refraining from reporting certain information 'they may discover.'

Slaughter of Innocence

2010-04-06T13:36:00.003+09:00

This just grieves the soul.

2010-04-05T11:22:00.001+09:00

US healthcare reform is boon for India outsourcing companies

2010-04-05T11:09:00.002+09:00

Ok I know this to be true what has been going on in India is that they send their kids here to go to med school and then go back home and open up private medical hospitals at 1/4 the cost. You need a hip replacement? It will cost you about 40K in America, go to India it will only cost you 7K plus you get a nice vacation in a nice hotel.

Full Article Here

"The bulge in administrative work may look like a nightmare to American insurance firms and government employees. But to outsourcing executives here in India, it’s heaven-sent. A number of Indian companies are already anticipating an increase in workload thanks to Obama's healthcare law"

Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion.

2010-04-05T11:04:00.001+09:00

Full Article HERE

"Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person.
This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.
For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.

And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy.

Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out"

A national ID card in 2010? VERY IMPORTANT!!!

2010-04-03T13:01:00.003+09:00

I want to say first that the problem is not with illegal immigration or border control the problem is about a mindset. If no one hired an illegal immigrant or no one supported immigrants then none of them would come here. Illegal immigrants are truly free, they are off the grid, untaxable and are relatively free of government intrusion (besides the threat of deportation) They are living how we Americans originally intended. The government is BEGGING to get them into the system. Both democrats and republicans.

Article HERE

WASHINGTON D.C. – Senators Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina are meeting today with President Obama to discuss tactics on how best to orchestrate the appearance of bipartisanship regarding comprehensive immigration reform. However, immigration reform is not the sole reason for the Senators’ visit. Also on the agenda is the culmination of the plutocrat’s fetish like desire to track all Americans with yet another attempt at shackling us with a national identification card.

Since the events of September 11th, the aristocrats on the hill have sought a way to effectively track like cattle all U.S. Citizens; however, despite their relentless fearmongering of boogiemen terrorists, the American people have in large part resisted the attempt to achieve “safety” via a mirroring of 1970’s era East Germany.

In a fashion similar to when the FDIC proposed the “Know Your Customer Rule” before public backlash forced a retraction, the statist have returned to their default playbook to achieve their end by swaddling in a national identification card under the guise of “securing the borders”. Then Assistant Director of the FEDERAL RESERVE, Richard Small provided keen insight to the minds of plutocrats when he spoke at the Mid Atlantic Compliance Conference in 1999, quipping that success of “Know Your Customer” depended on simply renaming the provision in order to avoid public scrutiny; the Central Authority hopes to replicate a corresponding trajectory for the National ID.

Whereas, “Know Your Customer” finally became law upon passage of the unconstitutional USA PATRIOT Act, the National ID card has encountered continued resistance thanks both to the new-media and internet-at-large. First as REAL ID, then as the PASS Act, the National ID has thus far repeatedly run up against an ever-growing chorus of Americans awakening to a federal government intruding ever further into our personal lives and business.

As recently reported, efforts are now under way by Imperial Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Scott “Tea-Party” Brown (R-MA), and seven other co-sponsors co-conspirators to indefinitely detain Americans merely upon suspicion and without trial. Further, details remain sparse on the Obama Administration and Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair’s request to be granted authority by Congress to assassinate Americans suspected of committing belligerent acts against the Central Government. Now the seek to saddle us with a biometric ID which confirms identity be scanning the veins in our hands?

These several recent legislative maneuvers by the treasonous statists in Congress are scheming what can no less be described and ought rightfully be referred to as the “New Intolerable Acts”.

While we are fortunate to have a robust and growing body of enlightened pro-liberty advocates, thinkers, and teachers such as Representative Ron Paul, we must not rest upon their hard work to reclaim our quickly atrophying liberties. As his interview with Megyan Kelly of Fox News demonstrates, we must also consider utterly detaching ourselves form what was once referred to as “the fourth branch of government”, ergo the old-media, as it is obvious at least to this blogger, that they are but mere shills for the statists. Her inference that an erosion of our natural liberties is of no consequence and a necessary concession under the current events, shows her to be a cold lifeless traitor to human liberty.

Make no mistake, the world, why undeniably dangerous, has always appeared to be at an unrivaled level of hostility when viewed through the lens of the here and now. Whereas it took close to 2,000 years of human civilization for an imperfect generation to rightfully proclaim the individual as the standard-bearer of liberty, in full possession of our natural rights, and offer the opportunity to form a more perfect Union.

Let us not now shrink in the duty to be ever vigilant defenders of both our own and our posterity’s unalienable natural liberties in the face of this growing tyranny.

Army suggests brain scan for eligibility challenger

2010-04-03T11:59:00.002+09:00

We all knew this was gonna happen. Its of my mind that the people have no more concern about the constitution. We as a whole wanted Obama as a president rules be damned. By God thats what we got and now that we don't like some of the results of that decision we just wanna bitch and moan. We set a precedent ladies and gentlemen one that is next to impossible erase. We are no longer a people of principle. We can't be principles when it suits us and unprincipled when it doesn't

And so it begins.

"The U.S. Army is – unofficially – suggesting a brain scan and medical evaluation for an officer who announced he would refuse to follow further orders until and unless President Obama documents his constitutional eligibility to be commander in chief."

"A spokeswoman for the developing case of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, a flight surgeon with 18 years in the service, said the recommendation came to Lakin today from an officer whose name was not being used who implied that those higher up the chain of command thought it was a good idea. The suggestion was described to WND by spokeswoman Margaret Calhoun Hemenway, a veteran Washington appointee and now volunteer spokeswoman, as being presented in a "solicitous" manner"

"Officially, the U.S. Army says it has no plans for formal action at this point against the officer. But the controversy also raises the prospect that the government may be unwilling to pursue a prosecution because of the possible ramifications – including a defense demand for a court-ordered discovery process that would target Obama's historical documentation."

Another one bites the Dust

2010-03-31T23:53:00.002+09:00

Another ranking officer has decided to make the suicide move of question the eligibility of Obama. In a way I am saddened by this. The man is decorated and has been in the service for damn near two decades and in the end he won't even get the t-shirt. This will be swept under the rug and he will lose everything because he believes in principle. There is no glory for whistle blowers.

Obama to spend 10.3 trillion on welfare

2010-03-29T21:47:00.001+09:00

I am convinced that the powers that be are determined to destroy America's economy within this administration.

Article here

2010-03-29T21:35:00.001+09:00

2010-03-26T01:25:00.001+09:00

2010-03-25T23:28:00.004+09:00

Ok so the amended reconciliation is headed back to the house for another vote. But I am curious... Since the president signed the first bill hot off the press, the media has gotten some REALLY big mouths

Like this piece here in the NY Times which if your read objectively says that Obamacare is the largest redistribution of wealth in three decades.

And supposedly one senior democrat actually stated that this bill was about controlling the american people. I will post a link to that if I can track that one down, but its late and I need to go to bed, research will have to wait... OK I found it. Rep Dingell said it in an interview HERE

So my question is, what if the key democrats that it took to pass this bill have a change of heart? What if they no longer had enough to pass reconciliation?

Would this nullify the bill that Obama put his name to?

Just trying to keep hope alive

False Flag in less than 90 days

2010-03-24T13:53:00.005+09:00

The powers that be have been eying Iran for a LONG time now. Just the same as they were eying Iraq and Afghanistan. "Wait, how were we eying Afghanistan?" In one word Opium but I am not going to get into that now. I will say that the Taliban prior to 9/11 had all but destroyed the opium production in Afghanistan, Now they are back to the worlds no. 1 producer with a bang!

According to a Fox Interview with Juval Aviv there is going to be another "Attack" on America. I am not buying it. The powers that be want to go after Iran and the American public be damned. Why are they going after Iran? In a word... Money. Iran is tired of being robbed for their oil by using dollars and is accepting other forms of currency...OOPS that last prop for the dollar is about to crumble.

War is the only card America has left to play and its the one thing left we are good at. Say what you will about Bush Jr. There has never been a war fought with less casualties than the one fought in Iraq. We are a devise being used for the benefit of powerful men.

So how are they going to attack us? Let me tell you something. The masses all believe that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq... But.... What if there were?

America had been supplying Mr. Hussein with arms and agents of warfare for YEARS before the U.S. invasion. Then we come in and invade and Iraq is as clean as a whistle? Doubtful... In Fact I think Mr. Hussein had loads of WMDs.

So why all the charades?

The powers that be are not going to stick their neck out unless they have both sides of the argument covered. They had the argument covered if no weapons were found AND if some slipped through.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

Here is my line of thought. Weapons were there... We supplied them... We smuggled them out... Bush takes the hit for no weapons... Now the powers that be have untraceable weapons that we can use against ourselves that we can blame on someone else.

This is what scares me about all these hits on the news about bad things happening to the president by extremists. I think the powers that be are just softening the blow. The man has outlived his usefulness to the powers that be. His public opinion numbers are crashing by the nanosecond. And even though I disagree with all of his policies I hate to see anyone made into a martyr.

Just an opinion.

Everything that happens is by design.

Colorado into the Frey

2010-03-23T12:53:00.001+09:00

Article HERE

Republican Attorney General John Suthers said Monday he will join the suit, despite the objections of Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.

Suthers said the bill's requirement that most Americans buy health insurance or be subject to fines is an unconstitutional expansion of the federal government's powers. He says Congress has the right to control interstate commerce but can't force people to participate in commerce.

Suthers said his decision isn't politically motivated. Republican state lawmakers urged him to join the lawsuit earlier in the day but Suthers said he didn't meet with them to reach his decision.

They’re also supporting a ballot measure that would prevent the state from enforcing the law. Independence Institute president Jon Caldara must collect 76,047 signatures to get that measure on November’s ballot.

By Monday, at least 10 state attorneys general had promised to file suit against the federal government when President Barack Obama signs the bill. The states were Alabama, Colorado, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Michigan, Nebraska, Washington. Officials in North Dakota were weighing whether to join the case.

2010-03-23T12:30:00.000+09:00

2010-03-23T10:38:00.001+09:00

The count is now 38 states who are standing in the way of Obama

2010-03-23T00:18:00.002+09:00

According to the news article Here the count is now 38 states who are telling Obama to KISS OFF. I say just wait till the end of the week.

No need to secede now, we are all standing up against this, I say we just Exile D.C.

The States Rebel

2010-03-22T14:27:00.004+09:00

Success depends on the proles.

I am a firm believer that there is no law made by man. Its all just ideas of conduct on paper that we all just kind of agree with. There is the law of God to consider but for the scope of this argument I will say that for now he is just letting us get away with whatever until the stench of it reaches him in the wmap cold spot.

Anyways as you probably know an ugly piece of legislation passed tonight, but there is a bright spot. We the people just might tell washington to KISS OFF. I like rebellion, I have been a rebellious spirit my hole life not just rebellious but openly defiant. So when I see open forms of defiance against a tyrannical monster it brings a grin to my face and warms my blood.

Maybe there is some hope for us after all. Maybe we are not all quite sheep yet, maybe we really are the sleeping giant? I am beginning to hope so.

Onward

Full Article Here

With revolutionary die-hards behind him, Mr. Pitts has fired a warning shot across the bow of the Washington establishment. As the writer of one of 28 state "sovereignty bills" – one even calls for outright dissolution of the Union if Washington doesn't rein itself in – Pitts is at the forefront of a states' rights revival, reasserting their say on everything from stem cell research to the Second Amendment.

"Washington can be a bully, but there's evidence right now that there are people willing to resist our bully," said Pitts, by phone from the state capitol of Columbia.

Just as California under President Bush asserted itself on issues ranging from gun control to medical marijuana, a motley cohort of states – from South Carolina to New Hampshire, from Washington State to Oklahoma – are presenting a foil for President Obama's national ambitions. And they're laying the groundwork for a political standoff over the 10th Amendment, which cedes all power not granted to Washington to the people.

The movement's success will largely depend on whether Washington sees these legislative insurgents as serious – or, as Pitts puts it, as just "a bunch of rednecks."

"There's a lot of frustration when someone quite distant from you forces you to do something you don't want to do," says Steve Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in D.C. "That's the root cause, and it ends up being rationalized in constitutional terms."

The need for Taxation

2010-03-22T13:40:00.003+09:00

I posted this on my former blog, so when I deleted it I was like OH NOOOO! Where was that article. I never printed it out and thought it would be lost forever among the byways of the internet.. (I knew I would find it eventually if I was diligent enough, therein lies the problem... Diligent ENOUGH) This is an important piece of the puzzle.

So anyways here it is in spades
(link Here)

If asked the question "why do we have taxation?" most people would probably respond with something along the lines of "the government collects taxes so that it can pay its bills" or "taxes finance the operations of government". However, rather than going through the extremely costly exercise of collecting taxes -- the process of collecting taxes is costly to the government and the steps taken by people to minimise the amount of tax they pay place a large burden on the economy -- the government could simply print all the money it needs.

But wouldn't the printing of all this new money create an inflation problem? The answer is yes, there would be more inflation (money supply growth). However, inflation is really just a surreptitious form of taxation, so if the government were to print all the money it needed then people would be taxed indirectly rather than directly. There would potentially be a net benefit to the economy, though, if all forms of direct taxation were replaced by the surreptitious tax of inflation. This is because all the public and private resources that are presently consumed via the unproductive tasks of collecting and avoiding taxes would be freed up.

It is also worth noting that if money printing replaced direct taxation then the total addition to the money supply would be a lot less than the replaced tax revenue because the government's expenses would be a lot lower. The elimination of the huge government network that exists solely for the purpose of bringing in tax revenue -- something we've already mentioned -- is one reason why expenses would be lower. Another reason is that there would be no federal debt if the government printed whatever money it needed. To give you an idea of what a big difference the elimination of the federal debt would make to the government's annual expenses we'll note that the US Federal Government paid $350B dollars in interest during the 2005 fiscal year and has already paid about $250B in interest during the current fiscal year.

Which brings us back to the question: why do we have taxation?

As far as we can tell there are two inter-related reasons, the first of which can be explained with the help of the following extract from Richard Kelly Hoskins' book "War Cycles Peace Cycles".

"When the crusaders first left their homelands in Europe for the crusade to the Holy Land, they took with them almost the entire circulating supply of gold and silver coins. This left western nations, England in particular, with no money.

In the year 1100 A.D. Henry I, 4th son of William the Conqueror, ascended the throne of England. Finding the treasury empty and his needs great, he cast about for a source of income. Having wise advisors he soon hit on a plan. The plan, with a few refinements, remained in effect for the next 726 years - and can be reinstated tomorrow. He issued "tallies".

A tally was a stick about nine inches or so long with each of the four sides about 1/2 inch wide. On two of the sides, the value of the "tally" was carved into the wood. On the other two sides, the amount was printed in ink.

The tally was then split in half lengthwise. One half remained in the treasury and the other half was given to soldiers for their pay, to farmers for wheat, to armorers for armor, and to laborers for their labor.

At tax time, taxpayers were required to bring in one half of a tally to pay their taxes. Woe unto the man who did not have the required number of tally sticks. As a consequence, these intrinsically worthless sticks of wood were in great demand. Gold and silver coins were fine if you traveled abroad for a crusade or something, but at home if you did not have your tax-tally at tax time - you were done.

Upon receipt of a tally the treasurer would immediately match the presented half with the half stored in the treasury. THEY HAD TO TALLY - which is what gave it the name. Counterfeiters lost their heads! Actually, it was practically impossible to counterfeit a tally. The wood grain had to match - the notches had to match - and the ink inscriptions had to match. This could only come about if both pieces came from the same split tally stick.

There you have it! An inexhaustible source of revenue for the government. The means were available to make tallies as long as there were trees. There was a demand as long as the government required the tallies for taxes. The system flourished as long as tax-evaders and counterfeiters were punished and they always were. For 726 years the system flourished."

In the historical example described above, the government created strong demand for essentially worthless pieces of wood by requiring that all taxes be paid using these formerly worthless objects. Something that would otherwise have had no value hence became valuable. It's a similar story today in that taxes create demand for essentially worthless pieces of paper. For example, if you have a lot of gold, a large dollar-denominated tax bill and a small amount of dollars then you will need to sell some of your gold in order to obtain the dollars needed to pay your tax bill. Even though gold is much better suited to be money than any of today's national currencies and would be a lot more useful to the government than the paper it churns out at almost zero cost, we don't know of any government that would accept gold in payment of a tax bill.

Taxation not only supports the currency directly due to the need to obtain the currency in order to pay the tax, it supports it indirectly by fostering the general belief that the currency is actually worth something. After all, if the government is prepared to accept the currency it creates, and ONLY the currency it creates, in payment of taxes then the currency must have genuine value, right? On the other hand, if the government were to announce that there will be no more taxation and that all future government expenses will be paid by turning on a monetary printing press then light-bulbs would suddenly appear above the heads of millions of people. People who previously hadn't given the nature of modern money a second thought and who hadn't stopped to consider why a piece of paper with the number 100 printed on it should be worth 100-times as much as a similar piece of paper with the number 1 printed on it would quickly come to realize that if the government can just print as much money as it wants then the money must have no real value; a realization that would lead to the question: why should I work hard for something the government can produce in unlimited amounts at no cost to itself?

In summary, without the underlying demand created by taxation there is a good chance that the purchasing power of today's national currencies would collapse. Taxation is therefore a critical component of the current monetary system, but not for the reasons most people think.

Idaho doing the right thing!

2010-03-19T01:02:00.003+09:00

Its just happenstance that this is the state that I am planning on moving to. I wouldn't be affected by Nationalized Health Care due to a religious exception but none the less this may save me from haveing to go to court to prove my religious convictions.

Article is HERE

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Idaho is leading the charge in a states-rights push to defeat a proposal in Congress that would require people to buy health insurance, a key piece of reforms being pushed by President Barack Obama.

Republican Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter used a ceremony Wednesday afternoon to become the first governor to sign into law a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government over any such insurance mandates.

There's similar legislation pending in 37 other states, a point Otter stressed when asked if the bill he signed can succeed, given constitutional law experts are already saying federal laws would supersede those of states in a U.S. District Court fight.

"The ivory tower folks will tell you, 'No, they're not going anywhere,'" he told reporters. "But I'll tell you what, you get 36 states, that's a critical mass. That's a constitutional mass."

The state measures working their ways through statehouses from Missouri to South Carolina reflect a growing frustration with President Obama's health care overhaul, especially in Republican-dominated regions.

The Democratic president's proposal would cover some 30 million uninsured people, end insurance practices such as denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, require almost all Americans to get coverage by law, and try to slow the cost of medical care nationwide.

Democratic leaders hope to vote on it this weekend.

With Washington closing in on a deal in the monthslong battle over health care overhaul, Republican state lawmakers are stepping up opposition.

Last week, Virginia legislators passed a measure similar to Idaho's new law, but Otter was the first state chief executive to sign such a bill, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which created model legislation for Idaho and other states. The Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit group promotes limited government.

"Congress is planning to force an unconstitutional mandate on the states," said Christie Herrera, the group's health task force director.

Still, David Freeman Engstrom, a constitutional law expert at Stanford University Law School, said all these measures face significant legal hurdles. Freeman said there is the question of whether a state has standing to bring the lawsuit, or if that role is better served by an individual who could show they were harmed by the mandate to buy health insurance.

Idaho's law faces an even bigger challenge, he said, by setting up a direct conflict with the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution.

"That language is clear that federal law is supreme over state law," said Freeman. "So it really doesn't matter what a state legislature says on this."

Otter already warned U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in December that Idaho was considering litigation.

He signed the bill during his first public ceremony of the 2010 Legislature.

"What the Idaho Health Freedom Act says is that the citizens of our state won't be subject to another federal mandate or turn over another part of their life to government control," Otter said.

Minority Democrats who make up less than a quarter of the Idaho Legislature who opposed the bill called any lawsuits over health care reform frivolous.

Senate Minority Leader Kate Kelly, D-Boise, also complained about the bill's possible price tag. Those who drafted the new law say enforcement may require an additional Idaho deputy attorney general with an annual salary of $100,000 a year.

Kelly said that was irresponsible when Idaho is grappling with a $200 million budget hole.

"For Democrats in the Legislature, our priority is jobs," she said. "We'd rather Gov. Otter was holding a signing ceremony for (a jobs package) meant to put Idaho residents back to work."

At the White House, spokesman Reid Cherlin declined to comment Wednesday night.

Tightening the Noose

2010-03-18T12:07:00.003+09:00

Its getting real in the field!

Taken from here The news outlet is here

I’m Joseph Evers. Very few of you know or care about me. I’m the largest shareholder of ED, and I guess that makes me the “owner”. I’m generally pretty absent in the management of this website. I’d apologize for that but it doesn’t make a lot of money. What we do at Encyclopedia Dramatica is a labor of love, and we all put in what we can. Largely, the great team of volunteers really makes things work for this website, and your donations and page views have been (barely) making ends meet lately. No matter what the current administration and news will tell you, we are in a worsening depression. The last depositors of my fund left 2 years ago despite year after year profitability with no losses and they haven’t come back. Most everyone I know is broke and unemployed. Things are hard, and if Encyclopedia Dramatica were still relying on my pocketbook it would have died when that particular well dried up. So thank you all for contributing to this community. This is truly the most free collaborative publishing platform on the Internet and it would not exist without your love and support.

This weekend I returned from a very much needed vacation in Mexico. I saw Tulum, Coba, Chichen Itza, and Uxmal. If you’re ever in the Yucatan you should eat a few grams of highly potent mushrooms (there are street vendors if you know how to pay attention) and walk amongst the ruins of Chichen Itza. You will not regret it. I arrive Saturday night at LAX on Mexicana Air and get off the plane. When I turn on my Blackberry there are two notable things. The first is a great interview with Australia’s Channel 9 that Anonadmin did. It is a fantastic piece and I really recommend you read it. I normally discourage our users and moderators from talking to the press, but I’m glad he did. This really addresses a lot of points which are going to be of note in the rest of this post.

The second bit was a rather curious bit of correspondence from Australia’s Human Rights Commission.

For those unaware, Encyclopedia Dramatica has been in a lot of trouble in Australia lately. First ED was placed on the ACMA blacklist, a “secret” list of websites to be censored throughout Australia in their upcoming internet filter. After this list was leaked to the public, we all laughed about how we were put on a blacklist with “Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions, Christian sites, and even the websites of a tour operator and a Queensland dentist“. Meanwhile, Australia Communications Minister Stephen Conroy called for the arrests of Australians publishing the list.

Next the “Aboriginal” article was recently removed from Google Australia’s search engine results. This was right after Google had done a large amount of grandstanding about fighting Chinese censorship. Which proves they’re a bunch of spineless hypocrites. Really, you have to admire the shrewdness of Google. China was a gigantic business failure, and a loss leader. With a bunch of CIA and shareholder money Google went in promising that their search technology was really so much better (FYI: from a perspective of pure technical achievement, Yahoo’s is best in the business right now, though they do poison their search results with paid entries) that the Chinese market would fall in a fortnight. Years and what is likely billions later, Baidu completely dominates the Chinese search market. By spinning an obvious business failure as a failure of RED POLITICS Google was able to pull out of China without losing face. Their idiot shareholders sat there and applauded them for wasting billions of their money. For that I give Google a lot of respect. They are some of the most brilliant marketers around, but as anyone who has used Google’s ad placement can attest, the only thing they really excel at selling is themselves.

As for the correspondence from the Australian HRC, well, I’ll just show the first page of the PDF verbatim (click through for high res)

So here’s the deal. This is an initial investigation into charging me, personally, with the violation of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act. While I act in complete compliance with both the civil and criminal codes of the United States of America, and am assured the right of free speech according to our Constitution (which, if not the greatest political document in the entire history of law, is certainly on the top five) I can personally be jailed and fined for the violation of this law. Check out the court precedent they cite, Dow Jones & Co Inc v Gutnick, where a United States paper had to pay 580k for publishing an article about a globalized company headquartered in Australia and its CEO whilst completely in compliance with United States civil precedence. This isn’t a far-fetched legal theory, they have used it before. Welcome to the one world government, folks. Is this what you wanted? Is this what you had in mind? Cause this is what you’re gettin’.

Encyclopedia Dramatica will never be censored in any way. We will keep publishing this content and our Australian users will be able to view it up until the point that your God-forsaken government blocks it with their soon-to-be-implemented secret list of banned material. ACMA’s child pornography blacklist is only one half child pornography. The rest is religious and political speech. You really want Soviet-style communism as your future? I know some people that had to escape from the GDR. Many of your children will be in that position. The house of cards is about to come down, and they’re making sure your mouths are taped shut first. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My counsel has advised me that I can never under any circumstances visit my family in Sydney again, nor otherwise make any appearances on Australian soil. Here’s to the hidden cost of freedom.

The ED moderator's interview here

Encyclopedia Dramatica is Wikipedia's evil twin. It’s a site where almost every article is biased, offensive, unsourced, and without the faintest trace of political correctness. A search through its archives will reveal animated images of people committing suicide, articles glorifying extreme racism and sexism, and a seemingly endless supply of twisted, shocking views on just about every major human tragedy in history.

Among the articles on the website is one lampooning the death of Bundaberg schoolgirl Trinity Bates. Another article, about Australian Aborigines, was deemed so offensive it was removed from Google's search earlier this year.

For people unfamiliar with the site, a common reaction is disgust and outrage. The site also poses a challenge for anyone who espouses a doctrine of completely free speech — the pedophilia jokes and the celebration of cyber-bullying as an almost heroic act are problematic at best.

So who would create these articles? And who would defend them? ninemsn contacted Encyclopedia Dramatica to find out and was put in touch with one of the top moderators on the website.

We asked the moderator — who did not want to be named — why he allows these articles to be published, whether he worries about offending people, and if the site is connected to the recent vandalism on Facebook tribute pages for Trinity and others.

We didn't expect him to be a 42-year-old Bible-quoting industrial engineer with an interest in epistemology.

Here is the full interview:

What can you tell me about yourself?

My home is Switzerland, but my work is in the United States and Canada. I'm 42. I'm an industrial engineer by degree. Sixty-five years ago that would have meant I did great work and made things, but now that our nations are de-industrialized it just makes me a glorified software engineer.

I am a volunteer, and merely a friend of Joseph Evers [Encyclopedia Dramatica's chief executive, who was on vacation in the Yucatan and couldn't be reached]. I am not an official organisational voice of ED.

What motivates you to keep Encyclopedia Dramatica going? What do you like about the website?

I don't personally keep ED going. Mostly it is Joseph's pocketbook that does it, combined with the generous help and support of my fellow users. I like the website because it is the only collaborative publishing platform on the internet that allows completely free speech.

Do you think it's possible for people to go too far with free speech? Is there a line that can be crossed?

Let us talk epistemology for a moment. The minute there is a hidden limit on speech, it is no longer free. Free speech with limits is not free speech under any circumstances. But Matthew 15:11 (what goes into a man's mouth does not make him "unclean", but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him "unclean") certainly applies to some users of ED and virtually any other web community in existence.

How do you defend publishing articles on Encyclopedia Dramatica like "Trinity Bates"?

I didn't write that article and I have no specific comment on it, but my distaste for what some people might say does not outweigh my distaste for censorship.

Do you worry that families of dead people lampooned on the site could be offended? Why or why not?

It isn't a large concern, no. A truly free publishing platform comes with positives and negatives. I have seen the whole spectrum of pros and cons, and the pros outweigh the cons.

What are the pros?

A forum for completely open dialogue about any issue. Many subjects have a state or corporate controlled monologue that is completely shattered by the way ED does things.

I've seen ED used as a platform to sabotage political campaigns, to publish innovative new research in the information security field, to document countless events which would have gone undocumented in the mainstream press, to organise political action, and to publish quality satire.

Earlier this year an article on ED titled Aboriginal was removed from Google after legal action from an individual. One of the main concerns was that there was the potential for a child to stumble across the article. Is that a concern to you?

My kids have seen the article in question. Then again, my kids interact with power tools, controlled demolitions, open flames, spears, knives, smithing equipment and caustic chemicals.

I reference this TED talk on dangerous things you should let your kid do: http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html

Largely the problem with the younger generation is that they've grown up in a bubble of Fisher Price rounded corners and bright colors where costumed animals never tell them anything that could hurt anyone's feelings. It is no wonder that they've grown up stunted and are unable to survive in the workplace. Preventing children from viewing political speech is doing them a massive disservice.

Do you think that the authors of the article "Aboriginal" were defending free speech or just being racist bullies?

Bullying is when someone gets beaten. Satire is when an article gets written on an Internet comedy website.

Do you think Google was right to remove the article from its search?

Google didn't remove it, Australian law did. Very few companies will defy a legal order in compliance with national law. It differs naught from the censorship used by the PRC or the Soviets. It is a sure sign of decline when a nation facing great social and economic problems that threaten to sink it has little more to do than squabble over things people say.

Does Encyclopedia Dramatica or its users contribute to the vandalism of Facebook tribute pages?

Absolutely not.

The Trinity Bates article references joining Facebook tribute pages for her. Don't you think this could lead people with the wrong motives to visit her tribute pages and interfere with her family's grieving?

ED is a platform to document things that happened on the internet. Any member of our community would view that as a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of an event that actually happened and not a suggestion to go do anything.

Do you think people are vandalising these Facebook pages more often than usual lately?

No, this is nothing new. Over a decade ago when I was a kid dialing into regional BBSs with my first modem, people would break into other people's accounts and use them to post obnoxious things. Moderation systems have actually made this problem better and not worse. Back when the internet was young everything was far more insecure and stuff like this happened on a far larger scale.

The issue is that largely new classes of people who previously were excluded from this medium of communication are finally getting connected and they're shocked by what they see. People acting obnoxiously on the Internet to garner reactions is not a startling revelation to anyone that has been using any sort of social media in the past three decades.

Last week a spokesperson for Facebook said that she had "never seen anything like this" while speaking about the tribute page attacks. Do you think she's telling the truth? Haven't there been attacks from [internet prankster group] Anonymous on similar Facebook pages for years?

I'm pretty sure I've heard of Facebook memorial attacks before this. I can't recall a specific one off the top of my head but I know they've been done before. This type of problem is old on Facebook, and older than Facebook.

Does the Australian government reaction — and police investigations — make vandalising tribute pages even more attractive for Anonymous?

Reaction in general probably makes it more attractive. Police investigations probably don't figure into their logic anywhere.

Do you think police will be able to catch those responsible for the vandalism of the tribute pages?

Doubtful. The IT muscle of Australia leaves a lot to be desired. This is a country that took $80 million to develop a filtering proxy, something which has already been done more effectively (http://www.squid-cache.org/) for free. Literally, squid did regex-based filtering, and not list-based filtering a decade ago. In addition, it can speed up web traffic instead of slow it down like the Australian filter. ISPs that push more traffic than the entirety of Australia's internet usage have already implemented squid at cost in the hundred thousand range (which includes all hardware and development costs).

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks this whole deal is an engineered campaign of feigned outrage to push a very expensive public works project that is largely against public interests. However, applying Hanlon's razor makes me think this is just people new to the Internet just beginning to discover Internet users.

People should remember that reacting like this after putting something public on the Internet is akin to running down to the local homeless shelters and methadone clinics and inviting all comers to your grandma's memorial service. You can't then go and act shocked while finding a junkie passed out with some needles and used condoms in the bathroom.

Allowing such material to be published doesn't seem to me like something most Christians would be comfortable with. How do you justify this to yourself? Are there any other particularly relevant Bible passages you turn to?

All the things Christ said and did would make most "Christians" uncomfortable. He called the leaders of a specific ethnic group murderers and liars (John 8:44), demanded hatred (Luke 14:26) and flogged bankers and flipped over their tables. John 8 is an extremely condemning document — at the time it would have been considered worse than anything on ED. Many people were brutally murdered by the Pharisitic establishment over it. The synoptic gospels and the gospel according to John were so revolutionary that no publishing platform would take them.

These days most Christians focus on Paul and completely ignore the life and actions of Christ. If Christ were here again today he'd probably start a website and people would be crying for its censorship.

Glenn Beck gets it right on this one

2010-03-18T10:56:00.002+09:00

Here is a neat little gem.

2010-03-18T09:49:00.002+09:00

Great Book! She read the whole thing in half hour segments here

QUIT GIVING ME STUFF!!!!!!

2010-03-16T23:55:00.003+09:00

The FCC wants to spend 300 billion dollars to give everyone broadband. ARE THEY INSANE! Our house is on fire, all our hopes and dreams of a future are going up in smoke and the VERY people who started the fire WANT TO THROW SOME GASOLINE ON IT! The Audacity of this government! Are we so bereft of thought, so utterly brain dead, that we don't even care? So absent of common sense that we don't even know how much we are spending?

What is it? In case they can't pass health care to destroy this country they are gonna nickle and dime us to DEATH?!?

STOP SPENDING MONEY! JUST STOP DOING EVERYTHING! QUIT F**KING WITH IT! JUST QUIT MOVING SO WE CAN FIX IT OURSELVES!

OK I am going to bed before burst a blood vessel. Night all ; )

Oh yea, here is the link

McCain again showing his true colors...

2010-03-12T10:00:00.002+09:00

This was taken from The Atlantic Here

A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully

Mar 5 2010, 3:40 PM ET

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.
According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)

It would require these "belligerents" to be coded as "high-value detainee[s]" to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the president. (The H.I.G., of course, was established to bring a sophisticated interrogation capacity to the federal justice system.)

Any suspected unprivileged enemy belligerents considered a "high-value detainee" shall not be provided with a Miranda warning.

The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a "high-value detainee" if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.

To the extent possible, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must make a preliminary determination whether the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent within 48 hours of taking detainee into custody.

The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must submit its determination to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General make a final determination and report the determination to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress. In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination.

Note that the president himself doesn't get to make the call.

The Last Brick In The Wall

2010-03-05T19:44:00.003+09:00

The Internet... I don't think the world understood the gravity of what it could develop into 20 years ago. I personally believe if the powers that be knew how powerful the internet was going to be it would never have been allowed to go mainline. The more I look, I see a slow cautious creeping seizure of the net as we know it.

The Internet is the last great forum for freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom of the press, and will not be allowed to stand. The end draweth neigh my friends.

Everyone is a liar, and no one knows the answers, its just a fact. However I know a little truth, and you, you know a little truth and everyone you know knows a little truth. Where am I going with this? With something like the internet we can all convey our little bit of truth.

Did you know Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist? a plagiarist? A sexual deviant? That the FBI holds records on MLK that they refuse to let come to light? That Jesse Jackson prays to whomever he calls God that they never release those records? Yep neither did I.

Did you know that FDR did everything in his power to instigate a war with Japan? Did you know about a list of 8 things that America could do that would cause an attack from Japan? Did you know that the majority of Japanese people believe they deserved to be nuked? Did you know FDR ported all those battleships prior to the attack? Did you know we cracked the Japanese codes several months prior to the attack? Yea, I didn't know that one either.

Did you know that the feminist movement was started and funded by government and bankers to disrupt the societal structure. Gloria Steinem was a CIA operative. Hugh Hefner, the chief exploiter of women at the time donated massive amounts of money to feminist causes. Why wasn't I told this stuff?

The keys to the riddles are out there, just a few clicks away from the truth. Mere keystrokes from undermining the years of lies we have been brainwashed with. Because we the people ARE the internet. It brings Joe Shmos like you and me on par with names like MSNBC and Fox. The net is host to millions of anonymous people who can post the truth without fear of reprisal or national security.

Well folks I just want you all to know that the internet isn't going to be around much longer, at least not as we know it. Every day the powers that be are trying to control this medium. Truth cannot be allowed, or else people might start to think for themselves.

And this comes to the precipice of what I am getting at:

Shutting down the net for an emergency AKA blueprint for a lockdown

http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/cyber-shockwave-simulation-massive-cyber-attack-hit-us-today

Net Neutrality

The Internet II

The Internet 2 is what really scares me. Instead of going against legislation defending net neutrality on our current net, they are just making a whole new net that is ten thousand times better. But this new bigger faster stronger net is gonna have a whole massive wad of strings attached... not even strings just massive cables to bind this animal down.

The down side is that there seems to be only one guy out there talking about this named Alex Jones. Who I utterly detest. He is like the Michael Moore of the libertarian wing. A guy I know named Jack Blood has some interesting things to say about Jones, but thats not the point.

In closing I leave off with this article HERE

MOTHER @%#&$? !!!!!!

2010-02-27T01:48:00.005+09:00

At least I didn't read this at the beginning of my day.

Democrats facing a tough election year quietly voted this week to extend the Patriot Act legislation that many of them had decried under former President George W. Bush

Full Article Here

Girl Cas, Cat Class and Cat Style

2010-02-23T02:05:00.002+09:00

Girl Cas recently went toe to toe with her college prof. What I like about the story was that she handled it with precision. Waited for the opportune moment for the coup de gras. Mostly I liked this story is because of my disdain for organized education. I find the education system as we know it to be a continuation of the 12 years of brainwashing, the result being what I call "dumb smart people" (not to mention most people rack up an unimaginable debt in student loans which they cannot file bankruptcy on in most cases) So when you come across a girl like Cas who can still think for herself it gives you a sense of hope. You can read her story here

Off Topic

2010-02-23T00:04:00.003+09:00

My alcohol recommendations for the month

Wine:
Shiraz by Yellow Tail

Beer:
Imperial White by Sam Adams

Watch out for your Web Cam

2010-02-20T11:09:00.002+09:00

Taken from this article Here

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."

The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

While declining to comment on the specifics of the suit, spokesman Douglas Young said the district was investigating. "We're taking it very seriously," he said last night.

The district's Apple MacBook laptops have a built-in webcam with a "security feature" that can snap a picture of the operator and the screen if the computer is reported lost or stolen, Young said.

But he said "the district would never utilize that security feature for any other reason." The district said that the security system was "deactivated" yesterday, and that it would review when the system had been used.

Widener University law professor Stephen Henderson said using a laptop camera for home surveillance would violate wiretap laws, even if done to catch a thief.

2010-02-18T00:51:00.001+09:00

Some more neat stuff

2010-02-18T00:26:00.005+09:00

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (today Piven is an honorary chair for the Democratic Socialists of America), the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act.

This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests - and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones."These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," writes Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy."As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" -- the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.

Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a July 20, 1998 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."

Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "voting rights movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like ACORN, the organization that spear-headed this campaign, the new "voting rights" movement was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Its flagship organizations were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

All three of these organizations -- ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE -- set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. The Motor-Voter bill is largely responsible for swamping the voter rolls with "dead wood" -- invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people -- thus opening the door to the unprecedented levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections. At the White House signing ceremony for the Motor-Voter bill, both Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were in attendance.

The new "voting rights" coalition combines mass voter registration drives -- typically featuring high levels of fraud -- with systematic intimidation of election officials in the form of frivolous lawsuits, unfounded charges of "racism" and "disenfranchisement," and "direct action" (street protests, violent or otherwise). Just as they swamped America's welfare offices in the 1960s, Cloward-Piven devotees now seek to overwhelm the nation's understaffed and poorly policed electoral system. Their tactics set the stage for the Florida recount crisis of 2000, and have introduced a level of fear, tension and foreboding to U.S. elections previously encountered mainly in Third World countries.

In January 2010, journalist John Fund reported that Congressman Barney Frank and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer were preparing to unveil legislation calling for "universal voter registration," whereby any person whose name was on any federal roll at all -- be it a list of welfare recipients, food stamp recipients, unemployment compensation recipients, licensed drivers, convicted felons, property owners, etc. -- would automatically be registered to vote in political elections. Without corresponding identity-verification measures at polling places, such a law would vastly expand the pool of eligible voters, thereby multiplying the opportunities for fraudulent voters to cast ballots under other people's names.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his "Shadow Party," through whose support the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns to overload, and cause the collapse of, various American institutions. Leftists such as Barack Obama euphemistically refer to this collapse as a "fundamental transformation," on the theory that society can only be improved by destroying the deeply flawed existing order and replacing it with what they view as a better alternative.

Click here to read about more recent efforts by the Left to overload the American system.

Equal Protection Under The Law?

2010-02-12T00:47:00.008+09:00

Ok a little commentary first. I must say that the following article is excellent but the thing thats missing is reality. Here is reality. There is no such thing as law... I know, I know, law school student and lawyers everywhere are popping blood vessels as I say that. Laws are only ideas of conduct written on paper that for the most part everyone tends to agree to follow. Its like the border argument. There is no such thing as a border between the U.S. and Canada/Mexico Its just a bunch of lines drawn on a map that everyone tacitly or otherwise agrees on. I know, I know, border patrol agents everywhere...

My point is that everything comes down to force. The government forces you to obey laws because 1. you agree to it 2. they are bigger than you. So what happens if your bigger than the government? Why do you think there are such laws against inciting a riot... because a riot is force of the people and can be more powerful than government's force. Its a rivalry for control and government HATES competition. There is a reason why people are taught to celebrate their diversity, because the more diverse people are the harder it is to unify them.

People being what they are are evil... You can argue with me all you like but we are what we are and there is 6000 years of evidence in my favor. That being said we have only tried to continually enslave and destroy ourselves from the beginning.

No matter which way you slice it, everything goes back to survival of the fittest. The fittest always rise to the top. The modern day "fittest" are at the top right now so don't ever get confused.

In my opinion this is why liberals and minorities typically always support communist endeavors because freedom and truth are racist...sexist...biased...unfair etc. It means you can serve all white patrons in your establishment if you want, or all black if you prefer. In a country of only white male land owners who can vote, things are not gonna go your way, and this is unacceptable to everyone left out. Hens those who want to control a free people needed a way to crack open that voting block. Ever wonder why America is always forcing themselves into other countries to establish a democracy? Even when a country seems perfectly content without it? Its hard to muscle in on a guy who has all the marbles. I mean if you think about it a sovereign king or an absolute dictator is hard to manipulate. He has the ability to tell you to kiss off. Dictators and monarchs always get bad press. Just ask the Bolsheviks and the Nazis.

It makes me wonder why Arab countries are propagandized as being such bad guys. They don't want freedom they want to be ruled by their God this poses a problem for those who would want to control the world. Your competing with a deity and generally thats a losing battle if your just a man.

This is why I am an anarchical person... because in a void of government the people rise up and rule themselves. This happened in the "wild west" which was far more lawful that what people know and even in modern day prison systems where child pedophiles get murdered because some things "are just intolerable" even to criminals. Just to name two quick examples.

In the end every government ends in slavery. People want to be controlled,

So here is the Article I promised if your still awake

By Paul Craig Roberts
Original article is HERE

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s "war on terror," which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for "terrorists." Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed "terrorists" prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the "detainees" (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as "the 760 most dangerous men on earth," there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.

Wikipedia has this to say about the trial: "The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers."

An ignorant and bigoted American jury convicted her for being a Muslim. This is the kind of "justice" that always results when the state hypes fear and demonizes a group.

The people who should have been on trial are the people who abducted her, disappeared her young children, shipped her across international borders, violated her civil liberties, tortured her apparently for the fun of it, raped her, and attempted to murder her with two gunshots to her stomach. Instead, the victim was put on trial and convicted.

This is the unmistakable hallmark of a police state. And this victim is an American citizen.

Anyone can be next. Indeed, on February 3 Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now "defined policy" that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat. No arrest, no trial, no conviction, just execution on suspicion of being a threat.

This shows how far the police state has advanced. A presidential appointee in the Obama administration tells an important committee of Congress that the executive branch has decided that it can murder American citizens abroad if it thinks they are a threat.

I can hear readers saying the government might as well kill Americans abroad as it kills them at home – Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Black Panthers.

Yes, the U.S. government has murdered its citizens, but Dennis Blair’s "defined policy" is a bold new development. The government, of course, denies that it intended to kill the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver’s wife and child, or the Black Panthers. The government says that Waco was a terrible tragedy, an unintended result brought on by the Branch Davidians themselves. The government says that Ruby Ridge was Randy Weaver’s fault for not appearing in court on a day that had been miscommunicated to him, The Black Panthers, the government says, were dangerous criminals who insisted on a shoot-out.

In no previous death of a U.S. citizen by the hands of the U.S. government has the government claimed the right to kill Americans without arrest, trial, and conviction of a capital crime.

In contrast, Dennis Blair has told the U.S. Congress that the executive branch has assumed the right to murder Americans who it deems a "threat."

What defines "threat"? Who will make the decision? What it means is that the government will murder whomever it chooses.

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a "threat."

Ironic, isn’t it, that "the war on terror" to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens who it regards as a threat.

Why Bitch About the Problem if You Don't Have a Solution?

2010-02-09T23:12:00.002+09:00

I caught some flak from a friend saying that all I do is just point out the problems but I never divulge any of my solutions for the problem. I thought about it and he was right I don't readily give out what I think the solutions are.

Usually I just listen to people and inevitable I always hear the recent talking points. Not always the exact talking point but some variation of what the latest thing the media is putting out.

I must be getting old because in the past I would just berate or patronize the person ending in embarrassment, now I try to invoke (or is it evoke) some form of original thought. I try to educate instead of burn bridges.

Bla bla bla

My point is that the last post I said that we are fucked, but I never posted what I thought we could do about it.

So here is what I think:

The United States of America as we know it has signed so many contracts with foreign countries and the UN, levied an unpayable debt upon ourselves, instituted liberal immigration policies, and in many cases allowed our own history to be diluted and taught to us by edict created by those who want to see us fail.

The ONLY solution I can see for us (the only beneficial one for us) is to have a revolution. A non violent one would be better but I don't really believe its possible. Really we have to start from scratch. Keep many of the same ideals as the founding fathers but get rid of the flaws.

One thing that would have to be established would be inflexible and unammendable laws. In fact we probably would be better off completely without a legislative branch all together. I also am not too partial to one "leader" like a president, or judges that have the power to "interpret"... I am thinking of some how a community could self rule even above the state or fed. Not sure how to implement it yet though. Been giving it a lot of thought. The best way I can figure everything has to be done locally. If you don't like your local community then move to another local community.

I don't like the idea of have anything other then true private business. Companies and corporations start getting too big and its no longer a free market and resembles communism and starts to oppress the small community. Maybe allowing only family business?

Your right to contract should not be unlimited, but only limited by not allowing you to contract your rights away.

Maybe getting rid of the military would be a good idea, in favor of every local community having a strong militia. Not the current view of militias but the original idea of militias.

Support of local community is imperative. I would say get rid of the state and fed entirely. Any and all local government, if any at all must be financed by import and export tariffs. This also helps the local economy to support itself.

All Judges at this point in time get their pay check from the state. This must be changed because it creates a bias. Bias itself is inevitable but the bias should be in favor of the people.

Prosecutors should not even exist. Where originally there had to be a damage to persons or property to litigate, now the damage is to the law hens you have a prosecutor to press charges on behalf of the state even if nothing was damges or anyone was hurt.

Anyways these are the thing just floating around in my head. I have a list of solutions a mile long but this is just to get the ball rolling

It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt

2010-02-06T22:14:00.003+09:00

WE'RE FUCKED

Taken from The Economic Collapse Blog here

A lot of people are very upset about the rapidly increasing U.S. national debt these days and they are demanding a solution. What they don't realize is that there simply is not a solution under the current U.S. financial system. It is now mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off the U.S. national debt. You see, the truth is that the U.S. government now owes more dollars than actually exist. If the U.S. government went out today and took every single penny from every single American bank, business and taxpayer, they still would not be able to pay off the national debt. And if they did that, obviously American society would stop functioning because nobody would have any money to buy or sell anything.

And the U.S. government would still be massively in debt.

So why doesn't the U.S. government just fire up the printing presses and print a bunch of money to pay off the debt?

Well, for one very simple reason.

That is not the way our system works.

You see, for more dollars to enter the system, the U.S. government has to go into more debt.

The U.S. government does not issue U.S. currency - the Federal Reserve does.

The Federal Reserve is a private bank owned and operated for profit by a very powerful group of elite international bankers.

If you will pull a dollar bill out and take a look at it, you will notice that it says "Federal Reserve Note" at the top.

It belongs to the Federal Reserve.

The U.S. government cannot simply go out and create new money whenever it wants under our current system.

Instead, it must get it from the Federal Reserve.

So, when the U.S. government needs to borrow more money (which happens a lot these days) it goes over to the Federal Reserve and asks them for some more green pieces of paper called Federal Reserve Notes.

The Federal Reserve swaps these green pieces of paper for pink pieces of paper called U.S. Treasury bonds. The Federal Reserve either sells these U.S. Treasury bonds or they keep the bonds for themselves (which happens a lot these days).

So that is how the U.S. government gets more green pieces of paper called "U.S. dollars" to put into circulation. But by doing so, they get themselves into even more debt which they will owe even more interest on.

So every time the U.S. government does this, the national debt gets even bigger and the interest on that debt gets even bigger.

Are you starting to get the picture?

As you read this, the U.S. national debt is approximately 12 trillion dollars, although it is going up so rapidly that it is really hard to pin down an exact figure.

So how much money actually exists in the United States today?

Well, there are several ways to measure this.

The "M0" money supply is the total of all physical bills and currency, plus the money on hand in bank vaults and all of the deposits those banks have at reserve banks. As of mid-2009, the Federal Reserve said that this amount was about 908 billion dollars.

The "M1" money supply includes all of the currency in the "M0" money supply, along with all of the money held in checking accounts and other checkable accounts at banks, as well as all money contained in travelers' checks. According to the Federal Reserve, this totaled approximately 1.7 trillion dollars in December 2009, but not all of this money actually "exists" as we will see in a moment.

The "M2" money supply includes everything in the "M1" money supply plus most other savings accounts, money market accounts, retail money market mutual funds, and small denomination time deposits (certificates of deposit of under $100,000). According to the Federal Reserve, this totaled approximately 8.5 trillion dollars in December 2009, but once again, not all of this money actually "exists" as we will see in a moment.

The "M3" money supply includes everything in the "M2" money supply plus all other CDs (large time deposits and institutional money market mutual fund balances), deposits of eurodollars and repurchase agreements. The Federal Reserve does not keep track of M3 anymore, but according to ShadowStats.com it is currently somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 trillion dollars. But again, not all of this "money" actually "exists" either.

So why doesn't it exist?

It is because our financial system is based on something called fractional reserve banking.

When you go over to your local bank and deposit $100, they do not keep your $100 in the bank. Instead, they keep only a small fraction of your money there at the bank and they lend out the rest to someone else. Then, if that person deposits the money that was just borrowed at the same bank, that bank can loan out most of that money once again. In this way, the amount of "money" quickly gets multiplied. But in reality, only $100 actually exists. The system works because we do not all run down to the bank and demand all of our money at the same time.

According to the New York Federal Reserve Bank, fractional reserve banking can be explained this way....

"If the reserve requirement is 10%, for example, a bank that receives a $100 deposit may lend out $90 of that deposit. If the borrower then writes a check to someone who deposits the $90, the bank receiving that deposit can lend out $81. As the process continues, the banking system can expand the initial deposit of $100 into a maximum of $1,000 of money ($100+$90+81+$72.90+...=$1,000)."

So much of the "money" out there today is basically made up out of thin air.

In fact, most banks have no reserve requirements at all on savings deposits, CDs and certain kinds of money market accounts. Primarily, reserve requirements apply only to "transactions deposits" – essentially checking accounts.

The truth is that banks are freer today to dramatically "multiply" the amounts deposited with them than ever before. But all of this "multiplied" money is only on paper - it doesn't actually exist.

The point is that the broadest measures of the money supply (M2 and M3) vastly overstate how much "real money" actually exists in the system.

So if the U.S. government went out today and demanded every single dollar from all banks, businesses and individuals in the United States it would not be able to collect 14 trillion dollars (M3) or even 8.5 trillion dollars (M2) because those amounts are based on fractional reserve banking.

So the bottom line is this....

#1) If all money owned by all American banks, businesses and individuals was gathered up today and sent to the U.S. government, there would not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

#2) The only way to create more money is to go into even more debt which makes the problem even worse.

You see, this is what the whole Federal Reserve System was designed to do. It was designed to slowly drain the massive wealth of the American people and transfer it to the elite international bankers.

It is a game that is designed so that the U.S. government cannot win. As soon as they create more money by borrowing it, the U.S. government owes more than what was created because of interest.

If you owe more money than ever was created you can never pay it back.

That means perpetual debt for as long as the system exists.

It is a system designed to force the U.S. government into ever-increasing amounts of debt because there is no escape.

We could solve this problem by shutting down the Federal Reserve and restoring the power to issue U.S. currency to the U.S. Congress (which is what the U.S. Constitution calls for). But the politicians in Washington D.C. are not about to do that.

So unless you are willing to fundamentally change the current system, you might as well quit complaining about the U.S. national debt because it is now mathematically impossible to pay it off.

***UPDATE***

It has been suggested that the same dollar can be used to pay off debt over and over - this is theoretically true as long as the dollar remains in the system.

For example, if the U.S. government gives China a dollar to pay off a debt, there is a good chance that the U.S. government will be able to acquire that dollar again and use it to pay off another debt.

However, this is not true when debt is retired with the Federal Reserve. In that case, money is actually removed from the system. In fact, because of the "money multiplier", when debt is retired with the Federal Reserve it can remove ten times that amount of money (and actually more, but let's not get too technical) from the system.

You see, fractional reserve banking works both ways. When $100 is introduced into the system, it can theoretically create $1000 as the example in the article above demonstrates. However, when that $100 is removed, it can have the opposite impact.

And considering the fact that the Federal Reserve "purchased" the vast majority of new U.S. government debt last year, we have got a real mess on our hands.

Even if a way could be figured out how to pay off all the debt we owe to foreign nations (such as China, Japan, etc.) it would still be mathematically impossible to pay off the debt that we owe to the Federal Reserve which is exploding so fast that it is hard to even keep track of.

Of course we could repudiate that debt and shut down the Federal Reserve, but very few in Washington D.C. have any interest in doing that.

It has also been suggested that instead of just using dollars to pay off the U.S. national debt, we could use the assets of the U.S. government to pay it off.

That is rather extreme, but let us consider that for a moment.

That total value of all physical assets in the United States, both publicly and privately owned, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 to 50 trillion dollars. Of course the idea of the U.S. government "owning" every single asset of the American people is repugnant to our entire way of life, but let's assume that for a moment.

According to the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government, which is an official United States government report, the total liabilities of the United States government, including future social security and medicare payments that the U.S. government is already committed to pay out, now exceed 65 TRILLION dollars. This amount is more than the entire GDP of the whole world.

In fact, there are other authors who have written that the actual figure for the future liabilities of the U.S. government should be much higher, but let's be conservative and go with 65 trillion for now.

So, if the U.S. government took control of all physical assets in the United States and sold them off, it could not even make enough money to pay for everything that the U.S. government is already on the hook for.

Ouch.

If you have not read the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government, you really should. Actually the 2009 report should be available very soon if it isn't already. If anyone knows if it is available, please let us know.

The truth is that the U.S. government is in much bigger financial trouble than we have been led to believe.

For example, according to the report (which remember is an official U.S. government report) the real U.S. budget deficit for 2008 was not 455 billion dollars. It was actually 5.1 trillion dollars.

So why the difference?

The CBO's 455 billion figure is based on cash accounting, while the 5.1 trillion figure in the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government is based on GAAP accounting. GAAP accounting is what is used by all the major firms on Wall Street and it is regarded as a much more accurate reflection of financial reality.

So needless to say, the United States is in a financial mess of unprecedented magnitude.

So what should we do?

Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks

2010-02-06T03:27:00.003+09:00

This is scary on sooooo many levels

"The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity."

Washington Post article here

Did I Just hear "Assassinate American Citizens"

2010-02-04T01:11:00.002+09:00

I have never really tried to post to much about Ron Paul because I am not really a
Paulite. I do tend to follow some libertarian philosophy and I do like a lot of Paul's core principals. But I really believe that any form of government just F**KS you out of whatever would normally have otherwise... libertarian or otherwise. The thing is that I believe that Ron Paul's Ideal of government FAR exceeds anything else we have now days.

Defamation

2010-02-03T16:01:00.009+09:00

This is a neat little flick. Well not so little its a full length movie. I watched this with only mild interest in the beginning but as the movie progressed I found a couple of gems in here. What I find to be interesting was the fact that Yoav was trying to be non biased or as much as one can be. He went to the ADL, he went into the black community, he went to the rabbis, talked to scholars with opposing views of the ADL, Israeli high school students, and even to the left wing political party of Israel.

What was the result? I am sure you can guess. It just goes to show that you cannot be critical of Israel even if your an Israeli. I have minor critiques, but nothing I am going to say here only because I think overall its a pretty good observation on the subject.

I will however recommend further reading on the history of Judaism because I find it to be vastly misunderstood if not totally buried. The people who actually do research into this area also get slammed. I guess certain groups really don't want people digging around in their closets...

Anyways the link to the full video is here

I recommend also reading the books

The Ten Tribes of Israel Found by Stephen M Collins which can be found at his website here

And Who is Esau Edom by Charles A Weisman and you can find the book here

2010-01-30T10:33:00.006+09:00

Follow The Money

Have you ever heard that term before? I bet you have. My first big lesson in this was when I fought in Iraq. I was given all kinds of reasons why we went to Iraq, but not the real reason.

One little known fact is that all of the oil producing countries out there (OPEC) do all of there trading in dollars, this is an artificial support for the dollar, as all countries who purchase oil from (OPEC) must transfer there money into dollars and then make the purchase. Yes the U.S. dollar was no longer being backed by gold since Lindon Banes Johnson and there needed to be a new back, oil was it.

Now that in mind, America and some other countries were putting up a trade embargo on Iraq. Mr. Hussein was was in a jam, he has control of 15 percent of the worlds oil supply but he has his hands tied, what does he do? He offers his oil for euros in exchange. Uh-oh this does a couple of things. One, other opec nations are like "Can we do that?!?" You see, they don't like using dollars because we just inflate the hell out our currency and the money we pay them for their oil is worth less and less. And two it opens the door for the use of gold in exchange for oil. You see gold is real money, don't let anyone ever tell you different. So in 2008
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the U.S. "KISS OFF we now accept gold in tender of payment of debt!!!" (OMG) To put this into scope, the VERY FIRST thing the our government after "winning" the war in Iraq was to convert the accounts back to dollars and off of euros hens saving the dollar for awhile.

So I told you all that story so you can follow this story. Not that you couldn't figure out where this was going, but the refined mechanisms of my mind more resembles a battalion of kindergartners storming a candy factory.

In my opinion there is a very real reason why we are being propagandized toward global climate change, and much like the Iraq war are none of the reasons for it are the real reason. My logic is far more provincial... It doesn't follow the money , not the really big money anyway.

All you see are two perspectives and are left to choose one, and if your like me who just wants to be left alone you end up stuck with whatever "side" wins. The "left" wants you to believe that we are killing the earth and we all need to green and taxing carbon emissions will penalize those who are cause the planet damage (this is over simplified but you get the gist) The Right says that there is plenty of oil out there, and you need to let the free market handle it, or it will kill the economy, or china and india don't follow it and we will be put to an unfair disadvantage or its a way for the liberals to regulate you... again oversimplified but you get the gist.

Here is the real matter. The powers that be want us off of oil because they want to choke the arab oil producing nations, because if they all together and all at once started to use gold coin it would kill the dollar and make gold and silver coin a viable currency again thus killing central banks control over currency and their power over the general population. It all comes down to money and power and ultimately control.

Free energy has been out there for damn near a hundred years. Tesla was on the verge of giving the world free power, but stopped by J.P. Morgan and ilk because they couldn't put a meter on it. There have been radical advances in Tesla technology that ANYONE can figure out and build in their garage. I know because I have built them myself and they do work. The information is suppressed for your own good.

This has nothing to do with carbon emissions. One volcanic blast puts more CO2 in the atmosphere than all the man made CO2 ever has, is making now, or probably every will make. As evidenced by the research and data collected at the Pinatubo blast. It all comes back to control.

So people ask me why I am a skeptic, because everything we have ever been taught is a lie. We are hopeless because we will never admit that everything we know is wrong, or that we are slaves, and that is a scary proposition.

Alternative Search Engines

2010-01-29T13:26:00.003+09:00

With Google becoming a more and more ominous threat to privacy (not to mention very subtle but powerful forms of censorship) Firefox has gone out and recommended Bing. Where as Bing comes close to the same functionality of Google with only slightly better privacy policies, I have decided to post some great alternatives that your not going to see publicized. (because Google isn't going to tell us about them and most us are using it)

Ok first up is ixquick check it out.

And then second is cuil, which seems to be getting some bad press but that makes me wonder if its because they threaten to overturn Google's choke hold grip on everything....

They are located here and they have a brief tutorial when you click the button "make the most of Cuil"

I personally use ixquick, but hey I just wanted to let you know there are alternatives

What else is going on in the world we don't know about?

2010-01-21T09:10:00.005+09:00

Check this here

Four people are reported to have died and more than 530,000 affected by the severe winter in Xinjiang, where another cold front is expected to send the temperature plummeting to -42 C in some parts. More than 100,000 houses have been flattened or damaged amid the heaviest snowstorms in a decade, and 15,200 livestock died in the autonomous region. Direct economic losses are estimated at 200 million yuan ($29 million), and the regional government has allocated 15 million yuan ($2.2 million) for disaster relief in the affected areas. Tacheng and Altay areas, which have been reeling under the heaviest snow in 10 years, will face severe blizzards in the next two days, the regional meteorological station warned yesterday. "Another cold front is expected to hit the northern part of Xinjiang as of Sunday (last) night and last for two days, which will cause severe blizzards," Wei Rongqing, deputy director of the regional meteorological station said. "The temperature in Altay might drop to -42 C, which will further disrupt people's lives and create more problems in relief work," he said. In Altay, the local authority has decided to move more than 10,000 livestock from mountain areas that are difficult to reach to other locations where sufficient supplies are stored. Due to the cold front, most parts of the country will see snow, rain and temperature drops by up to 18 degrees Celsius in the next three days, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) forecast over the weekend. Temperatures might drop 8-12 degrees Celsius in Xinjiang, Gansu province, northern parts of Qinghai province and western parts of Inner Mongolia autonomous region; and up to 18 degrees Celsius in certain areas. The cold front will bring rain to Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Guangdong province, the Sichuan basin, northern parts of Guizhou province and southern parts of Yunnan province, according to the forecast.

The illusion of Security

2010-01-19T10:19:00.002+09:00

This is mostly in german, but watch the english speaking guy back peddle. I do travel a lot and honestly I think eventually I will start yachting, not because I am afraid of terrorists blowing up airports but because I hate airport security. I refuse to be rushed and I hate being told what to do. When at airports I tend to feel like I'm cattle, and the methods by which you are screened are tyrannical. And just to make my case check the next

Flash Point

The Daily Show Telling the Truth ?!?

Osama... Obama?

New York town to flip the lever six times for one candidate

Say Goodbye To Your Vitamins and Herbs

Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website

Simple Fix to BP's Problem

Britain bans doctor who linked autism to vaccine

Congress preparing quadruple tax on oil

Chaff anyone?

U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade

LA Times Poll on the Arizona Boycott

Best news I have heard all week

My favorite comic character comes to life

'Smart dust' aims to monitor everything

What do you think this means?

FCC trying to get back authority over the net.

REALLY SCARY ISH!!!!!

History

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

The Sky is Falling.... Yea Sure It Is.

More on Paul

State Funded Militia in Oklahoma To Protect Against The Federal Govt

80% of America does not trust the Government!

Obama Dodd financial bill would further enrich Goldman Sachs

McCHRYSTAL LOST IN AFGHANISTAN

Harding

Freaking Awesome!!! The Darknet Plan

Contents

[edit] The Goal

[edit] The Plan

[edit] Stage 1: The Net

[edit] Stage 2: The Carrier

[edit] The Tools

[edit] to build the net

[edit] to build our wifi

[edit] Visualisation

[edit] Status quo

[edit] Stage 1 visualized

[edit] Stage 2 visualized

[edit] Mindmap

[edit] More Information - see also

Google gives the US Government access to Gmail, says iTnews' editor.

Mexican Government Targets Oklahoma; State Lawmaker Calls for Tough Response

Polish President Dies in an "Accident" This I Think is Why

Missouri House passes sovereignty resolution

Ashtabula County: Judge tells residents to "Arm themselves"

If you are Muslim you can opt out of Obamacare with no penalties

Foreclosure bill would shorten process to 90 days

Death Camps Warned Being Prepared As Millions In US Left Hopeless

IRS Commissioner: Don't Worry, If You Don't Buy Health Insurance You'll Only Lose Your Tax Refund

Here goes the internet.

The biggest hustle in human history

Slaughter of Innocence

US healthcare reform is boon for India outsourcing companies

Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion.

A national ID card in 2010? VERY IMPORTANT!!!

Army suggests brain scan for eligibility challenger

Another one bites the Dust

Obama to spend 10.3 trillion on welfare

False Flag in less than 90 days

Colorado into the Frey

The count is now 38 states who are standing in the way of Obama

The States Rebel

The need for Taxation

Idaho doing the right thing!

Tightening the Noose

Glenn Beck gets it right on this one

Here is a neat little gem.

QUIT GIVING ME STUFF!!!!!!

McCain again showing his true colors...

The Last Brick In The Wall

MOTHER @%#&$? !!!!!!

Girl Cas, Cat Class and Cat Style

Off Topic

More Creepy Than My Last Post

Watch out for your Web Cam

Some more neat stuff

Equal Protection Under The Law?

Why Bitch About the Problem if You Don't Have a Solution?