Answers to a Small Arms Treaty Supporter: Don’t Leave People Defenseless

English: DONSKOI MONASTERY, MOSCOW. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s funeral. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On another forum, there’s a guy who says he’s a veteran, who is arguing in favor of gun control.  (I take such claims at face value absent contrary evidence). This page is for putting up my answers to his comments:

“My personal experience in war situations is that casual arming or civilians can only make the situation worse. They prove no match for trained soldier and it only leads to more humanitarian consequences. That was surely the case in Bosnia, a situation I am familiar with.”

That decision should be left to the Bosnians. Heavy-handed unarmed peacekeeping by the UN and heavily armed (tanks, missiles, you name it) intervention by the US, none of it has succeeded anywhere, at least in recent decades. Honoring the Bosnian demands to be allowed to defend themselves (did the UN/NATO alliance also deny them training in their use?), could it have turned out any worse than the mass “ethnic cleansing” that supposedly happened?

At least the Biafrans were able to punish the other Nigerian tribes severely for their efforts. Hitler’s Brownshirts and Stormtroopers had little to fear from return fire.

“More important is prompt international peace keeping intervention, which the Americans are often not good at. Outside the US you will get few supporters for you approach to this problem.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is one very important voice from “outside the US” who is a strong advocate of this approach. WW2 Holocaust survivors have also lamented their lack of having any way to defend themselves. Armenian survivors of the genocide of circa 1905 point out they gave up their arms only to wish they had not.

One of the reasons that guns are such a strong tradition in the United States was the reaction to the Great British Gun Grab that had its climax in “The Shot Heard Around the World” at Lexington, where the Brits had come on orders of the government to confiscate the colonists’ weapons.

Control by occupying governments afraid of their victims is nothing new. When the Philistines oppressed the Hebrews, during the time they had no standing army at all (or government), they banned swords and swordsmiths altogether for their subjects. Time after time, a “judge” would come along that would organize an army and they would start making weapons to throw off the oppressing government. Civilian farmers all. In Gideon’s case led by a farmer, and in the case of Deborah, led by a woman of faith.

“At this time the UN and others are looking at way of reducing the presence of arms, especially in Africa, as a way of reducing violence.”

The worst thing that can happen to world, since the UN is only going to favor existing governments, which around the world are more oppressive every day. So dictators around the world of course are going along with this. We should feel safer for this? The only nations against it are the ones that the UN has already declared rogue.

Not that they are any fair judge of anything. In 2009 the entire UN unanimously voted to condemn Honduras for its constitutional and legal removal of a rogue president who became a dictator in office, and threatened to make himself president-for-life under cover of fraud. None of that mattered to the rogue dictator-friendly United Nations.

God save us from the United Nations, they are one of the biggest supervisors of violence on the planet. Their intervention and ban on arms shipments to Bosnia while arms poured in to the Serbs from the Russians only prolongued the war.

And now we have the United Nations declaring that Syria should give up the nation to al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood (mother of Hamas) and their allies? You know the guys who are yelling “Die Christian dog!” as they kill members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world? The ones who were documented by a European journalist as using chemical weapons themselves?

Senator McCain and the United Nations are sounding the same war drums here. Look again. What is wrong with that picture.

“I am afraid the American happiness is a warm gun attitude will win few friends in Europe or Australasia. To suggest the ownership would have countered the growth of fascism is frankly absurd.”

Fair-weather friends who have disarmed their own people are no friends to anybody. Crime is up in England and Australia, who are bragging about their carefully filtered statistics while hiding the relevant ones under a desk somewhere.

Honduras recently has been one of the most violent countries in the world, having a big gang problem that started mostly as a deported export of Los Angeles Salvadoran and Honduran gangs. My wife is from Honduras. These gangs don’t need no stinkin’ permits, they make bazooka-style weapons from common materials found in the home. They steal weapons to get them.

When there is a ban on anything, there will be somebody eager to profit off the extra illegality markups.

Heck, the proof that governments are the most dangerous are right here in our own borders. Our own government ran protection for at least one large shipment of thousands of big bad guns sold to the most violent gang in the Americas across the border!

And that same government has punished the whistleblowers and promoted the criminals who did it! Meaning, somebody higher up than the guys that ran the regional office wanted it to happen.

And I’m supposed to feel safe with my neighbors giving up their right to self-defense, so we can expect protection from that same government?

No sir, bad guys having guns is bad. Banning good guys from having them is much worse.

As a footnote, anecdotes sometimes illustrate the principle. My wife saved her own son from a kidnapping by using her own concealed self-protection that she pulled out of her purse to stop it. God help anybody who tells her she should have had that equalizer with her. She is of short stature but what she had made it a more level playing field.

She was also a passenger once on a tour bus that was stopped on the road in Nicaragua where a gang intended to rob everything from everyone. One guy pulled out his self-protection and began making noise with it. The robbers had guys in the bushes. Everybody else started pulling out their own and shooting back. The bus driver just flew on ahead down the road.

Nothing panics a robber like somebody who is able to defend himself against them.

It’s outrageous and insulting to tell people that they have no right to defend themselves equally with an attacker.

But let’s understand the most important principle. Guns have provided a means of self-defense to many people in history, also. The independent militias were important to the American side in the Revolutionary War. The civilian paramilitary volunteers in the Vietnam border with China defended that nation against the bigger colossus to the north and drove them back. An ad-hoc civilian militia composed of WW2 veterans and other civilians together enforced the law and an honest election against a local cartel in a Tennessee county that ran the county like a plantation.

People with government power have no right to enforce anything that they don’t have. So far as I know, it’s been governments that have used weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, and possibly even now biological weapons. They’re working hard on the last one. At least let the good guys across the land that want to, let them be prepared. You never know if the next Fast and Furious scandal will involve smuggling weapons to the worst gangs on this side of the border. Or the next gun control law might be rigged to stop blacks from owning them, like the first gun control laws passed in the States in the past.

With the recent scandals and illegal and unconstitutional seizure of information from AP, even the Obama sycophants at MSNBC are worried. The AP is almost a declared organ of UN and pro-government-control propaganda, and Obama praise.

Related articles

• Yugoslav wars left population heavily armed (stripes.com)
• Rand Paul: UN has secret plot to ‘CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL’ of America’s guns (rawstory.com)
• The New York Times on Venezuela and Honduras: A Case of Journalistic Misconduct (nytexaminer.com)
• Inside the most violent city in the world: (jericho777.wordpress.com)
• El Salvador Gangs Warn Over Truce (4umf.com)
• One Year In Hell…Surviving a Full SHTF Collapse in Bosnia (silverdoctors.com)
• Correction: Honduras-Death Squads story (kansascity.com)
• Correction: Honduras-Death Squads story (seattletimes.com)
• Why There Is No Military Solution to the Syrian Conflict (jadaliyya.com)

 

This Is No Ordinary Scandal – WSJ.com

IRS building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578487460479247792.html

So besides the blatant abuse of the paperwork process to disobey the Supreme Court United Citizens decision by disregarding the First Amendment for political opposition to the “leader” in the White House, we have this:

The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal’s Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who’d donated more than a million dollars to groups supporting Mitt Romney. He found himself last June, for the first time in 30 years, the target of IRS auditors. His wife and his business were also soon audited. Hal Scherz, a Georgia physician, also came to the government’s attention. He told ABC News: “It is odd that nothing changed on my tax return and I was never audited until I publicly criticized ObamaCare.”

Franklin Graham, son of Billy, told Politico he believes his father was targeted. A conservative Catholic academic who has written for these pages faced questions about her meager freelance writing income. Many of these stories will come out, but not as many as there are. People are not only afraid of being audited, they’re afraid of saying they were audited.

All of these IRS actions took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. They constitute the use of governmental power to intrude on the privacy and shackle the political freedom of American citizens. The purpose, obviously, was to overwhelm and intimidate—to kill the opposition, question by question and audit by audit.

It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved.

Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of “frontline people” in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party’s foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting.

Related articles

• WSJ: The IRS Scandal Started At The Top (cornhusker4palin.newsvine.com)
• NO ORDINARY SCANDAL: Join us May 21st at your local IRS office (directorblue.blogspot.com)
• IRS Scandal Widens: Agency Accused of Abusing Audit Power (breitbart.com)
• Peggy Noonan: No ordinary scandal (sago.com)
• Foundry: Frank VanderSloot First To Sound Alarm on ‘IRS Hit List’ (boiseweekly.com)
• The IRS Scandal Started at the Top (punditfromanotherplanet.com)

Found at lewrockwell.com and elsewhere, news and commentary roundup

It should be no secret to the people that read this blog regularly, but http://lewrockwell.com is an almost daily stop for me, with new insights and revelations from behind the scenes about current events, from an independent liberty-minded thinker’s perspective:

I may or may not own a gun, but for those who do, or who are considering:

Mini/Pocket 9mm Pistols for Concealed Carry:
http://lewrockwell.com/rep4/mini-9mm-concealed-carry.html

Real Men Wear Red: Sportsmen Who Choose To Wear the Colour Are More Likely To Be Winners Because They Are ‘Dressing To Kill’:
http://lewrockwell.com/spl5/real-men-wear-red.html

Evidence for Confiscation: 5 Examples That Show the Threat Is Real by S.H. Blannelberry:
http://lewrockwell.com/orig14/blannelberry11.1.html

There was a news conference by the targets of the IRS witch-hunt. Make no mistake that’s what it was. It’s not just the keyword searches for putting the applications behind the rest of them. There were some that were not from any “tea party” or “patriot” names, but “American Grizzlies”? And how about that keyword “constitution”? Are neutral officials –ahem, “neutral”– somehow allergic to the United States Constitution? How about the groups with the name “Christian” in them?

The story of Gary Johnston, a retired police officer from Kingston, Tenn., seemed to typify the abuse suffered by many rank-and-file tea party members at the hands of the IRS.

Johnston told WND he put together a small tea party group in 2009 and had no plans to file for tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) organization. But the IRS told him he had to do it. So, he first filled out a 19 page questionnaire in March of 2010. In August, the IRS sent him another form with 22 more questions, and embedded within those were another 60 questions.

“A lot of the questions struck me as strange,” Johnston said.

“Intrusive, terrible questions. They wanted to know any and every email that’s ever come to us or sent by us, personal or private, that might be construed to be political. They wanted to know everybody that was coming to our meetings, if we charged money, who donated, what the donations were. They wanted to know everything about our personal lives and our families’ personal lives — anyone in our family that might be politically connected.”

What sort of personal information did the IRS want to know?

“They wanted to know who we were affiliated with, what we did, what we aspired to do, what positions we might run for politically. They were asking questions that you could not answer, but could trap you.”

Did they ask you anything about reading material?

“Oh, yes, they asked any and all literature that you’ve ever had disseminated or had sent to you; anything that’s ever been written about you; anything you’ve ever written on a blog or to a newspaper. They asked me for outlines of what I’ve been reading, you could call that a book report. They asked what we were really trying to accomplish. It went on and on and on.”

After 70 days of filling out all sorts of intrusive documents, Johnston finally consulted a CPA and tax attorney. He said the attorney took one look at the material and said, “What did you do to upset the IRS? You’ve made somebody angry. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. 80 percent of this is illegal. They can’t ask you this stuff.”

She advised Johnston not to respond to many of the questions and not provide the IRS with much of the material it had requested. The IRS then sent him a form with another 40 questions, including some of the same questions he had refused to answer earlier.

Then Johnston’s group started getting “a lot of calls from the IRS.”

“These IRS agents who were calling us were apologetic. They were saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. … I’m with you guys, I have to do this. This is part of my job.’”

Johnston said their bosses, at the Cincinnati office, “were telling them they have to do this.”

The witch hunt was executed by the IRS against the targeted groups. Why did they think they could get away with this?

And that’s not all. Look at the way the IRS treated Dr. James Dobson‘s application for Family Talk:

“Ms. Medley did not call back until March 19. Family Talk Action’s attorney asked her when the IRS would issue its determination letter. Ms. Medley responded saying, I don’t think your Form 1024 (application for exemption) will be granted because Family Talk Action is ‘not educational’ because it does not present all views. She continued, saying that Family Talk Action sounded like a ‘partisan right-wing group’ because, according to Ms. Medley, it only presents conservative viewpoints. She then added, ‘you’re political’ because you ‘criticized President Obama, who was a candidate.’” [Ed: So WHAT
if it presented issues from their point of view? They all
do, and the IRS has routinely approved the left-wing
groups over the years with much worse bias!]

The organization said it had submitted sample radio programs after the IRS had demanded them, although none was aired during an election year.

“It was the opinion of Family Talk Action’s legal counsel that these samples were not only 501(c)(4) qualified but 501(c)(3) qualified,” the statement said.

“Family Talk Action’s legal counsel had never heard an IRS agent express biased statements like those he heard during the March 19 call. He also felt that the this agent did not understand the difference between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities,” the report said.

Not educational because it “doesn’t present all views”? Oh yeah? How about all the multitude of 501c4 AND 501(c)(3) entities it routinely approves that only present leftist and anti-Christian views, like Media Matters and others?

Oh, and what did the Big “O” say he’s going to do about it? He’s going to put a stop to this because it’s important that Americans “understand and believe that the IRS” is fair. Oh yeah, except this episode shows it’s NOT fair. How about it’s important to follow the Supreme Law of the Land, the Constitution?

So who is he going to put in jail over this for abuse of power? Anybody?

Look, does the Socialist Workers Party get the third degree grilling, send us all of your emails you ever got or sent? What an uproar that would be right? How about from the unions?

It’s not a “small cadre” of a couple of “rogue agents”. It looks like it was ALL the conservative groups that had any of those “suspicious” keywords in their names!

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/lawmakers-demand-jailtime-for-irs-scandal/

According to Fox News, an internal timeline by the inspector general’s office revealed the IRS began looking at tea party and “patriot” groups as early as 2010, shortly after Obamacare was passed.

However, in 2011 the organizations scrutinized were expanded to include groups focused on government debt and spending, taxes and education on “ways to make America a better place to live” as well as those who criticized “how the country is being run.”

In early 2012, the IRS expanded the list even further to include groups that were educating people on the Constitution and Bill of Rights and involved in limiting/expanding government.

Gardner told WND that among the multiple conservative groups targeted by the IRS was at least one group from Colorado.

The group, which is asking that its name be kept private for now, applied for 501(c)(4) status and had its application illegally released to the public during the application process, which is a clear violation of federal law.

“The information on their application was confidential and the IRS was required by law to treat it as such, yet that information was leaked to ProPublica,” Gardner said. “Who’s to say the IRS didn’t give out confidential donor information either? This confirms people’s worst beliefs about government overbearance.”

They’re demanding health records from medical organizations, too:

Yeah, just apologize and that’s it? We put a muzzle on the voices of tens of thousands of Americans, and tilted the election to an administration that expands the Patriot Act, confiscates two months of emails and reports from a press organization (a leftist one even!) to catch a whistleblower supposedly, tells the man in charge in Tripoli second to the late Ambassador he’d better muzzle himself instead of testify to events, covers up the truth about events that left four people to die in an attack that could have been avoided. And refuses to give up the prerogative (it’s not a “right”) to kill any American the President fingers as a threat. And under whom even the Pentagon is now claiming the power to kill Americans and control them under certain conditions.

And nobody goes to jail? Watergate was a LOT less than all this, and people went to prison. Hello?

And Holder, after treating the Congress with such contempt and stonewalling on Fast and Furious, and to this day refusing to release relevant documents, and even bald-faced punishing the whistleblowers of Fast and Furious, he rebukes Congress for incivility and lack of respect?!
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/hot-tempered-holder-lashes-out-in-defiance/

And yet another one:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/irs-rejected-group-on-behalf-of-planned-parenthood/?cat_orig=politics

(BREITBART) The IRS scandal of targeting tea party or conservative organizations grew deeper Wednesday with the revelation that the agency denied tax-exempt status to a pro-life organization because of its hypothetical opposition of Planned Parenthood.

The Thomas Moore Society, a public interest law firm announced that one of their clients was told that their approval as a non-profit was conditioned on a commitment not to protest outside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.

>>>>

Whattaya know, now they tell us there was a “suicide note” inside that boat in Boston? How convenient. All of a sudden they “found” an admissible “confession”? And how convenient that the “suspect”, umm, “shot himself” in the throat? Now he can’t yell something like “I’m a patsy!” like Lee Harvey Oswald did…

>>>>>

In another story, McClatchy newspapers are quoting ” two anonymous government officials”:

CAIRO — In the month before attackers stormed U.S. facilities in Benghazi and killed four Americans, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens twice turned down offers of security assistance made by the senior U.S. military official in the region in response to concerns that Stevens had raised in a still secret memorandum, two government officials told McClatchy.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#storylink=cpy

What American official in such a land would report in a “still secret memorandum” that he had security concerns, and then turn down military offers of more security? And then go to the city where other states had pulled completely out? Why would any official do that? This thing does NOT pass the “fishy smell” test:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#.UZi_gIJnEZc

There is something else going on there. Presuming, just for the sake of argument, that it’s true, the big question is indeed WHY? The Embassy had just reported that they could NOT defend the compound in Benghazi, and they needed “additional security upgrades”.

Note, this is some anonymous somebody’s recollection of somebody else’s phone call. Stevens can no longer tell his side of that phone call, ey?

The next three paragraphs from the McClatchy report are interesting because they seem to be an example of “Does. Not. Compute.” Or maybe post-facto C. Y. A.:

Why Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation in the first of two attacks that took place late Sept. 11 and early Sept. 12, 2012, would turn down the offers remains unclear. The deteriorating security situation in Benghazi had been the subject of a meeting that embassy officials held Aug. 15, where they concluded they could not defend the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The next day, the embassy drafted a cable outlining the dire circumstances and saying it would spell out what it needed in a separate cable.

“In light of the uncertain security environment, US Mission Benghazi will submit specific requests to US Embassy Tripoli for additional physical security upgrades and staffing needs by separate cover,” said the cable, which was first reported by Fox News.

Army Gen. Carter Ham, then the head of the U.S. Africa Command, did not wait for the separate cable, however. Instead, after reading the Aug. 16 cable, Ham phoned Stevens and asked if the embassy needed a special security team from the U.S. military. Stevens told Ham it did not, the officials said.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#storylink=cpy

But further on, this “report” seems to come back down to Earth:

“That is odd to me because Stevens requested from the State Department additional security four times, and there was an 18-person special forces security team headed by Lt. Col. Wood that Gen. Ham signed off on that the State Department said no to,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who has been among the most vocal critics of the Obama administration on Benghazi. “The records are very clear that people on the ground in Libya made numerous requests for additional security that were either denied or only partially granted.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html#storylink=cpy

Senator Lindsay Graham is not my favorite politician, being an advocate as he is for shredding the US Constitution. But note that the Embassy had made repeated security requests and were denied, not by the military brass, but by the State Department in Washington, D.C.

Maybe this is the military brass doing its own CYA “not my fault” public relations effort, true or not. I can believe it, of course. But there are more questions raised in this McClatchy report than answers.

(1) WHO GAVE THE ORDER to the military security team in Tripoli to stand down instead of moving to help defend the Americans under attack?

(2) WHO in the D.C. State Department hierarchy turned down the request for better security in Libya? How high did that decision go? How high does it usually go?

(3) AT THIS POINT, what difference does it make? (This has been answered but it’s good to keep it in mind).

(4) If the important thing is to make sure it doesn’t happen again, then why is the Administration trying to make sure the people they work for don’t even know what happened?

(5) It the important thing is to track down those responsible for this and administer appropriate measures on them, then why are those responsible –already even publicly identified– publicly walking around as free men, and the State Department knowing where they ar

English: Anti-United States Internal Revenue Service symbol. Commonly used by tax protesters and tax reform advocates in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

?

(6) The acting head of the diplomatic mission in Libya described the situation to the Secretary of State, we now know, finally from his own mouth to Congress. So WHY did Clinton, and Susan Rice (who reports to her), and don’t forget OBAMA himself, repeat so often that this was a spontaneous demonstration and blame a VIDEO?

(7) WHY IS SOMEBODY WHO MADE A VIDEO STILL IN PRISON? DID SOMEBODY SUSPEND THE CONSTITUTION?

Related articles

• IRS Rep Told Dr. James Dobson They Wouldn’t Approve His Application Because He Had Been “Critical Of President” (vineoflife.net)
• BRIDGET JOHNSON: Durbin Asked IRS’ Shulman to Probe ‘Several’ Conservative 501(c)(4) Groups i… (americanbulwark.com)
• IRS Rep Told Dr. James Dobson His Application Was Rejected Because He Had Been ‘Critical Of The President’ (breitbart.com)
• You Criticized Obama: Famed Christian Radio Host Alleges Outrageous IRS Intimidation (theblaze.com)
• Video: IRS Rep Told Dr. James Dobson They Weren’t Going To Approve His Group’s 501 (c)(4) Application Because He Had Been “Critical Of The President” (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
• MARK HEMINGWAY: Ideological Revenue Service. Some 471 conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax-… (pjmedia.com)
• GOP rockstars rip into IRS (wnd.com)
• Family Talk Radio Claims It Was Targeted By The IRS (allaccess.com)

Assault weapons are good for assaults, and for stopping them too

Gun Control (Photo credit: D’oh Boy (Mark Holloway))

 

A book only does any good if somebody’s reading it. An assault weapon only does bad if somebody uses it for bad, and it does real, real, good when you’re using it to stop bad people. Like a runaway scalawag government. The *natural right* to self-defense acknowledged (by mouth at least) by the most fanatical gun ban control freak, is one that’s only good if you can actually defend yourself against anybody who would do you harm.

 

You know, like fake a Gulf of Tonkin incident, run protection for a sale of thousands of guns to the most violent Mexican Mafia in the world, or fake a nuclear weapons program in Iraq for an excuse for a war, or massacre a community of families in a bath of fire in Texas, or take all the women and children captive from a peaceful West Texas community and try to get the kids to say lies about their parents, and refuse to let them talk to each other (false imprisonment is a crime and should be prosecuted, and the lying libel that “justified” the warrant too).

One commenter pointed out that the National Guard that they say was meant to benefit uses much more powerful weapons that the ones they want to ban from people for their own protection. We will protect you from yourself by taking away what you need to do defend yourself from us…

There is nothing new under the sun… When the pagan nations surrounding Israel of old conquered them, they made it illegal for them to make swords, the most advanced weapons technology of the day…

They that live by the sword, though, don’t want to face people who have them. That’s why they that live by the sword shall die by the sword. Blessed are the peacemakers..

 

 

Related articles

• 10 Nefarious Conspiracies Proven True (listverse.com)
• We’ve Been Had……AGAIN! Monsanto Protection Act is now a LAW (federaljack.com)
• A two-year independent commission has concluded that, yes, people were tortured by the US government in the years following 9/11, and that “top officials” are responsible [Obvious] (fark.com)
• Delicious BBQ Recipes: Texas-style Spare Ribs (barbecue.answers.com)
• What is a false flag? (syesworldview.wordpress.com)
• 3. Eavesdropping (donjuanlatigazodecordero.wordpress.com)

 

Who It was Dan Rather Wanted to “Cut His Heart Out and Throw His Liver to the Dogs”

That’s what Dan Rather wanted to do to Bush:
http://www.mrctv.org/node/121124

But his biggest insults were to the intelligence of Americans.

For my positions, I always say if it’s the truth, that’s enough, no embellishment needed…

Remember, this is the guy at the center of Rathergate, caught passing a fraudulent document to his broadcast as “proof” of something. The font and the source proved his undoing…

Falsehoods and cover stories are getting harder to make stick.. The Internet is starting to expose more and more shady and corrupt dealings..

Just How Fascist Is the US?

Big Three at the Potsdam Conference in Germany: Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Harry S. Truman and Generalissimo Josef Stalin, seated in garden. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jack D. Douglas penned an interesting article listing 10 core factors of fascism. You might call them “markers”.

Just How Fascist Is the US?:
http://lewrockwell.com/douglas/douglas77.1.html

The first three:

1. A hardcore, totalitarian party masquerading as the people’s party, but secretly working totally with the rich and powerful corporations, uniting them under the party. [Fascism, unlike
communism and other forms of socialism and so on, is above all
a corporatist form of totalitarianism.]

2. Stroking mass vanity with big lies – “Germany over all,” “America is the greatest nation in the world.” And mass greed and lust for power with utopian promises of free money and endless prosperity and great conquests over nature and nations

3. Infiltration secretly by the party of all major institutions at the top by secret take-overs, threats, bribes, co-option, etc.

I did have something to add to his number 10:

10. Foreigners, racial or religious or party groups or others used as “evil and secret witches” to stoke terror and blood lust for wars, used as threats and as conquests to fuel vanity and hubris. [Germany and the US. Used the "communists" as
witches to inspire terror and hate and blood lust in their
early rise to power, then used religious-race groups, foreign
enemies, drug fiends destroying the nation, etc.]

Just a comment about #10. You mentioned the anti-communist bugaboo in their propaganda set. But today, the bugaboo has been transformed magically, through Groupthink, into a threat by capitalism, aka “corporations”, to pollute the air again, cook the earth into cinders, rob everything you have by selling you stuff. That way corporations are subsumed into the corporate-government-media complex and bullied into staying on the plantation.

The other big “threat” they use to scare the apathetic and indifferent public into obedience is Christianity. The state rules over religions. They want to make the world safe for the elimination of religions, because religious individuals are among the strongest resisters to blind total obedience. Whatever else you think of religious faith.

But note the subtle difference in the treatment of the three major monotheistic faiths. It seems like official policy out of D.C. treats Christians as the threat but Jews and Muslims are given a pass. Oh yes, and suppression of Christian faith. This was major policy in both Hitler’s Germany and in Stalin’s Russia, was to pick fights they could win of the state over Christianity. Teutonic paganism trumped up in Germany, atheism in Russia (with subtle mixes in their media of pro-communist spirituality, manifest in some of their movies that I watched during the Cold War era).

Note that the example of China’s “stepwise” introduction of limited capitalistic structures shows us that there is really no difference at all in essence between government-enforced “socialism” and “communism”, as we know them today. Both are all about enforcing as much control and conformity as possible on the populace, whether the nominal title of ownership says “the state” or not.

Related articles

• 10 Indicators of Fascism (lewrockwell.com)
• Are Corporations Fascist by Nature? (sago.com)
• Patterns matter, symbols don’t (piikz.com)

Boston area “shelter in place’ order, Dunkin Donuts exception

Cops in Boston told Dunkin Donuts: There won’t be any shooting (logo, Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some people are bent out of shape over the accolades GW Bush is getting now that he’s gone. Some are bonkers at the news that he was a lot smarter than most of his critics. Sun Tzu indeed. Feigning slowness of mind.

GW took the last barrier that slowed the exponential growth in Medicare cost. Making unlimited pharmaceuticals available on demand to seniors removed the barrier on seniors providing their own money for it, and instead taking it from the rest of us. Santorum the “conservative” justified his vote in favor by saying he is a “team player”, showing he is NOT on our side, with the people he helped rule.

GW insisted on war based on circle-jerk intelligence sources where the powers that be hide behind “it’s a secret” to tell us why they know this or that. For example, MI-6 and the CIA (or their bosses) made an agreement for Echelon. You spy on ours, we spy on ours, and we tell each other everything.

But don’t worry, we won’t use it on good guys, we won’t use it on you, just “Trust us”.

GW signed into law the worst rights violations up to the day of his time with the Patriot Act. Self-written warrants, leapfrog linked warrantless searches, and worse. I told you guys at the time not to trust this subterfuge of your rights because it will be used against you, just imagine a Hillary using it. Oh, so now Obama simply expanded what GW did. Lefties are silent because he’s “one of them”, as if. But they will be among the first to go down.

That’s right, Aaron Swartz, who was the guy that started the roar that stopped SOPA and PIPA, thank God, but he was a “progressive”. The Justice Department hounded and harassed him into suicide. Presumably it’s suicide, could be, because as far back as the Clintons, Janet Renal was already implementing military tactics into her purview (psy-ops included). Aaron’s Dad said he was sure it was suicide, okay.

But now the House of Representatives has passed CISPA, a bill that’s a lot like the two evil twins of before, with an overwhelming majority.

And get this phenomenal development: The entire town of Watertown, Mass, in the Boston area, was put under martial law under the euphemism of “shelter in place”, with strict curfew for SIXTEEN HOURS. Anybody outside their homes was definitely harassed (there is video) and punished. For 16 hours they searched for the fugitive.

But almost at the instant they lifted their “shelter in place” orders, a PRIVATE CITIZEN was finally able to do what the ENTIRE BOSTON MILITARIZED POLICE FORCE COULD NOT do: find the bad guy. Almost at once.

Feinstein, when she was asked whether she thought somebody should be able to shoot him if he broke into their home, she said she’d rather trust the massive Boston police presence and surveillance than an “assault weapon”.

Oh, yeah, the martial law “shelter in place” order? The police apparently ordered Dunkin’ Donuts to stay open. One cop told them not to worry, “Nobody’s going to get shot”.

Feel safer now?

Related articles

• Police allow Dunkin’ Donuts stores to remain open despite Boston lockdown (metro.co.uk)
• Cops Asked Dunkin’ Donuts to Stay Open (drudge.com)
• More changes come to mobile payments industry (lexingtonlaw.com)
• Despite Ordering Shutdown, Dunkin’ Donuts Stayed Open “At Cops’ Request” (informationliberation.com)

Homeschool parents have 1 shot to see son again

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/homeschool-parents-have-1-shot-to-see-son-again/?cat_orig=education

This family needs international support to keep their son.

The Swedish authorities have been brutal against the rights of the family to keep their child, based only on their home-schooling decision, despite testimony from numerous friends and neighbors they are a good family and the decision of a lower court in the family’s favor.

The child was taken from them even as they boarded an aircraft to go to the mother’s home country of India. Their Social Services, the agency that was portrayed as criminally negligent in the novel by Stieg Larsson, in his so-called “Millennium Trilogy“, the most famous being “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo“.

They are certainly living down to the horrendous performance of the treatment of the girl in those novels.

Of course Stieg Larsson was also wrong, wrong, WRONG, in his perverted portrayal of Nazil history. The Nazis, especially the Hitler kind, despised Christianity and hated the Bible. His fictitious evil socialist (“national socialist”) based crimes on verses.

Of course the crimes they committed were worse than the perversions portrayed, weren’t they, and he did not bring in the question of whether these people actually did it.

 

Related articles

• What You Need to Know about Homeschooling (education.com)
• Think Homeschooler’s are immune from the reach of Common Core? Think again! (stopcommoncorewa.wordpress.com)
• Homeschool Homeroom Open House at the Chesapeake Arts Center! (chesapeakeartscenternews.wordpress.com)
• A Project to Help Homeschooling Humanists (patheos.com)
• Special Situations in Homeschooling Your Child (education.com)
• Homeschooling: The Future of Liberty (athomesense.com)
• What is the hardest part about homeschooling? (runningwithflashcards.wordpress.com)
• Do Parents Have a Right to Homeschool? (education.com)
• Homeschooling (ekanovitasari123.wordpress.com)
• First Year Homeschooling 5: Helpful Rescources (amongmanyblessings.com)

Who said people don’t need protection from their government?

English: Smoke from second floor bedroom increases and spreads across back of building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/no-confidence-unofficial-account-waco-incident

http://www.policemisconduct.net/the-waco-incident-20-years-later/

David Koresh said he was NOT God, he was NOT Jesus Christ, and my Dad heard a lying edited clip more heinous than the one NBC did on Zimmerman that he was God. I heard the context: “They say I’m God, but I’m not“.

They denied starting fire, but then NBC a year later did a documentary showing the fire belching from the tanks.

Reno said they did it for the children, but they already had the infrared “see-through-walls” technology so that they very much sent the tanks at the rooms where they had to know the kids were housed.

The local sheriff had done an arms raid three times and declared them clean. After the raid, he said that the feds would now have to burn the community down to the ground to cover the evidence, and called them names like “idiots”.

They rolled the tanks over and over again where they had seen the families bury the ones that the ATF had killed.

At one point the FBI negotiator asked them if they had any fire extinguishers in the building, and the response came back there was just one. (Why would they ask that?)

The ones inside asked for someone like from the press to come between the siege commandos and the ones inside to negotiate.

When the grandmother came to try to see Koresh with a lawyer, one of the agents said “I hope she told him goodbye”.

The lawyer that went in and out of the camp reported that Koresh had said that the residents were relieved that they would not have to die and that the situation would be resolved.

The negotiators reached an agreement with Korresh that held promise that they would come out on April 19, and they received proof of good faith of the agreement on the day before from inside. The raid was launched on April 19.

CS CHEMICAL WARFARE GAS

This is classified as a chemical warfare in treaties, banned in war. It’s a powder and they mixed it into an aerosol and it’s volatile, very flammable. Special forces used it in Vietnam to incapacitate Vietcong in their tunnels, knock them out.

http://www.policemisconduct.net/the-waco-incident-20-years-later/

Since this web site is all about police misconduct, we cannot let the twentieth anniversary of the Waco incident pass without comment.

April 19, 1993 marks the worst police action in modern American history. Here are the main things to know:

• 76 people, including 27 children, died that day. That loss of life is a sufficient explanation as to why this incident is important and worth remembering.
• The federal police operation did not involve a handful of “rogue” agents. The incident is disturbing because it supposedly involved the best units of the ATF and the FBI. And much of the decision-making was done by the top people at headquarters facilities in Washington, DC.
• Make no mistake, crimes were committed by federal agents at Waco. And those crimes were covered-up.
• If the feds can successfully cover-up the worst police action in modern American history–an event that was highly publicized and that eventually brought extensive congressional hearings and the appointment of a special prosecutor– it is frightening to consider what police agencies would be able to get away in instances where there is no media scrutiny or legislative oversight.

For those interested in the details, read this, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1997). For today, let me just highlight some facts for all the people who do not have the time or inclination to study the details.

• When the Branch Davidian residence burned to the ground and it became apparent that the FBI tank assault on April 19 backfired–resulting in almost everyone losing their lives, Attorney General Janet Reno told the media that the reason she ordered the assault was because “babies were being beaten” – so the feds had no choice–they just had to move in. About a week later, Reno testified before Congress. Under oath, she admitted she had no evidence that babies were being beaten! What!?
• The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team kept saying they were there to save lives and that they were especially concerned about the safety of the children in the residence. But their tanks drove into the side of buildings even as the agents admitted they did not know the whereabouts of the children.
• Some of the Branch Davidians survived the inferno of April 19. They were arrested and charged with “murdering ATF agents.” In a stinging rebuke to the federal prosectors, the jury acquitted the Davidians of those very serious charges.
• One of the primary reasons the cover-up was successful was that government officials kept deflecting attention away from their actions to the Branch Davidian leader, David Koresh. And, later, the feds would deflect attention by pointing out the crimes of the Oklahoma City bombers. The feds seemed to taunt everyone with the question, “Who are you going to side with? Koresh? McVeigh and Nicols?” That was always a false choice. One can, for example, condemn excessive force against a shoplifter without “siding with” shoplifting.
• There are, to be sure, some wild conspiracy theories out there about the feds and Waco. But the existence of a conspiracy theorist(s) does not make all government conduct lawful and ethical, at least in logic.

What’s the takeaway from all this? First, recognize that this awful incident really did happen. Crimes were committed and then the government tried to deceive everyone about what actually happened there. Second, when it comes to government power, especially police power and the use of deadly force, be impartial, ask questions, and follow the evidence. We must remember that, in a free society, police agents may not use the “color of their office” to commit crimes.

Update: Podcast interview here.

Related articles

• 10 Things You May Not Know About Waco (pbs.org)
• Photos: ATF Raided Koresh’s Davidians 20 Years Ago (abcnews.go.com)
• February 28 Marks The 20th Anniversary Of The Waco Siege (youviewed.com)
• The Branch Davidian seige, 20 years later (mysanantonio.com)
• Using Military Weapons on Americans: 20th Anniversary of Federal Attack at Waco (antiwar.com)
• Rand Paul’s question about military drones and the limits of executive power recall the Branch Davidian siege of 20 years ago (thescoopblog.dallasnews.com)
• 20 Years Ago Today: Operation Showtime (independent.org)
• ATF honors 4 agents killed in botched 1993 raid (kansascity.com)
• ATF honors 4 agents killed in botched 1993 raid (seattletimes.com)

A little here, a little there

Okay, maybe the Boston thing was not a setup, but the authorities seem always at the ready, so as to avoid “letting a good crisis go to waste”. Maybe that’s why they have so many crises lately. Sequester was the end of the world, and then there was the debt ceiling on its way, and the Republicans in the House didn’t even pretend to try to block it this time.

The American people changed the Congress in 2010 to stop the mad power monster. Four of them caved, but the one key guy that caved, whose name is an opposite of “east”, got no help but got the exit. Apparently by fraud it seems, unless it’s a coincidence that in the last few minutes before the counting closed, the count flipped by 4,000 votes over a few minutes.

Indoctrination Centers: Teacher has 4th Grade Students write: “I am willing to give up some of my Constitutional Rights” (to be safe):
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/fourth-grade-shock-i-am-willing-to-give-up-some-of-my-constitutional-rights-in-order-to-be-safe-or-more-secure_04122013

Beware, be prepared to adjust the what they are already calling “the new reality”. Because they don’t plan to let this incident go to waste for increasing surveillance and police powers.

And most important, to get Americans used to more hassle. The entire city of Boston was locked down for awhile. The entire town of Watertown in the Boston area was in lock down and people ordered to stay inside. The equivalent to a curfew.

Notably missing in coverage at Fox News in the aftermath of the events in Boston, is Judge Andrew Napolitano’s influence toward sanity, a counterweight to the disgusting comments oozing out of Krauthammer’s mouth and the rest of the talking heads saying they should deny the guy his natural rights, the ones recognized by the US Constitution.

Here is a prescient warning from James Madison:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

x