Americans seem to be mesmerized or intimidated. The banker/gov theft goes on with barely a ripple.
In London some are trying to stand up and make their voices heard during the G20 summit, so the government and media step up a psyops operation of fear and try to discourage those who have only good intentions.
A Metropolitan police officer stands guard at the area where a suspect package was found in front of the The Bank of England in London, England, 31 March 2009. The City, London’s financial district, is undergoing heavy police scrutiny as it braces for protests before and during Thursday’s G20 summit. more photos
LONDON – Thousands of extra police are patrolling London’s streets ahead of tonight’s expected start of G20 summit protests amid fears that terrorists could capitalise on the presence of tens of thousands of unruly protesters to launch an attack.
The convergence of the two threats comes as Britain is already on “severe” alert, meaning security officials believe an attack is highly likely. more
Highly likely?
Protest should be the backbone of taking back control of our lives and our country.
The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents — because they have a tame child-creature in their house.
The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they’re property.
Children are naïve — they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble.
It pays to make the U.S. school system a crock of shit because the dumber the people are that come out, the easier it is to draft them, make them into docile consumers, or, you know, mongo employees. There are plenty of yuppies out there with absolutely nothing upstairs. Graduate airheads with PhDs and everything but they don’t know anything.
Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT!
We’re involved in sort of a low key war against apathy. Most of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might just for a second question enough of their environment to do something about it. As long as they don’t feel their environment, they don’t worry about it — they’re not gonna do anything to change it. Something’s gotta be done before America scarfs up the world and shits on it.
We have recently heard many shocking stories of brutal killings and ruthless violence related to drug cartels warring with Mexican and US officials. It is approaching the fever pitch of a full blown crisis. Unfortunately, the administration is not likely to waste this opportunity to further expand government. Hopefully, we can take a deep breath and look at history for the optimal way to deal with this dangerous situation, which is not unprecedented.
Alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s brought similar violence, gangs, lawlessness, corruption and brutality. The reason for the violence was not that making and selling alcohol was inherently dangerous. The violence came about because of the creation of a brutal black market which also drove profits through the roof. These profits enabled criminals like Al Capone to become incredibly wealthy, and militantly defensive of that wealth. Al Capone saw the repeal of Prohibition as a great threat, and indeed smuggling operations and gangland violence fell apart after repeal. Today, picking up a bottle of wine for dinner is a relatively benign transaction, and beer trucks travel openly and peacefully along their distribution routes.
Similarly today, the best way to fight violent drug cartels would be to pull the rug out from under their profits by bringing these transactions out into the sunlight. People who, unwisely, buy drugs would hardly opt for the back alley criminal dealer as a source, if a coffeehouse-style dispensary was an option. Moreover, a law-abiding dispensary is likely to check ID’s and refuse sale to minors, as bars and ABC stores tend to do very diligently. Think of all the time and resources law enforcement could save if they could instead focus on violent crimes, instead of this impossible nanny-state mandate of saving people from themselves!
If these reasons don’t convince the drug warriors, I would urge them to go back to the Constitution and consider where there is any authority to prohibit private personal choices like this. All of our freedoms – the freedom of religion and assembly, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the right to be free from unnecessary government searches and seizures – stem from the precept that you own yourself and are responsible for your own choices. Prohibition laws negate self-ownership and are an absolute affront to the principles of freedom. I disagree vehemently with the recreational use of drugs, but at the same time, if people are only free to make good decisions, they are not truly free. In any case, states should decide for themselves how to handle these issues and the federal government should respect their choices.
My great concern is that instead of dealing deliberatively with the actual problems, Congress will be pressed again to act quickly without much thought or debate. I can’t think of a single problem we haven’t made worse that way. The panic generated by the looming crisis in Mexico should not be redirected into curtailing more rights, especially our second amendment rights, as seems to be in the works. Certainly, more gun laws in response to this violence will only serve to disarm lawful citizens. This is something to watch out for and stand up against. We have escalated the drug war enough to see it only escalates the violence and profits associated with drugs. It is time to try freedom instead.
They mention Hillary Clinton’s well-publicized statements:
At the same time, American drug users are fueling demand for the drugs, and American guns are supplying the firepower wielded with such ferocity by Mexico’s cartels — a reality acknowledged by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on her trip to Mexico last week.
Calderon has also complained about the American guns, and a lot of people (including politicians) have been talking about the need to stop the smuggling of guns across the Mexican border – guns easily bought at gun shows and retail stores in the United States.
This has led to more calls to militarize the border and stop smuggling both ways (people who say we can just stop smuggling by doing a better job of border control don’t quite understand the amount of legal traffic and trade across that border. Truly effective interdiction efforts would hurt the economy of both countries.)
And yet, let’s take a closer look at those guns…
On night patrol in Reynosa in November, soldiers came upon some suspicious men, who led them to a house that was packed with armaments for the drug cartels — 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of dynamite. […]
The war analogy is not a stretch for parts of Mexico. Soldiers, more than 40,000 of them, are confronting heavily armed paramilitary groups on city streets. The military-grade weapons being used, antitank rockets and armor-piercing munitions, for example, are the same ones found on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Are these being bought at gun shows in the U.S.? Unlikely.
Anybody who has followed the drug war in Mexico knows that there is another factor that is heavily involved here…
The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends to defeat them, and they spend their wealth to bolster their ranks with an untold number of politicians, judges, prison guards and police officers — so many police officers, in fact, that entire forces in cities across Mexico have been disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.
If you can own politicians and police forces, do you really need to smuggle individual handguns in from another country?
The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.
But in reality, while the main weapons are getting to the cartels from the U.S., they’re not being smuggled into Mexico, and so no interdiction efforts will help.
The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons –are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.
That’s right, the ultimate source of the guns used by the cartels in Mexico? The U.S. government.
Hey, why should we be surprised? After all, one of the most dangerous groups in Mexico — the mercenary army for Mexico’s Gulf Cartel — is Los Zetas, which we helped train at Fort Benning in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, and counter-surveillance techniques. So why shouldn’t we be supplying them the weapons as well?
Conroy follows the trail of the shipments of legal guns to Mexico, noting that while these weapons could be traced…
But that assumes the Mexican government, and our own government, really want to trace those weapons. A November 2008 report in the San Antonio Express News, which includes details of the major weapons seizure in Reynosa, Mexico, that same month involving the Zetas, reveals the following:
Another example of coordination problems occurred this month. Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country’s single largest stash of cartel weapons — nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.
But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.
[…] A former DEA agent, who also asked not to be named, says the shipment of military-grade weapons to the Mexican government under the DCS program, given the extent of corruption within that government, is essentially like “shipping weapons to a crime syndicate.”
Conroy also notes that the State Department’s Blue Lantern program, which monitors the end-use of commercially exported defense articles had 634 cases in FY’ 2007, of which 143 were deemed “unfavorable.”
So we’re fighting an escalating drug war where both sides are funded and supplied by… us.
Over and over again in the drug war, we find the same kind of thing. The more we fight the drug war, the more damage we cause — more corruption, more violence, more criminal activity.
Excerpt from a 1980 interview with Professor Antony C. Sutton, highlighting the capitalist-communist connection.
From Sutton’s book ‘Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution’ (1974):
While monopoly control of industries was once the objective of J.P. Morgan and J.D. Rockefeller, by the late nineteenth century the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood that the most efficient way to gain an unchallenged monopoly was to “go political” and make society go to work for the monopolists — under the name of the public good and the public interest. This strategy was detailed in 1906 by Frederick C. Howe in his Confessions of a Monopolist. [1] Howe, by the way, is also a figure in the story of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Therefore, an alternative conceptual packaging of political ideas and politico-economic systems would be that of ranking the degree of individual freedom versus the degree of centralized political control. Under such an ordering the corporate welfare state and socialism are at the same end of the spectrum. Hence we see that attempts at monopoly control of society can have different labels while owning common features.
Consequently, one barrier to mature understanding of recent history is the notion that all capitalists are the bitter and unswerving enemies of all Marxists and socialists. This erroneous idea originated with Karl Marx and was undoubtedly useful to his purposes. In fact, the idea is nonsense. There has been a continuing, albeit concealed, alliance between international political capitalists and international revolutionary socialists — to their mutual benefit. This alliance has gone unobserved largely because historians — with a few notable exceptions — have an unconscious Marxian bias and are thus locked into the impossibility of any such alliance existing. The open-minded reader should bear two clues in mind: monopoly capitalists are the bitter enemies of laissez-faire entrepreneurs; and, given the weaknesses of socialist central planning, the totalitarian socialist state is a perfect captive market for monopoly capitalists, if an alliance can be made with the socialist powerbrokers. Suppose — and it is only hypothesis at this point — that American monopoly capitalists were able to reduce a planned socialist Russia to the status of a captive technical colony? Would not this be the logical twentieth-century internationalist extension of the Morgan railroad monopolies and the Rockefeller petroleum trust of the late nineteenth century?
Consensus history teaches that capitalism and communism are at opposite ends of the political-economic spectrum, and that communism is the bitter enemy of capitalism. In some ways this may be true. But those at the top of the global banking system — who are often labeled “greedy capitalists” — are not by any means classical, free-market capitalists. They are monopoly capitalists who are after complete control. They exercise their control over the people by their control over the money supply. Perhaps this can all be best summed up by one of the conspirators themselves; for instance, John D. Rockefeller, who once stated “competition is a sin.”
Communism IS monopoly capitalism. Lenin once stated that “communism is socialism in a hurry.” Communism is often brought about through violent and bloody revolution, whereas socialism often takes a more incremental and stealthy approach. However, the end game is still the same. For the past many decades, the countries of the West have been gradually moving in the direction of socialism, as people are losing more and more of their freedoms while government becomes bigger and ever more encroaching upon people’s rights, often under the pretense of solving the problems the system itself creates (poverty, crime, terrorism) to gain more control.
In order to have monopoly control over the people, you must first gain monopoly control over government through the issuance of credit (debt creation). This is what the international bankers have done.
This video takes a brief look at the role that the Anglo-American financiers played in fomenting the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, marking the rise of communism in Russia, and a dialectical antithesis to capitalism that would play out on a global scale, moving us ever closer to the “third way” synthesis of a one world government, currency and military. by Matthew D. Jarvie
By Anshel Pfeffer and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and Reuters
Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit on Monday instructed the Military Police Investigation unit to close the inquiry into soldiers’ accounts of alleged misconduct and serious violations of the army’s rules of engagement during Operation Cast Lead.
He said it was unfortunate that the soldiers, who discussed their Gaza experiences in private on Feb. 13 at a military academy session which was later leaked verbatim to the media, had been careless about accuracy.
“It will be difficult to evaluate the damage done to the image and morals [of the armed forces] in Israel and the world”, his statement said.
In a press release issued Monday the army said that the preliminary Military Police investigation into the testimonies revealed that they “were based on hearsay and not first-hand experience.”
The Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights and others issued a statement Monday saying “the speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that [it] was merely the army’s attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity…” more
Rightfully so, trust in world leaders and globalist bankers is virtually non-existent among the working class. Although their concerns are all the political map, the Brits show a little spunk in the outcry against the manufactured economic crisis and the ‘leaders’ who are willing participants in crimes against humanity.
It’s unlikely any relief for the people will come from this summit. It’s likely that the secret sessions will move us closer to a one world currency and further the chasm between the rich and the poor.
To protect the ‘dignitaries’ from harm, Scotland Yard is coordinating the most expensive police operation in British history. To enhance the world perception that anti-globalists are violent anarchists, agent provocateurs may be in place to make sure that conflict occurs in the streets of London.
The City of London must be protected and some ‘tough’ bankers say to bring it on.
March 30 (Bloomberg) — Graham Williams, an insurance company director, has a warning for protesters planning to bring London’s financial district to a standstill this week: “We’re not all pansies.”
As officials in the City of London advise financial workers to dress down and avoid confrontation with demonstrators from groups such as the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination and Anarchist Federation, some bankers and brokers are pledging to keep their suits crisply pressed and ties firmly knotted.
“Most us have played rugby or boxed,” said Williams, 66. “If any of those guys do get violent against us individually because we’re wearing a suit, we will take action.”
Protesters plan to target London bankers for their role in the financial meltdown as G-20 leaders gather in the city to discuss their response. Police estimate 1,500 campaigners will try to block roads and prevent people from getting to work in central London, home to the London Stock Exchange, Bank of England and the European headquarters of JPMorgan Chase & Co., on April 1, which demonstrators have dubbed Financial Fools Day.
“What we’re seeing with these groups is certainly an intention to cause us problems or to cause the city’s institutions problems,” Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Metropolitan Police said in a written statement.
The London Chamber of Commerce is advising employees of financial firms to stagger their arrivals, cancel meetings and shed their suits to lessen the impact of the protests. About 300,000 people work in the City, mostly in financial services, according to the City of London police.
Already some most likely ‘patsies’ have been arrested to show that the police are on top of the situation.
Police have discovered “suspicious devices” along with imitation firearms and a number of other weapons.
Three men aged 25, 19, and 16 and two women aged 20, who all live in Plymouth or the surrounding area, were arrested between Friday and Sunday, police said.
“As the search progressed officers found a number of weapons and suspected imitation weapons as well material relating to political ideology,” a spokesman said.
The spokesman said there was no suggestion of Islamic extremists being involved and added: “Those arrested are not believed, at this stage, to be part of a national or larger operation.”
A police source said: “At this time this enquiry would appear to be regarding political activity involving British nationals.”
Obama has his economic agenda and also will use this trip to promote the ever continuing fraudulent wars.
Obama has publicly urged other nations to embrace bigger stimulus plans. On this page last week, for example, he wrote that “the leaders of the G-20 have a responsibility to take bold, comprehensive and coordinated action,” beginning with “swift action to stimulate growth.
“Already, some of the money from his economic recovery program is being used to purchase foreign goods and supply credit to foreign firms. (That’s how globalization works.)
And, outside the G-20, Obama will be asking his new partners for big increases in economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Last but not least. Surely the ‘intelligence’ agencies would not resort to a false flag attack during the G20 summit as they did during the G8 summit on 7/7/05, the infamous London bombings. That would be too obvious. But strange things happen when some are trying to control the world. Lives are the least of their concern.
Bloggers have a limited audience. Much of the time it’s the same old thing, preaching to the choir.
An option to getting an issue that is mostly ignored by the main stream press and that most people are unaware of is to submit a letter to the editor to a local newspaper or website.
Compromise may be necessary, tone the wording down a bit from the usual rant and you just may have a shot at getting it in print.
Fortunately, a local news website with a fairly large readership, the Cannon Wire, is open to publishing letters that the local newspaper would not touch. I thank them for their support of free speech.
Six people were killed and at least three others were injured Sunday, March 29, 2009, when a man walked into the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center in Carthage, NC and started shooting.
A news conference is scheduled for 5 p.m. (Watch it live on WRAL.com.)
Mass killings seem to be occurring at an increased frequency. Psychopaths, criminals, Manchurian Candidates and big pharma drug zombies seem to be everywhere. The Obama, Pelosi, Holder and Emanuel goosestepping followers will once again use this latest shooting by making the pitch for taking our guns. I would bet this nursing home was a ‘gun free zone.’
The Brady Bunch will spring into action on this one. They could not have scripted a better storyline.
Their goal is to take one step at a time. First ban the semi-automatic rifles and then………..
I fell very sorry for the victims and their families. I know that it could next be my family, friends or me that could fall by the hand of a crazed gunman.
I’m more worried about a future in which unarmed American citizens are prey for not only criminals but also defenseless against a government that will go to any lengths to make sure we are the slaves they intend for us to be.insert_video_player_4838236(width,height);
“Not everyone has access to or the ability to navigate the ‘tubes.’ From William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, the publishers of these fine newspaper institutions have ensured that the government’s message has gotten directly into the hands of the American people.They are too big to fail.“
anonymous U.S. Senator
NEWS FLASH!! As the United States of Socialist America continues its Bizarro World freefall towards Great Depression II, we now have word that the “Honourable” Benjamin Cardin, U.S. Senator (Democrat, of course) from the great state of Maryland, has introduced into that “august” body known as the U.S. Senate a bill entitled “Newspaper Revitalization Act.”
“We are losing our newspaper industry…the economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy. It is in the interest of our nation and good governance that we ensure they survive” said Senator Cardin.
The act would grant newspapers tax-free status as non-profits¹, a deal similar to that enjoyed by public broadcasting outlets, which survive on tax-deductible contributions from listeners. The newspapers, however, will also be able to enjoy tax free advertising revenue.”
Since all newspapers might soon become non-profits, perhaps we can convince the great Jerry Lewis to hold a telethon for The New York Times–and I know the perfect day to hold that telethon on: May Day.
¹As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think any Establishment newspaper has ever been profitable–at least in the sense of any thinking person having found it “profitable” to read an Establishment newspaper.
Of course some newspapers must have ‘contributed’ to Sen. Cardin for his support in getting them some free money.
Bad business practices deserve bailouts? Bad depends on your perspective. The government depends on the propaganda outlets and when the newspapers depend on the government for survival, well, that’s a symbiotic relationship that can’t be allowed to fail.
whore: (compromise oneself for money or other gains)
Elitist Thugs Keep Trying to Kill Off Indigenous and People of Color
by MNN
We are told the world is overpopulated and that it must be depopulated! We are finding out it is part of the old eugenics plan to create a “super race” and get rid of those who they deem to be “useless eaters”. It’s a code for systematic killing of us and people of color, in violation of international law and norms.
The serial killers making these blatant plans to carry out “mass executions” must be stopped.
The economic melt down is being used as their incentive to proceed. Outright killing and bio-terrorism strategies are being perfected and practiced on us. It’s a pet project of the elite. It’s common knowledge that Prince Phillip said that after he dies, he wants to come back as a deadly virus to reduce the earth’s population by 90%.
Henry Kissinger set up the old ideas that President Obama is following. [Hey, isn’t he a person of color?] Kissinger was National Security Advisor NSA and Secretary of State for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970’s. Like King George VI and early elitist Thomas Malthus, Kissinger says that humans will eat and reproduce until there is standing room only on the planet. He thinks he should rebalance the natural world to his way. In his memoirs, “The Final Days”, control over life and death is a sexual high as “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”.
We think that the megalomaniacs should not reproduce.
They’re at it again. The same pack of rabid dogs who helped scare Americans into invading Iraq and Afghanistan have another prey in their sights: Iran.
This pack of mad dogs scents blood and is very adept at manipulating Americans into fighting wars for Israel by using their effective “echo chamber,” a relentless assault on our senses.
There is a country that is peopled with blood-thirsty psychos that has no qualms about using WMD’s, especially on civilians. This nation has launched countless wars of aggression against mostly 3rd world nations, to either keep their thuggish bitch dictator in place or install some heavy-handed goon that will be happy with getting paid chump change while that nation’s corporations rape, pillage and plunder the natural resources.
If you guessed that country to be Israel, you’re close, but Israel comes in at #2.
The world’s #1 terrorist state that is fond of using false-flags, of spreading lies and distortions on the MSM to start wars of aggression and of gladly killing civilians is the country that formerly belonged to We the People. more – Greg Bacon
The United States greatness can not be viewed outside of its relationship to the Masonic worldview and almost at every turn in American history there is Freemasonry. Its philosophy and ideology gave the U.S. Government teachings that would alter the world’s power dynamic and create a paradigm shift that has been in existences for over two centuries. Thus, for the most part, until perhaps the last twenty years historians and social scientist have ignored the Masonic influence in shaping our democracy. Yes, as I stated above some of the early Masonic writers had documented this reality, but oftentimes their research were dismissed as mere conspiracy theory and this further allowed Freemasonry to cloak it-self and remain under the radar. But let’s be clear those that embraced Freemasonry have stood shoulders above their uninitiated brothers. more – Fahim Knight
The agency that owns the space where the World Trade Center towers stood is freeing itself of the term “freedom” to describe the signature skyscraper replacing the buildings destroyed on September 11, 2001. The new term “slave tower” appears more appropriate as many Americans remain enslaved to the “official story” of how the twin towers were utterly pulverized on September 11, 2001.
The One World Trade Center skyscraper is expected to be completed in late 2013.
The change from Freedom Tower was revealed Thursday at a news conference where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced the signing of the first commercial lease in the building to a Chinese company more – RobertsCourt
We can make over 25,000 things with it. Farmers love it. Environmentalists love it. You can’t get high from it. So why is it still illegal?
While Uncle Sam’s scramble for new revenue sources has recently kicked up the marijuana debate — to legalize and tax, or not? — hemp’s feasibility as a stimulus plan has received less airtime.
But with a North American market that exceeds $300 million in annual retail sales and continued rising demand, industrial hemp could generate thousands of sustainable new jobs, helping America to get back on track.
With 25,000 known applications from paper, clothing and food products — which, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal this January, is the fastest growing new food category in North America — to construction and automotive materials, hemp could be just the crop to jump-start America’s green economy.
But growing hemp remains illegal in the U.S. The Drug Enforcement Administration has lumped the low-THC plant together with its psychoactive cousin, marijuana, making America the planet’s only industrialized nation to ban hemp production. We can import it from Canada, which legalized it in 1997. But we can’t grow it.
One of the silver linings of this economic depression is the collapse of mainstream media companies and the creation of internet blogs along with citizen journalism.
While this media shift is ongoing and certain, a question arises – Will the government, in further effort to keep their political-financial-media power in tact, bailout big media?
I wonder what a “neutered press” would look like? Would they peddle optimism even while the economy was collapsing? Would celebrity gossip become newsworthy? If the government wanted to loot the United States treasury and bailout their campaign contributors on Wall St, would a “neutered press” fail to demand answers or, even worse, scare the American people into submission? Would this neutered press allow the government to use 9-11 as a tool to occupy the middle east, while ignoring the cries of first responders and families of 9-11?
I’ve often said that I do not follow the mainstream news for information, I follow it for the lie. more – Conspiracy Planet
Congress is not going to do shit to stop this. It will all go down because they’re all in on the game. Whether they are bought off or threatened doesn’t matter anymore. If anything were going to be different, we would have already seen many high profile people hauled off to jail in front of teevee cameras. Somehow I missed that news cycle. It didn’t happen. So many people belong in jail — basically the entire ruling class — that none of the dominoes can be allowed to fall. And that’s why this keeps going on and on, and we keep paying and paying. These people are all corrupt to the bone. Again, whether they started out that way or got sucked in incrementally makes no difference to me. People justify things to themselves all the time. Maybe they told themselves they could do some good with the power we invested them. Maybe they wanted to “help people.” Maybe they thought looking the other way was the price they had to pay to bring the bacon home to the district. I do not know, and I do not care, because they’ve done nothing but screw us in the end. They can all rot in hell, along with their masters. more – A. Peasant at Twelfth Bough
Some Americans are unfortunately afflicted by hoplophobia, the unnatural fear of guns, which causes them to lose all common sense in public policy discussion about the right to bear arms. This fear may or may not be treatable by gun range therapy and other measures.
But a new phobia that has arisen over the last few years that afflicts some elected officials: pistolgriphobia, the unnatural fear of pistol grips on otherwise ordinary long guns. In a few states, state legislatures have gone as far to say that a rifle or shotgun with a pistol grip is an “assault weapon,” requiring special registration, or perhaps banned from private ownership.
There is no rational basis for either pistolgriphobia or the DC City Council’s ban on rifles containing pistol grips. Rifles with pistol grips may look scary to some people, but they are often less deadly than normal hunting rifles more – Mike Stollenwerk – Gun Rights Examiner
When the Patriot Act was first passed by Congress one month after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, privacy groups objected to the freedom-robbing measure. At the time, legislators claimed that the bill would only be temporary following 9-11. Eight years later, the most troubling portions of the legislation are still law even though the provisions were set to expire at the end of 2005. That year, Congress hastily passed legislation which kept the measures in full force.
There has been much debate over the Patriot Act’s effectiveness other than sending the country further down the slippery slope of a police state. The FBI’s own inspector general found that federal law enforcement regularly applied the new law for the purpose of prosecuting other criminal activity that was outside the intent of the original legislation.
“The Patriot Act vastly—and unconstitutionally—expanded the government’s authority to pry into people’s private lives with little or no evidence of wrongdoing.” more – American Free Press
The initial surge will add 17,000 troops to the 36,000 already there. Then, later this year, there is to be a second troop surge of another 17,000 or so. This mass of soldiers is expected to be deployed to a series of new garrisons to be built in far-flung regions of this impoverished, rural, mostly illiterate warlord state that is ruled by hundreds of fractious, heavily armed tribal leaders. We’re not told how much this escalation will cost, but it will at least double the $2 billion a month that American taxpayers are already shelling out for the Afghan war.
What Obama has not mentioned is that, in addition to soldiers and civilians, there is a third surge in his plan: private military contractors. Yes, another privatized army, such as the one in Iraq. There, the Halliburtons, Blackwaters and other war profiteers ran rampant, shortchanging our troops, ripping off taxpayers, killing civilians and doing deep damage to America’s good name.
Already, there are 71,000 private contractors operating in Afghanistan, and many more are preparing to deploy as Pentagon spending ramps up for Obama’s war. The military is now offering new contracts to security firms to provide armed employees (aka, mercenaries) to guard U.S. bases and convoys. Despite the widespread contractor abuses in Iraq, Pentagon chief Robert Gates defends the ongoing privatization push: “The use of contractor security personnel is vital to supporting the forward-operating bases in certain parts of the country,” he declared in a February letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
What the gentle war secretary is really saying is this: “We don’t have a draft, and I don’t see a lot of senators’ kinfolks volunteering to put their butts on the line in Afghanistan, so I’ve gotta pay through the nose to find enough privateers to guard America’s Army in this forbidding place.”
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting twist to Obama’s contractor surge: the for-hire guards protecting our bases and convoys will not likely be Americans. The Associated Press has reported that of the 3,847 security contractors in Afghanistan, only nine are U.S. firms.
With an entourage of 500 staff, an armour-plated limousine and a fleet of decoy helicopters, America’s new president will arrive for his first visit to Britain amid huge razzmatazz on Tuesday for the G20 summit. But it will be his closed-door meetings with world leaders that are likely to prove the most significant of the trip
I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.
In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work. (In other words, his house looked the way most houses look about 1:45am when their inhabitants are distractedly watching “Cheaters” or “Chelsea Lately” reruns.)
The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.
I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.
W
The agency that owns the space where the World Trade Center towers stood is freeing itself of the term “freedom” to describe the signature skyscraper replacing the buildings destroyed on September 11, 2001. The new term “slave tower” appears more appropriate as many Americans remain enslaved to the “official story” of how the twin towers were utterly pulverized on September 11, 2001.
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