Saturday, December 31, 2011

What Police State?



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December 30, 2011

Our Growing Police State

By Matt Holzmann
Last week, the FBI released its preliminary crime statistics for the first half of 2011, and across the nation violent crimes dropped 6.7% while property crimes dropped 3.7%. This continues a downward trend that dates back to the 1970's.
Many of the violent crimes reported this year have been sensational.  Representative Gabrielle Giffords and Federal Judge John Roll were targeted by a lone, crazed gunman and there were a number of other gruesome crimes. The Giffords/Roll shooting was brought to an end by a bystander. The Ft. Hood massacre on November 5, 2009, which killed 13 American soldiers and wounded 29 others was brought to an end by two base police officers using conventional sidearms and procedures. The warning signs for this terrorist attack, the first on American soil since 9/11, were ignored and yet it was the local cops on the beat who faced and dealt with a terrible crime.
Every case one can think of was resolved by conventional methods.  And yet the police powers of government on a local and national level have been growing at an alarming rate.  And despite a dissonant data base there is a growing trend towards militarization of police forces and of an invasive state security apparatus.
The concept of militarization of police forces in this country began with the Special Weapons & Tactics (SWAT) teams in Los Angeles in 1967 -68.   Its formation was a response to  events including the Watts riots of 1965, and the emergence of snipers such as Charles Whitman, who killed 13 people on the campus of the University of Texas in 1966; the rise of armed revolutionary groups such as the Weathermen and, later, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Eventually SWAT returned to a more traditional police role of hostage/barricade incidents and suicide intervention.
Prior to and concurrent with this, the FBI in its battle with communism regularly investigated American citizens and the Hoover Files became famous.  Today they are known primarily for salacious tidbits in the files on celebrities such as John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe.  It was a time with different mores and the democratic principles of the country were in a cold war with a real and formidable enemy.  Such was Hoover's justification.
With the fall of the Soviet Empire, instead of the "end of history", the world was fragmented into dysfunctional states and many of the same pawns used during the Cold War turned their hands towards criminal operations.  The drug wars became the new front for  law enforcement. Sometimes the gangs were as well or better equipped than the police.


Today, Afghanistan provides 90+% of the world's heroin while the largest military action in the 21st Century takes place in that country; the opium poppies in many cases grow right up to the razor wire of American bases.  A de facto civil war is taking place between the government and the narcotraficantes in Mexico that has cost 36,000 lives.  Today the street prices of cocaine and heroin are at historic lows.  It would seem that the War on Drugs is truly lost and that our government simply doesn't care.  And yet over $20 Billion/year is spent on the War on Drugs; most of it on law enforcement. This seems to be a very poor return on the investment.
On September 11, 2001 the jihad being waged against the West since the mid 90's struck at the heart of the infidel empire and 3,000 civilians were murdered. Everything changed that day. The West invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq with the goal of defeating the jihadists.  Over 10 years later there has not been a single successful attack on the United States.  Attacks in the UK, Spain, and Indonesia were successful, but there has been a steady decline caused by greater global cooperation and information sharing as the primary differentiators.
Along the way a massive security infrastructure and bureaucracy was created. The Patriot Act authorized the broad use of enhanced surveillance techniques and intelligence gathering while including domestic terrorism under the scope of the intelligence services. To date the only truly domestic terror prosecution seems to have been a few retired white supremacists in Georgia. The Ft. Hood massacre was officially classified by the White House recently as a workplace related shooting.
A key provision of the Patriot Act was the expansion of the authority of the Department of the Treasury to investigate money laundering, and yet the narcotics trade has risen from $321 Billion in 2003 according to the United Nations to an estimate of $500 Billion this year by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.  In Afghanistan, hundreds of millions of dollars in cash are shipped out to banks in Dubai openly and with the government's approval with no questions asked. The opium/heroin trade alone is estimated at $4 Billion/year which funds both the warlords on our side and the Taliban warlords. So Afghanistan is not only bleeding our military, but also our civilian population.
And  we now have a Department of Homeland Security that employs over 216,000. The Transportation Security Agency consists of over 58,000 of those employees.  The Border Patrol is of equivalent size, while ICE employs approximately 20,500.  In an address delivered by retired General Barry McCaffrey, he emphasized the real dangers of the War on Drugs and an out of control border. The criminal networks have become ever more sophisticated and now act as paramilitaries, destabilizing one of our most important allies. And yet the inward directed nature of much of our security establishment does nothing to address real and present dangers.


The Wall Street Journal in an article entitled "Federal Offenses: law enforcement teams grow at government agencies" wrote on Saturday of the proliferation of heretofore nonexistent police forces in federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Commerce, Labor Department, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Agency, and many others who have the power to conduct investigations, seek indictments, or simply raid violators of even regulatory violations.  Cases where armed agents have raided homes and workplaces have included the infamous Gibson Guitar raid for illegal wood; documentation errors on otherwise legal imports, and even the recent batch of a 881 lb. Bluefin Tuna by a New Bedford trawler. "Put the tuna on the ground and raise your hands".
The Internal Revenue Service has been strong arming countries around the world to open their bank records not to trace narcotics cash or Russian mobsters, but income tax evaders. The "Stop On Line Piracy Act" (SOPA) and the recent NDAA Act, which is now law, have broadened the policing authority of the Federal government to a never before greater degree at a time when ordinary crime is decreasing. The SOPA  Act, in the words of one IT manager, would make our internet similar to China's. The NDAA allows for the President to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens. The law then becomes a matter of semantics to the unprincipled.
In the meantime, corruption and cronyism have risen to a level not seen since the 1870's.
Nat Hentoff has written extensively on the assault on civil liberties and on due process starting with many of the measures of the Bush Administration.  This accelerated, according to Mr. Hentoff, under President Obama, who has concentrated power in the White House to an extraordinary degree. By avoiding Congressional approval and his own Executive Branch through the appointment of "czars" ranging from the auto industry to  regulation to ethics to climate to consumer affairs, the president has subverted the separation of powers repeatedly in an imperial presidency that is unparalleled.
Crime rates have been dropping for 20 years and yet today there is more danger to civil liberties posed by government than ever before. Our government continues to expand the definition of crime while approving special powers usually found in police states.
When Members of Congress urged the President to ignore their own branch of government during the recent Congressional debt ceiling debate and act by fiat or the insistence of some of those same Members of Congress on the recusal of Justice Thomas in the health care case before the Supreme Court, one can easily understand the danger of even a well intentioned government to its own people.
As the terrorism threat used to rationalize many of these powers has receded, government power has never been greater or more at odds with the Constitution.  In the meantime the narcoterrorism network which funds many those terrorist organizations, is on the sidelines.  The law is at odds with itself.
Our government has built an anti-Constitutional framework that can and will eventually be turned against our citizens. On one side we have our civil/criminal system, and the other the growing power of  Orwellian dysfunction. Think about it.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/12/our_growing_police_state.html at December 31, 2011 - 08:47:27 AM CST

Friday, December 30, 2011

President Ron Paul?

Why Ron Paul Can Win

by James Jaeger
The Daily Bell



If you have been watching the news, you know that Ron Paul is now beating both Gingrich and Romney in the polls and could walk away with a win in Iowa.
Some say he could also walk away with a win in New Hampshire, and possibly even win the Republican (GOP) nomination.
For the Republican National Committee (RNC), this must be uncomfortable – the idea that they would be forced to nominate a principled, Constitutionalist just because WE THE PEOPLE demanded it.
But here's what really terrifies them: Ron Paul is in a position to hand the election of 2012 over to Barack Obama and the Democrats because he would be a "spoiler." But even more terrifying is the fact that Dr. Paul is in a position to be much more than a "spoiler" – he's in a position to be a "winner."
Etymology of the term SPOILER:
The term "spoiler" is a derogatory term that was dreamt up by statists in the Democratic and Republican parties in order to sucker the public into continuously voting for no one outside the Establishment. In other words, if you vote your conscience, YOU are a "spoiler." If you run on principles of your conscience and take votes away from an Establishment candidate, YOU are also a "spoiler."
Thus, since Ron Paul votes his conscience, since he rejects certain aspects of the Establishment – such as the Federal Reserve's abuse of the monetary system and its financing of the welfare-warfare empire we have now become – there is no way apparatchiks in the GOP will nominate Dr. Paul no matter what WE THE PEOPLE want.
And to this end, lackey pundits in the CFR-dominated, mainstream media continuously chant that Ron Paul has "no chance to get the Republican nomination." They spew this so often, it's obvious they don't believe their own lies.
But here's the joker: Ron Paul does not even need the GOP to win the general election. If he were to walk away for a third party, he would take at least 12% of the Republican vote with him. He would also take another 15% from the Independents and at least 11% from the Democrats. This would give him 38% – enough of the vote to win the Presidency in a three-man race.
GOP strategists know all this and this is why you will never hear them utter these statistics in the mainstream media. If the public were to become too "hopeful" – if they were to understand the mathematics of the situation – even more people would vote for Ron Paul if for no other reason than to be on the winner's bandwagon.
So, the GOP has some serious choices to make.
Either they morph into a small-government party and support the Ron Paul Revolution of "getting back to the Constitution," or they risk losing their power to a new political party. And a new political party would not only mean the demise of the Republican party, but the Democratic party as well.
Since the Democratic Party AND the Republican Party are BOTH the parties of BIG government, a new political party of SMALL government would reveal to the public – more than ever – what the two mainstream parties have become.
The two mainstream parties – the Democrats and Republicans – have become, in essence, two departments of the same police state. They are the same political party, in effect: growing the government ever larger and ever more militaristic, both domestically and internationally. The PATRIOT Act expands the police state domestically, and the UN, IMF, WTO, NAFTA, GATT and NATO -which they BOTH continuously and blindly support – expand the police state internationally.
Due to serious abridgments of the US Constitution and principles stated in the Declaration of Independence, the United States are now run by a dictating oligarchy known as the UNITED STATES. And this dictating oligarchy is dominated by cultural Marxists and corporate fascists who have hijacked the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.
The "DemoPublicans" have established the Department of Homeland Security for the purpose of administering their police state and the PATRIOT Act has become their new Constitution.
If you accept the idea that the Democrats and Republicans (again the "DemoPublicans") have become two departments of the same police state – two wings of the same ugly bird – you will have to accept that ultimately it does not matter whether a Democrat or Republican is elected to the presidency. It does not matter if Obama or Romney is elected president. Establishment politicians in either of these "two" parties will continue to use the Federal Reserve System to monetize debt (print money out of thin air) and use this fraudulent "fiat" currency to build their welfare-warfare state.
It could be said that Republicans specialize in printing money to build weapons and wage wars – Democrats specialize in printing money to address the sick and the poor. The Republicans thus CREATE the sick and the poor with their WAR-fare policies and the Democrats HEAL the sick and the poor with their WELL-fare policies.
Thus when an entity controls the HEALING and HURTING of Humankind, doesn't that entity, in essence, CONTROL Humankind? Well, welcome to the DemoPublican control mechanism – something you might think about the next time you vote or mindlessly scream out for your Clinton-, Bush-, Obama-, Gingrich- or Romney-candidate.
Taken as a whole, the Demopublican machine – now assembled more by supra-national, international banking families than American citizens – has destroyed US politics that used to center on constitutional principles. Controllers in this CFR-led embryonic world government have created a well-oiled machine to maximize the plunder of millions, if not billions of people, through the mechanism of central banking, debt and the hurting-healing cycle. Would it not be reasonable to posit that the Democratic and Republican Parties are thus primary tools in what seems to be a master plan of globalization?
Ron Paul – a strict limited-government Constitutionalist with an appreciation for ethnonationalism – does not fit in with the New World Order's management plans. Therefore, if he wins the popular vote not only in Iowa and New Hampshire but across the nation, the DemoPublican controllers have a serious problem.
They can either rig the elections so it looks like Dr. Paul did "not" win, or they can blackmail him by threatening his family, like they did when Ross Perot was getting too popular.
If Dr. Paul walks away from the GOP to go Indy, in reality he will "spoil" nothing, for as discussed above, the Democrats and Republicans are the same political party in effect, so there is nothing that CAN be "spoiled".
Also, since the DemoPublicans must continue the cockfight between them – so the illusion that they are "different" parties can be maintained – this fighting has been, of necessity, escalating into a GRIDLOCK. Note the endless fighting about extending payroll tax cuts, Obamacare and illegal immigration. Thus, even if Ron Paul is labeled a "spoiler" – for thwarting the Establishment Controller's plan to get one of their puppets nominated or elected – he will spoil nothing.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR RON PAUL TO BE A SPOILER, BECAUSE:
A) THE DEMS AND GOP ARE THE SAME PARTY IN EFFECT, AND;
B) EVEN IF OBAMA GETS REELECTED, THE DEMS AND GOP WILL BE GRIDLOCKED AND THUS NOTHING WILL GET DONE.
Summary:
The term "spoiler" is used by two groups of people:
1) the ignorant or IQ-challenged person who knows little or nothing about politics or the art of war, and
2) the statist propaganda-merchant who is trying to give the public the illusion that there is a "difference" between the Democratic and Republican Parties.
The reason the statist propaganda-merchant is trying to perpetuate the meme that there is a difference between the two major parties is so the general public will not look elsewhere for the solution to their problems. If one can get the Democrats and Republicans fighting with each other, it gives the illusion that they are "different" to the degree they "fight." Indeed they DO have "differences"; however, the differences are over trivial issues. On all the major issues the Democrats and Republicans are identical, overtly and covertly, thus they are the same political party in effect. You saw how many of Bush's policies Obama kept in place when he came into office ostensibly to "change" things. The same thing will happen if the Republicans take back the White House, ad infinitum.
So this is why Ron Paul is such a threat to the Establishment. He's running on the GOP ticket basically so he can get mainstream media exposure. The mainstream tried to ignore him in the last election. Remember how Hannity practically spat on Dr. Paul in the 2008 election? Remember how all the other pundits treated him? Then, when he suddenly raised millions of dollars with his "money bombs" and millions of voters started joining the grassroots Ron Paul Revolution – which kicked off the Tea Party Revolution – it wasn't "politically correct" to spit on him any longer. Worse, they couldn't ignore him into oblivion like they ignored all other dissenting candidates. Third-party candidate Ross Perot was only able to get mainstream media exposure because he purchased it with his personal wealth. Neither Ralph Nader nor Harry Brown, on the other hand, have been able to purchase such exposure; thus they have never been able to get an alternative vision into the public domain.
Thus, if Ron Paul continues to get support from the rest of the nation he's currently getting in Iowa, the GOP should technically nominate him, but it's a long-shot they will.
After all, for Ron Paul to win and use the vote to destroy the cultural Marxist-infested, totalitarian fiat empire, being built by controllers of the "liberal world order" is incomprehensible to them even though Pat Buchanan details in his new book, Suicide of a Superpower, the reasons why the moment of globalism and "free" trade has passed.
But such is the power of the zeitgeist for the world is in revolt, from the Middle East to Wall Street. The 99-percent don't know exactly HOW they have been screwed, but they do know that they HAVE been screwed – at least for the past 100 years. From the Tea Partiers to the Wall Street Occupiers in America, WE THE PEOPLE are fed up with:
1) a Congress that has been bought and sold by corporate fascists,
2) Presidents that start wars and act like Marxist dictators,
3) an activist Supreme Court that legislates from the bench making one-size-fits-all laws that ignore the original intent of the Founders.
WE THE PEOPLE are fed up with many other things, but both the "Right" and the "Left" can agree with much of what Ron Paul offers, because his principles are American principles, and American principles are Constitutional Principles which accommodate both liberals and conservatives, Left or Right.
So don't let CFR-infested, Establishment propaganda spewed through the mainstream media or the DemoPublican police state dissuade you from voting for Ron Paul, whether he stays on the GOP ticket, goes Independent or starts a new party.
It is vital that all Americans stay true to their conscience, NOT their political parties. Remember, the US Constitution does not even mention political parties. In fact, many of the Founders warned us against them; they called them "factions" and said that membership in them is dangerous to a democratic form of government. They warned us to stay away from entrenched political parties – such as the Democrats and Republicans – because entrenched political parties are only one step away from dictatorships.
It is not too late to act. Vote out the incumbent congressmen and vote in Ron Paul no matter what scare tactics the pundits on CNN, FOX News or MSNBC attempt to use on you. Ron Paul CAN get 38% of the vote and win the presidency. This is not an opinion; it's mathematical fact.


Reprinted with permission from The Daily Bell.


December 23, 2011

Copyright © 2011 The Daily Bell

More Nutty Conspiracy Stuff?

Obama's FEMA Camps and the Deaths of Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il





According to this article and this article, Obama’s FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is getting camps ready for not only the post-economic collapse, but for political dissidents and critics of government criminality. This will be made possible by Congress’s just having codified into law Obama’s dictatorship by giving him the power to treasonously turn the military against the American people. Thanks to the imbeciles and criminals of Congress, Obama can have anyone apprehended and detained indefinitely, merely by labeling someone a "terrorist," at his discretion, without any evidence presented against the accused, without any charges or trial.
Now, those two linked articles go to Infowars.com. Some people have smeared Infowars as a "conspiracy theory" website, but Alex Jones and his crew are very responsible and conscientious researchers and reporters, and they present and link to information that documents and gives evidence to their assertions of government "conspiracies." So, they are not ‘theorists," they are conspiracy factualists. And you can see various things by Gov. Jesse Ventura as well. While Ventura actually calls his show "Conspiracy Theory," he goes out on location and investigates such theories and allegations of possible government wrongdoing, and, especially from this unbelievable video posted just recently (especially starting at about 25 minutes into it), you can decide for yourself whether Ventura is just a "theorist" or a factualist.
In that linked video, Ventura exposes a large "residential" center, with locked front doors and surrounded by high fences with barbed wire facing inward. While it looks exactly like a prison, there were children playing on swings in one area within the grounds. Thanks to the emotionally frantic, post-9/11 dupes for the Bush/Obama’s police state, we seem to be on the road to Soviet-Nazi tyranny — unless someone actually takes action such as arresting Obama and those aforementioned senators and congressmen and charging these government officials with treason.
Yes, I know there are many people who are in denial, and so trusting of their beloved government, especially their federal government, regardless of how much the government abuses them. "They would never do anything of a criminal nature to us." But just look at Katrina, and the BP-government police state with that oil spill last year. Look at what our military people have done to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As I pointed out in this article, look at what our military people have been doing to their own fellow comrades. Being in denial will not help you when you are a target of military aggression, let alone a target of your local police.
Jacob Hornberger noted here and here how dangerous a government’s military could be.
And, regarding this new law codifying Obama’s dictatorship and his merely labeling someone a "terrorist" without evidence shown, only someone extremely naive could think that Obama or any political ruler or prospective one such as Romney wouldn’t have his goons nab someone who challenges their power grabs and who openly presents views that could convince others to withdraw support of the Regime.
Unfortunately, the naive and gullible dupes for police statism cry,"But we have to allow officials to sweep up those ‘terrorists’ based on the judgment of military personnel or police (and without evidence) because we can’t wait for the process of a trial with a jury to prove someone’s guilt and then imprison him, we have to risk rounding up innocents!"
One thing that Gov. Ventura noted in the video was that, with all this stuff, we’re headed for either tyranny or liberty.
Interestingly, there were two deaths this week of two world leaders who contrasted one another in that liberty-tyranny fork in the road: Kim Jong-Il, the crazy dictator from North Korea; and Vaclav Havel, the sensible political dissident who opposed communist Soviet rule and worked for freedom in his country of the Czech Republic (formerly a merged Czech and Slovak Czechoslovakia).
According to Wikipedia, Havel, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, "was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, that proposed the establishment of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. He also received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award and several other distinctions." (Need I say, beyond what I’ve exhaustively already written, what Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama has done?)
While still in Czechoslovakia under Soviet dictatorial rule, Havel founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted, whose main goal was to educate the population about the persecution of dissidents, people who disagree with government policy and either withdraw their consent and/or openly and actively work to make changes. Yes, the U.S. has the American Civil Liberties Union, and other similar organizations, but it seems that, especially with the latest acts of Congress and Obama and their implicit threats to jail American dissidents, "civil liberties" organizations in the U.S. seem as powerless as they seemed to be in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
One of Havel’s first acts as President of Czechoslovakia, before it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was to give amnesty to and release the country’s political prisoners. Can we possibly expect any U.S. president to do the same here? Particularly with the War on Drugs, which imprisons a much higher proportion of inner-city minorities than others amongst the general population. But what exactly will Obama, the military and FEMA (and Obama’s ACORN and Obama’s obedient union militants) do to political dissidents in the U.S., especially if there is to be economic collapse, civil unrest, looting and so forth?
And, in contrast to Vaclav Havel and all his work toward greater freedom and individual liberty, what did Kim Jong-Il do? According to Human Rights Watch,
"Kim Jong-Il exercised total control for 17 years over one of the world’s most closed and repressive governments. He was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of North Koreans through widespread preventable starvation, horrendous prisons and forced labor camps, and public executions. Kim family rule, starting with his father, Kim Il-Sung in 1948, is projected to continue with Kim Jong-Il’s son, Kim Jong-Un…
"Kim Jong-Il’s legacy includes the fate of the tens of thousands who have died in the kwanliso camps for alleged enemies of the state, where today an estimated 200,000 North Koreans continue to work and die in conditions of near starvation and brutal abuse. In this system, the sins of one member of the family condemn an entire generation to imprisonment. A steady stream of former prisoners who escaped North Korea have testified to Human Rights Watch and other organizations how even children born inside such camps grow up to inherit their parents’ prisoner status.
"Leaving the country without official permission is considered an act of treason, punishable by torture and imprisonment, yet tens of thousands have fled in the last two decades, and thousands more continue to risk their lives every year to escape."
The way that Jesse Ventura described those "residential" facilities with barbed wire run by FEMA and Homeland Security, it would seem like Dick Cheney, Obama and Janet Napolitano are learning about government-civilian relations more from Kim Jong-Il than from Vaclav Havel.
One wonders about what kind of country America has become when we have the choice between Statist A or Statist B, the Affirmative Action President Obama who collects Spider Man and Conan the Barbarian comics, or Romney who put his dog on the roof of the car for a long trip. (Who would do that?)
And in the current Obama Administration, we have the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs chief Cass Sunstein, who wants to "cognitively infiltrate" Internet websites and social networking sites, and we have an Obama Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan who said that freedom of speech "depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs" (i.e. government-approved speech).
And a "science czar," John Holdren, who believes that a born human infant "will ultimately develop into a human being," but believes that trees should have rights to sue in court. And Obama’s former health care czar and current director of the National Institute of Health bioethics (sic) department, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, believes the government should have the power and control to allocate and ration health care, not the doctors and patients.
Why does it seem that so many people in government are just plain nuts?
As the Economic Collapse Blog noted in this article, the legacy of Kim Jong-Il and his North Korean regime is one of "weirdness," just plain crazy yet frightening stuff. The writer concludes, "Please do not let that happen to America." I think it already is happening, and we have good reason to believe that. Just where are the Vaclav Havels of our time? (I think we know the answer to that question!)
The real crimes in America are not being committed by or planned by private civilians who believe in personal and economic freedom, private property and the philosophy of Live and Let Live, and who want to speak out against intrusions and threats posed by those with armed, compulsory government legal authority and power.
No, the real crimes are those of our government officials who are extremely clueless about liberty and who are totally drunk with power grabs. Seizing and detaining innocent civilians? Suppressing speech and political dissent? "Emergency" camps? Government degenerates and outlaws have become the most dangerous amongst our increasingly vulnerable population under centralized rule.
December 23, 2011

Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist, visit his blog.
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee?

First Amendment Under Attack: 18 Examples of How They Are Coming for Our Free Speech





In the United States today, the First Amendment is under attack like never before. Technological innovations such as the Internet have made it possible for average Americans to communicate directly with one another in ways that completely bypass the mainstream media, and this is making the elite very uncomfortable. They have decided that they better come after our free speech before it is too late. Right now, free speech in America is being chipped away at it in thousands of different ways. On the one hand, you have the disciples of "political correctness" that want to make all forms of speech that are "offensive" to anyone against the law. On the other hand, you have those that are obsessed with "national security" that want to ban all speech that is critical of the U.S. government or the U.S. military. These twin forces are constantly seeking to push the First Amendment into a smaller and smaller box. If you say the wrong thing in America today, your website might be shut down, you could be suspended from school, you may find yourself out of a job and there is now even a possibility that you could be arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without a trial.
Usually those that are targeted for their speech are those that the "establishment" does not like. That would include free thinkers, political activists, libertarians, true conservatives and Christians.
Instead of seeing the value in allowing everyone to say what they think, we are being taught in America today that there is speech that is "acceptable" and speech that is "not acceptable".
If we allow this attack on the First Amendment to continue, eventually we will wake up in a country where our freedom of speech is totally gone.
The following are 18 examples of how the elite are coming for our free speech....
#1 Two bills currently going through Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, would give the U.S. government the ability to shut down literally millions of websites.
These bills are incredibly dangerous and if they are passed they could change the way that the Internet operates forever.
The following is from a piece that Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently authored about these new bills....
"Imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress -- SOPA and PIPA -- give the U.S. government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial)"
Any website that posts "infringing material" could be instantly shut down under these news laws. For example, if one "infringing video" was posted on YouTube, the entire site could be taken down forever and permanently erased from Google in a matter of days. That is how serious these new bills are as Brin noted later on in his piece....
"While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don't believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world."
Can you imagine a world where there is no more YouTube, no more Facebook and no more Twitter?
That is what we could be looking at.
Sadly, many in the U.S. Congress seem absolutely obsessed with censoring the Internet.
U.S. Senator Chris Dodd once said the following....
"When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites"
U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman has gone even farther. Just check out what he once said....
"Right now, China – the government – can disconnect parts of its internet in a case of war. We need to have that here too"
Not only that, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman also recently asked Google to install a "terrorist button" on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers can easily flag "terrorist content" for authorities.
The Internet is under attack from Washington D.C., and if you love the Internet you need to say something while you still can.
Please contact your representatives in Congress and tell them that they must vote against these bills.
#2 Politicians all over the United States are using law enforcement authorities to shut down free speech that they do not like. For example, during a recent meeting of the Pensacola City Council, a priest was nearly arrested after he calmly said some things that members of the city council did not like. If you have not seen this video of the incident yet, you should really check it out.
#3 The First Amendment is especially under attack in our public schools. For example, one group of high school athletes was recently suspended for "Tebowing" in the hallways of their school.
#4 The U.S. government is now encouraging children to spy on their parents as part of the "war on terror". If a school official hears that a parent has said the "wrong thing" at home, that parent could potentially get labeled as a "potential terrorist".
#5 Even though tens of millions of Americans have found the information and products sold by Kevin Trudeau to be incredibly helpful, the FTC has mercilessly gone after him. They have done everything that they can to shut him up and now he is being ordered to pay a ridiculous financial penalty of 37.6 million dollars.
#6 Hillary Clinton recently said that certain "political, cultural, and religious beliefs" are obstacles to promoting alternative lifestyles around the world and therefore must not be tolerated....
"Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs"
#7 Some U.S. courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to use the name of "Jesus Christ" during any official government meeting. The following comes from a recent WorldNetDaily article....
But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even "a solitary reference to Jesus Christ" in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners' meetings could do "violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life."
#8 In North Carolina last year, a pastor was dismissed from his chaplain duties for praying in the name of Jesus.
#9 Down in Texas, the Department of Veteran Affairs actually tried to ban prayers that include the words "God" or "Jesus" during funeral services for veterans.
#10 Being able to engage in peaceful protests is one of the most important rights that the First Amendment protects. But in recent years that right has been under attack like never before. In a recent article I detailed some of the violence that law enforcement authorities have used against protesters in 2011....
In recent weeks, we have seen law enforcement authorities brutally dragging female protesters to the ground by their hair. We have also seen them use pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang stun grenades against protesters. If this is how protesters are going to be dealt with from now in America, then we have completely lost the moral high ground. How will we ever get other nations to take us seriously when we criticize their brutality against protesters when we are so brutal ourselves?
#11 As I have written about previously, the FBI is now systematically recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. This is going to cause many Internet talk radio hosts to watch what they are saying. After all, who wants a visit from the FBI? The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....
If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.
#12 In Wichita, Kansas last year, a Christian minister was handcuffed and hauled off to jail by police for sharing the gospel and handing out tracts to Muslims on a public sidewalk.


Shawn's Take: This was Pastor Mark Holick of Spirit One Christian Ministries and there is a questionable doubt that he was indeed on public property. Some say he was harassing the people of the muslim center.


#13 On June 18, 2010 two Christians decided that they would peacefully pass out copies of the gospel of John on a public sidewalk outside a public Islamic festival in Dearborn, Michigan and within three minutes 8 police officers surrounded them and placed them under arrest.
#14 As I have written about previously, a very revealing document obtained by Oath Keepers shows that the FBI is actually instructing store owners to report many new forms of "suspicious activity" to them. Apparently the FBI now believes that the definition of "suspicious activity" includes "radical theology" and making "extreme religious statements".
#15 Last year, a high school student in Southern California was suspended for two days because he had private conversations with his classmates during which he discussed Christianity. He was also banned from bringing his Bible to school ever again.
#16 A Christian consultant was recently fired by Bank of America and by Cisco because they discovered a book that he had written that expressed Christian viewpoints about social issues.
#17 Members of the U.S. Congress have been banned from saying "Merry Christmas" in any piece of congressional mail that is paid for by U.S. tax dollars. Even if you do not celebrate that holiday, you should still be outraged at that infringement of free speech.
#18 Barack Obama recently signed a new law that officially designates the United States as part of the "battleground" on the war on terror. This new law allows the U.S. military to arrest American citizens if they are suspected of being "potential terrorists" and to detain them indefinitely without trial. So if the U.S. military comes and grabs your neighbor and ships him off to Guantanamo Bay, then this new law is probably to blame.
This new law is also going to have a huge chilling effect on free speech in America.
I have personally been contacted by several people that I know in recent weeks that are changing their behavior because of laws that have recently been passed.
It is not enough for the elite that they control Wall Street, most of the big corporations and the U.S. government.
They also want to shut all the rest of us up and keep us from complaining about it.
The elite literally want to control what we think and what we say.
We live in a country where political correctness is way out of control and where bureaucrats are constantly trying to push our free speech into a smaller and smaller box.
They are coming for our free speech my friends.
If you love free speech, and if you love the Internet as it currently exists, then you need to stand up and say something right now.
If we do not respond to these constant attacks on the First Amendment, then eventually we are going to lose it for good.
Reprinted with permission from End of the American Dream.


December 21, 2011
Copyright © 2011 End of the American Dream

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

2012: The End Is Near?

50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe





Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don't make dramatic changes immediately. If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them. Just "tweaking" things here and there is not going to fix this economy. We truly do need a fundamental change in direction. America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding. If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.
At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends. If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that "business as usual" will result in a national economic apocalypse.
The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe....
#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.

#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished.
#3 If the number of Americans that "wanted jobs" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.
#5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.
#6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
#9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

#10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.
#11 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#12 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.
#13 One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
#14 The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.
#15 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.
#16 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.
#17 The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

#18 In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.
#19 Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.
#20 If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.
#22 New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.
#23 As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.
#24 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#25 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#26 One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#27 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#28 The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#29 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.
#30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
#31 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
#32 According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.
#33 Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
#34 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
#35 According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.
#36 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.
#37 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.
#38 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

#39 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.
#40 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#41 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#42 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.
#43 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#44 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#45 For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.
#46 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
#47 Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.
#48 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
#49 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.
#50 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
Of course the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence. If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape. The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based. That would be a very significant step toward restoring prosperity to America.
During 2011 we made a lot of progress in educating the American people about our economic problems, but we still have a long way to go.
Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country.
Reprinted with permission from the Economic Collapse Blog.


December 20, 2011
Copyright © 2011 Economic Collapse Blog