“Even while committing an act of pure treason in signing the bill, the unindicted criminal President Obama issued a signing statement that reads, in part, ‘Moving forward, my administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded…’
“Anyone who reads between the lines here realizes the ‘the flexibility on which our safety depends’ means they can interpret the law in any way they want if there is a sufficient amount of fear being created through false flag terror attacks"
BILL OF RIGHTS IS NO MORE
By Chuck Baldwin
January 5, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
While most Americans were celebrating the holidays, President Barack Obama quietly signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), otherwise known as the “Indefinite Detention Act,” into law. Obama had initially said he would veto the bill which contains the draconian language authorizing the US military to seize and incarcerate US citizens without warrant, due process, trial, etc. Of course, Obama quickly changed his mind after the bill passed both houses of Congress.
When signing the NDAA into law, Obama issued a signing statement that in essence said, “I have the power to detain Americans... but I won’t.”
Americans should realize that, coupled with the Patriot Act, the NDAA, for all intents and purposes, completely nullifies a good portion of the Bill of Rights, turns the United States into a war zone, and places US citizens under military rule. And what is even more astonishing is the manner in which the national press corps, and even the so-called “conservative” talking heads, have either completely ignored it, or have actually defended it. The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al., should be ashamed of themselves!
At this juncture, I want to highly encourage my readers to review two columns written by my constitutional attorney son, Tim Baldwin. He has written two masterful columns explaining the draconian provisions of the NDAA and responding to those irresponsible journalists who fail to understand and warn the American people regarding the horrific implications of the NDAA.
Mike Adams at NaturalNews.com has also written a great piece regarding the seriousness of the NDAA. He begins his report saying, “One of the most extraordinary documents in human history--the Bill of Rights--has come to an end under President Barack Obama. Derived from sacred principles of natural law, the Bill of Rights has come to a sudden and catastrophic end with the President's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a law that grants the U.S. military the ‘legal’ right to conduct secret kidnappings of U.S. citizens, followed by indefinite detention, interrogation, torture and even murder. This is all conducted completely outside the protection of law, with no jury, no trial, no legal representation and not even any requirement that the government produce evidence against the accused. It is a system of outright government tyranny against the American people, and it effectively nullifies the Bill of Rights.
“In what will be remembered as the most traitorous executive signing ever committed against the American people, President Obama signed the bill on New Year's Eve, a time when most Americans were engaged in the consumption of alcohol. It seems appropriate, of course, since no intelligent American could accept the tyranny of this bill if they were sober.
“This is the law that will cement Obama's legacy in the history books as the traitor who nullified the Bill of Rights and paved America's pathway down a road of tyranny that will make Nazi Germany's war crimes look like child's play. If Bush had signed a law like this, liberals would have been screaming ‘impeachment!’”
Adams is absolutely right! Liberals are as bad as conservatives when it comes to overlooking traitorous behavior when it is perpetrated by one of their own.
Adams goes on to say, “Even while committing an act of pure treason in signing the bill, the unindicted criminal President Obama issued a signing statement that reads, in part, ‘Moving forward, my administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded…’
“Anyone who reads between the lines here realizes the ‘the flexibility on which our safety depends’ means they can interpret the law in any way they want if there is a sufficient amount of fear being created through false flag terror attacks. Astute readers will also notice that Obama's signing statement has no legal binding whatsoever and only refers to Obama's momentary intentions on how he ‘wishes’ to interpret the law. It does not place any limits whatsoever on how a future President might use the law as written.”
Signed into law by President George W. Bush, the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act effectively eviscerated the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. Now, the NDAA of 2012, signed into law by President Barack Obama, has effectively eviscerated the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth amendments to the US Constitution. Note that it has not mattered one whit whether it was a Republican or Democrat President or Congress in power at the time. Both parties in Washington, D.C., have superintended over the deliberate and unabashed dismantlement of the Bill of Rights. And, of course, we must all realize that for all intents and purposes--and with very few exceptions--both parties in Washington, D.C., have ignored the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution for decades.
We should also add that the First Amendment was pretty much expunged in 1962 and 1963 when the US Supreme Court outlawed the public acknowledgment of God. And the Second Amendment suffered a major setback with the passage of the Nazi-like Gun Control Act of 1968. And, of course, the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision also effectively annihilated the right to life clause of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Therefore, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that, over the past several decades, the US Congress, the US Supreme Court, and the US Presidency have collaborated together to strip the American people of the protections and safeguards of their liberties contained in what must be recognized--along with the Declaration of Independence--as the Holy Grail of liberty: the Bill of Rights.
So, how long will it be before the President of the United States will actually act upon the power that has been granted him under the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the NDAA of 2012? How long will it be before the US military is ordered to turn their guns on the American citizenry? How long will it be before American citizens begin disappearing in much the same way that the people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s China disappeared? What will be the “national emergency” that triggers the implementation of these Hitlerian laws? Another 9-11-style attack maybe? Who knows? One thing is certain: these laws are not painstakingly written, debated, and passed into law for the fun of it! These laws are on the books for a reason: the federal government fully intends to implement these laws at some point! You can count on that!
And once more I need to remind readers that the only Presidential candidate that is sounding the alarm regarding this persistent and deliberate erosion of our liberties is Congressman Ron Paul.
I am reminded of the sagacious words of America’s most celebrated jurist Daniel Webster. He said, “God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.” So, I guess it’s time to start asking the question: Just who is left within these States United that truly love liberty and are willing to guard and defend it? Because one thing is certain: the vast majority of the miscreants in Washington, D.C., sure aren’t going to do it.
Full article and additional links:
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin682.htm
http://www.newswithviews.com/Timothy/baldwin177.htm
http://tinyurl.com/7j7reom
http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_of_Rights_Obama.html
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Totalitarian State Mind Control Wars (Part 1)
By Paul McGuire
January 2, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
Totalitarianism has already conquered America. What happens in the next few years is simply the externalization of a battle that has already been won in the mind of man. For over a century millions of American’s have been put into a drug-like state through materialism, television, film, music, ever-increasing dosages of sexual perversion, political theatre, false prophets in the church, drugs, social engineering and the mind-control-factories of public education. Martial Law, detention camps and rule by military force are simply the by-products of an Armageddon-style war for the mind that has been won by those who arrogantly call themselves “the scientific elite.” But, most people do not understand the Luciferian and spiritual dimension of this warfare that was planned centuries ago.
This war is not a new war; it is a mind control war that goes back to ancient Babylon and the secret occult religions. The primary military theatre of this war is in the human mind. Beginning in 1917 when the father of modern public education came back from Communist Russia, the mass brainwashing and mind control war started with Orwellian thought control in public education.
This was not hidden; Dewey and others came out publicly and stated the purpose of publication was to not educate but to indoctrinate through scientific social engineering. Despite the fact that Dewey and the Communist movement claim to be atheists, the reality is that Karl Marx was a practicing Satanist. The Communist Manifesto that Marx wrote with Engels was simply a copy of the Illuminati Manifesto written in the late 1700’s. The six primary tenets of the Illuminati Manifesto are:
These are also the exact same goals of the World Communist Movement. Look at America today and notice that every one of these areas is under attack or has been destroyed. This is a deliberate strategy and it ties directly in to harnessing Luciferian power and mind control because it severs all psychological and spiritual ties to God and the individual. The endgame is a microchipped planet of slaves who will serve the Illuminati elite.
This has not been a covert war in the traditional sense; most of it was announced in articles, speeches, books and through the media. Science fiction author and former head of British intelligence during World War I wrote, “The Open Conspiracy,” in 1928, which outlined a plan for global totalitarian state. In a June 16, 1928 article in the Illustrated London News, Wells’ good friend and fellow intellectual G. K. Chesterton reviewed the book and warned of the danger he saw in what Wells was saying about the "general tendency towards establishing a world control." Chesterton correctly perceived that Well’s call for world government would end up being a world dictatorship.
In 1940, H.G.Well’s published his book, “The New World Order” and revealed the battle plan. H.G. Wells, was far more than a leading intellectual, he was connected to occult secret societies. Unlike, American Marxists in academia and politics, Well’s believed the most effective method of Revolution was not with guns, camps and violent revolution. Wells understood that the most effective revolution could be achieved through the science of brainwashing and mind control. Wells wrote in “The New World Order,”…A Revolution need be neither an explosion nor a coup d'état. And the Revolution that lies before us now as the only hopeful alternative to chaos, either directly or after an interlude of world communism, is to be attained…” Well’s explained, “An altogether different type of Revolution may or may not be possible. No one can say that it is possible unless it is tried, but one can say with some assurance that unless it can be achieved the outlook for mankind for many generations at least is hopeless. The new Revolution aims essentially at a change in directive ideas. In its completeness it is an untried method.” Years later, after this new type of Revolution, that relied on social engineering and mind control was tested, Wells realized that scientific mind control is far more effective that troops, guns and camps.
“It depends for its success upon whether a sufficient number of minds can be brought to realize that the choice before us…” Aldous Huxley, a disciple of H.G. Wells and British Intelligence agent, came to Hollywood in the 1930’s to promote his ideas by writing screenplay’s that would be produced as feature films. In 1932 Huxley wrote a novel entitled, “Brave New World,” where he described a “scientific dictatorship: that was established not through armed troops and tyranny, but through drugs, sex and mind control. “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” Aldus Huxley.
In a 1962 speech at UC Berkeley, Huxley spoke primarily of the ‘Ultimate Revolution’ that focuses on ‘behavioral controls’ of people: If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must bring in an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. We are in process of developing a whole series of techniques, which will enable the controlling oligarchy – who have always existed and will presumably always exist – to get people to love their servitude.”
Huxley added, “I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world. If you can get people to consent to the state of servitude – then you are likely to have a much more stable, a much more lasting society; much more easily controllable society than you would if you were relying wholly on clubs, and firing squads and concentration camps.”
Aldous Huxley began turning on many Hollywood celebrities, writers and powerful people on to the psychedelic drug mescaline. He wrote his famous book, “Heaven and Hell and the Doors of Perception,” which advocated the use of strong psychedelic drugs to travel into different dimensions and he promoted occult and mystical teachings. As I High School student in New York City, I read Huxley’s book and took mescaline not as a means to get “high,” but to travel through the doors of perception. At around this same time, Harvard Professor Timothy Leary was telling people to “tune in, turn on and drop out,” by ingesting an even-more powerful drug LSD.
In my search for the answers to life’s questions, I began taking LSD, practicing Eastern mysticism, saw the great white light and communicating with spirit guides, which today I am convinced were demons. My major at the University of Missouri was “Altered States of Consciousness” and filmmaking. Back then I did not understand the promotion of psychedelic drugs and the counter culture was a mind control war called MK ULTRA.
In 1980, when I moved into Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain in the Hollywood Hills above Sunset Blvd. to produce a number science fiction films, I did not know that Aldous Huxley lived within walking distance of my house several decades earlier and that Timothy Leary was there at the same time I was there. I had hung out with Leary at the Electric Circus on St. Marx’s place in the East Village and we would run into him at exercise gyms.
What is interesting is that Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain was home to a lot of musicians, writers and other people who were allegedly involved in MK ULTRA experiments. Years after I lived there, I read that there was supposedly some kind secret MK ULTRA facility hidden up there.
I remember jogging up the mountain one day and walking through some trees I discovered a strange looking compound directly beneath the cliff I was standing on. It was a strange looking compound and at the time, I believed it to me the home of some kind of cult. If that was the rumored facility I will never know, because I was unable to find it again since there was only one small view of it hidden by the private property of people’s homes.
The whole Lookout Mountain scene had no appeal to me because I had long ago left the “counter culture” and began intensively studying the Old and New Testament’s. There was no question that there was intense demonic activity in the Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain area. You can feel the presence of it in the air. But through my research, I began to realize the occult-Illuminati connections between psychedelic drugs and the MK ULTRA program which was developed by Nazi scientists who were practicing Satanists brought to America after World War II. This implied that certain rituals and drugs can open portals into another dimension and allow demonic entities to travel into our present reality, which is the secret component of the mind control wars.
Full article:
http://www.newswithviews.com/McGuire/paul111.htm
January 2, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
“You who read this represent the greatest danger to America.
No matter what the outcome of the war in Europe may be, Totalitarianism has already won a complete victory in many American minds and conquered all of our intellectual life. You have helped it to win.
Perhaps it is your right to destroy civilization and bring dictatorship to America, but not unless you understand fully what you are doing.
But the tragedy of today is that you — who are responsible for the coming Totalitarian dictatorship of America — you do not know your own responsibility. You would be the first to deny the active part you're playing…”
-Ayn Rand in a open letter entitled, “To All Fifth Columnists,“ in 1941
Totalitarianism has already conquered America. What happens in the next few years is simply the externalization of a battle that has already been won in the mind of man. For over a century millions of American’s have been put into a drug-like state through materialism, television, film, music, ever-increasing dosages of sexual perversion, political theatre, false prophets in the church, drugs, social engineering and the mind-control-factories of public education. Martial Law, detention camps and rule by military force are simply the by-products of an Armageddon-style war for the mind that has been won by those who arrogantly call themselves “the scientific elite.” But, most people do not understand the Luciferian and spiritual dimension of this warfare that was planned centuries ago.
This war is not a new war; it is a mind control war that goes back to ancient Babylon and the secret occult religions. The primary military theatre of this war is in the human mind. Beginning in 1917 when the father of modern public education came back from Communist Russia, the mass brainwashing and mind control war started with Orwellian thought control in public education.
This was not hidden; Dewey and others came out publicly and stated the purpose of publication was to not educate but to indoctrinate through scientific social engineering. Despite the fact that Dewey and the Communist movement claim to be atheists, the reality is that Karl Marx was a practicing Satanist. The Communist Manifesto that Marx wrote with Engels was simply a copy of the Illuminati Manifesto written in the late 1700’s. The six primary tenets of the Illuminati Manifesto are:
- Abolition of Monarchy and Ordered Government
- Abolition of Property
- Abolition of Inheritance
- Abolition of Patriotism
- Abolition of Family
- Abolition of Religion
These are also the exact same goals of the World Communist Movement. Look at America today and notice that every one of these areas is under attack or has been destroyed. This is a deliberate strategy and it ties directly in to harnessing Luciferian power and mind control because it severs all psychological and spiritual ties to God and the individual. The endgame is a microchipped planet of slaves who will serve the Illuminati elite.
This has not been a covert war in the traditional sense; most of it was announced in articles, speeches, books and through the media. Science fiction author and former head of British intelligence during World War I wrote, “The Open Conspiracy,” in 1928, which outlined a plan for global totalitarian state. In a June 16, 1928 article in the Illustrated London News, Wells’ good friend and fellow intellectual G. K. Chesterton reviewed the book and warned of the danger he saw in what Wells was saying about the "general tendency towards establishing a world control." Chesterton correctly perceived that Well’s call for world government would end up being a world dictatorship.
In 1940, H.G.Well’s published his book, “The New World Order” and revealed the battle plan. H.G. Wells, was far more than a leading intellectual, he was connected to occult secret societies. Unlike, American Marxists in academia and politics, Well’s believed the most effective method of Revolution was not with guns, camps and violent revolution. Wells understood that the most effective revolution could be achieved through the science of brainwashing and mind control. Wells wrote in “The New World Order,”…A Revolution need be neither an explosion nor a coup d'état. And the Revolution that lies before us now as the only hopeful alternative to chaos, either directly or after an interlude of world communism, is to be attained…” Well’s explained, “An altogether different type of Revolution may or may not be possible. No one can say that it is possible unless it is tried, but one can say with some assurance that unless it can be achieved the outlook for mankind for many generations at least is hopeless. The new Revolution aims essentially at a change in directive ideas. In its completeness it is an untried method.” Years later, after this new type of Revolution, that relied on social engineering and mind control was tested, Wells realized that scientific mind control is far more effective that troops, guns and camps.
“It depends for its success upon whether a sufficient number of minds can be brought to realize that the choice before us…” Aldous Huxley, a disciple of H.G. Wells and British Intelligence agent, came to Hollywood in the 1930’s to promote his ideas by writing screenplay’s that would be produced as feature films. In 1932 Huxley wrote a novel entitled, “Brave New World,” where he described a “scientific dictatorship: that was established not through armed troops and tyranny, but through drugs, sex and mind control. “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” Aldus Huxley.
In a 1962 speech at UC Berkeley, Huxley spoke primarily of the ‘Ultimate Revolution’ that focuses on ‘behavioral controls’ of people: If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must bring in an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. We are in process of developing a whole series of techniques, which will enable the controlling oligarchy – who have always existed and will presumably always exist – to get people to love their servitude.”
Huxley added, “I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world. If you can get people to consent to the state of servitude – then you are likely to have a much more stable, a much more lasting society; much more easily controllable society than you would if you were relying wholly on clubs, and firing squads and concentration camps.”
Aldous Huxley began turning on many Hollywood celebrities, writers and powerful people on to the psychedelic drug mescaline. He wrote his famous book, “Heaven and Hell and the Doors of Perception,” which advocated the use of strong psychedelic drugs to travel into different dimensions and he promoted occult and mystical teachings. As I High School student in New York City, I read Huxley’s book and took mescaline not as a means to get “high,” but to travel through the doors of perception. At around this same time, Harvard Professor Timothy Leary was telling people to “tune in, turn on and drop out,” by ingesting an even-more powerful drug LSD.
In my search for the answers to life’s questions, I began taking LSD, practicing Eastern mysticism, saw the great white light and communicating with spirit guides, which today I am convinced were demons. My major at the University of Missouri was “Altered States of Consciousness” and filmmaking. Back then I did not understand the promotion of psychedelic drugs and the counter culture was a mind control war called MK ULTRA.
In 1980, when I moved into Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain in the Hollywood Hills above Sunset Blvd. to produce a number science fiction films, I did not know that Aldous Huxley lived within walking distance of my house several decades earlier and that Timothy Leary was there at the same time I was there. I had hung out with Leary at the Electric Circus on St. Marx’s place in the East Village and we would run into him at exercise gyms.
What is interesting is that Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain was home to a lot of musicians, writers and other people who were allegedly involved in MK ULTRA experiments. Years after I lived there, I read that there was supposedly some kind secret MK ULTRA facility hidden up there.
I remember jogging up the mountain one day and walking through some trees I discovered a strange looking compound directly beneath the cliff I was standing on. It was a strange looking compound and at the time, I believed it to me the home of some kind of cult. If that was the rumored facility I will never know, because I was unable to find it again since there was only one small view of it hidden by the private property of people’s homes.
The whole Lookout Mountain scene had no appeal to me because I had long ago left the “counter culture” and began intensively studying the Old and New Testament’s. There was no question that there was intense demonic activity in the Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain area. You can feel the presence of it in the air. But through my research, I began to realize the occult-Illuminati connections between psychedelic drugs and the MK ULTRA program which was developed by Nazi scientists who were practicing Satanists brought to America after World War II. This implied that certain rituals and drugs can open portals into another dimension and allow demonic entities to travel into our present reality, which is the secret component of the mind control wars.
Full article:
http://www.newswithviews.com/McGuire/paul111.htm
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Coming In 2012: Target Tehran
January 4, 2012 by John Myers
The United States has Iran in its crosshairs.
Target Tehran is a new production set to be released worldwide in 2012. Washington hopes it will be a blockbuster.
The story is of an all-out air and naval assault on Iran by the forces of freedom and democracy: the U.S. Navy and Air Force. It is yet to be decided if the U.S. infantry will be written into the script; but with an unlimited budget, it very well may happen.
Details of the story are undergoing final edits at the Pentagon. President Barack Obama has already signed on to direct the project. Insiders say it could save his career.
(Unfortunately, Target Tehran will not follow the same plot as its namesake, Target Tokyo. When that film was released in 1945 — narrated by Ronald Reagan who, ironically, would become president — there was no doubt that America was fighting a global struggle for freedom. Many historians have called it America’s last good war.)
The first production, Iraq II, was directed by two Presidents at a cost of $1 trillion. Not since Ishtar has there been a bigger desert bust.
Almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers perished during the making of Iraq II. Another 32,000 U.S. soldiers were wounded. No U.S. agency officially keeps track of the “other side,” but estimates indicate that between 100,000 and 300,000 Iraqis died.
Counterpunch.com describes the Iraq war in a paragraph that reads like a movie review:
There is no happy ending. Iraq is as far away from democracy as it was during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Saddam was a ruthless butcher, but that hardly distinguished him as a Mideast ruler. Today, Iraq is being ripped apart by sectarian violence and is on the verge of a bloody civil war.
Such post-production details matter little to the neoconservatives who conceived the project.
Only a few weeks ago did production shut down in Iraq. In response, The Washington Post published this opinion piece by Jessica T. Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
Bullets Over Broadway
As misguided as it was for America, Iraq II was embraced by Obama, the second director brought in on the project. Continued work ceased only after the Iraqi government, which owns the lot where the production was being made, declared that U.S. forces could face prosecution for their actions.
It seems almost impossible to believe that the U.S. government, which seamlessly transformed Japan and Germany into rich democratic nations following World War II, could fail so miserably in the Mideast, yet that is exactly what has happened.
Springtime For Hitler
Washington is intent on further Mideast productions. In a case of life imitating art, Target Tehran seems much like Mel Brooks’ production The Producers.
Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seem as careless as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in turning their play into a flop — as long as their careers can be furthered by it.
On the PBS program Victory In The Pacific, the narrator says: “The emperor, who had worried about a rebellion from his subjects, helped ensure his position by posing as their savior.”
I expect the same of Obama in 2012. His re-election looms in less than 11 months, and nothing has proven to be a better prescription for winning than engaging in war. What better target than Iran? Unlike George W. Bush, Obama doesn’t have to lie about weapons of mass destruction. Many Americans are convinced Iran actually has them, and Washington is already in pre-production mode. Consider the recent public relations offensive:
Over the holidays, Obama’s Hawaii vacation included a workout at the Kaneohe Marine Base. Later, he hiked with family and friends along the Lanikai Pillbox trail on the Windward side of Oahu, a short distance from Pearl Harbor. Not far away, Obama was likely planning his re-election campaign and the centerpiece of it: Target Tehran.
Full article:
http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/government/coming-in-2012-target-tehran/?eiid=
The United States has Iran in its crosshairs.
Target Tehran is a new production set to be released worldwide in 2012. Washington hopes it will be a blockbuster.
The story is of an all-out air and naval assault on Iran by the forces of freedom and democracy: the U.S. Navy and Air Force. It is yet to be decided if the U.S. infantry will be written into the script; but with an unlimited budget, it very well may happen.
Details of the story are undergoing final edits at the Pentagon. President Barack Obama has already signed on to direct the project. Insiders say it could save his career.
(Unfortunately, Target Tehran will not follow the same plot as its namesake, Target Tokyo. When that film was released in 1945 — narrated by Ronald Reagan who, ironically, would become president — there was no doubt that America was fighting a global struggle for freedom. Many historians have called it America’s last good war.)
The first production, Iraq II, was directed by two Presidents at a cost of $1 trillion. Not since Ishtar has there been a bigger desert bust.
Almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers perished during the making of Iraq II. Another 32,000 U.S. soldiers were wounded. No U.S. agency officially keeps track of the “other side,” but estimates indicate that between 100,000 and 300,000 Iraqis died.
Counterpunch.com describes the Iraq war in a paragraph that reads like a movie review:
In the U.S. narrative — as repeated in U.S. media — this war was waged to prevent Iraq from terrorizing the world, never mind that all the “evidence” was trumped up. It is mind-boggling the notion of killing and maiming untold tens of thousands of Iraqis and displacing hundreds of thousands of them, and for U.S. politicians to continue to invoke notions of U.S. sacrifice and heroic deeds in the same breath.There were also indirect costs of Iraq II, including a five-fold increase in the price of oil and a declining opinion of the United States. Two generations ago, America was seen as the great liberator. Today, many people consider it the great instigator.
There is no happy ending. Iraq is as far away from democracy as it was during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Saddam was a ruthless butcher, but that hardly distinguished him as a Mideast ruler. Today, Iraq is being ripped apart by sectarian violence and is on the verge of a bloody civil war.
Such post-production details matter little to the neoconservatives who conceived the project.
Only a few weeks ago did production shut down in Iraq. In response, The Washington Post published this opinion piece by Jessica T. Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
The public may also never know exactly why or when the Bush administration made its tragically misguided decision to go to war. Former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill has said that unseating Saddam Hussein dominated a meeting with President George W. Bush 10 days after Bush’s inauguration — eight months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Among the many reasons posted — avenging an Iraqi attack on Bush’s father, getting the United States’ hands on Mideast oil, extending democracy across the region — only the charge that Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction came close to selling the American people on war.
Bullets Over Broadway
As misguided as it was for America, Iraq II was embraced by Obama, the second director brought in on the project. Continued work ceased only after the Iraqi government, which owns the lot where the production was being made, declared that U.S. forces could face prosecution for their actions.
It seems almost impossible to believe that the U.S. government, which seamlessly transformed Japan and Germany into rich democratic nations following World War II, could fail so miserably in the Mideast, yet that is exactly what has happened.
Springtime For Hitler
Washington is intent on further Mideast productions. In a case of life imitating art, Target Tehran seems much like Mel Brooks’ production The Producers.
Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seem as careless as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in turning their play into a flop — as long as their careers can be furthered by it.
On the PBS program Victory In The Pacific, the narrator says: “The emperor, who had worried about a rebellion from his subjects, helped ensure his position by posing as their savior.”
I expect the same of Obama in 2012. His re-election looms in less than 11 months, and nothing has proven to be a better prescription for winning than engaging in war. What better target than Iran? Unlike George W. Bush, Obama doesn’t have to lie about weapons of mass destruction. Many Americans are convinced Iran actually has them, and Washington is already in pre-production mode. Consider the recent public relations offensive:
- In a speech at the 71st General Assembly of the Union for Reform Judaism on Dec. 16, Obama said: “Another grave concern — and a threat to the security of Israel, the United States and the world — is Iran’s nuclear program. And that’s why our policy has been absolutely clear: We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
- In an interview with CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley that aired on Dec. 19, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared that Iran might be only a year away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. “If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it,” Panetta said.
- On Dec. 20, CNN reported that Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said “I am satisfied that the options that we are developing (for attacking Iran) are evolving to a point that they would be executable if necessary.”
- In a Dec. 21 interview with Israel’s Channel 10, Dennis Ross, Obama’s former Mideast adviser, said: “This is a president who has prided himself on doing what he says, so I think if he draws the conclusion that what is required is to take a certain kind of step, he’s prepared to take those steps. It means that when all options are on the table and if you’ve exhausted all other means, you do what is necessary.”
- On Dec. 23, former Pentagon adviser Matthew Kroenig’s essay “Time to Attack Iran” was published in Foreign Affairs. Kroenig builds his case that an American assault on Iran should be undertaken sooner rather than later.
Over the holidays, Obama’s Hawaii vacation included a workout at the Kaneohe Marine Base. Later, he hiked with family and friends along the Lanikai Pillbox trail on the Windward side of Oahu, a short distance from Pearl Harbor. Not far away, Obama was likely planning his re-election campaign and the centerpiece of it: Target Tehran.
Full article:
http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/government/coming-in-2012-target-tehran/?eiid=
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
ATF used "Fast and Furious" to make the case for gun regulations
By Sharyl Attkisson
December 7, 2011 1:44 PM
Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.
In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."
On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as "(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue." And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: "Bill--well done yesterday... (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case."
This revelation angers gun rights advocates. Larry Keane, a spokesman for National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group, calls the discussion of Fast and Furious to argue for Demand Letter 3 "disappointing and ironic." Keane says it's "deeply troubling" if sales made by gun dealers "voluntarily cooperating with ATF's flawed 'Operation Fast & Furious' were going to be used by some individuals within ATF to justify imposing a multiple sales reporting requirement for rifles."
The Gun Dealers' Quandary
Several gun dealers who cooperated with ATF told CBS News and Congressional investigators they only went through with suspicious sales because ATF asked them to.
Sometimes it was against the gun dealer's own best judgment.
In April, 2010 a licensed gun dealer cooperating with ATF was increasingly concerned about selling so many guns. "We just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to the bad guys," writes the gun dealer to ATF Phoenix officials, "(W)e were hoping to put together something like a letter of understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us down the road for selling these items."
ATF's group supervisor on Fast and Furious David Voth assures the gun dealer there's nothing to worry about. "We (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into detail."
Two months later, the same gun dealer grew more agitated.
"I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys. I guess I am looking for a bit of reassurance that the guns are not getting south or in the wrong hands...I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk of agents (sic) safety because I have some very close friends that are US Border Patrol agents in southern AZ as well as my concern for all the agents (sic) safety that protect our country."
"It's like ATF created or added to the problem so they could be the solution to it and pat themselves on the back," says one law enforcement source familiar with the facts. "It's a circular way of thinking."
The Justice Department and ATF declined to comment. ATF officials mentioned in this report did not respond to requests from CBS News to speak with them.
The "Demand Letter 3" Debate
The two sides in the gun debate have long clashed over whether gun dealers should have to report multiple rifle sales. On one side, ATF officials argue that a large number of semi-automatic, high-caliber rifles from the U.S. are being used by violent cartels in Mexico. They believe more reporting requirements would help ATF crack down. On the other side, gun rights advocates say that's unconstitutional, and would not make a difference in Mexican cartel crimes.
Two earlier Demand Letters were initiated in 2000 and affected a relatively small number of gun shops. Demand Letter 3 was to be much more sweeping, affecting 8,500 firearms dealers in four southwest border states: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. ATF chose those states because they "have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico." The reporting requirements were to apply if a gun dealer sells two or more long guns to a single person within five business days, and only if the guns are semi-automatic, greater than .22 caliber and can be fitted with a detachable magazine.
On April 25, 2011, ATF announced plans to implement Demand Letter 3. The National Shooting Sports Foundation is suing the ATF to stop the new rules. It calls the regulation an illegal attempt to enforce a law Congress never passed. ATF counters that it has reasonably targeted guns used most often to "commit violent crimes in Mexico, especially by drug gangs."
Reaction
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating Fast and Furious, as well as the alleged use of the case to advance gun regulations. "There's plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement. But, we've learned from our investigation that reporting multiple long gun sales would do nothing to stop the flow of firearms to known straw purchasers because many Federal Firearms Dealers are already voluntarily reporting suspicious transactions. It's pretty clear that the problem isn't lack of burdensome reporting requirements."
On July 12, 2011, Sen. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department oversees ATF. They asked Holder whether officials in his agency discussed how "Fast and Furious could be used to justify additional regulatory authorities." So far, they have not received a response. CBS News asked the Justice Department for comment and context on ATF emails about Fast and Furious and Demand Letter 3, but officials declined to speak with us.
"In light of the evidence, the Justice Department's refusal to answer questions about the role Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to play in advancing new firearms regulations is simply unacceptable," Rep. Issa told CBS News.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-57338546-10391695/documents-atf-used-fast-and-furious-to-make-the-case-for-gun-regulations/#ixzz1iQQzPF7V
December 7, 2011 1:44 PM
Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.
In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."
On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as "(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue." And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: "Bill--well done yesterday... (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case."
This revelation angers gun rights advocates. Larry Keane, a spokesman for National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group, calls the discussion of Fast and Furious to argue for Demand Letter 3 "disappointing and ironic." Keane says it's "deeply troubling" if sales made by gun dealers "voluntarily cooperating with ATF's flawed 'Operation Fast & Furious' were going to be used by some individuals within ATF to justify imposing a multiple sales reporting requirement for rifles."
The Gun Dealers' Quandary
Several gun dealers who cooperated with ATF told CBS News and Congressional investigators they only went through with suspicious sales because ATF asked them to.
Sometimes it was against the gun dealer's own best judgment.
In April, 2010 a licensed gun dealer cooperating with ATF was increasingly concerned about selling so many guns. "We just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to the bad guys," writes the gun dealer to ATF Phoenix officials, "(W)e were hoping to put together something like a letter of understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us down the road for selling these items."
ATF's group supervisor on Fast and Furious David Voth assures the gun dealer there's nothing to worry about. "We (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into detail."
Two months later, the same gun dealer grew more agitated.
"I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys. I guess I am looking for a bit of reassurance that the guns are not getting south or in the wrong hands...I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk of agents (sic) safety because I have some very close friends that are US Border Patrol agents in southern AZ as well as my concern for all the agents (sic) safety that protect our country."
"It's like ATF created or added to the problem so they could be the solution to it and pat themselves on the back," says one law enforcement source familiar with the facts. "It's a circular way of thinking."
The Justice Department and ATF declined to comment. ATF officials mentioned in this report did not respond to requests from CBS News to speak with them.
The "Demand Letter 3" Debate
The two sides in the gun debate have long clashed over whether gun dealers should have to report multiple rifle sales. On one side, ATF officials argue that a large number of semi-automatic, high-caliber rifles from the U.S. are being used by violent cartels in Mexico. They believe more reporting requirements would help ATF crack down. On the other side, gun rights advocates say that's unconstitutional, and would not make a difference in Mexican cartel crimes.
Two earlier Demand Letters were initiated in 2000 and affected a relatively small number of gun shops. Demand Letter 3 was to be much more sweeping, affecting 8,500 firearms dealers in four southwest border states: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. ATF chose those states because they "have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico." The reporting requirements were to apply if a gun dealer sells two or more long guns to a single person within five business days, and only if the guns are semi-automatic, greater than .22 caliber and can be fitted with a detachable magazine.
On April 25, 2011, ATF announced plans to implement Demand Letter 3. The National Shooting Sports Foundation is suing the ATF to stop the new rules. It calls the regulation an illegal attempt to enforce a law Congress never passed. ATF counters that it has reasonably targeted guns used most often to "commit violent crimes in Mexico, especially by drug gangs."
Reaction
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating Fast and Furious, as well as the alleged use of the case to advance gun regulations. "There's plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement. But, we've learned from our investigation that reporting multiple long gun sales would do nothing to stop the flow of firearms to known straw purchasers because many Federal Firearms Dealers are already voluntarily reporting suspicious transactions. It's pretty clear that the problem isn't lack of burdensome reporting requirements."
On July 12, 2011, Sen. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department oversees ATF. They asked Holder whether officials in his agency discussed how "Fast and Furious could be used to justify additional regulatory authorities." So far, they have not received a response. CBS News asked the Justice Department for comment and context on ATF emails about Fast and Furious and Demand Letter 3, but officials declined to speak with us.
"In light of the evidence, the Justice Department's refusal to answer questions about the role Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to play in advancing new firearms regulations is simply unacceptable," Rep. Issa told CBS News.
Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-57338546-10391695/documents-atf-used-fast-and-furious-to-make-the-case-for-gun-regulations/#ixzz1iQQzPF7V
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Freedoms Lost with Passage of NDAA, Does Anyone Care?
lack of reaction--by the GOP's Presidential candidates is a perfect example of how it will not matter to a Tinker's Dam which Republican candidate wins the nomination
RON PAUL IS THE ONLY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO GETS IT
By Chuck Baldwin
December 29, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
The recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the reaction--or better, lack of reaction--by the GOP's Presidential candidates is a perfect example of how it will not matter to a Tinker's Dam which Republican candidate wins the nomination, unless that candidate is Congressman Ron Paul. This is what so many people within the so-called Religious Right and establishment GOP just do not understand: they do not understand the fact that America is in the throes of a burgeoning police state. They have buried their heads in the sand for so long that they wouldn't know what tyranny looked like if it came up and bit them on their blessed assurance! They have totally drunk the propaganda Kool Aid that purports that the biggest threat to our liberties comes from the Sand People. Our Founding Fathers were a much wiser lot, of course. They understood perfectly that the biggest threat to our liberties comes from Washington, D.C., not Baghdad, or Tehran, or any other foreign entity.
Listen to Daniel Webster: "There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing."
Yet, except for Ron Paul, not a single Republican Presidential candidate has issued the slightest warning regarding the draconian components of the NDAA that literally turns America's homeland into a war zone and, with the stroke of a pen, effectively eviscerates the Bill of Rights. Why is that? Because, except for Ron Paul, none of them get it. Bachman, Gingrich, Perry, Romney, Santorum. None of them!
The day after Christmas, TheHill.com posted this report quoting Dr. Paul. "GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by Congress this month, will accelerate the country's 'slip into tyranny' and virtually assures 'our descent into totalitarianism.'
"'The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty,' Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporters. 'To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly.'"
The Hill report continued quoting Dr. Paul, "'The Fifth Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning,' Paul continued. 'It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about the due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented and without access to legal council. The danger of the NDAA is its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the U.S. government without trial.'"
The report also quoted Congressman Paul as saying, "'The president's widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law,' Paul said. 'That should chill all of us to our cores.'
"'The Bill of Rights has no exceptions for really bad people or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system, it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the Bill of Rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire United States is a battlefield in the war on terror. This is a very dangerous development, indeed. Beware.'"
Then again, not only are these pathetic Presidential pretenders not aware of this fast erosion of our liberties being orchestrated by these miserable miscreants inside the Beltway, how many of you folks who go to church every Sunday hear your pastor say a peep about the totalitarian elements contained within the NDAA? Yep! That's what I thought! They don't get it, either!
For that matter, where is the first State Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or Attorney General to say, "Not in my State!"? Where are the county sheriffs to say, "Not in my county!"? (I can promise you this, if Bob Fanning and Chuck Baldwin are elected Montana Governor and Lieutenant Governor in 2012, we will say it! And we will say it loudly enough that everyone in Washington D.C., will be able to hear it!)
And speaking of Montana, it is extremely encouraging to learn that my friend and Oathkeepers founder, attorney Stewart Rhodes, is leading a recall petition against the two US senators from Montana who both supported NDAA. Salem-News.com has the story: "Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86-14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.
"Montana is one of nine states with provisions that say that the right of recall extends to recalling members of its federal congressional delegation, pursuant to Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses."
The Salem-News report continued saying, "Montana law requires grounds for recall to be stated which show conformity to the allowed grounds for recall. The draft language of the Montana petitions, 'reason for recall' reads:
"The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S. citizens:
"'a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed...'
"[NDAA] permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, 'for the duration of hostilities' in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as 'task which does not end' to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2011.
"Those who voted Aye on December 15, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
"The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. We the undersigned call for a recall election to be held for Senator Max S. Baucus [and Senator Jonathan Tester] and charge that he has violated his oath of office, to protect and defend the United States Constitution."
The report goes on to quote Rhodes (a Yale Law School graduate) as saying, "These politicians from both parties betrayed our trust, and violated the oath they took to defend the Constitution. It's not about the left or the right, it's about our Bill of Rights. Without the Bill of Rights, there is no America. It is the Crown Jewel of our Constitution, and the high-water mark of Western Civilization." Amen, Stewart! Amen!
NDAA should be to Americans in 2011 what the Boston Massacre was to the colonists in 1770, because this Act literally massacres the Bill of Rights. (And risking the charge that I'm tooting my own horn, when Montanans elect Bob Fanning Governor and Chuck Baldwin Lieutenant Governor in 2012, it will be the second "shot heard 'round the world.") And of all the Presidential hopefuls, Ron Paul is only one who gets it!
Full article and links:
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin681.htm
RON PAUL IS THE ONLY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO GETS IT
By Chuck Baldwin
December 29, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
The recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the reaction--or better, lack of reaction--by the GOP's Presidential candidates is a perfect example of how it will not matter to a Tinker's Dam which Republican candidate wins the nomination, unless that candidate is Congressman Ron Paul. This is what so many people within the so-called Religious Right and establishment GOP just do not understand: they do not understand the fact that America is in the throes of a burgeoning police state. They have buried their heads in the sand for so long that they wouldn't know what tyranny looked like if it came up and bit them on their blessed assurance! They have totally drunk the propaganda Kool Aid that purports that the biggest threat to our liberties comes from the Sand People. Our Founding Fathers were a much wiser lot, of course. They understood perfectly that the biggest threat to our liberties comes from Washington, D.C., not Baghdad, or Tehran, or any other foreign entity.
Listen to Daniel Webster: "There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing."
Yet, except for Ron Paul, not a single Republican Presidential candidate has issued the slightest warning regarding the draconian components of the NDAA that literally turns America's homeland into a war zone and, with the stroke of a pen, effectively eviscerates the Bill of Rights. Why is that? Because, except for Ron Paul, none of them get it. Bachman, Gingrich, Perry, Romney, Santorum. None of them!
The day after Christmas, TheHill.com posted this report quoting Dr. Paul. "GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by Congress this month, will accelerate the country's 'slip into tyranny' and virtually assures 'our descent into totalitarianism.'
"'The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty,' Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporters. 'To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly.'"
The Hill report continued quoting Dr. Paul, "'The Fifth Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning,' Paul continued. 'It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about the due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented and without access to legal council. The danger of the NDAA is its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the U.S. government without trial.'"
The report also quoted Congressman Paul as saying, "'The president's widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law,' Paul said. 'That should chill all of us to our cores.'
"'The Bill of Rights has no exceptions for really bad people or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system, it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the Bill of Rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire United States is a battlefield in the war on terror. This is a very dangerous development, indeed. Beware.'"
Then again, not only are these pathetic Presidential pretenders not aware of this fast erosion of our liberties being orchestrated by these miserable miscreants inside the Beltway, how many of you folks who go to church every Sunday hear your pastor say a peep about the totalitarian elements contained within the NDAA? Yep! That's what I thought! They don't get it, either!
For that matter, where is the first State Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or Attorney General to say, "Not in my State!"? Where are the county sheriffs to say, "Not in my county!"? (I can promise you this, if Bob Fanning and Chuck Baldwin are elected Montana Governor and Lieutenant Governor in 2012, we will say it! And we will say it loudly enough that everyone in Washington D.C., will be able to hear it!)
And speaking of Montana, it is extremely encouraging to learn that my friend and Oathkeepers founder, attorney Stewart Rhodes, is leading a recall petition against the two US senators from Montana who both supported NDAA. Salem-News.com has the story: "Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86-14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.
"Montana is one of nine states with provisions that say that the right of recall extends to recalling members of its federal congressional delegation, pursuant to Montana Code 2-16-603, on the grounds of physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of certain felony offenses."
The Salem-News report continued saying, "Montana law requires grounds for recall to be stated which show conformity to the allowed grounds for recall. The draft language of the Montana petitions, 'reason for recall' reads:
"The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all U.S. citizens:
"'a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed...'
"[NDAA] permanently abolishes the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, 'for the duration of hostilities' in the War on Terror, which was defined by President George W. Bush as 'task which does not end' to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2011.
"Those who voted Aye on December 15, 2011, Bill of Rights Day, for NDAA 2011 have attempted to grant powers which cannot be granted, which violate both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
"The Montana Recall Act stipulates that officials including US senators can only be recalled for physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct, or conviction of a felony offense. We the undersigned call for a recall election to be held for Senator Max S. Baucus [and Senator Jonathan Tester] and charge that he has violated his oath of office, to protect and defend the United States Constitution."
The report goes on to quote Rhodes (a Yale Law School graduate) as saying, "These politicians from both parties betrayed our trust, and violated the oath they took to defend the Constitution. It's not about the left or the right, it's about our Bill of Rights. Without the Bill of Rights, there is no America. It is the Crown Jewel of our Constitution, and the high-water mark of Western Civilization." Amen, Stewart! Amen!
NDAA should be to Americans in 2011 what the Boston Massacre was to the colonists in 1770, because this Act literally massacres the Bill of Rights. (And risking the charge that I'm tooting my own horn, when Montanans elect Bob Fanning Governor and Chuck Baldwin Lieutenant Governor in 2012, it will be the second "shot heard 'round the world.") And of all the Presidential hopefuls, Ron Paul is only one who gets it!
Full article and links:
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin681.htm
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
What is missing from this article is the fact that it was Darwinistic Evolution that drove the concept of "race" and the belief that the "savages" were not fully human, but were examples of unevolved sub-human species and "throwbacks". Interestingly, "Christian Evangelism" is subtly slipped in as the cause instead.
Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
Curator Nanette Snoep gives a tour of the Savages exhibition
An exhibition in Paris looks at the history of so-called human zoos, that put inhabitants from foreign lands, mostly African countries, on display as article of curiosity.
Over four centuries from the first voyages of discovery, European societies developed an appetite for exhibiting exotic human "specimens" shipped back to Paris, London or Berlin for the interest and delectation of the crowd.
What started as wide-eyed curiosity on the part of observers turned into ghoulish pseudo-science in the mid-1800s, as researchers sought out physical evidence for their theory of races.
Finally, in high colonial times, hundreds of thousands of people visited "human zoos" created as part of the great international trade fairs.
Here they could watch whole villages of Kanaks or Senegalese, with real-life inhabitants paid to act out war dances or religious rituals before their colonial masters.
The story is told at the Quai Branly museum in Paris until June 2012, mainly through the display of paintings, old photographs, archive film, posters and postcards.
The aim of the exhibition is explicit - to teach how Western societies created a sense of "the other" in regard to foreign peoples, thus legitimizing their eventual domination.
The information [that] allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."”
Ex-footballer Liliane Thuram
"What we tried to do is conduct a kind of archaeology of the stereotype," says curator Nanette Snoep.
The display, entitled "Inventing the Savage", was the inspiration of the Caribbean-born former international footballer Liliane Thuram, who today heads his own anti-racism foundation.
"I have long been interested in slavery because of the way my own family was affected by it," says Thuram.
"It became clear to me that racism was above all an intellectual construction. And as such, it was also susceptible to de-construction.
"That's what we are trying to do with the exhibition: putting on display the information that allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."
At the start, all was relatively innocent. One of the first paintings is of four Greenlanders brought to the Danish court in 1664 by a Dutch sailor. They stare out with a look as bewildered as those that must have been on the faces of their captors.
"What is fascinating is that on top of the painting are written their names. In other words, at this early stage they are seen as individuals. Exotic yes, but people," says Snoep. "It is later when the names disappear that the relationship deteriorates."
Another early portrait is of the Tahitian man called Omai, who was brought to the court of King George III in London by the explorer Joseph Banks.
In his book The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes describes Omai as "quick-witted, charming and astute. His exotic good looks… were much admired in society, especially among the more racy of the aristocratic ladies."
But describing this same portrait, Holmes adds: "It is not clear if [Omai] is Banks's companion or his trophy."
Guest or specimen? If there was room for ambiguity in the early days - when explorers and explored often found each other mutually intriguing - this disappeared with the new certainties of the colonial epoch.
The saddest emblem of the coming era was the South African Saartjie Baartman, later to be known as the Hottentot Venus. Born around 1780, she was brought to London in 1810 and put on display.
She had the genetic characteristic known as steatopygia - extremely protuberant buttocks and elongated labia - which evidently delighted the cabaret-goers of the British capital.
Later she came to Paris, and was analysed by the budding racial anthropologists. According to the exhibition catalogue, one scientist described her as having the "buttocks of a mandrill".
When she died in poverty, her skeleton was put on display. It remained on show in the Museum of Mankind in Paris until 1974. In 2002, her remains were repatriated and buried in South Africa.
"Baartman marks the start of the period of description, measurement and classification, which soon leads us to hierarchisation - the idea that there are lesser and greater races," says Snoep.
The climax of the story comes with the imperialist high noon of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
A European public fed on notions of Christian evangelism and cultural superiority was titillated by re-enactments of life in the colonies which became a regular part of international trade fairs.
Entrepreneurs put on travelling stage shows featuring Hindu rope-dancers, Arabian camel-herders, Zulu warriors or hunters from New Caledonia. Whole African villages were recreated to allow Europeans a glimpse of "primitive" living.
The most famous impresario was "Buffalo Bill" Cody whose Wild West shows - according to the exhibition organisers - were another example of racial stereotyping.
The story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races”
Some 35,000 people are reckoned to have taken part in the displays. Most were paid.
"They were shows. Public entertainment. The villagers from Africa or India were acting out a role. Significantly there were barriers between the public and the performers, to reinforce the notion of separateness," says Snoep.
These ethnographic displays died out after World War II. Oddly it was Hitler who first banned them. The last was in Belgium in 1958.
The organisers of Inventing the Savage claim that these "human zoos" were seen by 1.4 billion people overall - and that they therefore played an important, and so far unacknowledged, part in the development of modern racism.
"What is left of this incredible story today?" intones the voice-over on a film which is part of the exhibition.
"A view of Africa and its people that is still contemptuous. A certain way in the West of believing oneself superior. Above all the story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races."
Inventing the Savage provides plenty of food for thought, and there is no-one alive today who would for a minute defend the practice of human ethnographic exhibitions.
The show has been well-received but has come into some criticism for what some see as its heavy-handed didacticisim - as well as a kind of historical cherry-picking that leaves out what does not fit the message.
There is no mention for example of what the human "exhibits" themselves thought when brought to Europe. They are presented as victims, nothing more. Nor are the reactions of the audience explored. Maybe these were more complex than mere colonial self-satisfaction.
Writing in the left-wing newspaper Libération, columnist Marcela Iacub detects in the show "the frankly conservative role… of militant anti-racists and the consensus that they seek to create."
The spirit of the exhibition, she says, is a kind of "censorship, accompanied by the promotion of pedagogical, uplifting messages that will eradicate in us all those dangerous ideas that survive."
Iacub says it is ironic that it was just that kind of misguided moral superiority - the need to improve the unenlightened - that led to Europeans colonising Africa in the first place.
"In the eyes of the militant anti-racist, we are all violent, easily manipulated, barbarous, bloodthirsty, and incapable of thinking without the aid of people to teach us. In fact just like the 'savage' of old!"
Full article and links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16295827
Human zoos: When real people were exhibits
By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
Curator Nanette Snoep gives a tour of the Savages exhibition
An exhibition in Paris looks at the history of so-called human zoos, that put inhabitants from foreign lands, mostly African countries, on display as article of curiosity.
Over four centuries from the first voyages of discovery, European societies developed an appetite for exhibiting exotic human "specimens" shipped back to Paris, London or Berlin for the interest and delectation of the crowd.
What started as wide-eyed curiosity on the part of observers turned into ghoulish pseudo-science in the mid-1800s, as researchers sought out physical evidence for their theory of races.
Finally, in high colonial times, hundreds of thousands of people visited "human zoos" created as part of the great international trade fairs.
Here they could watch whole villages of Kanaks or Senegalese, with real-life inhabitants paid to act out war dances or religious rituals before their colonial masters.
The story is told at the Quai Branly museum in Paris until June 2012, mainly through the display of paintings, old photographs, archive film, posters and postcards.
The aim of the exhibition is explicit - to teach how Western societies created a sense of "the other" in regard to foreign peoples, thus legitimizing their eventual domination.
The information [that] allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."”
Ex-footballer Liliane Thuram
"What we tried to do is conduct a kind of archaeology of the stereotype," says curator Nanette Snoep.
The display, entitled "Inventing the Savage", was the inspiration of the Caribbean-born former international footballer Liliane Thuram, who today heads his own anti-racism foundation.
"I have long been interested in slavery because of the way my own family was affected by it," says Thuram.
"It became clear to me that racism was above all an intellectual construction. And as such, it was also susceptible to de-construction.
"That's what we are trying to do with the exhibition: putting on display the information that allows people to understand why there are still faultlines in society based on the colour of our skins."
At the start, all was relatively innocent. One of the first paintings is of four Greenlanders brought to the Danish court in 1664 by a Dutch sailor. They stare out with a look as bewildered as those that must have been on the faces of their captors.
"What is fascinating is that on top of the painting are written their names. In other words, at this early stage they are seen as individuals. Exotic yes, but people," says Snoep. "It is later when the names disappear that the relationship deteriorates."
Another early portrait is of the Tahitian man called Omai, who was brought to the court of King George III in London by the explorer Joseph Banks.
In his book The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes describes Omai as "quick-witted, charming and astute. His exotic good looks… were much admired in society, especially among the more racy of the aristocratic ladies."
But describing this same portrait, Holmes adds: "It is not clear if [Omai] is Banks's companion or his trophy."
Guest or specimen? If there was room for ambiguity in the early days - when explorers and explored often found each other mutually intriguing - this disappeared with the new certainties of the colonial epoch.
The saddest emblem of the coming era was the South African Saartjie Baartman, later to be known as the Hottentot Venus. Born around 1780, she was brought to London in 1810 and put on display.
She had the genetic characteristic known as steatopygia - extremely protuberant buttocks and elongated labia - which evidently delighted the cabaret-goers of the British capital.
Later she came to Paris, and was analysed by the budding racial anthropologists. According to the exhibition catalogue, one scientist described her as having the "buttocks of a mandrill".
When she died in poverty, her skeleton was put on display. It remained on show in the Museum of Mankind in Paris until 1974. In 2002, her remains were repatriated and buried in South Africa.
"Baartman marks the start of the period of description, measurement and classification, which soon leads us to hierarchisation - the idea that there are lesser and greater races," says Snoep.
The climax of the story comes with the imperialist high noon of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
A European public fed on notions of Christian evangelism and cultural superiority was titillated by re-enactments of life in the colonies which became a regular part of international trade fairs.
Entrepreneurs put on travelling stage shows featuring Hindu rope-dancers, Arabian camel-herders, Zulu warriors or hunters from New Caledonia. Whole African villages were recreated to allow Europeans a glimpse of "primitive" living.
The most famous impresario was "Buffalo Bill" Cody whose Wild West shows - according to the exhibition organisers - were another example of racial stereotyping.
The story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races”
Some 35,000 people are reckoned to have taken part in the displays. Most were paid.
"They were shows. Public entertainment. The villagers from Africa or India were acting out a role. Significantly there were barriers between the public and the performers, to reinforce the notion of separateness," says Snoep.
These ethnographic displays died out after World War II. Oddly it was Hitler who first banned them. The last was in Belgium in 1958.
The organisers of Inventing the Savage claim that these "human zoos" were seen by 1.4 billion people overall - and that they therefore played an important, and so far unacknowledged, part in the development of modern racism.
"What is left of this incredible story today?" intones the voice-over on a film which is part of the exhibition.
"A view of Africa and its people that is still contemptuous. A certain way in the West of believing oneself superior. Above all the story helps explain how millions of westerners were manipulated into a belief in the inequality of races."
Inventing the Savage provides plenty of food for thought, and there is no-one alive today who would for a minute defend the practice of human ethnographic exhibitions.
The show has been well-received but has come into some criticism for what some see as its heavy-handed didacticisim - as well as a kind of historical cherry-picking that leaves out what does not fit the message.
There is no mention for example of what the human "exhibits" themselves thought when brought to Europe. They are presented as victims, nothing more. Nor are the reactions of the audience explored. Maybe these were more complex than mere colonial self-satisfaction.
Writing in the left-wing newspaper Libération, columnist Marcela Iacub detects in the show "the frankly conservative role… of militant anti-racists and the consensus that they seek to create."
The spirit of the exhibition, she says, is a kind of "censorship, accompanied by the promotion of pedagogical, uplifting messages that will eradicate in us all those dangerous ideas that survive."
Iacub says it is ironic that it was just that kind of misguided moral superiority - the need to improve the unenlightened - that led to Europeans colonising Africa in the first place.
"In the eyes of the militant anti-racist, we are all violent, easily manipulated, barbarous, bloodthirsty, and incapable of thinking without the aid of people to teach us. In fact just like the 'savage' of old!"
Full article and links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16295827
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Old Testament prophecy fulfilled before our eyes?
Americans scrambling to Bible to see previously untold parallels with today
Posted: December 21, 2011
7:40 pm Eastern
By Joe Kovacs
WND
What do sycamore and cedar trees have to do with biblical prophecy, the tragic events of 9/11 and the imminent future of the United States?
The roots of a sycamore tree at Ground Zero felled on Sept. 11, 2001, have been preserved as a memorial to the event in New York City. A local messianic rabbi believes it's a visible fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy about God's current judgment on America.
Everything, according to a new book which says an obscure text from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah is an urgent wake-up call for all Americans in light of what happened on that fateful day in 2001.
"The Harbinger" by Jonathan Cahn, a messianic rabbi from the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in Wayne, N.J., deciphers stunning connections between what some may think is a cryptic biblical prophecy to the news events happening right now, in our current time.
Read "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future" for yourself!
The key verse in question is Isaiah 9:10, which states: "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." (King James Version)
These words were first uttered by leaders in ancient Israel and in response to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment by God against apostasy. It wasn't meant to destroy the nation, but to awaken it, according to most commentaries.
Historically speaking, the northern kingdom of Israel did not repent of its rebellion against God's commandments, and were eventually conquered and deported from their property by the ancient Assyrians. Eventually, the southern kingdom of Judah was also overcome by the Babylonians after the Jews refused to repent as well.
But in "The Harbinger," Cahn shows uncanny similarities between what's stated in Isaiah 9:10 to the 21st century events of 9/11 and the years afterward, suggesting America is currently under a time of focused judgment by Almighty God.
Cahn claims the part of the prophecy noting "The bricks are fallen down" refers directly to the crumbling of the World Trade Center in New York City, with the verse connoting on an attitude of defiance, a desire to rebuild with stronger materials instead of acknowledging the hand of God and moving toward national repentance.
The verse mentions sycamore and cedar trees, and it's here that things start to get eerie with the terrorist attack involving planes that smashed into the Twin Towers, leading to their eventual crumbling.
"After the cloud of dust began to clear, police officers, rescue workers and onlookers gazed at the little plot of land at the edge of Ground Zero," Cahn writes in "The Harbinger."
"There in the middle of the ash and debris that covered the ground was a fallen tree. It would soon become a symbol of 9/11 and of Ground Zero. And it was a symbol ... but one much more ancient than anyone there could have realized, and one carrying a message no one could have fathomed."
"The tree at Ground Zero that was struck down on September 11 was a sycamore tree."
Cahn notes that in Old Testament times, the Assyrians who attacked the ancient Israelites intended to cut down the sycamore trees belonging to God's people. But the intention was not present with the hijackers of 2001.
"The terrorists had no idea of Isaiah 9:10, no idea of the Harbingers, no idea of the sycamore tree growing at the corner of Ground Zero, and no idea that their attack would cause it to fall or that its fall was connected to an ancient prophecy. They had no idea ... but it still happened."
Not only was a sycamore tree struck on 9/11, but it was replaced in the exact same location by another tree of the type mentioned in the original Hebrew, an "erez" tree, which is the same genus as the cedar.
The uprooted sycamore tree from Ground Zero was replaced by the "Tree of Hope," a conifer tree which Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 9:10.
"The most natural thing to have done would have been to replace one sycamore with another," Cahn writes. "But the prophecy required that the fallen sycamore be replaced with a tree of an entirely different nature. So the tree that replaced the sycamore of Ground Zero was likewise not a sycamore. According to the prophecy, the sycamore must be replaced by the biblical erez. So it must be replaced by a conifer tree."
And that's what took place in 2003, as a conifer tree, the "Tree of Hope" as it was called, was planted in the spot where the sycamore was slammed on 9/11.
"Think about it," says Cahn. "Who could have put it all together? The tower fell because of the terrorists. It happened to fall exactly as it did in order to strike down that one particular tree. The tree just happened to be a sycamore, which just happened to be growing at the corner of Ground Zero.
"The tree that would replace it just happened to be given as a gift from outsiders who had nothing to do with anything else, but who just happened to feel led to give it. Their gift just happened to be the fulfillment of the biblical Erez Tree, which just happened to be the same tree spoken of in the ancient vow – the tree that must replace the Sycamore.
"They just happened to lower it into the same soil in that the fallen Sycamore had once stood – exactly as in the Hebrew of the ancient vow. And the man who led the ceremony around the tree just happened to bring it all together without knowing that he was bringing anything together. No one knew what they were doing. It wasn't a matter of intent. It was a manifestation of the Harbingers."
"The parallels are truly stunning," says Joseph Farah, founder of WND, who is producing a video documentary about Cahn's findings. "They are too numerous and too powerful to relate in news story form. In fact, they are overwhelming in their number and their exactitude. I am persuaded God is trying to tell America something and Rabbi Cahn has found the key to unlocking the message."
As WND previously reported, two major American political figures actually voiced the Isaiah 9:10 prophecy in public in the immediate wake of the 9/11 onslaught.
"In the aftermath of the attack, the nation was stunned," said Cahn, "Everyone was trying to make sense of what had happened – this unprecedented attack on America. The very next day, September 12, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle presented America's response to the world. And what did he say?"
Daschle said: "America will emerge from this tragedy as we have emerged from all adversity – united and strong. Nothing … nothing can replace the losses of those who have suffered. I know there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that speaks to all of us at times like this."
He then went on to read Isaiah 9:10:
"Daschle has no idea what he is doing here," explains Cahn. "He thinks he's offering comforting words to a grief-stricken people, but he is actually embracing the spiritually defiant and arrogant words of the children of Israel, proclaiming the ancient and ominous vow of the leaders of that nation. He doesn't realize it, but he is actually inviting more judgment on the nation."
It might be of some significance that Daschle, one of the most powerful men in the nation when he spoke those words, later fell into disgrace – to the point where he couldn't even serve in Barack Obama's Cabinet.
That might have been the end of the story – if no other top leader in the nation uttered those strange and obscure words after 9/11. But that's not the case.
On the third anniversary of the attack, Sept. 11, 2004, another powerful U.S. senator running for vice president that year and who would famously run for the presidency four years later, gave a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus.
This time, John Edwards' entire speech was built on a foundation of Isaiah 9:10: "Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord's Word to get us through," he said. He then read Isaiah 9:10. He went on to talk about how America was doing just that – rebuilding with hewn stone and planting cedars:
"Like Daschle, Edwards thinks he's invoking inspirational and comforting words from the Bible, but he's actually inviting judgment on America," says Cahn. "He's repeating the vow that provoked God to bring calamity on ancient Israel."
Get Rabbi Jonathan Cahn's "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future."
Full article:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=379829
Posted: December 21, 2011
7:40 pm Eastern
By Joe Kovacs
WND
What do sycamore and cedar trees have to do with biblical prophecy, the tragic events of 9/11 and the imminent future of the United States?
The roots of a sycamore tree at Ground Zero felled on Sept. 11, 2001, have been preserved as a memorial to the event in New York City. A local messianic rabbi believes it's a visible fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy about God's current judgment on America.
Everything, according to a new book which says an obscure text from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah is an urgent wake-up call for all Americans in light of what happened on that fateful day in 2001.
"The Harbinger" by Jonathan Cahn, a messianic rabbi from the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in Wayne, N.J., deciphers stunning connections between what some may think is a cryptic biblical prophecy to the news events happening right now, in our current time.
Read "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future" for yourself!
The key verse in question is Isaiah 9:10, which states: "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." (King James Version)
These words were first uttered by leaders in ancient Israel and in response to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment by God against apostasy. It wasn't meant to destroy the nation, but to awaken it, according to most commentaries.
Historically speaking, the northern kingdom of Israel did not repent of its rebellion against God's commandments, and were eventually conquered and deported from their property by the ancient Assyrians. Eventually, the southern kingdom of Judah was also overcome by the Babylonians after the Jews refused to repent as well.
But in "The Harbinger," Cahn shows uncanny similarities between what's stated in Isaiah 9:10 to the 21st century events of 9/11 and the years afterward, suggesting America is currently under a time of focused judgment by Almighty God.
Cahn claims the part of the prophecy noting "The bricks are fallen down" refers directly to the crumbling of the World Trade Center in New York City, with the verse connoting on an attitude of defiance, a desire to rebuild with stronger materials instead of acknowledging the hand of God and moving toward national repentance.
The verse mentions sycamore and cedar trees, and it's here that things start to get eerie with the terrorist attack involving planes that smashed into the Twin Towers, leading to their eventual crumbling.
"After the cloud of dust began to clear, police officers, rescue workers and onlookers gazed at the little plot of land at the edge of Ground Zero," Cahn writes in "The Harbinger."
"There in the middle of the ash and debris that covered the ground was a fallen tree. It would soon become a symbol of 9/11 and of Ground Zero. And it was a symbol ... but one much more ancient than anyone there could have realized, and one carrying a message no one could have fathomed."
"The tree at Ground Zero that was struck down on September 11 was a sycamore tree."
Cahn notes that in Old Testament times, the Assyrians who attacked the ancient Israelites intended to cut down the sycamore trees belonging to God's people. But the intention was not present with the hijackers of 2001.
"The terrorists had no idea of Isaiah 9:10, no idea of the Harbingers, no idea of the sycamore tree growing at the corner of Ground Zero, and no idea that their attack would cause it to fall or that its fall was connected to an ancient prophecy. They had no idea ... but it still happened."
Not only was a sycamore tree struck on 9/11, but it was replaced in the exact same location by another tree of the type mentioned in the original Hebrew, an "erez" tree, which is the same genus as the cedar.
The uprooted sycamore tree from Ground Zero was replaced by the "Tree of Hope," a conifer tree which Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 9:10.
"The most natural thing to have done would have been to replace one sycamore with another," Cahn writes. "But the prophecy required that the fallen sycamore be replaced with a tree of an entirely different nature. So the tree that replaced the sycamore of Ground Zero was likewise not a sycamore. According to the prophecy, the sycamore must be replaced by the biblical erez. So it must be replaced by a conifer tree."
And that's what took place in 2003, as a conifer tree, the "Tree of Hope" as it was called, was planted in the spot where the sycamore was slammed on 9/11.
"Think about it," says Cahn. "Who could have put it all together? The tower fell because of the terrorists. It happened to fall exactly as it did in order to strike down that one particular tree. The tree just happened to be a sycamore, which just happened to be growing at the corner of Ground Zero.
"The tree that would replace it just happened to be given as a gift from outsiders who had nothing to do with anything else, but who just happened to feel led to give it. Their gift just happened to be the fulfillment of the biblical Erez Tree, which just happened to be the same tree spoken of in the ancient vow – the tree that must replace the Sycamore.
"They just happened to lower it into the same soil in that the fallen Sycamore had once stood – exactly as in the Hebrew of the ancient vow. And the man who led the ceremony around the tree just happened to bring it all together without knowing that he was bringing anything together. No one knew what they were doing. It wasn't a matter of intent. It was a manifestation of the Harbingers."
"The parallels are truly stunning," says Joseph Farah, founder of WND, who is producing a video documentary about Cahn's findings. "They are too numerous and too powerful to relate in news story form. In fact, they are overwhelming in their number and their exactitude. I am persuaded God is trying to tell America something and Rabbi Cahn has found the key to unlocking the message."
As WND previously reported, two major American political figures actually voiced the Isaiah 9:10 prophecy in public in the immediate wake of the 9/11 onslaught.
"In the aftermath of the attack, the nation was stunned," said Cahn, "Everyone was trying to make sense of what had happened – this unprecedented attack on America. The very next day, September 12, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle presented America's response to the world. And what did he say?"
Daschle said: "America will emerge from this tragedy as we have emerged from all adversity – united and strong. Nothing … nothing can replace the losses of those who have suffered. I know there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that speaks to all of us at times like this."
He then went on to read Isaiah 9:10:
"Daschle has no idea what he is doing here," explains Cahn. "He thinks he's offering comforting words to a grief-stricken people, but he is actually embracing the spiritually defiant and arrogant words of the children of Israel, proclaiming the ancient and ominous vow of the leaders of that nation. He doesn't realize it, but he is actually inviting more judgment on the nation."
It might be of some significance that Daschle, one of the most powerful men in the nation when he spoke those words, later fell into disgrace – to the point where he couldn't even serve in Barack Obama's Cabinet.
That might have been the end of the story – if no other top leader in the nation uttered those strange and obscure words after 9/11. But that's not the case.
On the third anniversary of the attack, Sept. 11, 2004, another powerful U.S. senator running for vice president that year and who would famously run for the presidency four years later, gave a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus.
This time, John Edwards' entire speech was built on a foundation of Isaiah 9:10: "Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord's Word to get us through," he said. He then read Isaiah 9:10. He went on to talk about how America was doing just that – rebuilding with hewn stone and planting cedars:
"Like Daschle, Edwards thinks he's invoking inspirational and comforting words from the Bible, but he's actually inviting judgment on America," says Cahn. "He's repeating the vow that provoked God to bring calamity on ancient Israel."
Get Rabbi Jonathan Cahn's "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future."
Full article:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=379829
Friday, December 02, 2011
Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world
Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr, Finance Examiner
www.examiner.com
One of the longest running conspiracy theories in the global mindset is that the banking cartels would like nothing more than to control the economic and social domains of nations through a centralized authority, which would then be run by a select few.
On November 24th, this theory may have finally come out of the darkness and into the light as an executive member of the European Central Bank (ECB) called for nations in the Euro Zone to be willing to give up economic sovereignty to the EMU over fiscal, structural, and economic polices.
…from the just delivered speech by ECB executive board member José Manuel González-Páramo is the following: "We cannot completely delegate governance to financial markets. The euro area is the world’s second largest monetary area. It cannot depend solely on the opinions of ratings agencies and markets. It needs economic governance arrangements that are preventive and linear. This underscores my central point that a much more comprehensive approach to economic governance is now the priority for the euro area. And this means more economic and financial integration for the euro area, with a significant transfer of sovereignty to the EMU level over fiscal, structural and financial policies." - Zerohedge
For a course of action to be considered a conspiracy, it requires plans to be agreed upon, and taken up by more than one person or coalition. Several key indicators and actions that have occurred recently fulfill this requirement of a focused drive towards a centralized banking authority that supersedes the sovereignty of nations.
First, the removal of leadership in both Greece and Italy has led to members of the banking establishment to be placed in power, and in those positions. In Greece, newly appointed Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is a former head of the Central Bank of Greece, and in Italy, Mario Monti, who was the head of the international division of Goldman Sachs and key member of the tri-lateral commission and Bilderberg group, has replaced former Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi.
Secondly, a recent document has came out of the Vatican and Catholic Church calling for a global public authority, and central banking establishment for the greater good of the world in this continuing economic crisis.
While nations such as the United States, and governing bodies such as the European Union, downplay the consequences of massive indebtedness, the old axiom of a borrower being slave to the lender has, and always will be true. With Americans now in bondage for over $15 trillion in debt liabilities to banks and other sovereign nations, and the EU moving headlong into a liquidity crisis and economic meltdown under the weight of $30 trillion in overall debts, the time may be right for the banking cartels to get their wish, and move out of the shadows to seize control of the overall economic system, even at the loss of power to sovereign states.
Continue reading on Examiner.com Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/finance-examiner-in-national/conspiracy-theory-confirmed-bankers-do-want-to-rule-the-world#ixzz1fOINjd00
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr, Finance Examiner
www.examiner.com
One of the longest running conspiracy theories in the global mindset is that the banking cartels would like nothing more than to control the economic and social domains of nations through a centralized authority, which would then be run by a select few.
On November 24th, this theory may have finally come out of the darkness and into the light as an executive member of the European Central Bank (ECB) called for nations in the Euro Zone to be willing to give up economic sovereignty to the EMU over fiscal, structural, and economic polices.
…from the just delivered speech by ECB executive board member José Manuel González-Páramo is the following: "We cannot completely delegate governance to financial markets. The euro area is the world’s second largest monetary area. It cannot depend solely on the opinions of ratings agencies and markets. It needs economic governance arrangements that are preventive and linear. This underscores my central point that a much more comprehensive approach to economic governance is now the priority for the euro area. And this means more economic and financial integration for the euro area, with a significant transfer of sovereignty to the EMU level over fiscal, structural and financial policies." - Zerohedge
For a course of action to be considered a conspiracy, it requires plans to be agreed upon, and taken up by more than one person or coalition. Several key indicators and actions that have occurred recently fulfill this requirement of a focused drive towards a centralized banking authority that supersedes the sovereignty of nations.
First, the removal of leadership in both Greece and Italy has led to members of the banking establishment to be placed in power, and in those positions. In Greece, newly appointed Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is a former head of the Central Bank of Greece, and in Italy, Mario Monti, who was the head of the international division of Goldman Sachs and key member of the tri-lateral commission and Bilderberg group, has replaced former Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi.
Secondly, a recent document has came out of the Vatican and Catholic Church calling for a global public authority, and central banking establishment for the greater good of the world in this continuing economic crisis.
While nations such as the United States, and governing bodies such as the European Union, downplay the consequences of massive indebtedness, the old axiom of a borrower being slave to the lender has, and always will be true. With Americans now in bondage for over $15 trillion in debt liabilities to banks and other sovereign nations, and the EU moving headlong into a liquidity crisis and economic meltdown under the weight of $30 trillion in overall debts, the time may be right for the banking cartels to get their wish, and move out of the shadows to seize control of the overall economic system, even at the loss of power to sovereign states.
Continue reading on Examiner.com Conspiracy theory confirmed: bankers do want to rule the world - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/finance-examiner-in-national/conspiracy-theory-confirmed-bankers-do-want-to-rule-the-world#ixzz1fOINjd00
U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And that the Prez Alone Can Decide Who Is a Target
U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And that the Prez Alone Can Decide Who Is a Target
Submitted by George Washington on 12/01/2011 20:13 -0500
www.zerohedge.com
As everyone realizes by now, Congress' push for indefinite detention includes American citizens on American soil. As Huffington post notes:
The debate also has left many Americans scratching their heads as to whether Congress is actually attempting to authorize the indefinite detention of Americans by the military without charges. But proponents -- led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- say that is exactly what the war on terror requires. They argued that the bill simply codifies precedents set by the Supreme Court and removes uncertainty, which they said would better protect the country.
(As Emptywheel and Gleen Greenwald note, the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans. See this, this, this and this.)
But that's not all.
The government can also kill American citizens. For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.
But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.
AP notes today:
U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.
***
The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson ... said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.
Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.
The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.
You might assume - in a vacuum - that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).
But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. And see this.
And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admitst hat he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
And it is counter-productive in an age when the government - instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer - are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
And it is insane in a time of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.
And when the "War on Terror" in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.
And when Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn't stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Laden years ago.
As I noted in March:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
Full article and links:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/%3F-older-posts-us-says-americans-are-military-targets-war-terror-%E2%80%A6-and-prez-alone-can-dec?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2
Submitted by George Washington on 12/01/2011 20:13 -0500
www.zerohedge.com
As everyone realizes by now, Congress' push for indefinite detention includes American citizens on American soil. As Huffington post notes:
The debate also has left many Americans scratching their heads as to whether Congress is actually attempting to authorize the indefinite detention of Americans by the military without charges. But proponents -- led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- say that is exactly what the war on terror requires. They argued that the bill simply codifies precedents set by the Supreme Court and removes uncertainty, which they said would better protect the country.
(As Emptywheel and Gleen Greenwald note, the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans. See this, this, this and this.)
But that's not all.
The government can also kill American citizens. For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.
But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.
AP notes today:
U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.
***
The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson ... said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.
Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.
The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.
You might assume - in a vacuum - that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).
But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. And see this.
And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admitst hat he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
And it is counter-productive in an age when the government - instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer - are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
And it is insane in a time of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.
And when the "War on Terror" in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.
And when Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn't stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Laden years ago.
As I noted in March:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
Full article and links:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/%3F-older-posts-us-says-americans-are-military-targets-war-terror-%E2%80%A6-and-prez-alone-can-dec?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism
-By Larry Sand
To a large extent, the progressives have taken over American education, are transforming it and are doing it in plain sight
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism is an invaluable book written by Kyle Olson, founder and CEO of the Education Action Group, an organization that is on the frontline of education reform and a champion of school choice.
In this brief and very readable book, Olson describes the ways that the progressives in our society have taken over K-12 education. They have been running most of our elite colleges and schools of education for years now and this step is in keeping with their plan to transform America.
As a public school teacher whose career spanned four decades, I have seen the long march first hand. Perverting the traditional purpose of American education (which has been to make better and more educated citizens), progressives have been inspired by the theories of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who saw everything through a Marxist class warfare lens.
Carrying Freire’s mantle, current gurus like revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers and the recently deceased Communist Howard Zinn have been behind the effort to destroy America as we know it. They claim that basically the U.S. and its capitalist system are the root of all evil. Unfortunately, their love-the-world/hate-America attitude has gained an incredible amount of currency in our public schools in a relatively short time. Ayers, Zinn and their ilk have essentially managed to convince much of the education establishment to abandon every teaching technique and curriculum that benefited prior generations. For example, “drill and kill” has been thrown on the refuse heap; we are now supposed to let our students “discover” learning. The “sage on the stage” has been replaced by the “guide on the side.” The only problem with these techniques is that they haven’t worked, but they do sound good (at least to the progressives.) As such, we are now raising a nation of dunces.
On the 2010 NAEP history test, we learned that only 12 percent of high school seniors have a firm grip on American history. Yes, we are educating students to the point that almost half the nation thinks that the cornerstone of Communism, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” is in the U.S. Constitution. Only 2 percent of high school seniors know the significance of Brown vs. the Board of Education and only 4 percent of 8th graders could explain why urban populations rose and rural populations shrank over time.
So just what are we teaching them?
This is where Olson’s book shines. In chapter after chapter, he meticulously details lessons being foisted on students that are being taught for one purpose only – to advance the progressive agenda. A few examples:
- An examination of the nature and extent of police brutality, which is being promoted in middle schools by none other than Van Jones, conspiracy enthusiast extraordinaire.
- A clever lesson using poker chips, the aim of which is to convince students that unequal distribution of wealth has to do with the fact that the U.S. has more than its share of resources, not that we have a wealth-promoting capitalist system.
- “I Pledge Allegiance to the Earth.” Yup, no more of this silly patriotic stuff. Children, you are denizens of the earth! (I wonder what our political enemies think of this rubbish… when they stop laughing, that is.)
Rightfully, Olson reserves a special section for the unions whose far left agenda has been well documented, and who have gone to great lengths to make this country over in their own image. Their attempts to indoctrinate kids and glorify the union movement are staggering. For example,
- “Trouble in the Henhouse: A Puppet Show.” In this charming bit of propaganda put out by the California Federation of Teachers aimed at kindergartners, we find an oppressive farmer whose hens unionize and convince the heartless farmer that he’d better respect them or else.
- The “Yummy Pizza Company” is another lesson from CFT — actually ten, which delve into the process of organizing a union local. They include instructions on how to collectively bargain as well as a sanitized look at prominent labor leaders.
- Click Clack Moo, a popular book promoted by the AFL-CIO, tells second graders about unhappy cows that refuse to work until the mean farmer is forced to meet their demands.
And while we are teaching our children the joys of class warfare, earth worship and the importance of union membership, other countries that are more serious about educating their young are cleaning our clocks in every international comparison available.
Actually, it is even worse than Olson suggests. There is one aspect of the progressive takeover that he gave short shrift to. Except for SB 48, an obscene bit of legislation in California which will bring the contributions of homosexuals and transgenders into the K-12 curriculum, there is little mention of the progressives’ ongoing effort to sexualize children. From Gay-Straight clubs in middle school (where parents do not have to be notified of their child’s involvement) to attempts to teach orgasm to eleven year olds, the radicals led by the National Education Association have been making alarming progress.
Another example of the progressives’ sexual agenda is which holidays are deemed important. Few people are aware of what holiday is celebrated on November 20th. But every student at the middle school where I worked till my retirement in 2009 knows, because the school spent more time acknowledging that day — “Transgender Day of Remembrance” — than Veteran’s Day, November 11th. TDR was considered more worthy of the students’ time at my school than a holiday which acknowledges the contributions of American soldiers. (Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. At the same school, posters of Che Guevara adorned the walls of no less than five classrooms, including an American history class that had no pictures of Washington or Lincoln. Che was considered a hero by these teachers who passed this admiration on to their impressionable students. Of course the real life Che was a sadistic mass murderer, but being a progressive means never having to sweat minor details like the truth.)
Clearly Indoctrination is a book that could leave citizens in a state of great despair. But fortunately, in the last chapter, Olson lists several important ways that parents and the general public can fight back. And if this country isn’t to become permanently transformed — fight back we must. None of our international enemies are as powerful, organized and, thus far, as successful as our home grown progressives who are bent on destroying public education as we know it in America. It is imperative that we all become more knowledgeable about what is going on in our schools and take action. Kyle Olson’s Indoctrination is an excellent place to start that process.
To a large extent, the progressives have taken over American education, are transforming it and are doing it in plain sight
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism is an invaluable book written by Kyle Olson, founder and CEO of the Education Action Group, an organization that is on the frontline of education reform and a champion of school choice.
In this brief and very readable book, Olson describes the ways that the progressives in our society have taken over K-12 education. They have been running most of our elite colleges and schools of education for years now and this step is in keeping with their plan to transform America.
As a public school teacher whose career spanned four decades, I have seen the long march first hand. Perverting the traditional purpose of American education (which has been to make better and more educated citizens), progressives have been inspired by the theories of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who saw everything through a Marxist class warfare lens.
Carrying Freire’s mantle, current gurus like revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers and the recently deceased Communist Howard Zinn have been behind the effort to destroy America as we know it. They claim that basically the U.S. and its capitalist system are the root of all evil. Unfortunately, their love-the-world/hate-America attitude has gained an incredible amount of currency in our public schools in a relatively short time. Ayers, Zinn and their ilk have essentially managed to convince much of the education establishment to abandon every teaching technique and curriculum that benefited prior generations. For example, “drill and kill” has been thrown on the refuse heap; we are now supposed to let our students “discover” learning. The “sage on the stage” has been replaced by the “guide on the side.” The only problem with these techniques is that they haven’t worked, but they do sound good (at least to the progressives.) As such, we are now raising a nation of dunces.
On the 2010 NAEP history test, we learned that only 12 percent of high school seniors have a firm grip on American history. Yes, we are educating students to the point that almost half the nation thinks that the cornerstone of Communism, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” is in the U.S. Constitution. Only 2 percent of high school seniors know the significance of Brown vs. the Board of Education and only 4 percent of 8th graders could explain why urban populations rose and rural populations shrank over time.
So just what are we teaching them?
This is where Olson’s book shines. In chapter after chapter, he meticulously details lessons being foisted on students that are being taught for one purpose only – to advance the progressive agenda. A few examples:
- An examination of the nature and extent of police brutality, which is being promoted in middle schools by none other than Van Jones, conspiracy enthusiast extraordinaire.
- A clever lesson using poker chips, the aim of which is to convince students that unequal distribution of wealth has to do with the fact that the U.S. has more than its share of resources, not that we have a wealth-promoting capitalist system.
- “I Pledge Allegiance to the Earth.” Yup, no more of this silly patriotic stuff. Children, you are denizens of the earth! (I wonder what our political enemies think of this rubbish… when they stop laughing, that is.)
Rightfully, Olson reserves a special section for the unions whose far left agenda has been well documented, and who have gone to great lengths to make this country over in their own image. Their attempts to indoctrinate kids and glorify the union movement are staggering. For example,
- “Trouble in the Henhouse: A Puppet Show.” In this charming bit of propaganda put out by the California Federation of Teachers aimed at kindergartners, we find an oppressive farmer whose hens unionize and convince the heartless farmer that he’d better respect them or else.
- The “Yummy Pizza Company” is another lesson from CFT — actually ten, which delve into the process of organizing a union local. They include instructions on how to collectively bargain as well as a sanitized look at prominent labor leaders.
- Click Clack Moo, a popular book promoted by the AFL-CIO, tells second graders about unhappy cows that refuse to work until the mean farmer is forced to meet their demands.
And while we are teaching our children the joys of class warfare, earth worship and the importance of union membership, other countries that are more serious about educating their young are cleaning our clocks in every international comparison available.
Actually, it is even worse than Olson suggests. There is one aspect of the progressive takeover that he gave short shrift to. Except for SB 48, an obscene bit of legislation in California which will bring the contributions of homosexuals and transgenders into the K-12 curriculum, there is little mention of the progressives’ ongoing effort to sexualize children. From Gay-Straight clubs in middle school (where parents do not have to be notified of their child’s involvement) to attempts to teach orgasm to eleven year olds, the radicals led by the National Education Association have been making alarming progress.
Another example of the progressives’ sexual agenda is which holidays are deemed important. Few people are aware of what holiday is celebrated on November 20th. But every student at the middle school where I worked till my retirement in 2009 knows, because the school spent more time acknowledging that day — “Transgender Day of Remembrance” — than Veteran’s Day, November 11th. TDR was considered more worthy of the students’ time at my school than a holiday which acknowledges the contributions of American soldiers. (Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. At the same school, posters of Che Guevara adorned the walls of no less than five classrooms, including an American history class that had no pictures of Washington or Lincoln. Che was considered a hero by these teachers who passed this admiration on to their impressionable students. Of course the real life Che was a sadistic mass murderer, but being a progressive means never having to sweat minor details like the truth.)
Clearly Indoctrination is a book that could leave citizens in a state of great despair. But fortunately, in the last chapter, Olson lists several important ways that parents and the general public can fight back. And if this country isn’t to become permanently transformed — fight back we must. None of our international enemies are as powerful, organized and, thus far, as successful as our home grown progressives who are bent on destroying public education as we know it in America. It is imperative that we all become more knowledgeable about what is going on in our schools and take action. Kyle Olson’s Indoctrination is an excellent place to start that process.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
www.OverruledMovie.com
A definite must see!
Overruled The Movie
http://www.OverruledMovie.com/
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Overruled The Movie
http://www.OverruledMovie.com/
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
10 Certainties
November 21, 2011 by Bob Livingston
www.personalliberty.com
We live in strange times. Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions more live in fear that their job could go away at any time. The food stamp rolls are larger than they've ever been.
An untold number are homeless, not because they choose to be or because they suffer from some mental disease or defect, but because they have lost everything in the second Great Depression. And many more are one missed paycheck or one delinquent mortgage payment away from finding themselves on the street.
A growing number of young adults are now living with their parents or other relatives. Unable to find a decent job despite possessing a college diploma, tens of thousands leave college mired under an irrepressible and unmanageable debt burden.
Protests that began in the Middle East earlier this year over rising food prices and food shortages evolved and spread throughout the region and now find themselves smack in the middle of America in the form of the Occupy movement.
Our country suffers from an amoral rot. Secular humanism, nontheism, atheism and other humanist philosophies are attempting to elevate the creature above the Creator. As such, a belief that the end justifies the means is consuming society. It's become, "Anything goes."
Where America is headed is anybody's guess. I think we are in store for a complete collapse of the system, because there are 10 things that are certain.
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
After all, they elected Barack Hussein Obama, a man who openly campaigned on an anti-American socialist philosophy and had the least experience, fewest qualifications, thinnest resume and shadiest past of any serious Presidential candidate in United States history.
Of course, the alternative was really no alternative. That's the way the elites wanted it. And now the global elites and their corporate media propaganda machine are deciding again who will be elected - and the American voter, with nary a whimper, follows blindly along, accepting that a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and some neocon anti-Romney are the only choices we have.
The trouble has been in selecting the anti-Romney. So far, Michele Bachmann's star fizzled like a New Year's sparkler, Rick Perry fell off his horse after he insulted most Republicans over illegal immigration in one debate and stepped on his tongue in two others, Herman Cain's stock has begun dropping faster than Sharon Bialek's perky mood in the back of a limo - as much because of Cain's incoherent answers to tough questions as over the dubious sexual harassment claims - and now Newt Gingrich is the rising neocon star.
The same Newt Gingrich who twice (at least) cheated on his wives (he's had three) while they suffered from serious illnesses. The same globalist, Council on Foreign Relations member, pagan ritual Bohemian Grove attendee Newt Gingrich who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in an advertisement hawking the threat of man-caused global warming, who has a penchant for cozying up with people like race huckster Al Sharpton when it's politically expedient and then denouncing them later, who devised the original government-growing Contract with America, who endorsed RINO (later to turn Democrat) Dede Scozzafava over a Tea Party candidate, who called Congressman Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan right-wing social engineering, who said the Tea Party will be the "militant wing" of the GOP, and who we now know looted American taxpayers of between $1.6 million and $1.8 million as a "historian" for the Freddie Mac corporatist slush fund (although Gingrich remembers only about $300,000 of it).
And this is the same Newt Gingrich who once called for a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance, endorsed "cap-and-trade" legislation, said he would have voted for TARP and promoted Bush's prescription drug bill. He also continues to support ethanol subsidies and is pro-amnesty for illegals.
That Gingrich, with all his baggage and pompousness, can be an attractive candidate to people who call themselves conservatives, tells you all you need to know of the ignorance of the average voter. And this ignorance continues because…
There is a concerted effort by the establishment to defeat Ron Paul.
It's gotten so overt that even the corporatist media propaganda machine is chastising its own members over their treatment of Paul. It all seemed to come to a head after the Nov. 12 CBS News debate in which Paul got 89 seconds to speak during the only televised hour of the debate.
In addition to the snubs, which have left Paul with the least speaking time in all the debates - even much less than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who are barely registering in the polls - networks have a habit of taking down or dismissing as irrelevant any polls that show Paul doing well. Despite it all, Paul is in a virtual tie for first in Iowa and is a strong second in New Hampshire, a State that Romney will probably carry hands-down. And Paul is polling the best of all Republican candidates against Obama with independent voters.
The media and political elites fear Paul because he has not been corrupted and will expose that…
Government is a criminal enterprise.
News this week that members of Congress have been involved in unethical, if not illegal, insider trading based on information they possess before anyone else or on laws they know are about to be considered is just one more straw to put in the camel's pack. How many more can that poor camel hold before the American people really wake up?
We have long told you here about the crony capitalism and fascism that infest the capital. And while Congress, former Congressional staffers and big businesses dip into the money-printing till and pass dollars around like the Monopoly® money it is, bureaucrats, paper pushers, statist judges, on-the-take regulators, Department of Justice thugs, Congress and an increasingly-militarized Federal government create dozens of new statutes and regulations because…
The Federal Government wants to make everyone a criminal.
Just last week, it was announced that the Department of Justice wanted to criminalize lying to a website. So, if you violate the "Terms of Use" policy by fibbing on online dating sites, social networks, etc., you could become a felon. The government wants to treat those terms as contracts.
In his book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, Harvey A. Silverglate writes that "federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law abiding citizens…" They are seizing illegal power by twisting marginal and highly questionable interpretations of criminal law.
We are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. The pattern is to intimidate all criminally charged defendants into pleading guilty to "reduced" charges rather than risk going to trial with the threat of draconian sentences in the implied event of conviction. And remember, government prosecutors have unlimited funds to use to pay an unlimited number of lawyers and investigators to spend an unlimited number of hours to snoop, dig and scratch around in every aspect of a citizen's business, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
No trial? This means that the Federal prosecuting attorney is the judge and the jury.
We now have a huge volume of Federal criminal laws which are broad and impossibly vague, and Silverglate believes it's possible the average citizen unknowingly violates at least three of them every day. They have become dangerously disconnected from English common law tradition. And since most Federal judges are selected from a pool of former Federal prosecutors, it's rare if ever that a judge rules against the government's case.
Liberty-loving Americans are now considered the enemy of the State. The Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies have issued memos and directives describing who they see as potential "domestic" terrorists. They include military veterans - both retired and those returning from overseas engagements - Tea Party supporters, Ron Paul supporters, 2nd Amendment supporters, 10th Amendment supporters, people who display American flags, people with Gadsden Flag bumper stickers, anti-Obamacare protesters and anyone who advocates for smaller government.
But this is only part of our government's war on us because…
Government creates crises and uses them to steal liberty and transfer wealth.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Congress acted quickly to pass overarching laws that allowed increased surveillance of Americans. The meme was that law enforcement agencies needed increased "power" to snoop, spy, eavesdrop and invade in order to identify terrorists. With the passage of the law, government has almost carte blanch to go anywhere, look at anything and listen to whatever it wants on any and all conversations, transactions and correspondence Americans have. And Americans can no longer travel without subjecting themselves to radiation-emitting scans or humiliating searches.
Meanwhile, the FBI infiltrates mosques, Muslim communities, militias and other "subversive" groups looking for ignorant patsies they can turn into potential terrorists. They then provide them with dummy bombs or weapons and ridiculously ineffective plans for terror plots and wait for them to try to pull them off.
These "terror plots" give the government more excuses to intrude on civil liberties.
With the bursting of the housing bubble (created by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's easy-money policies), Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on television claiming the sky was falling and predicted the end of the world if "government" didn't bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG and their other corporatist buddies in the financial sector. We got the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and Bush claimed he had "abandoned free-market principals to save the free-market system."
What really happened is that trillions of dollars were transferred from hard-working Americans to the coffers of big business and big finance, both in the United States and abroad. Of course, there is nothing new about this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to reward his labor friends and grow government's power under the interstate commerce clause. And while Americans starved, thousands of farmers were forced by the government to destroy crops and livestock.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt began issuing executive orders by the handfuls, locking up Americans without cause and stealing liberty, wealth and prosperity from citizens in the process.
But this is not the history that people are taught. And schoolchildren certainly never hear in school that…
The Federal Reserve is looting your bank account right out from under your nose.
Few people have a real understanding of just how insidious the Federal Reserve and inflation are. But no matter where you hide your money, through its money-printing, the Federal Reserve steals a portion every day.
That's because every dollar printed reduces the value of those you hold. Think of it like pouring water into a glass of milk. The more water that is poured in, the less milk remains. Pretty soon, there is no milk left.
Right now the official rate of inflation is about 3.5 percent. It is, in fact, much higher. But the highest-paying interest rate on a certificate of deposit is about 1.1 percent. You do the math.
Face it. The system is stacked against you because…
Financial interests control the world.
Of course, that has long been the ultimate goal of the elites. They have been, throughout history, ruthless and unwavering in their efforts. They are the true 1 percent.
I and others have long warned about the growing power of the financial elites. We write often about their growing power and the increased fascism of the system. Now a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have uncovered the 147 "super-entities" that control the world's wealth, according to an article in New Scientist.
Here's a list of the Top 25. See any familiar names?
"From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs (transnational corporations) and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power," according to the report.
"When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a 'super-entity' of 147 even more tightly knit companies-all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity-that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. 'In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,' says [researcher James] Glattfelder."
Now you see why the buddy system operated so well when the Fed began bailing out the "too big to fails." And the big corporations got there with the help of their corporatist partners in crime in Congress.
The truth of the matter is…
We are no longer operating under Constitutional government, but people are completely unaware.
The government-controlled non-education system, corporate-controlled media and government propaganda machine have succeeded in producing an uneducated generation that is so ignorant it doesn't even know it's ignorant and, therefore, can't do anything about it.
Rather than teach history, government indoctrination centers focus on less-significant, politically correct characters - in order to prop up the self-esteem of the "underpriviledged" and "underrepresented" - and singular, historically insignificant events. One specific example I know of is of a middle-school child whose teacher spent three class days on the U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviets in 1980, and about 15 minutes of class time on World War II.
Of course, a discussion of the founding of our country, the conditions that sparked the revolution, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution that resulted from their discussions, or the greatness of the Founding Fathers received little or no attention in that class. I'm afraid it's the rule rather than the exception.
Ask someone on the street about the Constitution and you'll probably get some lame answer about "separation of church and state" or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," like Herman Cain gave in one of his speeches.
And rather than work to gain knowledge of the country and its politics, most would rather devote their time to voting for the next "Idol" and debating who should get voted off the island and whether college football should have a playoff. These and other unimportant events completely consume the general public.
So when government does pass new unConstitutional laws, no one is the wiser. Most people are concerned about - if they think about it all - "what's in it for me?" and "how much 'free' money do I get?" Many are still waiting for the "free money" from "Obama's stash." Unfortunately, because they weren't large corporate donors, they got nothing but disdain from the teleprompter in chief.
Congress, aided by a willing Judiciary and President, long ago left any pretense of governing according to the Constitution. When they're sworn in, they pledge their fealty to it, then put it away never to be read again.
Meanwhile, the two-party system of governance entraps people who do pay a modicum of attention into a false left/right paradigm and the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine pushes the false notion that there is a difference between the parties. But Democrat or Republican is irrelevant. It's all class warfare, dissembling Kabuki Theater.
To demonstrate how far we've traversed from the Constitution, the government can now prevent you from drinking raw milk, can force you to have your children vaccinated for non-existent maladies, can search you without cause, can arrest you for videotaping in public, can murder American citizens at will and can twist and turn obscure statutes and use them to incarcerate and fine you.
The Federal agencies designed to protect us from bad foods and bad drugs instead promote bad foods and bad drugs and make natural foods and supplements illegal or difficult to obtain. That keeps Americans fat and happy and stupid.
In addition to loving the increased power they get by ignoring the Constitution, it's a fact that…
Politicians love war and an attack on Iran is inevitable.
War is yet another way for government to steal the liberty of the American people, and war with Iran is inevitable, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. The drumbeats for war are reaching a crescendo, and the same rhetoric used in the run-up to the Iraq war is being replayed in the run-up to Iran.
The frightening thing is that the anti-war Democrats have gone silent. Some protested loud and long over Bush's wars, but Obama has been given a pass - by Congress and the American people - to invade any country he chooses over the most dubious of reasons. And it seems from the cheering the neocon warmongers get during the Republican debates, Americans have grown to love war as much as the politicians.
Sources tell me U.S. Marines will be on the ground in Libya in January, news reports indicate a Marine contingent will soon land in Australia, and Obama recently sent "military advisers" to Central Africa. The French just recalled their diplomat from Syria, an indication a Libya-style attack is in the offing. This is all proof that…
The American government is seeking world conquest.
The globalists and One World Government crowd will not rest until all the world is in subjection. Moammar Gadhafi was taken down because he wouldn't play in the OWG pool, and Syria and Iran are next. The Marines going to Australia will be a foil to China. Then, who knows?
http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/10-certainties/?eiid=&rmid=2011_11_21_PLA_[P11842499]&rrid=306924170
www.personalliberty.com
We live in strange times. Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions more live in fear that their job could go away at any time. The food stamp rolls are larger than they've ever been.
An untold number are homeless, not because they choose to be or because they suffer from some mental disease or defect, but because they have lost everything in the second Great Depression. And many more are one missed paycheck or one delinquent mortgage payment away from finding themselves on the street.
A growing number of young adults are now living with their parents or other relatives. Unable to find a decent job despite possessing a college diploma, tens of thousands leave college mired under an irrepressible and unmanageable debt burden.
Protests that began in the Middle East earlier this year over rising food prices and food shortages evolved and spread throughout the region and now find themselves smack in the middle of America in the form of the Occupy movement.
Our country suffers from an amoral rot. Secular humanism, nontheism, atheism and other humanist philosophies are attempting to elevate the creature above the Creator. As such, a belief that the end justifies the means is consuming society. It's become, "Anything goes."
Where America is headed is anybody's guess. I think we are in store for a complete collapse of the system, because there are 10 things that are certain.
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
After all, they elected Barack Hussein Obama, a man who openly campaigned on an anti-American socialist philosophy and had the least experience, fewest qualifications, thinnest resume and shadiest past of any serious Presidential candidate in United States history.
Of course, the alternative was really no alternative. That's the way the elites wanted it. And now the global elites and their corporate media propaganda machine are deciding again who will be elected - and the American voter, with nary a whimper, follows blindly along, accepting that a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and some neocon anti-Romney are the only choices we have.
The trouble has been in selecting the anti-Romney. So far, Michele Bachmann's star fizzled like a New Year's sparkler, Rick Perry fell off his horse after he insulted most Republicans over illegal immigration in one debate and stepped on his tongue in two others, Herman Cain's stock has begun dropping faster than Sharon Bialek's perky mood in the back of a limo - as much because of Cain's incoherent answers to tough questions as over the dubious sexual harassment claims - and now Newt Gingrich is the rising neocon star.
The same Newt Gingrich who twice (at least) cheated on his wives (he's had three) while they suffered from serious illnesses. The same globalist, Council on Foreign Relations member, pagan ritual Bohemian Grove attendee Newt Gingrich who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in an advertisement hawking the threat of man-caused global warming, who has a penchant for cozying up with people like race huckster Al Sharpton when it's politically expedient and then denouncing them later, who devised the original government-growing Contract with America, who endorsed RINO (later to turn Democrat) Dede Scozzafava over a Tea Party candidate, who called Congressman Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan right-wing social engineering, who said the Tea Party will be the "militant wing" of the GOP, and who we now know looted American taxpayers of between $1.6 million and $1.8 million as a "historian" for the Freddie Mac corporatist slush fund (although Gingrich remembers only about $300,000 of it).
And this is the same Newt Gingrich who once called for a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance, endorsed "cap-and-trade" legislation, said he would have voted for TARP and promoted Bush's prescription drug bill. He also continues to support ethanol subsidies and is pro-amnesty for illegals.
That Gingrich, with all his baggage and pompousness, can be an attractive candidate to people who call themselves conservatives, tells you all you need to know of the ignorance of the average voter. And this ignorance continues because…
There is a concerted effort by the establishment to defeat Ron Paul.
It's gotten so overt that even the corporatist media propaganda machine is chastising its own members over their treatment of Paul. It all seemed to come to a head after the Nov. 12 CBS News debate in which Paul got 89 seconds to speak during the only televised hour of the debate.
In addition to the snubs, which have left Paul with the least speaking time in all the debates - even much less than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who are barely registering in the polls - networks have a habit of taking down or dismissing as irrelevant any polls that show Paul doing well. Despite it all, Paul is in a virtual tie for first in Iowa and is a strong second in New Hampshire, a State that Romney will probably carry hands-down. And Paul is polling the best of all Republican candidates against Obama with independent voters.
The media and political elites fear Paul because he has not been corrupted and will expose that…
Government is a criminal enterprise.
News this week that members of Congress have been involved in unethical, if not illegal, insider trading based on information they possess before anyone else or on laws they know are about to be considered is just one more straw to put in the camel's pack. How many more can that poor camel hold before the American people really wake up?
We have long told you here about the crony capitalism and fascism that infest the capital. And while Congress, former Congressional staffers and big businesses dip into the money-printing till and pass dollars around like the Monopoly® money it is, bureaucrats, paper pushers, statist judges, on-the-take regulators, Department of Justice thugs, Congress and an increasingly-militarized Federal government create dozens of new statutes and regulations because…
The Federal Government wants to make everyone a criminal.
Just last week, it was announced that the Department of Justice wanted to criminalize lying to a website. So, if you violate the "Terms of Use" policy by fibbing on online dating sites, social networks, etc., you could become a felon. The government wants to treat those terms as contracts.
In his book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, Harvey A. Silverglate writes that "federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law abiding citizens…" They are seizing illegal power by twisting marginal and highly questionable interpretations of criminal law.
We are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. The pattern is to intimidate all criminally charged defendants into pleading guilty to "reduced" charges rather than risk going to trial with the threat of draconian sentences in the implied event of conviction. And remember, government prosecutors have unlimited funds to use to pay an unlimited number of lawyers and investigators to spend an unlimited number of hours to snoop, dig and scratch around in every aspect of a citizen's business, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
No trial? This means that the Federal prosecuting attorney is the judge and the jury.
We now have a huge volume of Federal criminal laws which are broad and impossibly vague, and Silverglate believes it's possible the average citizen unknowingly violates at least three of them every day. They have become dangerously disconnected from English common law tradition. And since most Federal judges are selected from a pool of former Federal prosecutors, it's rare if ever that a judge rules against the government's case.
Liberty-loving Americans are now considered the enemy of the State. The Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies have issued memos and directives describing who they see as potential "domestic" terrorists. They include military veterans - both retired and those returning from overseas engagements - Tea Party supporters, Ron Paul supporters, 2nd Amendment supporters, 10th Amendment supporters, people who display American flags, people with Gadsden Flag bumper stickers, anti-Obamacare protesters and anyone who advocates for smaller government.
But this is only part of our government's war on us because…
Government creates crises and uses them to steal liberty and transfer wealth.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Congress acted quickly to pass overarching laws that allowed increased surveillance of Americans. The meme was that law enforcement agencies needed increased "power" to snoop, spy, eavesdrop and invade in order to identify terrorists. With the passage of the law, government has almost carte blanch to go anywhere, look at anything and listen to whatever it wants on any and all conversations, transactions and correspondence Americans have. And Americans can no longer travel without subjecting themselves to radiation-emitting scans or humiliating searches.
Meanwhile, the FBI infiltrates mosques, Muslim communities, militias and other "subversive" groups looking for ignorant patsies they can turn into potential terrorists. They then provide them with dummy bombs or weapons and ridiculously ineffective plans for terror plots and wait for them to try to pull them off.
These "terror plots" give the government more excuses to intrude on civil liberties.
With the bursting of the housing bubble (created by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's easy-money policies), Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on television claiming the sky was falling and predicted the end of the world if "government" didn't bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG and their other corporatist buddies in the financial sector. We got the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and Bush claimed he had "abandoned free-market principals to save the free-market system."
What really happened is that trillions of dollars were transferred from hard-working Americans to the coffers of big business and big finance, both in the United States and abroad. Of course, there is nothing new about this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to reward his labor friends and grow government's power under the interstate commerce clause. And while Americans starved, thousands of farmers were forced by the government to destroy crops and livestock.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt began issuing executive orders by the handfuls, locking up Americans without cause and stealing liberty, wealth and prosperity from citizens in the process.
But this is not the history that people are taught. And schoolchildren certainly never hear in school that…
The Federal Reserve is looting your bank account right out from under your nose.
Few people have a real understanding of just how insidious the Federal Reserve and inflation are. But no matter where you hide your money, through its money-printing, the Federal Reserve steals a portion every day.
That's because every dollar printed reduces the value of those you hold. Think of it like pouring water into a glass of milk. The more water that is poured in, the less milk remains. Pretty soon, there is no milk left.
Right now the official rate of inflation is about 3.5 percent. It is, in fact, much higher. But the highest-paying interest rate on a certificate of deposit is about 1.1 percent. You do the math.
Face it. The system is stacked against you because…
Financial interests control the world.
Of course, that has long been the ultimate goal of the elites. They have been, throughout history, ruthless and unwavering in their efforts. They are the true 1 percent.
I and others have long warned about the growing power of the financial elites. We write often about their growing power and the increased fascism of the system. Now a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have uncovered the 147 "super-entities" that control the world's wealth, according to an article in New Scientist.
Here's a list of the Top 25. See any familiar names?
- Barclays PLC
- Capital Group Companies Inc.
- FMR Corp.
- AXA
- State Street Corporation
- JP Morgan Chase & Co.
- Legal & General Group PLC
- Vanguard Group Inc.
- UBS AG
- Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.
- Wellington Management Company LLP
- Deutsche Bank AG
- Franklin Resources Inc.
- Credit Suisse Group
- Walton Enterprises LLC
- The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
- Natixis
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
- T. Rowe Price Group Inc.
- Legg Mason Inc.
- Morgan Stanley
- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.
- Northern Trust Corporation
- Société Générale
- Bank of America Corporation
"From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs (transnational corporations) and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power," according to the report.
"When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a 'super-entity' of 147 even more tightly knit companies-all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity-that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. 'In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,' says [researcher James] Glattfelder."
Now you see why the buddy system operated so well when the Fed began bailing out the "too big to fails." And the big corporations got there with the help of their corporatist partners in crime in Congress.
The truth of the matter is…
We are no longer operating under Constitutional government, but people are completely unaware.
The government-controlled non-education system, corporate-controlled media and government propaganda machine have succeeded in producing an uneducated generation that is so ignorant it doesn't even know it's ignorant and, therefore, can't do anything about it.
Rather than teach history, government indoctrination centers focus on less-significant, politically correct characters - in order to prop up the self-esteem of the "underpriviledged" and "underrepresented" - and singular, historically insignificant events. One specific example I know of is of a middle-school child whose teacher spent three class days on the U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviets in 1980, and about 15 minutes of class time on World War II.
Of course, a discussion of the founding of our country, the conditions that sparked the revolution, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution that resulted from their discussions, or the greatness of the Founding Fathers received little or no attention in that class. I'm afraid it's the rule rather than the exception.
Ask someone on the street about the Constitution and you'll probably get some lame answer about "separation of church and state" or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," like Herman Cain gave in one of his speeches.
And rather than work to gain knowledge of the country and its politics, most would rather devote their time to voting for the next "Idol" and debating who should get voted off the island and whether college football should have a playoff. These and other unimportant events completely consume the general public.
So when government does pass new unConstitutional laws, no one is the wiser. Most people are concerned about - if they think about it all - "what's in it for me?" and "how much 'free' money do I get?" Many are still waiting for the "free money" from "Obama's stash." Unfortunately, because they weren't large corporate donors, they got nothing but disdain from the teleprompter in chief.
Congress, aided by a willing Judiciary and President, long ago left any pretense of governing according to the Constitution. When they're sworn in, they pledge their fealty to it, then put it away never to be read again.
Meanwhile, the two-party system of governance entraps people who do pay a modicum of attention into a false left/right paradigm and the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine pushes the false notion that there is a difference between the parties. But Democrat or Republican is irrelevant. It's all class warfare, dissembling Kabuki Theater.
To demonstrate how far we've traversed from the Constitution, the government can now prevent you from drinking raw milk, can force you to have your children vaccinated for non-existent maladies, can search you without cause, can arrest you for videotaping in public, can murder American citizens at will and can twist and turn obscure statutes and use them to incarcerate and fine you.
The Federal agencies designed to protect us from bad foods and bad drugs instead promote bad foods and bad drugs and make natural foods and supplements illegal or difficult to obtain. That keeps Americans fat and happy and stupid.
In addition to loving the increased power they get by ignoring the Constitution, it's a fact that…
Politicians love war and an attack on Iran is inevitable.
War is yet another way for government to steal the liberty of the American people, and war with Iran is inevitable, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. The drumbeats for war are reaching a crescendo, and the same rhetoric used in the run-up to the Iraq war is being replayed in the run-up to Iran.
The frightening thing is that the anti-war Democrats have gone silent. Some protested loud and long over Bush's wars, but Obama has been given a pass - by Congress and the American people - to invade any country he chooses over the most dubious of reasons. And it seems from the cheering the neocon warmongers get during the Republican debates, Americans have grown to love war as much as the politicians.
Sources tell me U.S. Marines will be on the ground in Libya in January, news reports indicate a Marine contingent will soon land in Australia, and Obama recently sent "military advisers" to Central Africa. The French just recalled their diplomat from Syria, an indication a Libya-style attack is in the offing. This is all proof that…
The American government is seeking world conquest.
The globalists and One World Government crowd will not rest until all the world is in subjection. Moammar Gadhafi was taken down because he wouldn't play in the OWG pool, and Syria and Iran are next. The Marines going to Australia will be a foil to China. Then, who knows?
http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/10-certainties/?eiid=&rmid=2011_11_21_PLA_[P11842499]&rrid=306924170
Friday, November 18, 2011
German memo shows secret slide towards a super-state
The six-page memo, by the German foreign office, argues that Europe’s economic powerhouses should be able to intervene in how beleaguered eurozone countries are run. The confidential blueprint sets out Germany’s plan to tackle the eurozone debt crisis by creating a “stability union” that will be “immediately followed by moves “on the way towards a political union”.
Full article at www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8898213/German-memo-shows-secret-slide-towards-a-super-state.html
Full article at www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8898213/German-memo-shows-secret-slide-towards-a-super-state.html
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Glee Throws High School Students under the Bus
From: Bill Johnson
To: Friends
Date: November 10, 2011
Re: Glee Throws High School Students under the Bus
Tuesday night FOX TV aired the much-hyped episode of Glee, entitled “The First Time.” As we reported last week, this episode centered on a high school girl losing her virginity with her boyfriend as well as two high school homosexual boys also having sex for the first time.
Some reviewers lauded this episode glorifying teenage sex for its “tasteful” depiction. Such as this writer from tvfanatic.com: “…if you tune in to be taken deeper into the teenager world, to watch a show that sometimes tries to deliver a message more than a joke, to have a serious experience... then you probably have a satisfied smile on your face right about now. …
If Glee is going to tackle the issue of losing one's virginity straight (or gay!) on, this is how it should be done.”
And then there were other TV reviewers who actually seemed to be disappointed because the sex wasn’t graphic enough!
However, the issue isn’t how explicit the sex scenes were - as the gushing reviewer writes above – it’s the message delivered to millions of teen and pre-teen viewers. And the message perpetuated by Glee is that teens who wait to have sex (let alone until marriage) are freaks and weird oddities of nature.
In this episode one student, shocked to find out two of his classmates are still virgins, convinces them that losing their virginity will make them better performers in the school musical, stating: “How do you expect to convey the human experience to an audience when you haven’t even opened yourself up to (the) most basic and primal one?”
The girl who ultimately loses her virginity seeks advice from other girls beforehand. Yet, even though statistics show in the “real” world that at least half of teens are abstinent, this one lone girl is the only one in the group who hadn’t yet engaged in promiscuous sex. As one of these girls tells her: “Losing my virginity was a great experience for me …”
Contrary to the fictional accounts in the show, the "first" experience for most girls is very much a disappointment and source of shame and guilt.
What irresponsible message is this conveying to vulnerable young people tuning in to Glee, a show with a fan base of millions? Instead of using their influence to at least portray abstinence as a positive choice in a culture rampant with teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the negative and harmful consequences that often result, Glee and other teen-based shows throw their young audience under the proverbial bus, profiting from them while they contribute to their downfall and abasement.
One of the greatest dangers of Glee is the fact that the seductive messages of the show are mixed in with the entertaining song and dance performances, numbing viewers – especially young, impressionable ones – to the often subtle, indoctrinating ideas they’re absorbing.
While teens are not even considered mature enough to make a decision to legally get tattoos or piercings without parental permission, Glee mocks the idea that kids may not have the wisdom needed for such a monumental, irreversible step. Instead of supporting the fact that it is in the best interest of teens to practice abstinence, Glee creators are telling kids that their sexuality has no more consequence or significance than beasts in heat.
And then there’s the whole issue of the promotion and legitimization of homosexuality among teens on Glee - not only giving viewers messages in “acceptance” of any and all lifestyles, but also depicting several male on male kissing scenes, discussions of sex, as well as showing the two boys in bed together.
These types of themes on Glee shouldn’t come as a surprise since Glee’s creator, Ryan Murphy, has made clear his agenda to push illicit sexuality on our youth and erode television standards even further, having stated:
“It is tough to get that sexual point of view across on television. Hopefully I have made it possible for somebody on broadcast television to do a rear-entry scene in three years. Maybe that will be my legacy.”
And by choosing to align with Glee with their advertising dollars, the corporations sponsoring Glee empower these ideas and themes.
Take Action! Contact the sponsors of Glee by clicking on the link below.
http://americandecency.org/take_action_form.php?message=130
To: Friends
Date: November 10, 2011
Re: Glee Throws High School Students under the Bus
Tuesday night FOX TV aired the much-hyped episode of Glee, entitled “The First Time.” As we reported last week, this episode centered on a high school girl losing her virginity with her boyfriend as well as two high school homosexual boys also having sex for the first time.
Some reviewers lauded this episode glorifying teenage sex for its “tasteful” depiction. Such as this writer from tvfanatic.com: “…if you tune in to be taken deeper into the teenager world, to watch a show that sometimes tries to deliver a message more than a joke, to have a serious experience... then you probably have a satisfied smile on your face right about now. …
If Glee is going to tackle the issue of losing one's virginity straight (or gay!) on, this is how it should be done.”
And then there were other TV reviewers who actually seemed to be disappointed because the sex wasn’t graphic enough!
However, the issue isn’t how explicit the sex scenes were - as the gushing reviewer writes above – it’s the message delivered to millions of teen and pre-teen viewers. And the message perpetuated by Glee is that teens who wait to have sex (let alone until marriage) are freaks and weird oddities of nature.
In this episode one student, shocked to find out two of his classmates are still virgins, convinces them that losing their virginity will make them better performers in the school musical, stating: “How do you expect to convey the human experience to an audience when you haven’t even opened yourself up to (the) most basic and primal one?”
The girl who ultimately loses her virginity seeks advice from other girls beforehand. Yet, even though statistics show in the “real” world that at least half of teens are abstinent, this one lone girl is the only one in the group who hadn’t yet engaged in promiscuous sex. As one of these girls tells her: “Losing my virginity was a great experience for me …”
Contrary to the fictional accounts in the show, the "first" experience for most girls is very much a disappointment and source of shame and guilt.
What irresponsible message is this conveying to vulnerable young people tuning in to Glee, a show with a fan base of millions? Instead of using their influence to at least portray abstinence as a positive choice in a culture rampant with teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the negative and harmful consequences that often result, Glee and other teen-based shows throw their young audience under the proverbial bus, profiting from them while they contribute to their downfall and abasement.
One of the greatest dangers of Glee is the fact that the seductive messages of the show are mixed in with the entertaining song and dance performances, numbing viewers – especially young, impressionable ones – to the often subtle, indoctrinating ideas they’re absorbing.
While teens are not even considered mature enough to make a decision to legally get tattoos or piercings without parental permission, Glee mocks the idea that kids may not have the wisdom needed for such a monumental, irreversible step. Instead of supporting the fact that it is in the best interest of teens to practice abstinence, Glee creators are telling kids that their sexuality has no more consequence or significance than beasts in heat.
And then there’s the whole issue of the promotion and legitimization of homosexuality among teens on Glee - not only giving viewers messages in “acceptance” of any and all lifestyles, but also depicting several male on male kissing scenes, discussions of sex, as well as showing the two boys in bed together.
These types of themes on Glee shouldn’t come as a surprise since Glee’s creator, Ryan Murphy, has made clear his agenda to push illicit sexuality on our youth and erode television standards even further, having stated:
“It is tough to get that sexual point of view across on television. Hopefully I have made it possible for somebody on broadcast television to do a rear-entry scene in three years. Maybe that will be my legacy.”
And by choosing to align with Glee with their advertising dollars, the corporations sponsoring Glee empower these ideas and themes.
Take Action! Contact the sponsors of Glee by clicking on the link below.
http://americandecency.org/take_action_form.php?message=130
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Calvinism On The Move
by Brenda Nickel
Saturday, 29 October 2011 09:17
www.carylmatrisciana.com
Calvinism is definitely on the rise within unlikely sectors of Evangelicalism. We expect to see increasing numbers of Calvinists in Reformed denominations, but to see Calvinism on the move in more fundamental branches of Christendom is surprising. Such was the focus of a recent newsletter article sent to Caryl Productions and titled, "Calvinism on the March" posted here by David Cloud of Way of Life Literature. The upswing in devotion to Calvinism can be traced to specific tactics that should be brought to the light of Truth so its deeds may be seen for what they are, deceptive. Otherwise, Christians will not be prepared to meet the challenges that lay ahead as loyalty to Calvinism's "sovereign purposes of God" advance nearly unabated. Do we care that biblical Christianity is being redefined from the inside out right before our very eyes?
Full article:
http://www.carylmatrisciana.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=277:calvinism-on-the-move&catid=39:calvinism&Itemid=58
Additional Info:
Calvinism on the March
http://www.wayoflife.org/files/169aa1723c4aa2b62518aea3937a55eb-185.html
Saturday, 29 October 2011 09:17
www.carylmatrisciana.com
Calvinism is definitely on the rise within unlikely sectors of Evangelicalism. We expect to see increasing numbers of Calvinists in Reformed denominations, but to see Calvinism on the move in more fundamental branches of Christendom is surprising. Such was the focus of a recent newsletter article sent to Caryl Productions and titled, "Calvinism on the March" posted here by David Cloud of Way of Life Literature. The upswing in devotion to Calvinism can be traced to specific tactics that should be brought to the light of Truth so its deeds may be seen for what they are, deceptive. Otherwise, Christians will not be prepared to meet the challenges that lay ahead as loyalty to Calvinism's "sovereign purposes of God" advance nearly unabated. Do we care that biblical Christianity is being redefined from the inside out right before our very eyes?
Full article:
http://www.carylmatrisciana.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=277:calvinism-on-the-move&catid=39:calvinism&Itemid=58
Additional Info:
Calvinism on the March
http://www.wayoflife.org/files/169aa1723c4aa2b62518aea3937a55eb-185.html
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