What's Old is New Again

By Charles Burris

As Sean Hannity points out, first it was Russia hacked the election and Trump obstructed justice so he should be impeached. Then recently Trump was a blood-thirsty warmonger calling for the destruction of North Korea so he should be impeached. Now it’s Trump is a pro-Nazi, pro-Klan racist who incites violence so he should be impeached.

It appears more and more that Charlottesville was a staged event.
Today’s left-wing fascists are taking a page from history with their strategy of provocation.

In the late 1920s, under the direction of Gauleiter or regional party leader Joseph Goebbels, violent street confrontation and warfare in Berlin between the left-wing National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and the left-wing Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was used to create both chaotic instability within the faltering Wiemar Republic, as well as building support for the Nazis cadres.

For the Nazi Party, the brownshirts — who included the unemployed, the underemployed, apprentices and high-school students — were “political soldiers.” In Goebbel’s view, their task was the “conquest of the street.” In the melting pot of Berlin, these primarily young men were supposed to reconcile and embody two previously hostile worldviews: nationalism, which Goebbels believed had to be “reshaped in a revolutionary way,” and a “true socialism” free of Marxism.

Even the corpse of Heather Heyer is being tragically manipulated and egregiously transformed into a 2017 version of Horst Wessel.
As Wikipedia notes:

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. Lacking a majority in the Reichstag, Hitler formed a coalition with the Nationalists (German National People’s Party (German: Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP)). Not long afterwards, he called elections for 5 March. Six days before the election, on 27 February, the Reichstag fire damaged the house of Parliament in Berlin. Claiming that the fire was the first step in a Communist revolution, the Nazis used the fire as a pretext to get the President, Hindenburg, to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, officially the Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (Presidential Decree for the Protection of People and State).
Under the decree, issued by Hindenburg on the basis of Article 48 of the Wiemar Republic Constitution, the government was given authority to curtail constitutional rights including habeas corpus, free expression of opinion, freedom of the press, rights of assembly, and the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Constitutional restrictions on searches and confiscation of property were likewise suspended.
The Reichstag Fire Decree was one of the first steps the Nazis took toward the establishment of a one-party dictatorship in Germany. With several key government posts in the hands of Nazis and with the constitutional protections on civil liberties suspended by the decree, the Nazis were able to use police power to suppress, intimidate and arrest their opposition, in particular the Communists. Hitler’s subversion of the Constitution under Article 48 thus had the mark of legality.

The organizer of the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville was a Democrat and an Obama supporter. He was also part of the Occupy Wall street movement and a strong supporter of gun control. His name is Jason Kessler. Kessler suddenly switched from being an Obama supporter to a Trump supporter after Trump won.
How can someone who supported and worked for George Soros funded, Black Lives Matter enthusiast Barack Obama suddenly become a white supremacist and create a white supremacist rally to engage in violent street warfare confrontation with Black Lives Matter and Antifa? Is Jason Kessler also a George Soros paid agent provocateur? The mayor of Charlottesville ordered the police to stand down so violence could erupt. The entire Charlottesville event was a staged event, a classic strategy of provocation operation which is going to be used as psywar pushing for national imposition of martial law and the deep state coup against Trump and the remnants of the Republic.

Posted By ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Off With Their Heads!!

By Michael Rozeff

The cry will go out to destroy Mt. Rushmore, because all 4 presidents depicted there were racists — were. Dogmatic cultural cleansing is gaining popularity. But for these men, those were the times. Those were the currents of thought that were prevalent. It’s demanding too much after the fact to create a sanitized history. Removing memorials that elicit all sorts of thoughts and feelings, for and against, disrespects the experiences of the past that belong to everyone in the country in memory. This disrespects the people of the past who erected these memorials. Wrong or right, they lived according to their lights and darknesses. The destroyers act as if they have found and know the truth for all time and as if they know how to make it explicit to the eye and mind, but do they know that truth and do they know how to memorialize it? Do they have a right to destroy that which annoys them?

In our time, now to create a present that’s sanitized according to particular currents of thought that are now held by particular groups is to accord respect to these thoughts and groups. Are these deserved? Does the proclamation of one’s purity and virtue on slavery justify the power of certain self-selected groups to destroy the memorials erected by past Americans?

If libertarians united and demanded similar kinds of purification rites against all those in America’s past who have been anti-libertarians, would not their case be even broader than the case being made by memorial-bashers today? What a massive excision would be involved in removing the works of our anti-libertarian forefathers. However, the case for doing so is as weak as the case for destroying Mt. Rushmore.

The past in memory belongs to all of us as it happened. The past in its public physical forms belongs to those in the past who created these forms. They left them as an inheritance to be preserved. They’d erode over time perhaps or be taken or removed or relocated, but they were not meant to be destroyed because of the aggression of past human beings. We were not bequeathed them to be destroyed because they annoy some of us or because of the sins of the fathers or because we wish to erect new monuments to our supposed purity and virtues or because of political motives disguised as virtuous ones.

The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, writes “Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson will be removed from the CUNY hall of great Americans because New York stands against racism.” This is a cheap shot that wounds the hall’s purpose and history, which is “to honor prominent Americans who have had a significant impact on this nation’s history.” The state is a trustee or a custodian of this property, and that means that it should be fulfilling a duty to the creators to maintain their works. It should not be culturally cleansing the art works because anti-racism has recently become a popular rallying point for political elements that have a political agenda.

If all property were private, this matter would be a libertarian no-brainer. In our world, much property is officiated over by governments. In such cases, we can ask what treatment would be appropriate if they were private. The governments, often cities, hold them in a variety of ways, because the land was sometimes donated and the statues were paid for and made in a variety of ways. We have to ask to whom the statues belong in order to get some idea of the government’s just role in protecting their heritage. They basically are held in trust for the people who built them and paid for them.

We are surely not going to find that they belong to people who are upset because the statues are of people who were slaveholders or racists. One does not gain ownership because one is unhappy about something that belongs to others or about something one has no real claim to. Tearing down statues or pressuring governments to remove them is going to be in many cases a rights violation, a disrespecting of the rights of their dead and buried owners who left them as an inheritance to be kept up by various governments typically.

If a private society were to collect these statues, which may be available at bargain prices, they could perhaps be arranged to make for a profitable tourist attraction.

posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

A Brave New USA

By Porter

Owing to a formidable native facility for pessimism, I am infrequently surprised. Though three elements of the last few days did almost tease my brow to furrow.

The first was learning of the suddenly impotent nature of court orders. The Charlottesville right–as you know–came armed with one of these sacred writs–a thing we previously knew to enjoy the power to dictate national policy on every topic. Yet apparently court orders are sufficient only to compel modest functionaries like congress and the president of the United States, while having no power whatsoever over small town leftist mayors. Thus the injunction to allow the Lee Park assembly was summarily ignored, and the court was invited to sit on its thumb if they didn’t like it. I hope someone is noting that for precedent.

The second of these were the frantic and unanimous denunciations of the Charlottesville right by every Republican down to the Humboldt County Clerk. I understand these people are made to attack right like Swiss watches are made to tick, though the sheer Pavlovian reflexiveness and purple pageantry of their language was…well…typical, I suppose.

Though it should be mentioned, this wasn’t just the customary act of conservatives running cover for a left that vividly despises them. There was a cunning calculation in those lugubrious displays. The purpose of which was to scuttle their political competition so that the National Review transvestites could consolidate influence on the right and get conservatives back to losing graciously.

You’ll note that in comparison the left never attacks its radicals. It simply doesn’t acknowledge them at all, and suffers hearing aid failures whenever anyone asks. Thus those things with black masks and baseball bats flourish in the tacit approval of benign indifference. This is how you win generation after generation, by the way. Focusing attacks on your enemies rather than one’s own flanks has been proven since the campaigns of Clausewitz to be a successful tactic. Though certainly not one conservatives will lower themselves to learn.

The final item that has given me about a three volt shock has been the utter and absolute pass given to the left’s explicit communists. Now obviously arriving at such spectacles brandishing a swastika is breathtakingly stupid. Though it should be only slightly more stupid than waving a hammer and sickle. Yet there they are at every fetid left-wing riot without a peep of media reflection or demands of denunciation. I certainly don’t expect a democrat to object to symbols of murderous Bolshevism, though is it beyond the range of even rock-ribbed republicans to mention the fact between gasps about “white supremacy?”

That reminds me of the need to clarify media terms. A supremacist is one who wants a safe and harmonious home absent foreign squatters screaming about his moral infirmities into perpetuity. And CNN deploys other shorthand as well. For instance, teen means a black man of any age, as counterprotestor means a communist of any race. And fascists are whoever counterprotestors attack. It’s really no more complicated than that.

Read the entire Article

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

By Thomas DiLorenzo

Among the many crusades of America’s Social Justice Bolsheviks over the past several years has been one supposedly against bullying.  Billions of tax dollars have been spent to create a whole new anti-bullying bureaucracy.  At the same time, America’s Social Justice Bolsheviks are the world’s biggest bullies!  Let a well-known conservative or libertarian speaker show up at one of their universities and he will be shouted down, screamed at with F-bombs, shoved around, libeled as a racist/sexist/homophobe, terrorized with cars and buildings set on fire as in Berkeley, or just plain dis-invited.  A conservative student was recently assaulted by a mob of black-clad, hooded Bolshevik goons at Ithaca College for merely wearing a Young America’s Foundation ball cap.  Conservative and libertarian college students mostly remain quiet for fear of being bullied by social justice Bolsheviks among the student body and the university administration.  Whenever they do speak up in an entirely civilized and scholarly way, they risk being accused of “bullying” with their “insensitive” remarks and threatened with university sanctions.  Safe rooms are set up in dozens of universities to allow the social justice Bolsheviks to hide their empty heads in the sand should a diverse viewpoint ever be uttered on their campuses.


Posted By ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Happy Anniversary, SPLC Hate Factory!

By Christopher Manion

Five years ago today domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II entered the HQ of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. He planned to kill all fifteen FRC employees, he said, “because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a “hate group” due to their traditional marriage views.”
Corkins also intended to stuff Chik-Fil-a sandwiches into the mouths of his dead victims. His attack was thwarted when he was tackled by security guard Leo Johnson – after Corkins had shot him!
“While Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,'” said FRC President Tony Perkins.
Sure enough, the SPLC also inspired the first terrorist attack in the United States under President Trump, when terrorist James T. Hodgkinson, 66, opened fire on Republican members of Congress on an Alexandria, Virginia baseball field. Like Corkins, Hodgkinson was also a fan of the abundantly-funded “poverty center” that has some $250 million in the bank.
Apparently, the SPCL haters aren’t spending that dough to end poverty: they’re using it to spread hate.
[note: FRC officials gratefully note that their historic escape from a mass murderer occurred on the Feast of the Assumption, a major Marian feast in the Catholic Church].

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Two Anniversaries

By Charles Goyette
This is August 15. Perhaps you know the historical importance of this very date more than a generation ago.
Well, it marks the beginning of Woodstock, “three days of peace, love, and music,” in 1969. The music festival drew 400,000 people – and many more who would later claim to have been there!
But it is also a red letter day in our country’s economic history. On August 15, 1971 events were set in motion that are driving to an unhappy finish.
It was on this date 46 year ago that President Nixon severed the last remaining link of the U.S. dollar to gold, the preferred money of the ages. Nixon introduced a number of other destructive measures at the same time, including his wage and price control program, a harebrained scheme that played such an important role in ushering in the stagflation – economic stagnation accompanied by double-digit inflation – of the 1970s.
Since the dollar is no longer redeemable in anything and anchored to nothing, there is no discipline on the extent of dollar creation by the politicians and the monetary authorities.
And create money, they have. By the governments own calculations, figures that woefully understate the real loss of the dollar’s purchasing power, it would take $6.00 today to buy what $1.00 would purchase when Nixon closed the gold window.
For the last thirty-five years the monetary authorities have been using the privilege of a currency freed from the restraint of gold to buy down interest rates and transfer wealth from Main Street to Wall Street. But from its beginnings the Fed has been in the business of funding wars that the American people would never have willingly taxed themselves to pay for.
The monetary madness reached a frenzy of ferocity with Ben Bernanke and his madcap “Quantitative Easing.”
Except for the Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sin, I know of no serious world view in which a monumental malfeasance like the creation of trillions of dollars out of nothing can have been allowed to proceed without eventually producing the most grave consequences.
Off the stage and mostly unobserved is the quickening of monetary events that were set in motion 46 years ago today.

posted by  ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Perhaps...Perhaps Not

By Michael S. Rozeff

“North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, according to a confidential July assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency…”

I do not believe this. Why believe a one-sentence conclusion that’s leaked to the Washington Post? The Post is a CIA vehicle. Why believe some unknown intelligence source with no other information to back it up? Why believe this when such leaks are used to manipulate public opinion at critical junctures? If such important information is for real, why would it be made public via a leak? Why not come out in the open? Why not inform members of Congress and have them release it? Come out of the shadows and speak like a man. I refuse to credit people who hide in the dark, shooting forth their documents and expecting us to believe them and dance to their tune. If members of government cannot make a supportable case in public, why should I listen, much less believe? Government is supposed to be transparent.

The detailed information that we have from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists does not allow us to conclude that N. Korea has an ICBM and an atomic warhead atop it that can hit the lower 48. That is further reason for thinking that N. Korea does not have an operational miniaturized atomic bomb deliverable by an ICBM to this country.

In a few years, N. Korea might attain the capability. We’d probably see some tests that showed they had it for sure.

I will believe that they have this capability now if the U.S. has penetrated their computer systems and/or has some spies on the ground or hard information that this is the case. But the available news is that the U.S. does not now have such spies. On May 8, 2017 it was reported that a spy unit was being formed for exactly that task. The U.S. has used aerial surveillance as a rule.

Failing direct knowledge of what N. Korea has accomplished, and knowing of the poor record of our intelligence agencies in other important instances such as the Russian economy, and knowing of their political biases, and knowing of their incentive to err on the side of inflating risks, I am staying with my belief that at this time N. Korea couldn’t come close to Seattle with an atomic device.

Regardless of N. Korean weaponry, safety of Americans and prevention of atomic wars are very important objectives. To attain them, the U.S. needs to negotiate and be willing to end its security pact with S. Korea. This is not appeasement, but it does signal the beginning of the end of the U.S. empire. That’s why it will be strongly resisted by the national security state. We will be told that appeasement is present and that it makes us less safe. This is absolutely not the case. Getting out of trouble spots with which the involvement makes us an atomic target makes us safer.

What should therefore be crystal clear is that the desire of the national security state to maintain and extend the U.S. empire directly conflicts with the twin aims of the safety of Americans and no atomic wars.

posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

They're Serious

In Germany and several other countries, public utterance or display of the Nazi salute is a crime.  Less than a week ago, two Chinese tourists were arrested for allegedly making a Nazi salute while they took photographs of themselves outside the Reichstag in Berlin.  The arrests made international news.

The "criminals" were ordered to post €500 bail. Final disposition of this very serious breach of law was not available as of this posting.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Surviving the Political Establishment

Patrick Mason:

Today I read through an article on Lewrockwell.com regarding increased seismic activity noted at Yellowstone and its potentially dire foreboding of what could be coming.  This got me thinking about something which continually surfaces in my mind about the legitimately unhinged actions of a handful of scheming, bought-and-paid-for politicians who are engaging in attempts to threaten nuclear-tipped Russia, N Korea, and China to the point they will be pushed into a corner with no other choice but to fight their way out…,which means nuclear war and unleashing the feared apocalypse all nuclear nations heretofore strove to steer clear of.
Those of us raised during the Cold War (1949-1991) realized during the collapse of the Soviet Union the kind of bullet we all had dodged.  Our generation should be THE keenest and sensitive to the madness which has gripped both our leadership and the general population by efforts to reignite what we all thought would be a thing of the past.  Alarmingly, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
The enormity of recklessness and arrogance of the US Government is almost nightmarish, and the complicity of the media and both sides of the political aisle is simply disgusting.  They are literally dreaming up baseless assertions against Russia, China, and N Korea insisting that we are either being “attacked,” or under “threat” of being attacked, and setting up three of the most deadly nuclear nations on earth (who have done us no harm, by the way) and DARING them to fire.

What is the most sickening tenet of all this reckless irresponsibility is this:
We cannot stop a catastrophic Yellowstone eruption, nor can we stop a life-killing asteroid.  Science has shown both events have already occurred in our past (several times) and WILL occur again.  These events also can occur with no real warning.  We are powerless to stop them.
However, we have the power to stop practically all destructive man-made events from happening…, including nuclear war which would have the same perilous effects a super-volcano or asteroid would have.  Surely, these leaders know this.  They must.  How could they not?  Yet, they press on in their aggression.
What, other than collective, bi-partisan madness, is responsible for such breathtaking indifference to such glaring stupidity?
I find myself wishing/hoping they’re bluffing, and that they’ll call off the dogs once it becomes apparent the nations in the crosshairs cock their revolvers and prepare to pull the trigger.  But, my instincts tell me THIS gang means business.
I never thought in my entire life that I would fear the actions of “my” government more than the life-snuffing effects of a super-eruption or a 5 km asteroid.
Robert Oppenheimer, designer of the US atomic bomb who had grave reservations later in life for doing so, visited Truman to express his revulsion of a second bomb dropped on Japan as being unnecessary and calling for a ban on any further nuclear weapons manufacturing.  For his efforts, Oppenheimer was shown the door by Truman who angrily exclaimed “I don’t want to ever see that SOB in this office again!”  Truman’s belligerent insouciance to ‘Peace’ appears to have manifested itself into every subsequent presidency since.
Surviving a super-eruption or asteroid impact is possible depending on factors controlling the severity of the event.  However, evidence from such events in the past have shown most to be life killers.  The same can be said of nuclear events.  The evidence we have from the Japanese bombings is horrific, and we now have countless times more weapons which are thousands of times more deadly and destructive.  Who in his or her right mind would ever – in their most fevered dream – actually believe any war could be won, much less any life could survive the nuclear onslaught which WILL occur if Washington has its way?
But, yes…, these folks appear to be that crazy.
If not these irresponsible politicians, the American public should familiarize themselves with the passage Vishnu proclaimed in the (Hindu) Bhagavad Gita which Oppenheimer recalled as he witnessed his invention going off for the first time:
“I have become death; the destroyer of worlds.”

Searching for Dragons to Slay

By Michael Rozeff

America as a people has no enemies, none: not North Korea, not Iran, not Russia and not China.

Our government says these are enemies, but they are not. Their forces are not bent on attacking us. They are not preparing to attack us, anymore than Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen were preparing to attack us. None of these countries began a war against us; but in one way or another the government claimed to see enemies and inserted our country into new battles and wars in these places. We must stop supporting the government when it invokes “national security” in situations where national security is not anywhere near being at stake. We should stop supporting our government when it expansively claims that it has “interests” all over the world.

Americans have been conned by warmongers. We continue to be conned. The warmongers who go out of their way to target countries like these and others as enemies use a cunning scheme. They claim that their prey is ready and willing to grow into an enemy. To the warmongers, a potential enemy is not “potential” anything: it’s an enemy, period. Stop them now, we are told. Take preventive steps now, we are told, which means, treat them as if they were an enemy. This makes us into their enemy:

“The United States is preparing for all options to counter the growing threat from North Korea, including launching a ‘preventive war,’ national security adviser H.R. McMaster said in an interview with MSNBC that aired Saturday.”

Hearing this, North Korea will surely regard the U.S. as its enemy, even if we have no basis for thinking of it as our enemy.

By forming alliances with “friends”, the U.S. government goes out of its way to expose us to countries that it can then label as enemies. The enemies of our “friends” and allies become our enemies. Those who favor a large U.S. military like this. They want us always to be on a war footing. That brings them profits, positions, power, promotions, glory and fame.

With reference to countries and states, America has no enemies. There are other countries with substantial military forces and nuclear weapons, but they are not threatening us. They require attention, some vigilance, some caution, but not hostility or threats of our own. We can certainly keep our sword sheathed while extending a hand in friendship.

We need to be careful how we think about terror movements. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are not states. They are terrorist movements that aspire to become states. Are they enemies? No, they are not. They are criminals and then some. It’s a mistake to grant them the status of “enemy”, as if they were a state. This allows warmongers to use them as a rationale for huge expenditures on the military and intelligence operations. They are more like larger scale criminal enterprises or syndicates that gain recruits by ideology. They are more like a Mafia, a mob, a network. Al-Qaeda means “the base”. They are more than an isolated criminal and less than an enemy state.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS are or have been supported in part by states that the U.S. regards as allies, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Even the U.S. has supplied them with arms and equipment, albeit indirectly. In Syria, the Russians, Assad’s forces and elements of Iranian forces are dealing deadly blows to ISIS day after day after day and paying a price in fighters killed in action and wounded. They are defeating the terrorists.

If ISIS were [our] enemy …the U.S…. would be applauding Putin and Assad for winning the day against ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria. Instead, the Congress of the U.S. almost unanimously has just passed a sanctions bill against Iran and Russia that specifically condemns them for their activities in Syria when they’ve been invited in by the Syrian government. (See, for example, Sec. 103(6)(d), Sec. 211(2), and Sec. 234.) This kind of outrageous sanctions bill compels Russia and Iran to view the U.S. as more hostile and more of an enemy. This in turn is what warmongers want, because then it becomes easier for them to claim that Iran and Russia are enemies.

The warmongers do everything in their power to create enemies of Americans where they previously did not exist. This is an absolutely corrupt, unlawful and dishonest aim, one that’s taken over both major political parties.

BOHICA*

* Bend Over Here It Comes Again

Politics of Water in California

California is currently experiencing a serious drought. The previous serious drought was in 1977 when the very same Jerry Brown was governor. It makes about as much sense to blame the drought on global warming as does Mr Brown as on the people of California for again electing him as governor.

California Governor Jerry Brown has announced that private citizens and small businesses — among others — will have their water usage restricted, monitored, and subject to heavy fines if state agents determine that too much water has been used. Noticeably absent from the list of those subject to restrictions are the largest users of water, the farmers.

Agriculture accounts for 80 percent of the state’s water consumption, but 2 percent of the state’s economy. To spell it out a little more clearly: Under Jerry’s Brown water plan, it’s fine to use a gallon of subsidized water to grow a single almond in a desert, but if you take a shower that’s too long, prepare to be fined up to $500 per day.

There Is No Market Price for Water

The fact that the growers, who remain a powerful interest group in California, happen to be exempt from water restrictions reminds us that water is not allocated according to any functional market system, but is allocated through political means by politicians and government agents.
When pressed as to why the farmers got a free pass, Jerry Brown was quick to fall back on the old standbys: California farms are important to the economy, and California farms produce a lot of food. Thus, the rules don’t apply to them. If translated from politico-speak, however, what Brown really said was this: “I have unilaterally decided that agriculture is more important than other industries and consumers in California, including industries and households that may use water much more efficiently, and which may be willing to pay much more for water.”

In California, those who control the political system have ensured that water will not go to those who value it most highly. Instead, water will be allocated in purely arbitrary fashion based on who has the most lobbyists and the most political power.

Numerous economists at mises.org and elsewhere (see here and here and here) have already pointed out that the true solution to water shortages lies in allowing a market price to determine allocation — and in allowing there to be a market in water — just as there is a market in energy, food, and other goods essential to life and health. Supporters of government-controlled water claim that billionaires will hoard all the water if this is allowed, although it remains unclear why the billionaires haven’t also hoarded all the oil, coal, natural gas, clothing, food, and shoes for themselves, since all of these daily essentials are traded using market prices, and all are used daily by people of ordinary means.

City Water vs. Agricultural Water

For a clue as to how divorced from reality is current water policy in California, we need only look at the government-determined “price” of water there. Even under current conditions, water remains very inexpensive in California, but for the record, city dwellers have historically paid much, much higher prices for water than growers.

For example, according to this study, water for residents of San Francisco rose by 50 percent from 2010 to 2014, but residents were still paying about 0.8 cents per gallon for water. In Los Angeles, the price growth was a little less over the same period, but the Los Angeles price was also low, coming in a little over 0.6 cents per gallon. City dwellers are told that water is incredibly scarce, but as Kathryn Shelton and Richard McKenzie have noted, the price of water is so low that virtually no one even knows the per-gallon price.

But how much do growers pay for their water? In a recent LA Times article contending that growers “aren’t the water enemy,” it was noted that growers are now paying $1,000 per acre foot. This is supposed to convince us that water prices are incredibly high. But how does this compare to city prices? An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons of water, so if we do the arithmetic, we find that growers who pay $1,000 for an acre-foot are paying about 0.3 cents per gallon for their water. That’s a little less than half as much as the city users are paying.

Now, city water is treated potable water, so we might expect a premium for city water. Historically, however, the gap between city prices and agricultural prices is much, much greater. Bloomberg notes that as of 2014, the price of water had risen to $1,100 “from about $140 a year ago” in the Fresno area. Going back further, we find that in 2001 many farmers were paying $70 per acre foot. Prices well below $1,000 are far more typical of the past several decades than the $1,000 to $3,000 per acre-foot many growers now say they pay. In fact, if we see what the per-gallon price would be for a $140 acre-foot of water, we find that a city dweller could use fifty gallons per day at a monthly price of 64 cents per month, or a per-gallon price of 0.04 cents.

At prices like these, it is no wonder that there is now a shortage of water. The price of water has for years been sending the message that water is barely a scarce resource at all.
In many cases, the low prices are enabled by decades of taxpayer subsidization of water infrastructure. A year round flow of water to both cities and growers is ensured in part by huge New Deal-era projects like Shasta Dam, and Hoover Dam, which the State of California could not afford to build, but which today California largely relies upon for water, care of the US taxpayer.

In central and northern California, the primary beneficiaries of federal water projects are growers, although it’s the city dwellers, who use a relatively small amount of water, who get lectured about conserving water. Were an actual market in water allowed, however, growers would have to compete for water with city dwellers, whose industries are far more productive than agricultural enterprises and who are likely to be willing to pay higher prices. Even when the private sector owners of water are old farming families (a legacy of prior appropriation), the water would still tend to go to those who value it the most as reflected in the per-unit prices they are willing to pay. That is: city dwellers.

 What Will We do Without California Growers

The fact remains that much California farmland is in a desert where it rains under twelve inches per year. Massive irrigation projects have made farming economical in the region, but it’s unlikely that the status quo can continue forever if California dries up and cities begin to compete for more water.
When crops like pecans, which are native to Louisiana where it rains over fifty inches per year, are being grown in central California, we will have to ask ourselves if there is true comparative advantage at work here, or if the industry is really sitting upon a shaky foundation of government-subsidized and -allocated resources.

The rhetoric that’s coming out of the growers, of course, is that California growers are essential to the American food supply. Some will even suggest that it’s a national security issue. Without California growers, we’re told, we’ll all starve in case of foreign embargo.

But let’s not kid ourselves. North America is in approximately zero danger of having too little farmland for staple crops. In fact, one can argue that some of the best farmland in the world — in Iowa for instance — is underutilized because policies like Jerry Brown’s farm favoritism send the message that California will prop up its desert agriculture no matter what.

No, if California farmland continues to go dry, this only means that Americans will have to turn to other parts of the US or imports. After all, many of the crops grown in dry parts of California are much more economically grown in more humid environments, including citrus plants, avocadoes (which are native to Mexico), and various tree nuts. And of course, it’s these crops, which are already fairly expensive and water-intensive that get mentioned when we’re told that California growers must be given what they want until the end of time. This will likely mean higher prices for some of these crops in the short run, the correct response is not government favoritism, but free trade, and letting comparative advantage work. In a world with market prices, it’s simply not economical to grow everything under the sun in the California desert. If markets were allowed to function, with real water prices and free trade, this would quickly become abundantly clear.

Ryan McMaken

The Tangled Web of US foreign Policy

As the US-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen enters its second week, more than 500 people — including many civilians — have been killed, what infrastructure existed in the impoverished country has been destroyed, and the ousted president cheers on the destruction of his country within the protective embrace of the country that is bombing his own.
What is less reported in US mainstream media is that one group in Yemen seems to be making out quite well in the US-backed and Saudi-created chaos: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yes, al-Qaeda. The group that the US has been droning in Yemen since 2010. The drone strikes that set the population and especially various tribes like the Houthis against the US-accommodating Hadi. The Houthis who had been fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen before they started being bombed by Saudi Arabia. That al-Qaeda.
A Thursday prison raid by al-Qaeda operatives in the port city of Mukalla freed one of their commanders, “emir” Khaled Batarfi. Barfi celebrated his freedom by taking up residence in the abandoned regional governor’s palace as Saudi planes continued to bomb al-Qaeda’s enemy in Yemen, the Houthis. Barfi even used the palace telephone apparently to issue orders to his minions. It must have been hard for him to believe his incredible good luck!
The Saudis are said to have air-dropped weapons to supporters of ousted president, Mansur Hadi, in the battleground port city of Aden. How long before al-Qaeda shows up with these gifts from the Saudis by way of the US military-industrial complex?
So why is the US backing the Saudi attack on its neighbor? It is complicated. According to US government logic, when Yanukovych was chased by a mob from his office in Ukraine, by leaving the country he lost legitimacy. In Yemen, on the other hand, when president Hadi was chased by a mob from his office he retained his legitimacy and Saudi airstrikes were approved and coordinated by the US to put him back in office.
It had something to do with democracy, it was said. However, Hadi was “elected” after overthrowing his predecessor in a coup and standing for office as the only candidate on the ballot. Not surprisingly in the circumstance, he “won” more than 99 percent of the vote. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was effusive in her praise, claiming the Soviet-style election and inauguration “were promising steps on the path toward a new, democratic chapter in Yemen’s history.”
Yanukovych, in contrast, was elected in a contested election judged to be “free and fair” by international monitoring bodies.
Watching State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki defend these double standards is one of those golden comedy moments that makes you laugh and then cry.
So the US backs Saudi attacks on Yemen in the name of democracy even though neither country is remotely democratic, and even though none except al-Qaeda and the US military-industrial complex seems to be benefitting. Is this incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, or something darker?


Daniel McAdams

ISIS – America’s (Latest) Frankenstein

By John M. Peters

Dating back to at least 2007, the Bush Administration and its Saudi and Israeli allies were hatching the plan to overthrow the government of Syria. It was also well known that the use of radical Islamic organizations or Jihadists was a sanctioned tool in this plan. As reported by Seymour Hersch, Saudi Arabia left no doubt about its intentions in Iraq and Syria:
“The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw…’The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.’”
“Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
“Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be ‘the ones to talk to,’ Jumblatt said.”
Upon her appointment as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton willingly picked up the torch on the policy to overthrow the government of Syria. In this cause she enlisted underlings Robert Ford, and Susan Rice. Ford openly fomented opposition while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Syria, while Rice pounded the table as Ambassador to the U.N. relentlessly demanding international military action to unseat Syria’s President a demand she has continued to make in her position as National Security Advisor. Throughout this period somebody else had Clinton’s ear on Syria – someone with ties to Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. That person was Huma Abedin, Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff.  Adebin was also the wife of disgraced former New York Congressman, Anthony Weiner, and a Clinton aide since 1996. Abedin was considered Clinton’s closest policy advisor on the Middle East. Is it any wonder that Clinton has been the talon-baring hawk for military intervention in Syria? In taking this line, Clinton insures both Saudi and Israeli support for her run at the Oval Office.
Which takes us full circle to America’s latest ‘existential threat’ – ISIS or ISIL or IS, depending upon which moniker the West has decided to use for the day. ISIS never existed until the conflict in Syria. Its members have come from throughout the world, their common denominator being their fervor for Jihad and cutting off peoples’ heads. How were all of these individuals able to travel freely from their native countries, including the U.S. and Britain, to the Middle East? Who paid their way? Who purchased and supplied the weapons they are unleashing from Syria to Iraq? Who provided them with military training? Why are western nations backing them in Syria, but attacking them in Iraq? If we are now worried about the return of the American jihadists from their butcher-fest in Syria, and we know who they are, why does the U.S. government not simply revoke their passports and refuse them re-entry. Why does Obama not simply order them assassinated as he did with U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki???
It is commonly known that ISIS gets its support from those nations (including prominent individuals and organizations within those nations) which are trying to assure the destruction of Shiite influence in the Middle East. They plan to accomplish this through the advancement of a Sunni extremist agenda. How ironic that those nations – Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar – also happen to be America’s closest allies in the region! If ISIS is such an existential threat, why are we not threatening or bombing Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar?  As columnist Patrick Buchanan recently wrote:
“If President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to crush ISIS, he could seal his border to foreign fighters entering Syria and send the Turkish army to assist President Bashar Assad in annihilating ISIS in Syria.” Buchanan notes that instead of supporting them, U.S. politicians like John McCain, want to attack “Syria’s army, the most successful anti-ISIL force in the field.”
The Obama Administration’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil policy on the Benghazi fiasco is also rooted in the ISIS issue. It is known that Benghazi was being used by the United States to procure weapons and Libyan jihadists to send to fight in Syria by way of Turkey.
The recent execution of American journalist James Foley (if it occurred) also has its roots in America’s Syrian policy. Foley was originally kidnapped not by ISIS, but by Senator John McCain’s ‘moderate Syrian rebel’ allies, the so-called Free Syrian Army. The same ‘moderate rebels’ who cannibalized dead Syrian soldiers on camera. They then transferred or traded Foley to ISIS.
In the classic television comedy The Three Stooges, the Stooges are working as exterminators. Business is slow so they find a way to increase their business by pretending to conduct home inspections for pests while actually planting pests in the home. They then leave the homeowner with their business card and wait for the call. Soon after, the frantic homeowner urges them to return quickly and they have a paying job of their own creation.
The trail of ISIS terror leads painfully, inexorably and unmistakably back to the United States and its allies. ISIS was a creation of the West and its failed policy decisions. Now ISIS is being used as the excuse for further military adventurism in the Middle East. Stooges indeed!

When in Hole Stop Digging

By Michael Rozeff

Where it counts, in the higher levels of the U.S. government, the most powerful positions are filled by fools. What other conclusion can be drawn when every major policy move is foolish, destructive and dangerous? Are we supposed to believe that American meddling and aggressions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria accomplished something desired by these men and women and something beneficial to Americans? Are we supposed to believe that the management of the American economy has benefited this country, or that the surveillance state is a big plus? Are we supposed to believe that the huge spending financed by a huge national debt is producing dividends for America?
And now, are we supposed to believe that confronting Russia over Ukraine, seeking to bring down Putin, and stirring up trouble inside Russia is going to produce a new set of institutions and leaders in Russia that is more beneficial to us? Are we supposed to believe that confronting China will do the same? Or that spreading American forces throughout Africa will bring us peace?
Why should we expect anything but bad results from American meddling and confrontations when that is all that they have produced for many years now? Why should we not conclude that the country is being run by ignorant and naive fools or jackasses, who keep beating their heads and ours against one wall after another? How stupid are they to be imbued with confused ideas about remaking the world and whose methods for doing so cluelessly produce one debacle after another?

Government Lexicon

By Michael S. Rozeff

Words no longer mean anything stable and therefore laws mean nothing stable at the highest level of U.S. government. The government is the master of words now. It creates threats when none exist. It defines and names them according to its pleasure. This in turn justifies it in creating a national emergency when there is none.
There is no restraint, no constraint, no boundary on what a president can do when and if words fail to provide such constraints. When a president uses words to mean things they do not in fact mean, that is, when he uses bald-faced lies as justifications for his actions, then any so-called law can be issued by a president. He can do anything by declaring that the situation demands it, even if it doesn’t. At that point, words mean nothing of what their conventional content gives them. They become what authority says they mean. At that point, we are in an Alice in Wonderland world.

Alice is talking with Humpty Dumpty:

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
“‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
“‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’”

Who is master, the word or its user, in this case Humpty Dumpty? Humpty tells Alice he’s the master.

Obama is now the master. Here is Humpty Dumpty Obama speaking. Obama issued an executive order that says:

“I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of persons — including persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine — that undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. I hereby order:”

What national emergency? There isn’t any. I defy anyone to prove that there is an actual national emergency because of relations between Crimea and Ukraine. Obama finds “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States…” What threat? I defy anyone to prove that there is a threat to the security of Americans arising from Crimea’s relations with Ukraine.

What danger is there to Americans if Crimea holds a referendum? What danger if it decides to alter its political relations with Ukraine and Russia? What actually is the “Government of Ukraine” of which Obama speaks? What are its democratic processes being undermined? How can a vote in Crimea cause an emergency to Americans? How can such a vote cause an emergency to Americans while riots in the streets, snipers and thugs can cause a change in government in Ukraine and that is no cause for Obama to declare an emergency, indeed that becomes a cause for approval?

In Obama’s dictionary, if he thinks something has happened in Crimea having to do with its government that another government (in Ukraine) has not authorized, then this constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States…” This constitutes an “emergency”.

If the foreign policy of the United States is unlawful to begin with and if it is thwarted by Crimeans or a Crimean vote to separate from Ukraine, does that give rise to a threat to the foreign policy of the U.S.? Even if it does, which it doesn’t in this case, is it so serious as to declare that the U.S. foreign policy faces an emergency?

A national emergency arises from a threat to THE NATION, that is, to Americans regarded as a people. If there is a threat to the foreign policy of the U.S., and I deny that a vote among Crimeans is a genuine threat even to that, this is not the same as a threat to Americans. There is no national emergency.

How can a vote in Crimea be viewed as a threat to U.S. foreign policy and the overturning of the government of Ukraine by violent means not be viewed as a threat? Only if the U.S. is content with the latter but unhappy with the former. In other words, to the U.S. government, a threat is that which frustrates what it desires. It is not based on something objective that endangers Americans but on an impediment to U.S. foreign policy. This impediment is declared to be a threat so that then a national emergency can be declared when none exists. That in turn then is used to justify taking actions in the form of sanctions.

Is the frustration of a want to be called a threat? If I want a Mercedes-Benz in a showroom but can’t get it without paying for it, is the dealer a threat to my “foreign policy”? Do I then declare that the dealer has threatened my family? Do I declare a family emergency? Do I then use my power to blockade the showroom or to prevent the dealer from accessing his bank account or to stop trailers from delivering new cars to him? Yes, this all sounds very far-fetched but so is it far-fetched for Obama to see a threat to this nation from a vote in Crimea and declare a national emergency.

Obama’s executive order is a raw exercise of power dressed up to give the appearance of legality.

Uncensored!!

The below embedded video interview of the whistleblower/hero “traitor” Edward Snowden by a German journalist was expected by this writer to go viral on the internet. Strangely, although having been posted many times on YouTube, its shelf life has been shall we say “short”. It would appear that our minders in the US media do not wish dissemination of any but the official version of the NSA leaks. In any event, dear readers, please avail yourselves of the opportunity for exposure to a non official perspective regarding the lies, lawlessness, secrecy and obtrusiveness of the imperial regime: ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Death by Government

Government More Likely to Kill Your Kids Than a School Shooter Is

By Thomas Hochmann
December 14th, 2013

In light of the sensationalist news coverage of yesterday's Arapahoe High School shooting, I thought it would be fun to look at some actual facts about school shootings. I know, I know... It's so old fashioned to resort to such inconvenient things as facts. Please forgive me for committing this grave sin against the journalistic standards of the 21st century.
First off, there are 132,656 K-12 schools in the US. From 2003 to date, there have been 76 shootings in US schools. 53 of those shootings resulted in deaths. Thus, over this 10 year period, the US has experienced an average of 5.3 fatal school shootings per year. Using these numbers, you can figure out that the odds that any given school will experience a fatal shooting during an entire calendar year are about 1 in 25,029.
Compare that figure that to the odds that you will die from:

• An air travel accident (1 in 20,000)
• Drowning (1 in 8,942)
• Electrocution (1 in 5,000)
• Falling down (1 in 246)
• Committing suicide (1 in 121)
• A car crash (1 in 100)

According to Wikipedia, "schools will do a lockdown drill one or two times per year." In anticipation of an event that has a 1 in 25,029 chance of actually occurring at a given school, children have a 100% certainty that they will be terrorized by the school itself at least once every year. On any given school day, there's at least a 1 in 270 chance that the school will frighten the crap out of your child with a lockdown drill.
Schools don't have mandatory drowning drills (though death by drowning is twice as likely as experiencing a fatal school attack), or mandatory "how not to fall down" classes (100 times as likely), or mandatory "don't get in a car because you might die" drills (250 times). They don't even devote this much shock-and-awe theatrics to teaching kids about cancer, which has a 1 in 7 chance of killing you (3,575 times more likely than a fatal school shooting).
As a fun aside, it's worth noting that you have a 1 in 89 chance of being killed by your own government. That's right: it's 281 times more likely that your own government will kill you or your child than your child's school will experience a fatal gun attack.
Funny how the schools don't drill kids on how to evade the police or withdraw their consent from government, both of which are far more likely sources of death and destruction than any crazed civilian gunman.

---

Connecting Dots Regarding the Lying Surveillance State?

It is indeed strange how missing pieces of a puzzle can obscure the entire picture until key pieces eventually fall into place. The most recent case in point is the revelation of spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US on upper as well as other levels of foreign government functionaries. The NSA, operating under a secret annual budget of multiple billions of dollars has routinely justified its secrecy and “black” budget status by playing the “National Security” card. One would be justified in wondering how the electronic interception and hacking of the personal email and telephone communications of the leaders of such nations as Brazil, Spain  Mexico, Argentina, Germany and France impacts US “national security”. The question now becomes: what nation has the US omitted from its intelligence gathering operations? This humble correspondent though lacking smoking-gun evidence is willing to bet the rent money that US government spying for the purpose of blackmail includes Sweden.

In 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange became the focus of US politicians’ outrage over publications that among other embarrassments, the US military has been engaging in what can be characterized as war crimes.

In July of that Year Army private Bradley Manning was arrested and charged with being the source of the leaked documents to Assange’s organization. Manning, whose conscience was apparently troubled by some of these events as well as being plagued by psychological issues which should have precluded him from any sensitive military assignment was arrested and after 400+ days of brutal torture-like confinement, brought to trial for the whistle-blowing leaks.

In the meantime, during a publicity seminar in Sweden during August of 2010 Assange “unluckily” ran afoul of Swedish authorities for what this writer would characterize as a “groupie tryst gone bad”.

On 11 August 2010, Assange arrived in Sweden on a speaking trip partly arranged by "Miss A", a member of a political party. He had never met her before, but had arranged that he would stay in her apartment while she was out of town. Days later, they reportedly had sex.

Three days later and still in Sweden, Assange met another woman, "Miss W", at another seminar. Again, he went back to her home and again, they are said to have had sex.

The two women then made contact and discussed aspects of the encounter. Both women reportedly said that what started as consensual sex became non-consensual and that Assange had deceived them about the use of condoms [and initially simply that Mr Assange be required to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases].

The complaint by the two women to the Swedish police was initially investigated by Chief Public Prosecutor Eva Finné of Chefsåklagare who, as a result, stated: “I don't think there is reason to suspect that he [Assange] has committed rape." This is the juncture at which one may be excused for beginning to suspect “influence by mysterious/external forces” (as the result of pressure exerted by way of blackmail?). The Swedish national prosecution authority now alleged: “Assange remained suspected of molestation. Police gave no further comment at that time, but continued the investigation.”

On 1 September 2010, Överåklagare (Director of Public Prosecution) Marianne Ny [unexpectedly?] decided to resume the preliminary investigation concerning all of the original allegations.

On 18 August 2010, Assange applied for a work and residence permit in Sweden. On 18 October 2010, his request was denied. He [had] left Sweden on 27 September 2010.

The subsequent complaint resulting in “the investigation of a MISDEMEANOR charge” for Assange’s Extradition from the UK is virtually without precedent, especially when “Assange's British lawyer, Mark Stephens, said "his client offered to be interviewed at the Swedish embassy in London or at Scotland Yard or via video, but that the offer had not been taken up.” Assange went so far as to agree to returning to Sweden for questioning if he could receive diplomatic assurance from that country that he would not be handed over to US authorities.

Predictably the Swedes declined to provide such assurances. Indeed, the reason revealed by a press report in Sweden:

Julian Assange has always been available for questioning in London
When I read the preliminary investigation of Assange's "Sex Crimes" I understand why police and prosecutors did not go to London to question  him. If they did it would close the investigation with the clear conclusion: No Crime!

This entire issue must now be viewed in light of the ongoing Snowden revelations of the ubiquitous global capture of private communications by the National Security Agency and the other extra legal actions by so called US “allies” such as the forcing of a Bolivian presidential aircraft to land and be searched in Austria on the suspicion that the whistleblower/fugitive Snowden might be aboard.

The latest brouhaha was based on the fact that the NSA has been spying on senior German and French officials. These German and French officials are fully aware of the spying capacity of the United States government, and especially the NSA. The thought that these revelations are news to foreign leaders is naïve. What is disturbing to the foreign leaders is that their own domestic populations are finding out how subservient the leaders have been to the United States government, and how defenseless all domestic populations really are. It is obvious that if the NSA can spy on Angela Merkel, it can spy on anybody in Germany. [or anywhere else].

 Indeed, one (conspiracy theorist) source has speculated that the chief justice of the US Supreme Court may have been blackmailed into his unexpected decision to uphold the clearly unconstitutional ObamaCare outrage.

Welcome one and all to the ubiquitous police state USSA.

Corruption

The Obama Pelosi War (AKA WW III)

Is that cool or what!!

Warfare Through a False Flag Frameup!

Let us try, through the use of logic, to follow the rationale for going to war with Syria. Never mind that our "fearless leaders" refer to the action as one of limited scope with no so-called "boots on the ground". If ANY nation committed such acts against the US they would be categorized as aggressors pure and simple.

In any event, it is alleged that the Assad government which is engaged in a civil war has used poison gas on the "innocent" citizenry of that hapless nation. Never mind that the US intelligence "community" caught in perjury has classified the "evidence" it has allegedly obtained of such outrage as "secret" and will only reveal it to lying political hacks members of Congress who are in turn expected to convince the US citizenry of the need to wage  a war which will result in the further slaughter of those "innocent" citizens. Never mind the credible evidence that the "rebels" themselves are the likely perpetrators of the chemical weapons outrage.

Jon Rappoport lays out the top nine real reasons for going to war with the Assad regime in Syria:

One: Give the appearance of unifying the country behind the President, who “did his job the right way,” by going to Congress for approval. This elevates Obama’s ratings and, by inference, suggests that his other programs should be accorded more merit. A wartime president always gains more support.
Two: Give the people an adrenaline rush. The effect should never be underestimated. Cleanses the pores, cleans the slate, and relieves frustration by proxy, temporarily…if you have very little access to your cerebral functions.
Three: In this case, winning Congressional approval reinstates the illusion, for a few moments, that we are a Constitutional Republic, with a government dedicated to justice.
Four: Help fulfill the long-planned US-Israeli agenda of destabilizing Syria and causing it to partition into warring and chaotic ethnic factions.
Five: Stop the construction of a natural gas pipeline across Syria, which would boost Iran’s economy by sending Iranian gas to Europe. Iran’s economy must be torpedoed.
Six: Send a message throughout the Middle East that the US is all-powerful and the dollar must remain the reserve currency in all oil transactions.
Seven: Feed the US military-industrial complex, which demands wars.
Eight: Aid the long-term goal of Globalism/Free Trade, which involves putting the entire Middle East into unresolvable debt and suffering…and then coming in with outside elite bankster financing, to rebuild the entire region and own it, lock, stock, and barrel.
Nine: Distract Americans from a number of scandals, including: Benghazi, Fast&Furious, IRS non-profit division crimes, NSA spying, the continuing failed war in Afghanistan, and a tanking domestic economy with more and more people living below the poverty line.
None of these reasons has anything to do with “punishing Assad for using chemical weapons.” In any case, that whole scenario has been thrown into extreme doubt.

Your government at work.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding the Middle East

Late breaking news informs us that our esteemed Leader will "consult" with Congress when it reconvenes after the holiday weekend on how to proceed against Syria over that nation's alleged use of chemical weapons within its own borders.

"The chart is a spin-off of the most amazing letter to the editor ever written, which appeared in Thursday's Financial Times. It also explained the entire Middle East, in a few short sentences. Here they are:

Sir, Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!

Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.

But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!

Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!

Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the U.S.!

Gulf states are pro-U.S. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!

Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.

KN Al-Sabah,
London EC4, U.K."

click on chart to enlarge

Let's Pretend!!

We just recently returned from a 5500 mile cross country road trip from north Georgia to the west coast and back. We have been doing these trips semi regularly since the middle 1980s to maintain contact with family and friends. Leonidas refuses to run the TSA gauntlet at the nation's airports. During the last 5 years the changes, I should say the deterioration of the quality of life, in middle America have been impossible to ignore. We endeavor as much as possible to avoid the large metropolitan centers and the interstate highway systems.

Beginning in 2010 we found it to be nearly impossible to avoid being stopped by the local or state traffic police for various infractions; usually such heinous crimes as failure to secure a seat belt or for proceeding at 4 miles per hour over a ridiculously low and recently reposted speed limit along a sparsely traveled rural highway.

Regular readers of this humble bolgster are aware that he is a retiree from the profession formerly known as "peace" officer but commonly referred to of late as "law enforcement". For that reason, a road tax invoice traffic citation is rarely issued unless of course such transgression is perpetrated within the borders of Colorado. Extra care must be exercised along surface roads which cross state lines as posted speed limits for the obvious purpose of revenue generation will change abruptly even as highway conditions remain unchanged.

In spite of media attestations to an improvement in the official economic statistics regarding the general economy, subsequent journeys through smallish towns in such states as Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia reveal the proliferation of closed and or abandoned homes and businesses. Although anecdotal, these conditions are nevertheless astounding. Indeed, as our vehicle requires being refilled with diesel fuel at 500 mile intervals the closing of former fuel stations now requires either an on board emergency supply or a recalculation of truck stop locations.

The descent of our formerly prosperous nation into conditions formerly evinced in the third world we have visited while cruising aboard our sailboat is troubling. These conditions are not only evident in the observable living conditions of the populace but the attitudes of the ruling bureaucracy. As an example I refer to the stationing of 4 sandinista soldiers at traffic intersections in Nicaragua to enforce the 4 way stop signs. Vehicles were required to come to a full stop at the intersection. If a driver's front tires touched the limit line the soldier ordered her to reverse and stop short of the line before proceeding. This procedure of course did not apply to official government or Communist party vehicles.

We now note that our formerly prosperous and "free" nation not only exhibits the economic characteristics of a banana republic but the political practices as well. Although the legal niceties are adhered to, the courts' proceedings and jurists are often "secret" as a matter of "national security".

In spite of the above, this humble bolgster remains optimistic of the final emergence of liberty in this fair land. This optimism is not based on any belief in a miraculous awakening of the citizenry resulting in the restoration of the republic. The return of liberty will be the result of the financial bankruptcy and accompanying default of various collectivist governments and the revelation that a society based on theft and violence cannot be sustained.

Government Lies Continue

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden
 Monday 1st July 2013

H/T Brock Townsend

The Rule of "Law"?

The following is a statement written by Julian Assange on the (show) trial of Bradley Manning. Assange himself is a political refugee in the Equadorian Embassy in London. He is wanted for international extradition in a warrant issued in Sweden for "a date gone bad". The real reason for his persecution is his publication via Wikileaks of data embarrassing to US government functionaries including this video.

Statement by Julian Assange

As I type these lines, on June 3, 2013, Private First Class Bradley Edward Manning is being tried in a sequestered room at Fort Meade, Maryland, for the alleged crime of telling the truth. The court martial of the most prominent political prisoner in modern US history has now, finally, begun.

It has been three years. Bradley Manning, then 22 years old, was arrested in Baghdad on May 26, 2010. He was shipped to Kuwait, placed into a cage, and kept in the sweltering heat of Camp Arifjan.

"For me, I stopped keeping track," he told the court last November. "I didn’t know whether night was day or day was night. And my world became very, very small. It became these cages... I remember thinking I’m going to die."




After protests from his lawyers, Bradley Manning was then transferred to a brig at a US Marine Corps Base in Quantico, VA, where - infamously - he was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of his captors - a formal finding by the UN. Isolated in a tiny cell for twenty-three out of twenty-four hours a day, he was deprived of his glasses, sleep, blankets and clothes, and prevented from exercising. All of this - it has been determined by a military judge - "punished" him before he had even stood trial.

"Brad’s treatment at Quantico will forever be etched, I believe, in our nation’s history, as a disgraceful moment in time" said his lawyer, David Coombs. "Not only was it stupid and counterproductive, it was criminal."

The United States was, in theory, a nation of laws. But it is no longer a nation of laws for Bradley Manning.

When the abuse of Bradley Manning became a scandal reaching all the way to the President of the United States and Hillary Clinton’s spokesman resigned to register his dissent over Mr. Manning’s treatment, an attempt was made to make the problem less visible. Bradley Manning was transferred to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

He has waited in prison for three years for a trial - 986 days longer than the legal maximum - because for three years the prosecution has dragged its feet and obstructed the court, denied the defense access to evidence and abused official secrecy. This is simply illegal - all defendants are constitutionally entitled to a speedy trial - but the transgression has been acknowledged and then overlooked.

Against all of this, it would be tempting to look on the eventual commencement of his trial as a mercy. But that is hard to do.

We no longer need to comprehend the "Kafkaesque" through the lens of fiction or allegory. It has left the pages and lives among us, stalking our best and brightest. It is fair to call what is happening to Bradley Manning a "show trial". Those invested in what is called the "US military justice system" feel obliged to defend what is going on, but the rest of us are free to describe this travesty for what it is. No serious commentator has any confidence in a benign outcome. The pretrial hearings have comprehensively eliminated any meaningful uncertainty, inflicting pre-emptive bans on every defense argument that had any chance of success.

Bradley Manning may not give evidence as to his stated intent (exposing war crimes and their context), nor may he present any witness or document that shows that no harm resulted from his actions. Imagine you were put on trial for murder. In Bradley Manning’s court, you would be banned from showing that it was a matter of self-defence, because any argument or evidence as to intent is banned. You would not be able to show that the ’victim’ is, in fact, still alive, because that would be evidence as to the lack of harm.

But of course. Did you forget whose show it is?

The government has prepared for a good show. The trial is to proceed for twelve straight weeks: a fully choreographed extravaganza, with a 141-strong cast of prosecution witnesses. The defense was denied permission to call all but a handful of witnesses. Three weeks ago, in closed session, the court actually held a rehearsal. Even experts on military law have called this unprecedented.

Bradley Manning’s conviction is already written into the script. The commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, Barack Obama, spoiled the plot for all of us when he pronounced Bradley Manning guilty two years ago. "He broke the law," President Obama stated, when asked on camera at a fundraiser about his position on Mr. Manning. In a civilized society, such a prejudicial statement alone would have resulted in a mistrial.

To convict Bradley Manning, it will be necessary for the US government to conceal crucial parts of his trial. Key portions of the trial are to be conducted in secrecy: 24 prosecution witnesses will give secret testimony in closed session, permitting the judge to claim that secret evidence justifies her decision. But closed justice is no justice at all.

What cannot be shrouded in secrecy will be hidden through obfuscation. The remote situation of the courtroom, the arbitrary and discretionary restrictions on access for journalists, and the deliberate complexity and scale of the case are all designed to drive fact-hungry reporters into the arms of official military PR men, who mill around the Fort Meade press room like over-eager sales assistants. The management of Bradley Manning’s case will not stop at the limits of the courtroom. It has already been revealed that the Pentagon is closely monitoring press coverage and social media discussions on the case.

This is not justice; never could this be justice. The verdict was ordained long ago. Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relations exercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience.

Conspiracy to commit journalism.

The alleged act in respect of which Bradley Manning is charged is an act of great conscience - the single most important disclosure of subjugated history, ever. There is not a political system anywhere on the earth that has not seen light as a result. In court, in February, Bradley Manning said that he wanted to expose injustice, and to provoke worldwide debate and reform. Bradley Manning is accused of being a whistleblower, a good man, who cared for others and who followed higher orders.

But this is not the language the prosecution uses. The most serious charge against Bradley Manning is that he "aided the enemy" - a capital offence that should require the greatest gravity, but here the US government laughs at the world, to breathe life into a phantom. The government argues that Bradley Manning communicated with a media organisation, WikiLeaks, who communicated to the public. It also argues that al-Qaeda (who else) is a member of the public. Hence, it argues that Bradley Manning communicated "indirectly" with al-Qaeda, a formally declared US "enemy", and therefore that Bradley Manning communicated with "the enemy".

But what about "aiding" in that most serious charge, "aiding the enemy"? Don’t forget that this is a show trial. The court has banned any evidence of intent. The court has banned any evidence of the outcome, the lack of harm, the lack of any victim. It has ruled that the government doesn’t need to show that any "aiding" occurred and the prosecution doesn’t claim it did. The judge has stated that it is enough for the prosecution to show that al-Qaeda, like the rest of the world, reads WikiLeaks.

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people," wrote John Adams, "who have a right and a desire to know.”

When communicating with the press is "aiding the enemy" it is the "general knowledge among the people" itself which has become criminal. Just as Bradley Manning is condemned, so too is that spirit of liberty in which America was founded.

In the end it is not Bradley Manning who is on trial. His trial ended long ago. The defendent now, and for the next 12 weeks, is the United States. A runaway military, whose misdeeds have been laid bare, and a secretive government at war with the public. They sit in the docks. We are called to serve as jurists. We must not turn away.

Free Bradley Manning.

A tip of the boonie hat and many thanks  to Robert Wenzel for permission to repost this message

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"If It Saves One Life"

On May 30th an ambulance was caused to stop, in the middle of the emergency transport to the hospital of a suspect who had been shot by police. The ambulance, operated by the Washington, DC Fire Department (Medic 19) was powered by a diesel engine equipped with an EPA mandated device which shuts the engine off when for any reason exhaust emissions fail to comply with government standards. The patient was pronounced dead at the hospital when he arrived there after being transferred to another ambulance. Asphyxiation has been ruled out as the cause of the patient's death.

DC Deputy Fire Chief John Donnelly says his department's challenge is to work within the federal agencies restrictions.

We should all feel relieved and safer as a result of the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Memorial Day"

Today is the legally designated Monday set aside mainly as a late Spring paid non-working day for most Americans to engage in seasonally appropriate outdoor diversions. This humble blogster thought it appropriate to urge his fellow citizens to spend a few minutes being reminded of some things of which our society has become bereft:

 On this Memorial Day it is appropriate to memorialize a number of long-dead American institutions (RIP). The first would be the main principles of the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the notion that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Lincoln administration destroyed that principle long ago when it responded to the withdrawal of consent by eleven Southern states by waging total war on their civilian populations for four long years, killing as many as 400,000 Southerners according to the latest research, while bombing, burning, and looting Southern cities and towns.

 The Declaration of Independence also declared in its closing paragraphs that the states were "free and independent" of any other government. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! At the time, "free and independent states" meant that Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, etc. were considered to be free and independent states in the same sense that Great Britain, France and Spain were free and independent states.

 Treason in the U.S. Constitution is defined as "only" levying war upon the states, or giving aid and comfort to THEIR enemies. This of course is exactly what the Lincoln regime did, while redefining treason to mean exactly the opposite of what it means in the Constitution: opposition to the federal government.

The notion of "limited constitutional government" is also long dead, thanks to the victorious Hamiltonian nationalists in American politics. It was Hamilton himself who invented the notion of "implied powers" of the Constitution almost before the ink was dry on the original document. In Hamiltonian language, "implied" means "unlimited." Jefferson believed that the Constitution could "bind" the government in "chains." His nemesis Hamilton was of the opposite opinion that the Constitution could be used to rubber stamp anything and everything the central government ever wanted to do as long as it was "properly" interpreted by slick, conniving lawyers like himself (or by fellow nationalists like John Marshall or Abraham Lincoln). Hamilton’s view has prevailed, as was proven for the millionth time by Chief Justice John Roberts when he declared the Obamacare mandate to be a "tax" and therefore constitutional despite the fact that Obamacare’s proponents argued before the Supreme Court that the mandate was NOT a tax.

Also dead is the notion that there is such a thing as personal liberty – at least in the eyes of the federal government. The government now claims to have a "right" to spy on every citizen without a search warrant, to monitor the mails, bank accounts and emails, to grope and sexually assault each and every citizen passing through an airport, and even to murder American citizens with drones, on American soil, in the name of "security."

 What’s left of America’s market economy is controlled, regulated, regimented, and suffocated by more than two hundred years of accumulated government bureaucracy. American businesses are regulated by more than 80,000 pages of fine print regulations in The Federal Register; by dozens of federal regulatory agencies whose agents often carry firearms to enforce their edicts against the citizens; and by hundreds of other state and local government regulatory bureaucracies that attempt to regulate and tax all aspects of business life. There are even local government taxes on the air above "public" sidewalks if occupied by a commercial enterprise. It is all a part of government’s relentless, never-ending war on capitalism and freedom.

 Almost twenty-five years after the worldwide collapse of socialism the American regime has embraced socialist central planning with tremendous zeal. The primary vehicle for the American version of Soviet central planning is the Federal Reserve Board, which claims "authority" to control, regulate, and regiment all aspects of financial markets. It is devoted to destroying market interest rates, which are a necessary ingredient for real capitalism to exist, and believes in the "fatal conceit" of a centrally-planned economy. Its head, the bearded Ben Bernanke, even looks a lot like Lenin.

Also gone are the days when American politicians would be praised with words like "he kept us out of war" or took seriously Thomas Jefferson’s warnings about "entangling alliances" with foreign countries. The new foreign policy mantra is: "Do As We Say, Or We Will Invade and Occupy Your Country and Murder Your Citizens by the Hundreds of Thousands." "Soldiers" are not defenders of American freedom but paid murderers for the state. Endless military intervention all around the world has made life more dangerous and more insecure for Americans by creating endless enemies who resent it when other countries invade, bomb, and destroy their homelands. Nothing has been more destructive of American freedom than the state itself and its military-industrial-congressional complex. War is the health of the state, and an expanded state is always and everywhere the enemy of personal freedom.

 Governments at all levels have been very busy for a very long time destroying American freedom and prosperity. A single day could never be long enough to memorialize all of our lost freedoms, but I guess one has to start somewhere.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo; professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland    May 27, 2013

The New 'Normal' in 21st Century Police State Amerika

In a police state, citizens have no rights and can be ordered around at the whims of a militarized police force whose goons run around in black uniforms, terrorizing the populace. Welcome to Boston, 2013. The police state is running wild in this city, and it has reached the point where innocent families are being ordered out of their own homes by screaming, aggressive, 'roid-head SWAT teams armed with overwhelming firepower.

"GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOW!"

One member of the local police aims his M4 rifle directly at the resident taking above photo from a second-story window.

 Read the rest here.

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