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 | "Congress has the authority to ban immigration from Muslim countries"barenakedislam | April 1, 2011 at 7:17 PM | Categories: Islam in America | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-rS2 |
Bryan Fischer continues to infuriate the Left with his honest assessment of Islam in America. Right Wing Watch --Last week, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer declared that the First Amendment does not apply to Islam and therefore, Muslims have no right to freely practice their religion in this country. A few days later, Fischer [...]
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Your New Facebook Friend Might Be A Spy
The war between security firm HBGary and Anonymous reveals a new tactic: using fake social network profiles to gather information.
By Dan Tynan, ITworld Feb 18, 2011 2:58 pm
Is that new friend really your friend, or just someone pretending to be your friend so he can spy on you? No, I'm not just being more paranoid than usual. This really does happen - especially if you're a member of an anonymous collective determined to do battle with the forces of corporate evil (not to mention Tom Cruise, Soulja Boy, and your mom).
The ongoing battle between Anonymous and the security wonks who are trying to take it down has revealed a new weapon: Creating fake profiles on social networks to trace out the connections between you and your comrades.
[ See also: Facebook ads use your face for free ]
In what proved to be a colossally dimwitted move, HBGary Federal executive Aaron Barr bragged to the Financial Times about his success in infiltrating Anonymous:
Mr Barr said he had collected information on the core leaders, including many of their real names, and that they could be arrested if law enforcement had the same data... But he does not plan to give specifics to police, who would face hurdles in using some of the methods he employed, including creating false Facebook profiles.
In other words, to "catch" Anonymous, Barr had to resort to methods the police could not - violating Facebook's terms of service in the process.
OK. Maybe sometimes you need to bend the rules to get the bad guys (assuming you consider Anonymous the bad guys - in this scenario it's increasingly unclear.) But bragging about it?
Barr might just as well have smeared peanut butter all over his body and jumped into the elephant cage at the San Diego Zoo.
Anonymous was not amused. And the collective decided to exact revenge in the usual manner - by pwning every digital device in Barr's realm, including his Twitter account, his iPhone, HBGary's Web site and its corporate servers. They defaced the site with a taunting letter and posted more than 40,000 HBGary emails on Pirate Bay. Among other things, those emails revealed the details of a plot cooked up by HBGary on behalf of Bank of America to take down WikiLeaks by subverting reporters sympathetic to it.
But the emails also reveal the details of how Barr "infiltrated" the group. An excellent report in Ars Technica goes into further detail on Barr's methods:
Barr had been interested in social media for quite some time, believing that the links it showed between people had enormous value when it came to mapping networks of hackers-and when hackers wanted to target their victims. He presented a talk to a closed Department of Justice conference earlier this year on "specific techniques that can be used to target, collect, and exploit targets with laser focus and with 100 percent success" through social media.
His curiosity about teasing out the webs of connections between people grew. By scraping sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, Barr believed he could draw strong conclusions, such as determining which town someone lived in even if they didn't provide that information. How? By looking at their friends.
"The next step would be ok we have 24 people that list Auburn, NY as their hometown," he wrote to the programmer implementing his directives. "There are 60 other people that list over 5 of those 24 as friends. That immediately tells me that at a minimum those 60 can be tagged as having a hometown as Auburn, NY. The more the data matures the more things we can do with it."
The same went for hackers, whose family and friends might provide information that even the most carefully guarded Anonymous member could not conceal. "Hackers may not list the data, but hackers are people too so they associate with friends and family," Barr said. "Those friends and family can provide key indicators on the hacker without them releasing it..."
As the emails reveal, Barr wasn't actually interesting in "doing good" by taking down Anonymous. He picked that group as a test case to prove that parsing publicly available information from social networks was enough to expose their identities. Barr was solely interested in getting publicity for HBGary and driving business to it in the process.
Well, he succeeded on the publicity part. Drumming up business, not so much.
Using social networks to gather intelligence about people can quickly lead you down the rabbit hole - and you often end up chasing the wrong rabbit. Barr's colleagues doubted his conclusions internally, and even Anonymous said he was way off base, including people as "key members" who were tangentially related to the group at best.
Barr has done us a public service though, by reminding us (yet again) that when we use social networks, we often end up revealing far more than we may think - and that information can be used against us.
ITworld TY4NS blogger Dan Tynan knows who your friends are (and hopefully none of them are Aaron Barr). Experience his juvenile sense of humor at eSarcasm (Geek Humor Gone Wild) or follow him on Twitter:@tynan_on_tech.
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Quote
WASHINGTON DC- In a move that has shocked both Democratic Party officials and voters, President Barack Obama announced on Friday that he will not seek or accept his party's nomination in the 2012 presidential election.
The announcement was made during a press conference on Friday morning in the White House James S. Brady Press Briefing room. His wife and children at his side, Obama cited the current international political climate, his administration's unpopular positions on domestic issues, as well as an inability to participate in family life, as reasons for his decision.
The president noted the many accomplishments of his presidency, such as the implementation of universal health care, limits placed on the power of large investment firms, stricter environmental controls, prevention of the "slaughter of thousands in Libya by a tyrannical regime", and the 2009 economic stimulus package, which he noted "has kept millions of people working in a faltering economy".
He also noted there is much more to do before he leaves office, including reassessment of the safety of American nuclear facilities, ensuring continued economic growth, and the passage of a budget bill.
Obama, who was elected during an extravagant wave of youthful publicity in the 2008 presidential election, has been plagued by his administration's inability fulfill campaign promises to end U.S. combat operation in Iraq and and Afghanistan, as well as the rise of a dissenting political faction known as the Tea Party, partly due to an unprecedented 14.2 trillion dollar national debt.
Today's announcement has left political strategists baffled. All of them note that Obama's approval ratings have been on the rise for several months.
The announcement also raises questions about who will seek the nomination of the Democratic Party. Although neither have declared candidacies, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is named as a frontrunner, as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Clinton declined to comment when asked if she was considering a presidential bid, stating that she was "evaluating her options".
More at:
http://bit.ly/obama-resign-announcement
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/opinion/01iht-edcohen01.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/opinion/01iht-edcohen01.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/opinion/01iht-edcohen01.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212>
Obama is a realist? This guy wants the basis for going into Libya
to be getting rid of Ghadaffi. The president has stated he is not in
there for regime change. Our people are in there trying to give golden
parachutes to Ghadaffi's people. How does anyone make any sense out of
this. We are not there to change the regime but we are heavily involved
in changing the regime. Obama is a realist and a centrist? Bottle
whatever he has been drinking or smoking and you will make a billion.
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America's Peacetime Crimes against Iraq
by Anthony Gregory, Posted January 14, 2011
Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 359 pages.
Between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the United States enforced a comprehensive sanctions policy against the Iraqi people, under the auspices of the United Nations. Whereas the hot conflict of 1990 and the one that has run from March 2003 to this day have occupied American attention, the sanctions, beginning even before Operation Desert Storm and persisting until Shock and Awe, implemented by three presidential administrations, were largely ignored. Trade restrictions simply do not elicit the primetime excitement that bombs and aircraft do. Yet the devastation from depriving a nation of international trade is easily comparable to that of war.
On the eve of the Iraq War, moderate voices for "peace" even insisted that the sanctions were "working" in undermining Saddam's regime and preventing it from rearming as though such were worthy U.S. goals in the first place. But putting that question aside, the prospect of all-out war struck many Americans as imprudent, displeasing, perhaps even immoral even as many of those same Americans defended the sanctions regime and advocated their continuation in lieu of war.
But more principled voices for nonintervention, and those aware of the enormity unleashed by the sanctions, had been protesting them for years. Indeed, as a practical matter, the sanctions ran counter to defending American lives on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden cited the sanctions on Iraq, among other U.S. policies, as a main motive behind the attacks of September 11. Perhaps no single example of such policies is more horrific than the sustained and systematic destruction of Iraqi economic life which is to say, Iraqi life that took place in the "peacetime" era between the two wars. To this day, thanks to the sanctions as well as the wars, the Iraqis have "never [come] close to restoring the standard of living that most Iraqis had up to 1990," according to Joy Gordon, whose new book, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, is a powerful and rather comprehensive treatment of the topic.
War by other means
The sanctions began in August 1990, in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. During the actual Gulf War, 160,000 bombs were dropped on Iraqi forces and infrastructure. A UN envoy soon found 75 percent of the water access and 85-90 percent of the electricity infrastructure destroyed. The bombing and sanctions demolished Iraq's relatively modern economy, turning the nation into a third-world country, and preventing it from recovering. "Between August 1990 and December 1995, food prices increased by 4,000 to 5,000 times."
The result of these policies was mass devastation:
- The destruction from the 1991 bombing campaign of electric generating plants, water purification, and sewage treatment facilities resulted in cholera and typhoid epidemics. In 1990 the incidence of typhoid was 11.3 per 100,000 people; by 1994 it was more than 142 per 100,000. In 1989 there were zero cases of cholera per 100,000 people; by 1994 there were 1,344 per 100,000.
All in all, "according to 1990 testimony before Congress, the sanctions eliminated 90 percent of Iraq's imports and 97 percent of its exports. As a result, per capita income went from $3,510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996." Iraq's GDP, which had been $54 billion in 1979, sank to $10 billion in 1993.
At first, the goal was to pressure Iraqi forces to retreat from Kuwait. But sometime after the war began, the goal shifted to one of general containment and disarmament at least as far as the UN Security Council was concerned while the U.S. government and Britain upheld the more ambitious goal of regime change. That was a bipartisan policy in America. Bill Clinton said in 1993, "There is no difference between my policy and the policy of the [George H.W. Bush] Administration.... I have no intention of normalizing relations with [Saddam Hussein]." And as his secretary of State Madeleine Albright made clear in 1997, "We do not agree ... that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted."
But if the goal was regime change, the policy was virtually destined to fail. Gordon writes, If Saddam Hussein was supposed to be motivated by self-interest, and wanted sanctions to end, then there was no reason for him to comply with the demands of the Security Council, since sanctions could not be removed without U.S. agreement and the United States repeatedly made clear that it would never remove them while Hussein was in power.
In a chapter called "The Magnitude of Catastrophe," Gordon documents the extent of that destruction and finds that only the combination of war, restrictions on imports, central planning of exports, and a systematic undermining of Iraqi infrastructure could produce the calamity that occurred. The destructive policies, such as the bombing of Iraq's water treatment facilities and the UN ban on the importation of chlorine, worked together. "Or take, for example, the ceiling on oil exports: once the ceiling on oil sales was lifted, Iraq was blocked from obtaining the equipment necessary to increase oil production. Or consider the blocked contracts for electrical equipment: even if Iraq had been allowed to buy the equipment and chemicals for water and sewage treatment, there was not sufficient electricity to power the plants."
Gordon writes,
- The perversity and irony of the sanctions regime, imposed under the auspices of international law, is that it may have done more human damage than Saddam Hussein's persecution of ethnic groups and human rights combined.
How did the program work? Initially, the UN forbade all member nations to import any Iraqi goods, and required them to prohibit their nationals from shipping any goods or sending funds to either Iraq or Kuwait. From August 1990 to March 1991, that included food. The program soon came to involve "a labyrinth of UN agencies as well as the establishment of an entirely new agency within the UN." Beginning in August 1991, Iraq was allowed to export up to $1.6 billion every six months to trade for food and medicine. All humanitarian goods, food, and medical equipment would be purchased through the "661 Committee," which came to possess "extremely broad responsibilities for the overall implementation of the sanctions regime." The 661 Committee, made up of 15 delegates, "few of whom had expertise in economic development, emergency relief, oil, or any other of the committee's substantive areas of work," made about 6,000 decisions a year about what would be allowed into Iraq. From 1990 to 1995, that was "the sole legal means for Iraq to import any goods." By 1995, food was so scarce that an Iraqi government rationing program provided "1,100 calories per person per day."
And before Iraq could buy any goods, it would have to present a "distribution plan," giving a
- detailed description of the areas of need in each sector.... The plan then listed every single item to be purchased, how it would be used, and where it would be used: every piece of equipment for electrical production, and the specific power plant where it would go; every chemical or instrument for water treatment, and the specific laboratory or plant where they would be used; every dose of vaccine for poultry and cattle, and every syringe, needle and scissors for veterinarians; and so forth.
Moreover, Iraq never handled any of the funds. The "proceeds of all oil sales were deposited in [a UN] account and all payments to vendors were made from this account." The U.S. meddling with oil prices through a socialist scheme of "retroactive pricing" also interfered greatly with trade with Iraq. "The chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute asked, 'How can you do business if you don't know what the price is?'"
The United States calling the shots
Although done through the UN, the sanctions were essentially a U.S. policy. "The United States exercised singular influence over every aspect of the structure and extent of the sanctions." The Multinational Interception Force, which enforced the policy, "for its entire history was under the command of U.S. naval officers." The United States first created the policy by intimidating and bribing member nations to vote for it offering aid to Colombia, Ethiopia, and Zaire to vote for the sanctions; making deals with China and the Soviet Union; and canceling aid to Yemen for refusing to go along. Then, by exercising its veto power over the implementation of the sanctions, the United States would put a "hold" on various importation contracts blocking agricultural goods, children's milk, food-packaging materials, raw cotton, and glue. The United States even "blocked the purchase of salt on the grounds that it could be used for the salinization of leather, which contributed to Iraqi industry." These holds were at times both absurd and devastating: "Vehicles in general were targeted by the United States on the grounds, for example, that a vehicle that could carry a bulldozer could conceivably be used by the military to carry a tank.... Sixty percent of transportation contracts on hold were for accessories such as tires, car batteries, or spare parts, making it impossible to maintain or repair whatever vehicles there were."
This "dual use" rationale for blocking items that could supposedly be used for both civilian and military purposes was taken to obscene levels. The United States "blocked a contract for 1,000 water tankers on the grounds that they were lined with stainless steel and therefore were 'WMD dual use.'" A "catering truck was blocked because it was refrigerated." Propellant used to make inhalers was disallowed. Vaccines were blocked, because it was supposed to be possible to turn the weak viruses into biological weapons. Pesticides were blocked because "Iraq might extract chemical components ... to make chemical weapons." Although the UN monitored how imports were used, the United States insisted on blocking such important goods outright. And although the holds were supposedly for security reasons, the United States was willing to reverse itself to benefit nations that went along with its sanctions policy.
All the while, Congress was content to allow the executive branch to handle the sanctions, blindly accepting State Department propaganda and only occasionally speaking up insofar as it concerned the disarmament of Iraq and regime change. Only a few legislators spoke in behalf of the devastated Iraqi people. Gordon provides a very good chapter on congressional dynamics. Of course, even with the Democrats running "both houses of Congress until 1995, for the most part they had little interest in the humanitarian situation."
The UN itself is to blame as well, but, notably, most other member nations, the elected members of the Security Council, and the humanitarian organizations within the UN tended to protest the policy as framed by the United States and to an extent Britain. UN agencies produced damning reports of the humanitarian disaster. UN secretaries general complained. Starting in 1991, nations such as India, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Cape Verde, and Morocco proposed reforms to allow for more humanitarian aid. In 1999, UN panels issued reports finding that the Oil-for-Food Program could not be sufficiently reformed to deal with the horror. In 2000, delegates from more than 20 nations, at this point even including the United States and Britain, gave presentations urging reform. But at every turn, "the United States either prevented the reforms from being adopted or undermined their implementation after they had been adopted."
As for the well-publicized Oil-for-Food scandal, Gordon has a whole chapter detailing the facts, showing that the corruption involved was overblown compared with the destruction and corruption of the sanctions policy itself. Even without the Oil-for-Food corruption, the Iraqi people would have been virtually no better off. And even here, the United States is hardly blameless: "By far the greater part of Iraq's illicit funds came from ongoing trade with Jordan, Turkey, and Syria.... The United States blocked any punitive action by the Council against either Jordan or Turkey." The amount of misallocated money involved in the scandal was dwarfed, for example, by the waste and mismanagement of Iraqi funds by the Coalition Provisional Authority established by the United States in 2003:
- From 1990 to 2003 Iraq averaged about half a billion dollars in illicit trade annually. By contrast, in fourteen months of occupation, the U.S.-led occupation authority depleted $18 billion in funds, a good deal of it on questionable contracts with little justification, but much of it just an outright giveaway of cash.
Philosophical, legal, and political lessons
Gordon finishes with a couple of chapters exploring the implications for international law and political and ethical philosophy. Libertarians will not be overimpressed by the sanctions' incompatibility with UN guarantees such as the "right to health care," but they will find very compelling the discussion of the Geneva Convention, war crimes, and the like. Gordon finds little legal recourse for the Iraqi people in the form of prosecution or judicial oversight of the Security Council. The sanctions, she concludes, probably do not rise to the level of "genocide" or "a crime against humanity" "but it seems to me this does not constitute a vindication of the sanctions, but rather a failure of international law." She comes to a rather encouraging libertarian conclusion: "It may be that, in the end, there is a particular risk posed to humanity by international governance," whose institutions "entail the risk of a new form of global violence."
But there is so much to learn from this tragic and disgusting episode. Conservatives need to recognize that totalitarianism and socialistic central planning are indeed not just an abstract threat under the banner of the Democratic Party, but are a reality of U.S. policy, especially as it concerns foreign affairs. They must come to grips with the evil and systematic destruction and terror that are unleashed in the name of U.S. national security upon innocent people in other countries. Liberals should learn that central economic control and restrictions of free trade contain the seeds for near-genocidal levels of cruelty and oppression; that allowing international bodies to govern trade is far from a panacea but is rather a tool of imperialism; that no political party and no state American, international, or Iraqi can be trusted not to put political interests above the human right to engage in economic exchange. The Iraqis have been brutalized by the U.S. government for 20 years now, and neither their own government, for all its monopolization of public services, nor the United Nations, for all its high rhetoric, has done much other than worsen their misery. The rest of us can learn about the extent of death and destruction meted out by our own government, in our own name, and come to see why so many in the world would hate us and be willing to kill us not for our freedom, but for Washington, D.C.'s, war on the freedom of others. Invisible War is a very important book about a very important topic, a topic at risk of being neglected and forgotten, as have so many other atrocities commited by the U.S. empire.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1009f.asp
Orders From On High Obeyed by Military!
by Gary D. Barnett
Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
~ Smedley Butler, Major General USMC
Is there any order given to U.S. military personnel that is not obeyed? Is there anyone that the U.S. military won’t kill (murder) when given an order? Is there any order that any in the U.S. military thinks is unconstitutional, considering that all in the military have taken an oath to uphold that set of rules? Will there ever be an order that U.S. troops will disobey? As far as I can tell, the answer to all these questions is no!
There has been a lot of talk lately about the war against Libya being unconstitutional, but one has to wonder why these questions are coming now? It certainly isn’t due to any sudden moral awakening by the politicians or most of their constituents, because every single war since WWII has been unconstitutional. And in my opinion, every single war since the Revolution has been completely unjust and unnecessary. If I am correct in my opinion, that means that every order to kill, maim, occupy, and destroy those in other lands obeyed by American forces has been not only unconstitutional but also immoral.
This blind following of orders by all U.S. military forces scares the living daylights out of me. Am I alone in this thinking, or do others in this country understand the implications of this policy? What if there is civil unrest here at home? What if due to the destruction of our economy by our own government, American citizens take to the streets as is happening now in Africa and the Middle East? Does anyone honestly believe that U.S. troops given orders to shoot to kill their own countrymen won’t do so? Believing that it would be different if it happened on our own soil would be a fool’s game.
Given the buildup and militarization of police, the expanded powers of the Department of Homeland Security, and the domestic deployment of federal troops via the Army service component of NORTHCOM, plans are already in the works for military control of U.S. citizens. In my opinion, any orders given by military leaders to fire on Americans would be followed just as all other orders are followed. There would probably be more dissent than is now present, but there would be plenty willing to do the bidding of their masters. Considering that they are now willing, and have been in the past, (remember Vietnam) to murder, rape, and mutilate women and children, why would any think they aren’t capable of gunning down American dissenters?
The United States is currently in three unconstitutional and unholy wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. U.S. troops are also causing havoc and killing innocents in several other countries as well, and threatening even more. But are any orders being ignored or disobeyed? Of course not! Not only are these gruesome orders to war against those who have never harmed us being followed, but they are being followed with gusto. Just consider recent reports of cold-blooded murder and mutilations of innocent Afghans by U.S. troops who are called "kill squads." These aren’t the only atrocities being committed by U.S. soldiers, just the latest in a brutal string of events that are seemingly never-ending.
Acts of terrorism perpetrated against other countries by the U.S. military and its willing and parasitic order takers in uniform are being spread like wildfire, and the orders keep coming and the killing continues. Just today this story titled "Lejeune Marines prepare to deploy off Libyan coast" appeared out of North Carolina. Camp Lejeune Marines were given orders to go to Libya, and they accepted those orders with pride, and offered no questions as to the justness of the cause.
The wife of Sergeant Lewis Cochran, a Marine being deployed to Libya, said she "is confident her Marine is prepared for the mission." Sgt. Cochran said, "Whatever the president decides, he’s ready. My Marines, all the Marines the whole PLT is ready to go." This kind of statement and sentiment of course is common, and is telling of the mindset of those willing to do anything they are told to do regardless of the moral implications. This willing behavior is pathetic in nature, and serves no purpose other than to help those in power advance their wickedness. This literally sickens me! I believe exactly as did Herbert Spencer when he said:
Many who commit horrible deeds have excused these acts by simply saying, "I was just following orders." This is an empty excuse, and has been used in the past to give cover for some of the most heinous crimes of mankind. Most of those crimes were carried out in the name of war, and those willing to prosecute those unjust wars are just as responsible as those who start them. Guilty all those who purposely participate in these heinous crimes against mankind, every damn one of you!
March 31, 2011
Gary D. Barnett [gbarnett@midrivers.com] is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana.
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
The biggest obstacle to freedom and liberty is not knowing what freedom and liberty are.
by Gary D. Barnett
Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
~ Smedley Butler, Major General USMC
Is there any order given to U.S. military personnel that is not obeyed? Is there anyone that the U.S. military won’t kill (murder) when given an order? Is there any order that any in the U.S. military thinks is unconstitutional, considering that all in the military have taken an oath to uphold that set of rules? Will there ever be an order that U.S. troops will disobey? As far as I can tell, the answer to all these questions is no!
There has been a lot of talk lately about the war against Libya being unconstitutional, but one has to wonder why these questions are coming now? It certainly isn’t due to any sudden moral awakening by the politicians or most of their constituents, because every single war since WWII has been unconstitutional. And in my opinion, every single war since the Revolution has been completely unjust and unnecessary. If I am correct in my opinion, that means that every order to kill, maim, occupy, and destroy those in other lands obeyed by American forces has been not only unconstitutional but also immoral.
This blind following of orders by all U.S. military forces scares the living daylights out of me. Am I alone in this thinking, or do others in this country understand the implications of this policy? What if there is civil unrest here at home? What if due to the destruction of our economy by our own government, American citizens take to the streets as is happening now in Africa and the Middle East? Does anyone honestly believe that U.S. troops given orders to shoot to kill their own countrymen won’t do so? Believing that it would be different if it happened on our own soil would be a fool’s game.
Given the buildup and militarization of police, the expanded powers of the Department of Homeland Security, and the domestic deployment of federal troops via the Army service component of NORTHCOM, plans are already in the works for military control of U.S. citizens. In my opinion, any orders given by military leaders to fire on Americans would be followed just as all other orders are followed. There would probably be more dissent than is now present, but there would be plenty willing to do the bidding of their masters. Considering that they are now willing, and have been in the past, (remember Vietnam) to murder, rape, and mutilate women and children, why would any think they aren’t capable of gunning down American dissenters?
The United States is currently in three unconstitutional and unholy wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. U.S. troops are also causing havoc and killing innocents in several other countries as well, and threatening even more. But are any orders being ignored or disobeyed? Of course not! Not only are these gruesome orders to war against those who have never harmed us being followed, but they are being followed with gusto. Just consider recent reports of cold-blooded murder and mutilations of innocent Afghans by U.S. troops who are called "kill squads." These aren’t the only atrocities being committed by U.S. soldiers, just the latest in a brutal string of events that are seemingly never-ending.
Acts of terrorism perpetrated against other countries by the U.S. military and its willing and parasitic order takers in uniform are being spread like wildfire, and the orders keep coming and the killing continues. Just today this story titled "Lejeune Marines prepare to deploy off Libyan coast" appeared out of North Carolina. Camp Lejeune Marines were given orders to go to Libya, and they accepted those orders with pride, and offered no questions as to the justness of the cause.
The wife of Sergeant Lewis Cochran, a Marine being deployed to Libya, said she "is confident her Marine is prepared for the mission." Sgt. Cochran said, "Whatever the president decides, he’s ready. My Marines, all the Marines the whole PLT is ready to go." This kind of statement and sentiment of course is common, and is telling of the mindset of those willing to do anything they are told to do regardless of the moral implications. This willing behavior is pathetic in nature, and serves no purpose other than to help those in power advance their wickedness. This literally sickens me! I believe exactly as did Herbert Spencer when he said:
"When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves."The bottom line is depressing. We now live in a country where wars of aggression, occupation, torture, and murder against those who never attacked or harmed us is common. These wars are now started on the say so of one man, and those under his command follow his orders to the letter. These orders are unquestioned by not only the officers in the military and their vassals in uniform, but by the congress and by most Americans. How could we have arrived at such a depraved state of existence? How can most of our society stand by and watch the slaughter of millions of innocent people; these acts of horror done in their name?
Many who commit horrible deeds have excused these acts by simply saying, "I was just following orders." This is an empty excuse, and has been used in the past to give cover for some of the most heinous crimes of mankind. Most of those crimes were carried out in the name of war, and those willing to prosecute those unjust wars are just as responsible as those who start them. Guilty all those who purposely participate in these heinous crimes against mankind, every damn one of you!
March 31, 2011
Gary D. Barnett [gbarnett@midrivers.com] is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana.
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
The biggest obstacle to freedom and liberty is not knowing what freedom and liberty are.
locomotivebreath1901, by lb1901 |
| Original Article |
| Shame and embarrassment might be the sole reason for Obama's million dollar secret.>>>> I like Donald Trump. He's good entertainment. I wouldn't vote for him as President, but he is a man who likes to poke alligators with sticks. This particular alligator is named 'birther.' It's getting long in the tooth, and ain't very productive, but it's still worth a bag of popcorn............. . |
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Keith,
1) If the judge was so "sympathetic" why was he screaming and acting belligerent - insisting that "we will not be going down that road today."
2) Your feeble attempt to label me as someone who believes in "Patriot/Militia/Tax Protest" arguments has no more basis in reality than your insistence that a "fictional entity" is in any sense real. Fictional entities gain and maintain their power only because people blindly accept that they are real.
On 04/01/2011 01:57 PM, Keith In Köln wrote:
1) If the judge was so "sympathetic" why was he screaming and acting belligerent - insisting that "we will not be going down that road today."
2) Your feeble attempt to label me as someone who believes in "Patriot/Militia/Tax Protest" arguments has no more basis in reality than your insistence that a "fictional entity" is in any sense real. Fictional entities gain and maintain their power only because people blindly accept that they are real.
FICTION, n.3) I agree that "Any judge who sits in a bench trial, and is not an impartial juror should be impeached and removed from the bench." So, Let's start today! The few times I have been in court my experience has been the same as Veronica Vincent: "I've been in Federal court for 7 years and have not found an honest judge yet."
1. The act of feigning, inventing or imagining; as, by the mere fiction of the mind.
2. That which is feigned, invented or imagined. The story is a fiction.
On 04/01/2011 01:57 PM, Keith In Köln wrote:
Jonathan,You had a sympathetic judge. One day, your "Patriot/Militia/Tax Protest" arguments will come back and bite you in the ass. Trust me on this one. I am quite familiar with most all of your arguments, (as are the State and federal District Attorneys).....If I can shoot big holes in these arguments, rest assured that any prosecutor and especially a Judge can.Any judge who sits in a bench trial, and is not an impartial juror should be impeached and removed from the bench.A State: It is what is called, "A fictional entity". Just as a corporation is. Do you deny that IBM, or that that the region, of what we call the State of Texas exists? I am in Germany, and don't have my Black's Law Dictionary handy, (I would bet that you have a copy of one!) but in general, a State, or a Nation-State is a politically organized body of people; a group of people or individuals if you will, that arerganized under a single, governmental authority....
(More on this later....Bigger name on the other line...My girlfriend!!)
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 9:49 PM, Jonathan Ashley <jonathanashleyii@lavabit.com> wrote:
Keith,
1) I expected better of you. Declaring something exists is not factual evidence of its existence. If I tell you that little gray men abducted me yesterday while I was at the local Piggly Wiggly does that prove the existence of little gray men?
I once had a traffic ticket dismissed because the judge declared the prosecution's witness (the "law enforcement officer" who claimed I was speeding on a road in the State of Texas) incompetent to testify when I asked the officer the following questions:
- Is it your contention that I was within the State of Texas on September 21, 1999?
- Yes!
- Is it your contention that I was driving a vehicle within the State of Texas on September 21, 1999?
- Yes!
- Is it your contention that I was speeding within the State of Texas on September 21, 1999?
- Yes!
Both the judge (who we are indoctrinated to believe is supposed to be an impartial juror) and the prosecutor both went hysterical. They did not want the officer answering that question.
- Officer, what is a state?
2) While you are entitled to believe that "Manning betrayed his country by orchestrating the greatest leak of classified intelligence in U.S. history," there are those who believe an act of moral conscious makes for a far better patriot than one who would blindly follow the "my country, right or wrong" mentality that perpetuates ongoing warmongering by an elite few for their own benefit.
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Keith In Köln <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Greg, Mark MJ & Jonathan!
Without going in and researching this, I don't think that there is any question that the United States, as a corporation (e.g; a corporate body, or corporate politic) does in fact exist. As a Nation-State; and as Mark pointed out yesterday, the United States is sovereign, in and of itself.
Assange has arrogantly admitted to disseminating classified information through his entity, "Wiki-Leaks". Bradley Manning, According to his online chats, stated that he was in "an awkward place" both "emotionally and psychologically." So in a snit, Manning betrayed his country by orchestrating the greatest leak of classified intelligence in U.S. history.
It is in violation of our laws to retain, disseminate, or disclose classified information of the United States. Assange and his attorneys were warned of this before Assange chose to violate 18 U.S.C. § 793 et.seq. (See §§ 793, 794 and 798 in particular). Isn't that in the Army Code of Conduct? You must follow orders at all times. Exceptions will be made for servicemen in an awkward place. Now, who wants a hug? Waitress! Three more apple-tinis!"
According to The New York Times, Bradley sought "moral support" from his "self-described drag queen" boyfriend. Alas, he still felt out of sorts. So why not sell out his country?
In an online chat with a computer hacker, Bradley said he lifted the hundreds of thousands of classified documents by pretending to be listening to a CD labeled "Lady Gaga." Then he acted as if he were singing along with her hit song "Telephone" while frantically downloading classified documents.
Where is Lil'TommyTomTomForNews? Surely he can remind us once again why it was so important to shit-can "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".
On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Jonathan Ashley <jonathanashleyii@lavabit.com> wrote:Keith,I am making this challenge precisely because you are a lawyer. Can you factually prove that the United States of America actually exists?You cannot hear it, see it, smell it, touch it, or taste it. Its alleged boundaries are not visible from any un-doctored image from space I have ever seen.Sure the statists who pretend they represent the interests of the United States of America (members of Congress, the President, and the far too many bozos appointed to government positions by the bozo-in-chief) can be heard incessantly, seen far too often, smelled (if you should venture too close to them), touched (not sure why anyone would desire to do so), and (for those with no discernment and who are so inclined) tasted. The United States of America fails every sensory test.So how can you prove anything "belonged to the United States"?Even if one were to assume anything published by Wikileaks originally belonged to the United States government, you - being a lawyer - should know that U.S. federal government works are not eligible for copyright protection (17 USC 105). So, how can anyone be found guilty of publishing that which upon its creation is in the public domain?"Might Makes Right":"the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."--
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If "the radioactive plume spreading all across the country" actually exists, how come independent observation stations reported by such websites as http://radiationnetwork.com/ are not reporting levels any higher on average than were reported before the disaster in Japan?
On 04/01/2011 01:47 PM, Bruce Majors wrote:
On 04/01/2011 01:47 PM, Bruce Majors wrote:
--
Monday, March 28, 2011
EPA to Help Mainstream Media Obscure The Truth About Radiation Exposure to
Americans
Dees Illustration
Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
As Americans focus on March Madness and Dancing With the Stars instead of
the radioactive plume spreading all across the country, the US EPA
(Environmental Protection Agency) is attempting to make the mainstream media
cover up of the Fukushima cloud a bit easier.
The agency now notorious for its infamous claim that the air was safe to
breathe after 9/11 is now seeking to raise the PAGs (Protective Action
Guides) to levels vastly higher than those at which they are currently set
allowing for more radioactive contamination of the environment and the
general public in the event of a radioactive disaster.
PAGs are policies established by the EPA that guide the agency in enforcing
the various environmental laws such as the Clean Air and Water Act in the
invent of a radioactive emergency such as a nuclear/dirty bomb or factory
meltdown like that occurring in Japan.
The EPA had already established PAGs in this area in 1992. They can be found
here. However, the agency now plans to amend and revise these standards this
year.
Because regulatory agencies form their own policies (although they can be
directed by either the President or the Congress), there is no requirement
to seek Congressional approval for these changes. All that is required is
that the agency place the proposed changes in the Federal Register for
public comment before it finalizes its draft into legal policy.
According to PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the
new standards would drastically raise the levels of radiation allowed in
food, water, air, and the general environment. PEER, a national organization
of local, state, and federal employees who had access to internal EPA
emails, claims that the new standards will result in a "nearly 1000-fold
increase for exposure to strontium-90, a 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for
exposure to iodine-131; and an almost 25,000 rise for exposure to
radioactive nickel-63" in drinking water. This information, as well as the
emails themselves were published by Collapsenet on March 24.
In addition to raising the level of permissible radiation in the
environment, PEER suggests that the standards of cleanup after a radioactive
emergency will actually be reduced. As a result, radioactive cleanup
thresholds will be vastly lowered and, by default, permissible levels of
radiation will be vastly increased in this manner as well.
As Michael Kane writes for Collapsenet, the current EPA numbers, as well as
those generally agreed upon in the international radiation assessment
community, all point to the fact that these increases in permissible levels
would create a level of radiation where approximately 1 in 4 people would
contract cancer from exposure to them.
The changes to the 1992 PAGs are not a new attempt by the EPA. The agency
attempted similar changes in 2009 but the revisions were stopped largely by
a barrage of FOIA requests and a lawsuit filed by PEER. However, in 2009
there was no massive radiation disaster the EPA needed to cover up as there
is at the current time. In 2009, the EPA could afford to back off, regroup,
and try again at a later date. Unfortunately, it is not likely to react the
same way this time around.
As of the time of this writing, a toxic cloud of radiation has not only
reached the US West Coast, but has spread all the way across the country to
states like South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, and Massachussetts.
Both the US government and the mainstream media have largely denied any risk
associated with the radiation and have actively engaged in covering up the
extent to which it has spread across the country.
In the event of any real journalism, the revelation of the danger and scale
of the Japanese radiation cloud could be disastrous for those who hide the
truth from the people who are sure to suffer the consequences. Indeed, the
revelation that a toxic cloud of cancer-causing particles is littering the
United States (especially in real time) might even be too much for the
average television- and sports-obsessed American to handle.
However, the lowering of safety standards for radiation contamination would
be a major victory for those wishing to cover it up. After all, the talking
heads would then be able to claim that the radiation levels are within the
safety range set by the EPA.
No cause for worry.
Regardless of the motivation behind these new changes, they must be actively
opposed. We cannot allow the veil to be pulled even further over the eyes of
the American people. At the very least, we cannot allow an agency charged
with protecting both the environment and the people who live in it to set
standards alleviating itself of that responsibility.
Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a
Bachelor's Degree from Francis Marion University where he earned the Pee Dee
Electric Scholar's Award as an undergraduate. He has had numerous articles
published dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health,
economics, and civil liberties. He also the author of Codex Alimentarius -
The End of Health Freedom
Related Articles:
No Danger No Concern No Sanity
3 Ways To Protect Yourself From Radiation NATURALLY
US nuclear agency: Japan crisis no US health threat
Nature Blowing Its Top and Bottom
What They're Covering Up at Fukushima LinkWithin
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/epa-to-help-mainstream-media-obscure.html
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