Like the Right to Political and Economic Freedom, the Right to Bear Arms and Self Defense Belongs to EVERYONE of Every Race

Bleeding Heart Libertarians has this post by Matt Zwolinski, What Are You Going to Do With Your Gun? regarding an article in The Atlantic on the “secret history of guns.” A main aspect of the article referred to by Zwolinski is the push for gun control by Republicans during the 1960s, primarily in response to the presence of Black Panthers openly carrying loaded shotguns and pistols, particularly on the California state capitol steps. At the time, openly carrying firearms was perfectly legal, and the Panthers took advantage of it. As Zwolinsky put it in his post, “The suppression of liberty in the case of guns – much like the suppression of liberty in the case of drugs – was largely motivated by racist fears about the abuse of that liberty by the ‘other.’”

Contrary to what the Left and some “bleeding hearts” want to believe, the primary reason the American founders stressed the right to bear arms was for self-defense, not hunting or sport. All human beings have an inherent right to defend themselves against aggression by others, especially by the State. The biggest threat to our lives and liberty is not common street criminals, but the government. And that is especially so the more centralized and powerful the government is.

Currently, the U.S. has centralized so much control over so much of everyday life into the federal government, it can now be quite accurately called a “tyranny.” The feds rape the people at airports and they restrict the individual’s right to even leave the country now. They have made one law and regulation after another to such an extent that any government bureaucrat who has a gripe against some private civilian can search through that individual’s business dealings or bank accounts and find just the slightest “violation” of some regulation and send the S.W.A.T. team after that individual. Most readers to this blog already have read one account after another here, or on LewRockwell.com and so on. You know what I’m talking about.

Now, back to the Black Panthers of the 1960s. Up to that point, black Americans had to deal with racism that was institutionalized, with racial segregation occurring in the public schools, the public parks and drinking fountains, and the public buses in the cities and so on. In addition to that, there were white against black harassments, physical assaults and murders. These acts of violent crimes against black Americans were promoted by racist government policies, and one can then understand why, at that time especially, of course black Americans should have exercised their God-given right to bear arms, and openly, and use their arms as a means of self-defense. There were very few police officers who would come to the defense of a black American who was being victimized. In fact, many amongst the police were the aggressors. (And that is still the case today, only worse, although the police-aggressors are going after everyone now, black people, white people, Asians, Hispanics, women, men, children, grandmothers, anyone those brutes can get their hands on.)

The 1964-65 Civil Rights Act addressed those problems, and then it created new problems, however. It got rid of the Jim Crow laws, and made it illegal for any government in the U.S. to restrict minorities’ right of access to public facilities, that is, government-run facilities, such as city buses, parks, etc. But the mistake was including private property and privately-owned businesses in which it became illegal for the owners to restrict people from entering their own private property. I have already addressed that here.

But decades later, Americans, especially the guilt-ridden, anti-freedom-of-association, “lily-white liberals,” have taken “anti-discrimination” to an absurd degree, with affirmative action and quotas, all which discourage merit and achievement, and are policies that consist of more institutionalized discrimination. These policies have led to many promotions of people based solely on race, including people who were less qualified than others for various positions. These policies of the past several decades have contributed to an attitude in the inner city of shaming young black youths for being smart and for achieving, and encouraging them to behave irresponsibly, such as having sex with as many girls and fathering as many children as possible, and not staying around to actually be a responsible father.

It is difficult for people to acknowledge these things for fear of being called “racist.” You can call me anything you want, but I believe the truth is important, and I’ve written that many times here. But it actually has been the Left who have been the racists, through their demeaning and patronizing of black Americans for the past several decades.

Now, economically, this attitude of back-door institutionalized racism against blacks has given us government policies such as minimum wage laws that cause employers to have to cut entry-level jobs and thus lead to unemployment especially with teens and especially in the inner city. Besides minimum wage laws, regulatory fascism protects established (white-owned) businesses by preventing black entrepreneurs from being able to start their own businesses.

Culturally and socially, this has also led to a situation in which our esteemed attorney general, Eric Holder, decided not to go forward with a “slam-dunk” case against New Black Panthers (a totally different group from the 1960s Black Panthers!) who were accused of intimidating white voters in Philadelphia during election night in 2008. If the races of the perpetrators and victims were reversed — whites intimidating black voters — you better believe Holder would have prosecuted them. So his motivation in not going after the black aggressors was clearly a racist motivation. Holder clearly does not believe in equality under the law, and his being the attorney general in the anti-equality Obama Administration is fitting.

And now, we have a situation in America in which black youths go on a “wilding” rampage, and beat up on innocent white people, such as was the case at the August, 2011 Wisconsin State Fair. According to witnesses, many of the black youths were banging on people’s cars as they were leaving the fair, and pulling people out of cars or otherwise beating up white people, looking into cars and passing by the ones with black people but attacking the white people.

We need to return to a society of individualism, property rights, freedom of association, and encouragement of achievement. Repeal all economic and business-related regulations and restrictions against young black Americans’ right to use their own labor, property, capital, and efforts to start their own business on a “level playing field” with everyone else. Repeal minimum wage laws that restrict inner-city youths’ (and everyone else’s) right to earn money in an entry-level job, not just money but their ability to gain an understanding of the work ethic and get the experience necessary to get higher-paying jobs that require more experience, or to start one’s own business.

And finally, in returning to the topic at the beginning of this post, the right to bear arms and self-defense is everyone’s right — black, white, Asian, Hispanic, etc. We also need to repeal each and every law and regulation that restricts one’s right to bear arms and right to self-defense. One reason for this is so that everyone can protect one’s life, liberty and property and one’s family from the aggression of burglars, rapists, robbers, and other violent criminals. The more important reason is to protect our liberty from the tyranny of the government and its hired guns, including the military when the President turns the government’s guns against the people.

Government Criminals (Sorry for repeating myself)

Last week’s roughhousing and brutishness amongst the Michele Bachmann security guards against reporters was similar to Bachmann goons roughing up ABC’s Brian Ross. When asked if he was ever roughed up like that before, he answered, “A few times. Mostly by Mafia people.” This reflects how, as the government gets bigger and more powerful, so does its police enforcement apparatus, and thus, as I noted recently, such powers of coercion and aggression draw to it those more prone to committing acts of aggression and criminality and/or supporting them.

This further news of Bachmann goon criminality reminded me of the incident at an Alaska U.S. senate campaign event at a public building in which security guards for then-candidate Joe Miller (R-Neanderthal) roughed up a reporter and then handcuffed and arrested him. Miller’s private security guards arrested a reporter! Besides the punkish lawlessness of his bodyguards, Miller also believes in secrecy, as he objected to anyone looking into his background. And Bachmann herself has supported government keeping secrets from the people, yet supports the government’s having the power to arbitrarily intrude itself into people’s private lives, through her support of the Patriot Act.

On the one hand, Bachmann is for “small government” and the Constitution. On the other hand, she supports George W. Bush’s unconstitutional Big Government Patriot Act and the wasteful spending of hundreds of billions of dollars on the military-industrial-complex.  No wonder Michele Bachmann is a pill-popping, migraine-suffering mental basketcase.

These Big Government conservatives, who support having a military stationed in and trespassing on every other part of the world, forcing American taxpayers to fund such government expansionism and intrusions, are authoritarians, and they love the use of rule-by-aggression, as directed from a top-down authority against the people, without question and with a demand for obedience. They are no different from the Obama-Soviet leftists who crave the same way of life.

All these authoritarian people share a love for and obedience to authority. It’s just that, which people to put in place and which ideologies must be shoved down the throats of the people may differ between the left-wing authoritarians and the right-wing authoritarians.

Now, I know a lot of people are in denial and don’t want to acknowledge the impending economic collapse or are living in a dreamworld of false hope for some “recovery” that’s still based on our inherently flawed system of centralization and government monopolies. But we have seen that the militarists, such as Bachmann and Obama,  are calling for more warmongering violence against other countries, such as Syria and Iran, and based solely on paranoia and ignorance, and the cradle-to-grave communists like Obama are calling for more and more State control over every aspect of daily life, from health care to financial fascism.

None of this is possible without becoming the totalitarian tyranny that it already is becoming. This is all leading to total bankruptcy and collapse, rioting and looting and civil unrest. The masses amongst the population will become as much criminals as the employees of the government. Why? Because central planning, besides consisting of immoral usurpations, trespasses and thefts of private wealth, property and liberty, just doesn’t work.

Now, when the economy does collapse, the dictator in the White House will try to impose martial law, which basically is nation-wide suspension of civil liberties. However, such a scheme will be an act of criminality on Obama’s part, and each and every governor of each and every state must overrule the federal dictator and not allow enforcement of such federal martial law to occur in his or her state.

So, in the case of Obama’s imposing martial law, to what or to whom would members of the military, National Guard, or a local police forces legally owe their loyalty? Would that be to Obama? No, their loyalty must remain to the people and to the protection of their liberty. For those who believe that the police or military’s loyalty is primarily to the president, and that such people must obey all orders given by the president, then they support dictatorship, pure and simple.

When they are administered an oath, these military and law enforcement people are obligated by law to obey and follow the law, not to obey the president (or governor, or mayor, etc.). The Oath Keepers organization makes that clear (here and here). If you are someone in the military or police, and if a commander or superior officer, or president gives you an unlawful order — that you know is unlawful — you are obligated by law to disobey that order. And this includes martial law.

Here is why martial law is unlawful, and any American political official who imposes it should be arrested and charged with whatever violations of individuals’ rights to life, liberty and property are applicable, and charged with treason. Martial law is the suspension of civil liberties. This includes the people’s God-given right to bear arms and right of self-defense, the right to be secure in one’s person, papers, houses and effects, the right to not be apprehended (kidnapped) and detained (held hostage) without actual suspicion of having committed some actual crime against someone’s person or property, and the right to freedom of speech and the right to dissent and criticize criminal government bureaucrats and their goons. These are amongst the many God-given rights we have.

These rights to life and liberty, basically the right of the individual to own one’s life and the right to be free from the aggression of others, are, as referred to in the Declaration of Independence, unalienable or inalienable rights. This is a recognition that such individual rights belong to the individual inherently, as given to one by God or nature, and they may not be taken away.

No, the government doesn’t give us those rights, and neither does the Constitution. Those rights are natural, inherent rights that we have as human beings. Therefore, martial law, the suspension of such rights and liberty, is a criminal act of aggression imposed by the State. In fact, most if not all acts of the State are criminal acts of aggression against the lives, liberty and property of the people.

Hurricane Irene has turned out to not be the major problem for some places like New York City and Eastern Massachusetts as had been feared (although it has been a problem for a lot of people elsewhere), much to the disappointment of the totalitarian control-freak fear-mongering government bureaucrats like Mayor Bloomberg and others of his fascist ilk. But we did get a glimpse into what happens when government exploits disasters for its own ends, and for the ends of government-employed criminals and mobsters, during Hurricane Katrina.

With one government intrusion after another, day after day, the Anti-Federalists are proven right. For the above reasons, we had better decentralize America, just as the Soviet Union did. And de-monopolize activities such as community policing and territorial security away from compulsory government, disarm all government employees and allow only the people — civilians — to  exercise their right to self-defense and their right to bear arms. Government centralization and monopolization of these activities only invite the employees of such institutionalized aggressions to be criminals and punks run amok.

And this decentralization and de-monopolization should also apply to all other central planning usurpations by the government, and other forced monopoly schemes, such as the Federal Reserve System especially, and retirement and medical care as well.

The Progressives’ Regulatory Police State, Small Government Fascists, and the Right’s Anti-Muslim Hysteria

There have been quite a few blog posts and articles in just the past few days that have made me feel compelled to do this post. First, I found this blog called Progressives for Ron Paul, and this specific post calling for other Progressives to sign a letter to Dr. Paul, asking him to compromise on some of his principles to get their support. Something went wrong when I submitted my comment, either that or it just wasn’t accepted. But here is my comment, in response to some of their specific requests:

It’s good that you’re supporting Ron Paul. However, I don’t believe he would name a coalition cabinet that includes progressives, certainly not in economic policy. Most Progressives support the stifling regulatory State that has been killing the economy.

And Dr. Paul will not agree to supporting any kind of “progressive consumption tax,” because consumption taxes are actually regressive, not progressive, and hurt the poor the most.

Dr. Paul probably would not endorse a “progressive Democrat” in a primary, because progressive Democrats by and large support the vast amount of the regulatory bureaucracies that Paul wants to get rid of, including the EPA, the FDA, and ObamaCare.

And Dodd-Frank as well. We need to eliminate the special favors that government gives to the big banks, and hold all banks and financial institutions accountable under the rule of law.

If only Progressives were more informed on how government interventionism in the economy makes everyone worse off, just as government’s foreign interventionism does, and how government-corporate cronyism has made the rich richer and the middle-class poorer, you would support Ron Paul economically, as well.

And I recommended some articles to read, including The Ethics of Liberty, The Free Market, The Clean Water Act vs. Clean Water, The Minimum Wage Protects the Rich, The Socialist Wall Street Bailout, and The Case Against the Federal Reserve.

Progressives, “liberals,” “socialists,” whatever they are, are usually those — at least, in the past — who protest police abuse and so forth, but, at the same time, they call for more and more government interventionism and regulations in private economic matters. What they don’t realize is that, when you call for more government regulations of economic or otherwise private activity, you are calling for greater police powers to enforce them. This is what some of us in the real world call the “regulatory police state.” This police state can be seen in the harassment of property owners in their front yard vegetable gardens, garage sales, kids’ lemonade stands, all the way up to “insider trading” and other government scams of entrapment of non-crimes.

The regulatory police state harasses, terrorizes and criminalizes non-criminal individuals and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as a means of protecting the established bigger businesses, banks, and other Big Business institutions who use the armed power of the law and police to protect their own selfish interests at the expense of others. Related to this, the Federal Reserve’s counterfeiting puts new money into the economy that devalues the currency and causes price inflation especially in food and energy. The Fed allows the first receivers of the new money — the Primary Dealers (Big Banks) — to profit from the new money in the billions (or trillions), while the later receivers, the rest of us schmucks, have to deal with the inflation that the richer rich people don’t have to worry about. I wish “Progressives” could understand this. Unfortunately, the left lives in a world that is not real, not with reality, just as much as the right lives in their own non-reality with their Muslim paranoia and obsession with this false understanding of the Bible and their obession with gay marriage.

Robert Wenzel posted this one yesterday: Ron Paul Warns of Riots; Robert Reich Calls for Marches, noting the polar opposites between the two, the responsible Paul and the irresponsible, infantile Reich. Wenzel notes:

There’s a global attitude among many that government should somehow act to take care of the populace. The fundamental understanding that only production creates wealth and that government sucks up wealth, just has not sunken in. Frighteningly, there will be anger against government for ”not doing enough,” which will likely lead to people taking to the streets.  But the anger will not be taken out against government. It likely will result in riots in our major cities that will destroy property and other wealth that has been created by the private sector that has nothing to do with the undeliverable promises of the government.

The Progressive left is out to lunch when it comes to understanding the nature of compulsory government. Robert Reich reminds me of the two young ladies in the U.K. who were commenting how justified they were in their rioting, thinking they were fighting back against “the Rich,” in their destroying small businesses and shops. Their ignorance is no different from that of the left in general, thinking that people who happen to own businesses or employ people are “the Rich,” when most of them are just barely getting by and trying to make ends meet.

If you look at the general population immediately surrounding the Washington, D.C. area, you will find “the Rich,” most of whom profit from the federal government’s confiscating wealth from the general population. And if you look in and around Manhattan and Connecticut, you will find the Wall Street “Rich,” who also profit from government’s corporate handouts and the Fed’s EZ money.

A few days ago talk host Michael Savage represented the right-wing version of the left’s infantilism and fantasy-world. Savage was telling people to take down the tail numbers of the private jets at the airport in Martha’s Vineyard to see who exactly is there at the same time that Barack Obama is there. So some guy calls in saying he was doing that but was afraid of getting arrested, in the same way that people are getting arrested merely for videotaping police.

In one breath, Michael Savage was saying what a “police state” this is now because of Jamit Napolitano’s Homeland Insecurity and the TSA goons, and that you could get arrested for anything now, and then he’s going on about the NYPD’s infiltration of Islamic mosques that wasn’t based on any specific crimes or suspicion, and Savage was becoming all emotional and immature in his approval of this. He used as a comparison World War II, with Hitler invading other countries and the FBI infiltrating German-American-owned business, clubs or organizations. And now they should infiltrate Muslim’s private property and associations to “prevent terrorism.” (My advice to the owners of mosques is to use the Second Amendment against invaders and intruders of their property and organizations.)

Obviously, Savage doesn’t like Obama’s Homeland Insecurity police state against Americans in general, but he does like the NYPD’s or FBI’s police state invasions and intrusions against presumably innocent Americans associating peacefully on their own property. Savage suffers from anti-Muslim hysteria, which has been a problem in America especially since 9/11. I noted recently how the way to prevent terrorism is not to violate people’s inalienable rights of presumption of innocence and the right to be left alone and the right to due process, or to start wars against other countries and murder innocents abroad. The way to prevent this Islamic, Middle-Eastern-based terrorism is for the U.S. government to stop trespassing on foreign lands and murdering their people, which it has been doing since long before 9/11. As I have also observed, central planning in national security, which all Americans are compelled to use, only encourages the federal monopolists to commit aggression against foreigners and provoke them to act against us.

Like the Progressives’ regulatory police state, government monopoly in security and judicial decision-making encourages irresponsibility and criminality, with the military as especially led by its incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats of the Pentagon, with local police departments, and with the whole judicial system.

Keven Carson had this article recently, on Small Government Fascists, regarding how the Tea Party-”small government” types who fear government’s police state overreach in ObamaCareless and the TSA Nazi thug goons, nevertheless support the extreme police state prosecutorial criminality that we have been seeing more of in recent years. Carson refers to some specific cases, and to Rick Perry, and notes, “The really scary part is that, to a certain segment of the American Right, it really is more important that somebody — anybody — be punished than to make sure you’re punishing the right person…If someone worships the power of uniformed, armed thugs, and celebrates the lawless abuse of power by such thugs, there’s nothing ‘small government’ about them.”

It is more important to prosecutors now to protect themselves from the embarrassment of poorly or incompetently investigated or prosecuted cases than it is to protect innocent individuals from being falsely jailed or murdered by the State.

And Wendy McElroy had this piece, Police-Thugs with Guns, referring to recent cases of police brutality and cover-ups. In the same regard to the aforementioned prosecutors’ crimes, it is more important to local police departments to protect themselves from bad publicity caused by the Nazis and neanderthals within their ranks than it is to protect the public from the crimes and violence of the police.

They are extremely selfish people, these thuggish, criminal officials, in their protecting themselves from embarrassment (“Oooo, I’m a gutless weasel — I can’t handle being embarrassed!”) at the expense of other human beings’ lives and liberty. There is a place in Hell awaiting them.

I have mentioned this before, but the reason for more and more police and prosecutorial abuse and crimes is because of the compulsory monopoly that the government has in security, community policing and judicial decision-making. We need to de-monopolize and decentralize the police and courts, and legalize voluntary and competing policing and security organizations. That is the only way to hold people accountable, under the rule of law. Monopolists are not accountable. The big problem is, when you monopolize something like policing and security, and give these people this officialdom and “authority” of the State, in which they are permitted to be above the law, but in which the rest of us schmucks must “obey the law” (meaning: obey THEM!), you are already asking for trouble.

And for the same reasons, we have to de-monopolize the production and distribution of money, take it out of the Fed’s dirty, criminal hands, decentralize the government-protected banking cartel and eliminate government regulations of and privileges for businesses and banks at the expense of everyone else.

End the criminal, regulatory police state and police monopoly!

“I Agree With Ron Paul on Everything But Foreign Policy.”

August 24, 2011

(Link to article at Activist Post)

It is unfortunate that many Americans, including the news media and pundits, dismiss Ron Paul and his message of freedom and peace as either “fringe” or “unelectable.” A lot of people have stated that they agree with Paul on everything but foreign policy. But that is mainly because their views are based on a heavy dose of government propaganda and misinformation, especially since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Americans are going to have to face the truth that none of the Bush-Obama post-9/11 wars and domestic police state programs will protect us from terrorism. As long as the U.S. government continues to trespass on foreign lands with invasions and occupations, constantly commit murders of innocents and destroy entire countries, which the U.S. government has been doing for a century and especially since 1990, the people who don’t like their lands trespassed upon and their family members murdered will continue to retaliate.

The latest thing I’ve heard, regarding the ineffectiveness of the government’s intrusions, has been that the new airport interrogation program will not prevent terrorism, according to Israeli security expert Rafi Sela, who was interviewed on NPR in Boston.

Congressman Ron Paul’s understanding of the moral principles upon which America was founded – and that they are absolute moral principles and cannot change over time – is being criticized as outdated. Unfortunately, too many people have succumbed to the moral relativists’ post-9/11 era of knee-jerk fear mongering. The ones who say that “times are different now,” and that the ideas of individual human rights, national sovereignty and property rights are irrelevant are the ones who practice moral relativism, and their policies of U.S. government expansionism, imperialism, hegemony, and perpetual wars are what have been ruining America, certainly not Ron Paul’s policies of peace and the rule of law.

Out of moral relativism and delusions of grandeur, the statist control freaks have been trying to “democratize” Middle Eastern countries, whether the countries want democracy or not. According to this article, the grandiose globalists had been planning their regime change schemes for Libya, Syria, and Iran for many years, just as with Iraq and Afghanistan.

One problem with the American psyche in general that has gone against America is this idea of “American exceptionalism.” As Laurence Vance recently noted in Christianity and War, for some reason, the moral ideas of “Do unto others what one would want others to do unto you,” and “Don’t do to others what one would not want others to do unto you,” have been forgotten. Too many Americans really believe that it’s okay for our government to place its military bases and other government apparatus on foreign territories, despite the objections of their people, but that it wouldn’t be okay for a foreign government, such as Saudi Arabia or China, to place its military bases in Texas or New Jersey. This is the moral relativism on which U.S. government foreign policy has been based for decades.

The moral relativists also believe that it’s a very bad thing for a group of people to crash planes into American buildings and murder 3,000 people here, but that it’s not so bad when Americans murder tens of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Pakistan and Yemen, and Somalia and Libya, and so on.

Now, there are some things about which many Americans are misinformed, particularly in regards to the notion that the U.S. government’s war in Afghanistan (2001- ) was a justified aggression as a means of capturing Osama bin Laden. But, according to Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger and other news organizations, when the Bush Administration in 2001 demanded that the Afghanistan Taliban rulers turn over bin Laden for extradition to the U.S., the Taliban responded by requiring that the Bush Administration present actual evidence of bin Laden’s guilt, and then the Taliban would send bin Laden to a neutral third country. The Bush Administration refused, and continued to demand unconditionally that bin Laden be extradited, without presenting evidence of his guilt.

It was not unreasonable of the Taliban to require evidence before handing over bin Laden. In the Administration’s refusal to present evidence, and with a hostile George W. Bush exhibiting his ignorance of due process by stating, “There’s no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty,” one can conclude that the Bush Administration did not have evidence of bin Laden’s guilt.

Indeed, in 2001, bin Laden had claimed that he was not involved in the September 11th attacks. It is mind-boggling how the U.S. government had gone on to destroy Afghanistan (and Iraq), with hundreds of thousands of innocents murdered, and thousands of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded, all based on the assumption that Afghanistan or bin Laden had responsibility for 9/11. For those who believe the assumption as truth, please find a source for actual evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11. And many people actually believe the sham that the Navy SEALS actually killed bin Laden on May 1st, when there are many questions and doubts about that.

The truth is that 9/11 didn’t change anything, because the Bush Administration already had plans to start wars in the Middle East. And also, according to Bush family biographer Russ Baker, George W. Bush had already been planning to start wars, especially in Iraq where his father the elder President Bush left off, for political reasons. In Baker’s book, Family of Secrets, Baker quotes the younger Bush’s ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz:

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told me in our 2004 interview…”It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander in chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade . . . if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed, and I’m going to have a successful presidency.’”

Many people actually have no idea that the U.S. government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis prior to 9/11. This started with the U.S. government’s first war on Iraq in 1991. As with the second U.S. war against Iraq beginning in 2003, the first one was also one in which Iraq was of no threat to the U.S.

The U.S. government’s atrocities in Iraq throughout the 1990s were among the motivations of the 9/11 terrorists. The actual primary motivations for the 9/11 attacks, as stated by the terrorists and their cohorts, were political in nature, not religious. The terrorists were angry at the U.S. government’s invasive foreign policy, and at the hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocents in Iraq that started with the U.S. military’s 1991 bombing campaign that included its destruction of civilian electrical, water and sewage treatment centers. The U.S.-led UN sanctions throughout the ‘90s prevented those electrical, water and sewage treatment centers from being repaired or rebuilt, and that situation forced the Iraqis to use untreated water, which led to skyrocketing disease such as cholera and cancer rates.

The civilian electrical, water and sewage treatment centers were intentionally targeted by the U.S. military, according to then-Air Force Col. John Warden, III.

Do people know about all this pre-9/11 history?

Just as with the younger Bush in 2002 with the fabrications, lies and emotionalistic propaganda to justify an unnecessary war in Iraq, in 1990 President George H. W. Bush used emotionalistic propaganda to convince Americans to support his desire to commit the previous aggressions in Iraq. In 1990, the elder Bush and several members of Congress repeatedly cited the story, fabricated by “Nayirah,” the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., of Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and letting them die, as a means of stirring people’s emotions for their support for war.

And just as with Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and other connected military contractors in the 2000s involved with the younger Bush’s post-9/11 wars, there were corporate connections to past and present U.S. government officials promoting this first 1991 U.S. war against Iraq, as well. They involved Henry Kissinger and his group Kissinger Associates, Gen. Brent Scrowcroft, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Lawrence Eagleburger, William Simon, and Bechtel, connections that were well fixed during the 1980s.

By the late 1990s, with continuing disease and following the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis from the 1991 war and subsequent sanctions, the terrorist organization al-Qaeda cited the U.S. government’s Middle Eastern occupations and Iraqi sanctions as motivations for al-Qaeda’s subsequent attacks in African U.S. embassies and the U.S.S. Cole, in al-Qaeda’s 1998 fatwa declaration.

This was all before 9/11. Those who refuse to understand that 9/11 was blowback for the U.S. government’s aggressions in the Middle East, and who continue to call for more U.S. government aggressions, do not seem to understand the idea of cause and effect. If you trespass on the property of the neighbors across the street, and provoke them by committing acts of violence against them and then block their access to medical care and food, then they might want to retaliate against you.

All this is not to say that we owe terrorists our “understanding” or sympathy for their terrorism. But it does mean that if we don’t want foreigners to attack us, then the way to prevent that is for our government to stop trespassing on their lands and murdering their people. U.S. government foreign interventionism and aggressions abroad have been going on for a century. Ron Paul believes, rightly, that it has to stop.

When our government officials tell us they want to start or enter a war against another country, we must hold their motivations in suspect. They are probably lying, as has been the case with every war of the past century. (More information on the government’s war lies here).

If we are led to believe that another country such as Iran is a threat to us, then, chances are that the government bureaucrats are lying or fabricating evidence or documentation, as with Iraq in 2002. There is some kind of psychological craving to commit aggression against others, a craving we see time and again amongst those who are given a monopoly on territorial “protection.” For over 200 years of the United States of America, that is one thing that hasn’t changed.

People need to be more informed of the truth about what our politicians have been up to, and, if they were more informed, they probably would agree with Ron Paul on foreign policy.

Articles on U.S. Government Lies, Propaganda and Fabrications for War

James Bovard: Iraqi Sanctions and American Intentions

PR Watch: How PR Sold the 1991 War in Iraq

Jacob Hornberger: An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iran

U.K. Guardian: The Persian Gulf War disinformation campaign

Stephen Kinzer: How BP Destroyed Democracy in Iran

Jacob Hornberger: Military Suicides and Guilty Consciences

Karen Kwiatkowski: Brad Manning Has Rights!

Paul Craig Roberts: The War on Terror

Washington’s Blog: The Anniversary of 9/11

Justin Raimondo: The Meaning of 9/11

Salon: The Israeli “art student” mystery

Gareth Porter: US Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Forged

David Ray Griffin: Lack of evidence of bin Laden involvement in 9/11

Bin Laden claims he was not responsible for 9/11 in interview

Glenn Greenwald: They hate us for our occupations

Mother Jones: The Bush-Iraq Lie Factory

Justin Raimondo: Imperial Hubris

Laurence Vance: U.S. Presidents and Those Who Kill for Them

CNN: Paper used by Colin Powell to justify Iraq War was plagiarized

Washington’s Blog: 9/11 Didn’t Change Anything

Jacob Hornberger: It Was Wrong to Invade Afghanistan

Jim Powell: What We Can Learn from Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder

Glenn Greenwald: The universality of war propaganda

James Bovard: Another Bush 9/11 Lie Exposed

Eric Margolis: 9/11 Cover-Up Remains While Questions Mount

Jacob Hornberger: The Troops Don’t Defend Our Freedoms

Tom Engelhardt: Entering the Soviet Era in America

Karen Kwiatkowski: Who’s Afraid of Bradley Manning?

Jacob Hornberger: Foreign Policy Blowback at Ft. Hood

Andy Worthington: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Lies on Guantanamo

Murray Rothbard: Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy

Russ Baker: Reagan, the Bushes, and Saddam Hussein

Arthur Silber: No, I Do NOT Support “The Troops”

Gary North: Pearl Harbor Historiography: A Lesson in Academic Housecleaning

Murray Rothbard: War Guilt in the Middle East

How much might Israeli intelligence have known about impending September 11th attacks?

AE911truth: Architects and Engineers: Solving the Mystery of WTC 7

Robert Higgs: The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism

Justin Raimondo: Support the Troops?

The Occupying Foreign Government in Washington

Washington’s Blog has this post on how Washington, D.C. is like a separate country, one that couldn’t care less about the American people. The writer notes that Washington, D.C. is full of life-long politicians, their media propagandists, industrial private-sector government contractors and their lobbyists, apparently 60% of whom think that the economy is getting better, while the rest of America recognizes that everything is getting worse.

You see, this is what you get when you centralize power and authority as has been done in America the past century, to the point that D.C. has become the Leviathan dictatorship tyranny that it was inevitably destined to be with such centralization. Culturally, we have a society in which covetousness of everyone else’s wealth and property is acceptable, positively reinforced and encouraged, and institutionalized through positive legislation, fascist, protectionist regulations and just plain outright thievery (IRS).

But to the point that Washington’s Blog notes that D.C. is a separate country, I have noted before that we need to be realistic and view the federal government for what it is: an invading, occupying foreign government. The occupation is largely in D.C., but its parasitic, dictatorial reach goes into each of the 50 states, those states whose inhabitants have willingly given up their inalienable rights to life, liberty and property, and who have bent over backwards to let the goons of Leviathan rape them repeatedly, and increasingly more severely.

Now, the intrusions and crimes of Obama’s UnhealthyCare and the Dodd-Frank-Elizabeth Warren-Bankster bureaucracies are totalitarian in their pursuit of prying into the private lives of Americans, their medical matters and their businesses. But, because of the overwhelming militarization of “law enforcement” due to Drug Prohibition and terrorism fear-mongering, there have been plenty examples of how the reason we need to view the federal government as an occupying foreign government and therefore an enemy of our liberty, security and property, is because those people view us as their enemy! Here are some examples:

The U.S. military’s psychological-operations (psy-ops). I have brought that up twice before. As I noted here, Psy-ops are generally used on foreign government agents or diplomats to influence their emotions and decisions to become favorable to one’s own ends. Psy-ops are often used on the enemy during times of war. But when the U.S. military personnel use psy-ops on their own fellow Americans, in this case on U.S. senators who represent the American people, we can conclude from that that these generals really do view their fellow Americans as the enemy.

Another example has been the U.S. Justice (sic) Department’s operation “Fast and Furious,” engaging in a gun-running op to Mexican drug cartels, who then use the guns on innocent Americans. I still can’t believe that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holster has not been charged with the obvious cover-up of this whole thing, not to mention for the operation itself. Only foolish, incompetent government bureaucrats would be stupid enough to run a gun-dealing operation to violent criminals in another country, or even within their own country.

I heard Michael Savage a few months ago speculate that this operation might be on purpose for those totalitarians in D.C. to increase their anti-gun hysteria, for the purpose of disarming Americans even more than they already are. Give them absolute power, give them the guns and let them take yours, and then you are their prisoner. After all, men are angels, you know.

After their interventionism has ruined America’s economy and taken away all hope from future generations, the Leviathan bureaucrats and their cohorts in CONgress and at the Fed believe that an economic collapse will happen, which will be followed by chaos, civil unrest, rioting and looting, and the detention camps are already being set up all across the country. Yes, Jamit Napolitano is ready to oversee the concentration camps, and, don’t forget, Jamit, don’t forget the Tea Party terrorists, the military vets, the anti-war protesters, and so forth.

This is all an inevitable result of when you centralize everything, including and especially national security. Because D.C., the invading and occupying foreign government residing in the 202 area code, has a monopoly on territorial protection in which no alternative is allowed for the people to choose from, you have given the bureaucrats carte blanche power and their agenda will be not the protection of the American people, but the constant, never-ending expansion of the bureaucrats own power. Monopolists — especially those whose monopoly all Americans are compelled to use for protection — are not accountable. When you give them a monopoly in territorial protection (a.k.a. “defense”), they will use those monopolistic armed powers to act aggressively against and provoke foreigners, and that is exactly what we have had for a century.

The D.C. Leviathan monopolists constantly committed aggressions against and provoked the inhabitants of the Middle Eastern countries especially since 1990, with Iraq, with sanctions that followed, provoking retaliation and widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East leading up to 9/11. Since 9/11, the D.C. monopolists have been fear-mongering and terrorizing the American people to accept further U.S. invasions against and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, accept further and further police state aggressions against our liberty, property, homes and businesses, a situation in which the government is much more guilty of actual terrorism than the Islamic terrorists have been.

In fact, one American who has been terrorized by the FBI goons and intruders, Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, reports today that the FBI goons have been investigating Antiwar.com, and for what, writing a column that explains some of the crimes the D.C. protection-racket monopolists are committing?

Slowly, but surely, the author of this FBI memo is building a case: the document is written in the language of an indictment – but what are the charges? That Antiwar.com is widely read and cited? That we posted a publicly available document on the internet, one that was published by Cryptome.org and others? That we are in league with neo-Nazis and are hoping to start a race war and initiate a reign of terror? Well, that’s just a warm-up, folks, because it’s worse than that:

“File 17A-LA-234485 serial 55, dated 11/10/2003 indicated that on 10/27/2003, a special agent reviewed the computer hard drives of [several words redacted]. The review of two hard drives revealed visits to many websites between 07/25/2002 and 06/15/2003. One of the websites listed was antiwar.com.”

Of course, we’re terrorists – yes, that must be it. Otherwise why would the FBI Counterterrorism Unit be taking such an interest in Antiwar.com? And the proof? Well, someone snared in one of their investigations actually went to our website – more than once! If that isn’t a good reason for the feds to set their dogs sniffing around our garbage cans, well then I don’t know what is.

You see, when the American people are more informed about what the invading and occupying foreign regime in Washington is up to, with one crime after another against the people, the central goons go after those who are turning the lights on them. To the invading, occupying foreign regime in D.C., we the American people are their enemy.

A better case for dissolving the “union,” and for states to secede and take back their freedom, independence  and sovereignty could not have been made better by the regimes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Father McLaughlin

Lew Rockwell posted a video from the McLaughlin Group. Thank God I stopped watching TV 15 years ago, but I have seen some of these clips on YouTube and other websites. I was addicted to this show during the 1980s into early 1990s — why, I don’t know.

Given his age (84), former priest (and former Deputy Special Assistant to President Nixon) John McLaughlin’s continued wit and perception of current events is quite impressive. Of course, Eleanor Cliff is still her same old misguided, lefty dreamer, still adhering to FDR’s Anti-Social Insecurity and the fantasy that relying on government officials to help manage your retirement or medical care actually works. Cliff claimed that her co-panelist Pat Buchanan would never let go of his Anti-Social Insecurity or Medicare. (However, Buchanan probably would let go of it if the criminal IRS closed down and stopped stealing over half of Pat’s income and let him be free to control his own retirement and medical care.)

But I do appreciate the gang’s discussion of Ron Paul, and recognizing the value of Paul’s work in uncovering the truth about the Fed, the “nanny state,” the drug war and the other wars that are killing America.

Now, here’s a treat. I listened to the greatest talk radio host of all time, Jerry Williams, on WRKO during the 1980s, but here are links (opening up a new Media Player window) to interviews by Jerry Williams when he was at WBZ, interviewing John McLaughlin first in 1973, and then 1974. Both discussions are about the Watergate issue. The first audio was while McLaughlin was still a priest, but was also Nixon’s Deputy Special Assistant. That was so controversial with Father McLaughlin taking a political post, he was pressured to leave the priesthood in 1974.

http://www.jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBZ/wbz19.m3u

http://www.jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBZ/wbz30.m3u

While MSM Sleeps, “Zzzzzzzz,” It Takes Bloggers and Blog Commenters to Provide Info on Rick Perry

(Slightly edited because of link issues.)

Here is Michelle Malkin’s informative article about Rick “Merck” Perry’s controversial scheme of his state government’s forcing teenage girls to take the Gardasil HPV vaccine.

And Karen De Coster wrote about Gardasil’s dangerous effects, including some deaths, as well:

The organization Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FDA, and in a 2007 analysis it discovered, at that time, there were 3,461 complaints that were filed about adverse reactions to the vaccine. Side effects have been blood clots, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, seizure-like activity, and fainting. It is also being linked to miscarriages, degenerative muscle conditions, and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Oh, and death. Some young girls are developing juvenile ALS after getting the vaccines, and some die.

There are other things I’ve seen about Perry, quite a few items of which I’ve seen in comments sections of blogs, and from Robert Wenzel’s blog. In this post, Wenzel writes:

Brad Plumer at WaPo explains how the job market stayed strong in Texas, and why that is about to change:

Thanks to relatively high property taxes and loose restrictions on building, Texas had a much less severe housing bubble than did other states. When many parts of the country were plummeting into recession in 2008, Texas was still growing.

It was only in 2009 that bleak conditions nationwide finally caught up with the Lone Star State, and sales-tax revenue started dropping. Fortunately for Texas, however, Congress had just passed a big stimulus bill, and Perry used $6.4 billion in federal money to smooth over the state’s growing deficit. Hence Texas hasn’t been forced to enact the same sharp budget cuts over the past three years that most other states have made.

Trouble is, that’s all about to change. Texas could only fend off its deficit woes for so long, and this year, faced with a $27 billion shortfall, Perry and the legislature opted for steep cuts to Medicaid and education over the next two-year budget cycle. Given that roughly half of all new Texas jobs in the last two years have come in the health care, education and government sectors, it’s a real question as to whether a newly austere Texas will keep creating jobs at its current pace.

Got that?  Fifty percent of jobs have been either direct government jobs or jobs created by Federal funding. Perry is a massive statist.

Also in that post, commenter Allen Lewis noted:

Also, Rick Perry introduced the first income tax in the history of the state of Texas. It’s called the business margins tax:

http://www.lonestarlandlaw.com/Texas-Margin.html

Also, Rick Perry loves to raise revenue by implementing “user fees” which he claims are not taxes.

http://www.texaspolicy.com/pdf/2011-05-PB28-BillAnalysis-SB1811-CFP.pdf

(That reminded me of a column that Carla Howell wrote about Willard Romney: Mitt Romney: Champion of Big Government.)

And also from that post by Wenzel, Anonymous added:

Here’s the 2010 Republican primary debate. Y’all can watch Debra Medina kick ass against statists Rick Perry and Kay Bailey. It’s a good debate. Debra pulls out our dirty laundry for all to see. Shame she was plowed under by the evil Glenn Beck.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/291322-1

(More about the connection between Beck and Perry and their sinking of libertarian-leaning Republican Establishment-challenging Debra Medina here and here.)

In this post by Robert Wenzel, one of his readers emailed him about meeting Perry and with more info on Perry. In that linked video, note how Perry points or jabs his finger in the guy’s chest. Can you imagine Mitt Romney doing that? (Hmmm. Wait, I can imagine Romney doing that. Never mind, as Emily Litella would say.) The reader wrote:

What I asked Governor Perry was “Considering state debt has nearly tripled and spending has increased by two thirds since you were governor, and also that ACORN considered your help their ‘proudest moment,’ what were the differences between him and the current liberal president?” As you can see, he immediately tried to excuse away the numbers.

I found the debt numbers at Politifact from Bill White, who quotes the Texas Bond Review Board. I asked Perry about the raw numbers, which show that in 2000 Texas state debt was $13.7B, and by 2009 that number had grown to over $34B (Mitchell Schnurman found more recent numbers for 2010: $37B.). Bill White at Politifact adjusted for inflation and found the debt merely doubled under Perry.

Perry’s record on spending can be found at Texas Budget Source. In 2000 when Perry took over, Texas spending was $49.7B and the latest numbers the site has available show that spending was $82.1B, a 67% increase. Adjusting for inflation and population growth, the growth in the size of the Texas government during his time as governor is a paltry 36%.

Finally, I found that Perry had good friends in ACORN, a community organization that Republicans love to hate. In 2006, Perry signed into law a bill which benefited low-income homeowners. ACORN called this their “proudest moment.” When Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson opposed funding ACORN in 2007, he attacked her.

On that post, commenter Scarlett wrote:

Perry like a pus boil on a neck, he will be popped with consistent factual questioning. This guy is a strict socialist, red/blue, blue/red. What else is new, MSM loves the BS from the appointed donkey.

And on this post, Robert Wenzel writes,

Perry has received a total of $37 million over the last decade from just 150 individuals and couples, who are likely to form the backbone of his new effort to win the Republican presidential nomination. The tally represented more than a third of the $102 million he had raised as governor through December, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, LaTi reports.

Nearly half of those mega-donors received hefty business contracts, tax breaks or appointments under Perry.

Auto magnate B.J. “Red” McCombs, who contributed nearly $400,000 to the governor, is the primary financial backer for a Formula One racetrack to be built near Austin. The state has pledged $25 million a year in subsidies to support the project.

The Houston-based engineering firm of James Dannenbaum, who gave more than $320,000 to Perry, received multiple transportation contracts from the state. In 2007, Perry appointed Dannenbaum to a coveted post on the University of Texas’ board of regents.

A Mississippi-based poultry company run by Joe Sanderson, who gave $165,000 to Perry, received a $500,000 grant from a state business incentive fund championed by Perry to open a chicken hatchery and processing plant in Waco.

LaTi has more, here.

And TPM has this chart and explanation of the growth in jobs in Texas really being government jobs, not private sector jobs, as mentioned above.

And then there’s Rick Perry’s dream for a Trans-Texas Corridor. Apparently, he wants to join the rest of the world’s evil land thieves, and call it “eminent domain.”

And, when Joe Lieberman says that Perry has made “very good first impressions,” then I KNOW I don’t like Rick Perry!

With all this info on Rick Perry, who needs to hear about Perry’s possible, alleged gay/stripper/affair with his male secretary of state/ fiasco? I know I don’t.

News “Journalists” Shill for the State

August 18, 2011

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

It’s bad enough the possibility that there might have been some hanky-panky going on regarding the vote count at the Iowa Straw Poll this week, in which Ron Paul received 4,671 votes to Michele Bachmann’s 4,823, a difference of just 152 votes. But to see one national media outlet after another completely ignoring Dr. Paul’s virtual tie for the #1 spot, and others who continue to dismiss Paul as “fringe,” despite Paul’s being the most mainstream and commonsensical of all the candidates, is amazing.

The shills for the State do not see how obvious they are now. And the shills aren’t just the left-biased news media, but on the right as well. In his loving devotion to the State, Rush Limbaugh said, regarding the GOP’s giving Ron Paul any actual attention, “This is nuts on parade.”

Oh, really, Mr. Limbaugh? And whose “Operation Chaos” scheme was it that helped give us the tyrannical President Obama? Hmmm?

“Nuts,” indeed.

I dare any of the Iowa or national news reporters to interview people on the street and ask if they were of the 4,671 people who voted for Ron Paul, and, if so, ask them why they voted for Paul. You will find answers not in the “fringe,” or in the land of ignorance and fantasy as with supporters of some of those other candidates. No, you will find people who believe in and understand the ideas of freedom and peace, and who want there to be a free and prosperous America for their future generations.

So many Americans now have been cradled by Big Daddy Government. Economically and culturally Americans have become infantilized, and their coma-like passivity is being disturbed by this Ron Paul person, who dares to advocate independence, and that people grow up and be responsible for their lives and stop being babies.

The idea of the fiat money way of life, the use of value-less paper as the sole government-mandated medium of exchange, has been so ingrained, its century-long status quo being challenged makes people very uncomfortable. Ron Paul has been exposing the instability of the whole system, and that frightens people.

So, rather than deal with reality as Paul suggests, the pundits and the government groupies of mainstream news would prefer to just continue sucking their thumbs and hope for some magical cure, as the Limbaugh-Romney-Obama-Krugman statists hope for.

The people who snub those who advocate a challenge to the status quo and a challenge to government-controlled money and banking, government-controlled medicine, and a challenge to the U.S. government’s immoral and bankrupting wars of aggression – aggressions that do nothing but provoke foreigners to act against us – the people who close the door to the challenger and keep it open for the statists, despite all the destruction the State has wrought, is further confirmation of my assertion that statism is a sickness.

But why do we – the people who just want to live our lives and be left alone, and who mind our own business and do not support acts of aggression against others – why do we have to suffer at the hands of these statists? Ron Paul is advocating for our freedom and independence, that we have a right to live our lives, without aggression and intrusions into our lives and businesses by our neighbors and by the government. We have a right to trade freely with others without Big Daddy Government’s permission, we have a right to travel freely without being cancer-scanned and groped by sickos or asked to show our papers, and we have a right to earn a living without being harassed and having our labor enslaved by the State.

The media act as though that’s too much for us to ask and too much for Ron Paul to advocate, so the media babyishly snub him and his unapologetic message of freedom and peace.

Ron Paul wants to remove the government’s monopoly in money production and distribution, allow for competition in currencies, and have money that is backed by something of actual value, like gold and silver. Dr. Paul understands that paper money leads to tyranny. Paul wants to undo the current institutionalized irresponsibility of letting banks engage in risky investments and not being held accountable, that allows the banks to get bailed out by the taxpayers and by future generations via the government’s perpetual debt machine.

Paul understands that GM should have been made to go bankrupt. All businesses that are run irresponsibly or unprofitably need to restructure themselves or close, including banks as well. The problem with “Too Big To Fail” is that the whole banking and monetary system is a government-corporate cartel that protects the top bankers from accountability, and restricts entrepreneurs’ right of free entry into the field.

We had much more freedom, and much more prosperity, growth and progress in the years prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve. With freedom there is prosperity. In total contrast, in the past century of government usurpations and intrusions, we have had stagflation, wars of aggression, corporatism, and now the inevitable collapse of the system, a collapse that Paul wants to avoid.

But these ideas apparently are too much for our news media government flunkies. As the State has grown larger and larger by each generation, the news media, the intellectuals and academics have shrunk in their capacity toward intellectual curiosity, discovery and searching for the truth. The State and its compulsory powers tend to stifle questioning and challenging of its authority, and its power has an allure to it that seems to have been just too tempting for the journalistic elites to resist.

In his article, Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State, economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted how the change occurred within intellectuals from being more independent to being State apologists:

If one donor or sponsor no longer supported (intellectuals), many others existed who would happily fill the gap. Indeed, intellectual and cultural life flourished the most, and the independence of intellectuals was the greatest, where the position of the king or the central government was relatively weak and that of the natural elites had remained relatively strong.

A fundamental change in the relationship between the state, natural elites, and intellectuals only occurred with the transition from monarchical to democratic rule. It was the inflated price of justice and the perversions of ancient law by kings as monopolistic judges and peacekeepers that motivated the historical opposition against monarchy. But confusion as to the causes of this phenomenon prevailed. There were those who recognized correctly that the problem was with monopoly, not with elites or nobility. However, they were far outnumbered by those who erroneously blamed the elitist character of the ruler for the problem, and who advocated maintaining the monopoly of law and law enforcement and merely replacing the king and the highly visible royal pomp with the “people” and the presumed decency of the “common man.” …

A “tragedy of the commons” was created. Everyone, not just the king, was now entitled to try to grab everyone else’s private property. The consequences were more government exploitation (taxation); the deterioration of law to the point where the idea of a body of universal and immutable principles of justice disappeared and was replaced by the idea of law as legislation… and an increase in the social rate of time preference (increased present-orientation)…

…while the natural elites were being destroyed, intellectuals assumed a more prominent and powerful position in society. Indeed, to a large extent they have achieved their goal and have become the ruling class, controlling the state and functioning as monopolistic judge…

Now, this is not to suggest that people such as Rush Limbaugh, Chris Wallace or Candy Crowley are “intellectuals,” but they are amongst the so-called news “journalists” of the day, which is part of the crowd of news and pundits, academia, the professional economists and those in pop culture who shill for the State and its constant expanded power over the infantilized lives of the people.

When someone such as Ron Paul says he wants the people to have their freedom – that is, freedom from the State’s reaching into their private personal and economic lives – and who actually speaks in terms of morality (e.g. it’s immoral to start wars of aggression against other countries who were of no threat to us), and if Ron Paul’s proposals result in shrinking the State’s size and power, that seems to be a huge threat to the thumb-sucking apologists of the State. Certainly more than any threat from government’s destroying the economy, forcing future generations into debt slavery, provoking foreigners to retaliate against us, or from the government’s own police state.

As Dr. Paul stated, “We are trying to reverse 100 years of history, the change from a republic to an empire…” Apparently, Paul agrees with Murray Rothbard, who called for an outright repeal of the 20^th Century:

Heaven forfend! Who would want to repeal the 20th century, the century of horror, the century of collectivism, the century of mass destruction and genocide, who would want to repeal that! Well, we propose to do just that.

With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. We shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state. We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and perpetual war. We shall repeal the 20th century.

One of the most inspiring and wonderful sights of our time was to see the peoples of the Soviet Union rising up…to tear down in their fury the statues of Lenin, to obliterate the Leninist legacy. We, too, shall tear down all the statues of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of Harry Truman, of Woodrow Wilson, melt them down and beat them into plowshares and pruning hooks, and usher in a 21st century of peace, freedom, and prosperity.

I’m verklempt.

Jon Stewart exposes the pols’ and media’s infantile bias against Ron Paul

Decentralization and Secession as a Viable Alternative to the Tyrannical Status Quo

August 14, 2011

(Link to article at Activist Post)

Because of the continuing fiascos in Washington; activists on the left and on the right, libertarians and socialists, will have to begin to face the fact that looking to the central planning elites in Washington for answers is futile . . . even counter-productive.

The debt ceiling will be raised for the 75th time since 1962, no real spending cuts will happen, taxes will again be raised, and happy days are here again for the politicians, the life-long bureaucrats, the industrial lobbyists and lawyers, and, especially, the Wall Street fat cats.

“Well, the next time they will implement their promised reforms,” say those who are still faithful in the central planning bureaucrats. But our chosen representatives do not fulfill their promises, and they never will.  Sooner or later, we are going to have to face the reality that central planning is a promise that can never be kept.

I have been trying to get that message across, especially in my March 2010 prediction that the 2010 elections would be just another rearranging of deck chairs (and I was right).

But it appears that too many people just have blind faith in central planning and the fantasy that “reforming” an inherently flawed system could ever work.

Faith in central planning, despite all the destruction the U.S. government has wrought, is something that needs to be overcome.

Food  activists have begun to understand the benefits of decentralization, as have those promoting the decentralizing of money and  banking.

Many people are sympathetic to the idea of decentralization/state secession, similar to the corrections made in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s with the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, many people are unnecessarily concerned about their Social Security future, and with national security. And it has been a mistake to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure justice.

But in the long run, freedom and independence are far preferable to our current tyrannical centralization. Compromise is impossible.

First, we must confront the truth about Social Security, and ask whether a government-controlled, government-mandated retirement scheme even has any moral legitimacy, let alone whether it makes any economic sense.

People need to understand how they and future generations have been cheated by a government that takes your earnings and savings, and forces you to forfeit your right to control your own retirement future. Yes, these are distressing truths to many people, but if we can never get back what was stolen from us in our first several decades of adulthood, the people need to demand – at the very least – the restoration of their children and grandchildren’s right to keep what they earn and save.

Second, Americans need to let go of their faith in our constantly bumbling national security central planners. For a century now, our national security central planners have been corrupt, incompetent, warmongers, and imbeciles – anything but adept at keeping us safe.

If people actually think about it, they might then realize the absurdity in giving professional bureaucrats and politicians a monopoly on protecting a territory of thousands of square miles with a population of 300 million people from foreign aggression. Instead, what has happened is that such central planning rulers have used that monopolistic government and military apparatus to act aggressively against foreign nations, which is what has provoked the foreign nations to act against us, thus making us less safe.

And third, giving such a centralized bureaucracy a monopoly in ultimate judicial decision-making has not protected the people from injustice. Decisions by the Supreme Court have increasingly exemplified those of a banana republic. Most recently, the Supreme Court, in an 8-1  decision, backed the power of the police to break into the homes of innocents without a warrant and with impunity.

Moreover, such a powerful compulsory centralized bureaucracy has tended to attract the worst amongst us; those who are lacking in moral scruples. Of course giving such an agency the power to seize wealth and property from the people is bound to attract those who have no problem with coveting others’ wealth and property. And of course giving some people the privilege of being above the law, and the power to initiate acts of aggression against others, will attract those of an anti-social bent.

The distasteful reality is, as with the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, centralizing power and especially consolidating more power to the executive is destructive and dangerous. The U.S. has become increasingly totalitarian, with more centralized government control over the people — from FDR’s New Deal and his stealing gold from Americans, the Federal Reserve and Richard Nixon’s closing the gold window, to more recently George W. Bush’s police state DHS, TSA and the retaliation from Bush and Obama’s aggressions overseas.

People need to face the reality of central planning’s destruction of America, and do what the states of the Soviet Union did: Not “reform” but abolish that central power altogether.

Activists who are serious in their intention of freeing themselves and their families and their progeny from the tyranny of the Washington Leviathan, should advocate that states secede and regain their independence and sovereignty that is their right to have.

No central government has any moral authority to compel any individual or groups of people to belong to any association which they did not voluntarily join.

With independent states and no central power, the people’s right to control their own retirement

savings and their medical matters would not be infringed, and neither would their right to bear arms. In the case of any one state in which a government violates such rights of its population, the people have the freedom to move to a better, freer state. Currently, with all Americans under the compulsory authority of the federal government, it is difficult or impossible for people even to actually move to a different country to escape from the U.S. government’s further intrusions and tyranny.

And with independent states and no central power, the people’s right to self-defense would not be usurped by such a central power. The people of the states would have the right to arm themselves, have militias and whatever weaponry they believe is necessary to protect them from foreign aggression.

With independent states and no central power, there would be little to no ability (or desire) for any one American state to deliberately act aggressively against and provoke foreigners.

And, economically, what would happen if we got rid of all the compulsory, monopolistic federal bureaucracies – the Federal Reserve, IRS, HHS, FDA, EPA, TSA and DHS to name just a few – and required that all people live under the rule of law and that no one individual or business receive any extra privileges from the State?

The people of the states would have the freedom to discover and make use of natural resources that exist within their own territories, and not be compelled to be “dependent on foreign oil.”

There would be no federal raw milk raids, no drug raids, and no S.W.A.T. teams breaking into homes and murdering people for student loan defaults. And no Big Farms would get any special privileges at the expense of smaller family farms.

And the people would have the freedom to do business with whatever medium of exchange suits them — The Bernank be damned.

Americans need to have faith in the kind of free-market capitalism that raised the standard of living of all people of all walks of life.

The ruling class is expressing the same kind of fear-mongering with the debt ceiling issue that they expressed during the Wall Street Bailout fiasco, with the mainstream media acting as their obedient stenographers.  This should be seen as yet another example of how self-serving the elites in Washington really are – Republicans as well as Democrats. Because the truth is, they will never make things better, only worse.

Among the painful truths of the day is that central planning doesn’t work; it is immoral, and it’s destroying America.  We need to get rid of it.

 

How Statism Is a Sickness, and Not Just a Destructive Political System

August 13, 2011

Copyright 2011 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

From the recent debt ceiling hysterics, we have seen just how dysfunctional America is now, as the Establishment satisfies its short-term, immediate-gratification needs at the expense of the people and future generations.

Every subsequent day is increasingly depressing and discouraging, with one news item after another how the controlling rulers in Washington are just rearranging the deck chairs and kicking the can further down the road. Out of the rulers’ own narcissistic selfishness, greed and self-absorption, they continue to increase our financial insecurity and enslavement, and increase the risk of total economic collapse and societal ruin and chaos.

America has been falling apart for some time, and is committing suicide now. But most Americans, oblivious to the realities around them, are unaware that they are killing themselves – with dependence, debt, serfdom – with their statism sickness.

America’s sickness is statism: the anti-liberty, anti-property, immoral philosophy in which people may act aggressively against and enslave their neighbors and covet wealth and property with impunity, and that’s it in a nutshell.

The use of the State, with its compulsory monopoly powers of aggression, has enabled the people to realize their infantile, primitive drives without regard to the lives, liberty or property of others. Statism is the sickness that has made criminals out of decent people. And statism is the sickness with which society has afflicted itself to ruin itself.

Statism is a pathology of human thought and behavior that causes people to passively and obediently lie on the ground while the rulers and their obedient servants walk all over the people, and enslave their labor and torture them with impunity.

What is terrifying is the coinciding of the possible coming economic collapse and the steadily strengthening police state in America.

The Growing Big Brother Police State and Its Subservient Supporters

Thanks to the police state that George W. Bush greatly expanded, people are sheepishly going through high radiation-emitting scanners at airports, putting themselves at higher risk of cancer, and for no reason except to serve the profits of the scanners’ makers, and to serve the porn-lusting cravings of the pervs who get off on the nude images they’re seeing. Or, the obedient serfs get groped and molested in their most private parts. And that’s at the airports, although the “security” statists are taking it to the train stations and bus depots – and shortly this example of the statism sickness will be at the malls, theaters, and, maybe even in your neighborhood on street corners. Government police bureaucrats are already sending out vans to x-ray other vehicles on the streets, and I’m sure they are using those x-ray vans to peek into private homes.

There are already “Smart Meters,” the new type of electric meters that enable the electric company, and obviously the government, to keep every aspect of your private home life under surveillance. And, the police are now attaching GPS devices underneath cars to track the owner even without any suspicion of crimes.

Is it fair to refer to George Orwell as a “prophet”?

People who know and understand history and human nature can see what’s coming, and it is not good, and that is what is so terrifying. We have a homeland “security” chief, Janet Napolitano, who wants people to “say something if you see something,” so she is encouraging the people to “rat out” their neighbors. Napolitano is encouraging brownshirts, frankly, and this will lead us to a situation in which, when some people don’t like their neighbors, they will leave anonymous tips to the government. Yes, this will happen, because we know what kind of bitter, malicious people there are now in America, especially in this economic downturn, a period of high unemployment and increasing social unrest.

And there will be plenty of people who will think there is wrongdoing going on next door or in their neighborhood, because of a misunderstanding or because something innocent occurred that was taken entirely out of context. For example, a homeschooling family is being tormented by the government because of an anonymous tipster. And a man in New Hampshire committed suicide by immolation because of the State’s campaign against him, and against fathers and the family in general.

The attitude of many government officials, police and military personnel is very authoritarian now. People are getting arrested because of trivial, technical laws that anyone could unwittingly violate, and the police just go “by the book.” And because “it’s policy,” firefighters stand by and watch a house burn to the ground, or watch a man slowly drown in the ocean.

“The Law” is now being used now to harass the people, collect money for the State, and to act as ego-reinforcements for the goons in blue with badges and guns.

They are arresting people merely for feeding the homeless, for other nonsensical reasons, and for engaging in political activism. A woman in an Arizona town was arrested at a public meeting merely for pointing certain things out during her time to speak. Now, that town is a dictatorship, apparently. And elsewhere, a woman has been charged with the misdemeanor of “unlawfully entering a school bus,” which she did because she believed her little boy might’ve been ill.

There no longer seems to be any common sense, there are too many laws and regulations on the books, and our culture has become one in which those in positions of State authority take their power and authority way too seriously.

An example of the gradually increasing corruption of society’s law enforcers is the issue of videotaping police. The good cops don’t mind being videotaped. The ones who don’t like it and react violently toward the videotaping are the ones who know they may possibly (or probably) be violating someone’s rights. They are like cockroaches scurrying away when you turn on the light.

Unfortunately, the job of police officer naturally seems to attract narcissists and psychopaths. The job attracts people who like to have power over others, and who like to bully other people around, be above the law and get away with it. In a nutshell, the job attracts those who are inclined toward criminal behavior, and who are lacking in moral scruples. A government monopoly in community policing and security restricts free entry into that field, it gives the police an artificial authority, and such a monopoly reinforces unaccountability and encourages the bad behavior.

The widespread mentality of those who are afflicted with the statism sickness is an authoritarian mentality, which is antithetical to the philosophy of individualism and to liberty. While I will not dwell on too many psychological analyses of the inner-workings of the typical statist – because I realize many readers are not interested in that – I will state my belief that many statists are conditioned in their childhood to identify with their abusive or neglectful caretakers, and they then transfer such an “unhealthy identity” onto their substitute parent authorities: the State. (And see here, here, and here.)The obedient statists become their tyrants. Believe it or not, some (perhaps many) people even desire to be belittled, treated like a baby, used as a punching bag by authority figures such as police, and, ultimately, tyrannized.

As 20^th Century novelist George Orwell wrote in his bestseller, 1984, from a dialogue between O’Brien and Winston (O’Brien speaking):

“The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual….Alone — free — the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal….”

Americans’ deference to authority, particularly to governmental authority and police, has been reinforced for a century by their State-controlled education, which indoctrinates this identity with and obedience to the State.

That statist indoctrination has discouraged individualism and has excused (or, in fact, promoted) the State’s authoritarian sadism and cruelty. And as the individual’s own sense of self-worth and motivation toward independence have been constantly crushed by the authoritarians of the government-controlled schools and universities, so many more people seem to be attracted to those positions of power and control that the State provides them: police, government bureaucrats, and especially, politicians driven toward the power of legislation, enforced by the policeman’s guns and bullets.

Our politicians now do not seem to care whom their legislation hurts, and they certainly do not care about putting America at greater risk with their irresponsible increasing debts. Most of our politicians value campaign contributions and votes from special interests to win elections far more than they care about principles. For example, regarding the issue of Israeli settlements at the expense of the Palestinians, Barney Frank, who privately opposed the settlements, was quoted to have said to anti-settlements anthropologist Jeff Halper,

“I’m with you 100 percent… If you bring me the names of 5000 Jews in my district that support you, tomorrow morning I change my vote… If you can’t do that… I’m not going to commit political suicide for the sake of the Palestinians…”

And we have seen the pathological extent to which some politicians seem to have merged their identities with the all-mighty State, with delusions of grandeur and God-complexes, such as Sen. Charles Schumer and former President George W. Bush, for instance.

Schumer has stated that he thinks God gave him the role of the U.S. Senate’s protector of Israel:

“You know, my name …. comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem [Orthodox for God] actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer — to be a or the shomer Yisrael.”

And George W. Bush believed that God chose him to run for president, and then Bush was on a faith-based “crusade” against terrorism. And with these politicians’ delusions of grandeur has been the American people’s deifying of the State.

America’s Militaristic and Economic Statism

Because of the general ignorance of the majority of the American population – ignorance of what their own government had been doing to people in the Middle East for many decades prior to 9/11 – and because of their post-9/11 fears and panic that were exploited by U.S. government officials, the population “rallied around their president” after the terrorist attacks. The indoctrination of statism had caused the American people to support more U.S. government aggressions in the Middle East that have provoked a greater number of its inhabitants there, support a greater police state and infringement of their own rights at home, and support additional bankrupting bureaucracies, deficits and debt.

Further, the authoritarian loyalty to the State practiced by many people in our society now causes them to react emotionally not to their own government’s corruption and war crimes when exposed, but to a military whistleblower such as Bradley Manning, someone who allegedly exposed not secrets whose exposure could have harmed Americans or soldiers, but exposed the military’s corruption and war crimes. Many people respond to that by wanting to punish or kill Manning, not to prosecute the criminals he had allegedly exposed. For a year, Manning, not having been convicted of any crime, has been held in solitary confinement, and has been treated with sleep deprivation and 23-hour-per day isolation. Manning is being treated worse than actual convicted spies.

In the military, there are too many soldiers and officers now who actually sexually assault one another while their senior officers blame the ones who get assaulted. And we have seen just how sick some in the military are in their behavior at Abu-Ghraib and in groups such as the ritualistic “Kill Team.”

The American culture has been one in which most people had a good degree of self-respect and respect for others, and would condemn police, government or military abuse and corruption. Now, it is a culture in which police assaults against innocent civilians seem to be brushed aside.

Those who openly condemn abusive police are referred to as “terrorists” in the same unjustified way that Tea Partiers are referred to as “terrorists” merely for opposing raising the debt ceiling.

Economically, some of the sick cruelty in America has involved the compulsory powers of the State to prevent upward mobility and create impoverishment. For example, many people now know that it is not a good idea for low-and middle-income folks to purchase a home they can’t afford with money they still won’t have years down the road. And that it has been shown to be a bad idea for members of Congress to make legislation forcing banks and lenders to lend to those would-be homeowners, involving risks to the homeowners and to the banks.

Supposedly, the government’s forcibly “encouraging” the lending to high-risk borrowers was involved in the 2008 financial crisis (although some people disagree with that), but what banker or lender in his right mind would lend to someone he knows could never afford to own a home? Either an idiot or predator.

And why would Congressman Barney Frank support expanding the legislation that encouraged the risk-taking, following the 2008 downturn? Frank and many of his fellow congressional and activist supporters of “affirmative action lending” that invites predatory lending that has now led to foreclosure fraud are not stupid, and would either have to know what they are doing, or they live in a total fantasy world, or they are sadists.

Conclusion

Western culture has seen a great evolution of advancements since the Enlightenment and the American Revolution, but because of the intrusions of the State and compulsory State apparatus (taxation, regulatory trespasses, central banks, wars of aggression, etc.), and because of decades of immediate-gratification selfishness, materialism and indebtedness, the West has been on a steady decline – a devolution.

The irresponsible oinkers in Washington have raised the debt ceiling once again, and the Federal Reserve will go on to print more money and cause more price inflation that will lead to more impoverishment, crime and civil unrest. The criminal mob violence that some have predicted has begun at the Wisconsin State fair, and in England – those of the lower economic scale are committing wanton acts of violence because they can. That will be followed by an increasingly hungry and desperate middle class doing the same. Statism has caused the devolution of Western civilization.

The statism sickness is de-civilizing our society, our culture, our world. And it is statism that will have been the main cause of the possible impending economic collapse.

Besides Dr. Miller’s prescription of Austrian Economics as the cure for economic illness, the cures for the statism that has caused so much suffering for America (and the world) are decentralization and a voluntary society of private property, total freedom of association and contract, and a return to common sense.

We know that the statists of the ruling class will never let go of their powers. But can the cures be implemented solely by withdrawing consent and participation from the current compulsory State?

Collectivist Claptrap from Glenn Beck

Apparently, Glenn Beck is about to have a major public relations event in Israel, in Jerusalem titled, “Restoring Courage.” Yes, after bombing the Gaza Strip’s civilian water and sewage treatment facilities followed by the blockade that prevents rebuilding for two years now thus forcing the Gazan Palestinians to have to use untreated water, and after the Israeli military’s attack on last year’s flotilla to Gaza, murdering several people including one American, perhaps Israel needs some courage restored. It doesn’t take much courage to do those things to the entire population of the Gaza strip, that also includes not just travel restrictions but they are forbidden to travel outside Gaza, including getting medical treatment. As I’ve noted several times before, if a government were doing this to a Jewish population, the whole world would be up in arms.

The reason I believe the 2008-2009 “Cast Lead” bombing of civilian water and sewage treatment facilities was intentional, followed by the blockade/sanctions, is because such events are extremely similar to what the U.S. military did to Iraq in the early ’90s.

Now, there are some readers who believe that “Palestinian” = “terrorist,” and that is because of the hardcore propaganda campaign by the Israeli government and the U.S. government, and, of course, the powerful AIPAC lobbying organization. The terrorist organization Hamas  is a tiny minority of the entire Palestinian population, and most Palestinians do not support Hamas’s violence or their power. Most of the Palestinians are regular people, families, men, women and children, who just want to live their lives and be left alone. But because of the propagandists, many Americans and other Westerners actually believe that most Palestinians have bomb vests on them and want to act as suicide bombers. This is the same kind of influential propaganda that gets young people in England (and America) to actually believe that those looted or burnt-down businesses there are “the Rich,” and because of the propaganda the punks think their violence is justified. Hardly anyone knows that the reason their costs of living are skyrocketing and their food prices are becoming unaffordable are because central banks (such as the Federal Reserve) print money (or add zeros to the numbers in the computers) and devalue the print currency, and the real “Rich” are the Big Banksters, the top managers of the Primary Dealers who get the new money first and make big use of it, at the expense of the rest of the population. But propaganda makes people think that small businesses and people who are amongst the workers and producers of the population are “the Rich.”

AIPAC is perhaps the most powerful and propagandistic lobbying organization in America. With very little effort, AIPAC causes Congressmen and Senators to lose their seats, and that is why the gutless wonders of the U.S. Congress stood up and cheered so many times for Benjamin Nutty-Yahoo when he spoke there. It is because of Israel’s and AIPAC’s propaganda that so many Americans believe the crap about how much a threat Iran is, just as they bought the crap about Iraq in 2002-03 hook, line and sinker.

But the whole point of not Christian or Jewish Zionism, but political Zionism, has been to promote the expansion of government and the power of the State over the people. It isn’t Jews or Arabs who have caused moral hazards in and around Israel and have caused so much economic turmoil and social unrest. Those problems have been caused by governments, and this insatiable desire by government bureaucrats, politicians, militarists and warmongers to expand their governments, governmental controls over other people’s lives, wealth, businesses and property.

Once they get their hands on the apparatus of compulsory powers over entire populations, government bureaucrats and politicians want more, more, more, like a drug addict. The propaganda instilled by government-controlled schools and pop culture into the average Israeli youth now is the same as here in the U.S: There is a collective treasury for which all the population do their labor — they certainly don’t do their labor for their own benefit or their own families, God forbid — it’s all for the collective. That socialist propaganda is why we see those protests in Israel now, huge protests, by Jews, Arabs, Christians, atheists — for MORE welfare, MORE cradle-to-grave care, MORE free education and free medical care. This is what government propaganda for the sake of making people want more powerful government and more government control — and more serfdom — causes.

So yesterday on his radio show, Beck was also discussing the “communists” and revolutionaries, and how the revolutionaries would treat their followers not as individuals but as a collective. Then Beck goes on about “individual liberty,” the Declaration of Independence, and so on. But I’ve heard Beck and other Christian Zionists for so long now, whether consciously or not, treating “the Jews” as a collective. It’s been that way for a century now.

I can’t help but perceive the Beck collectivists as treating “the Jews” as not just a collective but as characters in the Christian Zionists’ Bible, with “the Jews” fulfilling their roles according to what the Bible calls for. I can compare that to the patronizing way the “white liberals” of America have been treating the black population, keeping them enslaved with restrictive business regulations and licensing laws, minimum wage laws, affirmative action laws that don’t encourage actual achievement, and so on. In the same destructive fashion, the Christian Zionists for the past century have been helping “the Jews” to migrate to an area of the world, a tiny territory of Israel or Palestine, whatever you want to call it, and based solely on the Bible and certainly not on practicality. “Say, let’s have ‘the Jews’ stay in this teeny tiny territory of Israel-Palestine, completely surrounded by millions of Arabs and Muslims. Let’s help the Israeli government continue to take lands away from the Palestinians, have laws that treat the Arabs as 2nd-class citizens, and not let the Palestinians travel outside the Gaza Strip. Let’s do everything we can to antagonize the indigenous Arabs and those in surrounding territories as well.” Please excuse my sarcasm, but it’s hard to believe that Christian Zionists really care about “the Jews” and their freedom and security as much as the Christian Zionists care about realizing the stories of their Bible.

When Beck denounces the sick, barbaric treatment by the Israeli regime of the Palestinians, especially this situation in the Gaza Strip, then I might take him a little more seriously.

Yes We Can (Be Free, Independent and Sovereign, without Central Planners’ Intrusions)

On a FoxNews Radio newscast this morning a reporter reporting on the stock market’s status thus far today noted a meeting for today to decide what “intervention” the Federal Reserve must take in light of the recent crash. And I heard Laura Ingraham this morning saying that Barack Obama is not showing “leadership” in this current crisis, and that people need a leader to look up to. No, Dr. Laura, we don’t need some kind of “leader.” People should be left free to lead their own lives.

But it seems that it’s just the same old thing over and over, with this assumption that the status quo — top-down central planners intervening in this or that financial matter as a response to whatever crash or downturn that took place, when, in reality whatever crash or downturn that took place was because of the central planners’ interventions. WHY is it so harmful to so many people’s sense of ease in life to point out what should be extremely obvious?

The government along with the Federal Reserve and banking cartel system created a culture that encouraged high-risk loans to be given to people who could not have afforded what they were buying with money they didn’t have, and encouraged banks, lenders, and investors to engage in high-risk activities with no accountability for those whose risks had major negative effects. The intervention of government or tax-funded bailouts or Federal Reserve money-printing bailouts has only made things worse. Congress’s kicking the can down the road yet again with the raising of the debt ceiling is also not helpful.

But people are calling for MORE government intervention, MORE Federal Reserve quantitative easing (i.e. causing price inflation to get even worse, but funding the banksters’ bonuses because that’s more important in the short-term, which is what matters, even though the QE is robbing people of their weekly paychecks because they can hardly afford the higher prices — and the raising of the debt ceiling is breaking into our grandchildrens’ piggy banks and stealing from them, and so on.).

If only it were somehow easy to convince the masses that we should have LESS government intervention, or NO government intervention. I know, here’s a new one: stop intervening in problems that were caused by previous interventions, and let things correct themselves. Let people be free to lead and live their own lives. Functional, top-down, dictatorial central planning is a myth, and will never exist in reality. Only free individuals can know what is needed at whatever given time for their lives and their businesses, and individuals throughout the society are the only ones who, given the information they themselves have, can make necessary calculations as to how best to conduct their businesses, including banks, other financial businesses and other places of trade and commerce in general.

This means we must challenge the status quo system of central planning we’ve had in place for a century (or two), and recognize its inherent flaws, as well as its inherently immoral structure of intrusiveness. People have a God-given human right to trade with whatever media of exchange they damn well want, and they have a right to be free from being forced to use only a single particular medium of exchange such as a government-produced, government-issued dollar. And people have a God-given right to operate a bank and patronize any kind of financial institution they wish, but everyone including banks must follow the rule of law, which means no fraud or theft. All this requires outlawing fractional reserve banking, and freeing banks to do business and with whatever currencies they wish, outlawing the Federal Reserve and repealing legal tender laws and freeing competing currencies. And also making lenders accountable for their high-risk lending, and making borrowers take responsibility for their high-risk borrowing.

The only real way to save our society from the impending impoverishment is for that freedom to occur, and decentralize the whole system, AWAY from Washington, DC, and AWAY from New York City, the city that never thinks.

Leon Piñata: Defense Cuts Are “Doomsday Mechanism”

Glenn Greenwald points out how absurd it is that U.S. Commissar of Warmongering & Propaganda Secretary of Defense Leon Piñata is seeing any cuts to “defense” (i.e. wars of aggression) as a “doomsday mechanism.” Yes, it s a threatened doomsday for all the merchants of death military and building contractors, and all the lobbyists and political hacks whose livelihoods rely on a “defense”-related government-issued or lobbying firm paycheck, or company contract or stock dividend.

Greenwald notes,

As the U.S. continues to spend almost more than the rest of the world combined on its military while it wages and escalates war in multiple Muslim countries around the world — to say nothing of the dozens of nations in which it continuously engages in lower-level covert military action — the very idea that American security would be gravely jeopardized by these cuts is absurd on its face.  If anything, American security is far more endangered by continuing on this path of unbridled militarism and aggression.

Now, I don’t know if Leon Piñata has been paying attention, but it seems that he missed the Washington Post series last year on the utter wastefulness that is America’s “national security” apparatus. (See the Post series, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.)

As Tom Engelhardt noted in his June, 2010 article comparing the American Empire’s military spending spree to the old Soviet Union’s similar military spending spree, and detailing some of the extravagant Taj Mahal-style luxury military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan,

By (2008), private contractors had built for the Pentagon almost 300 military bases in Iraq, ranging from tiny combat outposts to massive “American towns” holding tens of thousands of troops and private contractors, with multiple bus lines, PXs, fast-food “boardwalks,” massage parlors, water treatment and power plants, barracks, and airfields. They were in the process of doing the same in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, in the Persian Gulf region generally. This, too, represented a massive investment in what looked like a permanent occupation of the oil heartlands of the planet….

Like the Soviet military, the Pentagon, in other words, is planning to remain obese whatever else goes down.

Obese. THAT’s George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s Pentagon. And I’ve searched the web for Blackwater/XE’s actual worth, and I can’t find ANY source with that information! These fat cat parasite contractors really don’t want people to know just how much they’ve been sucking away from the American people. War is a racket. A reckless protection racket. Leon Piñata is a living example of military-economic fascism.

Ooooo, but it will be Doomsday if they make ANY cuts to “defense” spending!