Some Misc. Items for Thanksgiving Weekend

Here is an article by Nat Hentoff highlighting the lawsuit against the Obama Administration by journalist Chris Hedges on the NDAA indefinite detention of Americans provision. Obama pushed this provision through Congress and then signed it into law, and then pushed to have it reinstated (which it was) after a judge struck it down.

I knew that the provision gives the military the power to abduct and indefinitely detain innocent Americans without any probable cause or suspicion whatsoever, only on the orders of the President or a military officer or the whim of whichever government agent would be acting so criminally against another human being. But I didn’t know that this provision would make the detained individual subject to extraordinary rendition, at least according to the quote of Hedges provided by Hentoff in this article. Extraordinary rendition is when the government criminally abducts an innocent person without charges or probable cause, and transports the individual out of the country to a foreign territory whose laws are more “relaxed” where torture by government is concerned. But the purpose of torture is to extract false confessions, or falsely implicate other innocent individuals, from innocent people who just want the torture to stop. Duh.

Infowars has this article on the Gestapo DHS repeating their “If You See Something, Say Something” scheme, this time for shoppers at malls etc. If you see something “suspicious,” report it to the DHS Stasi. (But are you sure you want to encourage the “Black Friday Zombies” to report something they might see as “suspicious”? I. Don’t. Think. So.

WND has this anti-Iran propaganda piece on the Ayatollah who supposedly says he wants to “Wipe Israel off face of Earth.” Well, no, that isn’t even what the translation according to WND’s own article says. The Ayatollah refers to the “regime,” once again, just as I noted in my recent post. He is referring to the current government (“regime”) of Israel, not the Israeli people, or the entire territory of Israel, just as the similar quote from several years ago was referring to.

According to the WND article, the Ayatollah (that the article at first incorrectly referred to as Mohammad Khatami who was President of Iran prior to Ahmadinejad and a critic of the Ahmadinejad regime, by the way), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “The Zionist regime is destined to destruction because this miserable regime was imposed (on the Middle East) based upon force, and no imposed phenomenon can last.” That statement about being “imposed” “based upon force” is exactly correct. The current state or government of the territory of Israel or Palestine was not formed by voluntarily contracted agreement which included the indigenous inhabitants of that territory. It was a conquest waged by various Western governments at the time, as Murray Rothbard asserted in his 1967 article. And here is further information on the actual history which you won’t hear about from the propagandists.

For Your Holiday Weekend Reading

Wendy McElroy explains the increase in police brutality in Amerika.

Gary Gibson doesn’t think the drug war and cops are funny. (Neither do I, quite frankly.)

David D’Amato analyzes stop and frisk in our police state.

Ronald Baily says that watched cops are polite cops.

Jacob Hornberger says that poor black and Hispanic Americans would not be given the same light treatment as Congressman Trey Radel.

Butler Shaffer comments on being thankful for our collective insanity.

Robert Murphy writes about working on the holidays.

Kurt Nimmo comments on the new commie Pope.

And Robert Wenzel also comments on the new commie Pope.

William Anderson writes about Paul Krugman’s belief in the confidence fairy.

And Jim Davies comments on Ayn Rand’s “limited government” fairy.

Joshua Cook writes on the worldwide protests against mainstream media.

And Paul Rosenberg writes on the five reasons he stopped taking the news seriously.

Sheldon Richman comments on the Iran deal and the crazies on all sides.

Laurence Vance comments on Erasmus’s view of the wickedness of soldiers.

Infowars responds to Jeremy Scahill calling Alex Jones a lunatic. (Infowars article links to this criticism of Dirty Wars by James Corbett.)

And Washington’s Blog says that Japan reacts to Fukushima crisis by banning journalism.

More Regulatory Fascist Trespassing in Prison Amerika

Kelley Vlahos has this piece up at Fox News on the new ultra-draconian, economy-killing, property-trespassing regulatory scheme being imposed by the Environmental Protection Racket Agency. Not only will that unconstitutional agency expand its control over power plants throughout the country, but it will expand its power and control over all bodies of water including small streams and ponds on private property, regardless how small the property. The new regulations will give greater powers to environmentalist wackos to trespass on private property for the flimsiest of excuses and sue private property owners for no good reason at all.

Future lawsuit victims of the trespassing water-fanatics will need to counter-sue the aggressors, and the victims will need to have the environmentalist perpetrators criminally charged with trespassing, harassment, endangerment, extortion and perhaps other crimes. And that includes not only activists, but the local bureaucrats who will be taking part in enforcing such criminal activities against innocent human beings.

See this article by Rad Geek on the Clean Water Act vs. clean water.

(Or “Who Owns Water?” by Murray Rothbard is also informative, as is his analysis on law, property rights and air pollution. And here is Lew Rockwell’s Enviro-Skeptic’s Manifesto.)

And here is an article on a man who was arrested and thrown in jail by local goons with badges for collecting rain water on his own property. Yes, it already is happening, and the crazies are really out there. Sadly, the crazies don’t realize how crazy they are, and they really believe they are doing good. But no, when crazy environment-religious fanatics collude with government bureaucrats and inflict their aggressions and intrusions against others, against innocent human beings, they are criminals. They should be treated as such.

And I am looking forward to the day that people fight back against bureaucrats and their minions who enforce other laws and regulations in other areas in which people’s persons, property and lives are being destroyed and ruined by the criminally meddlesome amongst us.

Here is Judge Andrew Napolitano on this latest fascism the Obama Regime is imposing onto others:

The Ongoing Crusade to Destroy Iran

There is a lot of anti-Iran ignorance out there, especially from talk radio and the neocon pundits. I have already addressed the issue a few days ago. The problem is mainly that of being under the influence of government propaganda. But those who are already predisposed to unquestionably worship the state of Israel and hate the Muslims will eat up the propaganda.

When government bureaucrats can’t get enough power and control, can’t spread enough of their bureaucratic and military apparatus onto enough foreign territories, can’t exercise enough control and authority over enough foreigners — it’s never enough for the covetous power-grabbing bureaucrats — they need to convince the gullible sheeple amongst the masses to follow along. And that requires the able and willing stenographers of mainstream media, talk radio and neocon pundits.

For instance, the mantra I hear repeatedly is how dangerous Iran is, as the Iranian regime and/or other Iranian elements outside the government are aiding and funding Hezbollah and Hamas, supposedly listed terrorist organizations. Well, how about those U.S. government bureaucrats who have been aiding and abetting al Qaeda in Syria and Libya, and especially “providing material support” for the MeK in Iran? What do Krauthammer et al have to say about that? Anything?

Another point that the neocon pundits and talk radio ignoramuses make is how religiously fanatical the Iranian leaders are. That may very well be the case with some of them. The U.S. statist propagandists say that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map,” referring to the Jews of Israel. Well, no, they want to wipe the Israeli “regime” off the map, referring to the current administration, the current anti-Palestinian zealots in charge, not Israelis themselves.

After all, even though many of Iran’s Jewish population left Iran following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, there are still Jews in Iran, tolerated by the ruling regime,  who are apparently not the subject of the kind of harassment, abuse and criminality which the Palestinians in Israel especially Gaza suffer on a daily basis at the hands of the Israeli government and military. Here is Roger Cohen of the New York Times on his visit to Iran in 2009.

In my post a few days ago, I linked to this article on the mistranslations of “wiped off the map.” And the U.K. Guardian provided a related correction at the top of this article, in which the correction stated, “A more literal translation of the statement he (Ahmadinejad) made in 2005, at The World without Zionism conference in Tehran, is ‘the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time’.”

So no, the Iranians don’t want to commit mass genocide of the Israelis, despite the rantings of the talk radio crowd. That is just a fabrication, a myth promulgated by the Western government zealots who themselves are bloodthirsty in their wanting to start a war against the Iranians. That is why the zealots love sanctions, because sanctions are devastating to civilian populations and do not affect the governments in charge. We already know this from the Western government sanctions on Iran, and especially from the sanctions on Iraq which the U.S. government imposed throughout the 1990s, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians by the year 2000.

And one final note regarding the religiously fanatical wing of the Iranian government: The U.S. government bureaucrats themselves are just as religiously fanatical — their religion is statism, and their god is the State. But in their State-worship religious fanaticism, the bureaucrat-statists have been much more destructive and murderous in their impulsive outbursts of religious State fanaticism. The U.S. government bureaucrats by and large view the State as their savior and they attempt to make it our savior, whether we like it or not. George W. Bush believed that the U.S. government was Iraq’s savior after ousting Saddam Hussein. And Bush implemented such a saving good and hard.

So now, after Bush’s fanatical and destructive crusade against terrorism, he is on a new crusade to convert Jews to Christianity. (Does that include the Jews in Israel, too?)

RSS Feed

An emailer asks for RSS feed for this site. All you have to do is add /feed to the end of the URL (e.g. http://scottlazarowitz.org/blog/feed). And that’s it. (But make sure it’s organic feed. I’ve been getting the organic free range chicken tenders, and I’m sure they give the chickens organic feed as well.)

More Articles on the State’s Contribution to Society

Travis Eby has a suggestion on how to deal with the State’s monopoly on security.

John Whitehead has this list of things we should not be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Walter Williams has this article on how tyrants mask their totalitarianism.

Jacob Hornberger shows how Bob Schieffer (and much of the mainstream media) ignores the truth about the JFK assassination.

Jonathan Carp says that people shouldn’t fear guns.

The Iranian Nuclear Agreement

Justin Raimondo writes about the new agreement between the “P5+1” countries and Iran. And he thinks this is a moment of great danger, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (a.k.a. “Nutty-Yahoo”) doesn’t like it. Bibi is like Mikey on the Life cereal commercials: he hates everything.

The extremists who control the Israeli government are so afraid of Iran getting nuclear weapons, it will probably be they, the Israeli bureaucrats, who will nuke Iran out of their irrational fear which is based on propaganda, hate and ignorance, and mistranslations of various Iranian leaders and Ayatollahs shooting their mouths off. Some Israelis believe that Iran is an “existential threat” to them. But then, given that Bibi agrees with the Samson Option, it is more likely that the Israeli bureaucrats could be an existential threat to their surrounding countries including European ones.

Please note that the problem I have with these issues is not the people of these countries, Iran, Israel, or even the U.S. for the matter. The problem is with their governments, and the parasites bureaucrats who run those illegitimate, compulsory institutions of monopoly and democracy.

Raimondo notes the possibility that the crazy bureaucrats of Israel could take revenge on the U.S. via some sort of false flag. For those who view such talk as “conspiracy theorist nonsense” and would never consider the possibilities (which would be mainly out of ignorance of actual history, a history which Washington’s Blog pointed out just recently), you might want to click the X button. But (and I’m sure the Israel Firsters will love this), Raimondo writes:

. . .

The third line of attack would be direct Israeli action against the US – no, not military action (don’t be silly), but some kind of covert action that would inflict enough damage to impact our ability to make the interim agreement permanent.

This isn’t pure speculation: in 1954, the Israelis recruited a group of Egyptians to plant bombs in Western targets, including the American information center, in major Egyptian cities. The idea was to blame the attacks on Islamists and Nasserites, and cause the British government to keep its troops in the Suez Canal zone. The plan failed, but only because the Israeli scheme was exposed: after years of denying the affair, the Israeli government finally owned up to it by awarding their agents medals of appreciation, bestowed on the surviving spies by President Moshe Katzav in 2005.

For years the Israelis have been saying their country faces an “existential” crisis on account of Iran’s nuclear program: another Holocaust, they have said, is imminent unless the Iranians are stopped. And Tehran, they aver, is intent on breaking any agreement they make with the West: the Iranians are determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and will stop at nothing in their drive to destroy Israel.

It doesn’t matter what the Israelis really believe: that they are saying this means we should take them at their word – and not underestimate their capabilities. Do I really have to remind my readers of this Carl Cameron story, run in four parts on Fox News in December of 2001, in which Cameron declared:

“Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

“There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are ‘tie-ins.’ But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’”

America has never been in greater danger than it is now. The battle between the US and Israel has always been fought on a covert level, but recently this hidden conflict has been coming closer to the surface – and is now about ready to erupt aboveground. . . .

And also, check out this related story about the Israeli art students and this story about the Israelis in New Jersey laughing and smiling while watching the WTC towers burning.

I’m sure that stuff will freak a lot of people out. I hope so. But then, if someone grows up with certain views reinforced by one’s treasured authority figures, the mainstream news media and one’s government, they tend to not question information or propaganda handed down to them.

Well, a lot of people just don’t know about the real history of Israel, its pre-founding years, the founding itself and all these years since its founding. I wrote this a while back, Murray Rothbard wrote this article in 1967, and here is more. Most recently, the Israeli regime is destroying the Palestinians’ olive groves. Why? Because they can. And I posted this long list of links on various related actions by Israeli bureaucrats.

Besides today’s Justin Raimondo article, Kurt Nimmo writes that the latest nuclear agreement may result in Israel and Saudi Arabia attacking Iran (Hmmm. the Israelis teaming up with the Muslim religious extremist wackos of Saudi Arabia who live in the 9th Century. Good.), Annie Robbins writes about the story behind the deal, that Israel was kept out of the loop on the U.S.-Iran agreement, and Philip Weiss presents various reactions to the agreement.

Meanwhile, while he doesn’t mention these issues with Israel, an American veteran of the war in Afghanistan writes about patriotism. And I thought that in some way that would be relevant here. (But, I’m sure the authoritarians, the neocons, and the Israel Firsters won’t agree with it.)

Very Colorful Interview

Here is a very lengthy yet informative interview of “Dollar Vigilante” Jeff Berwick by Anthony Wile  of the Daily Bell. I liked this part on ObomberCare:

Daily Bell: What’s your take on Obamacare and Obama? Is his administration gradually imploding?

Jeff Berwick: Many people incorrectly state that Obama and Obamacare are socialist. Obamacare in its current form is fascist and part of crapitalism – crony capitalism. It is just forcing people to use private, monopolistic insurance companies or be fined. Luckily, however, as with most things government does it is totally incompetent. This may be the fastest government program to implode in history.

Daily Bell: Will Obamacare be overturned? What will its impact be? Is the real goal a single payer system? How’s that working out for Canada?

Jeff Berwick: Considering that its real results have been tens of millions of people losing their medical insurance (and having their rates increased by as much as 500%) with just a few thousand people actually receiving medical insurance, it will be interesting to see just how far the federal government can push the American sheeple until they finally have enough. As for Kanada, I have countless personal horror stories of the medical system there, as I was born and lived there until I was in my early 30s. I spend a lot of my time in Mexico now and much prefer the free-market medical system in Mexico to either of its fasco-communist northern neighbors.

Daily Bell: What about the Tea Party in the US? We think the movement is getting bigger.

Jeff Berwick: What I have found interesting is that the libertarian mindset is so foreign to the political class one-party system that Harry Reid (Communist-Nevada) called Tea Partiers anarchists! They for the most part aren’t anarchists at all but constitutionalists or minarchists. What is nice, however, is that the word libertarian is finally being understood in the “land of the free” and is actually a cool thing to be now. Glenn Beck, who is a neocon, calls himself a libertarian. Bill Maher, who is a liberal, calls himself a libertarian. And the Republican Party is actually realizing that if they want a chance of winning, they will have to get the vote of the Ron Paul libertarians. Even better is that if libertarians form a substantial part of the Republican Party, it will destroy the Republican Party as we know it and soon after it will destroy the federal government. Because once people become libertarian it usually isn’t very long until they become true anarchists and realize that government itself is an unnecessary evil. A popular Internet meme put it best: “What’s the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist? About six months.”

And Berwick comments on the U.S. police state, and compares the U.S. currently with pre-World War II Germany:

Jeff Berwick: The comparison to Germany between 1921 and 1944 is almost eerie. In 1921 Germany went through a hyperinflation … which is in process in the US. In Germany in 1933 the Nazi government conducted a false-flag attack on the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, in order to gain national political power. This, of course, is very akin to 9-11. They then democratically elected a charismatic personality in Hitler… akin to Barack O’Bomber, the most warmongering Nobel Peace Prize winner in history who just this week extended the Afghanistan War to 2024 … making it more than two decades of occupation and war in that country. Not to mention all the other wars and occupations in places like Iraq, Libya and the recent attempt in Syria. As things continue to get worse in the US the federal government is becoming more and more oppressive and across the country there are unconstitutional checkpoints checking people’s papers. Many cities and counties have started making “homelessness” illegal and rounding up homeless and placing them in camps from which they are not allowed to leave. And that is on top of the US itself, which has the largest prison camp population on Earth with 5% of the population of the Earth and 25% of the worldwide prison population, most of whom never committed a crime against anyone or anyone’s property.

Read the full interview.

Some Interesting Reads

Washington’s Blog shows how stupid government policies are more dangerous than terrorism.

Butler Shaffer explains how the State preys on the gullible.

Jonathan Carp says: don’t raise the minimum wage, bring down the government instead.

Peter Schiff explains Bitcoin vs. Gold, and Robert Wenzel asks if Schiff’s analysis on intrinsic value is flawed.

Douglas Horne has this 7-part series on JFK’s war with the national security establishment and why JFK was assassinated.

Nat Hentoff says that U.S. prisons are thriving on Jim Crow marijuana arrests

Gary Galles says that Social Security is the most successful Ponzi scheme in history.

And Cracked features an article showing 5 recent trends that make it hard to trust the police.

1966 William F. Buckley, Jr. Interview of Mark Lane, Warren Commission Critic

Here is William F. Buckley, Jr., founder of National Review, interviewing Warren Commission critic Mark Lane on Firing Line in 1966.

Please try to ignore Buckley’s constantly clearing his throat, which is somewhat a distraction and a bit rude, if you ask me. And please try to ignore Buckley’s manner of speech, that snotty-sounding “I know more than you, I am smarter than you, I’m better than you” tone of voice, his Locust Valley Lockjaw thing that we have also heard from Thurston B. Howell III and Miss Jane Hathaway. Of course, being a CIA asset takes a great deal of intelligence as we all know. But how much intelligence does it take to think that we really have to “accept Big Government” and a “totalitarian bureaucracy” in the U.S. to fight the Commies? (But it does take an emotional devotion to the State and an indoctrinated following of “national security” games and toys to propagandize on behalf of a totalitarian police state.)

Mark Lane wrote the books, Rush to Judgment, a critique of the Warren report, and A Citizen’s Dissent, in which he responded to efforts to silence his investigations which contradicted Warren Commission findings. (And by the way, Lew Rockwell interviewed Lane last August, 47 years after this Buckley interview.)

Why “National Security” Extremists Would Want to Eliminate JFK

Jacob Hornberger has this extensive and important article on “the national security state’s assassination of John F. Kennedy.” There are many people out there who are still in denial of the truth, and desperately want to believe the propaganda that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, despite ALL the evidence and witnesses which show otherwise. Hornberger asks many questions to try to reveal the inconsistency of the “lone-nut” case, and points to the many reasons why members of the national security state would have a motive to get Kennedy out of their way.

Hornberger cites an important peace-promoting speech that Kennedy made in June of 1963. The power-grabbers of the national security apparatus just could not have any of the proposals expressed by their President, as Kennedy was clearly not with the agenda of the further arms build-up and isolationism of the “anti-communist” fanatics (who, in their love of their own totalitarianism became communists themselves, in my view).

Here is that important Kennedy speech at the American University graduation ceremonies of June 10, 1963:

http://multimedia.jfklibrary.org/player.js?deepLinkEmbedCode=QyMzc4bjq7L389dpXZPYGNf1K5JJs4hB&video_pcode=dkYWs6u-4OJzjXwPqLZTRC6aAfWo&height=270&embedCode=QyMzc4bjq7L389dpXZPYGNf1K5JJs4hB&width=480

Some Misc. Items: The Police State, and the Rulers’ Covetousness in Afghanistan

Wendy McElroy has written an important article on the police state in America. Despite the many revelations and incidents we are hearing about on a daily basis now, many people are nevertheless in denial that America is a police state, and is really now becoming as totalitarian as past totalitarian societies have been. In my view, following 9/11 the Rulers in Washington exploited fears and the gullibility of Americans. Today, despite Edward Snowden’s revelations and daily news accounts of police abuse and criminality, we still have a population a majority of whom are unthinking sheeple who believe the lies and propaganda of their national and local politicians. The people themselves are so busy with their videos and texting obsessions they have really become the obedient zombies the psychopathic power-grabbing Rulers want them to be.

And as part of that police state, TPTB want to disarm the people. William Grigg writes about the gun-grabbing fascists in California in this article.

And believe it or not, this “knock-out” game (as referenced here by Thomas Sowell) being inflicted by young minority youths in many cities now, is a part of the police state. That is because the actual police in charge of “protecting the public,” or “peace officers,” do not seem to be doing anything about all this. And the propagandists of the mainstream media will not report on it because of their idiocy regarding race relations in America. But real news journalists will report the truth and all the facts of events, even if the facts go against their own personal agenda of idiocy. The police state requires not only officials and “authorities” to enforce it, but their ignoring of the actual criminals who are allowed to get away with their violence against innocent people.

I also believe that this JFK assassination truth denial on the part of the media and many Americans is a part of the police state. Paul Craig Roberts writes about this denial in people and the cover-ups which have been going on for 50 years to protect the deniers’ immature sensitivities to the truth. The reason the denials and cover-ups are a part of the police state is that the “national security” police statists have been exploiting the people’s ignorance and fear of the truth as a means to continue building the Rulers’ beloved police state. And regardless of what they say their reasons are, the reality is that police statists and power-grabbers just get off on being in control over a police state that invades other people’s lives, their homes and businesses, and their privacy.

Sheldon Richman writes that the U.S. isn’t leaving Afghanistan, and Justin Raimondo writes that we’re never leaving Afghanistan. So, I guess that means the U.S. government bureaucrats will continue their love for coveting and stealing the natural resources of foreign lands, and profiting from the “poppy fields” as long as the Rulers continue to impose their hypocritical and useless drug war, and pretending that anyone from Afghanistan is of any threat to the United States.

Jerry Williams Interview of Theo Bikel on November 22, 1963

While Jerry Williams was a talk radio host on WMEX in Boston (1957-1965), the night of November 22, 1963 he discussed the JFK assassination and other various political and social matters with his guest, Theo Bikel. Bikel cancelled his scheduled live performance that night because of events earlier that day.

Theodore Bikel is an actor and singer, and was nominated for an Oscar for The Defiant Ones. He also appeared in The African Queen and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and also made many TV appearances. On Broadway and at other theatrical venues, Bikel played many roles, including the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof more than 2,000 times, according to Wikipedia. Currently Bikel is 89 and still performing.

Clicking on links opens new media player window. (The quality of the sound in Part 1 is a little muffled, but in Part 2 it’s better.)

Part 1: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WMEX/wmex05.m3u

Part 2: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WMEX/wmex06.m3u

Common Sense from President John F. Kennedy

Gettysburg Address Worship

James Bovard writes on the Gettysburg Address after 150 years: still balderdash