Homeschooling Is the Future (I Hope)

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s newest appointee is 21-year-old cellist Oliver Aldort, who is currently a student at the Curtis Institute of Music and begins with the BSO starting with the 2015-2016 season. Oliver will be the youngest member of the BSO, but certainly not the youngest member ever. According to Stokowski.org, in 1935 trumpeter Roger Voisin joined the BSO at age 17 and became principal trumpet in 1950.

One thing I already like about the new BSO cellist Oliver Aldort is that he was homeschooled, as were his siblings, according to their mother, Naomi Aldort, author of Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming parent-child relationships from reaction and struggle to freedom, power and joy. Mrs. Aldort allowed Oliver to have the freedom of playing and learning through self-expression and self-direction. He has never gone to school (prior to college, presumably), and this article mentions he doesn’t watch TV (i.e. he’s not a zombie like most Americans).

Increasingly parents in America will be deciding to homeschool their kids because of how incompetent and totalitarian the government schools have become. And because of federal curriculum mandates the private schools aren’t exactly a bowl of cherries either. The closest thing to schools providing the freedom and tolerance of kids’ self-direction is the Montessori schools. But most of them are very expensive, from what I’ve seen. If you are interested in homeschooling, you can check out Ron Paul’s homeschooling curriculum and read his book, The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System, and read Homeschooling: A Hope for America, edited by Carl Watner.

Here is a video of then-16-year-old Oliver Aldort performing the Polonaise Brillante, op. 3 by Chopin, with an unnamed pianist:

Another Howie Carr Medical Issue

I was listening to the Howie Carr Show yesterday, and his assistant, “V.B.” a.k.a. “Virgin Boy” was filling in. Apparently the 63-year-old Carr, Boston Herald columnist and author of books on gangsters, has just had either a gastrectomy surgery or a gastric sleeve surgical procedure. V.B. had used both terms, even though they supposedly are different.

The gastrectomy is a “partial or full surgical removal of the stomach,” according to Wikipedia, and whose purpose is to treat cancer or severe stomach ulcer. And a gastric sleeve surgical procedure is the surgical removal of more than half the stomach, and, according to WebMD, “leaving a thin vertical sleeve, or tube, that is about the size of a banana. Surgical staples keep (the) new stomach closed.” And the purpose of gastric sleeve surgery is to help people to lose weight. What a coincidence, given that I had just recently referred to New Joisey Gov. Chris Christie’s “lap band surgery” of two years ago to help him lose weight, which is a different procedure altogether.

So either Howie Carr was diagnosed with stomach cancer or has a severe stomach ulcer and he has had a gastrectomy, or, like Chris Christie he has a lack of self-control and can’t control his eating habits, in which case he has had a gastric sleeve surgical procedure. In any case, we can add this new medical ordeal to Carr’s melanoma issues in 2007, his osteoporosis that has since gone away (as well as the melanoma), his hip replacement surgery of 2009, his Lasik eye surgery of 2008, his hair transplant of 2011, his car crash of 2009 and his car crash of 2014 — honestly, the guy is a walking cash register for the doctors and hospitals these days.

I’m glad that “reformed” gangster Kevin Weeks decided against assassinating Howie Carr. Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten a chance to see the new eyes, new hips, new hair, and so on.  But, while I don’t want to sound pessimistic or ghoulish, if Howie Carr dies perhaps V.B. can do a “Howie Carr Death Pool” in his honor.

File under: “Takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’.”

Some More Recent Items

Jacob Hornberger on the national security establishment vs. defense.

Robert Wenzel on Rand Paul’s “Invest in Government Transportation Act.”

Lew Rockwell interviews Russ Baker on suppressing the truth about the Boston Marathon bombing.

Laurence Vance with a libertarian analysis of Obama’s tax-theft proposals.

Ladar Levison says that judges in his case and Barrett Brown’s case both bought the prosecutor’s same strategy of misrepresented events.

Trevor Timm says that Barrett Brown’s unjust sentence may become the norm for journalists.

Thomas Knapp comments on “school choice” as a stopgap measure for the ruling class.

Jerome Corsi discusses the Obama-Soros path toward a EU-style North American Union.

James Bovard on Eric Holder’s asset forfeiture reform proposals: No halo for Holder.

William Grigg on the games road pirates play.

Wendy McElroy on Bartolomé de las Casas: All mankind is one.

Hunter Hastings explains how free markets enhance freedom of choice.

Sheldon Richman on the consequences of liberty.

And Jeff Jacoby says, No, 2014 wasn’t the “warmest year in history.”

What Are These Congressmen Afraid Of?

A new congressional bill has been introduced to further disarm the public and make them more vulnerable. Democrats (what else?) Alcee Hastings, Robin Kelly and Danny Davis want to make civilians more defenseless and even more of a target for criminals, private and public. In this case the newly banned items are certain kinds of body armor. Now, who actually would want to have — or needs — body armor, you ask? Well, it actually doesn’t matter. The point is that people have a right to be armed and have a right to protect themselves in whatever ways they feel is necessary. As Mac Slavo pointed out,

The co-sponsors of the bill believe body armor in the hands of private citizens to be so dangerous that they intend to impose a 10 year federal prison sentence on those found to be in possession of the contraband.

The new law would still allow Americans to own Type I and Type II protection, which are designed to stop calibers ranging from .22 caliber to .357 Magnum respectively. Type III body armor is designed to stop higher velocity hand gun rounds like a high-velocity 9mm or .44 magnum and rifle rounds like the AK-47′s 7.62x39mm. Type IV, often reserved for special law enforcement response teams, is capable of stopping even armor piercing rounds from rifles.

Should such a law be passed, Americans would no longer have the ability to determine for themselves which type of body armor is best suited for their needs. Instead, we would be limited to protection from only a handful of calibers. And, as we well know, as soon as criminals with ill intent get wind that their victims probably won’t own body armor that’s able to stop a .44 or high velocity 9mm round, they’ll quickly switch to new weapons capable of ripping through “legal” protection.

When it comes to armaments and self-protection, there is a different mindset on the part of those employed by the State from those in the civilian world. The civilians, or most of them anyway, believe in minding their own business and “live and let live.” They really are not a threat to anyone. But those employed by the State believe in just the opposite: They relish in intruding on the lives of others, through new laws and regulations and coercive policies all enforced by the State’s hired guns. That is why so often those employed by the State tend to side with the actual criminal element of society, the real criminals, all the while fabricating and legislating so many new phony “crimes” to accuse the decent people of, as a means of harassing the decent and non-violent toward keeping them as submissive and obedient as possible.

Remember, the writers of the U.S. Constitution included the 2nd Amendment because they believed that self-defense and self–protection from aggression is a right, not a privilege granted by the government. The 2nd Amendment specifically refers to “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” NOT the right of the government to keep and bear arms!

Stop the World, I’m Getting Off, 2.0

First Kvetch Michelle Obama will love this one. Apparently there is some sort of movement now to promote obesity as a way to counter “anti-fat” prejudice, and there is this grossly obese model who has now signed a contract to pose for a major modeling agency. This is political correctness gone haywire, and it seems that the radical feminist movement celebrates it.

As Paul Joseph Watson wrote,

Why are growing sections of the corporate world and the establishment media promoting obesity as some kind of bizarre social justice movement, while people who encourage fitness and health, like nutritionist Abby Pell, are being castigated for “fat shaming”?

The answer is third wave feminism. Radical feminists have embraced the “fat pride movement” despite the fact that it is incredibly harmful to women. Why? Because it advances their social engineering agenda, which is to re-categorize any criticism of whatever they espouse as “hate speech”. People who question obesity are now actually being reported to police for committing hate crimes.

Now, I’d like to know if this particular model is so obese because she was “born that way,” and no matter what or how little she eats, she just won’t lose weight, or is it because she, like many people it seems, just can’t control her eating habits. For example, New Joisey Gov. Chris Christie two years ago had “lap band surgery,” the wrapping of a silicone band around the top part of the stomach to make it feel like one is “full.” (That is different from gastric bypass surgery in which the stomach is literally cut into two different parts and is more complicated and invasive.)

The “lap band” is for those who are lacking in self control and the will power to stop eating when they really have had an adequate amount of food. Some people, however, do not feel that they have had enough and overeat because their digestive systems are just not functioning properly. Others overeat mainly for emotional reasons. But several contributors to digestive systems not functioning properly include the consumption of junk food, processed foods, etc. The chemicals in a lot of the junk food are actually damaging to the functioning of the digestive system and actually prevent whatever nutritious food that people do eat from being digested. And that causes malnutrition. Even though you eat nutritious food, it is still not getting digested properly because the chemicals in the junk food are interfering with the process. The answer to that problem is to not eat any junk food. And no, avoiding junk food is not “easier said than done,” because there are plenty of good nutritious foods that are satisfying to your “sweet tooth” or your otherwise “craving” for junk food. (But why the craving for junk food anyway? In my view, it’s something in the psychological area that people more likely crave.)

And regarding New Joisey Gov. Chris Christie, if he clearly has a problem with his eating habits, which seems to show a lack of self-control and the will to set a planned, prepared diet and stick to it, why would anyone want someone like that to be President of the United States? Or should I not bring those points up? Am I being an anti-fattist?

But getting back to the social ostracizing of those who are critical of these politically correct social movements, such as promoting obesity, and this aforementioned extremely obese model who signed on with a major modeling agency, another aspect of her specifically which I find loathsome is the tattoos. Do men find tattoos on women attractive? I don’t. I guess I’m “anti-tattoo,” too. (I hope I don’t get sued for defamation.) Additionally, you can look at those articles about her and read her Twitters or Instagrams, and with “F-word” this and “F-word” that, there’s another reason to be repelled by this whole bizarre movement of obesity promotion. If you’re going to sign on with a major modeling agency, then you should have some class and clean up your language, at the very least.

Besides all that stuff, promoting unhealthy lifestyles is not particularly bright, in my view. As Watson noted in his article,

Are the following health conditions linked to obesity something which women should aspire to?

– Diabetes
– Heart disease
– High blood pressure
– Arthritis
– Indigestion
– Gallstones
– Some cancers (eg, breast and prostate cancers)
– Snoring and sleep apnoea
– Stress, anxiety, and depression
– Infertility

Now, I’m not going to post any of the photos of the extremely obese model here because I don’t want to risk causing any of my Dear Readers to toss their cookies, so if you are daring and want to see all that you can click on the first linked article or the Watson article.

But if this is how Western culture has declined, and it’s obviously getting worse, then stop the world, I’m getting off.

What Is Making Kids Act Up in School?

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, which is dedicated to civil liberties and human rights, has another article detailing the abuse and human rights violations going on every day in America’s government schools.

Roughly 1500 kids are tied up or locked down every day by school officials in the United States.

At least 500 students are locked up in some form of solitary confinement every day, whether it be a padded room, a closet or a duffel bag. In many cases, parents are rarely notified when such methods are used.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums. Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

Whitehead goes on to cite quite a few specific examples of the abuse. One might think that these so-called schools are psychiatric wards, or just scenes from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as though Nurse Ratched decided to change careers and become a public school teacher. But no, these daily abuses are really happening in today’s schools, abuse which we would not have imagined just 30 years ago.

Now, we know that schools mainly dish out boring, useless material mostly with the purpose of indoctrinating the kids to be obedient little robots and future tax slaves for the State, in addition to the political correctness brainwashing that is much more important to the social activist low-IQ government school teachers and administrators. But it seems that kids are acting up and out of control much more now than when I was in school.

In my view, when the child “acts up” in class and is disrupting the lesson, his parents should be called at their place of work. The parents’ work should be interrupted and they should be made to come pick up the child. If they don’t like missing a day’s work then it’s their own damn fault. Disciplining the child is the parents’ responsibility, not the schools. The parents should know how to discipline their children so that the kids don’t “act up” in school, and/or the parents need to work to resolve the underlying issues that are affecting the child.

Why is it that so many kids are acting up? In my view there are a lot of emotional issues going on with kids originating from their family relationships, which is not surprising given the narcissism which pervades our culture now. Parents don’t have as much time for the kids, to play with them, help them with their homework and just talk to them, as much as the parents have time for their iPhones and Smart Phones, their text-obsessions, gibberish emails and their video games, TV-watching compulsion and Internet porn surfing. Am I totally wrong about this?

But also, and perhaps more important, the kids’ brains are being poisoned by a lot of crap that many of us didn’t have to deal with when we were kids. One is the extra (and dangerous) vaccines that are given to kids now. When I was in school there were maybe 3 or 4 vaccines that we got. Now it’s 4 times that many, in as many as 40 doses by age 6, and that’s not an exaggeration. Not only that, but the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry get the extra vaccines into the kids while they are still infants, a time when the kids’ bodies are not nearly developed enough to handle all those foreign invading chemicals. And furthermore, the vaccines now contain many other chemicals, such as preservatives and other additives. All these chemicals get into the bloodstream and get into the brain, and they affect the neurotransmitters’ natural way of functioning, so that the unnatural invading chemicals actually are harming the child certainly more than whatever benefits such vaccines might provide. And obviously all that will affect the kids’ emotions, and their behaviors.

Another factor is the junk food crap that parents give their kids, and that parents themselves consume on a daily basis. The parents themselves now are affected by processed foods, all the damn chemicals and so it’s no wonder to me that we have such a narcissistic nation, so obsessed with texting and the adults’ little electronic gadgets that they can’t put down for two seconds. The kids’ brains and neurotransmitters are definitely affected by the chemicals in all that junk food and processed food such as high fructose corn syrup that Big Agra now wants to call something else because more health-conscious consumers are on to the corn syrup poison and the dangers that it causes.

Well, there is one more factor that I feel reluctant to bring up, as far as what makes kids act up and have emotional problems that parents are too out of touch to address. And that factor is the kids’ actual living circumstances, the actual physical structures in which they live. I’m sure people have already heard about the possible dangers of “overhead wires” that connect the houses or apartment buildings’ phone and electrical service to the lines along the street. I’m not particularly sure about that, about whatever health effects that might have on people. But there have been reports of the effects of cell phone usage on the brain, but also the effects of wireless electronics in general in the home. Supposedly, they really can cause some issues.

But there is one other possible factor, that I will cite here only from personal experience. When I was growing up, I was constantly over at a friend’s house, I’ll call them the “Smiths” (not their real name). To make a long story short, Mr. and Mrs. Smith both had some serious health issues. But the kids, from my own eyewitness perspective over many years, didn’t have those kinds of issues, or at least nothing more serious than the usual childhood stuff. But it wasn’t until these later years, when I saw their house for sale around 2012 (for about the 3rd time since the Smiths sold it around 1990), that I realized that the positioning of the parents’ bedroom may have affected their own health. While the kids’ bedrooms were upstairs on the 2nd floor, the parents’ bedroom was on the first floor directly over the garage. When I noticed that once again in these later years, that really made sense to me as far as a possible explanation for the parents’ health problems. My own theory is that the carbon monoxide from the cars seeping up from the garage gets into the parents’ room in which they are sleeping (and breathing) all night long, and over a period of many years that may have affected them. They lived in that house for about 20 years. I could get into what their specific health issues were, which might help my conclusions to make more sense, but in order to protect their privacy, I will not do that.

I could be completely wrong about all that, but it’s something to consider in the case of kids in houses in which the kids’ bedroom might be on a first floor over the garage. Parents, too. I hope I’m not freaking too many people out as far as those who may live in a house in which there are actual rooms or a bedroom above the garage. It’s just a possibility, and something to consider. Here are a bunch of photos of single family homes, in which several of them have rooms above the garage. (The house in which I grew up had an attached garage but it was on the side of the house with just an attic above the garage.)

And given these realizations that I’ve had, there is no way that I would ever live in an apartment building on the first floor in which there is a parking garage right underneath on the basement level.

But, the answer to the problem of government school teachers and administrators and school police acting like they are in Fallujah is to abolish government schools and allow the freed market in education to flourish, and it will if given the chance.

Some Reading for a Blizzard . . .

James Bovard with an article on America’s fading love of freedom.

Tom Woods asks, Does the Constitution bind anyone?

Ben Swann on the FBI setting up bombing suspects.

Kelli Sladick says that Virginia’s new anti-NDAA detention bill turns the table on the feds.

Laurence Vance on the American sociopaths (of the military).

Paul Craig Roberts says, Martin Luther King, Jr: An American Hero.

Philip Weiss on a possible Netanyahu speech to Congress.

Richard Ebeling says that global free trade makes for mutual prosperity and world peace.

Andrew Napolitano asks, Who will keep our freedoms safe?

Richard Boren on insurance companies as competing governments.

Alvin Lowi on voluntary government as a marketable service.

The AP with a story on the government health care website sharing personal data.

Jonathan Turley on the Boston mayor’s wanting to impose a speech code for a possible 2024 Olympics.

Andrew Jones with an interview of CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou

Daniel McAdams asks, Will new U.S. training program produce more ISIS fighters in Syria?

Eric Margolis Says, “Adios, Cuba!”

Robert Wenzel tells of the time he undermined the spirit of a government-trained-killer worshiper.

Jacob Sullum says the fine print in AG Eric Holder’s new forfeiture policy still leaves room for abuse.

William Grigg on the passing of a freedom fighter.

David Theroux with a speech on C.S. Lewis on mere liberty and the evils of statism.

Justin Raimondo on National Review‘s “slander” of him and Ron Paul.

Kelley Vlahos on David Petraeus’s double standard.

Arthur Silber discusses American Sniper and the murderers hall of infamy.

Michael Rozeff on American Sniper and John Wick.

Lindy West on the real American Sniper: A hate-filled killer.

Zero Hedge with an article on U.S. military’s conspiracy theory on ISIS.

And Doug Bandow on Saudi Arabia as America’s Frenemy.

The Obsessive, Fanatical Anti-Iran Whiners Are Out There, Once Again

Once again, the neocons and warmongers, obsessed with Iran but not other repressive and dangerous countries such as Saudi Arabia, are calling for sanctions and war against Iran and forcibly preventing Iran from having a nuclear program. For some perspective on the current debate, see Justin Raimondo. I do not agree, however, with supporting Rand Paul and Barbara Boxer’s proposals, which Raimondo quotes Politico as suggesting the bill would “reinstate some sanctions” under certain circumstances.

Because I just don’t have that much time now, I am going to present a part of an article I wrote a little over a year ago on rejecting the national security state, which addressed the Iran issue:

How are public office holders and their media and pundit stenographers so easily able to bamboozle so many millions of people? They did it with Iraq in 1990, and with Afghanistan in 2001, and again with Iraq in 2003.

With Iran, the issue at hand is preventing the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. The Israelis themselves won’t acknowledge their own many nuclear weapons, and they refuse to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran has signed.

But here is the main motivation underlying the fear-mongering: the former President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, and several Ayatollahs have allegedly stated their desire to “wipe Israel off the map.” The allegation is that Iran has been threatening to commit “mass genocide” of the Jews in Israel.

But if people did some fact-checking, they would see that Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khomeini whom he was quoting in 2005 were not referring to killing people, but referring to the “regime” or the government of Israel.

The U.K. Guardian stated in this 2007 article: “A more literal translation of the statement (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 really they are talking about the ruling “regime” in Israel.

Now, as an anguished Jewish American, I am sad to report that many people are misinformed about Israel and the Western governments’ exploitation of the earlier plights of Jews in Europe. There is a lot of history that apparently most Americans don’t know about, and that Christians in particular should know.

If interested, readers can also check out Murray Rothbard’s article on the subject.

Regarding how Jews are actually treated within Iran, you can read this 1998 article on Iranian Jews who actually are tolerated by “the regime” there, or this more recent account by the New York Times‘ Roger Cohen who visited Iran and spoke to Jews there.

Some other points of propaganda the U.S. government militarists and their talk radio stenographers bring up, besides the “wipe Israel off the map” misquote, include how the “crazy” Iranian leaders and Ayatollahs have been funding and arming terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

But what do the media pundits ever say about U.S. government bureaucrats accepting financial payments by and publicly advocating on behalf of a designated terrorist organization the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK)? (Oh wait, it seems that embarrassed U.S. government officials removed the MeK from their list of designated terrorist organizations once the officials’ providing “material support” for the MeK was revealed.)

And it seemed that the mainstream media wouldn’t inform the public about the U.S. government’s backing of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations until recently, at least regarding Syria. But the neocons and talk radio crowd are worried about Iran, not U.S. government knuckleheads.

So, while the Iranian leaders and clerics’ worst crime has been their inflammatory rhetoric, in America we have a President with an extra-judicial, due process-free “kill list,” and who claims the authority to have anyone he wants captured and detained indefinitely, even renditioned off to foreign territories for torture by foreign regimes, without charges or any evidence provided against the detained. And that President has his “finger on the button”!

And America has generals like the one who heads the NSA with his “Information Dominance Center” intentionally built in the fashion of the set from Star Trek, including sliding doors that make a “whoosh” sound. And we have a former U.S. President who is now on a crusade to convert Jews to the Christian faith. (Good luck with that one, Dubya.)

While it is sad that the current Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei stupidly continues to use inflammatory rhetoric against Israel, he nevertheless refers to the Israeli “regime” and not to harming the actual people of Israel.

In contrast, the ones who have been openly advocating the bombing and murdering of innocent people are the vicious American neocons and pundits who want to kill innocent Iranians (such as this former UN ambassador, this U.S. Congressman, this billionaire political fundraiser, and this TV pundit).

But unlike the “crazy Iranians” who spoke of getting rid of a “regime” and not referring to killing people or referring to nukes, these so-called Americans are referring to killing innocent people and using nukes in the manner of a Harry Truman.

And further, like the sanctions which devastated Iraq throughout the 1990s, the current sanctions imposed on Iranian civilians by the Obama Administration are having a devastating effect on innocent civilians in Iran.

Sadly, there are too many ignorant and propagandized Americans whose “leaders” have bamboozled them, exploiting their prejudices, to serve the Rulers’ hunger for coveting foreigners’ natural resources.

So I really don’t know how optimistic one should feel in hoping to reach those people. Can the propagandized and bamboozled ever be open to hearing the truth about the national security state which feeds off their hard labor’s earnings?

And finally, here is Ron Paul making some great points on the Iran issue and sanctions, from 2012:

The Saudi King Has Died

Am I the only one who is disgusted at the public displays of grief and sorrow by Western “leaders,” a.k.a. schnooks, over the death of the Saudi King Abdulluh? The Saudi regime is an extremely authoritarian tyranny, treating innocent people with the most heinous of criminal acts and murdering them for not following irrational Sharia Law rules in precisely the right manner. It is truly a sick society if there ever was one, that has been led by the monster who just kicked the bucket.

Barack Obama, the two Bush Presidents, and John Kerry all gave their sincerest sympathies and praised King Abdullah. They are actually expressing sadness over the death of the leader of a horrific and repressive regime. It is truly disgusting.

As I wrote in a recent post,

The Saudi Regime is now flogging and imprisoning bloggers who merely criticize the Regime’s Islamic clerics, and imprisoning Saudi lawyers for criticizing the primitive and “retarded” (their word, not mine) Saudi judicial system, as well as sentencing Saudi human rights activists to 15 years in prison for criticizing the ruling bureaucrats and thrown in jail for helping others to convert to Christianity (after receiving 300 lashes, of course). And Saudi Arabia is one of those repressive societies that arrests and jails the victims of rape.

Hmm. There certainly isn’t anything for which to criticize the Saudi ruling bureaucrats these days, is there?

The Saudi Regime has also now redefined as “terrorism” to include anyone who questions Islam or promotes atheistic thought, and anyone who seeks “to shake the social fabric or national cohesion, or calling, participating, promoting, or inciting sit-ins, protests, meetings, or group statements in any form, or anyone who harms the unity or stability of the kingdom by any means.”

And now, Buckingham Palace and other high-and-mighty British places have already lowered flags to half-mast to show “respect” for the Saudi King who, according to Paul Joseph Watson, has “overseen more beheadings than ISIS.”

Saudi King Abdullah with Barack Obama. Can you tell which dictator is which?

American Snipper

Jacob Hornberger has this terrific post on the Chris Kyle American Sniper movie. Hornberger tells the truth about the Iraq war, and which side of that conflict was the real aggressor.

In my view, there are many people who actually believe that the “aggressors” in that war were the Iraqis, even though it was the U.S. military who went over there and invaded their country! But people nevertheless still view Iraq as the aggressor, the invader, because that is just how much the U.S. government and its mainstream media stenographers can brainwash the public. Only in an Orwellian society, which is what Amerika is now, will people define the “aggressor” as the target of aggressions and occupations. Did Iraq invade the United States? Of course not. The U.S. government and military invaded Iraq!

And not only did the U.S. government and its military invade Iraq in 2003 but they did it a previous time in 1991. Even at that time as in 2003 Iraq was of no threat to America. But George H.W. Bush saw that the Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident helped to get Lyndon Johnson elected in 1964 and Richard Nixon’s delaying troop reductions in Vietnam helped to get Nixon reelected in 1972. So what the hell. Then after George H.W. Bush’s 1991 war in Iraq, in which his military intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian water and sewage treatment centers, that was followed by extremely cruel and sadistic sanctions and no-fly zones, in which deliveries of medical supplies and the means to repair damaged infrastructure were obstructed by the U.S government and the UN. The Iraqi civilian population were physically prevented from rebuilding water and sewage treatment facilities, and were made to have to use untreated water, which was followed by a huge increase in disease and infant mortality rates, and the deaths of over 500,000 innocent civilians in Iraq by the year 2000. As most Americans still don’t know (and probably don’t care), those actions of the U.S. government throughout the 1990s contributed to the motivations of the 9/11 terrorists, not one of whom was Iraqi.

But even though there was never any member of the Iraqi military or anyone under Saddam Hussein’s command who had come over here to U.S. territory, and even though no Iraqi committed any act of criminality or violence here in the U.S., and it was the U.S. military who invaded Iraq and not the other way around, and it was the U.S. military who murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis over there in Iraq, those Iraqis are still the “aggressors” in the minds of many Americans. Especially, as Hornberger notes, in the minds of U.S. military soldiers, even though if foreigners came over here and invaded America and broke into Americans’ homes, stole their firearms and shot their children, I’ll bet that Americans would attempt to fight back, and U.S. military soldiers especially would.

The reason, by the way, why it’s okay for Americans to fight back if foreigners invade their territories and ransack their homes and murder their family members, but it’s not okay for Iraqi families to fight back and resist Americans’ invading the Iraqis’ homes and murdering their family members, is because America is “superior” to Iraq, and Americans are a superior race to Iraqis in the minds of most Americans. That is known as American Exceptionalism. (I’m sure that most self-proclaimed “American Exceptionalists” would not admit to that characterization, as the truth of what supremacists are is something that many of them are probably too uncomfortable to admit.)

By the way, a lot of people such as chickenhawk talk radio personalities say, “Thank you for sour service” to military soldiers or veterans. But how many U.S. military soldiers or veterans say, “Thank you for your service” to all the hardworking producers of America whose taxes are involuntarily taken from their paychecks to fund those military soldiers’ own paychecks, their invasions, and their murders of innocents? But I digress.

Anyway, one important point that Jacob Hornberger makes is that, rather than PTSD the real effect of U.S. soldiers going over to other countries and murdering innocent people is their guilty conscience that is very hard for many of them to deal with. That is why there are so many military suicides on a daily basis, like an average of 22 per day, and why there are so many broken marriages, and why there is so much drug and alcohol abuse among soldiers returning to home after their killing sprees. Hornberger states,

I think the true cause is guilt — massive, deep-seeded, unresolved guilt over wrongfully killing people (and destroying their country) who were doing nothing more than exercising the right of self-defense under international law.

The assumption has always been that if you simply convince soldiers that they are fighting in a just cause, even if it’s not true, they won’t feel guilty about what they are doing. I don’t think the human conscience can be so easily fooled. I think that slowly it starts eating away at a person, sort of like acid.

And the problem is that soldiers who killed people in Iraq have a difficult time healing because they can’t confront the central problem — that they killed people wrongfully in an illegal, unconstitutional, immoral war of aggression. They can’t confess that grave sin. They relegate themselves to dealing with PTSD rather than with unresolved guilt over the wrongful killing of people. To do otherwise would require an admission that “our team” was in the wrong, something that the U.S. national-security state certainly would not countenance.

So, if you are a relatively new reader here and you feel that my writing style may be a little harsh, you may be right. But I believe that telling the truth is important, even if it makes people uncomfortable. And I can’t stand hypocrisy and double standards. No one group of people has any inherent “superiority” over any other, as a group. Collectivism is a very bad thing, in my view. For a better assessment of some of the ideas presented, please go read Jacob Hornberger’s post referenced above.

Incidentally, I just titled this post with the word “Snipper” rather than “Sniper,” because that’s just the kind of guy I am. However, perhaps if Chris Kyle became a hairdresser rather than a hired thug murderer we wouldn’t be talking about him now.

Brandon Smith’s Pledge

Brandon Smith has this article on one of his fellow Liberty Movement activists, David Crowley, who was apparently murdered along with his wife and little kid. The media are trying to portray the deaths as a “murder-suicide,” based on photos of Crowley in hunting and/or tactical gear, some photos of which are actually depicting Crowley using props for a film he had been working on. The film is titled Gray State and deals with life in Amerika as a totalitarian, Orwellian tyranny (as it seems very much on the way to being). Because of the immature prejudices and ignorance of many of those in the mainstream media, those ignoramuses have tended to dismiss people in the “prepper” or “survivalist” movement (a subgroup of the general Liberty Movement) as crackpots and paranoids who could snap and go on rampages and so on. On the contrary, such a description can more accurately be applied to your typical CIA or TSA agent, whereas the typical Liberty Movement participant merely strives to persuade others that freedom and peace, and a philosophy of “live and let live,” are the best ways for a civilized society to be.

So according to Brandon Smith, David Crowley was not the kind of guy who would harm others, certainly not his own family or himself. Smith says that none of the media accounts add up. In that article Smith presents a “Pledge” that, in the unfortunate possibility that he himself is, you know, “disappeared,” or murdered, that he is stating ahead of time that he would never abandon his family and would never hurt himself or others, except in actual self-defense. I would say that his Pledge, some of which I will quote here, can also apply to me as well. However, while I don’t think anyone (such as someone in government or police, etc.) will do anything to Brandon Smith, there is even less of a chance that anyone would do anything to me because I am not an “activist” as Brandon Smith is. He does a lot of public speaking and meets with groups and engages in various Liberty Movement related activities such as with the Oath Keepers organization. In contrast, all I do is just sit here at the computer like a schlep and write stuff. I am not an activist and am not involved in any groups or organizations, and don’t want to be.  But here is part of that Brandon Smith Pledge that can apply to me as well, as far as I’m concerned:

I, Brandon Smith, founder of Alt-Market.com, will NEVER bring deliberate harm to myself or other innocent people. I will NEVER commit suicide, nor will I ever hurt other people, including family, friends, or colleagues. I will NEVER use a weapon against another human being unless in self defense. I also will NEVER disappear from public view of my own volition, nor will I ever abruptly quit my work within the liberty movement. I am dedicated to the cause of freedom, I am proud of the path my life has taken, I am of excellent health, and am sound of mind (though such a thing may be treated as “subjective” by many).

I will NEVER jump from a bridge, jump from a tall building, hang myself with my underwear in a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation (I’m not into that), drown myself in a lake, or drive my car into a tree after packing it with explosives. I have no drug addictions and NEVER take psychotropic medications.  And to be clear, I will NEVER fly in a prop airplane, so it is impossible for me to die in a prop-plane crash. I also will NEVER pull a firearm on a police officer or federal agent unless they arrive without a warrant and exhibit clear intent to harm me or those I care about.

If I am found dead, regardless of the supposed circumstances or motives given by the mainstream press or state officials, IT WAS MURDER, not suicide. If I go missing, it is because of foul play, not because I have quit the movement, or gone off to Alaska to commune with the damn trees. Character attacks will not deter me from my work, nor cause me to walk away from my activism.

. . .

I think that this would be a good pledge for those involved in the Liberty Movement, anti-CPS activists and others to have. Perhaps Michael Hastings and Nancy Schaefer should have prepared such a statement.

The Latest in the People’s Republic

The Massachusetts state government now has a $765 million budget shortfall. At least that is what the new governor Charlie Baker is going to announce shortly. He says he will not raise taxes because the problem is spending, not revenue. Ya think? So what has happened in just the past 18 months since July 2013 when the state’s bureaucracy was receiving over $500 million in “above budget benchmark” tax collections and the coinciding legislative hacks’ $500 million tax increase (despite the over $500 million above-benchmark revenues and $1 billion rainy day fund)? That was during Summer 2013, so I guess the previous governor Deval Patrick and his cronies in the state legislature probably did engage in some “excessive spending.”

Speaking of excessive, there is a Draft Elizabeth Warren movement now, and far-left zombies want her to run for President in 2016 rather than the deranged warmonger Hillary Clinton. As far as her policy positions go, I say that if Elizabeth Warren is serious in wanting to use the Dodd-Frank law (that she helped to push through) to prosecute consumer fraud, she needs to actively prosecute the health-care fraudster Barack Obama who knowingly lied when he promised America’s health consumers, “If you like your doctor and insurance plan, you can keep them” under the Affordable Care Act a.k.a. ObamaCareless. (Lizzy Warren prosecute Obama? Not. Gonna. Happen.)

The New England Patriots will go to the Superbowl. Hooray! Wait a minute, I can’t stand football, so who cares? In other sports news, the U.S. Olympic Committee has decided to make Boston the city they hope will host the 2024 Olympics. But that should not happen. Boston is way too small in terms of square miles, and the city’s roads are scrunched and unorganized. The gridlock alone would cause chaos every day. It would be a disaster. And then add to that the expense that Massachusetts taxpayers will have to pay to fund security and so forth. And add to all that the extra police state — it would be a totalitarian nightmare. And that is what I have to say about that.

Finally, former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who recently lost in her race for governor to Charlie Baker, will now be the chief legal analyst at WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate. Huh? She sure knows the law when it comes to making up crimes that didn’t occur and knowingly keeping the innocent Gerald Amirault in prison for an even longer period, and she sure used the law to protect even more innocents when during the mid-1990s she helped to cover up the crimes of an actual child molesting priest, the late John Geoghan. I’m sure that Channel 5 WCVB-TV will be well-served in its future legal analyses by someone so committed to truth and justice as the delightful Martha Coakley has been.

Recent Commentaries

Brandon Smith asks, What will you do when government tyranny and terrorism work hand in hand?

Sheldon Richman on the choice between an open society and empire.

John Whitehead discusses the latest techno-surveillance police state criminality being inflicted on innocents by the government.

Kit Daniels with the truth about climate change and what’s really going on.

Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman discuss the latest bogus FBI claim of a disrupted terror plot.

Patrice Lewis with a message for government busybodies.

Laurence Vance on the most evil thing about Chris Kyle.

Mac Slavo discusses a “Russian Invasion Survival Manual” for Europeans.

Ted Rall says that editors, not terrorists, killed American political cartooning.

Eric Margolis on Charlie Hebdo and French politicians.

Lew Rockwell interviews Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Amerikan presidential dictators.

Jacob Hornberger says, Free speech in America? What about Lynne Stewart?

Justin Raimondo on the uses of Charlie Hebdo.

Robert Wenzel writes about Peter Thiel’s economic ignorance.

Jon Rappoport comments on the scamming pedagogical government educrats vs. the good old days when children just learned in school.

Tom Woods interviews Phil Magness on the unreliable and massaged data and made-up numbers used by Thomas Piketty in his recent book on capital.

Wendy McElroy on the “proofiness” of the politically correct rape.

Marcy Wheeler discusses the Jeffrey Sterling trial: Merlin meets Curveball.

William Grigg on the “Malheur Mafia.”

John Denson’s speech on war revisionism, fascism, and the CIA.

And Charles Burris on Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney, and the CBS News-CIA complex.

The 110th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” Russian Revolution of 1905

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 is subtitled, The Year 1905, and is a program symphony which depicts the Russian Revolution of 1905, a time of great societal turmoil. The 2nd movement is titled, 9 January, the date on which the Czar Nicholas’s Imperial Guard attacked striking laborers who were peacefully demonstrating and marching toward the Czar’s palace in St. Petersburg.

But apparently that date of January 9th was from the “old style,” or Julian Calendar which apparently Russia was still using during the early 20th Century. The real date is supposedly January 22nd, so I am posting a video of a performance of the Shostakovich 11th, The Year 1905, now as a compromise between January 9th and 22nd. However, this symphony was composed in 1957 — Russia supposedly switched from Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1918. Why did Shostakovich nevertheless refer to the “old style” date of January 9th as the date of Bloody Sunday instead of January 22nd? So that’s one annoying aspect of all this. And supposedly Shostakovich composed the symphony as a 50th anniversary memorial to the 1905 Russian Revolution, but had also stated that it was in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution. (I’m glad I didn’t live in Russia during the 20th Century!) There is also the possibility that the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, which was violently defeated by the Soviets (in early November that year which coincided with U.S. President Eisenhower’s reelection, not that that means anything), may have influenced Shostakovich while composing his Symphony No. 11.

In the video below, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra of St. Petersburg performs the Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 conducted by Valery Gergiev. (I recently posted another video with Gergiev conducting.) The 2nd movement, 9 January (which was really 22 January), the date of Bloody Sunday, is long and begins a little after 13:00. It becomes very dramatic and then quiets down. At a little after 22:20 the second major section of the 2nd movement begins with the loud snare drum which depicts the moment that the soldiers begin firing on the demonstrators. That is a very dramatic section.

The 3rd movement, In Memoriam, is slow and funeral march-like but has its share of high drama as well. And the 4th movement finale begins with a startling march and toward the end features the alarm bell played by the chimes. Now, I attended a performance of this symphony in February of 1990 by the Boston University Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Hoose. At the end of the symphony and on the concluding note, Hoose had the chimes continue to ring until it was silent in the hall. That had an amazing effect. I don’t believe that’s indicated in the score, and the performers in this video below don’t do that. However, in a more recent performance by the New England Conservatory Philharmonia conducted by Hugh Wolff, Wolff does have the chimes continue to ring but certainly not as long as David Hoose did in the performance I attended in 1990. (In that linked video, those young NEC students sound terrific! It gives me hope that, despite our society’s cultural decline maybe all is not lost.)

I think most performances of the Shostakovich 11th run between 60-65 minutes. The one in the video below is just a little less than 53 minutes. Now, for some reason this conductor Valery Gergiev is using what looks like a toothpick as a baton. (However, according to info on the Internet, he really does use a toothpick as a baton. Go figure.) There are several videos of this Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, but I chose this one — which is an excellent performance, by the way — because it is interesting to see actual Russians performing not just a Russian composition, but one depicting the 1905 Revolution and the Bloody Sunday incident that occurred in St. Petersburg which is the location of this Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra.

Was the Charlie Hebdo Attack a False Flag?

Paul Craig Roberts explains the possibility of the attack in Paris being a false flag op.