Merry Christmas and a Forever Gift

By Robert Williams

December 24, 2012

With all the various troubles in the world, nothing takes our mind off those than LOVE. The book Quotes on Sex, Love and Marriage is a gift that keeps on giving year after year. The right saying for the right situation and a conversation starter with each page. Available now in Kindle and paperback just click correct link below.

A “G” rated compilation avoiding harsh swear words;
yet is a group of relevant quotes that vividly
tell how our fellow Humans live, act, dream
and hopes yet to be, in our life's journey.
For life IS the journey.

Click here to take a "peek" or buy Kindle at Amazon.com

Click here to take a "peek" or buy Paperback at Amazon.com

Sources: Administrator

Feinstein's Gun Control Bill Will Trigger The Next American Revolution

by Brandon Smith
Friday, 28 December 2012

All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party - Mao Tse Tung

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military - William Burroughs

Revolution? Yes, it all sounds rather “extreme”, but the cold hard reality of our era is not going to comfort us with diplomacies and niceties, so honestly, why should I have to sugar coat anything? We live in extreme times and there is no longer room for prancing around the ultimate consequences of that which is taking place in America today. This country is increasingly sliding towards the edge of internal conflict. The Liberty Movement and true Constitutionalists see it, subsections of Republicans and Democrats see it, and most of all, the federal government sees it. In fact, they may even be counting on it.

Over the past two years alone, multiple draconian policies have been enacted through executive order by the Obama Administration which build upon the civil liberty crushing actions of George W. Bush and press far beyond. The Patriot Acts, the FISA domestic spy bill, the bailouts of corrupt international banks, attempts at CISPA and SOPA, actions like the NDAA authorizing the treatment of U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants” without rights to due process; all paint a picture so clear only a one-celled amoeba (or your average suburban yuppie) would not see it. You and I, and everyone else for that matter, have been designated potential targets of the state. Our rights have been made forfeit.

There is no ambiguous or muddled separation between the citizenry and the government anymore. The separation is absolute. It is undeniable. It is vast. It is only a matter of time and momentum, and eventually there will be unbridled oppression, dissent, and conflict. All that is required is a trigger, and I believe that trigger has arrived…

Though made to appear “complex”, the gun control debate is actually an incredibly simple issue. It all boils down to a couple of questions which gun grabbers rarely ask: How does the 2nd Amendment affect the future? That is to say, what was the original intent, and should we still value that intent as it applies to tomorrow? And, what will really happen if it is forcibly removed? Gun opponents act as though they are unaware of these questions, or maybe they don’t care. However, it is vital to their safety and the safety of our culture in general that they do finally consider the bigger picture.

We’ve all heard the prefabricated gun control talking points before. Some of them so old they predate us. They are numerous and most of them incredibly thin. The gist of the anti-gun position, though, could be boiled down to these three points…

Common Anti-Gun Arguments

1) The 2nd Amendment is “outdated” and no longer relevant in today’s modern society.

2) We do not want to stop you from “defending yourself”, or interfere with the American tradition of hunting, but people do not need “military assault weapons” for either.


3) Your claimed freedom to own guns should not supersede my freedom to live without fear of guns. We exist in a society, and our society requires us to give up certain freedoms so that it can function.

Again, in response to these arguments, I have to ask, what does the 2nd Amendment mean for the future? What was its original intent? Gun control advocates would like to ignore the fact that the Constitution specifically protects a broad application of gun ownership, but when they cannot deny the legality of it, they instead turn to more abstract and existential methods of attack. They try to twist the original intent of the 2nd Amendment to further their goals. To respond briefly to each of the above fallacies:

1) The right to self defense from ANY threat, whether it be an individual, or a criminal government, does not “outdate”. It is a universal and eternal freedom. It is a foundational pillar of natural law. Even if the 2nd Amendment did not exist, I would still have the inborn right to arm and protect myself and those I love, and the best way to do that is to own firearms. The men who drafted the Constitution were far more intelligent than any pithy gun grabber today, yet, these socialist errand boys seem to believe that they have “surpassed” the wisdom of the Founders. The amount of ego required to fuel such an attitude boggles the mind…

Gun violence and violence in general will not end simply by banning firearms. The very idea that any society can remove all weapons from their sight is naïve to begin with. Criminals always find a way. Murder, rape, and mayhem will continue until you confront the root problem, which is the human mind, and the human heart. Only when these two things are balanced in all people will violence end. Disarming good men and women has never made a society “safer”. When the power of defense is removed from the people, someone, somewhere, will seek to abuse their weakness. The most armed entity of the time invariably becomes the subjugator, and usually this is the government. Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc, all contained disarmed populations. The guns were gone, and still millions upon millions died. Modern day Mexico is a perfect example of a disarmed population that is now living in terror because of criminal organizations (which, of course, still have guns). Disarmament does NOT end gun violence, it only changes the dynamic of who uses that violence, and it makes innocent victims easier to attack.

2) Because the legal argument over the “interpretation” of the 2nd Amendment is essentially over, and the Supreme Court has ruled that gun rights do indeed apply to individuals, and not just collective bodies like the National Guard, gun grabbers are now reverting to the argument that we ARE allowed to defend ourselves with firearms, but the kinds of firearms we are able to use can still be limited. The goal of this argument is to fool gun owners who only possess conventional firearms (hunting rifles) into believing that they will not be personally affected if they support a ban on military style weapons. These wishy-washy hunting enthusiasts are often referred to as “Elmer Fudds” because of their gullibility.

All gun confiscation programs start by chipping away at the outer barriers of gun ownership. Like termites slowly chewing away at the wooden skeleton of a home, anti-gun proponents start small and end by destroying the entire edifice. Anyone who believes Feinstein’s legislation will begin and end with AR-15’s and AK-47’s is living in fantasy land. That said, the 2nd Amendment was not established for hunting purposes. Nowhere in the writings of the Founding Fathers do they mention “hunting” as their primary concern. Instead, gun rights are protected in order to ensure that the citizenry remains dominant over any centralized government that turns to corruption. We are supposed to police our own political leaders, and without military style arms, this becomes increasingly difficult.

Gun grabbers will argue that our government is not the enemy because it is derived through democratic elections. They will say that we can change it anytime we like in the voting box. I would point out that regardless of which party is placed in power through elections, nothing in terms of our direction as a country has been changed, and, that both parties support almost identical policies. For instance, Obama has come out in favor of nearly identical policy initiatives to Bush, and I can almost guarantee that many Republicans will sign onto the gun control efforts of Democrats despite their supposed pro-gun rhetoric. When the two party system becomes a one party system, voting becomes irrelevant.

Finally, they will admonish the idea of an armed citizenry keeping the government in check as a “fairy tale”. They will claim that in the face of modern military might, constitutionalists would be crushed. For what can an AK-47 do to an F-15? Apparently, they have never heard of Afghanistan, which has used AK-47’s and 30 year old armaments to repel two technologically advanced armies; the Soviet Union and the U.S. Of course, the Afghanis did not allow themselves to be disarmed…

3) Here is where we get into the nonsense of intellectual idiocy. The only real skill which academics seem to have is jumbling piles of logical fallacies together to make a single argument that sounds “rational”, but, in fact, isn’t. The third debate point is an extremely collectivist one, and collectivist arguments generally exploit the idea that individuals must sacrifice their personal freedoms in order for the group to function.

The truth is, the group does not matter. The perceived collective concerns and fears of a mass of people are not relevant. All that matters are the concerns of the singular man or woman, and whether or not those concerns are legitimate. If a person “fears” guns and gun violence, then that is their private problem, not the problem of our entire society. We as gun owners should not have to relinquish our rights because others are afraid of what MIGHT happen to them. We should demand that they control THEIR fear, instead of being allowed to control OUR guns. Just because a portion of our country shares this individual fear does not make that fear any more credible, or any more our problem.

Do They Know What They Are In For...?

Feinstein’s campaign for gun control is not hers alone; it has been the overall establishment’s work in progress for decades. I covered the broad based arguments of gun control advocates above because I wanted to illustrate the tangibility of gun ownership. I want to show you where we stand as constitutionalists, and I can say confidently that our moral and intellectual footing is strong. To be clear, when defenders of a particular idea are right in their position, they are much more likely to fight and die for that position, and they are much more likely to win.

In the beginning I asked what the 2nd Amendment means for the future of this country. Not only if it continues, but if it disappears. If I was a gun control proponent, I would weigh the aftereffects of my actions carefully, because the penalties will likely be dire…

I have heard it argued that Americans are passive. We didn’t rise up against the last Assault Weapons Ban. We didn’t rise up against the Patriot Act. We didn’t rise up against TSA molestation. We didn’t rise up against warrantless wiretapping, the assassination of U.S. citizens, or even the NDAA. The people who make this point, though, are not looking at the larger issue. It is one thing for our government to pass legislation; the wider application of that legislation on our streets and at our doorsteps is another matter.

Feinstein’s bill is unprecedented in the history of this country, and requires widespread enforcement in every town and hamlet in order to be effective. The way in which it is designed makes a violent response from the public inevitable. It reaches far beyond the Assault Weapons Ban of the 1990’s, calling for the creation of a massive database of almost all gun owners in the United States. This database will require citizens to submit their EXISTING firearms to cataloging, and the owners to be filed and fingerprinted like criminals.

The bill will ban the outright sale, manufacture, and transfer of at least 120 models of firearms (which have not yet been named). It will ban the manufacture and sale of most if not all semi-automatic rifles and the bill specifically targets handguns as well. Large capacity mags and mag fed weapons will essentially disappear from gun stores. Though, those guns designated as “hunting rifles” will be exempt (for now).

Feinstein has also openly agreed with NY Governor Andrew Cuomo that government buy back programs (forced selling of firearms at a reduced price) and even physical confiscations are on the table:

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/new-york-governor-andrew-cuomo-says-gun-confiscation-could-be-option

http://washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-feinstein-suggests-national-buyback-of-guns/article/2516648

To put this bluntly, there are approximately 50 million gun owners (according to official estimates) in the United States. If only 2% of those gun owners refuse to submit to the Feinstein Database, and the feds attempt confiscation, they will have a massive revolution on their hands.

Many Americans, including myself, will not be strolling into the local Fusion Center to register our weapons. Why? Because gun registration reeks of fascism! Some might call this “cliche”, but let’s just examine the guidelines of the

Nazi Gun Registration Program of 1938:

- Classified guns for "sporting purposes"

- All citizens who wished to purchase firearms had to register with the Nazi officials and have a background check.

- Presumed German citizens were hostile and thereby exempted Nazis from the gun control law (meaning officials could have guns, citizens could not).

- Gave Nazis unrestricted power to decide what kinds of firearms could, or could not be owned by private persons.

- The types of ammunition that were legal were subject to control by bureaucrats.

- Juveniles under 18 years could not buy firearms and ammunition.

You see, we’ve witnessed the Feinstein gun bill before, many times through history. We know how it ends, so, there is very little incentive for us to go along quietly.

The database itself is truly the crux of it all. It basically begs to be defied. When a government has become openly hostile to common people, destructive of their economy, and oppressive of their individual rights, it only follows that gun registration will lead to outright confiscation later down the road or imprisonment for the owner. Many Americans are simply not going to fall into the same trap that past societies have fallen into. The eventual refusal of millions of citizens to voluntarily register will lead to a definite federal response.

The Department Of Homeland Security has obviously taken this into account, at least partly, by stockpiling over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the span of a year, most of which are used in weapons distributed by the government for domestic enforcement. Their projected scenario, I believe, involves limited resistance from people like myself; “gun nuts” and “liberty freaks” who are on the “fringe” of the populous. At least, that’s what the headlines will say. In the end, who will care if a few “conspiracy theorists” take a bullet in the quest to end gun violence, right? But then again…

What I see in America is a much harder stance against gun confiscation than at any time in recent memory, and far less compromising than in the 1990’s. Gun grabbers are, in my view, walking into a hornet's nest. Most average firearms enthusiast may be less aware of the deeper problems at hand, but they know when they are about to be raped, and will react in kind. We in the Liberty Movement are often accused of “radicalizing” people against government authority, but I have to say, if that is the case, then the Feds are doing a much better job than we ever could.

Simultaneously, the UN (which most gun owners despise) is helping matters along by using the recent Sandy Hook shooting as a springboard for a reintroduction of their failed international Small Arms Treaty:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/un-arms-treaty-nra_n_2373417.html

"European and other U.N. delegates who support the arms trade treaty told Reuters on condition of anonymity they hoped Newtown would boost support for the convention in the United States, where gun control is an explosive political issue."

"Newtown has opened the debate within the United States on weapons controls in ways that it has not been opened in the past," Abramson said, adding that "the conversation within the U.S. will give the (Obama) administration more leeway."

The UN has always claimed that their small arms treaty would NOT restrict private gun ownership in the U.S., and that it only deals with the international trade of illicit arms. Yet, they try to use gun control actions in the face of Sandy Hook as a rationale for reopening negotiations? They can't have it both ways. Either they are trying to tie the treaty to domestic gun ownership in the U.S, or they aren't. Will our government sign on to an international agreement to restrict private gun ownership on top of Feinstein's gun grab bill?

To put this in the most basic terms: registration and restriction equals revolution. Count on it. It is not a matter of what we "want", it is a matter of what is necessary. Without a citizenry armed with weapons of military application, we lose our last deterrent to tyranny, and thus, we lose everything. When backed into a corner, a victim has two options: he can lie down and die, or, he can fight regardless of the odds. Sadly, this is where we are in America; fear, servitude, subservience, or civil war.

Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws - Edward Abbey

Sources: http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1243-feinsteins-gun-control-bill-will-trigger-the-next-american-revolution

It Realy IS this Simple

by Kirwan 
December 27, 2012

The public has become a chain-gang enslaved by mass-media and global-politics that has hidden the chains that have always bound us all. This has been going on and on and on for decades. Now it has arrived and literally everything is on the line. Either the globalists win it all or they all go to jail.

In a Republic the rights of the minority are protected from the tyranny of the majority; which is why this Republic was targeted for political and physical assassination. This was so important to the global-Zionists that they have gone too far. In addition to stripping the public of all our rights under the Constitution, they have gone that extra step which required them to murder due-process. Without due-process

“The right of the individual to challenge the laws or the government.”

They have killed any authority they might have ever had over the subject population.

This government has eliminated DUE-PROCESS for themselves and their edicts. In doing this they have removed any legal authority they might have ever had, over anyone. Consequently the public they seek to murder or oppress no longer needs to obey anything this government says—about anything. That is exactly where we are as 2012 comes to an end and a totally-lawless 2013 begins.

The number of rights, conditions, ideas and behaviors that are being challenged, from every quarter as the year ends, has no precedent anywhere in US history—because what is being advocated is nothing less than the outright enslavement of the whole country.

None of this could happen if this place had any cognition of the context for what is legislated, and what cannot be done in a Republic. This is the FACT, and regardless of how this fact came into being; it has become our responsibility to examine what is being proposed and to reject this total-takeover or we must accept the slavery that they have designed to put us in—while they finish killing off what’s left of the population in this country.

A quick review of some of the more extreme new demands that Americans now must face and defeat.

“Are you a psychiatrist, psychologist, neurologist, state or federal worker? If you answer “none of those” then you may become a target some day. In fact, you may be diagnosed as insane—especially if you happen to laugh or cry and someone reports you to the thought police. Far-fetched? Not at all. Every emotion you experience from love to hate, from anger to joy is now classified as a potential mental illness in the new edition of the psychiatric manual DSM-5. Welcome to the New World Mind Order…”

There is no credibility for the existence of psychiatry at all: The entire charade is nothing but a grossly inflated fraud, being used by this government to capture and control normal people and to prevent us from living normal lives. (1)

“In the days since the tragedy in Newtown, Americans from all over the country have called for action to deter mass shootings and reduce gun violence, and hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions on whitehouse.gov’s We the People platform. Obama’s new Gun Control Task Force headed by Vice President Joe Biden, the proposals coming to the forefront are focused on restricting the 2nd Amendment, government-controlled mental health services and governmental oversight of violence in social culture.” (2)

The Second Amendment is clear and can only be changed, in any part, by a Constitutional Amendment

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security
OF A FREE STATE,
THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”

On the incident in Sandy-Hook itself, which is important because screwed up reporting was responsible for the outrage, beyond the crime itself, (which given that Obama kills hundreds of children every month, in illegal wars overseas), is out-of-touch to say the least.

“The notorious car photographed leaving the scene of the Sandy Hook school shooting does NOT belong to Adam Lanza or his mother. HUH? That’s right. The audio from the police radio contains the vehicle registration request and reply. The car is registered to Christopher Rodia on charge for larceny and narcotics.

“Then there is an issue of teacher Lauren Rousseau’s car being riddled with bullets on the outside of the school. Whoever said there was shooting outside? Her Honda was green.

There was a gunfight at the O.K. corral in the parking lot. It may very well be that a drug deal went south and they shot it out. One of the ‘second’ shooters has been identified as well. If we look at the above pictures of Rousseau’s car, pay attention to the upper image. Call me stupid, but that looks like an exit hole. It craters out not in. Baby you can drive my car, but try NOT to shoot your gun off from inside please because then people will want to ban them.

The camo pants guy in the woods Christopher Mazedonia (supposedly a father of a child )who I will get to later, is still suspicious, especially when corroborated with the two shooter issue as first reported by teachers, he was moving toward the parking lot, would a father run away?

NOW THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION?

The only proof we have that Nancy Lanza owned firearms was the media saying she did. There is no documentary evidence from the police who would have had to issue a permit after a serious application process that includes a fingerprint check. DID NANCY LANZA OWN ANY GUNS?” (3)

Over it all there is this lurking truth, a truth that casts our lives into how many choose to live their lives as neglected-manikins. Puppets with broken strings stored away in some dark commercial attic, until our owners decide to use the lifeless manikins that we’ve become. Whether we are fitted with sexual organs, or empty minds or compliant and purposeless thoughts – too many are too often just useless shadows of the self that was meant to be alive and sentient—which no manikin can ever be. (4)

Then there was this from a reader, in a populous suburb of a city: This has been going on now for months, and I doubt that these people will simply turn these guns in, once the illegal government tells them to…

“I went in to a gun store just down the street today at 3:00 PM when the normal soccer mom would be picking up the kids from school and guess what I saw?

A line out the fucking door to purchase guns. I say this about Sandy Hook and the media scare from the “3 Bitches” in Congress it has created a new legal “gun run” across the US.

The gun store was down 75% on rifles and was out of stock on any semi-auto, large cap., or assault looking/style rifle.

He got 3 in an hour before I walked in the door and had 1 left while I was there and 3 guys were trying to “bid“ on the fucking thing like the last turkey in the market the day before thanksgiving, just so they did not miss their chance of owning one.

People were not looking much, they were buying right now!!!

The owner was out of all ammo that could fit these type weapons, and as for the “assault type rifle” (even in 22 cal.) all manufactures are out of stock and you can’t even order anything until 2/1/13.

What is out there in the pipeline is it!!!

As far as pistols go they were going all most as quick. The owner and the employees were handing out background check forms like flyers to a high school dance.

Most people knew the drill got the flyers before even looking at the weapons. Now that’s a new one on me.”

An overview from Alex: “US senators, state governors and others are testing the waters to see if they can sell a national confiscation buy back program under an Obama executive order. This is a way of making all gun owners terrorist. This is the plan, the facts are indisputable. We are in deep shit.” (5)

We must begin to choose COURAGE over blatant, mindless FEAR, or we shall lose all that is necessary to even have a life. 6)

“There is a destructive, delusional meme spreading like a virus among many misguided Americans. It pushes the idea that government can pick and choose which rights codified in the Bill of Rights it wishes to recognize or discard on any given day.

This delusion is predicated on the concept that if a popular majority can be emotionally whipped into a frenzy over one particular right, then that right can simply be discarded and stricken from the Bill of Rights.

But no such power exists to discard any portion of the Bill of Rights, at least not without proper ratification by three-fourths of the fifty states. There is no such power found solely in the federal government. There is no such power placed solely in the executive branch, nor in Congress, nor in the White House.

The Bill of Rights describes a set of individual rights and liberties which are not granted by government, but recognized as DIVINE rights given to use by our Creator. Because government never granted the rights in the first place, it has no authority to take them away.

“The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to “create” rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.” – William J Brennan Jr.

The individual liberties described in the Bill of Rights cannot be infringed, nor deleted, nor overridden by popular opinion… not even loudly screamed opinion. America is not a nation ruled by the tyranny of the mob. It isn’t even a democracy — it’s a republic, where certain inalienable rights describe the protection of each individual, even if that individual is the lone voice of sanity in a majority gone mad. The Bill of Rights protects individuals from the tyranny of mob rule — a phenomenon that routinely rears its head in any society where historical illiteracy is rampant and the masses are lulled into a state of complacency by charismatic but dishonest leaders.

It was the extended amendments attached to the Bill of Rights that outlawed slavery, guaranteeing individual freedom to those of African descent even in a time and place when the majority of voting citizens believed slavery was socially acceptable. And it was the Second Amendment that put firearms into the hands of those recently-freed slaves, ensuring that they could defend themselves against attackers of any color through the powerful expression of armed defense (aided by the laws of physics and certain materials from the table of elements, notably lead).

Another amendment beyond the Bill of Rights granted women equal voting rights in an age when the majority believed women should not be allowed to vote. It was the Bill of Rights that decriminalized prohibition, ending a dark era of mass criminalization of everyday citizens who suffered under the oppression of government law enforcement gone bad.

Yet today, incredibly, many African-Americans and women are actively assaulting the very document that first secured their own freedoms. They now wish to take their freedom and power and use it to enslave someone else by revoking other people’s rights under the Bill of Rights. This is the ultimate social betrayal, and it is a powerful demonstration of the principle that those who do not respect freedom for others do not deserve it for themselves.

The Second Amendment is not negotiable

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms — much like the Right of Free Speech — is not negotiable. Its protections are not subject to the whims of majority opinion, nor the screaming demands of hyperventilating media personalities. All the social media trolls and opinion writers in the world can comment all they want on the Second Amendment, yet the individual right to keep and bear arms remains immutable.

Just like the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is not negotiable. No Governor, Senator or President has any power whatsoever to banish the Second Amendment, and any who attempt to oppose it only brand themselves as criminal traitors to the United States of America. Any active effort to eradicate the Second Amendment outside of law — without going through the proper process of state ratification for Constitutional amendments — is, by definition, an act of sedition against the United States of America and its people.

Ironically, many who viciously attack the Second Amendment do so by invoking their free speech protections under the First Amendment. Yet they seem blind to the realization that the First Amendment itself is only made possible by the Second Amendment which balances power between the People and the government, ensuring that the individual right to bear arms serves as a check and balance against the monopoly of violence every government inherently seeks.

Disarmament of the populace is always the first step to depriving them of their civil rights and human rights. Without the right to bear arms, there is no right to free speech, no right to due process, no right to trial by jury and certainly no right to be secured against unreasonable search and seizure. A government with a monopoly of force is a government that respects no boundaries and honors no limits.

Grasping this point requires competent thinking, which is why so many who now flourish in America on the popularity of pop culture idiocy fail to understand it. It is intellectually lazy to blame gun rights for violence, requiring no depth of thought or reason. Only someone of higher awareness and possessing the aptitude for multi-layered thinking can realize the critical importance of distributed firepower in stopping government violence against the People. As Ron Paul recently said, “Government security is just another kind of violence.”

Ron Paul gets it. He understands that an imbalance of power in the hands of government inevitably leads to mass violence waged against the People. Those who are currently screaming for the population to be disarmed do not realize that in seeking to prevent one kind of violence (school shootings), they are unleashing a far more disastrous and horrifying violence by allowing the government to monopolize physical power over the citizens. This is a mistake that has been repeated throughout history, often at the cost of tens of millions of destroyed lives. Click here to watch my short video documentary that lays out these facts in more detail.

The Second Amendment was put in place precisely for the purpose of making sure that future Americans would not fall for the same mistake yet again. That’s why it is the second highest amendment, right after the right of free speech, indicating its crucial priority in the enumeration of sacred rights that must be protected at all costs.”

Those who oppose the Bill of Rights are enemies of America

Some misguided, if not treasonous, U.S. Senators, lawmakers and public servants in the executive branch of government currently suffer under the dangerous misconception that the Bill of Rights only exists because they allow it to. They foolishly believe that they can selectively pick and choose which rights to nullify via new legislation or by the stroke of an executive pen. This delusion is not merely wrong-headed and arrogant, it poses a grave threat to the Republic and all its future generations.

Enemies of the Bill of Rights are enemies of America. Whether those enemies be found in the media, in Congress, in the Oval Office or on the streets of America, they are unworthy of being called “Americans” at all. Those who despise liberty do not deserve liberty. Those who deliberately and maliciously attack the Bill of Rights do not deserve the protections of the Bill of Rights. Those who despise the Constitution and its Bill of Rights are publicly indicating they would prefer to live as subjects, not Citizens.

I propose that any who attempt to denounce Bill of Rights protections for others must first surrender their own rights and freedoms. Do not speak of taking away my Second Amendment rights while you enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. Surrender all your rights and freedoms first, because only then have you achieved the necessary moral consistency from which you can demand others be deprived of their rights.

Relocate to North Korea, in other words, and become a subject of Kim Jong-un and then continue your assaults of the Bill of Rights as a Korean gulag blogger. Because only then will you know how much you have lost, and how much you should have valued the liberties you so carelessly abandoned.

The Bill of Rights is not negotiable. If you oppose it, you betray not only yourself, but all Americans.” (7)

Just Four Days left in 2012. Will you enter 2013 with determination or with dread? How that pans out might well determine whether you live or die…

Jim Kirwan

1) Psychiatrists: If you laugh or Cry you’re insane

2) 2nd Amendment Advocates Why is It Important For Obama To Destroy The 2nd Amendment? – 2 min 49 sec video

3) Baby you can drive my car

4) Americans Chained by Illusion – 3 min 39 sec video

5) Firearm Confiscation Plan Announced for America – 7 min 5 sec video

6) In the Valley of the Shadow of Death

7) The Bill of Rights is Not Negotiable

Sources: http://www.kirwanesque.net/2012/5584/this-simple/

Gun Control Tramples On The Certain Virtues Of A Heavily Armed Citizenry

Forbes OpEd
12/28/2012

It is time the critics of the Second Amendment put up and repeal it, or shut up about violating it. Their efforts to disarm and short-arm Americans violate the U.S. Constitution in Merriam Webster’s first sense of the term—to “disregard” it.

Hard cases make bad law, which is why they are reserved for the Constitution, not left to the caprice of legislatures, the sophistry and casuistry of judges or the despotic rule making of the chief executive and his bureaucracy. And make no mistake, guns pose one of the hardest cases a free people confronts in the 21^st century, a test of whether that people cherishes liberty above tyranny, values individual sovereignty above dependency on the state, and whether they dare any longer to live free.

A people cannot simultaneously live free and be bound to any human master or man-made institution, especially to politicians, judges, bureaucrats and faceless government agencies. The Second Amendment along with the other nine amendments of the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent individuals’ enslavement to government, not just to guarantee people the right to hunt squirrels or sport shoot at targets, nor was it included in the Bill of Rights just to guarantee individuals the right to defend themselves against robbers, rapers and lunatics, or to make sure the states could raise a militia quick, on the cheap to defend against a foreign invader or domestic unrest.

The Second Amendment was designed to ensure that individuals retained the right and means to defend themselves against any illegitimate attempt to do them harm, be it an attempt by a private outlaw or government agents violating their trust under the color of law. The Second Amendment was meant to guarantee individuals the right to protect themselves against government as much as against private bad guys and gangs.

That is why the gun grabbers’ assault on firearms is not only, not even primarily an attack merely on the means of self-defense but more fundamentally, the gun grabbers are engaged in a blatant attack on the very legitimacy of self-defense itself. It’s not really about the guns; it is about the government’s ability to demand submission of the people. Gun control is part and parcel of the ongoing collectivist effort to eviscerate individual sovereignty and replace it with dependence upon and allegiance to the state.

Americans provisionally delegated a limited amount of power over themselves to government, retaining their individual sovereignty in every respect and reserving to themselves the power not delegated to government, most importantly the right and power to abolish or replace any government that becomes destructive of the ends for which it was created. The Bill of Rights, especially the Second and Ninth Amendments, can only be properly understood and rightly interpreted in this context.

Politicians who insist on despoiling the Constitution just a little bit for some greater good (gun control for “collective security”) are like a blackguard who lies to an innocent that she can yield to his advances, retain her virtue and risk getting only just a little bit pregnant—a seducer’s lie. The people either have the right to own and bear arms, or they don’t, and to the extent legislators, judges and bureaucrats disparage that right, they are violating the U.S. Constitution as it was originally conceived, and as it is currently amended. To those who would pretend the Second Amendment doesn’t exist or insist it doesn’t mean what it says, there is only one legitimate response: “If you don’t like the Second Amendment, you may try to repeal it but short of that you may not disparage and usurp it, even a little bit, as long as it remains a part of the Constitution, no exceptions, no conniving revisions, no fabricated judicial balancing acts.”

Gun control advocates attempt to avoid the real issue of gun rights—why the Founders felt so strongly about gun rights that they singled them out for special protection in the Bill of Rights—by demanding that individual rights be balanced against a counterfeit collective right to “security” from things that go bump in the night. But, the Bill of Rights was not a Bill of Entitlements that people had a right to demand from government; it was a Bill of Protections against the government itself. The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights.

That is why the most egregious of the fallacious arguments used to justify gun control are designed to short-arm the citizenry (e.g., banning so-called “assault rifles”) by restricting the application of the Second Amendment to apply only to arms that do not pose a threat to the government’s self-proclaimed monopoly on the use of force. To that end, the gun grabbers first must bamboozle people into believing the Second Amendment does not really protect an individual’s right to own and bear firearms.

They do that by insisting on a tortured construction of the Second Amendment that converts individual rights into states rights. The short-arm artists assert that the Second Amendment’s reference to the necessity of a “well-regulated militia” proves the amendment is all about state’s rights, not individuals rights; it was written into the Bill of Rights simply to guarantee that state governments could assemble a fighting force quick, on the cheap to defend against foreign invasion and domestic disturbance. Consequently, Second-Amendment revisionists would have us believe the Second Amendment does little more than guarantee the right of states to maintain militias; and, since the state militias were replaced by the National Guard in the early twentieth century, the Second Amendment has virtually no contemporary significance. Gun controllers would, in effect, do to the Second Amendment what earlier collectivizers and centralizers did to the Tenth Amendment, namely render it a dead letter.

The truth is, the Founders understood a “well regulated” militia to mean a militia “functioning/operating properly,” not a militia “controlled or managed by the government.” This is clearly evidenced by Alexander Hamilton’s discussion of militias in Federalist #29 and by one of the Oxford Dictionary’s archaic definitions of “regulate;” “(b) Of troops: Properly disciplined.”

The Founders intended that a well-regulated militia was to be the first, not the last line of defense against a foreign invader or social unrest. But, they also intended militias to be the last, not the first line of defense against tyrannical government. In other words, the Second Amendment was meant to be the constitutional protection for a person’s musket behind the door, later the shotgun behind the door and today the M4 behind the door—a constitutional guarantee of the right of individuals to defend themselves against any and all miscreants, private or government, seeking to do them harm.

The unfettered right to own and bear arms consecrates individual sovereignty and ordains the right of self-defense. The Second Amendment symbolizes and proclaims individuals’ right to defend themselves personally against any and all threatened deprivations of life, liberty or property, including attempted deprivations by the government. The symbolism of a heavily armed citizenry says loudly and unequivocally to the government, “Don’t Tread On Me.”

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

Both Jefferson and James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, also knew that their government would never fear a people without guns, and they understood as well that the greatest threat to liberty was not foreign invasion or domestic unrest but rather a standing army and a militarized police force without fear of the people and capable of inflicting tyranny upon the people.

That is what prompted Madison to contrast the new national government he had helped create to the kingdoms of Europe, which he characterized as “afraid to trust the people with arms.” Madison assured his fellow Americans that under the new Constitution as amended by the Bill of Rights, they need never fear their government because of “the advantage of being armed.”

But, Noah Webster said it most succinctly and most eloquently:

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”

That is why the Founders looked to local militias as much to provide a check—in modern parlance, a “deterrent”—against government tyranny as against an invading foreign power. Guns are individuals’ own personal nuclear deterrent against their own government gone rogue. Therefore, a heavily armed citizenry is the ultimate deterrent against tyranny.

A heavily armed citizenry is not about armed revolt; it is about defending oneself against armed government oppression. A heavily armed citizenry is not about overthrowing the government; it is about preventing the government from overthrowing liberty. A people stripped of their right of self defense is defenseless against their own government. 

Sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencehunter/2012/12/28/gun-control-tramples-on-the-certain-virtues-of-a-heavily-armed-citizenry/
image: file

Four More Years of War

Posted by Stephen Lendman   
Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America’s imperium. He did aggressive in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won’t end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America’s global military footprint.

Fiscal cliff hype is about greater force-fed austerity to free up more funds for America’s war machine. Waging them isn’t cheap. Profiteers depend on wasteful spending to boost bottom line performance.

It pays to have friends in high places. They assure all the billions wanted. Social America is being sacrificed to provide them.

Over the next decade, trillions of dollars will shift from people needs to war making, generous corporate handouts, tax breaks for the rich, and hardened homeland repression against nonbelievers.

At the same time, deficits will keep rising exponentially. Hype about urgently cutting them is fake. Post-9/11 has been the worst of times. Expect more of the same on steroids ahead.

Conditions today are the most perilous in world history. Global war is possible. The threat is real and ominous. Open discussion is suppressed. Media scoundrels won’t touch it.

Nor do they explain Project Censored’s top Censored 2013 story: “Signs of an Emerging Police State.” It began pre-9/11, accelerated under Bush, then Obama exceeded his extremism.

Tyranny in America is a hair’s breadth from full-blown. For those affected, it arrived long ago.

Project Censored‘s number 4 story is: “FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States.” Innocent people are wrongly imprisoned. Media scoundrels convict them in the court of public opinion.

Other top censored stories include criminalizing nonviolent protests, corporate predators running the global economy, Federal Reserve money printing madness enriching Wall Street, Washington joining forces with Al Qaeda, prison slavery, wrecking public education by privatizing it, and NATO war crimes in Libya, but it’s much the same wherever this killing machine shows up.

Media scoundrel managed news suppresses these and other vital truths people most need to know. Instead, they get The New York Times running cover for Obama’s foreign policy by praising what it should condemn.

On November 11, its editorial headlined “The Foreign Policy Agenda.” It reads like it’s about someone else, not Obama. It wrongly claims he envisions a world without nuclear weapons.

Under Bush and Obama, Washington asserts the right to use them preemptively. Both administrations violated NPT, the ABM and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaties, and Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Others relating to national security also.

In 2010, Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was old wine in new bottles. Rhetoric changed. Policy stayed the same.

Obama won’t achieve his goal, said The Times, but his position “offers a framework for reducing America’s stockpile and for (encouraging) other countries to follow suit.”

Stockpile levels matter less than new, more destructive, weapons replacing older ones.

The Times also wants tough policies on Iran. It stops short of urging war, but wants sanctions “rigorously enforced and strengthened.” Those in place are illegal. Times articles and commentaries don’t explain. Nor are readers told that Iran’s program is peaceful. Tehran threatens no one.

What’s ahead in Afghanistan remains to be seen. Drawdown won’t end war and occupation. America doesn’t come to war theaters to leave. Permanent occupation is planned.

The Times hope for withdrawal by end of 2013, of course, won’t happen. Nor are Times’ claims about “severely weaken(ing) Al Qaeda.”

Washington enlists its support in all regional wars. It admits doing so. The so-called Arab Spring is fake. America’s war on Syria is suppressed. So is claiming a possible two-state Israeli/Palestinian solution followed by peace.

America’s foreign policy plate is full, said The Times. What’s ongoing and at stake was suppressed or distorted. Military Keynesianism on steroids is official US policy.

America always glorified wars in the name of peace. They’ve been waged every year in US history at home and/or abroad against one more adversaries. Peace, stability, personal safety, and common dignity are crowded out by imperial wars and a longstanding culture of violence.

Generations of violence engrained it in US culture. Media violence feeds it. America’s addiction to war reflects it. Permanent ones rage. New ones replace others when their energy wanes. Congress provides open-ended funding. The Federal Reserve prints up all the ready cash needed.

Imagine living under a permanent state of readiness. Enemies don’t exist so Washington invents them. At the same time, homeland needs go begging.

Eisenhower‘s military-industrial complex warning went unheeded. Disastrous “misplaced power” could rise and persist.

“Every gun that is made,” he added, “every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed.”

Today’s legacy is force-fed austerity. Health and public welfare are sacrificed on the alter of America’s addiction. Obama has plenty more in mind. Wars of choice are planned.

Since WW II, none of necessity existed. America is masterful at inventing enemies when none exist. No matter how many times people are fooled, they’re easy prey to convince alleged threats must be challenged.

Washington Post writer David Ignatius has close ties to US intelligence. Be “bold” he urges Obama in term two. “Think big.”

“Well, Mr. President, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Be “strategic” on foreign policy. Deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program. Find solutions for Afghanistan.

Remove Assad by “managed transition.” In other words, oust him by any way that works.

Cut a deal on Palestine that benefits Israel. Choose a new Secretary of State when Clinton leaves to assure whatever America says goes.

“A successful second term is less about ideology than about results. Think big. Take risks. Get it done.”

In other words, Ignatius favors policies that assure US hegemony. Without saying it, he includes war.

Former Bush administration UN ambassador/American Enterprise Institute senior fellow/uberhawk John Bolton wants Obama to prioritize national security threats.

America has none excepts ones it invents. Bolton left that unexplained. The war on terror isn’t over, he stresses. Al Qaeda hasn’t been defeated. It’s “stronger than before and America’s strategic position in the region has steadily deteriorated.”

Al Qaeda is used strategically as ally and adversary. It was part of Washington’s Libya strategy. It now serves US interests in Syria.

Prioritize “international terrorism,” says Bolton. Prevent Iran’s “long-sought objective of deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Challenge Russia and China assertively. Flex America’s muscles aggressively. Republicans should hold his feet to the fire.

Foreign policy advisors like Bolton risk WW III. Washington has lots more like him.

AP‘s Brian Murphy discussed Obama’s second term “evolving foreign policy.”

His mandate involves asserting “superpower confiden(ce and) military strength” combined with “soft power” coalition building.

Murphy ticked off the usual challenges – Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Israel/Palestine, China, Russia, North Korea, and Cuba. Solutions weren’t proposed.

Micah Zenko is a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Center for Preventive Action Douglas Dillon fellow. America “will never have another peacetime president,” he says.

It follows as one never before existed. America has always been at war at home and/or abroad throughout its history.

WW II aside, it’s truer today than ever. Multiple direct and proxy wars rage. More are planned. Political claims about wanting peace are false. America prioritizes war.

Zenko expects a “period of persistent conflict” to continue. Obama is America’s most belligerent leader. He exceeded the worst of Bush. Expect term one policies to continue and be intensified in term two.

Congressional oversight of presidential war-making powers is moribund. Obama is virtually restraint free. Previous warnings went unheeded.

Former Senator Robert Byrd reminded fellow legislators that “Congress is not a rubberstamp or a presidential lapdog – obedient and unquestioning. Oversight, oversight, oversight is among our most important responsibilities.”

Senator James Webb didn’t seek reelection. In May, he co-sponsored a bill that failed. Passage would have required presidents to formally request congressional approval before authorizing military action.

“Year by year,” he said, “skirmish by skirmish, the role of the Congress in determining where the US military would operate, and when the awesome power of our weapon systems would he unleashed, has diminished.”

Obama is free to continue term one wars and wage new ones. Expect him to take full advantage.

About the Author: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Sources: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12/26/four-more-years-of-war/

Legal Gun Owners in New York Outed Like Sex Offenders

By Kurt Nimmo   Infowars.com
December 25, 2012

A corporate media owned website in New York has posted the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in three counties in the state.

“Data for all permit categories, unrestricted carry, premises, business, employment, target and hunting, is included, but permit information is not available on an individual basis.”

The Journal News submitted Freedom of Information requests for the names and addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. It used Google Maps to pinpoint specific locations and included the names and addresses of permit holders.

The Gannett owned newspaper did not specify a reason for invading the privacy of handgun owners. However, considering the animosity of officialdom in the state toward the Second Amendment and the right to own firearms, the reason for outing legal handgun owners should be obvious.

The Journal News map resembles others posted online revealing the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders, thus giving the impression that handgun ownership is criminal.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo called for gun confiscation last week following the shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school. “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it,” the governor told a local radio station during an interview.

New York City mayor and noted anti-Second Amendment activist Michael Bloomberg went on Meet the Press on December 15 and demanded Obama issue an “executive action” calling for the ATF and the Justice Department to enforce new regulations aimed at law-abiding American practicing their right to own firearms. “What the president can do is number one, through executive action, he can order his agencies to enforce the laws more aggressively,” Bloomberg said.

Sources: http://theintelhub.com/2012/12/25/legal-gun-owners-in-new-york-outed-like-sex-offenders/

Administrative Note #1 : The following are the three stories causing this, by the Ganett Corporation.

As of this date this link IS the map and works.

http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-Where-gun-permits-your-neighborhood-?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1

Map: Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood?

The map indicates the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. Each dot represents an individual permit holder licensed to own a handgun — a pistol or revolver. The data does not include owners of long guns — rifles or shotguns — which can be purchased without a permit. Being included in this map does not mean the individual at a specific location owns a weapon, just that they are licensed to do so.

Data for all permit categories, unrestricted carry, premises, business, employment, target and hunting, is included, but permit information is not available on an individual basis.

To create the map, The Journal News submitted Freedom of Information requests for the names and addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam. By state law, the information is public record.

Putnam is still putting together its records and could not immediately provide any data. The map will be updated when that data is released.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY

This map shows pistol permits registered with the Westchester County Clerk's Office. Residents are required to renew the permit every five years. Zoom in and out for more information and click on a dot to see details of a permit.

ROCKLAND COUNTY

This map shows pistol permits registered in Rockland County, which are issued for life and do not need to be renewed. Zoom in and out for more information and click on a dot to see details of a permit. Rockland County splits permit holders into two categories:

Active (blue): Permit holders that have purchased a firearm or updated the information on a permit in the past five years.

Historic (purple): Permit holders with no activity in the past five years. Permit holders who have died or moved out of the area may not have updated their permit records, so some locations marked with a purple dot may not represent a current permit holder

http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-Where-gun-permits-your-neighborhood-?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1

The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood

12:40 AM, Dec 24, 2012

Written by Dwight R. Worley

In May, Richard V. Wilson approached a female neighbor on the street and shot her in the back of the head, a crime that stunned their quiet Katonah neighborhood.

What was equally shocking for some was the revelation that the mentally disturbed 77-year-old man had amassed a cache of weapons — including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition — without any neighbors knowing.

“I think that the access to guns in this country is ridiculous, that anybody can get one,” said a neighbor of Wilson’s who requested anonymity because it’s not known whether the gunman, whose unnamed victim survived, will return home or be sent to prison. “Would I have bought this house knowing somebody (close by) had an arsenal of weapons? No, I would not have.”

In the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and amid renewed nationwide calls for stronger gun control, some Lower Hudson Valley residents would like lawmakers to expand the amount of information the public can find out about gun owners. About 44,000 people in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam — one out of every 23 adults — are licensed to own a handgun.

Click here for interactive map of gun permits

Anyone can find out the names and addresses of handgun owners in any county with a simple Freedom of Information Law request, and the state’s top public records expert told The Journal News last week that he thinks the law does not bar the release of other details. But officials in county clerk’s offices in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam maintain the public does not have a right to see such things as the specific permits an individual has been issued, the types of handguns a person possesses or the number of guns he or she owns — whether one or a dozen.

Combined with laws that allow the purchase of rifles and shotguns without a permit, John Thompson, a program manager for Project SNUG at the Yonkers Family YMCA, said that leaves the public knowing little about the types of deadly weapons that might be right next door.

Dave Triglianos, a Mahopac resident and certified gun instructor, said making all information on pistol-permit applications public would violate the privacy of law-abiding gun owners. He said that everyone, including gun owners, sympathizes with the Sandy Hook families but that onerous gun legislation and the disclosure of specifics only harm legitimate gun owners, not criminals.

My information “should be absolutely private,” said Triglianos, who is licensed to carry firearms and owns an AR-15 rifle, the same model of gun used in the Newtown massacre. “Why do my neighbors need to know that? I am not a threat to my neighbors. I don’t pose a physical threat to anyone.”

State and federal lawmakers are considering a raft of new gun laws, including measures to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to restrict purchases of guns and ammunition and to improve background checks for gun buyers.

No measure among the various bills would make more pistol-permit information public. Gun-control advocates said such a measure is unlikely to gain support due to privacy concerns. Others say it’s appropriate for law enforcement to have access to detailed records on licensed handguns, but not the general public.

“It’s not necessary for people to know who has what,” said Daniel Friedman, a Ramapo councilman and author of the book, “Saving Our Children: An In-Depth Look at Gun Violence in Our Nation and Our Schools.” “I think we need to balance people’s right to privacy with people’s right to safety and people’s right to legitimately own guns.”

Dana Schubert, a retired Newtown police officer, said after the school massacre that he supports gun-owner privacy but would like to see laws requiring the storage of firearms in safes when not in use.

He said Nancy Lanza, the mother of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, did not properly secure her collection of weapons, allowing Adam to take four of them to kill her and 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary.

(Page 3 of 5)

Details at issue

Access to information provided on pistol-license applications — such as the permit type, models of guns purchased and number of weapons owned — changed in 1994 when the state Legislature rewrote sections of the penal law covering licensure.

Before the amendment, the law said “the application for any license, if granted, shall be a public record.” The law now reads “the name and address of any person to whom an application for any license has been granted shall be a public record.” Many counties have interpreted that to mean any information beyond names and addresses is barred from public release.

But Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, said all government records and data are presumed public unless a specific statute bars their release. While names and addresses are specifically deemed public records, Freeman said, disclosure of additional data is left to the discretion of the custodians of pistol-permit records.

“There’s nothing in the law that prohibits the disclosure of additional information,” he said. “There’s simply no right of access to it.”

After the Newtown shooting, The Journal News filed Freedom of Information Law requests in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam for pistol-permit records, seeking the names of licensees, their addresses, types of permits and types of weapons owned. The newspaper was advised by officials in all three clerks’ offices that only names and addresses would be released.

The Journal News appealed Westchester’s partial denial of the request, citing language from Freeman’s written opinions on the subject. County Attorney Robert Meehan, the appeal officer, denied the request, writing, “The available legislative history associated with (the law amendment) demonstrates that its intent was to limit the public disclosure of pistol permit applications to the name and address of successful applicants.”

Westchester provided the names and addresses of the county’s 16,616 active permit holders, all of which are considered current because the county’s permits expire five years after issuance. At the request of The Journal News, county officials also provided some aggregate information on the types of permits issued.

Nearly 5,000 individuals in Westchester have unrestricted permits to carry weapons at all times, a number that includes retired police officers. Current officers who live in Westchester, regardless of where they work, do not need to carry permits.

More than 11,200 individuals have target-shooting permits, just over 6,900 have hunting permits, and more than 2,300 have permits to possess a gun during employment. A request for the total number of handguns licensed in the county was denied.

Putnam responded to the FOIL request but said pulling together the records would take additional time. The county estimated it has 11,000 permits.

Tom King, president of the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, said the release of additional pistol-permit information would endanger gun owners, some of whom have valuable collections of weapons.

“You’re giving a shopping list to criminals,” he said. “Does it matter if you own 47 guns or you own one gun? Everybody likes to think that someone who has all of these guns is evil, that there’s some nefarious reason they have all these guns. There are collectors.”

Public officials share similar concerns. Though acknowledging that some pistol-permit data are public, Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, said he’s always uneasy providing it.

“You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents — they have permits,” Piperato said. “Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way.”

(Page 5 of 5)

“You are likely to find out one of your children’s friend’s homes that they visit has a gun,” Hilly said. “If you assume there are no guns, you could be wrong.”

Political debate

As the gun-control debate heats up, pro- and anti-gun groups, politicians and gun dealers are re-examining whether there are ways to make it harder for unfit individuals to obtain weapons.

Hilly joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a staunch gun-control advocate, and Mayors Against Illegal Guns at a news conference Friday calling for what she said are “common sense” reforms to gun laws, including closing the “gun show loophole.” Hilly said an estimated 40 percent of guns are sold between individuals at gun shows or privately — transactions that are not subject to background checks.

Mayors from White Plains, Peekskill and Mount Vernon also signed the group’s letter supporting various measures, including a federal ban on assault weapons and making gun trafficking a federal crime.

“We have seen a proliferation of these tragedies after the ban on assault weapons expired in 2004,” Peekskill Mayor Mary Foster said. “We cannot allow this to continue.”

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino last week canceled a gun show set for February at Westchester County Center, and the Crowne Plaza hotel in Suffern canceled a gun show scheduled for March. Dick’s Sporting Goods, the nation’s largest sporting-goods chain, suspended sales of certain types of rifles following the Newtown shooting.

The head of the National Rifle Association, which was silent in the days after the Newtown shooting, said Friday that increased gun regulations would embolden “monsters” and make people in “gun-free school zones” targets for criminals.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s chief executive, said banks, stadiums and lawmakers are protected by armed security and that schools need similar protection. His group is creating a “model school shield program” that will provide armed, trained volunteers to guard schools free of charge.

Triglianos said having trained armed guards in schools would be more effective than gun bans.

“Security means armed,” he said. “Somebody who is a security guard and is not armed is just another person who is going to run away when somebody starts shooting.”

But Hilly said the solution to gun violence isn’t more guns.

“You don’t have more success with more guns,” she said. “You certainly don’t want our schools turned into armed camps.” 

Sources: http://www.lohud.com/article/20121224/NEWS04/312240045/The-gun-owner-next-door-What-you-don-t-know-about-weapons-your-neighborhood?odyssey=obinsite

The Journal News/LoHud.com assailed for publishing map of gun permit holders

Written by Randi Weiner

8:39 PM, Dec 25, 2012

Gannett

WHITE PLAINS — Thousands of people, many from outside Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, have taken to their computers and phones in rage after The Journal News posted an online database of local gun permit holders.

The database, legally obtained from the county clerks’ offices through a Freedom of Information Act request made after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and eight adults dead, has been called irresponsible, dangerous and leaning toward intimidation by several online pundits.

Social media played a big part in the exponential spread of the story, whose map has been recommended more than 20,000 times. Two Facebook posts linking to the story on Sunday garnered 346 comments as of this evening. That’s in addition to 167 comments posted directly to Facebook.com/LoHud since the story published.

Numerous additional comments relating to the gun permit map have appeared on posts in other unrelated stories. More than a dozen more people sent private messages via Facebook objecting to the map. The overwhelming majority of comments strongly object to the story.

The database was also mentioned in the Drudge Report, Memorandum.com, Breitbart.com, Thegatewaypundit.com, Instapundit, iOwnTheWorld.com and UrbanGrounds, along with Yahoo, ABC News and Fox News, among others.

More than 500 comments — on both sides of the debate — accompanied a story on CNN.com this evening.

Hundreds of callers have complained, claiming publication of the database put their safety at risk or violated their privacy. Others claimed publication was illegal. Many of the callers were vitriolic and some threatened members of the newspaper staff.

“New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and they also have a right to access public information,” said Janet Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group.

Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Govenment and an expert in the state's Freedom of Information law, has said all government records and data are presumed public unless a specific statute bars their release. Names and addresses are specifically deemed public records, he said.

(Page 2 of 2)

This is not the first time The Journal News has been criticized for publishing information about gun permits. A similar story that ran in 2006 received similar responses, although social media did not play as large a part in the spread of the story or of the complaints.

“We knew publication of the database would be controversial but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings,” said CynDee Royle, Editor and Vice President/News.

“People are concerned about who owns guns and how many of them there are in their neighborhoods. Our Freedom of Information request also sought specifics on how many and what types of weapons people owned. That portion of the request was denied.”

Scott F. Williams, 41, of Haddon Heights, N.J., near Philadelphia, who served in the Marines as a rifleman, was one of a very few callers who agreed to identify themselves and comment on why they called.

“This is what I see,” he said. “It’s all in the context of the shootings in Newtown ... it gets us all talking about gun control. That people are at a heightened concern makes sense to me. I am a gun owner and a pro-Second-Amendment (person). I try to be rational.”

He called the newspaper’s decision to link to the database “highly Orwellian. The implications are mind-boggling,” he said. “It’s as if gun owners are sex offenders (and) to own a handgun risks exposure as if one is a sex offender. It’s, in my mind, crazy.”

Sources: http://www.lohud.com/article/20121225/NEWS02/121225002/The-Journal-News-LoHud-com-assailed-for-publishing-map-of-gun-permit-holders

Administrative Note #2:  ALL gun owners who were named should get together on-line a petition to The Journal News and the Gannet Corporate Headquarters their own demand for the NEWS organization to ACTUALLY practice what the 1^st Amendment says and that is right of Free Speech. As it is our press and media now controlled by Corporate Conglomerates who's Editorial Dictates are fraudulent based on the events of September 11, 2001 aka by The Progress for New American Century “a New Pearl Harbor”.

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains — however improbable — must be the truth!”- Doyle

Torture Superpower  CIA  Above Laws

We are Torturers and Killers above the Laws

by Tom Engelhardt and Peter Van Buren
December 18, 2012

On New Year's Eve 2003, Khaled el-Masri, an unemployed car salesman from Germany on vacation in Macedonia, was removed from a bus and kidnapped by the CIA due to a confusion of names. His evidently bore some similarity to an al-Qaeda suspect the Agency wanted to get its hands on. Five months later, after spending time under brutal conditions in an “Afghan” prison called “the Salt Pit” (run by the CIA), he was left at the side of a road in Albania. In between, his life was a catalogue of horrors, torture, and abuse.

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights finally rendered a judgment in his favor, confirming the accuracy of the story he’s told for years about his sufferings, fining the Macedonian government for its role in his case, and concluding for the first time in a court of law that “the CIA's rendition techniques amounted to torture.” El-Masri’s attempt to bring a case in the U.S. legal system against “George Tenet, the former director of the C.I.A., three private airline companies, and 20 individuals identified only as John Doe” for his mistreatment was long ago thrown out, thanks to the “state secrets privilege” -- such a trial, so the government claimed, could compromise U.S. national security. In this way, American courts, including the Supreme Court, typically avoided the subject of Bush administration and CIA torture tactics.

El-Masri was one of more than 9,000 individuals who were then being held in a globe-spanning archipelago of injustice, a series of “black sites” and borrowed prisons (as well as borrowed torturers in many cases). Some of those prisoners were, like el-Masri, innocent of any crime whatsoever; some like him had been kidnapped by the CIA; most, whether reasonable suspects or not, were charged with nothing. The crown jewel of this system was, of course, the U.S. prison built in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which the present president promised to close within a year of coming into office and which still couldn’t be more open.

If the former Soviet Union had built such an overseas gulag, run on the basis of torture and abuse, or if China did so today, there would be no question what Americans would have called it. Official Washington, along with its attendant pundits and think tanks, would have made a professional living off denouncing it as typical of what to expect of such oppressive single-party states. It would have been decried as a horror and a nightmare, an indefensible moral abomination, and a stain on humanity, no matter the information its torturers drew from the prisoners under their control.

And yet when Washington does it, the heated discussion in this country is largely about just how “effective” torture techniques are in eliciting “useful” information. Our courts generally avoid the subject and no one has been prosecuted for its horrific acts. In the meantime, a totally innocent man, whose name sounded like that of a terror suspect, was kidnapped, hooded, shackled, sodomized, flown to a prison in Afghanistan, held without recourse, beaten, tortured, slammed into walls, deprived of sleep, given inadequate food and water, endured total sensory deprivation, and then months later was released in a strange land without a helping hand of any sort. No one in the U.S. government then or since has felt compelled to offer him an explanation, or recompense for what he went through, or an apology of any sort. And with the exception of the usual suspects (like the American Civil Liberties Union), Americans seem to feel few regrets of any sort.

This, then, is what the United States became under George W. Bush and remains under Barack Obama -- the sort of country your mother brought you up to avoid. It’s shameful. Former State Department official and TomDispatch regular Peter Van Buren, who was hassled by his employer before his retirement for being an honest man and writing a tell-all book about his year on a forward operating base in Iraq, offers a look at just what kind of damage we've done to ourselves in the course of all this.

-- Tom

An All-American Nightmare: Why Zero Dark Thirty Won’t Settle the Torture Question or Purge Torture From the American System

By Peter Van Buren

If you look backward you see a nightmare. If you look forward you become the nightmare.

There’s one particular nightmare that Americans need to face: in the first decade of the twenty-first century we tortured people as national policy. One day, we’re going to have to confront the reality of what that meant, of what effect it had on its victims and on us, too, we who condoned, supported, or at least allowed it to happen, either passively or with guilty (or guiltless) gusto. If not, torture won’t go away. It can’t be disappeared like the body of a political prisoner, or conveniently deep-sixed simply by wishing it elsewhere or pretending it never happened or closing our bureaucratic eyes. After the fact, torture can only be dealt with by staring directly into the nightmare that changed us -- that, like it or not, helped make us who we now are.

The president, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has made it clear that no further investigations or inquiries will be made into America’s decade of torture. His Justice Department failed to prosecute a single torturer or any of those who helped cover up evidence of the torture practices. But it did deliver a jail sentence to one ex-CIA officer who refused to be trained to torture and was among the first at the CIA to publicly admit that the torture program was real.

At what passes for trials at our prison camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, disclosure of the details of torture is forbidden, effectively preventing anyone from learning anything about what the CIA did with its victims. We are encouraged to do what’s best for America and, as Barack Obama put it, “look forward, not backward,” with the same zeal as, after 9/11, we were encouraged to save America by going shopping.

Looking into the Eyes of the Tortured

Torture does not leave its victims, nor does it leave a nation that condones it. As an act, it is all about pain, but even more about degradation and humiliation. It destroys its victims, but also demeans those who perpetrate it. I know, because in the course of my 24 years as a State Department officer, I spoke with two men who had been tortured, both by allies of the United States and with at least the tacit approval of Washington. While these men were tortured, Americans in a position to know chose to look the other way for reasons of politics. These men were not movie characters, but complex flesh-and-blood human beings. Meet just one of them once and, I assure you, you’ll never follow the president’s guidance and move forward trying to forget.

The Korean Poet

The first victim was a Korean poet. I was in Korea at the time as a visa officer working for the State Department at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. Persons with serious criminal records are normally ineligible to travel to the United States. There is, however, an exception in the law for political crimes. It was initially carved out for Soviet dissidents during the Cold War years. I spoke to the poet as he applied for a visa to determine if his arrest had indeed been “political” and so not a disqualification for his trip to the U.S.

Under the brutal military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, the poet was tortured for writing anti-government verse. To younger Americans, South Korea is the land of “Gangnam Style,” of fashionable clothing and cool, cool electronics. However, within Psy’s lifetime, his nation was ruled by a series of military autocrats, supported by the United States in the interest of “national security.”

The poet quietly explained to me that, after his work came to the notice of the powers that be, he was taken from his apartment to a small underground cell. Soon, two men arrived and beat him repeatedly on his testicles and sodomized him with one of the tools they had used for the beating. They asked him no questions. In fact, he said, they barely spoke to him at all. Though the pain was beyond his ability to describe, even as a poet, he said that the humiliation of being left so utterly helpless was what remained with him for life, destroyed his marriage, sent him to the repeated empty comfort of alcohol, and kept him from ever putting pen to paper again.

The men who destroyed him, he told me, entered the room, did their work, and then departed, as if they had many others to visit that day and needed to get on with things. The Poet was released a few days later and politely driven back to his apartment by the police in a forward-looking gesture, as if the episode of torture was over and to be forgotten.

The Iraqi Tribal Leader

The second torture victim I met while I was stationed at a forward operating base in Iraq. He was a well-known SOI leader. The SOI, or Sons of Iraq, were Sunni tribesmen who, as part of Iraq War commander General David Petraeus’s much-discussed “Anbar Awakening” agreed to stop killing Americans and, in return for money we paid them, take up arms against al-Qaeda. That was 2007. By 2010, when I met the man, the Sons of Iraq, as Sunnis, had no friends in the Shia-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad and the U.S. was expediently allowing its Sunni friendships to fade away.

Over dessert one sticky afternoon, the SOI leader told me that he had recently been released from prison. He explained that the government had wanted him off the street in the run-up to a recent election, so that he would not use his political pull to get in the way of a Shia victory. The prison that held him was a secret one, he told me, under the control of some shadowy part of the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces.

He had been tortured by agents of the Maliki government, supported by the United States in the interest of national security. Masked men bound him at the wrists and ankles and hung him upside-down. He said that they neither asked him any questions nor demanded any information. They whipped his testicles with a leather strap, then beat the bottoms of his feet and the area around his kidneys. They slapped him. They broke the bones in his right foot with a steel rod, a piece of rebar that would ordinarily have been used to reinforce concrete.

It was painful, he told me, but he had felt pain before. What truly wounded him was the feeling of utter helplessness. A man like himself, he stated with an echo of pride, had never felt helpless. His strength was his ability to control things, to stand up to enemies, to fight, and if necessary, to order men to their deaths. Now, he no longer slept well at night, was less interested in life and its activities, and felt little pleasure. He showed me his blackened toenails, as well as the caved in portion of his foot, which still bore a rod-like indentation with faint signs of metal grooves. When he paused and looked across the room, I thought I could almost see the movie running in his head.

Alone in the Dark

I encountered those two tortured men, who described their experiences so similarly, several years and thousands of miles apart. All they really had in common was being tortured and meeting me. They could, of course, have been lying about, or exaggerating, what had happened to them. I have no way to verify their stories because in neither country were their torturers ever brought to justice. One man was tortured because he was considered a threat to South Korea, the other to Iraq. Those “threatened” governments were among the company the U.S. keeps, and they were known torturers, regularly justifying such horrific acts, as we would also do in the first years of the twenty-first century, in the name of security. In our case, actual torture techniques would reportedly be demonstrated to some of the highest officials in the land in the White House itself, then “legalized,” and carried out in global “black sites” and foreign prisons.

A widely praised new movie about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, opens with a series of torture scenes. The victims are various Muslims and al-Qaeda suspects, and the torturers are members of the U.S. government working for the CIA. We see a prisoner strapped to the wall, bloody, with his pants pulled down in front of a female CIA officer. We see another having water poured into his mouth and lungs until he wretches in agony (in what during the Middle Ages was bluntly called “the Water Torture,” later “the water cure,” or more recently “waterboarding”). We see men shoved forcibly into tiny confinement boxes that do not allow them to sit, stand, or lie down.

These are were among the techniques of torture “lawfully” laid out in a CIA Inspector General's report, some of which would have been alarmingly familiar to the tortured men I spoke with, as they might be to Bradley Manning, held isolated, naked, and without sleep in U.S. military prisons in a bid to break his spirit.

The movie scenes are brutal, yet sanitized. As difficult to watch as the images are, they show nothing beyond the infliction of pain. Horrific as it may be, pain fades, bones mend, bruises heal. No, don’t for a second think that the essence of torture is physical pain, no matter what Zero Dark Thirty implies. If, in many cases, the body heals, mental wounds are a far more difficult matter. Memory persists.

The obsessive debate in this country over the effectiveness of torture rings eternally false: torture does indeed work. After all, it’s not just about eliciting information -- sometimes, as in the case of the two men I met, it’s not about information at all. Torture is, however, invariably about shame and vengeance, humiliation, power, and control. We’re just slapping you now, but we control you and who knows what will happen next, what we’re capable of? “You lie to me, I hurt you,” says a CIA torturer in Zero Dark Thirty to his victim. The torture victim is left to imagine what form the hurt will take and just how severe it will be, almost always in the process assuming responsibility for creating his own terror. Yes, torture “works” -- to destroy people.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, accused 9/11 “mastermind,” was waterboarded 183 times. Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj spent six years in the Guantanamo Bay prison, stating, “They used dogs on us, they beat me, sometimes they hung me from the ceiling and didn’t allow me to sleep for six days.” Brandon Neely, a U.S. military policeman and former Guantanamo guard, watched a medic there beat an inmate he was supposed to treat. CIA agents tortured a German citizen, a car salesman named Khaled el-Masri, who was picked up in a case of mistaken identity, sodomizing, shackling, and beating him, holding him in total sensory deprivation, as Macedonian state police looked on, so the European Court of Human Rights found last week.

Others, such as the Court of Human Rights or the Senate Intelligence Committee, may give us glimpses into the nightmare of official American policy in the first years of this century. Still, our president refuses to look backward and fully expose the deeds of that near-decade to sunlight; he refuses to truly look forward and unambiguously renounce forever the use of anything that could be seen as an “enhanced interrogation technique.” Since he also continues to support robustly the precursors to torture -- the “extraordinary rendition” of captured terror suspects to allied countries that are perfectly happy to torture them and indefinite detention by decree -- we cannot fully understand what men like the Korean poet and the Iraqi tribal leader already know on our behalf: we are torturers and unless we awaken to confront the nightmare of what we are continuing to become, it will eventually transform and so consume us.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran Foreign Service Officer at the State Department, spent a year in Iraq. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about Iraq, the Middle East, and U.S. diplomacy at his blog, We Meant Well. Following the publication of his book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, the Department of State began termination proceedings against him. Through the efforts of the Government Accountability Project and the ACLU, he instead retired from the State Department in September 2012.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare. 

Sources: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/47162
image: file

‘Bug-Splats’

Some dead children are mourned; others are dehumanised.

By George Monbiot,
published in the Guardian 17th December 2012

“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.”(1) Every parent can connect with what Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town.

It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world’s concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them; no pictures on the front pages of the world’s newspapers; no interviews with grieving relatives; no minute analysis of what happened and why.

If the victims of Mr Obama’s drone strikes are mentioned by the state at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports, describe their casualties as “bug splats”, “since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.”(2) Or they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”(3)

Like Bush’s government in Iraq, Barack Obama’s administration neither documents nor acknowledges the civilian casualties of the CIA’s drone strikes in north-west Pakistan. But a report by the law schools at Stanford and New York universities suggests that during the first three years of his time in office, the 259 strikes for which he is ultimately responsible killed between 297 and 569 civilians, of whom 64 were children(4). These are figures extracted from credible reports: there may be more which have not been fully documented.

The wider effects on the children of the region have been devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several strikes on schools since George W Bush launched the drone programme that Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush’s blunders killed 69 children(5).

The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had: their dreams as well as their bodies have been broken(6).

Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don’t know what emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA’s extrajudicial killings in Pakistan is kept secret. But you get the impression that no one in the administration is losing much sleep over it.

Two days before the murders in Newtown, Obama’s press secretary was asked about women and children being killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan. He refused to answer, on the grounds that such matters are “classified”(7). Instead, he directed the journalist to a speech by John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism assistant. Brennan insists that “al-Qaida’s killing of innocents, mostly Muslim men, women and children, has badly tarnished its appeal and image in the eyes of Muslims”(8). He appears unable to see that the drone war has done the same for the United States. To Brennan the people of north-west Pakistan are neither insects nor grass: his targets are a “cancerous tumour”, the rest of society “the tissue around it”. Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than a human being.

Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little “collateral damage”, but the US takes “extraordinary care [to] ensure precision and avoid the loss of innocent life.” It will act only if there’s “an actual ongoing threat” to American lives(9). This is cock and bull with bells on.

The “signature strike” doctrine developed under Obama, which has no discernable basis in law, merely looks for patterns(10). A pattern could consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west Pakistan), or a group of unknown people who look as if they might be plotting something. This is how wedding and funeral parties get wiped out; this is why 40 elders discussing royalties from a chromite mine were blown up in March last year(11). It is one of the reasons why children continue to be killed.

Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a videoconference last January(12). The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that “the bottom line in the end is whose 4 year-old get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4 year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”(13) As the estimable Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing 4 year-olds is what terrorists do(14). It doesn’t prevent retaliatory murders; it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices.

Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama’s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are “militants”. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.

“Are we,” Obama asked on Sunday, “prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”(15) It’s a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan.

www.monbiot.com
 
References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/17/obama-speech-newtown-school-shooting
 
2. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rise-of-the-killer-drones-how-america-goes-to-war-in-secret-20120416
 
3. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-23/world/35500278_1_drone-campaign-obama-administration-matrix
 
4. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012. Living Under
 Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.

http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stanford-NYU-LIVING-UNDER-DRONES.pdf
 
5. eg http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=4043&Cat=13&dt=11/5/2006
 
6. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.

7. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/12/12/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-12122012
 
8. John Brennan, 30th April 2012. The Ethics and Efficacy of the President’s Counterterrorism Strategy. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy

9. John Brennan, as above.

10. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.
 
11. http://dawn.com/2011/03/18/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-killed-in-drone-attack/
 
12. http://dawn.com/2011/03/18/rare-condemnation-by-pm-army-chief-40-killed-in-drone-attack/
 
13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe
 
14. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe
 
15. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/17/obama-speech-newtown-school-shooting

Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/us-killings-tragedies-pakistan-bug-splats
 http://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/17/%e2%80%98bug-splats%e2%80%99/
images: file

Administrative Note: People carry assult weapons because they do NOT trust the United States Government.  When Obama can answer the Who, What, When, Where, Why and especially HOW the following happened ... in flat fact brutal truth honesty ... we will ALL know that 911 had NOTHING to do with Afghanistan, Pakistan, nor Iraq but a pipline by UNICAL, a NYC urban renewal project that was DENIED asbestos abatement from the Clinton EPA and finally a greedy Military Industrial Complex that "lost" $2.1 TRILLION dollars in fiscal year 1999 alone. 

These are the FLAT FACT BRTUAL TRUTHS of 911.

please help wake people up - retweet the above - Thank You

Feinstein Amendment Doubles Down on NDAA

 
By Naomi Wolf, Guardian UK
Posted 06 December 2012

While US government lawyers persist in defending the menacing Section 1021 in court, a Senate initiative makes matters worse

s I reported here, last spring a group of journalists and activists including Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Tangerine Bolen, led by counsel Bruce Afran and others, sued President Obama to halt the implementation of Section 1021 in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would have allowed for the indefinite detention of Americans without charge or trial. The vague definition of who could be detained included individuals who were seen to provide "substantial support" to al-Qaida's "associated forces" - wording that provided no protection for journalists interviewing, for example, detainees in Guantánamo, or activists and advocates working with prisoners on their cases.

I was present in Judge Katharine Forrest's New York courtroom when she repeatedly asked Obama's lawyers if they could assure her that Section 1021 could not be used to detain people engaged in journalism or peaceful protest. The government's lawyers repeatedly refused to give her those assurances, or assurances that US citizens were not already being detained under the NDAA. Forrest ultimately blocked the implementation of the act.

But the US government appealed the ruling. In October, a court agreed to stay the implementation of Forrest's injunction and hear the appeal. Afran has read the government's new brief for the case, and pointed out that the lawyers now argue that the NDAA won't be used to militarily detain individuals considered "independent journalists" or "independent" public advocates without charges or trial.

Who is considered an "independent journalist"? Afran noted, for example, that journalists associated with an outlet - like Bob Woodward - would not be considered "independent journalists", but self-employed or unemployed journalists are (though, in journalism, contracts and associations are much more complicated than that). He also added that almost all advocates are not "independent", as they are part of a movement or group with a philosophy. So, in the government's brief, the lawyers have gone even further than they did before in corralling new types of individuals who can legally be detained indefinitely without a civil trial.

To make matters worse, a recent development sees the threat of the NDAA on US citizens increasing. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein recently introduced an amendment to the 2013 NDAA, which, at first, seems to protect Americans' due process - but, on closer examination, can be easily misinterpreted. Afran said that the Feinstein amendment "puts a gloss" on a very dangerous situation,

"First of all, the Feinstein amendment does not say that people in the US can't be put into military custody. It simply says they can't be taken into indefinite military custody without 'trial'. If they are taken into military custody, they have to be given a trial of some sort - but not due process in a civil court. The [kind of] trial this refers to would be ... military tribunals. So the Feinstein amendment does virtually nothing for American citizens or people in the United States in terms of protection."

The original law at least left the issue of military detention somewhat ambiguous, but this amendment actually makes matters worse by explicitly allowing the military to take Americans into custody. The measure infringes on Americans' constitutional rights, asserts Afran, who explained that, since 1861, the US supreme court has written in at least four decisions that "people living in the US - citizens or not - cannot be taken into military custody and denied a trial in civil courts." Unforunately, should the NDAA go through, this becomes the law of the land:

"Our system says a law is in force unless a court says otherwise. The president is considering vetoing the bill. We don't know if it will be passed by the House, then signed by the president. If it is, we may have to go back to the trial court."

As for the amendment, major media - like the Huffington Post - are taking Feinstein's amendment at face value as a measure of preventing Americans from being indefinitely detained by the military. Even Michael McAuliff's HuffPo piece ran with an erroneous headline that read "Indefinite Detention: Senate Votes Down Military Imprisonment of Americans". The few other journalists who have actually been following this story closely agree with the activists, and the American Civil Liberties Union has also chimed in, saying that the amendment actually makes indefinite detention more likely.

Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense agrees with critics of the Feinstein amendment. He also makes the point that it would legally open the door for domestic military deployment in America:

"While the Feinstein amendment may appear helpful by restoring due process for US citizens, it unfortunately creates a host of problems: it reinforced the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Afghanistan as a basis for domestic military detention; offered protections only to the people least likely to face domestic military detention; invited domestic military deployment in violation of posse comitatus; and endorses a regime of unequal rights for immigrants that could destabilize other rights over time."

Many questions press on this issue: why are there repeated efforts by Congress to affirm the power of military detention of Americans? Why are Obama's lawyers drafting language that yet more broadly targets journalists and activists who might be subjected to military detention?

And, just as importantly, why is this appalling and historic set of developments not front-page news in every newspaper in the land?

Sources: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/14886-feinstein-amendment-doubles-down-on-ndaa
image: Wolf writes: "While US government lawyers persist in defending the menacing Section 1021 in court, a Senate initiative makes matters worse." (photo: Guardian UK)

Administrative Note:

Maniacal Mind Media Minionization of Mangled Mush

The reason for where we ARE in this moment and how the “Government” that while saying it wants to be small, is in actual flat fact reality not only so expensive but invasive to an inhuman level of indignity; is because of where we WERE on September 11, 2001 and how we were lied to by the “Government” once more on a National level about “Government” law breaking. Then the “media” began following orders and began broadcasting the current “myth” that Osama Bib-Laden, a lone man; who was a CIA operative all his adult life, who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and his House of Saudi family who was and still is currently a large part of the Bush and Cheney family holdings in the Carlyle Group; was the “evil doer” who was responsible for ALL that happened that day. The media did this WITHOUT ... I repeat … without a SINGLE piece of flat fact evidence that it was actually true. Even today, more than a decade later, the FBI does NOT say it has ANY real evidence Bin-Laden had ANY ties to 911.  

Nor has ALL the questions of 911 have been answered by the “Official Conspiracy”. How we got here is MORE important than just blindly going forward. It IS in our collective National Security Interest NOT to let a proven lie stand as an "official record" of that terrible day written and engineered by Philip D. Zelikow, Executive Director/Chair. Like the warning we now KNOW the White House had before the earlier Pearl Harbor of WWII. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident as a False Flag ops to get the Vietnam War going. Actual PROOF of a "Secret Goverment". We can't wait, and do not NEED to wait, to discover the Brutal Truth of "...a new Pearl Harbor" September 11, 2001 and the Progress for New American Century members. This 10th anniversary has NOT given us the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How questions of that day. Even at the end it was admitted all flat facts were not revealed, or even presented. yet, we went ahead as the propaganda machine started 2 wars without answering or discussing why WTC 7 fell why WTC 3 , 4, 5 (22 floors hotel) and 6 did not also fall despite being MORE damaged with bigger fires remained standing after the two towers EXPLOSIVELY demolished came down atop them. Deceptions http://ow.ly/6mbmv must stop at the highest and lowest level. Every person has a reason to know the story of the Science and Physics of the WTC 911 blueprint for truth http://ow.ly/6qSMD Reality MUST be Truthful to be Useful.

One NEADS to read this extraordinary and concise review of The Writ of Habeas Corpus. Because the “Law of the Land” aka “The Government(s)” have morphed into a convulsive invasive giant Squid with a need to hide what it does. And what it wants is a controlled population that is a slight edge above a slave.  

http://www.habeascorpus.net/hcwrit.html

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice. - Benjamin Franklin 

News media “stars” who are supposed to be REPORTING flat fact brutal truths that happen throughout the world to us; the “mush” sitting on the couch watching, listening and absorbing into the spaces behind our eyeballs and connecting to the ears with meshes of neurons across synapses; held together in a flowing electric energetic plasma and mater human being; are not doing your job properly, nor honestly.  

When we are born we humans do a variety of behaviors that vary between individuals, but also; in a general sense, all act in limited number of observable ways. We cannot KNOW what an infant who reaches consciousness of reality beyond his birthing chamber and takes his first BREATH of fresh air, his eyes SEE a new world around them, they SMELL for the FIRST time in their consciousness. A fetus's nose and sense of smell are not fully operational until AIR is inserted instead of fluid. It is then we start to process into our senses and synapses between the neurons start to record, learn, become curious, flooding a naive unprotected mind that is waiting and yearning to be filled with pleasant mush.

From babies who come crying and screaming into a new world upon leaving the calm, peaceful, fairly unchanging “existence” the mind of the fetus had within the womb; to babies that slip out of the Growing Chamber of Miracles and Mystery with smiles and giggles on their faces; some come out just plain dumbfounded; it is a VAST VAST difference upon the mind, the definition of consciousness and “soul”. That comes when ALL your senses become operational and you can sense the difference between what had been before when your mind was numbed and the new harsh reality of the new neurons that were firing in live reality based flat* fact brutal truth world .... only you don't know it yet. You may never realize it, and miss the honest reality around you. All of them. Each living story is unique and has meaning in the greater good of Human Kind.

*(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence I have been using the term “flat fact” rather than simply fact after watching the movie A.I. where the Robot named David is on a quest. In the movie he is helped by another robot, Gigolo Joe, who goes to Dr. Know. Here the world between fantasy and fact are combined in a unique way that its solution is solved by David by asking a new category question based on “flat facts”. It is THEN at that point the Human engineers designed that point of “human consciousness” and directed David to search the place beyond where the “Lions Weep”. Having grasped the difference between fantasy and reality by using “flat facts”. The SAME processes occur here in OUR reality, only too often humans are mindless mush that are capable of being deluded by fantasy marketed as facts my the overwhelming media input which is based on nefarious reasons.)

Which amazes me is that educated, religious, wealthy, political, and patriotic people can pass flat fact brutal truths off the “cliff” of honesty, integrity, constitutional rights, freedom of press to criticize and question, none of that comes with VIGOR and CONTINUING pursuit of flat fact brutal truths.

The media minions reading teleprompters, or just spitting out vile like Rush Limbaugh in a live media mush of mesh mashing meaning into masticating muscle of mindlessness have absolutely NO concern for their fellow humans. In flat fact, nearly ALL media minions do NOT have the concern for the weakest of humans in mind when they do their job. What they do, is what they are told to do, period.

Note: The fine print of this image reads:

A Message from The Ministry Of Homeland Security

The Greedy Obtuse Pirates (GOP) who planned that event are the same brick wall in Washington against Gun Control Laws and their War on Women. They have become a disease within Democracy itself with actions of blind obtuse behavior bumbling baby bombs while real babies are dying for their lack of action on the one hand, and their criminal, corrupt, corpwhorational control complex on the other.

And this War on Women ??? !!! Like what gives with the European While Male Christian Evangelican Mental Mindset that in itself a Mindless Mastication of Magical Myths. “Woman have hormones that naturally shut down Pregnancy when raped.” See: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/why-does-todd-akin-think-rape-victims-dont-get-pregnant/ 
 

Only THREE of SEVEN buildings of the World Trade center complex on Sept 11, 2001. There is a 1hour and 19.5 min long documentary called “Hagiography 101 – A time For Politics”.  Hagiography 101 Lesson 1 Time of Politics http://lnk.ms/J6bvF #Hagiography #Lesson #Time #Politics #wtc #false #flag #dod #cheney #bush #911

As for the World Trade Center after watching Hagiography 101 , try reading and researching thngs. Paradigm Research Group Unnecessary Preventable Oil Leak UFO Energy http://ow.ly/1TRVc #Oil #Leak #UFO #Energy #PRG #image #DC #bird #eti

Its time men stood WITH WOMEN across aisles, tables and public forums against making the US a Right-Wing Christian Theology just as self-serving and hypocritical as America's Constitution.  There is NO actual right to vote, we ALL do not get benefit of consideration of rights we had since John Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA in same 'games' governments play to keep the 3 rules of washington in play and power;

Global Power, Global Reach and Global Interventionalism.

Republican Eisenhower built it and told us about what he had done and hope what the future would NOT turn out to be...but alas The power remains with them, not with the people.  This will remain until at least 75% of eligible Americans do their civic DUTY to VOTE !!!  Signing petittions on-line is a nice feeling that last as long as any politicial masturbation exercise will give you...then it is back to flat fact brutal truth reality.  We the People are NEVER given"credit" on the Owner Equity side of Assets = Liabilities + Owner Equity.  Can Ezra Kline's idea put the "We the People" BACK into quite a few board seats at corpwhorations across the planet.  Check out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/can-a-giant-platinum-coin-save-our-credit/2011/07/11/gIQA2VAPjI_blog.html  but then the more updated version:

http://pragcap.com/theres-that-trillion-dollar-coin-again

And now my take about Republican War on Women and Showing the Greedy Obtuse Pirates how out of touch they really are.

How NASA might build its very first warp drive

by George Dvorsky
Nov 26, 2012

A few months ago, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity. We contacted White at NASA and asked him to explain how this real life warp drive could actually work.

The above image of a Vulcan command ship features a warp engine similar to an Alcubierre Drive. Image courtesy CBS.

The Alcubierre Drive

The idea came to White while he was considering a rather remarkable equation formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. In his 1994 paper titled, "The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity," Alcubierre suggested a mechanism by which space-time could be "warped" both in front of and behind a spacecraft.

Michio Kaku dubbed Alcubierre's notion a "passport to the universe." It takes advantage of a quirk in the cosmological code that allows for the expansion and contraction of

space-time, and could allow for hyper-fast travel between interstellar destinations. Essentially, the empty space behind a starship would be made to expand rapidly, pushing the craft in a forward direction — passengers would perceive it as movement despite the complete lack of acceleration.

White speculates that such a drive could result in "speeds" that could take a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in a mere two weeks — even though the system is 4.3 light-years away.

In terms of the engine's mechanics, a spheroid object would be placed between two regions of space-time (one expanding and one contracting). A "warp bubble" would then be generated that moves space-time around the object, effectively repositioning it — the end result being faster-than-light travel without the spheroid (or spacecraft) having to move with respect to its local frame of reference.

"Remember, nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract at any speed," White told io9. "However, space-time is really stiff, so to create the expansion and contraction effect in a useful manner in order for us to reach interstellar destinations in reasonable time periods would require a lot of energy."

And indeed, early assessments published in the ensuing scientific literature suggested horrific amounts of energy — basically equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter (what is 1.9 × 10²⁷ kilograms or 317 Earth masses). As a result, the idea was brushed aside as being far too impractical. Even though nature allowed for a warp drive, it looked like we would never be able to build one ourselves.

"However," said White, "based on the analysis I did the last 18 months, there may be hope." The key, says White, may be in altering the geometry of the warp drive itself.

A new design

In October of last year, White was preparing for a talk he was to give for the kickoff to the 100 Year Starship project in Orlando, Florida. As he was pulling together his overview on space warp, he performed a sensitivity analysis for the field equations, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"My early results suggested I had discovered something that was in the math all along," he recalled. "I suddenly realized that if you made the thickness of the negative vacuum energy ring larger — like shifting from a belt shape to a donut shape — and oscillate the warp bubble, you can greatly reduce the energy required — perhaps making the idea plausible." White had adjusted the shape of Alcubierre's ring which surrounded the spheroid from something that was a flat halo to something that was thicker and curvier.

He presented the results of his Alcubierre Drive rethink a year later at the 100 Year Starship conference in Atlanta where he highlighted his new optimization approaches — a new design that could significantly reduce the amount of exotic matter required. And in fact, White says that the warp drive could be powered by a mass that's even less than that of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

That's a significant change in calculations to say the least. The reduction in mass from a Jupiter-sized planet to an object that weighs a mere 1,600 pounds has completely reset White's sense of plausibility — and NASA's.

Hitting the lab

Theoretical plausibility is all fine and well, of course. What White needs now is a real-world proof-of-concept. So he's hit the lab and begun work on actual experiments.

"We're utilizing a modified Michelson-Morley interferometer — that allows us to measure microscopic perturbations in space time," he said. "In our case, we're attempting to make one of the legs of the interferometer appear to be a different length when we energize our test devices." White and his colleagues are trying to simulate the tweaked Alcubierre drive in miniature by using lasers to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million.

Of course, the interferometer isn't something that NASA would bolt onto a spaceship. Rather, it's part of a larger scientific pursuit.

"Our initial test device is implementing a ring of large potential energy — what we observe as blue shifted relative to the lab frame — by utilizing a ring of ceramic capacitors that are charged to tens of thousands of volts," he told us. "We will increase the fidelity of our test devices and continue to enhance the sensitivity of the warp field interferometer — eventually using devices to directly generate negative vacuum energy."

He points out that Casimir cavities, physical forces that arise from a quantized field, may represent a viable approach.

And it's through these experiments, hopes White, that NASA can go from the theoretical to the practical.

Waiting for that "Chicago Pile" moment

Given just how fantastic this all appears, we asked White if he truly thinks a warp-generating spacecraft might someday be constructed.

"Mathematically, the field equations predict that this is possible, but it remains to be seen if we could ever reduce this to practice."

What White is waiting for is existence of proof — what he's calling a "Chicago Pile" moment — a reference to a great practical example.

"In late 1942, humanity activated the first nuclear reactor in Chicago generating a whopping half Watt — not enough to power a light bulb," he said. "However, just under one year later, we activated a ~4MW reactor which is enough to power a small town. Existence proof is important."

His cautious approach notwithstanding, White did admit that a real-world warp drive could create some fascinating possibilities for space travel — and would certainly reset our sense of the vastness of the cosmos.

"This loophole in general relativity would allow us to go places really fast as measured by both Earth observers, and observers on the ship — trips measured in weeks or months as opposed to decades and centuries," he said.

But for now, pursuit of this idea is very much in science mode. "I'm not ready to discuss much beyond the math and very controlled modest approaches in the lab," he said.

Which makes complete sense to us, as well. But thanks to these preliminary efforts, White has already done much to instill a renewed sense of hope and excitement over the possibilities. Faster-than-light travel may await us yet.

Top image: CBS Studios Inc. Spearpoint, zamandayolculuk.com, Harold White, Flickriver.

Sources: http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive