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Security incident aboard AirTran Flight 297 suggests terror “Dry Run”
Planned and choreographed” incident similar to USAir Flight 300
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17508
By Doug Hagmann Thursday, December 3, 2009
On November 17, an incident took place aboard AirTran Flight 297 scheduled to fly from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport to Houston that the media does not want to cover and everyone from the airline to the TSA and other government agencies want to keep very quiet.
The reasons, I have been told, is fear of predatory lawsuits, negative publicity from accusations of religious profiling, and the obligatory subjugation to mindless mandatory Muslim sensitivity training that make a mockery of our American system of values. Interestingly, one airline official told me “we don’t want to become another flight 300,” which is a reference to a very similar scenario that took place aboard US Airways Flight 300 exactly three years ago.
I was first contacted about this incident two days after it happened by a passenger who was aboard AirTran Flight 297. Based on the allegations made by this passenger, we conducted additional research, interviews and investigation, all of which takes time to insure accuracy, and are now able to release our report of the incident that took place aboard that aircraft. Be prepared to be shocked, angered, and perhaps saddened by our national and corporate acquiescence to mafia-type tactics by Islamists who are engaged in a full frontal assault, and laughing about it.
Unsurprisingly, the facts we developed during the course of our investigation are inconsistent with those being reported in the media, despite the media having the responsibility to report the truth.
The incident
A group of thirteen men dressed in traditional Muslim attire were among 73 passengers who boarded AirTran Flight 297 on Tuesday, 17 November 2009, a routine flight scheduled to depart Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, gate C-16 at 4:43 PM ET to Houston Hobby Airport. Reports developed by this investigator found two witnesses who observed direct interaction among all of these Muslim men at the terminal.
As the passengers boarded the aircraft, two of the Muslim men took seats in first class, while the remaining eleven were seated throughout the remaining rows of the aircraft. Most had carrying-on bags that they stowed in the overhead compartments above their seats.
As the aircraft began to taxi to the runway, a female flight attendant was beginning to issue the normal passenger advisories over the PA system. Almost on cue at the time passengers were told to turn off all electronic devices, one of the Muslim men seated in the front of the plane began to use his cell phone in a manner that was described by a flight attendant and passenger “as deliberate and obvious.” He was talking loudly in Arabic, nearly at the level of the flight attendant. Some reports suggest that this man actually called another Muslim passenger, although this has not been immediately confirmed. It is possible, however, as another passenger reported that a Muslim man seated toward the rear of the plane answered his cellular phone at the same time the man in the front began using his.
At this point, the flight attendant in the front of the plane approached the Muslim man using his telephone and instructed him to immediately turn it off. A second female flight attendant did the same at the rear of the aircraft. Concurrent with this cellular activity, two other Muslim men seated adjacent near the middle of the aircraft began operating what one passenger described as a palm type camcorder, ostensibly to view previously taken footage. It is possible, according to one flight attendant interviewed by this investigator, however, that the camcorder was being used for recording purposes. Whatever its use, a third flight attendant, aware of the incidents taking place in the front and rear of the aircraft, approached the two men for the purpose of securing the camcorder. At least two passengers reported that the men became abusive to the flight attendant and initially refused to comply with her request.
It was at this time that most of the passengers began to notice the multiple incidents involving over a dozen men dressed in Islamic attire. Next, as if previously rehearsed, at least ten of the 13 Muslim men aboard the aircraft began to leave their seats at the same time. At least one passenger stated she observed one of the Muslim passengers using his cell phone to take photos of other passengers on the aircraft, while one other Muslim passenger sang loudly in Arabic. According to information provided to this investigator from one of the flight crew who was alerted to an onboard emergency, the aircraft was now being taxied back to the terminal. The TSA, FAA and FBI were notified.
At the terminal
Once back at the terminal, the thirteen men were escorted from the aircraft by TSA and security officials. According to a report from an airline security official, their baggage was also removed and searched, the search finding nothing of apparent danger. According to a law enforcement official interviewed by telephone by this investigator on Monday, investigation revealed that all of the Muslim passengers are acquainted with each other and are associated with (or have ties to) a large Islamic center that has been the subject of investigative interest.
According to one aircraft passenger I interviewed, what happened next was “unbelievable” and caused a great deal of upset among the aircraft passengers and flight crew (some who opted off the flight in anger, fear, or admittedly, a mixture of both emotions).
After a lengthy delay while officials dealt with these Muslim passengers, ten (one uncorroborated report suggests 11) of the Muslim passengers were permitted to re-board the same aircraft to complete their flight. Some passengers and flight crew, traumatized by the blatant actions of the Muslim passengers, refused to travel with the Muslims who caused this orchestrated disturbance.
The flight continues
According to flight logs and information from one of the flight crew who continued with the flight, AirTran 297 ultimately departed Atlanta and arrived in Houston later that evening. The flight, however, was not without its curious incidents by the very same Muslim men who caused the initial delay and disturbance.
During the flight, one passenger interviewed by this investigator described the behavior of two of the Muslim passengers as less overt but still suspicious in nature. Without apparent legitimate purpose, one Muslim passenger moved a stowed bag from one part of the aircraft to another, well away from his seated position. Another spoke loudly in Arabic, with all appearing to interact in one form or another.
Ultimately, the flight landed safely and despite the early incidents in Atlanta, the Muslim passengers appeared able to leave freely from the terminal.
Comments from flight crew and airline personnel
As initially stated, proper and accurate investigation takes time to corroborate eyewitness accounts, which are often unreliable, contradictive and in cases like this, colored by emotion. Having interviewed a total of seven-(7) individuals directly involved in this incident over the last several days, including two law enforcement officers who handled the after action reports, the situation pertaining to the initial 13 and remaining 10 or 11 Muslim men allowed to continue their travels was far greater than an incident involving the unauthorized use of a cell phone that resulted in a minor flight delay, as reported by the mainstream media.
According to one airline security official, “This was a deliberate, well planned attempt to disrupt a domestic flight that was organized in advance of the boarding of these [Muslim] passengers. The purpose of their actions appeared to be multi-faceted, not the least of which was an attempt to change their status from passengers to victims of religious profiling. The situation was handled in a manner that we believe might have avoided an incident like USAir had in 2006, where everyone from the passengers who reported suspicious behavior to the airline was subjected to legal action by the Muslim passengers.”
While litigation might have been avoided, passengers and flight crew remain traumatized, and our air travel system was unnecessarily disrupted during one of the busiest air travel weeks in the U.S. The agenda of the Islamists behind this incident is clear, yet no one in the media seems to have the desire to expose these ideological cretins for what they are.
Additional information about this incident is forthcoming.
Security incident aboard AirTran Flight 297 suggests terror “Dry Run”
Planned and choreographed” incident similar to USAir Flight 300
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17508
By Doug Hagmann Thursday, December 3, 2009
On November 17, an incident took place aboard AirTran Flight 297 scheduled to fly from Atlanta Hartsfield Airport to Houston that the media does not want to cover and everyone from the airline to the TSA and other government agencies want to keep very quiet.
The reasons, I have been told, is fear of predatory lawsuits, negative publicity from accusations of religious profiling, and the obligatory subjugation to mindless mandatory Muslim sensitivity training that make a mockery of our American system of values. Interestingly, one airline official told me “we don’t want to become another flight 300,” which is a reference to a very similar scenario that took place aboard US Airways Flight 300 exactly three years ago.
I was first contacted about this incident two days after it happened by a passenger who was aboard AirTran Flight 297. Based on the allegations made by this passenger, we conducted additional research, interviews and investigation, all of which takes time to insure accuracy, and are now able to release our report of the incident that took place aboard that aircraft. Be prepared to be shocked, angered, and perhaps saddened by our national and corporate acquiescence to mafia-type tactics by Islamists who are engaged in a full frontal assault, and laughing about it.
Unsurprisingly, the facts we developed during the course of our investigation are inconsistent with those being reported in the media, despite the media having the responsibility to report the truth.
The incident
A group of thirteen men dressed in traditional Muslim attire were among 73 passengers who boarded AirTran Flight 297 on Tuesday, 17 November 2009, a routine flight scheduled to depart Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, gate C-16 at 4:43 PM ET to Houston Hobby Airport. Reports developed by this investigator found two witnesses who observed direct interaction among all of these Muslim men at the terminal.
As the passengers boarded the aircraft, two of the Muslim men took seats in first class, while the remaining eleven were seated throughout the remaining rows of the aircraft. Most had carrying-on bags that they stowed in the overhead compartments above their seats.
As the aircraft began to taxi to the runway, a female flight attendant was beginning to issue the normal passenger advisories over the PA system. Almost on cue at the time passengers were told to turn off all electronic devices, one of the Muslim men seated in the front of the plane began to use his cell phone in a manner that was described by a flight attendant and passenger “as deliberate and obvious.” He was talking loudly in Arabic, nearly at the level of the flight attendant. Some reports suggest that this man actually called another Muslim passenger, although this has not been immediately confirmed. It is possible, however, as another passenger reported that a Muslim man seated toward the rear of the plane answered his cellular phone at the same time the man in the front began using his.
At this point, the flight attendant in the front of the plane approached the Muslim man using his telephone and instructed him to immediately turn it off. A second female flight attendant did the same at the rear of the aircraft. Concurrent with this cellular activity, two other Muslim men seated adjacent near the middle of the aircraft began operating what one passenger described as a palm type camcorder, ostensibly to view previously taken footage. It is possible, according to one flight attendant interviewed by this investigator, however, that the camcorder was being used for recording purposes. Whatever its use, a third flight attendant, aware of the incidents taking place in the front and rear of the aircraft, approached the two men for the purpose of securing the camcorder. At least two passengers reported that the men became abusive to the flight attendant and initially refused to comply with her request.
It was at this time that most of the passengers began to notice the multiple incidents involving over a dozen men dressed in Islamic attire. Next, as if previously rehearsed, at least ten of the 13 Muslim men aboard the aircraft began to leave their seats at the same time. At least one passenger stated she observed one of the Muslim passengers using his cell phone to take photos of other passengers on the aircraft, while one other Muslim passenger sang loudly in Arabic. According to information provided to this investigator from one of the flight crew who was alerted to an onboard emergency, the aircraft was now being taxied back to the terminal. The TSA, FAA and FBI were notified.
At the terminal
Once back at the terminal, the thirteen men were escorted from the aircraft by TSA and security officials. According to a report from an airline security official, their baggage was also removed and searched, the search finding nothing of apparent danger. According to a law enforcement official interviewed by telephone by this investigator on Monday, investigation revealed that all of the Muslim passengers are acquainted with each other and are associated with (or have ties to) a large Islamic center that has been the subject of investigative interest.
According to one aircraft passenger I interviewed, what happened next was “unbelievable” and caused a great deal of upset among the aircraft passengers and flight crew (some who opted off the flight in anger, fear, or admittedly, a mixture of both emotions).
After a lengthy delay while officials dealt with these Muslim passengers, ten (one uncorroborated report suggests 11) of the Muslim passengers were permitted to re-board the same aircraft to complete their flight. Some passengers and flight crew, traumatized by the blatant actions of the Muslim passengers, refused to travel with the Muslims who caused this orchestrated disturbance.
The flight continues
According to flight logs and information from one of the flight crew who continued with the flight, AirTran 297 ultimately departed Atlanta and arrived in Houston later that evening. The flight, however, was not without its curious incidents by the very same Muslim men who caused the initial delay and disturbance.
During the flight, one passenger interviewed by this investigator described the behavior of two of the Muslim passengers as less overt but still suspicious in nature. Without apparent legitimate purpose, one Muslim passenger moved a stowed bag from one part of the aircraft to another, well away from his seated position. Another spoke loudly in Arabic, with all appearing to interact in one form or another.
Ultimately, the flight landed safely and despite the early incidents in Atlanta, the Muslim passengers appeared able to leave freely from the terminal.
Comments from flight crew and airline personnel
As initially stated, proper and accurate investigation takes time to corroborate eyewitness accounts, which are often unreliable, contradictive and in cases like this, colored by emotion. Having interviewed a total of seven-(7) individuals directly involved in this incident over the last several days, including two law enforcement officers who handled the after action reports, the situation pertaining to the initial 13 and remaining 10 or 11 Muslim men allowed to continue their travels was far greater than an incident involving the unauthorized use of a cell phone that resulted in a minor flight delay, as reported by the mainstream media.
According to one airline security official, “This was a deliberate, well planned attempt to disrupt a domestic flight that was organized in advance of the boarding of these [Muslim] passengers. The purpose of their actions appeared to be multi-faceted, not the least of which was an attempt to change their status from passengers to victims of religious profiling. The situation was handled in a manner that we believe might have avoided an incident like USAir had in 2006, where everyone from the passengers who reported suspicious behavior to the airline was subjected to legal action by the Muslim passengers.”
While litigation might have been avoided, passengers and flight crew remain traumatized, and our air travel system was unnecessarily disrupted during one of the busiest air travel weeks in the U.S. The agenda of the Islamists behind this incident is clear, yet no one in the media seems to have the desire to expose these ideological cretins for what they are.
Additional information about this incident is forthcoming.
Ron Paul: Every man for himself!
It's taken a while, but America is warming to Ron Paul and his radical brand of extreme libertarianism
By Stephen Foley
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Ron Paul on the campaign trail in last year's race for the Republican party's presidential nomination
enlarge sponsored links:
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Secret War On The Dollar
Read the Shocking Bulletin ThatWashington Does Not Want You To See
www.UncommonWisdomDaily.com
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www.WorldCurrencyWatch.com/dollar
Pull US troops out of Afghanistan. Leave Iran alone. Legalise drugs. Get the government out of people's private lives. Say no to the bailout of Wall Street fat cats. As a menu of policy prescriptions, you might think that this all puts Ron Paul on the Soviet wing of the Democratic party. But you'd be wrong.
The 74-year-old Congressman from Texas, with his skinny frame and his hangdog face, is about as unlikely a poster child for the future of the Republican party as you are likely to find, but his ideas have struck chords with libertarian-minded college kids. Dismissed last year as the token nutjob in the line-up of Republican presidential candidates, his insurgent campaign proved surprisingly tenacious. Young people at music festivals wore "Dr Paul cured my apathy" badges, he spawned an internet fund-raising movement that had echoes of Barack Obama from the other side, and to this day he has a stronger YouTube presence than any other Republican politician.
To the extent that Paul is known outside the US, it is as the poor guy propositioned in a hotel room by a trouser-less Sacha Baron Cohen, in his movie Brüno. Paul flees, shouting: "he's queer, he's crazy, he hit on me".
Related articles
After five million words, the end of the road for Cormac's typewriter
Search the news archive for more stories
But in the US, his books now become instant best-sellers and he tours university campuses pushing a libertarian agenda. Where once he believed he was seeding the ground for a movement that would triumph well after his own career is over, to his own astonishment, policies he has espoused to almost universal ridicule for decades might just be about to go into law.
And this is why the economic and political establishment fears Ron Paul as one of the most dangerous men in America. His innocuous-sounding plan to subject the US central bank to a regular audit of its activities is a Trojan horse for the wider aim to End the Fed – the title of his latest book. Behind the liberal-sounding policies lies an audacious agenda to erase 100 years of economic orthodoxy and take the US back to a Nineteenth-century version of every-man-for-himself capitalism. Inch by inch, he is making progress.
"The college kids I think are interested in the anti-war position, in personal civil liberties and allowing them to do with their own lives what they want – but I tell them, if you ruin your own life don't come begging the government to take care of you."
Paul greets The Independent at his rooms in Congress, decked out in the formal regalia of public office, with flags and seals, but with portraits in one corner that reveal his inspirations: members of the Austrian school of economists whose founder Friedrich von Hayek predicted government attempts to intervene in the economy would set their people on "the road to serfdom".
"Ideas are the only things that count, and politicians are, for the most part, pretty much irrelevant," he says. "What was boiling out there I just brought to life. This material has been available in a quiet way on the internet and from a few libertarian think-tanks, but I was pretty shocked when college kids started calling out 'End the Fed, End the Fed.'"
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Paul was fascinated by the jar of coins that his parents kept on the kitchen shelf. He became a stamp and coin collector – still is – and he is fascinated by what gives money value. He's got a proportion of his savings in gold. Currencies come and currencies go, he says, but when people wanted to escape Vietnam during the war, they paid with gold coins at the border. "Most people think gold is beautiful, that's why it's money. It's because it's beautiful and rare and divisible and it lasts a long time. We don't use lead."
He decided to go into politics on the day, in 1971, when Richard Nixon said the dollar could no longer be exchanged for gold. Since then, the global financial architecture has been built entirely on the world's faith in the good credit of the US government. Paul is crouched under it, convinced the architecture will collapse.
"Remember that the pound got into trouble after World War I and lost supremacy around the world. The Bank of England blew that currency, and we're blowing ours; the British ended their empire because of too much spending and mismanagement and now we're ending ours. Our central bank is supposed to give us sound economic growth, low unemployment, steady interest rates and price stability. They've failed totally and utterly."
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to set interest rates, so as to smooth the economic cycle, dampen recessions and prevent panics. Paul's beef is that, in an economy where the currency is not tied to the value of gold, the central bank can simply print more and more money to fund the expansion of the economy and of central government. Over time, that will erode the purchasing power of the currency, but as long as that happens slowly through moderate inflation, no one seems to mind. One day, though, America's creditors will baulk at seeing the value of their dollar holdings whittled away.
Paul's apocalyptic vision of a post-empire America, bankrupt and swept clean of federal government welfare and war spending, seems less fanciful with every day the dollar declines on the global currency markets. Foreign governments are mulling creating new currency units for trading oil and other commodities and for storing as reserves. The Texan Congressman is only saying the same things he has always said, but now fewer people think he sounds mad.
And on America's wars he is certain of one thing: they will end.
"There's never been a war fought without inflation. In Roman times, they would clip coins, or dilute the metal, or print paper money like we did in revolutionary times. Today, we still call it printing money, but they just click a computer. If we had to pay for every cent we spent over in Afghanistan and Iraq we wouldn't be there."
Far from a "surge" in Afghanistan, the US should be pulling out, he said. "It has nothing to do with self-defence. The greatest threat to our national security is our occupation of those countries and the results of our occupation. We stimulated the birth of radical Islam and paid for some of these madrassa schools because we wanted radical Islam to be motivated to kill Communists, now they've turned on us. This is a war of aggression, a war of occupation. It's illegal under our constitution, it's immoral, it makes no sense whatsoever and it's going to break the bank."
Every year for decades, Paul has introduced a bill calling for an audit of the Fed, but it was only this year, amid public anger over the Fed-financed bailouts of Wall Street, that Paul has found a rag-bag of politicians rallying to his cause. The Fed has come under constant and sometimes contradictory fire for failing to spot the credit bubble before it burst in 2007, funnelling money to what Paul calls its "special friends" on Wall Street, and for pumping trillions of dollars of newly created money into credit markets without any Congressional oversight. When Ben Bernanke, its chairman, goes to Capitol Hill tomorrow for hearings to confirm him in a second term, he is expected to face a harsher grilling than any predecessor in generations.
Meanwhile, Paul's plan for an audit looks set fair to be appended to wider financial reform legislation. Economists are aghast, since it repeals a 1978 provision that was intended to protect interest rate policy from short-term political influence. Scores of eminent economists signed a petition against the measure, warning that credit markets will punish the US for anything that smacks of weakening the independence of the Fed, and Mr Bernanke himself, in his mild-mannered way, wrote at the weekend that "these measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks".
Congressman Paul, though, is determined to press on with his movement to abolish central banking. "Transparency is a good issue," he says. "Start with transparency and finding out how the Fed abused the monetary system, and then you move to the next stage."
Ron Paul: The maverick outsider
Born 20 August 1935 in Pittsburgh
Early Life Attended Dormont High School in Pittsburgh. Studied biology at Gettysburg College before obtaining a medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine.
Family Married Carol Wells, with whom he has five children, 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His son Rand is also a political activist and announced his US senate bid in August this year.
Career Paul entered politics in 1974, running as a Republican for the House of Representatives. Although he lost, he was elected to office in a 1978 and served until 1985. Feeling that Ronald Reagan's presidency had been a failure, he left the Republicans for the Libertarians, first running for president in 1988. Enjoyed an unexpected renaissance with his maverick candidacy for the presidency last year.
He Says "The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people."
They Say "Ron Paul is the one exception to the Gang of 535." William Simon, Secretary of Treasury
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ron-paul-every-man-for-himself-1832241.html
Ron Paul: Every man for himself!
It's taken a while, but America is warming to Ron Paul and his radical brand of extreme libertarianism
By Stephen Foley
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Ron Paul on the campaign trail in last year's race for the Republican party's presidential nomination
enlarge sponsored links:
Ads by Google
Secret War On The Dollar
Read the Shocking Bulletin ThatWashington Does Not Want You To See
www.UncommonWisdomDaily.com
Death to the U.S. Dollar
3 Secrets to Protect You in theDollar’s Final Days. Free Report.
www.WorldCurrencyWatch.com/dollar
Pull US troops out of Afghanistan. Leave Iran alone. Legalise drugs. Get the government out of people's private lives. Say no to the bailout of Wall Street fat cats. As a menu of policy prescriptions, you might think that this all puts Ron Paul on the Soviet wing of the Democratic party. But you'd be wrong.
The 74-year-old Congressman from Texas, with his skinny frame and his hangdog face, is about as unlikely a poster child for the future of the Republican party as you are likely to find, but his ideas have struck chords with libertarian-minded college kids. Dismissed last year as the token nutjob in the line-up of Republican presidential candidates, his insurgent campaign proved surprisingly tenacious. Young people at music festivals wore "Dr Paul cured my apathy" badges, he spawned an internet fund-raising movement that had echoes of Barack Obama from the other side, and to this day he has a stronger YouTube presence than any other Republican politician.
To the extent that Paul is known outside the US, it is as the poor guy propositioned in a hotel room by a trouser-less Sacha Baron Cohen, in his movie Brüno. Paul flees, shouting: "he's queer, he's crazy, he hit on me".
Related articles
After five million words, the end of the road for Cormac's typewriter
Search the news archive for more stories
But in the US, his books now become instant best-sellers and he tours university campuses pushing a libertarian agenda. Where once he believed he was seeding the ground for a movement that would triumph well after his own career is over, to his own astonishment, policies he has espoused to almost universal ridicule for decades might just be about to go into law.
And this is why the economic and political establishment fears Ron Paul as one of the most dangerous men in America. His innocuous-sounding plan to subject the US central bank to a regular audit of its activities is a Trojan horse for the wider aim to End the Fed – the title of his latest book. Behind the liberal-sounding policies lies an audacious agenda to erase 100 years of economic orthodoxy and take the US back to a Nineteenth-century version of every-man-for-himself capitalism. Inch by inch, he is making progress.
"The college kids I think are interested in the anti-war position, in personal civil liberties and allowing them to do with their own lives what they want – but I tell them, if you ruin your own life don't come begging the government to take care of you."
Paul greets The Independent at his rooms in Congress, decked out in the formal regalia of public office, with flags and seals, but with portraits in one corner that reveal his inspirations: members of the Austrian school of economists whose founder Friedrich von Hayek predicted government attempts to intervene in the economy would set their people on "the road to serfdom".
"Ideas are the only things that count, and politicians are, for the most part, pretty much irrelevant," he says. "What was boiling out there I just brought to life. This material has been available in a quiet way on the internet and from a few libertarian think-tanks, but I was pretty shocked when college kids started calling out 'End the Fed, End the Fed.'"
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Paul was fascinated by the jar of coins that his parents kept on the kitchen shelf. He became a stamp and coin collector – still is – and he is fascinated by what gives money value. He's got a proportion of his savings in gold. Currencies come and currencies go, he says, but when people wanted to escape Vietnam during the war, they paid with gold coins at the border. "Most people think gold is beautiful, that's why it's money. It's because it's beautiful and rare and divisible and it lasts a long time. We don't use lead."
He decided to go into politics on the day, in 1971, when Richard Nixon said the dollar could no longer be exchanged for gold. Since then, the global financial architecture has been built entirely on the world's faith in the good credit of the US government. Paul is crouched under it, convinced the architecture will collapse.
"Remember that the pound got into trouble after World War I and lost supremacy around the world. The Bank of England blew that currency, and we're blowing ours; the British ended their empire because of too much spending and mismanagement and now we're ending ours. Our central bank is supposed to give us sound economic growth, low unemployment, steady interest rates and price stability. They've failed totally and utterly."
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to set interest rates, so as to smooth the economic cycle, dampen recessions and prevent panics. Paul's beef is that, in an economy where the currency is not tied to the value of gold, the central bank can simply print more and more money to fund the expansion of the economy and of central government. Over time, that will erode the purchasing power of the currency, but as long as that happens slowly through moderate inflation, no one seems to mind. One day, though, America's creditors will baulk at seeing the value of their dollar holdings whittled away.
Paul's apocalyptic vision of a post-empire America, bankrupt and swept clean of federal government welfare and war spending, seems less fanciful with every day the dollar declines on the global currency markets. Foreign governments are mulling creating new currency units for trading oil and other commodities and for storing as reserves. The Texan Congressman is only saying the same things he has always said, but now fewer people think he sounds mad.
And on America's wars he is certain of one thing: they will end.
"There's never been a war fought without inflation. In Roman times, they would clip coins, or dilute the metal, or print paper money like we did in revolutionary times. Today, we still call it printing money, but they just click a computer. If we had to pay for every cent we spent over in Afghanistan and Iraq we wouldn't be there."
Far from a "surge" in Afghanistan, the US should be pulling out, he said. "It has nothing to do with self-defence. The greatest threat to our national security is our occupation of those countries and the results of our occupation. We stimulated the birth of radical Islam and paid for some of these madrassa schools because we wanted radical Islam to be motivated to kill Communists, now they've turned on us. This is a war of aggression, a war of occupation. It's illegal under our constitution, it's immoral, it makes no sense whatsoever and it's going to break the bank."
Every year for decades, Paul has introduced a bill calling for an audit of the Fed, but it was only this year, amid public anger over the Fed-financed bailouts of Wall Street, that Paul has found a rag-bag of politicians rallying to his cause. The Fed has come under constant and sometimes contradictory fire for failing to spot the credit bubble before it burst in 2007, funnelling money to what Paul calls its "special friends" on Wall Street, and for pumping trillions of dollars of newly created money into credit markets without any Congressional oversight. When Ben Bernanke, its chairman, goes to Capitol Hill tomorrow for hearings to confirm him in a second term, he is expected to face a harsher grilling than any predecessor in generations.
Meanwhile, Paul's plan for an audit looks set fair to be appended to wider financial reform legislation. Economists are aghast, since it repeals a 1978 provision that was intended to protect interest rate policy from short-term political influence. Scores of eminent economists signed a petition against the measure, warning that credit markets will punish the US for anything that smacks of weakening the independence of the Fed, and Mr Bernanke himself, in his mild-mannered way, wrote at the weekend that "these measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks".
Congressman Paul, though, is determined to press on with his movement to abolish central banking. "Transparency is a good issue," he says. "Start with transparency and finding out how the Fed abused the monetary system, and then you move to the next stage."
Ron Paul: The maverick outsider
Born 20 August 1935 in Pittsburgh
Early Life Attended Dormont High School in Pittsburgh. Studied biology at Gettysburg College before obtaining a medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine.
Family Married Carol Wells, with whom he has five children, 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His son Rand is also a political activist and announced his US senate bid in August this year.
Career Paul entered politics in 1974, running as a Republican for the House of Representatives. Although he lost, he was elected to office in a 1978 and served until 1985. Feeling that Ronald Reagan's presidency had been a failure, he left the Republicans for the Libertarians, first running for president in 1988. Enjoyed an unexpected renaissance with his maverick candidacy for the presidency last year.
He Says "The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people."
They Say "Ron Paul is the one exception to the Gang of 535." William Simon, Secretary of Treasury
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ron-paul-every-man-for-himself-1832241.html
Surviving the Coming Crash
by Baron Bodissey
{Think about this carefully before you throw comments out about it. It may be that you need to read it twice, anyway, some points to ponder in this article.}
The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.
As I have stated my essay The Coming Crash, I think we need to realize that the current ideological order is broken and beyond repair. There will probably some sort of pan-Western economic and social collapse in the not-too-distant future; I fear this is too late to avoid by now. The people who support the ruling paradigm are too powerful, and the paradigm itself contains so many flaws, that it cannot be fixed. It needs to crash. Instead of wasting time and energy on attempting to fix what cannot be fixed we need to prepare as best as we can for the coming crash and hopefully regroup to create a stronger and healthier culture afterward.
We are currently in the middle of the White Guilt Gold Rush. If you are a white Westerner you may not have fully realized this, but I can assure you that the rest of the world knows this. The trick is to keep the white man on the defensive and vaguely guilty at all times so that he can be squeezed for money. The climate quotas for carbon dioxide constitute a thinly disguised form of global Socialism through the UN-sponsored redistribution of wealth.
The recent scientific scandal about fake data regarding man-made global warming is just the tip of the iceberg. There are currently so many different layers of lies from “gender equality” via IQ differences to climate that it is virtually impossible to deal with all of them. Our entire society has essentially become one big lie. Our media, our schools and our political leaders repeat these lies every single day; those daring to question them are immediately ostracized.
Since the EU has forced through the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty and in essence abolished not just popular influence on EU policies but dissolved dozens of nation states, the self-appointed European elites have in effect banned any legal opposition to their rule. It is no longer possible to formally oppose their policies within the regular political channels. Given that the same elites appear hell-bent on running the entire continent into the ground, this leaves the options of rebellion or a structural collapse. I don’t think we will see open rebellion just yet, although this could change if the economy deteriorates further. This means that the most likely way out now is a structural collapse, and I fear that’s exactly what we are going to get.
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Didn’t the Obama Administration with international aid “save” the world from a looming financial crisis? Of course they didn’t. The main problem for the USA is that the national debt keeps rising while the national IQ keeps falling. This hasn’t changed one bit in the past year. On the contrary, it is worse now than it was before, and it looks like it will be worse still next year and the year after that. As long as this situation remains unchanged, my bet is that the price of gold will continue to rise as people seek safe harbor from the collapsing US dollar.
Although other industrialized countries have heavy debt loads, too, the case of the United States is especially serious because of its sheer size. Had the USA been a private person he would probably have been declared bankrupt a long time ago. But the United States is not a private person; it is still the world’s largest economy and has the world’s largest armed forces. As writer Takuan Seiyo states in the latest installment of his brilliant From Meccania to Atlantis series: “The strongest, most admired country in the world until just a few years ago is now a cautionary tale of the wages of sin and stupidity told to Chinese schoolchildren.”
I don’t know what the future holds for the USA. It could split apart along ethic and ideological lines in a Second American Civil War, or it could become just another Latin American country along with Canada, in which case all of America will be Latin America.
I could add that I don’t hate Latin America. If we do end up with a series of nasty Multicultural civil wars in Western Europe it is possible that some areas of South America could be better places to live than Birmingham or Marseilles. However, Latin America never has been and probably never will be a major force in world politics. If the United States declines this will shift global power back to Eurasia, where it has been throughout most of human history. China will in all likelihood be a leading player and perhaps the dominant one.
I am increasingly convinced that some of the developments we are witnessing are deliberate and that there is a long-term goal among certain powerful groups of breaking down Western nations to facilitate the creation of a global oligarchy. The lies we are being served are virtually identical in every single Western country. I’ve had discussions about this with my Chinese friend Ohmyrus who thinks this is caused by a structural flaw in our democratic system. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but there are other forces at work here as well.
According to Herman Van Rompuy, the newly-installed President of the European Union, the climate conference in Copenhagen is a step towards the “global management” of our planet. As author Bat Ye’or has demonstrated and as I have confirmed in my own book Defeating Eurabia, the EU is actively collaborating with Islamic countries to rewrite the textbooks in European countries to make them more “Islam-friendly.”
It is well-documented that there are detailed long-term plans to expand the EU to include Muslim North Africa and the Middle East. This has been publicly confirmed by several high-ranking officials, including the British Foreign Minister in 2007. One newspaper leaked EU plans to import 50 million (!) more Africans to Europe in the coming decades, although urban communities across Western Europe are already in the process of breaking down due to mass immigration. A high-ranking official from Tony Blair’s Labour Government in Britain openly confirmed that they promoted mass immigration to import voters and alter the ethnic composition of the country. Similar policies are undoubtedly being promoted in countries from Germany to Australia.
In June 2009, only a few years after a group of Arabs killed thousands of Americans in a Jihadist attack, former US President Bill Clinton told an Arab American audience that soon the USA will no longer have a majority of people with a European heritage. He believed that “this is a very positive thing.” It wasn’t that first time that Mr. Clinton expressed such views.
Jens Orback, Democracy Minister in the then Social Democratic Swedish government, during a radio debate stated that “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” He took it for granted that the natives will become a minority in their own country and that they have no right to oppose this.
I could add that Sweden has no colonial history. Neither have Finland or Norway, which gained their independence as late as the twentieth century, yet both countries are still force-fed mass immigration of alien peoples. The “colonial guilt” argument used against the natives in Britain, France and other Western European countries is bogus. The real issue is that we white Westerners should not have any countries to call our own. Our countries should be giant Multicultural theme parks for everybody else, financed by brainwashed white taxpayers.
Arguably the leading academic Multiculturalist in my country, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen of the University in Oslo, who has received millions in government funding for his projects, in an interview stated frankly that “The most important blank spot exists now in deconstructing the majority so thoroughly that it can never be called the majority again.” This is the ultimate goal of Western Multiculturalists. Make no mistake about it. Needless to say, this agenda is only pushed in white majority Western countries. All other countries are allowed to retain their demographic profile; only the West is required to commit suicide.
Law and order is rapidly breaking down in major cities across Western Europe, and indeed the Western world, as immigrant gangs rule the streets. The law is only upheld against the “racist” white majority population to ensure that they keep on paying ridiculously high taxes to authorities that do nothing but lie to them, insult them and aid their national destruction.
As the eminent English writer El Inglés says, “The nature and severity of the problems we face are now sufficiently clear for European patriots to start asking themselves what actions they and others like them will eventually be called upon to take when the failure of the state reaches a critical point, and what sort of battlefield they will be arrayed upon at that moment.”
One thing we absolutely need to do is to break the stranglehold that Marxist and Leftist groups have successfully established over the media and the education system in Western countries. These people need to be squashed. Maybe some readers think this sounds too harsh, but I firmly believe that we cannot deal effectively with our external enemies as long as our internal enemies control the information flow. We must reject those who promote a Globalist world, including multinational corporations that desire unlimited access to cheap labor.
Imagine if you have a person jumping off a plane without a parachute because he is convinced that he has “moved beyond gravity.” If works for a little while, until it suddenly doesn’t. That sounds too crazy to be true until you realize that this is what the entire Western world is doing right now when we pretend that we have “moved beyond ethnic divisions.” It is hardwired into the human brain to look after your people and “tribe” first. The only ones who are not currently doing this are whites. If, or rather when, white Westerners start behaving like everybody else our countries will quickly become Balkanized nightmares of competing tribes.
We must switch from a “save the world” to a “save ourselves” mode. In the early twentieth century, people of European origins made up one third of the global population, maybe as much as 40%. In the not-too-distant future this figure will be down to less than 10% and falling. This sharp reduction has not been caused by a plague but by a massive population increase in Third World countries, ironically facilitated by the global technological civilization created by European advances. We have given alien peoples the technological ability to multiply, move to our countries and colonize us. This cannot be allowed to continue.
We must start looking after our own interests just like everybody else. Self-preservation is a natural instinct for all living things down to plants and bacteria. The first thing we must do is to bury the entire notion of “racism,” which is anti-scientific nonsense exclusively designed to intimidate whites. It is perfectly conceivable, indeed highly likely, that there is a major genetic component to culture. This would imply that the preservation of the European cultural heritage can only be accomplished through the preservation of our genetic heritage.
It is becoming more or less mandatory for teachers in many Western countries to disparage European peoples, their culture and their heritage. We don’t need to have special reeducation camps because the media and the education system ensure that our society is virtually one large reeducation camp. Unfortunately, that’s not much of an exaggeration. In Hollywood films such as the disaster movie 2012, which I had the misfortune of seeing, all whites are portrayed either as evil and selfish or as losers whereas the non-white characters are portrayed as selfless and heroic. In reality, whites are today among the most selfless and least ethnocentric groups on the planet, and we are being punished heavily for this trait.
The truth is that whites create superior societies. Not only are others not capable of creating what we do, most of them are not even capable of maintaining it. The one major exception would be Northeast Asians, the only other large group of people on this planet apart from Europeans capable of sustaining a technologically sophisticated society. If anybody replaces us as the world’s leading civilization it will be them, for the simple reason that they are the only ones who possess a genetic intelligence to match ours, and they are not suicidal.
Because we create attractive societies other peoples want to move to our countries, but in displacing us they will gradually destroy what made our countries desirable places to live in the first place. They both hate and secretly envy us, and our children suffer needlessly from the violence and verbal abuse caused by this. If whites put up a colony on the planet Mars, I am sure others would hitchhike there on our space ships and demand that we let them in. Once there they would not exhibit any trace of gratitude. On the contrary, they would constantly whine and complain about how evil and racist and oppressive the white man is.
Muslims would demand respect because we owe all our scientific and technological advances to medieval Muslim scholars and because the Martian colony is the 63rd holiest place in Islam. In case you thought the latter sentence was intended as a joke, think again. In 1997 three Arab Muslim gentlemen from the Yemen sued NASA for trespassing on Mars, which they claimed that they owned because they inherited the planet from their ancestors 3,000 years ago.
Novelist Virginia Woolf famously wrote that women need “a room of their own.” In the twenty-first century it is whites who need a room of our own, and if we cannot have that in Europe, which is our cradle, then I don’t see where else we can have it. The alternative is that we maintain a continuing cycle where whites create dynamic societies that are overrun by people incapable of sustaining them. This cycle will finally end when the existence of white communities itself ends. The only viable long-term solution to this dilemma is physical separation. If you force very different peoples to share the same geographic space, conflict is inevitable. This insight was once considered common sense. Now it’s “hate speech.”
Will such a policy not be denounced as “hate” and “Fascism”? Possibly, but I don’t see why we should care about that. We, too, have a right to shape our destiny. Besides, we could always use the arguments of our critics against them. If whites truly are uniquely evil and oppressive, as some people seem to think, is it then not an act of mercy to keep non-whites away from us? That way they don’t have to become exposed to our racism, our hatred and our Islamophobia, but can retain their diverse, authentic and colorful tribal violence undisturbed.
One change that could conceivably take place is that people of European origins develop a stronger identity as “whites” on top of their national identities. I tried to explain to a hostile and now luckily discredited American blogger a while ago that the term “white nationalist” is meaningless in a European context. Maybe it carries some meaning in North America or Australia where most whites are of a mixed heritage, but over here it does not. Englishmen and Germans look fairly similar, but that hasn’t prevented them from slaughtering each other by the millions. Ditto for the French and the Spanish, the Poles and the Russians etc.
I don’t know if there ever will be a “white” identity. Perhaps we are just too different. What I do know is that if such an identity ever comes into being it will to a large extent have been created and forced upon us by our enemies. I have watched a number of disturbing videos, filmed by the attackers, of gangs of blacks or Arabs attacking what appears to be completely random whites. This happens from Sweden via Germany, Britain and France to the United States. This escalating wave of anti-white violence is one of the least-reported major news stories today as Western mainstream media almost uniformly try to cover these things up.
What strikes my about these attacks is that they are based on skin color; nobody asks the victims whether they are Russian Orthodox, Polish Catholics, English atheists, German Lutherans or Dutch Calvinists. These distinctions matter a great deal to us — we have fought many bloody wars because of them — yet they do not seem to matter to those who hate us. If people feel that they are attacked as whites they may start defending themselves as such, too.
The coming pan-Western crash will at the very least lead to an ideological-political paradigm shift and the rise of a new mythology to replace the post-WWII “suicide paradigm” of misunderstood anti-Nazism. At worst, the discontinuity will be so long and severe that what emerges on the other side will be a completely new civilization, the third generation of European civilization, just like what emerged during the Middle Ages was a different civilization from that of Greco-Roman Antiquity. The transition between the first and second generations of European civilization took centuries. History generally moves faster now than it did back then, but I suspect such a transition will nevertheless take several generations.
How a new civilization would look like I do not know. Medieval Europeans used different elements of the Greco-Roman legacy creatively and added new innovations on top of this. Generation Two of European civilization contained within itself aspects of Generation One, but also contained elements of sharp discontinuity. This will probably be the case next time, too.
All of this does admittedly sound a bit gloomy, yet I truthfully remain convinced that we have the necessary cultural and genetic resources to regroup and regenerate at some point, although it is conceivable that whites will in the future come from fewer bloodlines than we do today.
Baron Bodissey | 12/01/2009 05:31:00 PM
14 Comments:
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Natalie said...
I feel quite privileged sometimes to live in such a fascinating era. Excellent essay as usual, Fjordman.
12/01/2009 6:18 PM
unaha-closp said...
Ahem.
"The climate quotas for carbon dioxide constitute a thinly disguised form of global Socialism through the UN-sponsored redistribution of wealth."
You're half right. Wealth is about to be resdistributed, but you seem confused about the direction of transfer.
For years Europes economy has been moving from industrial production to knowledge based services whereby it profits by selling technologicy and providing financial services. Europe now outsources its basic industrial production. The European "solution" to climate change plays to these trends.
Emission quotas impose highest marginal cost in places where industrial output is increasing (China & India), whilst in Europe they provide a boon to business doing outsourcing of production. The global ETS sets a flat tax rate on carbon emissions, which is trivial if you are rich (European) massively high if you are poor (Chinese or Indian). The trading in carbon credits will require a new market in futures be established, coincidentally the expertise to run this unnecessary market is found in Europe.
Basically under the global ETS (Euro) proposal the developing world will have to pay Europeans to do what Europeans been doing for 20 years, whilst the developing world gets charged financial transaction fees by Europeans on European carbon markets to pay a tax the developing world can least afford.
The reason Copenhagen is running into difficulties is that the developing world is unwilling to sign up. And who can blame them?*
* Rhetorical question obviously, we will soon see the Euro-whine media and "green" movement pile in on China and India for obstructing progress on climate change.
12/01/2009 7:02 PM
Chechar said...
@ These people need to be squashed. Maybe some readers think this sounds too harsh…
Bravo, Fj! At last someone speaks my language.
@ The first thing we must do is to bury the entire notion of “racism,” which is anti-scientific nonsense exclusively designed to intimidate whites.
Some linguists have argued that language is rhetoric, and that we commit a great mistake in believing that, if a group of individuals use a word in all seriousness, it means that something real exists behind it. The rhetorical objective of Newspeak is social control, neologism and the abuse of language characterize it. No counter-jihad activist should ever use the word “racist” except when talking about anti-white racism or paranoid white guilt.
@ The truth is that whites create superior societies.
Yup. And this is the hidden meaning of the title “The Return of Quetzalcoatl”, as we shall see when a few more of my chapters appear here.
@ The only viable long-term solution to this dilemma is physical separation.
The first time I read about separation, it looked like the white nationalists were dreaming. But now it seems to be the very message of Takuan Seiyo’s “Atlantis” book. (He still has to publish the last chapters in The Brussels Journal.)
@ The coming pan-Western crash will at the very least lead to an ideological-political paradigm shift and the rise of a new mythology to replace the post-WWII “suicide paradigm” of misunderstood anti-Nazism.
The West is a train that is rushing in blind reverse opposing everything that the Germans did a few decades ago.
Leaving behind the current paradigm means creating a new myth that replaces both Christianity and “secular Christianity,” as I would call the current axiology that permeates the West. It’s true that Hitler and the Nazis intended to create a myth that broke away with Christianity and its secular incarnation. Alas, their hubris shown in their premature invasion of the Soviet Union, and their murderous projections on innocent Jews, resulted in the greatest axiological catastrophe the Western world has experimented since the fall of pagan Rome. I dislike using Hegelian terms, but what we need is a sort of synthesis.
Immature people do not tolerate dialectic synthesis. They move in comfort zones such as the primitive thesis or its primitive antithesis: troglodyte neo-Nazism or Neanderthal anti-racialism. The Hegelian verb, Aufheben, translated to English means to sublate: the suppression and assimilation of both, the previous thesis and antithesis. This is the apparently contradictory implication of preserving and changing an ethos.
We need to re-Aryanize the West in proportions, rates and quantities as it was before the 1960s by rejecting mass migration in both sides of the Atlantic. A mature Aufheben would both reject eliminationist anti-Semitism and at the same time recover its former ethnic and imperial self-esteem. Yes: this means invading and colonizing, e.g., the Arabic peninsula, but at the same time it also means the complete cancellation of all anti-Semitism in general.
12/01/2009 7:48 PM
Independent Accountant said...
Fjordman:
I have an advantage over you and probably 99% of whites. I grew up in a "minority-majority" neighborhood in New York in the 1950s and saw plenty of anti-white violence which the newspapers never reported. When I went to Europe in 1972 I laughed at the Europeans who called Americans "racist". I said to them, "Wait until your country is 10% Negro. Then we'll see if you know what you are talking about". I did not say 10% Moslem, thinking the main source of immigrants to Europe would be Africa. No matter. The Europeans are finally waking up. I will be interested to see what they try to do to Switzerland? Invade?
12/01/2009 8:45 PM
Godffrey said...
I think the reason no serious white identity has ever developed in the west is because in the past it was unnecessary. In the past we could afford to think of ourselves as Poles and Germans instead of whites because the survival of the white race has never been in such peril. At this point in time white nationalism may be of some use at least as a defense mechanism and a way to reassert our identity. I have enjoyed the recent Fjordman essays and they seem to be similar to the essays I read at American Rennaissance (amren.com). Race is perhaps the greatest and most prominent dividing line in western societies and is the greatest thing western nations have in common. White nationalism may become an important movement when the collapse comes.
12/01/2009 8:53 PM
laine said...
This piece by Fjordman is simply brilliant in its succinct and elegant reasoning. Yes, it is dark because the future of whites is dark and without hubris, I conclude that therefore the world is also heading in a much colder direction, and I don't mean climate change.
The northeastern Asians (Chinese) Fjordman justifiably names as capable as whites are yet missing our cultural "heart". They are a narrowly self-interested culture ungenerous to others. Yes, this will save them from suicide, but it will not provide the warm embrace that Pax Americana brought the world. That will be looked on as a Golden Age of relative stability and decency in the not too distant future.
Take the example of AIDS in Africa. Unlike America, China will pay for anti-AIDS measures only if it benefits themselves e.g. if they need an African work force to mine resources etc. Considering China's own surfeit of male population and the differential work ethics, the Chinese may decide that a major die off of the citizen "owners" of African resources serves their interests better. In that case, China would not be killing anyone, simply letting Africans' own pathologies (lower IQ, tribalism, racism vs whites, primitive sexual and other practices) kill them off without humanitarian intervention.
More actively, China presently arms sections of Africa for civil wars of attrition. Again, this leaves resource rich countries with decimated populations occupied full time with merely feeding themselves, easy to divest of their resources.
Incidentally, the global warming hoax has diverted funds that will no longer be available to compensate for what now looks like a coming cold spell. Cold kills far more people in marginal circumstances than warmth.
As for whites and the room of their own, if such a thing were even possible (maybe some rump of red states coalescing?) strictly speaking, white libs should be left to live in the majority non-white world they have wrought. (It will be Hobbesian). Letting them join sensible whites temporarily to swell our numbers may just be another poison pill. There really is something wrong with their survival instinct and reasoning ability and soon they would be opening the gates of the new citadel to more Trojan horses filled with enemies. Perhaps a compromise would be that they set up their own white enclave and defend it as best they can against the hordes they unleashed on all of us, proving their reversion to normal thought patterns before being allowed to rejoin us.
The decent non-whites with whom we have more in common that with deranged white libs will have to fend for themselves, but they have large cultures of origin to rejoin that have been allowed to stay "pure" and will do the best of a bad lot there.
Whites will no longer be the saviors of the world from itself (unfairly maligned as the most evil instead of the most productive and helpful by the ungrateful) but will have to devote all our energies to saving ourselves and only ourselves.
12/01/2009 10:31 PM
alettertothetimes said...
Just this morning I was saying the same thing, only not nearly as well.
The real enemy of the West and of white people is not brown people, but white liberals. Without their Gramscian schemes, Third Worlders and Muslims would be no threat.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/12/surviving-coming-crash.html
At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state
By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: December 1st, 2009
295 Comments Comment on this article
We woke up in a different country today. Alright, it doesn’t look very different. The trees still seem black against the winter sun; the motorways continue to jam inexplicably; commuters carry on avoiding eye contact. But Britain is no longer a sovereign nation. At midnight last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound by international treaties to other independent states, and became instead a subordinate unit within a European state.
Yes, a European state. Take a quick dekko at the definition set out in Article One of the1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”
Until yesterday, the EU qualified on grounds (a), (b) and (c). Now it has ticked the final box. Under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force today, it acquires “legal personality”, which gives it the right to sign accords and treat with other states. Nor is this right simply theoretical: the EU now has a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps (the European External Action Service) and 160 overseas embassies.
Until yesterday, the EU could not annex additional policy areas without a new treaty, which needed to be ratified by all its constituent nations. Now, it has the so-called “passerelle” clause, or self-amending mechanism. Parliament, in other words, no longer has the final say on extensions of EU jurisdiction. The EU derives its authority, not from its 27 members, but from its own foundational texts.
Until yesterday, Britain could simply walk out of the EU by abrogating the Treaty of Rome and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. Henceforth, it will have to go through the secession procedure laid down in Lisbon. In other words – in the minds of Euro-lawyers, at any rate, if not of British constitutionalists – the EU gets to settle the terms on which its members are allowed to leave. Formal sovereignty has been shifted from the national capitals to Brussels.
It is appalling, demeaning, disgraceful that such a thing should have been done without popular consent, and in the absence of the referendum that all three parties had promised. “There’s no point in crying over spilt milk,” you might say. True. But there is every point in mopping it up.
Lots of comments...
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100018459/at-midnight-last-night-the-united-kingdom-ceased-to-be-a-sovereign-state/
At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state
By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: December 1st, 2009
295 Comments Comment on this article
We woke up in a different country today. Alright, it doesn’t look very different. The trees still seem black against the winter sun; the motorways continue to jam inexplicably; commuters carry on avoiding eye contact. But Britain is no longer a sovereign nation. At midnight last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound by international treaties to other independent states, and became instead a subordinate unit within a European state.
Yes, a European state. Take a quick dekko at the definition set out in Article One of the1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”
Until yesterday, the EU qualified on grounds (a), (b) and (c). Now it has ticked the final box. Under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force today, it acquires “legal personality”, which gives it the right to sign accords and treat with other states. Nor is this right simply theoretical: the EU now has a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps (the European External Action Service) and 160 overseas embassies.
Until yesterday, the EU could not annex additional policy areas without a new treaty, which needed to be ratified by all its constituent nations. Now, it has the so-called “passerelle” clause, or self-amending mechanism. Parliament, in other words, no longer has the final say on extensions of EU jurisdiction. The EU derives its authority, not from its 27 members, but from its own foundational texts.
Until yesterday, Britain could simply walk out of the EU by abrogating the Treaty of Rome and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. Henceforth, it will have to go through the secession procedure laid down in Lisbon. In other words – in the minds of Euro-lawyers, at any rate, if not of British constitutionalists – the EU gets to settle the terms on which its members are allowed to leave. Formal sovereignty has been shifted from the national capitals to Brussels.
It is appalling, demeaning, disgraceful that such a thing should have been done without popular consent, and in the absence of the referendum that all three parties had promised. “There’s no point in crying over spilt milk,” you might say. True. But there is every point in mopping it up.
Lots of comments...
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100018459/at-midnight-last-night-the-united-kingdom-ceased-to-be-a-sovereign-state/
Sen. Hatch Questions Constitutionality of Obamacare:
If Feds Can Force Us to Buy Health Insurance ‘Then There’s Literally Nothing the Federal Government Can’t Force Us to Do’
Thursday, November 26, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) (Congressional photo)(CNSNews.com) - Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who has served in the Senate for 33 years and is a longtime member of the Judiciary Committee, told CNSNews.com that he does not believe the Democrats’ health-care reform plan is constitutionally justifiable, noting that if the federal government can force Americans to buy health insurance “then there is literally nothing the federal government can’t force us to do.”
Both the House and Senate versions of the health-care reform plan would force all individuals who are citizens or legal residents of the United States to buy health insurance. President Obama has endorsed this provision.
Hatch said if the federal government starts ordering Americans to purchase specific products without being able to plausibly justify that mandate through the Commerce Clause of the Constitution which empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce, it will mean “we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
The Commerce Clause, found in Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution, says: “The Congress shall have power to … regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
Hatch said this constitutional language authorizes Congress to regulate some types of commercial “activity,” which is different from authorizing Congress to force an individual American to engage in a commercial activity he or she is not presently engaged in and--as a free person--does not want to engage in. He said that “not one” of his Democratic colleagues has given a coherent constitutional argument to explain where Congress would derive the authority to do the latter.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service.
In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the Congressional Budget Office studied that plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.
“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,” the CBO concluded. “An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
“I think there’s a real constitutional issue there,” Hatch said on the CNSNews.com program “Online with Terry Jeffrey.”
He rejected the argument some have made that the federal government forcing everyone to buy health insurance is no different than state governments mandating that people who want to drive must buy auto insurance.
“You know, the illustration they give all the time is: Well, states require people to buy auto insurance. Yeah, they do, if they want to drive,” said Hatch. “But here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want. And, you know, if that’s the case, then we didn’t need a 'Cash for Clunkers,' all we had to do is have the federal government say you all got to buy new cars, no matter how tough it is on you. You know, they could require you to buy anything. And that isn’t America. That’s not freedom. That’s not constitutionally sound. Now, there may be some gimmicky way that they can do this, but I can’t think of a gimmicky way that would be constitutionally justified.”
Hatch was asked about the argument made by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.), who told CNSNews.com that the constitutional phrase that says Congress shall have the power to provide for the “general welfare”--which appears in the prefatory language preceding the Commerce Clause and the other enumerated powers of Congress--gives Congress the power to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance. He rejected this argument.
“Well, keep in mind the General Welfare Clause hasn’t been used for years, except through the Commerce Clause--Article I, Section 8,” said Hatch. “And frankly the Commerce Clause affects, quote, ‘activities,’ unquote. And, you know, the government telling you you have to buy health insurance--mandating that you have to buy health insurance--is not an activity. That’s telling you you got to do something you don’t want to do.
“Well, let’s put it this way,” said Hatch. “If that is held constitutional--for them to be able to tell us we have to purchase health insurance--then there is literally nothing that the federal government can’t force us to do. Nothing.”
Hatch said his Democratic colleagues in the Senate were trying to dismiss the question about the constitutionality of the government forcing people to buy health insurance without presenting a coherent and defensible argument for their position that Congress can exercise this sweeping and novel power.
When asked if any of his colleagues had made a coherent argument for the constitutionality of forcing people to buy health insurance, Hatch said, “Not one. Not one argument. In fact, they just dismiss it as though it’s not significant. But I’ll tell you this, a lot aren’t dismissing it. When we start having the federal government dictate to us what we have to purchase or buy without some commercial justifiable reason--you know, or 'activity,' which is the real key word here--we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
When the health-care reform bill was being debated in the Finance Committee, Hatch offered an amendment that would have provided for expedited judicial review of certain provisions in the bill including the mandate that individuals buy health insurance. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D.-Mont.) ruled Hatch's amendment out of order, however, arguing that the issue properly belonged in the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.
When CNSNews.com asked Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) where the Constitution authorizes Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance, Leahy would not directly answer the question, claiming that "nobody" questioned Congress's authority to do this.
"We have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?" Leahy told CNSNews.com reporter Matt Cover. "Why would you say there is no authority? I mean, there’s no question there’s authority. Nobody questions that."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was equally dismissive of the question of where the Constitution authorized Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance. When reporter Matt Cover asked her the question, she said: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs similarly dismissed the issue without directly saying where the Constitution authorized the federal government to force people to buy health insurance. When CNSNews.com White House Correspondent Fred Lucas asked Gibbs to comment on the fact that some Republicans were questioning the constitutionality of forcing Americans to buy health insurance, Gibbs said: “I won't be confused as a constitutional scholar, but I don't believe there's a lot of--I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity of what they're commentating on.”
Hatch said that if Congress claimed the power to tell Americans what things they must buy there would be “no limit” to the power of the federal government over the lives of Americans.
“There’s no limit,” said Hatch. “And this is a technical issue, but it’s an important technical, constitutional issue. I’ve raised it. A lot of people have said: Hey, you’re right. Some have said: Oh, you’re being extreme. I don’t think we’re being extreme. I think we’re being, we’re concerned about individual liberties and rights, and that’s what the Constitution protects, or at least should protect.”
Here is a partial transcript of CNSNews.com's interview with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah):
Terry Jeffrey: Let me bring you to the constitutional issue, senator, which I know you brought up in the Finance Committee when the bill was being marked up. The Congressional Budget Office, back in 1994, when they were looking at Senator—then-First Lady--Hillary Clinton’s plan to create a universal health care plan, looked at the question of an individual mandate, which was then being proposed. They studied it, they came back and they said never in the history of the United States has the federal government ordered individual citizens to purchase any good or commodity.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah): That’s right.
Jeffrey: It had never happened. Does the United States Congress have the congressional authority to order individual Americans to buy health care?
Hatch: I think there’s a real constitutional issue there. You know, the illustration they give all the time is: Well, states require people to buy auto insurance. Yeah, they do, if they want to drive.
Jeffrey: That’s a state government.
Hatch: Yeah, and if they want to drive, they have to buy automobile insurance. But here would be the first time where our government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want. And, you know, if that’s the case, then we didn’t need a “Cash for Clunkers,” all we had to do is have the federal government say you all got to buy new cars, no matter how tough it is on you. You know, they could require you to buy anything. And that isn’t America. That’s not freedom. That’s not constitutionally sound. Now, there may be some gimmicky way that they can do this, but I can’t think of a gimmicky way that would be constitutionally justified.
Jeffrey: One of our reporters at CNSNews.com, Matt Cover, asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: Where in the Constitution is there language that authorizes the Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance? And Congressman Hoyer said it’s in the phrase “general welfare”--which occurs at the beginning of Article I, Section 8, before the enumerated powers of Congress. What do you think of Congressman Hoyer’s constitutional argument?
Hatch: Well, keep in mind the General Welfare Clause hasn’t been used for years, except through the Commerce Clause--Article I, Section 8. And frankly the Commerce Clause affects, quote, “activities,” unquote. And, you know, the government telling you you have to buy health insurance, mandating that you have to buy health insurance, is not an activity. I mean, that’s telling you you got to do something you don’t want to do.
Jeffrey: And you’re not doing. If you’re sitting at home in your living room in the state of not owning health insurance, you’re not engaged in any kind of commercial activity. You’re not trading with a foreign nation--
Hatch: There’s no way. That’s right.
Jeffrey: --You’re not trading with an Indian tribe. You’re not trading across state lines.
Hatch: Well, let’s put it this way: If that is held constitutional--for them to be able to tell us we have to purchase health insurance--then there is literally nothing that the federal government can’t force us to do. Nothing. Now, whether or not the states can is another issue. The states may be able to. But since that government is closer to the people, those state representatives know that their very political lives depend on not doing things like that to the people.
Jeffrey: Have any of your Democratic colleagues presented a clear and coherent constitutional argument for why they think they can do this?
Hatch: Not one. Not one argument. In fact, they just dismiss it as though it’s not significant. But I’ll tell you this, a lot aren’t dismissing it. When we start having the federal government dictate to us what we have to purchase or buy without some commercial justifiable reason--you know, or 'activity,' which is the real key word here--we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.
Jeffrey: There’s no limit.
Hatch: There’s no limit. And this is a technical issue, but it’s an important technical, constitutional issue. I’ve raised it. A lot of people have said: Hey, you’re right. Some have said: Oh, you’re being extreme. I don’t think we’re being extreme. I think we’re being, we’re concerned about individual liberties and rights, and that’s what the Constitution protects, or at least should protect.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/56447
Sen. Hatch Questions Constitutionality of Obamacare:
If Feds Can Force Us to Buy Health Insurance ‘Then There’s Literally Nothing the Federal Government Can’t Force Us to Do’
Thursday, November 26, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) (Congressional photo)(CNSNews.com) - Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who has served in the Senate for 33 years and is a longtime member of the Judiciary Committee, told CNSNews.com that he does not believe the Democrats’ health-care reform plan is constitutionally justifiable, noting that if the federal government can force Americans to buy health insurance “then there is literally nothing the federal government can’t force us to do.”
Both the House and Senate versions of the health-care reform plan would force all individuals who are citizens or legal residents of the United States to buy health insurance. President Obama has endorsed this provision.
Hatch said if the federal government starts ordering Americans to purchase specific products without being able to plausibly justify that mandate through the Commerce Clause of the Constitution which empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce, it will mean “we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
The Commerce Clause, found in Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution, says: “The Congress shall have power to … regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
Hatch said this constitutional language authorizes Congress to regulate some types of commercial “activity,” which is different from authorizing Congress to force an individual American to engage in a commercial activity he or she is not presently engaged in and--as a free person--does not want to engage in. He said that “not one” of his Democratic colleagues has given a coherent constitutional argument to explain where Congress would derive the authority to do the latter.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service.
In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the Congressional Budget Office studied that plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.
“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,” the CBO concluded. “An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
“I think there’s a real constitutional issue there,” Hatch said on the CNSNews.com program “Online with Terry Jeffrey.”
He rejected the argument some have made that the federal government forcing everyone to buy health insurance is no different than state governments mandating that people who want to drive must buy auto insurance.
“You know, the illustration they give all the time is: Well, states require people to buy auto insurance. Yeah, they do, if they want to drive,” said Hatch. “But here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want. And, you know, if that’s the case, then we didn’t need a 'Cash for Clunkers,' all we had to do is have the federal government say you all got to buy new cars, no matter how tough it is on you. You know, they could require you to buy anything. And that isn’t America. That’s not freedom. That’s not constitutionally sound. Now, there may be some gimmicky way that they can do this, but I can’t think of a gimmicky way that would be constitutionally justified.”
Hatch was asked about the argument made by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.), who told CNSNews.com that the constitutional phrase that says Congress shall have the power to provide for the “general welfare”--which appears in the prefatory language preceding the Commerce Clause and the other enumerated powers of Congress--gives Congress the power to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance. He rejected this argument.
“Well, keep in mind the General Welfare Clause hasn’t been used for years, except through the Commerce Clause--Article I, Section 8,” said Hatch. “And frankly the Commerce Clause affects, quote, ‘activities,’ unquote. And, you know, the government telling you you have to buy health insurance--mandating that you have to buy health insurance--is not an activity. That’s telling you you got to do something you don’t want to do.
“Well, let’s put it this way,” said Hatch. “If that is held constitutional--for them to be able to tell us we have to purchase health insurance--then there is literally nothing that the federal government can’t force us to do. Nothing.”
Hatch said his Democratic colleagues in the Senate were trying to dismiss the question about the constitutionality of the government forcing people to buy health insurance without presenting a coherent and defensible argument for their position that Congress can exercise this sweeping and novel power.
When asked if any of his colleagues had made a coherent argument for the constitutionality of forcing people to buy health insurance, Hatch said, “Not one. Not one argument. In fact, they just dismiss it as though it’s not significant. But I’ll tell you this, a lot aren’t dismissing it. When we start having the federal government dictate to us what we have to purchase or buy without some commercial justifiable reason--you know, or 'activity,' which is the real key word here--we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
When the health-care reform bill was being debated in the Finance Committee, Hatch offered an amendment that would have provided for expedited judicial review of certain provisions in the bill including the mandate that individuals buy health insurance. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D.-Mont.) ruled Hatch's amendment out of order, however, arguing that the issue properly belonged in the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.
When CNSNews.com asked Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) where the Constitution authorizes Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance, Leahy would not directly answer the question, claiming that "nobody" questioned Congress's authority to do this.
"We have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?" Leahy told CNSNews.com reporter Matt Cover. "Why would you say there is no authority? I mean, there’s no question there’s authority. Nobody questions that."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was equally dismissive of the question of where the Constitution authorized Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance. When reporter Matt Cover asked her the question, she said: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs similarly dismissed the issue without directly saying where the Constitution authorized the federal government to force people to buy health insurance. When CNSNews.com White House Correspondent Fred Lucas asked Gibbs to comment on the fact that some Republicans were questioning the constitutionality of forcing Americans to buy health insurance, Gibbs said: “I won't be confused as a constitutional scholar, but I don't believe there's a lot of--I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity of what they're commentating on.”
Hatch said that if Congress claimed the power to tell Americans what things they must buy there would be “no limit” to the power of the federal government over the lives of Americans.
“There’s no limit,” said Hatch. “And this is a technical issue, but it’s an important technical, constitutional issue. I’ve raised it. A lot of people have said: Hey, you’re right. Some have said: Oh, you’re being extreme. I don’t think we’re being extreme. I think we’re being, we’re concerned about individual liberties and rights, and that’s what the Constitution protects, or at least should protect.”
Here is a partial transcript of CNSNews.com's interview with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah):
Terry Jeffrey: Let me bring you to the constitutional issue, senator, which I know you brought up in the Finance Committee when the bill was being marked up. The Congressional Budget Office, back in 1994, when they were looking at Senator—then-First Lady--Hillary Clinton’s plan to create a universal health care plan, looked at the question of an individual mandate, which was then being proposed. They studied it, they came back and they said never in the history of the United States has the federal government ordered individual citizens to purchase any good or commodity.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah): That’s right.
Jeffrey: It had never happened. Does the United States Congress have the congressional authority to order individual Americans to buy health care?
Hatch: I think there’s a real constitutional issue there. You know, the illustration they give all the time is: Well, states require people to buy auto insurance. Yeah, they do, if they want to drive.
Jeffrey: That’s a state government.
Hatch: Yeah, and if they want to drive, they have to buy automobile insurance. But here would be the first time where our government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want. And, you know, if that’s the case, then we didn’t need a “Cash for Clunkers,” all we had to do is have the federal government say you all got to buy new cars, no matter how tough it is on you. You know, they could require you to buy anything. And that isn’t America. That’s not freedom. That’s not constitutionally sound. Now, there may be some gimmicky way that they can do this, but I can’t think of a gimmicky way that would be constitutionally justified.
Jeffrey: One of our reporters at CNSNews.com, Matt Cover, asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: Where in the Constitution is there language that authorizes the Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance? And Congressman Hoyer said it’s in the phrase “general welfare”--which occurs at the beginning of Article I, Section 8, before the enumerated powers of Congress. What do you think of Congressman Hoyer’s constitutional argument?
Hatch: Well, keep in mind the General Welfare Clause hasn’t been used for years, except through the Commerce Clause--Article I, Section 8. And frankly the Commerce Clause affects, quote, “activities,” unquote. And, you know, the government telling you you have to buy health insurance, mandating that you have to buy health insurance, is not an activity. I mean, that’s telling you you got to do something you don’t want to do.
Jeffrey: And you’re not doing. If you’re sitting at home in your living room in the state of not owning health insurance, you’re not engaged in any kind of commercial activity. You’re not trading with a foreign nation--
Hatch: There’s no way. That’s right.
Jeffrey: --You’re not trading with an Indian tribe. You’re not trading across state lines.
Hatch: Well, let’s put it this way: If that is held constitutional--for them to be able to tell us we have to purchase health insurance--then there is literally nothing that the federal government can’t force us to do. Nothing. Now, whether or not the states can is another issue. The states may be able to. But since that government is closer to the people, those state representatives know that their very political lives depend on not doing things like that to the people.
Jeffrey: Have any of your Democratic colleagues presented a clear and coherent constitutional argument for why they think they can do this?
Hatch: Not one. Not one argument. In fact, they just dismiss it as though it’s not significant. But I’ll tell you this, a lot aren’t dismissing it. When we start having the federal government dictate to us what we have to purchase or buy without some commercial justifiable reason--you know, or 'activity,' which is the real key word here--we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.
Jeffrey: There’s no limit.
Hatch: There’s no limit. And this is a technical issue, but it’s an important technical, constitutional issue. I’ve raised it. A lot of people have said: Hey, you’re right. Some have said: Oh, you’re being extreme. I don’t think we’re being extreme. I think we’re being, we’re concerned about individual liberties and rights, and that’s what the Constitution protects, or at least should protect.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/56447
The Illustrated Man: How LED Tattoos Could Make Your Skin a Screen
By Charlie Sorrel November 20, 2009 | 9:39 am | Categories: R&D and Inventions
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/the-illustrated-man-how-led-tattoos-could-change-the-face-of-humanity/
(Sexual use video at link.)
The title character of Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story.
New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.
The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.
These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.
Chips are already used inside bodies, most notably the tiny RFID tags injected into pets. But the flexible nature of these “tattooed” circuits means they can move elastically with the body, sitting in places that a rigid circuit board couldn’t.
The first displays are sure to be primitive, but likely very useful for the patients that receive them. You won’t be getting the full-color, hi-res images that come with ink, but functional displays. This doesn’t mean that the commercial and artistic possibilities are being ignored. Philips, the electronics giant, is exploring some rather sexual uses:
It’s certainly rather creepy, but we’re sure that the inevitable next stage of playing adult movie clips on your partner’s back will be appealing to some. We, of course, are considering the geekier side of this tech. GPS, with a map readout on the back of the wrist would certainly be useful, as would chips that cover your eyeballs and can darken down when the sun is shining too bright.
And a full-body display will eventually be used for advertising. Combine this with bioluminescent ink, for example, and you could turn yourself into a small, walking version of Times Square. At least, unlike a real tattoo, you can switch this one off.
In fact, if you start to imagine the possible uses, they seems almost endless. Just like the stories that play across the body of the Illustrated Man.
Tattoo You [H+ Magazine]
Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics [Technology Review]
Photo of real tattoo: Spacemanbobby/Flickr
Ahh, wasn't my personal rant, but still a good one. The gov. is out of control and the farm bill harbors a severe ill wind.
This will not end well for anyone I'm afraid...
A site I thought some here would like. Herbs, teas, oils, etc.
http://www.sfherb.com/
Where were you when wood became a felony?
There are few things I hate more than being a scold. Especially because of all of my condemnation of scolds and scolding, having to be a libertarian scold makes me feel like a hypocrite, and little better than the scolds I criticize. I don't like people who criticize the moral failings of others, especially when the others consist of ordinary citizens simply trying to live their lives in peace.
The problem is, last night I learned about something awful that happened while millions of ordinary citizens who simply tried to live their lives did nothing to stop it. Someone has to be responsible, but who?
I honestly don't know. Not only do I hate to be a scold, I don't know who to scold for this damnable atrocity that befell this country in May and June of 2008 (while I and most bloggers were busy writing post about the impending election).
I refer to the 2008 Farm Bill (also known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka Public Law 110-246). To call it a law would be dishonest in the extreme. To attempt to summarize it would be impossible because of its vastness, so this post will focus on just one minor detail in the bill -- the federalization and criminalization of wood.
Not that anyone could have known. The scanty news reports at the time focused on President Bush's veto of what was described in vague terms as a bipartisan "Farm Bill," and of course because Bush was such a tired and evil man, the only interesting aspect of the bill was the bipartisan override of his tired and evil veto:
But to put Title III into effect, Congress re-passed the entire legislation, including the missing pages, and resent it to Bush. The House voted 306-110 at the end of May. The Senate voted 77-15 for the bill at the beginning of June.
Two-thirds of the $300 billion in spending for the farm bill will go for nutrition programs such as food stamps. Another $40 billion will go toward farm subsidies, and $30 billion is allocated for payments to farms to keep land idle and other environmental programs.
After vetoing the latest version of the farm bill, Bush scolded Congress on Wednesday for not "modifying certain objectionable, onerous and fiscally imprudent provisions. ... I am returning this bill for the same reasons as stated in my veto message."
When he vetoed the first version of the farm bill, Bush said it "continues subsidies for the wealthy and increases farm bill spending by more than $20 billion, while using budget gimmicks to hide much of the increase."
The president said it would hurt efforts to improve American farmers' access to overseas markets.
Other than Bush looking like a mean-spirited piker who wanted to starve the nation's children, there's nothing there that would give anyone a clue about what was in it. Had I the slightest idea what was in store, I'd have been hopping up and down, and screaming like a Banshee, instead of playing the present game of "how could this have happened?"
FWIW, that arch-liberal RINO who's every conservative's favorite demon right now (John McCain) voted against it. And in what right now I see as a laughable understatement, the White House said it was "bloated."
So what was going on when this 663 page monstrosity (which I cannot read for the life of me, even though I probably should) was being pushed through? Why didn't any of the provisions (to say nothing of Bush's exercise of his seldom-used veto powers) merit attention in the press? It's easy to say that they were trying to sneak this through, but the fact is, the political junkies (as well as libertarians like me) were pretty much preoccupied with the impending election. Bush was tired, worn-out, unpopular, passe, and many Republicans were acting as if he was an embarrassment.
I don't know what all is in that bill, but last night when I was researching something else I stumbled upon just one teensy provision of the bill -- an amendment to the Lacey Act which received no media attention at all, and isn't receiving any now.
This amendment deals with illegal plants -- the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country. Here are some excerpts from a summary:
The Lacey Act now makes it unlawful to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken in violation of the laws of a U.S. State, or any foreign law that protects plants. The Lacey Act also makes it unlawful to make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any plant.
The definition of the term "plant" includes "any wild member of the plant kingdom, including roots, seeds, parts, and products thereof, and including trees from either natural or planted forest stands."
[...]
Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted. In any prosecution under the Lacey Act, the burden of proof of a violation rests on the government.
[...]
Violations of Lacey Act provisions for timber and other plant products, as well as fish and wildlife, may be prosecuted through either civil or criminal enforcement actions. Regardless of any prosecution, the tainted plants may be seized and forfeited.
Everyone means everyone, which includes every reader of this blog.
Obviously, this means that in the future, the Fish and Game guys will be able to accompany SWAT Team raiders to check all wood in homes and businesses for possible violations. Even if they're wrong in their suspicions about the wood, it can still be confiscated. (Might that be a goal? To beef up employment at Fish and Game?)
Just think about the law enforcement possibilities alone. After kicking through and impounding your illegal wooden door, a federalized army of government termites could literally strip all wood paneling and flooring from every raided house as suspicious contraband, and haul away all the furniture, wood carvings, picture frames, tools, musical instruments! I can't think of a better harassment tool. The list of potentially regulated items is mind-boggling:
the scope of products that will require a declaration under the Lacey Act is broad and includes certain live plants, plant parts, lumber, wood pulp, paper and paperboard, and products containing certain plant material or products, which may include certain furniture, tools, umbrellas, sporting goods, printed matter, musical instruments, products manufactured from plant-based
resins, and textiles.
[...]
After September 30, 2009, based on experience with the implementation of the electronic system for declaration data collection, we will phase in enforcement of the declaration requirements for additional chapters containing plants and plant
products covered by the Lacey Act, including (but not limited to) Ch. 12 (oil seeds, misc. grain, seed, fruit, plant, etc.), Ch. 13 (gums, lacs, resins, vegetable saps, extracts, etc.), Ch. 14 (vegetable plaiting materials and products not elsewhere specified or included), Ch. 45 (cork and articles of), Ch. 46 (basket ware and wickerwork), Ch. 66 (umbrellas, walking sticks, riding crops), Ch. 82 (tools), Ch. 93 (guns), Ch. 95 (toys, games and sporting equipment), Ch. 96 (brooms, pencils, and buttons), and Ch. 97 (works of art). We will announce a specific phase-in schedule for those chapters in a subsequent Federal Register notice.
Did they mention shipping pallets and cargo braces? Wood is not only in stuff, it's in the stuff that the stuff comes in! Nearly everything is regulated.
Oh, and you firearm owners out there, let's not forget gun handles!
Ch. 93 Headings (arms and ammunition).
9302 -- Revolvers and pistols.
93051020 --Parts and accessories for revolvers
and pistols.
Ch. 94 Headings (furniture, etc.).
940169 -- Seats with wood frames.
Ch. 95 Headings (toys, games, & sporting
equipment).
950420 -- Articles and accessories for billiards.
Ch. 97 Headings (works of art).
9703 -- Sculptures.
Glad I don't own an art gallery, but my picture frames are not labeled, which means there are probably multiple potential felonies in progress in my home. (Perhaps I should be more careful about what I say.)
And while the NRA might not have noticed the impending crackdown on gun handles, at least IKEA is starting to speak up.
Between Wood Control and the Consumer Product Safety Nazis, I pity anyone in the secondhand business, including all Ebay and Craigslist sellers as well as people holding garage or yard sales.
In short, I pity the American people. This is not their fault, though, for no one has any control over what is going on. Not even the despicable fools we call "legislators" who cannot read the "laws" they pass because they are not meant to be read. As to the enforcers, they are only doing their job. They have to earn a living. And we are supposed to respect them, because they lay their lives on the line, "protecting" the public! From felonious wood!
Obviously, the full implications of this dramatic loss of freedom are beyond the capacity of a single post. After all, I am just one blogger, doing this by myself, without the kind of access to data that media organizations and think tanks might have. So, I cannot possibly hope to analyze everything. As things stand, I became exhausted last night just reading through the Lacey Act Amendment stuff pertaining to wood -- and that was one mere fraction of an execrable, unreadable monstrosity. I don't mean to whine, but slogging through such horrors is not exactly my idea of Saturday night fun. But who the hell else is going to do it? Flooring and furniture industry blogs? Who the hell reads them except people in the business? They're all greedy tree haters and have no credibility. Besides, all big business is the enemy right now. We need to stand up not only against Big Cereal, but now Big Flooring! Big Siding! Big Furniture! (Is there such an industry as Big Chopstick?)
I realize I'm in full-blown libertarian scold mode, and it probably reflects impotent rage over the fact that this is too little too late. But that goes to my biggest complaint (aside from my discovery of yet another horrific legislative power grab), which simply is this:
How come we were not told about this?
Where were the news media and think tanks when we needed them? It's too late now. Vast power grabs like this are almost never repealed, and certainly won't be in this Congress.
The fact that I was so upset after reading this late last night that I could barely sleep means nothing. And why should it? Our freedom means nothing. The full realization of that can be very unsettling, and the knowledge that there's so little that can be done about it -- that this is the way laws are passed and freedom lost -- it's just hard to live with that, and normal people really need denial in order to cope. The way I try to cope is by resorting to my usual sarcastic asides, knowing that this too, is just another blog post. It will be visible, but only for a few days, as it becomes slowly, inexorably buried under layer after layer of more and more blog posts. And if I hate the constant, relentless loss of freedom, all I can do is continue to write sarcastic blog posts, for even though I realize that none of this is funny, I really don't know what else I can do, other than maybe show up at a Tea Party demonstration and earn the entitlement to be called a racist bigot by the people who are busily cranking out unreadable "laws" like Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-246), which reduces us further to serfdom than any law I can remember reading attempting to read.
And I do mean serfdom. For those old fashioned cranks who like to imagine that a man's home is still his castle, I heartily recommend that they try doing what I tried doing last night when they were having fun at the movies, and try reading this!
This bill is very large, and loading it may cause your web browser to perform sluggishly, or even freeze. This is especially true for old and/or bad browsers. As an alternative you can download the PDF of the bill or read the text on THOMAS.
They are not kidding. Trying to load the bill shut down my browser for a while and nearly caused a crash.
Bringing up the alleged "text" of the "law" in turn brought up only a gigantic list of links, each of which goes to another gigantic piece of garbled and unreadable text. Yes, the Government Printing Office does have a PDF file, for those who want to contemplate unreadable gobbledygook in its entirety.
I think it is no accident that they make the loss of freedom as boring as it is possible to make it. They think this will make most people go away, and they are right. Only a maniac (or someone with a special interest) would actually spend his time reading this bill. There is probably not one member of Congress who read it, but then, they say that about all the monstrous bills cranked out by this monstrous government which every last one of our founders would decry as precisely what they were trying to avoid when they wrote the Constitution.
Yes, I truly believe that if they were alive today, our founders would say we ought to have another revolution. But it's inflammatory and irresponsible to talk that way, and the problem is, I don't advocate a revolution, because I don't want to see a whole lot of people getting killed, which is what tends to happen in revolutions. The fact is, the votes are not there to get rid of the tyrannical system which calls itself the federal government, and to deny this is, well, denial.
Besides, how can you overthrow a system which has metastasized into a grotesque life form so slippery, multi-tentacled, and all-encompassing that its very morphology evades detection and analysis? Really, the federal government is like a science fiction monster. No one can keep track of things which are not reported or discussed, and which are too complex to be read by human beings. Hell, despite my outrage right now, I was completely silent when this monster was being passed.
What was I doing? Mostly blogging about the impending election. (And of course, the usual things like pit bulls, porn, and responsibility.) But I thought stopping Obama was the most important national issue at the time. Besides, what the hell do I know about farming? That's what I thought the bill was about. No one said anything about federal wood control.
And get this:
Despite my ruined Saturday evening reading about wood control, I still haven't the faintest idea what else might be in there!
Looking back, I'm thinking that had people known what was happening, had enough bloggers sounded the alarm, it might just have made enough of a difference to persuade a few Republicans not to go along with the override of Bush's veto.
As things stand, former President Bush is the only guy who comes out looking good, and not only does he deserve to be thanked, I think that every Republican who voted to override owes him an apology.
But this Farm Bill was such a monster with so many provisions that it defies ordinary analysis. People could have voted for it or against it for innumerable reasons, liberal or conservative. Here's how the vote looked:
Having that many provisions in a bill means that only some provisions attract attention, so voting against wood control could be construed as voting to take food away from infants.
Anyway, I'm exhausted. I have finally succumbed to Orwellian overload, and my scold is over.
Once again, please bear in mind that I specifically do not advocate revolution. But wouldn't it be nice if we could vote for legislators who would simply pledge to vote against any and all legislation?
Who knows, it might be a nice campaign gimmick.
UPDATE (11/19/09): My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.
Comments to this post have now been turned off automatically (and I don't think there is a way to turn them back on), but anyone who wants to say something, please feel free to leave a comment on any of the more recent posts.
This one (on whether lost freedom can ever be regained) is probably as good a place as any.
Thanks for coming!
MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that the Gibson Guitar plant was raided by the federal wood police recently, so they're not wasting any time.
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/where_were_you_2.html
Where were you when wood became a felony?
There are few things I hate more than being a scold. Especially because of all of my condemnation of scolds and scolding, having to be a libertarian scold makes me feel like a hypocrite, and little better than the scolds I criticize. I don't like people who criticize the moral failings of others, especially when the others consist of ordinary citizens simply trying to live their lives in peace.
The problem is, last night I learned about something awful that happened while millions of ordinary citizens who simply tried to live their lives did nothing to stop it. Someone has to be responsible, but who?
I honestly don't know. Not only do I hate to be a scold, I don't know who to scold for this damnable atrocity that befell this country in May and June of 2008 (while I and most bloggers were busy writing post about the impending election).
I refer to the 2008 Farm Bill (also known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka Public Law 110-246). To call it a law would be dishonest in the extreme. To attempt to summarize it would be impossible because of its vastness, so this post will focus on just one minor detail in the bill -- the federalization and criminalization of wood.
Not that anyone could have known. The scanty news reports at the time focused on President Bush's veto of what was described in vague terms as a bipartisan "Farm Bill," and of course because Bush was such a tired and evil man, the only interesting aspect of the bill was the bipartisan override of his tired and evil veto:
But to put Title III into effect, Congress re-passed the entire legislation, including the missing pages, and resent it to Bush. The House voted 306-110 at the end of May. The Senate voted 77-15 for the bill at the beginning of June.
Two-thirds of the $300 billion in spending for the farm bill will go for nutrition programs such as food stamps. Another $40 billion will go toward farm subsidies, and $30 billion is allocated for payments to farms to keep land idle and other environmental programs.
After vetoing the latest version of the farm bill, Bush scolded Congress on Wednesday for not "modifying certain objectionable, onerous and fiscally imprudent provisions. ... I am returning this bill for the same reasons as stated in my veto message."
When he vetoed the first version of the farm bill, Bush said it "continues subsidies for the wealthy and increases farm bill spending by more than $20 billion, while using budget gimmicks to hide much of the increase."
The president said it would hurt efforts to improve American farmers' access to overseas markets.
Other than Bush looking like a mean-spirited piker who wanted to starve the nation's children, there's nothing there that would give anyone a clue about what was in it. Had I the slightest idea what was in store, I'd have been hopping up and down, and screaming like a Banshee, instead of playing the present game of "how could this have happened?"
FWIW, that arch-liberal RINO who's every conservative's favorite demon right now (John McCain) voted against it. And in what right now I see as a laughable understatement, the White House said it was "bloated."
So what was going on when this 663 page monstrosity (which I cannot read for the life of me, even though I probably should) was being pushed through? Why didn't any of the provisions (to say nothing of Bush's exercise of his seldom-used veto powers) merit attention in the press? It's easy to say that they were trying to sneak this through, but the fact is, the political junkies (as well as libertarians like me) were pretty much preoccupied with the impending election. Bush was tired, worn-out, unpopular, passe, and many Republicans were acting as if he was an embarrassment.
I don't know what all is in that bill, but last night when I was researching something else I stumbled upon just one teensy provision of the bill -- an amendment to the Lacey Act which received no media attention at all, and isn't receiving any now.
This amendment deals with illegal plants -- the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country. Here are some excerpts from a summary:
The Lacey Act now makes it unlawful to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken in violation of the laws of a U.S. State, or any foreign law that protects plants. The Lacey Act also makes it unlawful to make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any plant.
The definition of the term "plant" includes "any wild member of the plant kingdom, including roots, seeds, parts, and products thereof, and including trees from either natural or planted forest stands."
[...]
Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted. In any prosecution under the Lacey Act, the burden of proof of a violation rests on the government.
[...]
Violations of Lacey Act provisions for timber and other plant products, as well as fish and wildlife, may be prosecuted through either civil or criminal enforcement actions. Regardless of any prosecution, the tainted plants may be seized and forfeited.
Everyone means everyone, which includes every reader of this blog.
Obviously, this means that in the future, the Fish and Game guys will be able to accompany SWAT Team raiders to check all wood in homes and businesses for possible violations. Even if they're wrong in their suspicions about the wood, it can still be confiscated. (Might that be a goal? To beef up employment at Fish and Game?)
Just think about the law enforcement possibilities alone. After kicking through and impounding your illegal wooden door, a federalized army of government termites could literally strip all wood paneling and flooring from every raided house as suspicious contraband, and haul away all the furniture, wood carvings, picture frames, tools, musical instruments! I can't think of a better harassment tool. The list of potentially regulated items is mind-boggling:
the scope of products that will require a declaration under the Lacey Act is broad and includes certain live plants, plant parts, lumber, wood pulp, paper and paperboard, and products containing certain plant material or products, which may include certain furniture, tools, umbrellas, sporting goods, printed matter, musical instruments, products manufactured from plant-based
resins, and textiles.
[...]
After September 30, 2009, based on experience with the implementation of the electronic system for declaration data collection, we will phase in enforcement of the declaration requirements for additional chapters containing plants and plant
products covered by the Lacey Act, including (but not limited to) Ch. 12 (oil seeds, misc. grain, seed, fruit, plant, etc.), Ch. 13 (gums, lacs, resins, vegetable saps, extracts, etc.), Ch. 14 (vegetable plaiting materials and products not elsewhere specified or included), Ch. 45 (cork and articles of), Ch. 46 (basket ware and wickerwork), Ch. 66 (umbrellas, walking sticks, riding crops), Ch. 82 (tools), Ch. 93 (guns), Ch. 95 (toys, games and sporting equipment), Ch. 96 (brooms, pencils, and buttons), and Ch. 97 (works of art). We will announce a specific phase-in schedule for those chapters in a subsequent Federal Register notice.
Did they mention shipping pallets and cargo braces? Wood is not only in stuff, it's in the stuff that the stuff comes in! Nearly everything is regulated.
Oh, and you firearm owners out there, let's not forget gun handles!
Ch. 93 Headings (arms and ammunition).
9302 -- Revolvers and pistols.
93051020 --Parts and accessories for revolvers
and pistols.
Ch. 94 Headings (furniture, etc.).
940169 -- Seats with wood frames.
Ch. 95 Headings (toys, games, & sporting
equipment).
950420 -- Articles and accessories for billiards.
Ch. 97 Headings (works of art).
9703 -- Sculptures.
Glad I don't own an art gallery, but my picture frames are not labeled, which means there are probably multiple potential felonies in progress in my home. (Perhaps I should be more careful about what I say.)
And while the NRA might not have noticed the impending crackdown on gun handles, at least IKEA is starting to speak up.
Between Wood Control and the Consumer Product Safety Nazis, I pity anyone in the secondhand business, including all Ebay and Craigslist sellers as well as people holding garage or yard sales.
In short, I pity the American people. This is not their fault, though, for no one has any control over what is going on. Not even the despicable fools we call "legislators" who cannot read the "laws" they pass because they are not meant to be read. As to the enforcers, they are only doing their job. They have to earn a living. And we are supposed to respect them, because they lay their lives on the line, "protecting" the public! From felonious wood!
Obviously, the full implications of this dramatic loss of freedom are beyond the capacity of a single post. After all, I am just one blogger, doing this by myself, without the kind of access to data that media organizations and think tanks might have. So, I cannot possibly hope to analyze everything. As things stand, I became exhausted last night just reading through the Lacey Act Amendment stuff pertaining to wood -- and that was one mere fraction of an execrable, unreadable monstrosity. I don't mean to whine, but slogging through such horrors is not exactly my idea of Saturday night fun. But who the hell else is going to do it? Flooring and furniture industry blogs? Who the hell reads them except people in the business? They're all greedy tree haters and have no credibility. Besides, all big business is the enemy right now. We need to stand up not only against Big Cereal, but now Big Flooring! Big Siding! Big Furniture! (Is there such an industry as Big Chopstick?)
I realize I'm in full-blown libertarian scold mode, and it probably reflects impotent rage over the fact that this is too little too late. But that goes to my biggest complaint (aside from my discovery of yet another horrific legislative power grab), which simply is this:
How come we were not told about this?
Where were the news media and think tanks when we needed them? It's too late now. Vast power grabs like this are almost never repealed, and certainly won't be in this Congress.
The fact that I was so upset after reading this late last night that I could barely sleep means nothing. And why should it? Our freedom means nothing. The full realization of that can be very unsettling, and the knowledge that there's so little that can be done about it -- that this is the way laws are passed and freedom lost -- it's just hard to live with that, and normal people really need denial in order to cope. The way I try to cope is by resorting to my usual sarcastic asides, knowing that this too, is just another blog post. It will be visible, but only for a few days, as it becomes slowly, inexorably buried under layer after layer of more and more blog posts. And if I hate the constant, relentless loss of freedom, all I can do is continue to write sarcastic blog posts, for even though I realize that none of this is funny, I really don't know what else I can do, other than maybe show up at a Tea Party demonstration and earn the entitlement to be called a racist bigot by the people who are busily cranking out unreadable "laws" like Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-246), which reduces us further to serfdom than any law I can remember reading attempting to read.
And I do mean serfdom. For those old fashioned cranks who like to imagine that a man's home is still his castle, I heartily recommend that they try doing what I tried doing last night when they were having fun at the movies, and try reading this!
This bill is very large, and loading it may cause your web browser to perform sluggishly, or even freeze. This is especially true for old and/or bad browsers. As an alternative you can download the PDF of the bill or read the text on THOMAS.
They are not kidding. Trying to load the bill shut down my browser for a while and nearly caused a crash.
Bringing up the alleged "text" of the "law" in turn brought up only a gigantic list of links, each of which goes to another gigantic piece of garbled and unreadable text. Yes, the Government Printing Office does have a PDF file, for those who want to contemplate unreadable gobbledygook in its entirety.
I think it is no accident that they make the loss of freedom as boring as it is possible to make it. They think this will make most people go away, and they are right. Only a maniac (or someone with a special interest) would actually spend his time reading this bill. There is probably not one member of Congress who read it, but then, they say that about all the monstrous bills cranked out by this monstrous government which every last one of our founders would decry as precisely what they were trying to avoid when they wrote the Constitution.
Yes, I truly believe that if they were alive today, our founders would say we ought to have another revolution. But it's inflammatory and irresponsible to talk that way, and the problem is, I don't advocate a revolution, because I don't want to see a whole lot of people getting killed, which is what tends to happen in revolutions. The fact is, the votes are not there to get rid of the tyrannical system which calls itself the federal government, and to deny this is, well, denial.
Besides, how can you overthrow a system which has metastasized into a grotesque life form so slippery, multi-tentacled, and all-encompassing that its very morphology evades detection and analysis? Really, the federal government is like a science fiction monster. No one can keep track of things which are not reported or discussed, and which are too complex to be read by human beings. Hell, despite my outrage right now, I was completely silent when this monster was being passed.
What was I doing? Mostly blogging about the impending election. (And of course, the usual things like pit bulls, porn, and responsibility.) But I thought stopping Obama was the most important national issue at the time. Besides, what the hell do I know about farming? That's what I thought the bill was about. No one said anything about federal wood control.
And get this:
Despite my ruined Saturday evening reading about wood control, I still haven't the faintest idea what else might be in there!
Looking back, I'm thinking that had people known what was happening, had enough bloggers sounded the alarm, it might just have made enough of a difference to persuade a few Republicans not to go along with the override of Bush's veto.
As things stand, former President Bush is the only guy who comes out looking good, and not only does he deserve to be thanked, I think that every Republican who voted to override owes him an apology.
But this Farm Bill was such a monster with so many provisions that it defies ordinary analysis. People could have voted for it or against it for innumerable reasons, liberal or conservative. Here's how the vote looked:
Having that many provisions in a bill means that only some provisions attract attention, so voting against wood control could be construed as voting to take food away from infants.
Anyway, I'm exhausted. I have finally succumbed to Orwellian overload, and my scold is over.
Once again, please bear in mind that I specifically do not advocate revolution. But wouldn't it be nice if we could vote for legislators who would simply pledge to vote against any and all legislation?
Who knows, it might be a nice campaign gimmick.
UPDATE (11/19/09): My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.
Comments to this post have now been turned off automatically (and I don't think there is a way to turn them back on), but anyone who wants to say something, please feel free to leave a comment on any of the more recent posts.
This one (on whether lost freedom can ever be regained) is probably as good a place as any.
Thanks for coming!
MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that the Gibson Guitar plant was raided by the federal wood police recently, so they're not wasting any time.
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/where_were_you_2.html
Where were you when wood became a felony?
There are few things I hate more than being a scold. Especially because of all of my condemnation of scolds and scolding, having to be a libertarian scold makes me feel like a hypocrite, and little better than the scolds I criticize. I don't like people who criticize the moral failings of others, especially when the others consist of ordinary citizens simply trying to live their lives in peace.
The problem is, last night I learned about something awful that happened while millions of ordinary citizens who simply tried to live their lives did nothing to stop it. Someone has to be responsible, but who?
I honestly don't know. Not only do I hate to be a scold, I don't know who to scold for this damnable atrocity that befell this country in May and June of 2008 (while I and most bloggers were busy writing post about the impending election).
I refer to the 2008 Farm Bill (also known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka Public Law 110-246). To call it a law would be dishonest in the extreme. To attempt to summarize it would be impossible because of its vastness, so this post will focus on just one minor detail in the bill -- the federalization and criminalization of wood.
Not that anyone could have known. The scanty news reports at the time focused on President Bush's veto of what was described in vague terms as a bipartisan "Farm Bill," and of course because Bush was such a tired and evil man, the only interesting aspect of the bill was the bipartisan override of his tired and evil veto:
But to put Title III into effect, Congress re-passed the entire legislation, including the missing pages, and resent it to Bush. The House voted 306-110 at the end of May. The Senate voted 77-15 for the bill at the beginning of June.
Two-thirds of the $300 billion in spending for the farm bill will go for nutrition programs such as food stamps. Another $40 billion will go toward farm subsidies, and $30 billion is allocated for payments to farms to keep land idle and other environmental programs.
After vetoing the latest version of the farm bill, Bush scolded Congress on Wednesday for not "modifying certain objectionable, onerous and fiscally imprudent provisions. ... I am returning this bill for the same reasons as stated in my veto message."
When he vetoed the first version of the farm bill, Bush said it "continues subsidies for the wealthy and increases farm bill spending by more than $20 billion, while using budget gimmicks to hide much of the increase."
The president said it would hurt efforts to improve American farmers' access to overseas markets.
Other than Bush looking like a mean-spirited piker who wanted to starve the nation's children, there's nothing there that would give anyone a clue about what was in it. Had I the slightest idea what was in store, I'd have been hopping up and down, and screaming like a Banshee, instead of playing the present game of "how could this have happened?"
FWIW, that arch-liberal RINO who's every conservative's favorite demon right now (John McCain) voted against it. And in what right now I see as a laughable understatement, the White House said it was "bloated."
So what was going on when this 663 page monstrosity (which I cannot read for the life of me, even though I probably should) was being pushed through? Why didn't any of the provisions (to say nothing of Bush's exercise of his seldom-used veto powers) merit attention in the press? It's easy to say that they were trying to sneak this through, but the fact is, the political junkies (as well as libertarians like me) were pretty much preoccupied with the impending election. Bush was tired, worn-out, unpopular, passe, and many Republicans were acting as if he was an embarrassment.
I don't know what all is in that bill, but last night when I was researching something else I stumbled upon just one teensy provision of the bill -- an amendment to the Lacey Act which received no media attention at all, and isn't receiving any now.
This amendment deals with illegal plants -- the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country. Here are some excerpts from a summary:
The Lacey Act now makes it unlawful to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken in violation of the laws of a U.S. State, or any foreign law that protects plants. The Lacey Act also makes it unlawful to make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any plant.
The definition of the term "plant" includes "any wild member of the plant kingdom, including roots, seeds, parts, and products thereof, and including trees from either natural or planted forest stands."
[...]
Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted. In any prosecution under the Lacey Act, the burden of proof of a violation rests on the government.
[...]
Violations of Lacey Act provisions for timber and other plant products, as well as fish and wildlife, may be prosecuted through either civil or criminal enforcement actions. Regardless of any prosecution, the tainted plants may be seized and forfeited.
Everyone means everyone, which includes every reader of this blog.
Obviously, this means that in the future, the Fish and Game guys will be able to accompany SWAT Team raiders to check all wood in homes and businesses for possible violations. Even if they're wrong in their suspicions about the wood, it can still be confiscated. (Might that be a goal? To beef up employment at Fish and Game?)
Just think about the law enforcement possibilities alone. After kicking through and impounding your illegal wooden door, a federalized army of government termites could literally strip all wood paneling and flooring from every raided house as suspicious contraband, and haul away all the furniture, wood carvings, picture frames, tools, musical instruments! I can't think of a better harassment tool. The list of potentially regulated items is mind-boggling:
the scope of products that will require a declaration under the Lacey Act is broad and includes certain live plants, plant parts, lumber, wood pulp, paper and paperboard, and products containing certain plant material or products, which may include certain furniture, tools, umbrellas, sporting goods, printed matter, musical instruments, products manufactured from plant-based
resins, and textiles.
[...]
After September 30, 2009, based on experience with the implementation of the electronic system for declaration data collection, we will phase in enforcement of the declaration requirements for additional chapters containing plants and plant
products covered by the Lacey Act, including (but not limited to) Ch. 12 (oil seeds, misc. grain, seed, fruit, plant, etc.), Ch. 13 (gums, lacs, resins, vegetable saps, extracts, etc.), Ch. 14 (vegetable plaiting materials and products not elsewhere specified or included), Ch. 45 (cork and articles of), Ch. 46 (basket ware and wickerwork), Ch. 66 (umbrellas, walking sticks, riding crops), Ch. 82 (tools), Ch. 93 (guns), Ch. 95 (toys, games and sporting equipment), Ch. 96 (brooms, pencils, and buttons), and Ch. 97 (works of art). We will announce a specific phase-in schedule for those chapters in a subsequent Federal Register notice.
Did they mention shipping pallets and cargo braces? Wood is not only in stuff, it's in the stuff that the stuff comes in! Nearly everything is regulated.
Oh, and you firearm owners out there, let's not forget gun handles!
Ch. 93 Headings (arms and ammunition).
9302 -- Revolvers and pistols.
93051020 --Parts and accessories for revolvers
and pistols.
Ch. 94 Headings (furniture, etc.).
940169 -- Seats with wood frames.
Ch. 95 Headings (toys, games, & sporting
equipment).
950420 -- Articles and accessories for billiards.
Ch. 97 Headings (works of art).
9703 -- Sculptures.
Glad I don't own an art gallery, but my picture frames are not labeled, which means there are probably multiple potential felonies in progress in my home. (Perhaps I should be more careful about what I say.)
And while the NRA might not have noticed the impending crackdown on gun handles, at least IKEA is starting to speak up.
Between Wood Control and the Consumer Product Safety Nazis, I pity anyone in the secondhand business, including all Ebay and Craigslist sellers as well as people holding garage or yard sales.
In short, I pity the American people. This is not their fault, though, for no one has any control over what is going on. Not even the despicable fools we call "legislators" who cannot read the "laws" they pass because they are not meant to be read. As to the enforcers, they are only doing their job. They have to earn a living. And we are supposed to respect them, because they lay their lives on the line, "protecting" the public! From felonious wood!
Obviously, the full implications of this dramatic loss of freedom are beyond the capacity of a single post. After all, I am just one blogger, doing this by myself, without the kind of access to data that media organizations and think tanks might have. So, I cannot possibly hope to analyze everything. As things stand, I became exhausted last night just reading through the Lacey Act Amendment stuff pertaining to wood -- and that was one mere fraction of an execrable, unreadable monstrosity. I don't mean to whine, but slogging through such horrors is not exactly my idea of Saturday night fun. But who the hell else is going to do it? Flooring and furniture industry blogs? Who the hell reads them except people in the business? They're all greedy tree haters and have no credibility. Besides, all big business is the enemy right now. We need to stand up not only against Big Cereal, but now Big Flooring! Big Siding! Big Furniture! (Is there such an industry as Big Chopstick?)
I realize I'm in full-blown libertarian scold mode, and it probably reflects impotent rage over the fact that this is too little too late. But that goes to my biggest complaint (aside from my discovery of yet another horrific legislative power grab), which simply is this:
How come we were not told about this?
Where were the news media and think tanks when we needed them? It's too late now. Vast power grabs like this are almost never repealed, and certainly won't be in this Congress.
The fact that I was so upset after reading this late last night that I could barely sleep means nothing. And why should it? Our freedom means nothing. The full realization of that can be very unsettling, and the knowledge that there's so little that can be done about it -- that this is the way laws are passed and freedom lost -- it's just hard to live with that, and normal people really need denial in order to cope. The way I try to cope is by resorting to my usual sarcastic asides, knowing that this too, is just another blog post. It will be visible, but only for a few days, as it becomes slowly, inexorably buried under layer after layer of more and more blog posts. And if I hate the constant, relentless loss of freedom, all I can do is continue to write sarcastic blog posts, for even though I realize that none of this is funny, I really don't know what else I can do, other than maybe show up at a Tea Party demonstration and earn the entitlement to be called a racist bigot by the people who are busily cranking out unreadable "laws" like Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-246), which reduces us further to serfdom than any law I can remember reading attempting to read.
And I do mean serfdom. For those old fashioned cranks who like to imagine that a man's home is still his castle, I heartily recommend that they try doing what I tried doing last night when they were having fun at the movies, and try reading this!
This bill is very large, and loading it may cause your web browser to perform sluggishly, or even freeze. This is especially true for old and/or bad browsers. As an alternative you can download the PDF of the bill or read the text on THOMAS.
They are not kidding. Trying to load the bill shut down my browser for a while and nearly caused a crash.
Bringing up the alleged "text" of the "law" in turn brought up only a gigantic list of links, each of which goes to another gigantic piece of garbled and unreadable text. Yes, the Government Printing Office does have a PDF file, for those who want to contemplate unreadable gobbledygook in its entirety.
I think it is no accident that they make the loss of freedom as boring as it is possible to make it. They think this will make most people go away, and they are right. Only a maniac (or someone with a special interest) would actually spend his time reading this bill. There is probably not one member of Congress who read it, but then, they say that about all the monstrous bills cranked out by this monstrous government which every last one of our founders would decry as precisely what they were trying to avoid when they wrote the Constitution.
Yes, I truly believe that if they were alive today, our founders would say we ought to have another revolution. But it's inflammatory and irresponsible to talk that way, and the problem is, I don't advocate a revolution, because I don't want to see a whole lot of people getting killed, which is what tends to happen in revolutions. The fact is, the votes are not there to get rid of the tyrannical system which calls itself the federal government, and to deny this is, well, denial.
Besides, how can you overthrow a system which has metastasized into a grotesque life form so slippery, multi-tentacled, and all-encompassing that its very morphology evades detection and analysis? Really, the federal government is like a science fiction monster. No one can keep track of things which are not reported or discussed, and which are too complex to be read by human beings. Hell, despite my outrage right now, I was completely silent when this monster was being passed.
What was I doing? Mostly blogging about the impending election. (And of course, the usual things like pit bulls, porn, and responsibility.) But I thought stopping Obama was the most important national issue at the time. Besides, what the hell do I know about farming? That's what I thought the bill was about. No one said anything about federal wood control.
And get this:
Despite my ruined Saturday evening reading about wood control, I still haven't the faintest idea what else might be in there!
Looking back, I'm thinking that had people known what was happening, had enough bloggers sounded the alarm, it might just have made enough of a difference to persuade a few Republicans not to go along with the override of Bush's veto.
As things stand, former President Bush is the only guy who comes out looking good, and not only does he deserve to be thanked, I think that every Republican who voted to override owes him an apology.
But this Farm Bill was such a monster with so many provisions that it defies ordinary analysis. People could have voted for it or against it for innumerable reasons, liberal or conservative. Here's how the vote looked:
Having that many provisions in a bill means that only some provisions attract attention, so voting against wood control could be construed as voting to take food away from infants.
Anyway, I'm exhausted. I have finally succumbed to Orwellian overload, and my scold is over.
Once again, please bear in mind that I specifically do not advocate revolution. But wouldn't it be nice if we could vote for legislators who would simply pledge to vote against any and all legislation?
Who knows, it might be a nice campaign gimmick.
UPDATE (11/19/09): My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.
Comments to this post have now been turned off automatically (and I don't think there is a way to turn them back on), but anyone who wants to say something, please feel free to leave a comment on any of the more recent posts.
This one (on whether lost freedom can ever be regained) is probably as good a place as any.
Thanks for coming!
MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that the Gibson Guitar plant was raided by the federal wood police recently, so they're not wasting any time.
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/where_were_you_2.html
Gibson Guitar plant in Nashville raided by feds
Guitar maker cooperates in exotic wood probe
By G. Chambers Williams III and Wendy Lee • THE TENNESSEAN • November 18, 2009
An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar 's manufacturing plant, but no arrests.
Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson's Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.
Gibson issued a statement saying it is "fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood." The company said it did nothing wrong.
Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson's plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law.
Related
Musicians who play Gibson guitars
Gibson Guitar CEO leaves rainforest group after Nashville raid
Musicians who play Gibson guitars
Under the U.S. Lacey Act, trading in such banned woods is a federal offense, punishable by civil and criminal penalties or the seizure of property.
Environmental activists say the search of Gibson's plant took them by surprise because the company's top executive, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, has taken a lead role for at least the past six years in urging the music industry to use only sustainable wood products.
"Historically, Gibson has shown an awful lot of leadership; they are really one of the manufacturers far ahead of the field," said Scott Paul, director of the forest campaign for Greenpeace, the international activist group.
Suppliers may lie
Paul said the investigation at Gibson's facility shows how complex and tricky the sale of wood products can be, especially when some sales are arranged through third parties in remote countries.
"Today proves that even if you're very serious about buying only certified, well-managed supplies, it's still possible to get caught up … in many of these regions where law enforcement is not always great and corruption is not uncommon," Paul said. "There are a lot of middle men between the guitar manufacturer and the company that is logging the ground. There are a lot of people who are not that honest in the timber business worldwide."
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091118/BUSINESS01/911180400/Gibson+Guitar+plant+in+Nashville+raided+by+feds
Gibson Guitar plant in Nashville raided by feds
Guitar maker cooperates in exotic wood probe
By G. Chambers Williams III and Wendy Lee • THE TENNESSEAN • November 18, 2009
An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar 's manufacturing plant, but no arrests.
Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson's Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.
Gibson issued a statement saying it is "fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood." The company said it did nothing wrong.
Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson's plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law.
Related
Musicians who play Gibson guitars
Gibson Guitar CEO leaves rainforest group after Nashville raid
Musicians who play Gibson guitars
Under the U.S. Lacey Act, trading in such banned woods is a federal offense, punishable by civil and criminal penalties or the seizure of property.
Environmental activists say the search of Gibson's plant took them by surprise because the company's top executive, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, has taken a lead role for at least the past six years in urging the music industry to use only sustainable wood products.
"Historically, Gibson has shown an awful lot of leadership; they are really one of the manufacturers far ahead of the field," said Scott Paul, director of the forest campaign for Greenpeace, the international activist group.
Suppliers may lie
Paul said the investigation at Gibson's facility shows how complex and tricky the sale of wood products can be, especially when some sales are arranged through third parties in remote countries.
"Today proves that even if you're very serious about buying only certified, well-managed supplies, it's still possible to get caught up … in many of these regions where law enforcement is not always great and corruption is not uncommon," Paul said. "There are a lot of middle men between the guitar manufacturer and the company that is logging the ground. There are a lot of people who are not that honest in the timber business worldwide."
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091118/BUSINESS01/911180400/Gibson+Guitar+plant+in+Nashville+raided+by+feds
Gibson Guitar plant in Nashville raided by feds
Guitar maker cooperates in exotic wood probe
By G. Chambers Williams III and Wendy Lee • THE TENNESSEAN • November 18, 2009
An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar 's manufacturing plant, but no arrests.
Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson's Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.
Gibson issued a statement saying it is "fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood." The company said it did nothing wrong.
Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson's plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law.
Related
Musicians who play Gibson guitars
Gibson Guitar CEO leaves rainforest group after Nashville raid
Musicians who play Gibson guitars
Under the U.S. Lacey Act, trading in such banned woods is a federal offense, punishable by civil and criminal penalties or the seizure of property.
Environmental activists say the search of Gibson's plant took them by surprise because the company's top executive, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, has taken a lead role for at least the past six years in urging the music industry to use only sustainable wood products.
"Historically, Gibson has shown an awful lot of leadership; they are really one of the manufacturers far ahead of the field," said Scott Paul, director of the forest campaign for Greenpeace, the international activist group.
Suppliers may lie
Paul said the investigation at Gibson's facility shows how complex and tricky the sale of wood products can be, especially when some sales are arranged through third parties in remote countries.
"Today proves that even if you're very serious about buying only certified, well-managed supplies, it's still possible to get caught up … in many of these regions where law enforcement is not always great and corruption is not uncommon," Paul said. "There are a lot of middle men between the guitar manufacturer and the company that is logging the ground. There are a lot of people who are not that honest in the timber business worldwide."
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091118/BUSINESS01/911180400/Gibson+Guitar+plant+in+Nashville+raided+by+feds
Live feed of underlying pandemic map data here
Commentary
WHO Confirms D225G in Lung Cases in Norway and Ukraine
Recombinomics Commentary 23:50
November 20, 2009
Norway reported finding a mutated virus in three people who died or were severely ill. The mutation, known as D222G on the receptor binding domain, allow the virus to grow deeper in the lungs.
The mutation does not appear to be circulating and may have spontaneously arisen in the three patients, said Geir Stene-Larsen, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Only 3 of Norway's 70 tested samples had it.
Asked about that, Dr. Schuchat said the same mutation had also been found in mild cases in several countries, and it did not make the virus resistant to vaccine or to treatment with drugs like Tamiflu. She said she did not want to "underplay" it, adding that "it's too soon to say what this will mean long term."
The D222G mutation allows the virus to bind to receptors on cells lining the lungs, which are slightly different from those in the nose and throat. Henry L. Niman, a flu tracker in Pittsburgh, has been warning for a week that D225G - the same mutation under a different numbering system - has been repeatedly found in Ukraine, which is in the grips of a severe outbreak and where surprising numbers of people have died with lung hemorrhages - the kind of pneumonia that can be caused by an immune system's "cytokine storm" attacking a new virus.
The above comments from the Donald McNeil update in tomorrow's New York Times are the first direct acknowledgement that the receptor binding domain change in Norway and Ukraine are the same. Earlier the WHO had put out an update on the change in Norway and noted that a similar change had been seen elsewhere, and included Ukraine in the list of countries.
In earlier Ukraine updates WHO did not acknowledge any receptor binding domain changes, but the sequences released at GISAID by Mill Hill had D225G in four of the ten HA sequences, which precisely matched the four fatalities, raising concern that the previously described "destruction of both lungs" was driven by the acquisition of D225G. The group in Norway also found the change in dead or dying patients, further supporting a significant role of this change the the cytokine storm associated with this acquisition.
This change has been reported in a number of recently described cases including two fatal cases in Sao Paulo, a seriously ill case in China, and cases in Sydney, Australia and Vladivostok. The polymorphism had also been seen in earlier isolates in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Japan.
The role of this change in fatal cases may be dependent on the viral load. The cytokine storm is precipitated by high levels of virus, and lower levels may produce milder disease.
The above report, noting the identity between Norway and Ukraine should lead to more detailed analysis of tissue samples from fatal cases, which may contain an increased frequency of D225G, a receptor binding domain change identified in 1918 and 1919 samples.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11200906/D225G_Norway_Ukraine_WHO.html
Live feed of underlying pandemic map data here
Commentary
WHO Confirms D225G in Lung Cases in Norway and Ukraine
Recombinomics Commentary 23:50
November 20, 2009
Norway reported finding a mutated virus in three people who died or were severely ill. The mutation, known as D222G on the receptor binding domain, allow the virus to grow deeper in the lungs.
The mutation does not appear to be circulating and may have spontaneously arisen in the three patients, said Geir Stene-Larsen, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Only 3 of Norway's 70 tested samples had it.
Asked about that, Dr. Schuchat said the same mutation had also been found in mild cases in several countries, and it did not make the virus resistant to vaccine or to treatment with drugs like Tamiflu. She said she did not want to "underplay" it, adding that "it's too soon to say what this will mean long term."
The D222G mutation allows the virus to bind to receptors on cells lining the lungs, which are slightly different from those in the nose and throat. Henry L. Niman, a flu tracker in Pittsburgh, has been warning for a week that D225G - the same mutation under a different numbering system - has been repeatedly found in Ukraine, which is in the grips of a severe outbreak and where surprising numbers of people have died with lung hemorrhages - the kind of pneumonia that can be caused by an immune system's "cytokine storm" attacking a new virus.
The above comments from the Donald McNeil update in tomorrow's New York Times are the first direct acknowledgement that the receptor binding domain change in Norway and Ukraine are the same. Earlier the WHO had put out an update on the change in Norway and noted that a similar change had been seen elsewhere, and included Ukraine in the list of countries.
In earlier Ukraine updates WHO did not acknowledge any receptor binding domain changes, but the sequences released at GISAID by Mill Hill had D225G in four of the ten HA sequences, which precisely matched the four fatalities, raising concern that the previously described "destruction of both lungs" was driven by the acquisition of D225G. The group in Norway also found the change in dead or dying patients, further supporting a significant role of this change the the cytokine storm associated with this acquisition.
This change has been reported in a number of recently described cases including two fatal cases in Sao Paulo, a seriously ill case in China, and cases in Sydney, Australia and Vladivostok. The polymorphism had also been seen in earlier isolates in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Japan.
The role of this change in fatal cases may be dependent on the viral load. The cytokine storm is precipitated by high levels of virus, and lower levels may produce milder disease.
The above report, noting the identity between Norway and Ukraine should lead to more detailed analysis of tissue samples from fatal cases, which may contain an increased frequency of D225G, a receptor binding domain change identified in 1918 and 1919 samples.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11200906/D225G_Norway_Ukraine_WHO.html
Now you've made me blush.
100% PROOF U.S.A. has tested using RAIN to infect AMERICAN CITIZENS!
15 years ago!
100% PROOF U.S.A. has tested using RAIN to infect AMERICAN CITIZENS!
15 years ago!
It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say...that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.—Etienne de la Boetie
YOUR HAIR SMELLS NICE!
Every day, a male co-worker walks up very close to a lady standing at the coffee machine, inhales a big breath of air and tells her that her hair smells nice.
After a week of this, she can't stand it anymore, takes her complaint to a supervisor in the personnel department and states that she wants to file a sexual harassment grievance against him.
The Human Resources supervisor is puzzled by this decision and asks, 'what's sexually threatening about a co-worker telling you your hair smells nice?'
The woman replies, 'It's Keith, the midget."
Saved that one, sounds delicious!
Bohemian Bankruptcy - A tragedy by Drag Queen
Bohemian Bankruptcy - A tragedy by Drag Queen
Thanks, I forgot to include that one!
Possum Living - true story, worth watching
Definitely one of the downsides to knowing how to use all the equipment! My husband will only 'help' with the food production if the mood strikes him. However, I also don't clean animal stalls or pens anymore, so I suppose it's a tradeoff of sorts...
Fla. baby missing for 5 days found alive under bed
By MELISSA NELSON and ERIN GARTNER, AP
1 hour ago
{More F*cking sick bastards, will it never end?}
CHIPLEY, Fla. — A baby missing for five days was found alive in a box under her baby sitter's bed, and authorities said Thursday they plan to charge the sitter, her husband and the child's mother.
Investigators who searched Susan Elizabeth Baker's home near this rural Panhandle town found 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick tucked under a bed surrounded by items meant to hide her, Washington County Sheriff Bobby Haddock said. The baby, who was taken to a hospital but appeared healthy, was placed in protective custody.
"It was very emotional for us, because once we got her to the hospital, we called our wives and every one of us was crying," Haddock said. "Grown men crying. It's just such a relief. We've had missing children cases in the past, but nothing like this."
Haddock said deputies plan to charge Baker, husband James Arthur Baker, and the child's mother, Chrystina Lynn Mercer.
He would not detail Mercer's role in the disappearance but said authorities do not believe the baby's father, James Russell Dedrick Jr., was involved. Dedrick and Susan Baker are related.
The baby had been missing since Saturday morning. Her parents said they last saw her when they went to bed around 3 a.m. and investigators believe she vanished sometime between then and 8 a.m. Her parents did not report her missing until after 11 a.m., but authorities have not explained the discrepancy.
About 100 law enforcement agents and others spent days scouring dense vines and marshes around the baby's home in a remote, makeshift community of dirt roads, tin-roof shacks and old mobile homes.
On Wednesday, investigators contacted the Bakers and asked to search their home, about 12 miles from where Shannon was last seen. They agreed and authorities found the baby there Wednesday night.
"Statistically speaking this should not have ever happened, that we found this child alive, especially after so many days," said Haddock, who cradled Shannon in his arms as he spoke to reporters early Thursday. "Time was against us."
According to court documents, child welfare officials began looking into allegations Shannon was being abused less than two weeks after she was born.
In August, Susan Baker wrote a letter to Gov. Charlie Crist's office, pleading for help for the baby. She claimed Dedrick shook Shannon and that he, Mercer and others smoked cigarettes and drugs in front of her. Baker also claimed Dedrick was not the child's father and said he claimed paternity to get welfare benefits.
Investigators frequently went to the infant's home from August to late September and reported that both parents used marijuana and kept a messy home. But they said Shannon seemed to be cared for and in September, a physician determined that she was healthy and expressed "no concerns regarding the baby."
Susan Baker was involved in another missing child case in South Carolina more than two decades ago. She told authorities her stepson, 3-year-old Paul Leonard Baker, disappeared from the family's Beaufort, S.C., home on March 5, 1987, while she was napping.
A massive manhunt in the swampy area around the home turned up nothing, and she and her husband, James Baker, were extradited to South Carolina in 2000 to be charged in the child's disappearance. They were never indicted and the child was never found.
Susan Baker did serve prison time after authorities investigating her stepson's disappearance discovered a 6-year-old girl in the Baker home had been badly beaten. Susan Baker was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was suspended after 80 days. Authorities could not say how she was related to the girl.
___
Gartner reported from Chicago. Associated Press Writer Katrina A. Goggins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
WHO Targets Hemorrhagic H1N1 Cases in Lviv Ukraine
Recombinomics Commentary 19:54
November 3, 2009
Work will initially begin in Lviv region, where reported numbers of cases showing severe manifestations of acute respiratory illness have been especially high. Two virologists on the team have started working at the National Influenza Centre and the laboratories of the Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Station in Kyiv to provide diagnostic support.
The above comments from the WHO update on Ukraine strike a more serious tone than yesterday's quotes from WHO spokespersons playing down the alarming number of hospitalized and fatal cases, as well as media reports spinning political considerations, or politicians claiming only 15 confirmed H1N1 cases. As the WHO update clearly states, the dominant influenza circulating worldwide is swine H1N1 and it is assumed that most cases in the Ukraine (see map) are swine H1N1. Since the official government website lists 19,189 influenza cases (in addition to more than 235,000 ARI cases), the willingness of politicians to cite 15 confirmed cases, as well as media support in the distribution of the propaganda, is unfortunate.
The more severe manifestation of ARI cases are clearly hemorrhagic disease that fills lungs with blood and produces bleeding at all orifices, which are stark reminders of 1918 pandemic cases which were also linked to a swine H1N1.
Samples have arrived at Mill Hill in London, and sequence data should be available shortly. Since current swine H1N1 produced lethal infections in previously healthy young adults, and produced hemorrhagic disease, changes in the viral genome may be absent or minor. Therefore, release of the sequences to the entire scientific community would be useful.
Similarly, an update on the number of hemorrhagic cases would be useful. Rumors have suggested that such the number of such cases is significantly higher than the six described in media reports.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11030902/Ukraine_Hemor.html
WHO Targets Hemorrhagic H1N1 Cases in Lviv Ukraine
Recombinomics Commentary 19:54
November 3, 2009
Work will initially begin in Lviv region, where reported numbers of cases showing severe manifestations of acute respiratory illness have been especially high. Two virologists on the team have started working at the National Influenza Centre and the laboratories of the Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Station in Kyiv to provide diagnostic support.
The above comments from the WHO update on Ukraine strike a more serious tone than yesterday's quotes from WHO spokespersons playing down the alarming number of hospitalized and fatal cases, as well as media reports spinning political considerations, or politicians claiming only 15 confirmed H1N1 cases. As the WHO update clearly states, the dominant influenza circulating worldwide is swine H1N1 and it is assumed that most cases in the Ukraine (see map) are swine H1N1. Since the official government website lists 19,189 influenza cases (in addition to more than 235,000 ARI cases), the willingness of politicians to cite 15 confirmed cases, as well as media support in the distribution of the propaganda, is unfortunate.
The more severe manifestation of ARI cases are clearly hemorrhagic disease that fills lungs with blood and produces bleeding at all orifices, which are stark reminders of 1918 pandemic cases which were also linked to a swine H1N1.
Samples have arrived at Mill Hill in London, and sequence data should be available shortly. Since current swine H1N1 produced lethal infections in previously healthy young adults, and produced hemorrhagic disease, changes in the viral genome may be absent or minor. Therefore, release of the sequences to the entire scientific community would be useful.
Similarly, an update on the number of hemorrhagic cases would be useful. Rumors have suggested that such the number of such cases is significantly higher than the six described in media reports.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/11030902/Ukraine_Hemor.html
Rulings like this are such BS, for a myriad of reasons, I don't care what religion you are.
Italy, Vatican in uproar over court crucifix ruling
ROME (Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, prompting Vatican anger and sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.
"The ruling of the European court was received in the Vatican with shock and sadness," said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, adding that it was "wrong and myopic" to try to exclude a symbol of charity from education.
The ruling by the court in Strasbourg, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls -- a common sight that is part of every Italian's life -- could disturb children who were not Christians.
Italy has been in the throes of national debate on how to deal with a growing population of immigrants, mostly Muslims, and the court sentence is likely to become another battle cry for the center-right government's policy to restrict newcomers.
"This is an abhorrent ruling," said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals.
"It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history," he said.
The Vatican spokesman said it was sad that the crucifix could be considered a symbol of division and said religion offered a vital contribution to the moral formation of people.
Members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government bristled, weighing in with words such as "shameful," "offensive," "absurd," "unacceptable," and "pagan."
MORTAL BLOW
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the court had dealt a "mortal blow to a Europe of values and rights," adding that it was a bad precedent for other countries.
Condemnation crossed party lines. Paola Binetti, a Catholic in the opposition Democratic Party, the successor of what was once the West's largest communist party, said: "In Italy, the crucifix is a specific sign of our tradition."
The case was brought by an Italian national, Soile Lautsi, who complained that her children had to attend a public school in northern Italy which had crucifixes in every room.
Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said crucifixes on the walls of tens of thousands of classrooms "do not mean adherence to Catholicism" but are a symbol of Italy's heritage.
"The history of Italy is marked by symbols and if we erase symbols we erase part of ourselves," Gelmini said.
Lautsi, the woman who filed the suit, said crucifixes on walls ran counter to her right to give her children a secular education and the Strasbourg-based court ruled in her favor.
"The presence of the crucifix ... could be encouraging for religious pupils, but also disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities," the court said in a written ruling.
"The State (must) refrain from imposing beliefs in premises where individuals were dependent on it," it added, saying the aim of public education was "to foster critical thinking."
"JESUS DOESN'T BOTHER ME"
At least one Muslim girl disagreed with the court.
"If the crucifix is there and I am a Muslim I will continue to respect my religion. Jesus in the classroom doesn't bother me," Zenat, a 14-year-old girl of Egyptian origin, told Reuters Television.
Two Italian laws dating from the 1920s, when the Fascists were in power, state that schools must display crucifixes.
Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, said rulings such as that by the court were leading to "a Europe without an identity."
Only a handful of politicians defended the court, including some members of the Democratic Party, as well as members of the communist party and atheist groups.
(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Paris and Antonio Denti in Rome; writing by Philip Pullella; editing by Myra MacDonald)
Oh, the garden is always planned, sometimes for bigger and sometimes smaller. Some years we move it to another location, depending on what I may need that field for. (If I have had cattle there for a while and need to move them and recharge the field with grass or horses have been in one spot for a while, or I need to expand a pasture, etc.)
You get the idea.
Exactly right about one of the thrills in a garden is playing in the soil. It's lots of fun to tend the garden and get dirty, no problem there.
But when the garden is very large, sometimes it helps to use the tractor. There is no real replacement for your hands, but there are only so many hours in a day for work, with maybe a few for play.
Monk, I got your point in the bottom half of your post about size not being an issue when it really matters, well, for gardening anyway. LOL
This year my kitchen garden was smaller than normal, only about 1600sf. Normally I need the tractor to get the work done, otherwise I'd be out there forever.
Maybe men don't make smaller gardens because then they wouldn't get to play with all the big 'toys'.
Women probably don't ask because if you've got a garden, then you are getting the job done and that's what counts.
Anyway, for the record, I do drive all the tractors, farm trucks and the over the road trucks too (18 wheelers). On a farm, you have to be able to use all the equipment, otherwise it's just impractical and costly to hire more help just to do that. All the women farmers that I know also drive their own equipment over their hundreds of acres.
Also for the record, none of us wear overalls though!
Well, I hope that you are feeling better every day! Good to see you 'around'.
I'm wondering if they explained this vaccine and it's ingredients and possible side effects before they gave it to you?
I wonder also if they gave their reasons for not getting it themselves?
Are they giving you, or are you taking, lots of vitamins while taking chemo? Vitamin D3, CoQ10 and C would be very helpful for your immune system to keep out 'bugs'. Lots of greens and broccoli and asparagus are great now too.