Friday, June 10, 2011

Debt Collection SWAT Style (2:21 Video)

Debt Collection SWAT Style (2:21 Video)
http://www.realecontv.com/videos/government-corruption/debt-collection-swat-style-.html

"We never kicked in his door "- The door was obviously smashed in.

"We never held him or his children" - Really? A SWAT teams comes in, does a search and lets the residents just roam around?
--

Freedom is always illegal!

When we ask for freedom, we have already failed. It is only when we declare freedom for ourselves and refuse to accept any less, that we have any possibility of being free.

Re: Do You Think You Are Free?

No. I'm expensive as hell

--
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Do You Think You Are Free?

Do You Think You Are Free?
Date: June 10, 2011

I don't come to the United States very often, and when I do, there's usually a pretty good reason. In this case, it's because of the annual Atlas 400 meeting which kicks off today in New York. I get a ton of value out of the group, and for me it's worth making these trips (you can find out more about Atlas here.)

Because my US visits are generally short and sporadically infrequent, I'm highly attuned to little changes; this is something like out-of-town relatives who notice how much a child has grown over a period of several months, whereas parents seldom notice the small, daily changes.

On the surface, it seems like a pleasant enough place. Underneath the facade of shopping malls and little league, though, there are clear signs of decay. Eroding economic opportunities, increased bureaucracy, emerging class warfare, police state conditions, deteriorating infrastructure, reduced quality in service, etc.

Again, these changes are more acutely felt when you've been gone for a while because you have fewer recent experiences to normalize the extremity of a new incident.

To give you an example, I have a friend who spent 15-years living overseas without once setting foot in the United States starting in 1990. The first time he came back was in 2005, having completely missed the slow, gradual security rollouts at US airports throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

You may remember long ago, they used to let anyone and everyone into the airport gate areas, you just had to go through a dinky metal detector. Friends and family could accompany you all the way to the gate and wish you well before your flight.

This was the America that my friend left in 1990. He came back to the post-9/11 dehumanization of airline passengers without having been slowly indoctrinated into the nationwide fear of boogeymen who live in caves, and the consequent security paranoia at airports.

When he got home, the first thing he did was head down to the US Embassy and find out how he could relinquish his citizenship. That's when he discovered that he essentially had to ask permission and seek approval for what is clearly a very personal decision. He told me later, "I felt like a feudal serf..."

One of our readers, Roger from Sweden, recently wrote to us and echoed this point: "As long as someone else is the true owner of most of your so-called assets, you're just a modern day serf, just possibly dressed up in fancier clothes with whiter teeth. The scheme is very clever because we provide much higher yield."

He's right, and if you doubt it, just ask yourself a few questions--

Do you really own your home? Stop paying property taxes and find out.

Do you really own the cash in your bank account? Offend any number of state or federal agencies and see how quickly it gets confiscated.

Do you really control your own body? Try taking HGH, drinking raw milk, or even buying a simple chocolate Kinder egg.

Do you really have the right to bear arms? Try buying several magazine-fed automatic weapons and see who comes knocking at your door.

Do you even have rights to your own kids? Spank them in public and see how quickly the state protective service agencies show up.

Certainly, such dystopian anecdotes are not just prevalent in one country. As reader Aryan recently wrote, "the nation state is still alive and well... even in a capitalist paradise like Hong Kong, there are rules and regulations which you MUST follow."

This is true. It's not like there is any freewheeling anarcho-capitalist paradise anywhere in the world where the pure market prevails and government does not exist.

Every country has some system of law, whether corrupt or transparent, and real freedom is when individuals have the right to choose... to opt in to their preferred system, not to be incarcerated by one simply by accident of birth.

Of course, everyone's perception of cost/benefit differs. For some, the benefits of Norway may outweigh its extreme financial costs; others may see a country like Uruguay as a better fit for cost/benefit.

There is already strong competition emerging among nations trying to attract productive residents, whether entrepreneurs, retirees, investors, professionals, or laborers. From Panama to Qatar to Canada to Singapore to Latvia, the options are expanding all the time for those who care to look.

The idea is simply to be able to choose... to make an honest and complete appraisal of the situation and decide from an entire universe of options-- "are the financial and freedom costs I'm paying in this country worth the lifestyle benefits, especially considering the future trends and my international options?"

Instead, though, most people (particularly in the US) simply lie to themselves with brainwashed, bombastic drivel, then come up with a bunch of excuses to reject all other options.

Weighing the options and making a conscious, informed decision to stay in one's current situation with a solid backup plan is certainly a valid choice. Sentencing oneself to geographic captivity out of ignorance, indolence, or arrogance, however, especially without a credible backup plan, is just plain foolish.

On Monday I'd like to dive further into the ideas of 'is this fixable?' and 'what happens next?' Stay tuned, and thank you for being a member of this community.

Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

--

Freedom is always illegal!

When we ask for freedom, we have already failed. It is only when we declare freedom for ourselves and refuse to accept any less, that we have any possibility of being free.

Re: Candidate Ron Paul thinks GOP, nation moving closer to his libertarian views

Why should we always protect the Petro Dollar interesat.

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 12:40 PM, MJ <michaelj@america.net> wrote:
>
>
> Candidate Ron Paul thinks GOP, nation moving closer to his libertarian views
> By Jordan Fabian - 06/10/11 06:00 AM ET
>
> Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is running a different presidential campaign in 2012
> than he did in 2008, sensing that the evolving politics of the GOP could
> give him a better chance at building a wave of support and contending for
> his party's nomination.
>
> The last time Paul sought the presidency, he was a little-known libertarian
> back-bencher in Congress, largely dismissed at debates and by party insiders
> as nothing more than a fringe candidate.
>
> But just three years later, Paul is faced with a Republican Party that is
> more receptive to his small-government, anti-war attitudes, fueled in part
> by the rise of the Tea Party. He's also begun to reach out to mainstream
> conservative voices in an effort to spread his message beyond his hardcore
> supporters.
>
> With the experience of one presidential campaign under his belt, Paul is
> building a more streamlined and formal campaign apparatus that gives him a
> better chance of competing in key early primary states.
>
> Paul has a better chance in New Hampshire than in Iowa, but the congressman
> is not counting out any early states. He told The Hill last week that his
> campaign is focused on all the early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South
> Carolina and Nevada.
>
> Paul, who announced last month on Sean Hannity's Fox News program that he
> would form an exploratory committee, disputed the notion that he is running
> a different kind of campaign from 2008.
>
> Pressed on whether Hannity would have invited him on his show a few years
> ago, Paul responded that more people are questioning U.S. involvement in
> Iraq and Afghanistan and the role of the Federal Reserve than they were
> three years ago.
>
> "During the last campaign, I knew what was happening," Paul said last week
> on CNN's "State of the Union."
>
> "You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my
> monetary policy," he added. "No more. No more."
>
> While Republicans by and large still support the war in Afghanistan, signs
> of war-weariness have shown.
>
> Last month, more than two dozen House Republicans joined Paul in voting for
> a Democratic amendment that would have required President Obama to submit a
> timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and even more voted for a
> resolution questioning the U.S. intervention in Libya.
>
> And unlike some GOP contenders, like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney,
> former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Paul
> can claim total consistency in his opposition to the 2008 TARP bailouts, a
> key issue that resonates with Republican voters and Tea Party activists.
>
> Other candidates have started to move toward Paul on some economic issues.
> During a major speech this week, Pawlenty said he supports ending the Fed's
> dual mandate, and he has criticized the central bank for months over its
> efforts to stimulate the economy through quantitative easing.
>
> In a preview of his argument against other candidates at next week's
> presidential debate in New Hampshire, Paul said he is still the only
> candidate in the field with credibility on such issues.
>
> The Texan has built on his name recognition from the 2008 campaign to post
> strong showings in several national polls. And he still enjoys fervent
> support from his base, especially young voters.
>
> Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who supports Paul for president, told The Hill
> last week that he was approached by a 19-year-old named Trevor Benson during
> an event in his home state. With Benson donning a Paul 2012 button, the two
> struck up a conversation about Paul. Later, Jones had the Texan autograph
> photos for Benson and his friend.
>
> For his 2012 bid, Paul is combining supporters' enthusiasm and his ability
> to raise large sums of campaign cash online with a more traditional campaign
> structure.
>
> In 2008 in New Hampshire, for instance, Paul relied on a loosely formed
> collection of county campaign activists and finished a disappointing fifth
> place in the first primary in the nation. This time around, when Paul
> stopped in New Hampshire this week, he named a state campaign chairman and
> field staff.
>
> He has also reached out to Tea Party and social conservative activists in
> key early states at the beginning of the process in order to have a better
> shot of earning their support.
>
> Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said another key difference is Paul's improved
> ability to raise money early in the cycle. In 2008, Benton noted, big
> donations came in too late to build a full campaign staff in early states
> like Iowa. This year, Paul has raised more than $2 million from two one-day
> online "money bomb" fundraisers alone.
>
> "This time, we are raising money early to fund the campaign we need," he
> said.
>
> But more than any other state, New Hampshire, with its strong
> small-government tradition, will be Paul's proving ground.
>
> "New Hampshire will be a critical state for him," said Dartmouth College
> government professor Dean Lacy, who said Paul has a slim, but viable, chance
> of winning the nomination.
>
> "Ron Paul doesn't have to win New Hampshire, but he should hope to be a
> top-three finisher," he added. "That's the litmus test.
>
> "He had no real formal organization in '08 and now he is adopting a more
> conventional campaign structure," Lacy said. "He is running as more of a
> mainstream candidate this year."
>
> But many still believe there is a ceiling of support for Paul and that he
> lacks the ability to appeal to mainstream GOP voters to capture the
> nomination due to his unorthodox political views.
>
> On the day he announced his presidential campaign in Iowa, Paul said that he
> would not have voted for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, explaining
> he is not against ending segregation but the "property rights" elements in
> the law violate his libertarian beliefs.
>
> Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said the same thing during his election
> campaign in 2010 and faced heavy criticism from his opponents, a danger Paul
> faces on an even larger scale in a presidential contest.
>
> The elder Paul has also said he would not have authorized the mission that
> killed Osama bin Laden, and voiced support for the legalization of heroin
> during the first GOP primary debate last month.
>
> "He just has to shake the cranky-grandfather image," Lacy said. "To become a
> more mainstream candidate, he has to soften his appeal a little bit."
>
> But Paul's supporters remain unfazed.
>
> "If he were to win the nomination, I think he would definitely have a good
> shot," Jones said. "He would have a lot of momentum."
>
> Bob Cusack contributed to this story.
>
> http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/165725-candidate-ron-paul-thinks-gop-nation-moving-closer-to-his-libertarian-views
>
> --
> Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
> * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
> * Read the latest breaking news, and more.

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Candidate Ron Paul thinks GOP, nation moving closer to his libertarian views



Candidate Ron Paul thinks GOP, nation moving closer to his libertarian views
By Jordan Fabian - 06/10/11 06:00 AM ET

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is running a different presidential campaign in 2012 than he did in 2008, sensing that the evolving politics of the GOP could give him a better chance at building a wave of support and contending for his party's nomination.

The last time Paul sought the presidency, he was a little-known libertarian back-bencher in Congress, largely dismissed at debates and by party insiders as nothing more than a fringe candidate.

But just three years later, Paul is faced with a Republican Party that is more receptive to his small-government, anti-war attitudes, fueled in part by the rise of the Tea Party. He's also begun to reach out to mainstream conservative voices in an effort to spread his message beyond his hardcore supporters.

With the experience of one presidential campaign under his belt, Paul is building a more streamlined and formal campaign apparatus that gives him a better chance of competing in key early primary states.

Paul has a better chance in New Hampshire than in Iowa, but the congressman is not counting out any early states. He told The Hill last week that his campaign is focused on all the early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

Paul, who announced last month on Sean Hannity's Fox News program that he would form an exploratory committee, disputed the notion that he is running a different kind of campaign from 2008.

Pressed on whether Hannity would have invited him on his show a few years ago, Paul responded that more people are questioning U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the role of the Federal Reserve than they were three years ago.

"During the last campaign, I knew what was happening," Paul said last week on CNN's "State of the Union."

"You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy," he added. "No more. No more."

While Republicans by and large still support the war in Afghanistan, signs of war-weariness have shown.

Last month, more than two dozen House Republicans joined Paul in voting for a Democratic amendment that would have required President Obama to submit a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and even more voted for a resolution questioning the U.S. intervention in Libya.

And unlike some GOP contenders, like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Paul can claim total consistency in his opposition to the 2008 TARP bailouts, a key issue that resonates with Republican voters and Tea Party activists.

Other candidates have started to move toward Paul on some economic issues. During a major speech this week, Pawlenty said he supports ending the Fed's dual mandate, and he has criticized the central bank for months over its efforts to stimulate the economy through quantitative easing.

In a preview of his argument against other candidates at next week's presidential debate in New Hampshire, Paul said he is still the only candidate in the field with credibility on such issues.

The Texan has built on his name recognition from the 2008 campaign to post strong showings in several national polls. And he still enjoys fervent support from his base, especially young voters.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who supports Paul for president, told The Hill last week that he was approached by a 19-year-old named Trevor Benson during an event in his home state. With Benson donning a Paul 2012 button, the two struck up a conversation about Paul. Later, Jones had the Texan autograph photos for Benson and his friend.

For his 2012 bid, Paul is combining supporters' enthusiasm and his ability to raise large sums of campaign cash online with a more traditional campaign structure.

In 2008 in New Hampshire, for instance, Paul relied on a loosely formed collection of county campaign activists and finished a disappointing fifth place in the first primary in the nation. This time around, when Paul stopped in New Hampshire this week, he named a state campaign chairman and field staff.

He has also reached out to Tea Party and social conservative activists in key early states at the beginning of the process in order to have a better shot of earning their support.

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said another key difference is Paul's improved ability to raise money early in the cycle. In 2008, Benton noted, big donations came in too late to build a full campaign staff in early states like Iowa. This year, Paul has raised more than $2 million from two one-day online "money bomb" fundraisers alone.

"This time, we are raising money early to fund the campaign we need," he said.

But more than any other state, New Hampshire, with its strong small-government tradition, will be Paul's proving ground.

"New Hampshire will be a critical state for him," said Dartmouth College government professor Dean Lacy, who said Paul has a slim, but viable, chance of winning the nomination.

"Ron Paul doesn't have to win New Hampshire, but he should hope to be a top-three finisher," he added. "That's the litmus test.

"He had no real formal organization in '08 and now he is adopting a more conventional campaign structure," Lacy said. "He is running as more of a mainstream candidate this year."

But many still believe there is a ceiling of support for Paul and that he lacks the ability to appeal to mainstream GOP voters to capture the nomination due to his unorthodox political views.

On the day he announced his presidential campaign in Iowa, Paul said that he would not have voted for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, explaining he is not against ending segregation but the "property rights" elements in the law violate his libertarian beliefs.

Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said the same thing during his election campaign in 2010 and faced heavy criticism from his opponents, a danger Paul faces on an even larger scale in a presidential contest.

The elder Paul has also said he would not have authorized the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, and voiced support for the legalization of heroin during the first GOP primary debate last month.

"He just has to shake the cranky-grandfather image," Lacy said. "To become a more mainstream candidate, he has to soften his appeal a little bit."

But Paul's supporters remain unfazed.

"If he were to win the nomination, I think he would definitely have a good shot," Jones said. "He would have a lot of momentum."

Bob Cusack contributed to this story.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/165725-candidate-ron-paul-thinks-gop-nation-moving-closer-to-his-libertarian-views

The Media Distracts the Public from War


The Media Distracts the Public from War
by Sheldon Richman, June 10, 2011

If one is to judge by the tone of the television commentators, America must be deep in a crisis. Long stretches of cable time are devoted  to the breaking news. Each detail is presented as more grave and consequential for the republic than the last. The fate of the country surely hangs in the balance.

What is it? War? Fiscal crisis? Mass unemployment? A double-dip recession?

No. A congressman was caught sending lewd photographs of himself to women over the Internet.

This is what now consumes so much of the news media's attention. This is what outranks in news value continuing occupations of foreign countries, three overt and an undetermined number of covert wars, and a looming fiscal crisis. As America's imperial elite seeks to hold on to and extend its global power in defiance of economic reality, the spectacle of a congressman, Anthony Weiner of New York, appparently sharing pictures of his private parts with female strangers has taken center stage.

This betrays an odd set of priorities, to say the least. It's not that the Weiner story lacks news value. When a so-called representative demonstrates low character (lying to his wife and others) and poor judgment (leaving himself open to blackmail), his constituents are entitled to know. But that does not justify the news media's preoccupation ­ indeed obsession ­ with the story. The United States will be little different whether or not Anthony Weiner resigns his congressional seat.

During the more than weeklong scandal, some indisputably more important things have been going on. For example, just a few days ago five U.S. military personnel were killed in Iraq. Remember Iraq? That's the country the U.S. government invaded in 2003 on the basis of cynical lies about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda collusion, and has occupied ever since. Last year President Obama triumphantly announced to the American people that the war there was over as he withdrew all but about 47,000 troops. (As though that is an insignificant force.) MSNBC's Obama cheerleading section was on the scene to record the historic event. Wikipedia gives opening and closing dates for the war: March 20, 2003 – August 31, 2010. So it must be over, right?

Tell it to the families of the five soldiers. They were killed in a rocket attack from Shiite-controlled east Baghdad. That sounds like combat. That sounds like war. The American people are not being leveled with.

Under the Status of Forces Agreement between the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the U.S. military is to leave Iraq by the end of the year. Iraq's Iran-backed government and the most powerful figure outside the government, Muqtada al Sadr, have said they want U.S. forces out. But despite President Obama's reassurances, American military leaders aren't so certain it's time to leave. As the Christian Science Monitor reported, "[T]he attack could provide a new impetus for the Pentagon to push for an extension of the US military presence in the country." It quotes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen: "[T]here is still much work to be done and still plenty of extremists aided by states and organizations who are bent on pulling Iraq back into violence."  Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that staying on would send "a powerful signal to the region that we're not leaving, that we will continue to play a part. I think it would not be reassuring to Iran, and that's a good thing."

Gate's soon-to-be-successor, Leon Panetta, says the Iraqi government will probably ask that some American troops stay on after the deadline. If so, "that ought to be seriously considered by the president," Panetta says. But on this matter, Gates has conceded, "[W]hether we like it or not, we're not very popular there."

So the "non-war" rages on and may continue past the promised termination point. Of course Iraq is not the only serious matter being overshadowed. Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen are still deadly playgrounds for the ruling elite, and an attack on Iran cannot be ruled out. But Rep. Weiner's online sexual activities outrank all of this. Perhaps keeping the American people distracted is the mainstream media's idea of serving the country.


http://www.fff.org/comment/com1106l.asp

**JP** India’s bogus Mumbai 26/11 case falls apart in US court

All indian lies fall apart....such a bogus mumbai drama, staged by indian military/mosad, to remove police head karkare (who was investigating indian military role in bomb explosions inside india killing hundreds indians/Pakistanis) and to use it against Pakistan (their eternal aim), could not go through even in US courts... all the drama ended in a fiasco!


Bharat had made a big deal about the so called Mumbai trail in US court. The entire case fell apart due to lack of evidence and because the person being tried was innocent of any involvement in the Mumbai attacks. TheAmerican Court acquitted Tahawwur Hussain Rana on conspirator charge related to the Mumbai attacks. Bharat is now in a quandary. Their entire campaign to malign Pakistan has been destroyed. The millions of Dollars that Delhi spends in PR campaigns is now going up in smoke

The chagrin in Bharat is palpable. Delhi is disappointed over the acquittal of Tahawwur Hussain Rana by a US Court on the count of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai attacks. All that is left to do is try to wing it in local kangaroo court, where confessions are written in Marhati and the poor victims forced to sign them. They have already announced plans to to produce "evidence" against Rana while filing chargesheet against him in a Kangaroo court in Mumbai.

Bharati officials were caught flat-footed and had little to say.

The Bharati Home ministry here said: "NIA which is investigating the case against Headley, Rana and others had decided to wait for the proceedings to conclude in the US court before filing a charge sheet in Indiaagainst the accused. NIA has also sought certain documents and evidence that were produced in the US court and expects to receive them. After examining the verdict in the US court and after reviewing the documents and evidence that it expects to receive, NIA will take a decision on filing a charge sheet against Headley, Rana and others in an Indian court."

The Bharati Home ministry reacting to Rana's acquittal said: "We are disappointed that Rana was acquitted on the count of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. However, it must be remembered that Rana was tried in a US court in accordance with US law. Criminal trials in the US are jury trials and there are special rules governing such jury trials."

The disappointment in Bharat was ubiquitous. The Internal Security Secretary in the home ministry UK Bansal said:"We have taken note of the verdict announced by a US District Court in the Rana case following the finding by the jury that Rana was guilty on two of three counts. We are examining the details and will submit enough evidence against him in the court."

The jury acquitted Rana of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai terror attacks.

In the story that Bharat had spun, David Headley (CIA double agent) had allegedly advised Rana of his assignment to scout potential targets in India. However Bharat was unable to prove Rana's links to the MUmbai attacks.

Rana's attorneys have stated that they will file an appeal against the verdict on the lesser charges of providing logistic support to the LeT etc. The US authorities have shown no indication that they will pursue this any further or file an appeal against the acquittal on one count of conspiracy. Rana's lawyer Patrick Blegan said he would file motions in Superior Court that there was not enough evidence to convict him and that there was an error in the trial. Blegan said there is a huge contradiction in the verdict as LeT is primarily involved in Mumbai and not in Denmark. Analysts believe that Rana will be acquitted on the other charges upon appeal.

http://rupeenews.com/?p=37071

Re: Podcast interview re the Vietnam War w/ Bob Drury

in all the confusion of our hasty
retreat in 1975 U.S. military and civilian authorities forgot about
them
----
and just what would you expect from warmongers?

On Jun 10, 10:36 am, "georgeken...@gmail.com" <georgeken...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Posted this morning at Electric Politics, a podcast interview with Bob
> Drury, co-author with Tom Clavin of Last Men Out: The True Story of
> America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam (Free Press, 2011). It's about
> the Marine Security Guards at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon -- genuinely
> heroic men, not least because in all the confusion of our hasty
> retreat in 1975 U.S. military and civilian authorities forgot about
> them and almost left them behind. According to Bob, this is the first
> time their story has been told.
>
> If you enjoy the podcast please don't hesitate to forward the link.
>
> http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2011/06/forgetting_vietnam.html

--
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Re: Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong

I have no doubt about Goldfield's premise that we are still fighting
the Civil War. We still need a way to end it.
----
I agree.
It's time to remove the grip the NE and their favored lobby groups
have on our nation. Their culture corrupts our politicians and
prevents states from resolving problems.

Some of us will never forget that the north dominated the world slave
trade and held slaves up to the eve of the CW. Their hypocrisy has no
limits.

On Jun 9, 10:16 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> Thursday, Jun 9, 2011 09:01 ETEverything you know about the Civil War is wrongAlmost. Historian David Goldfield exposes how evangelical Protestants turned a conflict into a bloody conflagrationByJoan Walsh
>  
> On the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Americans are engaged in new debates over what it was about. Southern revisionists have long tried to claim it wasn't about slavery, but rather "Northern aggression" – which is a tough sell since they seceded from the Union despite Lincoln's attempts at compromise on slavery, and then attacked the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina. That would be Southern aggression, by any standard.
> But there's still room for smart revisionism. Instead of the traditional view that finds the Civil War a great moral and political triumph, David Goldfield calls it "America's greatest failure" in his fascinating new book, "America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation." It killed a half-million Americans and devastated the South for generations, maybe through today. And while many Northern Republicans came to embrace abolishing slavery as one of the war's goals, Goldfield shows that Southerners are partly right when they say the war's main thrust was to establish Northern domination, in business and in culture. Most controversially, Goldfield argues passionately -- with strong data and argument, but not entirely convincingly -- that the Civil War was a mistake. Instead of liberating African Americans, he says, it left them subject to poverty, sharecropping and Jim Crow violence and probably retarded their progress to become free citizens.
> Whether or not you accept that premise – more on that later – Goldfield shows definitively that Northern evangelical Protestants were the moral force behind the war, and once they turned it into a religious question, a matter of good v. evil, political compromise was impossible. The Second Great Awakening set its sights on purging the country of the sins of slavery, drunkenness, impiety -- as well as Catholics, particularly Irish Catholic immigrants. Better than any history I've seen, Goldfield tracks the disturbing links between abolitionism and nativism. In fact, he starts his book with the torching of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Mass. in 1834, a violent attack on Catholics which Goldfield shows was "incited" by Lyman Beecher, the father of the Beecher clan, most of whom turned out to be as anti-Irish Catholic as they were anti-slavery. To evangelical Protestant nativists, Catholicism was incompatible with democracy, because its adherents allegedly gave their loyalty to the Pope, not the president, and the religion's emphasis on obeying a hierarchy made them unfit for self-government. Also, rebellious Irish Catholics didn't show the proper discipline or deference to conform to emerging industrial America. The needs of Northern business were never far from some (though not all) abolitionists' minds.
> Still, though nativism was widespread in the North, and within the Republican Party (which  absorbed some old Know-Nothing and nativist Whig party remnants), abolitionism remained at the party's fringe. Most Republicans were seeking compromise, not the abolition of slavery, in the years before the war, including Abraham Lincoln. Our first Republican president didn't like slavery, and he fiercely opposed its extension to the Territories, but he also expressed doubts about African-Americans' capacity for democracy, and he opposed black suffrage. Lincoln supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which let slave-owners call on law enforcement even in free states to capture their runaway "property." (As a lawyer, he'd represented a slave owner trying to recapture a fugitive slave.)
> And as a strict constitutionalist, Lincoln resisted abolitionism, because like it or not, the Constitution made room for slavery. The president disliked slavery, but his priority was the union. He famously told abolitionist Republican Horace Greeley (who later turned against Reconstruction and ran for president as a Democrat, abandoning African Americans as did too many other abolitionists): "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
> In fact, during Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign, Republicans went so far as to argue that they were the real White Man's Party, because their commitment to keeping the Territories slave-free wasn't about the evils of slavery; it was about keeping the West white, so white families alone could enjoy the bounty of the frontier without competition (except from Indians, who would be eradicated.) Democrats insistedtheywere the White Man's Party, because slavery liberated white men to be the property owners and entrepreneurs God intended them to be, while an inferior race did their manual labor, for free. Most Republicans and Democrats agreed on white supremacy; they differed on the right way to maintain it.
> Yet as the war went on, Lincoln came to see slavery as a moral cause, and he wouldn't entertain compromise armistice proposals that let the South keep black people in bondage. In a book with few heroes, Lincoln emerges as one over time, virtually alone as an American politician in blending compassion for slaves with compassion for white Southerners. It's popular to suggest that had Lincoln lived, Reconstruction would have been more successful. But Lincoln's pattern of compromise throughout his political career makes speculating on what he'd have done very difficult. Goldfield makes clear, though, that Lincoln wanted reconciliation with the South, not Southern humiliation. In his subdued Second Inaugural Address, he refused to blame the war on the Confederacy, or trumpet the righteousness of the Northern cause. Because the Founders legalized slavery, he believed the country, North and South, shared responsibility for it. Lincoln closed with words made more poignant by the fact that the outcome he envisioned didn't come to be (and still hasn't):With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.Lincoln even proposed a plan to compensate slaveowners for their losses. That might make our blood boil today, but it was actually the way slavery had been abolished in other countries. Clearly, the Southern economy was destroyed, and families suffered hugely. Most of the war took place on Southern battlefields, destroying farms, homes, churches, businesses. A quarter of Southern men between the ages of 20 and 40 died; more than 28 million Southerners, white as well as black, fled the devastated Confederate states in the decades after the war. And while Northern wealth increased 50 percent between 1860 and 1870, the South lost 60 percent of its wealth in those years, roughly half of it human "property." Lincoln proposed legislation establishing a $400 million fund to compensate Southerners for giving up slavery, if they would recognize national sovereignty and ratify the 13th Amendment emancipating the slaves. We don't know what Southern leaders would have said; Lincoln's own cabinet nixed the idea.
> It's also possible Lincoln might not have taken from Confederate leaders the right to vote and hold office away, while giving it to former slaves, as Congress did after his death. Again, however fair that may seem from our distant (presumed) consensus that the pro-slavery Confederacy deserved whatever it had coming, it let Southern leaders complain they'd been "disenfranchised," even though the stricture only affected a fraction of the Southern male population. It was also rank hypocrisy, as eight northern states rejected black suffrage, while forcing it on the former Confederacy. But we'll never know what Lincoln would have done; he died. Meanwhile, the view of Henry Ward Beecher, staunch anti-Catholic (and a villain in this book, if it has one) prevailed: In a speech just before Lincoln's death, he gave a sermon at Fort Sumter:The whole guilt of this war rests upon the ambitious, educated, plotting, political leaders of the South…A day will come when God will reveal judgment and arraign at his bar these mighty miscreants…And then [they] will be whirled aloft and plunged downward forever and ever in an endless retribution."Contrast that with Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and then try to figure out which man is the actual Christian leader.
> ….
> Goldfield's book has been well-reviewed, because if it's sympathetic to Southern whites, it depicts the savagery of slavery and post-war white terrorism with unflinching and gut-wrenching clarity. (Literally. The book's tales of slaves' abuse and Southern white post-war savagery will make you sick.) Still, this Civil War history challenges the absolutism of the "Northerners were heroes, and Southerners were vicious, violent racists" school of history. He exposes and excoriates Southern whites' violence against black people before and after the war. But he also links the war to the pro-business evangelical Protestant crusade to eradicate native American Indians, Mexicans, Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and an emerging class of landless Northern laborers – anyone who stood in the way of their vision of clean, hard-working, business-friendly American progress. And he counts the South as a victim of that Northern evangelical crusade. Southerners were another group that simply wasn't conforming to their doctrine of "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men," as the title of Eric Foner's equally complicated and fantastic Republican Party history puts it.
> Republicans were first and foremost the party of small business, an emerging class of industrialists, the nascent middle class, and anti-Catholic nativists. They despised the working class – or denied it existed. Lincoln himself talked of the emerging caste of wage-earners optimistically as "young beginners," who would work for a time, save money, then buy land and/or their own business. Republicans either couldn't imagine an America with a permanent class of laborers (like Lincoln), or they dreamed of one, but found ways to convince those workers it was all in their interest. In their defense, in the decades after the Civil War, the Horatio Alger, rags to riches story was never more true.
> It's indisputable that Republican zeal for the liberation of black people was always a fringe sentiment – and even among that fringe, it was short lived. After the war, Northerners wanted to get back to business, and they did, with a vengeance. During the war, the federal government had flexed muscles of taxation, conscription and land annexation. The post-war era's emerging robber barons pointed to the Union army's successes as a justification of their march toward monopoly. "Who can buy beef the cheapest – the housewife for her family, the steward for her club or hotel, or the commissary for the army?" Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller asked. Oil and steel businesses boomed. The transcontinental railroad was completed -- as was the near-eradication of American Indians.
> Goldfield shows how leading Union generals almost immediately became warriors on the frontier, bringing the zeal with which they decimated the backward South to the task of decimating backward "savages." That new crusade had direct ramifications for Southern blacks. Even when President Ulysses S. Grant tried to use the military to beat back white Southern paramilitary groups literally massacring African-Americans trying to execute basic rights, he couldn't, because soldiers were deployed out West in the new Civil War against Indians. One hero of the book, Mississippi Republican Gov. Adelbert Ames, tries to use his power to protect blacks from Southern Democratic violence, but there were no Federal soldiers left in his state to call upon, they were all on the anti-Indian front. As the state's "White Line" paramilitary group tore through Mississippi to violently intimidate black voters, Ames was forced to give up his governor's position and flee. Early in the book, Goldfield quotes a Northern newspaper editor proclaiming "We can have no peace in this country until the CATHOLICS ARE EXTERMINATED." Near the end, he finds a Birmingham News headline that reads: "We intend to beat the negro in the battle of life, and defeat means one thing: EXTERMINATION." That doesn't feel heavy handed; it's fact, and it's tragic.
> Meanwhile, attacks on Irish Catholics continued. Although the famed Civil War Irish brigades fought bravely, the Organization of Union Veterans wouldn't include them – or black Union veterans, either. And if certain abolitionists hadn't already shamed themselves with their anti-Irish Catholic bias, they would later, when they dropped their concern for African Americans – and in fact, joined slavery advocates in concluding that blacks were unfit for self-government. After the war, Henry Ward Beecher began hawking watches and preaching "The Gospel of Prosperity;" he also wrote a novel whose hero was an industrious white Southerner, and whose main black character was a stupid, drunken man-child incapable of self-support. Beecher remained viciously anti-Irish Catholic and opposed to the emerging labor movement (those two things were connected, by the way, for quite a few abolitionists), arguing that the era's strikes showed that the working class was "unfit for the race of life." During the Great Railway Strike of 1877, he denounced the strikers in his loathsome "bread and water" sermon, where he thundered: "Man cannot live by bread alone but the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live." A few days later he proclaimed: "If you are being reduced, go down boldly into poverty." I wonder if Scott Walker is an admirer.
> Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to former Confederate Florida, became an Episcopalian, wrote a best-selling book about home decorating for women, and never again troubled herself about the (former) slaves. Abolitionist Horace Greeley gave up on Reconstruction and black rights quickly. His New York Tribune, which once crusaded against slavery, began to feature "exposes" of Reconstruction, including tales of black "corruption" and political incompetence. Even the Nation magazine, which we remember as a journal of abolitionism, soured on the experiment with black suffrage. Editor E.L. Godkin proclaimed that the "blackest" legislators were the worst, particularly in South Carolina, where blacks possessed an "average of intelligence but slightly above the level of animals."
> Part of the problem was that at the same time, the North was experiencing its own political growing pains, which former egalitarians suddenly blamed on universal (male) suffrage. New York recoiled at the Boss Tweed corruption scandal of 1870. Tweed himself wasn't Irish, but some of his on-the-take top lieutenants were, and he relied on the votes of Irish Catholic immigrants – who produced votes in excess of their already large, pro-Democratic numbers, thanks to the Tammany machine, as vote fraud was rampant. The New York Times used Tweed's corruption as "an example of the Irish Catholic despotism that rules the City of New York." At the same time, the once-abolitionist paper blamed "ignorant Negroes" for South Carolina's corruption issues, which had of course predated black suffrage and would survive it.
> Suddenly white Northern Republicans had a reason to sympathize with white Southern Democrats: Universal suffrage blighted both sides of the Civil War conflict. There's no better symbol of the transformation of Northern abolitionist sentiment than the work of cartoonist Thomas Nast: The pro-Union Harper's artist once graphically depicted the perfidy of Confederates and championed civil rights for slaves. But his most famous cartoon, from 1876, depicted Irish Catholics and African-Americans – two simian creatures labeled "Paddy" and "Sambo" -- as "The Ignorant Vote." Northerners had new appreciation for the South. It made the country whole: The North stood for reason, the South romance. Northern industrialists were happy to preserve the Old South in amber, a land of sweet magnolias and even sweeter women, who hadn't been "masculinized" by either labor or freedom, as Northern women were. It became a shrine to our agrarian past as worshipped by the founders, permanently left behind.
> ……….
> In this same period, even a couple of liberal heroes fell down too. Mark Twain and Walt Whitman both lamented the messiness of universal suffrage. Their worries, paradoxically, came out of a certain kind of populism. Whitman concluded that "the appalling dangers of universal suffrage" seemed to be empowering a rapacious post-war business class. Likewise, Twain railed against the greed of "The Gilded Age," a searing term he coined to describe the cruel era of robber barons, but he believed poor uneducated voters were letting the rich run rampant. A dinner companion reported Twain railing against "this wicked ungodly suffrage, where the vote of a man who knew nothing was as good as the vote of a man of education and industry; this endeavor to equalize what God has made unequal was a wrong and a shame." Both troubadours of democracy believed that universal suffrage was dooming democracy, as uninformed voters backed politicians who colluded with robber barons to destroy the country. Thus they concluded, Goldfield writes, "It might be prudent to restrict democracy in order to save it."
> For many reasons, Northern Republicans gave up on the early goals of Reconstruction: to grant free blacks civil and economic rights. Goldfield quotes a Northerner observing a general desire to forget the war, and particular "apathy about the Negro" – shades of the "compassion fatigue" that would be diagnosed by neoconservatives 100 years later, after the Great Society. The parallels between the backlash against Reconstruction, and the backlash against Lyndon Johnson's civil rights reforms, are unmistakable and chilling. The Republican Party of the 1860s, just like the Democratic Party of the 1960s, paid dearly for championing the rights of African Americans. And both parties backed away from their commitment to addressing the economic barriers to black inclusion once they dealt with the era's pressing moral problem: In Lincoln's case, Southern slavery, in Johnson's, violent Southern suppression of black civil and voting rights. After each morally overdue reckoning, the parties suffered, and then they changed sides. Republicans were trounced after Reconstruction, as Democrats became the party of the South; 100 years later, Democrats were trounced, and Republicans became the party of the South. The Civil War is still not over.
> Here is where Goldfield's scrupulously fair and heart-breaking story softens up even the most ardent civil rights advocate, to begin to sympathetically contemplate his notion that the Civil War could have been avoided, and slavery eradicated without it. As much as I love this book, and believe anyone concerned about race relations and the country's current political stalemate should read it, I couldn't quite get there. I understand Goldfield's reasoning. In an interview with Leonard Lopate, he contended that the abolition of slavery was inevitable "in a world that was hurtling toward the Industrial Revolution." I can imagine that, had a more politically creative group of politicians tried to compromise on a way out of slavery – perhaps offering to compensate slaveholders for their slaves, the way every other country that abolished slavery did – we maybe, maybe, might have avoided the Civil War.
> But that's such starry-eyed conjecture, it's hard to go there. One of the most persuasive arguments for Goldfield's theory is the fact that it took another hundred years to end Jim Crow. And almost 50 years after that, African Americans still aren't completely free: the legacy of what we lamely call "structural racism," in the criminal justice system, the health care system, the housing and job market, lives on. That makes it easy, in a way, to fantasize: Hell, yeah, there had to be a way to do this in less than 150 years!
> I wish. While it's possible, I just don't see the evidence in Goldfield's meticulously researched, passionately argued book. Yes, decent Southerners had doubts about slavery, and even some of those who didn't tried desperately to save the union. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens of Georgia was an old Whig friend of Abraham Lincoln's, and he didn't want war. But he couldn't compromise on slavery, not even when he met Lincoln for a secret peace summit early in 1865, as the Confederate Army lay bleeding after Sherman's march and Grant's late victories. And after the war, which perhaps made Southerners bitter in a way that foreclosed compromise, Goldfield depicts few if any ex-Confederates voicing contrition about their role in the war, as Lincoln did, let alone a desire for reconciliation – and certainly not support for equal rights for former slaves.
> Still, with half a million Americans dead on Civil War battlefields, and 150 more years of bitter conflict, it's worth pondering Goldfield's challenge -- if only because it might give some modern visionary a way to see beyond our current social, racial and economic stalemate. I have no doubt about Goldfield's premise that we are still fighting the Civil War. We still need a way to end it. This book models the complicated, even contradictory, compassionate vision that might make that possible. Eventually.http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2011/06/09/civil_war_america_aflame/index.html

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The Great American Political Spectrum ­ All 2.7 Inches


June10th
The Great American Political Spectrum ­ All 2.7 Inches
Tom Woods

Noam Chomsky correctly observes, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum ­ even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." (Thanks to Phil Champagne.)

That's what I mean when I say that being called an "extremist" means you disagree with Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.

Incidentally, I am not a supporter of Chomsky, who does write something of value once in a great while.  But when I saw this, and how conventional and simplistic his views were, I concluded he was someone I couldn't respect.

http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/the-great-american-political-spectrum-all-2-7-inches/

Podcast interview re the Vietnam War w/ Bob Drury

Posted this morning at Electric Politics, a podcast interview with Bob
Drury, co-author with Tom Clavin of Last Men Out: The True Story of
America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam (Free Press, 2011). It's about
the Marine Security Guards at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon -- genuinely
heroic men, not least because in all the confusion of our hasty
retreat in 1975 U.S. military and civilian authorities forgot about
them and almost left them behind. According to Bob, this is the first
time their story has been told.

If you enjoy the podcast please don't hesitate to forward the link.

http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2011/06/forgetting_vietnam.html

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Re: Mitt Romney Endorses Global Warming Hoax

Mitt Romney Endorses Global Warming Hoax
----
and just what do you expect from a man who wears magic underwear and
thinks he will be a god when he dies?

On Jun 9, 10:29 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2011/06/mitt-romney-end.html

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Re: Can you top this!!

Can you top this!!
----
that jewish Weener's wife, Huma, whose parents were indian and
pakistani, is an aide to Hilary Clinton says more than enough


On Jun 9, 10:48 pm, dick thompson <rhomp2...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> http://www.bizzyblog.com/2011/06/08/can-you-top-this/

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Re: WTF(wjd)?

ChristianAnarchist.org.
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beware of viruses and trojans

On Jun 10, 8:20 am, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> WTF(wjd)?byMichael RobertsFedUpFlyers.org
> Most readers, I hope, will recall theincident last month in Memphisin which the crew of a commercial flight bound for Charlotte, N.C. refused to fly until two passengers were removed from the aircraft. The passengers were Muslim scholars attempting to travel to an Islamic conference focused this year on the topic of Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims in the U.S.
> Those are still pretty much the only hard facts that have been released to the public as of this writing – plenty to incite the typical torrent of speculation, commentary, blathering idiotic bigotry, hurt feelings, and late night comedy routines. Yeah, it's great fun, but let's be honest and fair: so far, unless we're tangibly connected to the event in some official way, none of us has enough information to draw upon in order to frame a meaningful conclusion or comment on the situation.
> It would be especially imprudent and unprofessional for me, as a pilot, to indict the crew based on the data currently available. The media and other rumor mills have reported that the flight pushed off the gate and then returned because the crew was unwilling to continue with the two men on board. That no sound justification has been publicly given for this does not necessarily indicate that such justification does not exist. The pilots (or, as the media usually call them, thepilot) would have been sealed up on the flight deck in front of a locked, reinforced, terrorist-proof door when they made the decision to return to the gate. Whatever prompted their decision presumably happened in the cabin on the other side of that door as they were taxiing out to the runway. Pilots must rely on the cabin crew to keep them apprised of what's going on back there and make the best decisions they can based on that information. The public has been told nothing about any communications along such lines. So, for now at least, we don't know what we don't know.
> It has also been reported that Delta agents spoke with the flight crew for over half an hour when they returned to the gate and even apologized to the two men when the pilots insisted upon ejecting them from the flight. On the surface, this might cast an understandable cloud of doubt over the crew's actions. But I speak from personal experience and a solid familiarity with the stories of numerous colleagues when I say – difficult as it may be to fathom – that unsuspecting pilots are often met with considerable resistance when they decide to remove a threatening or problematic passenger from their plane. Many crews have made the mistake of contacting the airline and asking for a gate agent or supervisor to handle a belligerent drunk, an unstable lunatic threatening violence when asked to turn his phone off or buckle his seat belt, or some other superstar who just has to ruin it for everybody. I was shocked myself when I discovered that some airline support agents, managers, etc. seem completely deaf to the sound of a pilot's voice calling for the removal of a threatening passenger or asking for police assistance, etc. They'll go back and talk with the individual in question themselves, then return and say something like, "Okay, I got her to turn her phone off. She says she hasn't slept and she's going to her father's funeral and she's really upset but she's sorry and it won't happen again. Just don't serve her any more alcohol and I think she'll be alright…"
> Then we say, "Yeah but, um, she broke the flight attendant's nose."
> "I know, I know," they mutter, shuffling their feet a bit and trying to muster a sympathetic expression. "But I don't think we'll be able to find you another one in time to avoid a late departure." Then, to the bleeding victim, they say, "Hold pressure right there, like this. Keep your head tilted back. It doesn't look that bad. You can hold up till you get to Guadalajara, right? Put some ice on it at the hotel tonight – you'll be fine…"
> Okay, maybe I'm embellishing the casea little. The point is pilots can have a hard time finding someone to take an unruly passenger off their hands. Very few of us, I hope, will give in once the decision has been made, but it's a big deal to deny service to a paying customer and a big responsibility (and potential liability) to those involved. Such cases are the exception and not the rule, of course. Still, it happens a lot more than one would expect in a terror-stricken, post-9/11 world. Besides, absent the ideal solution of a legitimate, professional security division, this kind of situation is really outside the airline's scope of operational expertise. Fellow pilots, here's my advice if you need real help in the overly regulated and litigious chaos of the system in which we work – forget the company and call the control tower directly for law enforcement assistance. They'll send the fuzz right out without questioning your judgment or prerogative as Pilot-in-Command. Remove the threat now. Sort out the details, ideological conundrums, and conflicts of interest later.
> So, not to belabor the point, the bottom line is there may be a lot more to this story in Memphis than any of us has been told so far. Anyway, enough of that – there's something else I'd like to discuss.My Opinion(You didn't really think was going to keep it to myself, did you?)
> Notwithstanding the facts, known and unknown, the word on the street is the Captain – presumed by many accounts to be the angry conservative Christian redneck type – booted the two men off the plane for no better reason than his personal contempt of the peculiar way they were dressed, which clearly identified them as Muslims and hence a de facto terrorist threat. Other versions indicate that it was not the Captain, but some of the passengers who were uncomfortable flying with the two men on board. The Captain supposedly felt that the mass consternation resulting from the clerics' disruptive presence constituted a legitimate breach of safety sufficient to have them removed to calm the turbulent atmosphere in the cabin.
> I say without hesitation thatifsuch rumors prove true, it would indeed be a classic example of your standard, garden variety ignorant discrimination.Ifit is as it appears in the public eye, the Captain at the very least exhibited a foolish, costly, and hurtful lapse of judgment. He stands a good chance of losing his job, but the pilots union will get it back for him after some rehabilitative sensitivity training. Everyone else at the airline will also be subjected to this reeducation. The company will settle with the two men out of court under undisclosed terms and the public will never know exactly what happened. By then few will remember or care that much about the story anyway. Life goes on.
> Again, though, who knows what really happened?
> If we turn our attention to the public chatter surrounding the event, however, many things are laid bare in stark detail – not about the thing with the two Muslims in Memphis, but about people in general. It's a grim and painful picture, and all too predictable and commonplace. This is the real story in my opinion and few, if any, are giving it the attention it warrants.
> I refer to the perspectives revealed in comments like the following, drawn mostly from across the Internet and conversations in airports, hotel lounges, and radio talk shows:Good for the pilot! It is about time…
> Good for him. One more event showing that we have had enough. That pilot has every right to fear for his ship and the people on the flight when ragheads are on board…
> I hope more will follow his example. The more we can do to let these savages know they are not welcome the better…
> If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck…it's a terrorist…
> Maybe (the pilot) just realized he is the Infidel they want to kill….
> Great! This should be standard procedure at every airline...
> Do you think they cavity searched the 80 year old lady in front of them in line and groped the 4 year old girl behind them while telling Ali Baba to have a nice flight ?…
> Every single religion should be destroyed. The question is just the order in which that happens…
> Eventually we will have to ban Islam from free societies, but until then, enjoy watching innocent people being blown to smithereens…
> Awesome! All it takes is one brave pilot to say 'NOPE' not with you guys on board for more pilots to follow in his footsteps… I will walk off the next flight I take if there are overt Muslims on it… Guess it comes down to using common sense and protecting yourself, like the Founding Fathers had in mind…
> If you can't smoke on flights anymore because it endangers other passengers, then it only makes sense that Muslims shouldn't be allowed on flights for the same reason…
> I think that removing a Muslim is ALWAYS with reason....they are MUSLIM!...
> What an unmitigated statement of ignorance, bigotry and hate. And I'll bet you're a professing "Christian" aren't you?What a mess. What a heartbreaking, shameful spectacle! And what hypocrisy! I, too, am constantly encountering people who congratulate me along similar lines for refusing to be scanned or frisked, then rattle on about how the politicians and bureaucrats are, "Just too chickenshit and politically correct to pull all the Muslims and Arabs out of line."
> Folks, it's not about political correctness – a chickenshit doctrine, to be sure. It's about the ambitious assault of state power against the freedom and essential dignity of every human being who sets foot in an airport terminal. And it's already spilling out of the airports into the streets, by the way. What's worse, while many of these same blowhards deride and call for the utter humiliation and violation of the bearded Imam's basic rights, they willingly present their own bodies, their wives, and their children like chattel to the degrading perversions of an abusive government. (Yes, willingly – grumbling about it doesn't make their actions any less voluntary). So then, we have evolved into a culture that will happily trample the natural rights and liberty of others while simultaneously abdicating our own without the slightest hint of honorable resistance.
> Of course, I can't speak for the crew of the flight in Memphis. But I, for one, am ashamed to be praised in this way by the adherents of such despicable principles. Where a tenable threat exists, our highest priority is always to protect our passengers (and ourselves). But liberty and justice for all hardly constitutes a credible danger to anyone except the tyrants who would lord it over the rest of us and who are themselves the greatest legitimate threat. And, if it isn't clear, I'm not talking about radical Islamic fundamentalists. We've got our own domestic breed of despotism springing up right here at home. Our tyrant may be a clean-shaven white man in a western suit, or a mulatto, or a woman (I'm not naming any names, but her initials are Janet Napolitano).
> At any rate, whoever the real terrorists are, they seem to be winning. It's evident that fear has become the dominant trait, baked into our national character, manifest in our xenophobic bigotry as well as our truckling predilection to bow the knee rather than incur the cost and discomfort of resisting the blatantly delusive designs of the police state. A quiet kind of terror rips through the hearts and minds of Americans, snatching away virtue, compassion, integrity, faith, and love. It isn't just about Muslims on airliners; it's the buzz on the street, the force that drives us on through daily life and enslaves us – rather, compels us to dutifully enslave ourselves to every false shepherd – to the unjust magistrate, the employer, the charlatan preacher on television, the lender, all promising to deliver us from evil and give us our daily bread.
> This tyranny of fear produces in us – indeed, in the soul of entire nations and generations – the vilest forms of bitterness and contempt, the darkest extremes of human nature: cruelty, hatred, and violence. This is the path along which all the horrors of history were brought to pass. It's the path we're on right now, yet knowing this is not enough to turn us aside. We march on. We curse and condemn. And, in the manner with which we judge one another, so are we being judged.
> This is hardly some imaginative new sociological theory I just made up. Neither is what I describe a uniquely American phenomenon. It's just people doing what people do and have always done. Human beings have been maligning one another, kicking each other off trains, planes, and automobiles, enslaving, slaughtering, and setting each other on fire for as long as anyone can remember. It's wicked and it sucks and it never stops. Despite the irrefutable testimony of recorded history reflecting our ugliness and all it teaches us about ourselves and our kind, we still haven't managed to rise above our consummate state of depravity – not even a little bit. Nor can we since, to the degree that we've advanced in understanding, technology, and global unification, so we have advanced the instruments of our humiliation and totalitarian oppression. On the other hand, we'll find no lasting relief in avoiding understanding, shunning technology, or in the narrowness of nationalist exceptionalism. We can't just turn around and work our way back to paradise. We've been fruitful and multiplied. We've filled the earth and subdued it. Now here we all are spinning around on this rock – far more together than separate when viewed from above. And the truth we would do well to face is that man is not basically good. No, in a nutshell, man is basically screwed.
> That's why our self-righteous efforts to overcome our own savage condition will never succeed. How can we protect ourselves from ourselves by degrading and abusing ourselves? But isn't this how we function when we violate the basic dignity of others and, on that account, ourselves by imposing our answers to the problem of evil in the world on each other by force? Whether it's at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, the Department of Homeland Security, an airline pilot, or SEAL Team Six, the use of violence or threats of violence and other coercive means to arbitrarily control the affairs and prerogatives of others can do nothing to restrain our common affliction. On the contrary, our affliction is never more conspicuous than when we cower under or aspire to rule over one other. Man is unfit to rule himself, much less his fellow man. Neither is the greater part of humankind intrinsically worthy to rule over the lesser part. True liberty isn't the result of good government conquering evil by force. Freedom is not a grant of the state and to treat it as such by subjugating ourselves to the state is a logical absurdity. Indeed, a free society first requires a free people to build, sustain, and defend it against the state's inherent lust for power.
> Then what is true freedom, and where does it come from? Whatever is the answer, finding it would not entitle us to foist it on each other by compulsion or intimidation (civilized people sometimes call this legislation or regulation). To do so would belie the authenticity of our wisdom and add another exhibit to the body of evidence against us. Sadly, no party is more guilty in this regard than the Christian church. Following the publicity surrounding this story, I feel obliged to respond in some way to the unfortunate sentiments expressed by numerous Christians and reprove my fellow disciples for the heinous part many have played in the broader scene of anti-Islamic persecution and statist idolatry in this age of terror. For me, the discussion can move no further forward without fully acknowledging this painful truth.My BurdenAs a student and ardent worshipper of Christ, I'm persuaded that he alone is the great liberator of humankind held captive under the universal tyranny of death. Many Christians, however, seem to have forgotten that our freedom is not bought with the worthless blood of our enemies, but that of the sinless Master himself, who loved his enemies (all of us) until it killed him. He has released us from bondage at the auction block ofhuman capital, delivering us from the rule of fear – fear of death, loss, punishment, suffering and oppression in all its endless forms. This rule is most perfectly realized in the state, which derives its power from the legitimized use of deadly force to apply human solutions to human problems. In this we see that the state is fundamentally opposed to the way of Christ as the ultimate hope for true freedom and peace on earth. His is the way of absolute dependence upon God, apart from any rule of law enforced by human strength exerted in violence.Because its existence depends upon (and receives) the affirmation of popular consent, the state is the principal agent of human rebellion against the Creator. People have a congenital inclination to contrive and manufacture something they can set in motion to look after their every need and desire. The problem with these lifeless artifacts is they must be maintained. They are completely incapable of sustaining their own existence and can'tfunction without the constant care and feeding of their creators. The state is the epitome of such idolatry. Those who depend on it are in truth depending upon their own feeble strength, offered up and wasted in sacrificial toil and futility. When Christians engage under the auspices of the state to resist evil by force, they deny the higher power of God's love by which our Lord endured all hostility to establish an eternal kingdom that is not of this world.
> Did the pilots in Memphis throw the clerics off their plane in Jesus's name? I don't know. But droves of self-identified Christians have come out in support of the decision on the basis of the same limited information that has provoked so much outrage on the other side. The not-so-subtle implication is that Muslims are the embodiment of evil on earth and must therefore be suppressed by all means without regard for their civil rights, let alone the teaching and example of Christ himself.
> To everyone outside the faith, let me say plainly that Jesus commands us only to love and pursue peace with you. He gives us no license and certainly no mandate to deny your innate dignity, to harass, or deprive you of the basic rights and freedom conferred personally by God to all mankind. It's not for us to inhibit the freedom of movement or other means by which others engage in their daily business. Nor is it our place to control access to the marketplace and starve dissenters into submission. Rather, if our enemy is hungry we're told to feed him and, if he's thirsty, give him something to drink. If we are robbed, it's our privilege to freely give even more – just as the Creator gives good things to ungrateful and evil people like us. The yoke he places on us is easy, and the load we bear is light. Our God has not saddled us with the hopeless mission of driving evil off the face of the earth by violence and cruelty against unbelievers.
> But, someone will say, Islam is different and not properly understood. Muslim fundamentalists want to convert, enslave, or destroy us all! If this is true, and if we choose none of the above, the question is not whether we ought to resist, but what sort of resistance will truly deliver us and not simply feed our addiction to terror and strife. Christ teaches us to overcome evil with good, to love our enemies. This is not to say that we kowtow in passive obedience in the face of tyranny and injustice. Rather, we resist in the same love with which we have been irresistibly loved; we drive out fear and are not ruled by it. If our enemy slaps us with his left hand, we stand fast and offer him the opportunity to wield the right one also against our peaceable friendship and so bear witness to his own guilt and shame before God and everyone. By this he is ultimately and utterly defeated, condemned by any reasonable standard of justice and altogether disqualified to bear the crown of victory and authority.
> That we do these things imperfectly – or not at all – and so often engage in the same kinds of coercive devices described above in bending the will of others to suit our world view reveals a couple of important points. First, if our escape from the untamed barrens of hatred, fear, destruction, and the judgment of God himself depends on our ability or even our willingness to behave well, then Christians are as basically screwed as everyone else. Second, a lot of people calling themselves Christian simply don't get that and are still trying to be good which, they believe, entails forcing everyone else to be good too. Jesus didn't truck much with people like that in his day, to say the least.
> The love of Christ isn't a soft, squishy, amorphous ointment of politically correct weakness that makes us grovel in the face of intimidation. Neither is it a heartless crusade against the heathen doers of iniquity, idol worshippers, homosexuals, Democrats, or swarthy airline passengers wearing funny man-dresses. And please understand that I'm not trying here to proselytize or even persuade anyone of the truth of Scripture or the supremacy of Christ (but feel free to contact me if you want to have that discussion). My goal has been to correct the distortion of the biblical Jesus in the words and actions of many who claim to follow him and bring to light what is true about thecontentof the Bible and Christ's teaching so everyone will be better able to judge whether any of it is true at all.
> Finally, to those who genuinely love and follow Christ, if the words of our Teacher aren't clear enough, let's abide by his example in rejecting all aspiration and allegiance to the violent powers of the earth. We must refuse to prop up the lifeless idols that bind the soul in darkness and affirm that he alone is worthy to rule over us as we gladly submit to his perfect law of fearless love.A final note: Now that I've broken the seal, it seems like as good a time as any to move forward with something I've been mulling over for a while (years, in fact). If you've read all the way through to this point, you may be also interested in checking it out atChristianAnarchist.org.http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/roberts-m4.1.1.html

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Re: Petty hypocrite Republitards scared to death of Wieners wiener

Bush Jr. lied about Iraq!
----
some don't forget
we remember who told the Bush administration about the yellow cake
we also remember why Powell presented the info to the UN

Ledeen, Wolfowitz, and the rest of their clan will continue to choke
our government until all of Israel's enemies are eliminated.

On Jun 9, 10:09 pm, studio <tl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> He lied about his Twitter! Throw him out!
>
> Bush Jr. lied about Iraq! Re-elect him!

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Re: **JP** FW: Pak Army

why you people are using abusive language for our agencies and pak army? you cant blame whole the network of agencies and PAK ARMY due to any individual misbehave to some one. please stop this non sence and dont try to turn down the moral of our forces.
Ahsan Bajwa
Pak Observer
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 11:47 AM
Subject: RE: **JP** FW: Pak Army

If we are breathing in an free atmosphere ….. then it is only due to Pak Army & ISI. We have to ashamed at that moment when D.G ISI is briefing in front of such Jurk Pak parliamentary members.

My Message to all My Brothers and Sisters, " Please don't be the part of that moment, against Pak Army & Our Agencies, started by America through media."

We have not such conceptual powers and interpersonal skill that we understand "what and why ISI/Amry doing all"

 

Zubair Mukhtar

 

From: joinpakistan@googlegroups.com [mailto:joinpakistan@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Riaz Jafri
Sent: 08,June,11 10:22 AM
To: joinpakistan@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: **JP** FW: Pak Army

 

Naveed:

 

Why don't you and your likes join the army or send their son(s) to it to make it come upto your expectations?  You will do immense good to the nation. 

 

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Naveed Butt

Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 10:33 PM

Subject: RE: **JP** FW: Pak Army

 

Sometime we need to read real history books rather than stories from 'Taleem-o-Tarbiat'

Pakistan Army is the only army that is known globally for killing 3 Million Pakistanis in 1972 in East Pakistan and Raping numerous women. It is also known for invading their own country four times but never winning a war in battlefield against India despite plundring a huge portion of National Budget. Recently it has been also exposed of being incapable of even their home bases.

Sheetanon ko Dewta na banao.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: rashidahmed@jeraisy.com
Sent: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 18:15:47 +0300
To: joinpakistan@googlegroups.com
Subject: **JP** FW: Pak Army

0001a

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