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Monday, September 30, 2013

Pot Apocalypse Looms, Marijuana Foes Warn


by Phillip Smith

Not everybody is happy with Thursday's Justice Department announcement that it would not interfere with taxed, regulated, and legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. While the announcement was greeted with accolades (and some questions) by the drug policy reform community, opponents of marijuana law reform were up in arms and prophesying hellfire and damnation.

"Decades from now, the Obama administration will be remembered for undoing years of progress in reducing youth drug use in America," Dr. Paul Chabot of the Coalition for a Drug Free California said in a statement. "This president will be remembered for many failures, but none as large as this one, which will lead to massive youth drug use, destruction of community values, increased addiction and crime rates."

Chabot is also the the coauthor, along with Richard Morgan, of "The Eternal Battle Against Evil: A Comprehensive Strategy to Fight Terrorists, Drug Cartels, Pirates, Gangs, and Organized Crime," and the coalition web site also hawks Morgan's "Soros: The Drug Lord. Pricking the Bubble of American Supremacy."

While Chabot, with his Anslingerian fulminations and Manichean thinking, represents old school Reefer Madness-style prohibitionism, the new school prohibitionists aren't too pleased either.

"We can look forward to more drugged driving accidents, more school drop-outs, and poorer health outcomes as a new Big Marijuana industry targeting kids and minorities emerges to fuel the flames," warned former US Rep. Patrick Kennedy in a statement issued by Project SAM (Smart About Marijuana), a neo-prohibitionist organization that couches its policy aims amid public health concerns.

"This is disappointing, but it is only the first chapter in the long story about marijuana legalization in the US. In many ways, this will quicken the realization among people that more marijuana is never good for any community," said Project SAM cofounder and director Kevin Sabet.

Project SAM warned that after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors to go easy on medical marijuana in 2009, "public health consequences soared" and called on the federal government to fund "robust data monitoring systems" to track those alleged consequences.

"In Colorado, we've seen an explosion of consequences among kids as a result of the new industry that emerged around so-called medical marijuana after 2009," remarked Christian Thurstone, SAM Board Member and Denver Health treatment provider. "We now have to prepare the floodgates."

Just what will come through those floodgates, though, is unclear. Reform advocates point to 2011 data showing that youth marijuana use declined in Colorado since the state adopted its system of regulated dispensaries in 2009.

The taxpayer-funded Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) also weighed in with disappointment, doom, and gloom.

"The Department of Justice announced that it will not sue to block the implementation of laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize marijuana, despite the fact that these laws are in conflict with federal law," said CADCA head Gen. Arthur Dean in a statement. "CADCA and its more than 5,000 community coalitions across the country have been anticipating a response from the administration that would reaffirm the federal law and slow down this freight train. Instead, this decision sends a message to our citizens, youth, communities, states, and the international community at large that the enforcement of federal law related to marijuana is not a priority."

"The fact remains that smoked marijuana is not medicine, it has damaging effects on the developing adolescent brain, and can be addictive, as evidenced by the fact that 1 in 6 youth who use it will become addicted," Dean claimed, adding that the country is in "a growing crisis" as marijuana law reforms take hold. "The nation looks to our Justice Department to uphold and enforce federal laws. CADCA is disappointed in the Justice Department's decision to abdicate its legal right in this instance. We remain gravely concerned that we as a nation are turning a blind eye to the serious public health and public safety threats associated with widespread marijuana use."

Despite the bitter disappointment of the prohibitionists, marijuana law reform is moving forward, and the momentum is only likely to accelerate in the years to come. We may see in a few years if their dire warnings are correct -- if the country is still standing, that is.


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"public health consequences soared"

That must be why things like this exist then huh?
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/11/07/paul-armentano/cannabis-impact-health-justifies-its-legalization-not-its-criminal

So it is more healthy than Alcohol? Nicotine? Neither of those are Schedule I. Marijuana has NO acceptable medical uses, but doctors continue to prescribe it. Do doctors make money from prescribing an illegal substance? Do pharms pay them? No? Well do marijuana distributors who get raped by taxes and are unable to bank or transport their money pay them? No? Well then why are doctors still prescribing it? Why are 5 year olds using it effectively to treat seizures? Sanjay Gupta a relatively reputable doctor agrees that the "fact" that marijuana has no accepted medical use is an absolute lie. The DEA website states that researches have found many things that are untrue. Simple scans of the internet can disprove that. Especially researchers from other countries where the laws are a little more lax, and research is allowed.

Even if marijuana is physically addictive, even if marijuana could kill you from over dosing (which it virtually can't) then why can't we simple change it to a schedule 2 substance?

"Decades from now, the Obama administration will be remembered for undoing years of progress in reducing youth drug use in America,"
Project SAM warned that after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors to go easy on medical marijuana in 2009, "public health consequences soared"

First off, what consequences? Less dropout rates, and arrests? And... he said go easy on MEDICAL MARIJUANA!!!! not "let them smoke all the dope they want".

Go to **** Phillip Smith. This is the worst attempt at journalism I have ever seen. Try to be unbiased. At least try.

And if our country isn't still standing, I really would like to see that it was because of pot being legal, HAHAHA. That is the most ridiculous piece of anti-climactic trash I have ever read. Even worse than the pets eating pot thing.

If anything, if our country isn't still standing it will be because of our terrible foreign policies, the fact that we manage to tick off every nation we come into contact with, and that we actually help the taliban and other terrorists more than we deter them. It will be because we send guns to the drug cartels and police are able to pick and choose what laws they obey. Good luck with your career Phillip. Maybe you'll get a job as a bud tender one day.

Oh no!!!! Run for life ----- MARIJUANA!!!!!!!!!! This proves that there IS no "war on drugs". And when the so-called Justice Department has announced that they will no longer do their job and uphold the law, it's time for them to be dismantled. I absolutely love reading this "garbage" from these so-called prohibitionists. Let me tell you as a former Police Officer what the majority of our calls for service entailed. Alcohol and pills. Yep... I know it's a shocker. After 7 years of street patrol, on a 3pm-3am shift, the majority of our calls regarding intoxicated persons were for alcohol related incidents or prescription pill related incidents.

Not once, NOT ONCE, have I ever responded to a disturbance for a fight breaking out over stoners fighting over a bag of cheeto's. I have come in contact with hundreds of people on marijuana, and I can honestly say this: They were the most polite and compliant people to deal with. Drunks on the other hand: Obnoxious, rude, dangerous to others and always trying to fight.

For the US Law Enforcement communities: why don't you try enforcing laws that are worth enforcing. Like, oh I don't know, drunk driving, tax evasion, money laundering, corruption and other white collar crimes that are digging our country deeper into the hole.

Or perhaps those that relate to National Security. I'll use an example that I personally ran into. I called ICE because I had located an undocumented illegal immigrant. When I called ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and requested a pick-up, their answer was this: "Unless you have a bus load, we won't respond. Gather their personal information and forward it to us." Yeah that's gonna work real nice. I'm sure that "Jose" is his real name and he's going to provide truthful information to me because he's so concerned about following our laws. America's priorities are all jacked up and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

End of rant.

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Sunday, September 29, 2013

We're All Edward Snowden Now


Jeffrey Tucker

In the last several days, I've had three phone conversations with friends ? completely normal people who have their wits about them ? during which they have declined to say something for fear of government surveillance. They will be talking normally and suddenly catch themselves and divert the conversation.

The topics we were discussing were mostly innocuous, and I can't imagine that government interlopers would care, but the impulse to self-censor was triggered anyway.

Free becomes unfree. Fear replaces liberality. Open communication becomes censorship. The curtain is falling fast on free speech. It's happening all around us, and it is getting worse every day.

The first time I had this happen was about one year ago, when I was talking to a soldier stationed at a military base. He spoke to me almost in code, fully certain that his conversations were being monitored simply because he was speaking from a government facility. The phone was his, but he had the sense, which he probably couldn't prove, that the lines of communication were not safe.

That genuinely alarmed me. But at the time, I thought it was just because he was at a military base. A bit of paranoia is understandable, and maybe this is just what one would expect. But it turns out that this was just the beginning. The whole country has turned into a military base, and everyone in the know is acting like that soldier did only one year ago.

It's been true on email too. Increasingly, people are writing in frozen and stiff ways, presuming that someone else is reading. The same has happened in Facebook public postings and online chats. I've noticed, just in the last weeks, a reduction in the heat of postings, a fall in the level of zip, a new caution in the mode expression. Across the board, public digital spaces have become chilled.

What a difference one month makes. A leaker from the National Security Agency came forward with a version of events that hardly anyone could believe at first. It seemed outlandish to imagine that the government had a direct pipeline into all our communication portals, mining as much data as possible and building ever larger facilities to gather and hoard it, keeping it around for when it is necessary.

Surely, this man Edward Snowden is just a nut. But in the weeks after his revelations, we all began parsing the statements of denial from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Verizon. Then it became really apparent that these people were not even allowed by law to tell the truth. They were writing while concealing. They were trying to be forthcoming, but were not free to speak even if they wanted to. They had been ordered not to speak.

But what were they going to do about it? Shut down their businesses? Well, some smaller businesses have shut down rather than comply with the demands that they allow nonstop streaming of data to government headquarters. And get this: Ladar Levison of Lavabit was actually threatened with criminal charges for having shut down his services rather than comply.

Levison had previously complied with specific court orders for information from individuals, but the day he saw a demand for a full-blown "backdoor" to his system, he shut it down. The government then accused him of "violating the court order" for declining to do business. This amounts to a kind of nationalization of his small business ? a mandate that he serve the state through his own property or else face prison time.

It's impossible for me to look at all of these events and not see the most profound irony. I'm a child of the Cold War, a time when the civic morality play pitted the free speech and free thought of the United States against the controlling, censoring, authoritarian wickedness of the communist system operating in the Soviet Union and its satellites. It was a story of good and evil. We were good and they were evil, and the daily fear experienced by the unfortunate citizens of those countries served as the ultimate proof.

I guess I learned the lesson well, because I can't shake that sense of good and evil from my mind. The United States won the Cold War, but its government gradually came to adopt the very practices that we demonized at that time. Who conquered whom here? Freedom was supposed to have been the victor, but today, Edward Snowden had to be given sanctuary in Russia, of all places, just for having revealed uncomfortable truths about what the U.S. government is doing to its own citizens.

They say it's all about stopping terrorism. Well, oddly, security is precisely how censorship was justified in the old Soviet days too. The government had to be given access to all communication in order to protect the people from miscreants and enemies within the body politic or else everyone would suffer some terrible fate. To be on the side of free speech was considered an act of treason. So it is today in the great home of freedom.

It's helpful to consider the bigger picture here. All governments in all times and places have aspired to control the communication of their citizens. In the United States, the government did in fact maintain its control for the greater part of American history. The radio waves were nationalized and controlled. Mail was a government service. The government enforced a strict monopoly over television for decades. Even the telephone system was a government monopoly ? handsets and telephone cords were issued and owned by an agent of the state.

In the course of only a few decades, everything unraveled. The telephone monopoly was busted. Cable television was born. Censorship over the radio began to loosen. Then technology took over and there were cellphones, email, private delivery services, chat, hundreds of millions of websites anyone could start, Voice over Internet Protocol, and more forms of communication than government could possibly keep up with. The monopoly over communication that the government once maintained had been completely smashed.

This situation has persisted for about 15 years ? a near-anarchist paradise of human sharing and interaction through technological innovation. What's going on today is really the reaction and response by the elites. They want their power and control back. They are trying to get it through the oldest form of government control surveillance and the blackmail that comes with it. It's the tactic guards used to control prisoners. It's the tactic government is using to fight its way back toward having control over our lives.

So as you consider the alarming trends, the first thing to remember is that this approach is nothing new. To surveil the citizens is something governments from the ancient world to the present have aspired to do. It outrages us, and rightly so, but it shouldn't surprise us.

The chilling effect is intensifying, and serious damage has already befallen the digital spaces we've come to love. Over the long run, however, this approach is not going to work. Try as it might, the government will not stop communication innovation. Private entrepreneurs are busy innovating ways to keep the history of our times on the side of human liberty.

The desire to communicate even when government doesn't want us to is part of the American genetic code. "One if by land, and two if by sea," says Longfellow's poem about Paul Revere's ride to inform citizens about British troop movements. It was encryption in the style of the 18th century. That generation didn't give up on the freedom to communicate, and neither will we.
_
Jeffrey Tucker is the publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, the Primus inter pares of the Laissez Faire Club, and the author of Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo, It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes, and A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Build Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age, among thousands of articles. Click to sign up for his free daily letter. Email him: tucker@lfb.org | Facebook | Twitter | Google


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Fuck em they can't silence all of us and if they think they can then those fucks are clearly in need of some crack to supercharge their illigitimacy to my right to be left a fuck alone. "Well, oddly, security is precisely how censorship was justified in the old Soviet days too. The government had to be given access to all communication in order to protect the people from miscreants and enemies"

Not at all. In fact, no justification was required at all, since the controlling power of the Party was not questioned. That the state had the right to control anything that was going on in the country was an axiom that did not need any justification.

Besides, "protection" was not on the agenda as such. The prevailing mood was that the country and society are strong enough, and looking forward to the victories, rather than tremble in the corner from the fear of being harmed by some evildoers, begging for "protection". The mood was, paradoxically, "land of the free, home of the brave" - apparently contrary to the mood in today's US.

" want their power and control back"

I don't think it's that deep. What we are living through today, if nothing but the next circle of the sequence of "big ideas" of the US economy. At some point it was space exploration. At some point it was cold war. Today, it's security and war on terror. US economy can't exist without one or another, like drug addict who needs a doze every day. This one will pass same as others, only to be replaced by the next obsession. The best proof I have is that all these monkey games with technology and security, despite billion dollar budgets, haven't ever produced any substantial results (such as, for instance, prevented Boston bombing), and in fact nobody is expecting them to. The theory that security must be enhanced is assumed everywhere as a given, with no proof and no justification except buzzwords like "in this day and age......".

"We're all Edward Snowden now?' You mean we're all con men letting our image be used by the CIA and their propaganda media to dupe the American people into giving up more of their rights in the name of security? No one is given the kind of attention this Snowden guy is given by the media and the elites who control it, unless they WANT his message to go out. All of these media whistleblowers are phonies, agents, operatives and tools. @the real mccoy (trm): "Fuck em they can't silence all of us..."

well, they're giving it a go. i'm not allowed to have e-mail account, for example.

your notion is correct, though, they are killing-off the expendable ones. how do you choose?

i struggle with that question: "how do you choose?"

do you choose to save the future generations, or, do you save the "here-and-now's"? if dave were alive, he'd say: "why not save them all?" i'm no 'dave' however, i can see the world as he did; (as does Anonymous 75145, and, Anonymous 6578, so it would seem..)

fyi people - the government put the (Snow)den "story" up, for the purpose of controlling you, example: "Big Brother is watching."

so-what, that they have countless metaphysicians on the payroll. if those metaphysicians were truly "gifted," they wouldn't be working for the cartel. i can speak to this first-hand, for I've ran into many of these psychopaths during my journey.

as for this article, the opening paragraph speaks to its true nature:

for the "image and likeness" team / "mirror-mirror" team, everything is written in reverse, and/or, "code."

article translated: "the masses are too afraid of hell's cartel, to call the conspiracy into question. "the propaganda worked," in other words.

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Saturday, September 28, 2013

Cops Hold Children At Gunpoint For Climbing On School Roof, Rough Them Up, Arrest Them, School Defends Actions


Chris | InformationLiberation

When three middle schoolers climbed on top of the roof at their local middle school during off hours, they didn't think they'd end up stuck up at gunpoint by police officers aiming assault rifles at them ordering them to submit, but that's just what happened at Port Charlotte Middle school in southwest Florida.

Mike Riley, Charlotte County Public Schools Spokesperson justified the police's response by saying the children "knew they shouldn't have" climbed on the roof, "I don't care if they're in kindergarten or if they're seniors in high school, they know the rules."

"I really can't speak for law enforcement, but with the incident that happened, the murder of Sergeant Wilson, I'm sure when those guys respond to a call that there are three individuals on a roof of a school, they're nervous when they get there now."

Indeed, that same "nervousness" is what drove Officer Daniel Alvarado of San Antonio?s Northside Independent School District Police to shoot and kill 14-year-old Derek Lopez after he got in a scuffle with a fellow student, Derek fled from the cop rather than submit, and he paid for it with his life after Alvarado gunned him down out of "fear for [his] own safety."

That same nervousness is no doubt what drove this unnamed cop's actions in a recent incident out of Aurora, Colorado in which cops shut down a road searching for a bank robber. They ordered everyone out of their cars one by one and held them at gunpoint, video from the local news showed a police officer with a shotgun sticking up a child with his finger ready to pull the trigger.

Rule number one of gun safety is never point your gun at something you don't intend to shoot. I guess if you're a cop and you're "nervous" everyone is fair game. No wonder Antonio Buehler says cops are cowards.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.


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@nonymous 5029, I don't want to come across as pompous, arrogant, nor, rude, in this thread, but... How would you suggest, that i go about negating this article, without, appearing as such? It's a complex construct - switching directions 2x's on both side....

You know, my last request was simple: "I just don't want to see anymore." Perhaps, in the near-future, there will be an ap or something....

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Friday, September 27, 2013

The Twisted Premises Implicit in the Drive for War


By Anthony Gregory

On its own terms, the government?s case for war with Syria has problems. We cannot deny the monstrousness of Assad?s regime, but the Obama administration has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Syrian state is responsible for the particular chemical weapons atrocity that supposedly justifies a strike. Some of the very same folks who lambasted the Bush team for refusing to listen to the UN and allow its inspectors time before stampeding into Iraq have not as loudly denounced the Obama team for similar behavior. The U.S. government has indicated it cannot say for sure who ordered the attack. Moreover, any U.S. intervention that displaces Assad?s regime would empower some unsavory rebels, some of whom have connections to al Qaeda or who display troubling levels of brutality, such as the rebel leader who took a bite from an organ he ripped out of a dead enemy soldier. Any U.S. action that merely intended to ?punish? Assad while keeping him in power also seems counterproductive at best. The logic behind such a bombing--that a dictator is so brutal his subjects deserve to die--should deeply trouble all good people.

The hidden premise, of course, is that the U.S. government necessarily must intervene, bomb, wage war, and inflict mass bloodshed as a remedy to foreign horrors. It is taken for granted that nonintervention is no option, which assumes that U.S. intervention tends to cause more good than bad, or is worth the effort even if it sometimes fails. This premise is steeped in a cold utilitarianism and stands in tension with the actual results of U.S. policy over the last few decades. The utter calamity that has unfolded in Iraq should guide even those who philosophically embrace intervention toward a realistic advocacy of U.S. restraint. Even if humanitarian war were not a total oxymoron, the United States in particular deserves a prolonged time-out. It has in the last fifty years left behind millions of corpses piled under a thousand broken promises, and so a 50-year moratorium on further American wars would seem like a reasonable goal, rather than starting yet another war even as the chaotic and inhumane consequences of interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya continue to unfold.

Whereas in the recent past, U.S. wars were primarily sold to the public under the banner of national security and foreign liberation, the justification given today dispenses with any sustained argument that the war will actually make Syrians freer or Americans safer. These advertised benefits might come, but they are not the focus. You see, if Obama fails to kill in Syria, the United States will lose street cred. This is the justification for unleashing the dogs of war, according to such mainstream articles as this Time Magazine piece, which nonchalantly weighs the costs of inaction (appearing weak) against the costs of too much action (regional instability) without much apparent care for the flesh-and-blood human beings who would die in the president?s redemptive and face-saving conflagration.

All along, we see a portrayal of the U.S. ruling class as victims of historical circumstance: ?How did it come to this? some of it is bad luck?although that often comes with the job: Bush had 9/11, Clinton had the Balkans, Carter had the Iranian hostages.?

Also throughout this unfortunately typical article appears the theme that the U.S. government simply looks foolish when any government in the world misbehaves, flouting American will, a sin implicitly characterized as much less forgivable than the killing itself. If Assad murders thousands, as he has, that?s bad enough--but if the Obama administration tells him to stop and he refuses, such recalcitrance is just beyond the pale and can?t be left unpunished. After all, Syria ?has been a dictatorship since 1949.? But what?s apparently worse is that the nation-state ?has also been a constant thorn in the U.S.?s side, aligning with Iran?s ruling mullahs and sponsoring the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah.?

There is nothing defensible about the latter group?s terroristic attacks on civilians, but unfortunately such crimes appear around the world, as does the common tendency of states to brutally crush their opposition. America?s ally Bahrain has conducted particularly egregious offenses against dissenters. What makes Syria?s sins so mortal is they stand in defiance of American authority.

So we can take stock of the main premises implicit in the drive for war: The United States has a natural role to intervene abroad, such intervention is either likely to succeed, or else is worth risking failure, which could never be so significant as the U.S. empire losing its reputation as global savior. The U.S. government has generally been a force for good and must continue to be, and its leaders wage wars reluctantly to protect their own public relations image, a sad circumstance imposed upon presidents who would rather be peaceful but are forced into war because nothing is worse than the American government being called a chicken. The most unnerving of all premises, of course, is that it?s justifiable to kill innocent people by bombing the area where they happen to live, and this calculation of slaughtering people for the greater good is properly left up to the American state.

The causal acceptance of such murderous pretension infects almost all of the current foreign policy debate. In one of the closing paragraphs of this Time Magazine article, we see a cavalierly hopeful reference to what could potentially spiral into the worst war of the century: ?But to his critics, Obama does hesitate, and trouble follows as a result. With more than three years left in his presidency, he has the opportunity to reverse that impression. Success in Syria and then Iran could vindicate him, and failure could be crushing.?

We wouldn?t want a lame duck president to look bad. Torching and shredding thousands of people to death would almost seem futile if the carnage backfired and Obama?s empire came out of it embarrassed. This is thoroughly amoral reasoning at best, and so long as it profoundly pervades discourse over war and peace, we cannot take the interventionists seriously when they insist their own the ethical high ground.


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Thursday, September 26, 2013

If You Have Nothing to Hide, Be Very Worried


Pierre Lemieux

Many people do not seem to mind the government peeping into their "metadata" or even into their emails, Internet habits, or phone calls. Mark Reid, the city manager of Bluffdale, Utah, where a large NSA data center is being built, doesn't worry: "If someone reads my emails,"he says, "they'll be pretty bored."

He should think twice.

Other people might not have as boring a life as his. They may have legitimate reasons to keep prying eyes out. But even if their lives are boring, the Mark Reids of the world should still endeavor to keep them private.

The first reason why private information should remain private is that the state ? the whole apparatus of government, all branches, all levels ? has an incentive to use your information against you. There, as elsewhere, incentives matter.

But how do these incentives work? Assume that the state is nice and is entirely devoted to the welfare of its citizens. Similar to how parents are biologically driven to take care of their children. In this case, we can imagine any surveillance the angelic state carries out and any information it gathers will be used for the welfare of the people.

Obama implicitly adopts this angelic model of government. He's not the only one in the political class who feels this way.? On Aug. 10, Obama proposed a minor, cosmetic reform of the NSA's surveillance. Heclaimedthat it is important for "the American people to have confidence" in the intelligence community. The message is: Trust the state.

We have good reasons to reject the angelic model of the state. "If men were angels,"wrote James Madison, "no government would be necessary." He immediately added: "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." A brief survey of today's politicians will make it pretty clear that the state is not made of angels. Just meet some politicians and bureaucrats.

When we talk about the state's incentives, we are referring to the incentives of these individuals. Public choice analysis is a field of economics that over the last half century has studied how these incentives work. To summarize, the incentives of government bureaucrats are to increase the sizes of their bureaus, because that's how they get higher pay, better perks, and a greater sense of accomplishment. At the same time, politicians have the incentives to increase their power in order to satisfy the interests groups whose support they need to get elected or remain in power.

If we adopt this alternative model of the state instead of the angelic model, then we can understand why state power grows if not constrained from the outside. The American ideal ? as in classical liberalism, or libertarianism, in the Western tradition ? was to reinforce these constraints.

Lack of information is a useful constraint on government action. The less the state knows about individuals and their associations (including their business corporations), the less it is able to enforce its laws and regulations that are detrimental to liberty and prosperity.

Just imagine what would happen if, for example, official ID papers (Social Security numbers, passports, and driver's licenses) did not exist. Imagine how difficult and costly it would be to enforce confiscatory taxation, financial regulations, gun controls, or travel bans (such as those for Edward Snowden). What would happen if the government did not have all the financial information listed corporations are forced to provide "regulators"? It would be much more difficult to enforce the current confiscatory corporate tax rates.

Some information in the hands of government is justifiable, but not the mass of data it now amasses. Without wholesale and continuous surveillance, murder and outright fraud could still be punished. Indeed, they were before the government knew so much about the activities of individuals and businesses.

With less tracking information, enforcement would be more costly, of course, but this is what we want if we don't trust nonangelic governments. If laws and regulations were more costly to enforce, there would be fewer of them. The state would have to specialize in certain missions, focusing more on the protection of persons and property

If, on the other hand, information constraints on the state are weakened, the cost of enforcing laws and regulations will drop, and we'll get more state power. This trend has been going on for several decades. Information about financial institutions and their customers has made possible monstrosities like money laundering and civil forfeiture laws. Surveillance of health made the eugenics movement possible in 30 states. InNorth Carolina alone, 7,600 individuals were sterilized from 1929-74. Government ID papers have made checkpoints more productive and less costly.

Saying that some government activities have to be more costly is the same as saying they should be constrained. ID verifications must be more expensive so that government agents carry them out in only exceptional circumstances, when it is really worth it. It is only by constraining the state that we can preserve liberty. If you don't want random police checks, don't make them easy to do.

The problem is the same with DNA databases. James Watson, winner of a Nobel Prize for his work on the structure of DNA, argues for compulsory DNA fingerprinting.He claims that it would only "take away from our liberty to commit crime." The problem is that it would also make it easier for the state to enforce unacceptable laws, both current and future.

Decrease the cost of enforcing laws and regulations and you will get more of them. If the state knew more about the dull lives of all the Mark Reids of the world, it would be able to enforce this dullness more easily on more people.

There is a second reason why private information must stay private. It is simply that you may well be breaking criminal laws without knowing it. There are so many new and complicated laws that many people are not convicted felons only because the government does not know which paper crimes they have committed.

Some surveillance of suspected terrorists is necessary. But on Sept. 10, 2001, the U.S. government already had more surveillance power and information than is compatible with a free society.

The main problem with the surveillance state is not what it knows, but what it is does with what it knows. What it does with its mountain of information is control people ever more tightly. If you think you have nothing to hide and let the state look into your life, you'll soon find out that you do have much to hide.


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o I have to get it out.so lets make a map showing where all the drugs are.next lets make a map that shows where all the guns are.feel safer?

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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The US Uses Gas To Kill Civilians


By Mike Holmes

One point that needs to be made, but rarely if ever mentioned, is that in the supposed rationale for US attack on Syria to avenge/prevent claimed civilian deaths by government gas attacks, the US government itself has used similar weapons openly as recently as the FBI/ATF attack on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco Texas in the spring of 1993.

76 men, women and children died in this senseless military style assault which used highly lethal military CS gas as a primary weapon. CS is not a nerve agent and it doesn't in normal concentrations cause immediate death. But it is highly flammable, persistent and designed to incapacitate targets by causing massive biological reactions including inability to breathe, massive tearing in the eyes, nose bleeds, etc.

The Davidians were totally surrounded, posed no threat to others, and responded with weapons fire only after the ATF/FBI attacked with military style firearms. After the initial government assault was repelled, and after a long standoff, an impatient President Clinton and his Attorney General Janet Reno ordered an all-out military assault on the compound, despite the fact that the only legal justification was a single warrant for David Koresh on unproven charges. The presence of innocent group members was ignored, nor was there any planning for medical aid or fire suppression.

The rest is history. Special military tanks were used to puncture compound walls and insert large quantities of CS gas. CS gas grenades were used from military stores along with 2 metal CS pyrotechnic M651E1 shells. Other pyrotechnic devices and flammable rounds were also fired into the buildings despite known dangers of CS gas ignition and chemical changes to the CS in fires making it even more deadly.

Wikipedia has more details. The video "Rules of Engagement" makes it clear that this was a deliberate effort to kill those inside.

In the run up to the Iraq invasion and now with Syria, United States officials loudly wailed about these regimes "killing civilians" with poison gas. Despite lack of hard evidence for such use in these countries, there is no doubt that President Clinton and Reno approved this exact same tactic.

Unlike the Middle Eastern scenarios, no civil war or mass terrorist action was occurring in Waco. There were no enemy forces attacking regime outposts and military targets. Just religious dissenters who followed an unstable cult leader, who lived privately on a remote farm bothering no one.

While domestic and world reaction to the Davidian massacre ranged from shock to horror, in 1993 there were no bellicose calls for military attack on the US by other nations for this blatant violation of the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions, and legal due process. France, Britain, China and Russia did not propose UN authorization for military retaliation. Nor did the US government ever apologize but instead gave medals and honors to the government killers responsible for these horrific deaths.

While some victims were shot, most died from burns or asphyxiation as a result of the CS gas and the subsequent firestorm created when it was ignited deliberately.

So precedent is clear: the US Empire can use poison gas against peaceful religious dissenters when they do not immediately surrender to heavily armed police forces using military weapons. This is lied about, rationalized and ultimately forgotten, with the dead victims being blamed for their "suicidal actions."

Other nations engaged in civil wars are regarded by the US Empire as guilty of "genocide" with the flimsiest of "secret evidence" of poison gas use cited as justification for military attack. ?Thus far American citizens have not been made privy to this supposed evidence or its source.

Does anyone doubt that faced with an active armed rebellion in the US by opponents of the Obama regime, the US government would not hesitate one millisecond to deploy CS gas or worse against rebels? The precedent is clear. Gassing civilians is approved for the Empire, but others face our wrath should they be accused by secret sources of emulating the Clinton-Reno example. US government moral outrage is reserved only for the acts of others.

After all, the US Empire can do no wrong. War is the Health of the State.
_
Mike Holmes [send him mail] is a practicing CPA in the Houston area.


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It was not just CS gas that was used at Waco.

Special Forces were brought in for the final assault. They used shaped charge explosives to blow through the roof of the hiding place for the women and children -- killing them instantly.

Waco was not a police action. Waco was a killing field for monsters that have never been held accountable.

8517

plus they shot people as they exited the burning building out of a back door. Though the government says the flashes seen are reflections off glass and ground debris from the sun, its clear, and has been testified to by experts, they are muzzle flashes, which all occurred at the same time that survivors tried to exit the building. Its all on tape. They filmed it themselves. People can watch it online. The gov shooting unarmed people as they run from a burning building.

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

How "Your" Government Works


Kevin Carson

The Obama administration has announced the formation of a panel of ?outside experts? to review the NSA?s surveillance practices. And a wide-ranging, diverse collection of experts they are; when it comes to institutional backgrounds and viewpoints, they span the entire spectrum from A to B. They remind me a bit of the space shuttle crew in an episode of The Simpsons: ?They?re a colorful bunch ?? There's a mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician.?

Richard Clarke, who served on the National Security Council under two Bushes and a Clinton, was the counter-terrorism tsar for three administrations. Michael Morell is a former CIA director who was at Obama?s side during the kill of bin Laden and probably heavily involved in the whole ?wink, wink, nudge, nudge? operation of ?unofficial? leaks to the Zero Dark Thirty propaganda operation. Cass Sunstein, former White House information tsar under Obama, in 2010 authored a paper explicitly endorsing ?cognitive infiltration? by the government ? i.e., government secretly enlisting the help of ?respected outside experts? posing as independent commenters to debunk ?conspiracy theories? critical of government policy on social media. You know, like those boiler rooms the Mossad runs full of people pretending to be independent college students defending the Israeli apartheid state against social media critics.

This bunch of clowns bears an amazing resemblance to the ?outside experts? running other aspects of government policy. You know how the U.S. government brags about all the ?stakeholders seated around the table? when it drafts new laws or treaties on ?intellectual property?? Oddly enough, there aren?t many from the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Creative Commons. But you bet your booty the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft will be represented extremely well.

Pretty much every pick for U.S. Treasurer is a former CEO of Goldman-Sachs or Citigroup. Obama?s favorite for Federal Reserve chairman is Larry Summers, the ultimate insider?s insider from America?s quasi-public, quasi-private network of finance capitalist institutions.

Likewise, if you look through the assorted Assistant and Deputy and Assistant Deputy Secretaries at the USDA, you?ll find a gaggle of former Vice Presidents and Directors from Monsanto, Cargill and ADM. The second-tier political appointees at the FDA will generally be there as a change of pace between stints in the C-Suites of Merck and Pfizer. Basically the entire military procurement policy apparatus is an alliance of military (ahem, ?Defense?) contractors and Pentagon procurement officers, rigging tests and getting their lies straight so Congress will rubber-stamp their new weapons systems.

If you think all this insider involvement in policy represents ?regulatory capture,? or the corruption of an originally pristine system by campaign money and lobbyists, you?re missing the point. It?s their ability to use the state as a tool for extracting rents from society that makes these people insiders in the first place. Most of the profits they get in the ?marketplace? [sic, sic, SICK] result either from rents on artificial scarcity enforced by the state, or from direct government subsidies to their operating costs. Protecting the profits of ?insiders? is what governments do. If it weren?t for state subsidies and state-enforced entry barriers, artificial property rights, artificial scarcities and regulatory cartels, there wouldn?t be a Goldman Sachs or a Citigroup. There wouldn?t be an ADM, Cargill or Monsanto. There wouldn?t be a Merck or Pfizer, a Disney or Microsoft.

The government exists, since the beginning of the first states, to serve landlords, capitalists, usurers, bureaucrats and assorted other rentiers ? not to serve us. The state, by its very nature, is executive committee of an economic ruling class. Trying to ?reform? government through outsider review is like trying to reform the Mafia.


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Latest Commentary
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- How the State Destroys Social Cooperation
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- The US Uses Gas To Kill Civilians
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- Elysium: The Technological Side of the American Police State

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Monday, September 23, 2013

Stormtroopers Confine Reporter To Home: Citizens Treated Worse Than Dogs


Infowars reporter Jakari Jackson, along with a few of his neighbors, received a rude awakening today when an aggressive SWAT team showed up to perform an early morning ambush.

Jackson was startled out of his slumber around 5:30am when he heard someone banging on a door loudly. He immediately armed himself and walked to the front door of his Southeast Austin apartment to see what was the matter.

He soon heard a loudspeaker boom that the Austin Police was there to serve a warrant, and could see what looked like an Austin SWAT van parked outside.

He could also hear loud bangs which he believes were likely flash bang grenades.

Ever the intrepid journalist, Jackson grabbed a camera and attempted to film the raid, which happened to target one of his close neighbors.

When Jackson opened his door and began filming the storm troopers, who were outfitted in green ensembles more befitting of U.S. military than police officers, he was met by ferocious barking demanding he get back inside his house.

As evidenced in his footage, Jackson was already standing well within his doorway, which he declared, stating, "I am inside! This is my door; I'm standing right inside my apartment!"


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I am going to start using statist excuses in my daily life. "Citizen safety" will become part of my repertoire. "Based on my training and experience" will also be a key factor. Just think of the difference we could make if we all became a Citizen Peace Patrol armed with handguns and cameras streaming to Youtube and researched citizen arrest laws... Every time we observed police officers violate the law we could film them and effect a citizen's arrest. Oh, probably wise to keep some cash at home for bail money, but if enough of us did this it would make a difference. Did they come down from parachute? when is it ever appropriate or necessary for police on american soil to wear masks hiding their faces?

if there's an answer i honestly would like to know, i can't think of a valid reason for them to hide who they are - what are they afraid of?

why are cops SO AFRAID anyway? they have all the guns and bulletproof vests and helmets - the best our money can buy, and they always outnumber everyone by a large margin? why are they such chickenshits?

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Cop Flips Out On Teen Video Recording Him Making An Arrest, Arrests Him & Falsely Charges Him With Resisting & Obstruction


Chris | InformationLiberation

A Leland, North Carolina police sergeant John Keel was caught on his own dash cam video flipping out on a teenager for legally video recording him making an arrest with his cell phone outside a Buy & Go gas station.

After verbally harassing and threatening 19-year-old Gabriel Self, Keel arrested him and charged him for obstructing and resisting.

WECT reports Keel has been suspend for 30 days without pay, and all charges against Self were dropped.

Unfortunately, the cop was not charged for filing false charges, which is a felony offense, nor assault for physically accosting him.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.


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Sue them and get a college education on the Leland PD sorry TAX PAYERS

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Sunday, September 22, 2013

Eyewitness Records Santa Ana Officer Shoot, Kill Unarmed Homeless Man Who Called Her 'Bitch'


SANTA ANA (CBSLA.com) ? An eyewitness recorded cellphone video of a Santa Ana police officer shoot and kill an unarmed 22-year-old homeless man at a shopping center earlier this week.

The witness, who wished to remain unidentified, was standing in the parking lot of the Harbor Place Shopping Center on South Harbor Boulevard around 3 p.m. Tuesday when he said he filmed a confrontation in front of Jugo?s La Tropicana between an officer, later identified as a 13-year veteran, and victim Hans Kevin Arellano.

?She exited her patrol car, gun drawn, and asked the gentlemen to get on the ground. The gentlemen didn?t get on the ground, he was still inside the restaurant. She asked again. The man then exited the restaurant, and as he was exiting the restaurant, he said, ?What are you gonna do, b?-?? About a second later, she shot him in the chest,? he said.

Read More


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Why do we allow these dangerous, egotistical criminals to infest our lives? Disband this gang of theives, murderers, rapists, and bullies. Illegal activity? Really?
Okey, sure.
Just kill the man.
Cause he called her a bitch.
What a ... this country needs a civil war in response to atrocities committed by law enforcement yet people revere and fear law enforcement law they are gods among us. If citizens started striking back at cops like you can on grand theft auto video games maybe they would stop being so brazen. Code 10-00 is the law thing cops fear and respect. most cops just have a level II vest, and unarmored car yet people revere them and fear them like their gods or something. Look how easy cops go down on a game like PayDay or GTA.

They don't respect you, your civil rights or your human rights. If police unlawfully attack you, you have the right to defend yourself and return fire yet no one ever does. In the military dictatorship of california, people need to start defending themselves yet they dont. this cop who murdered this homeless in a better world would become a code 10-00 because the people would not put up with such crimes against humanity.

As pacifist and afraid of law enforcement people are today, the american revolutionary war could never have happened because people would be so afraid of King George's troops/cops/peace officers that everyone would have bowed the knee in fear and ones who signed the decleration of independence would just been hung and this country would not be independent. Though as tyrannical as california police act today, one no longer say they have rights or live under a government they respects freedom or the bill of rights.

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How Anarchism Can Solve Social Problems: Gary Chartier at Freedom Fest 2013


"Once states get a footing, they tend to crowd out alternatives," says philosopher and La Sierra University professor Gary Chartier, author most recently of Anarchy and Legal Order. "Also, I think they tend to colonize people, ideologically."

Reason Magazine's Matt Welch caught up with Chartier at this year's Freedom Fest to discuss his extensive writings on anarchy and left-libertarianism.

Held each July in Las Vegas, Freedom Fest is attended by around 2,000 limited-government enthusiasts and libertarians. ReasonTV spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks.

About 4 minutes.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Paul Detrick and Oppenheimer.


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Who's Really Getting Punished?


by Jacob G. Hornberger

I find it interesting how President Obama intends to punish Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad for his purported use of chemical weapons against Syrian rebels. It provides a fascinating insight into the collectivist mindset.

To punish Assad, Obama says that he will use his military to "degrade" Assad's military. That inevitably means that Obama will bomb certain segments of Assad's military, such as artillery or armor units.

That means that inevitably there will be Syrian troops who are killed by Obama's forces, but not necessarily the troops who participated in the alleged chemical attacks. They will be other troops who serve in Assad's military forces.

So, the way that Obama's mind works, by killing and destroying a segment of Assad's military Obama will be punishing Assad himself. It's sort of like a bee hive -- kill some of the drones and you hurt the queen and the hive.

But keep in mind that every single one of those Syrian troops, most of whom are undoubtedly draftees, who Obama kills with his military is a human being, one that has family and friends -- parents, brothers, sisters, spouse, children, and neighbors.

How likely is it that those survivors are going to passively say, "Oh, it's okay. We understand. President Obama killed our loved one because President Assad needed to be punished. Time to move on."

My hunch? Not very likely at all. It is much more likely that every one of them will be filled with anger and rage over the fact that the U.S. government had no business killing their son, father, brother, or husband.

And that's precisely how anti-American terrorism comes into play. The U.S. government, specifically the military and the CIA, go abroad and do bad things to people, producing anger and rage. A percentage of the survivors decide to retaliate with terrorism. When they do, U.S. officials themselves go into a rage, arguing that it's now necessary that they wage a war on terrorism and temporarily suspend the liberties of the American people. Let's also not forget the big, ever-expanding budgets for the war contractors because that's a big part of this process too.

We often hear about how the U.S. national-security state is so concerned about killing civilians as part of its military interventions (even though it still ardently defends and justifies its atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But with the exception of libertarians, hardly anyone challenges the justifications and consequences of their killing foreign troops as part of their military incursions.

Obviously, the civil war in Syria is a nasty thing but then again civil wars are always nasty things. Who can forget, for example, the war crimes that Lincoln and Sherman committed in their infamous "March to the Sea" during America's Civil War, when they intentionally targeted women and children and other civilians for extermination? Would that have justified Syrian intervention into America's Civil War? I can't imagine anyone defending that principle, even if the Syrian regime said it was just punishing Lincoln by killing Sherman's troops.

Of course, however, it's not just the Syrian troops and "collateral-damage civilians" who will bear the cost of Obama's punishment of Assad. Also paying the price will be us -- the American people -- who will continue to suffer the consequences of military empire, a national-security state apparatus, and an interventionist foreign policy. Our punishment will come in the form of continued destruction of our freedom, inner peace, harmony, and economic well-being at the hands of our own government.
_
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.


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Saturday, September 21, 2013

Students Taught That Government Is "Family": A Caretaker That Should Be Obeyed



SKOKIE, IL ? A homework assignment was given to children at a public school which revealed the true nature of this nation?s education model: to condition impressionable young people to accept the paternal role of the state; trusting, accepting, and obeying the state?s wishes as you would your own family.? This familial role of the state has been formally advocated since the onset of public education in America.

Fourth-graders at East Prairie School in Skokie, Illinois, were distributed an assignment titled, ?What is Government??

The assignment was prefaced with a statement that caused a stir with some parents.? The worksheet stated:

?Government is like a nation?s family.? Families take care of each other and make sure they are safe, healthy, educated, and free to enjoy life.? Families encourage children to be independent, hardworking, and responsible.? Families make and enforce rules and give appropriate punishments when rules are broken.? Government does these things for its citizens, too.?
The worksheet goes on to make a series of analogies between the state of families in the form of questions.? It can be viewed below.


Assignment given to children in compulsory government schools. (Source: TheBlaze)

This worksheet, while shocking to some, is completely in line with the foundation and intent of the American public education system.? To illustrate this, we must review some forgotten (buried) history.

Read More


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Since the Black community has a broken down family system, Govt must step in, indoctrinate, brainwash and control that part of our population.

The Jews understand the importance of family, the Italians also. The Irish just know it's every man for him self. At least they work.

The Hispanics are also strong on family but lack education.

Blacks + Hispanics = 51% + and growing.

Read the writing on the wall.

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Friday, September 20, 2013

Boston Cop Shoves Videographer, Then Threatens to Arrest Him for "Battery On A Police Officer"


Chris | InformationLiberation

Being assaulted by a police officer is grounds for being charged with battery on a police officer, at least according to this Boston police "Sargent" caught on video intimidating and threatening a man for videotaping.

From Carlos Miller:

A hefty plainclothes sergeant from the Boston Police Department figured the best way to not be exposed on camera was to physically confront a videographer, shoving him with his belly and pushing him back while threatening to arrest him for felony assault on an officer.

This, of course, is another common practice used by police, ranking right up there with ordering a non-resistant suspect to ?stop resisting? while physically pummeling him.

?You touch me again and I will lock you up for assault and battery on a police officer,? the burly sergeant told the burping videographer.

The sergeant and another plainclothes cop who identified himself as Fabiano told Jay Kelly that he needed to move out of the area because there was a police investigation.

Meanwhile, a shirtless jogger trots right through their investigation while numerous cars also drive through in opposite directions in two lanes.

The level of criminality one has to be comfortable with to boldly threaten to falsely charge someone with a crime while simultaneously committing a crime is almost incomprehensible, yet the cop clearly thinks nothing of it, knowing full well he is being videotaped.

Does anyone out there actually think this man was "served" by these police officers?

Would anyone out there voluntarily pay these men to protect them?

This is the problem with the compulsory monopoly that is the state, there is absolutely no accountability because there is no one to "watch the watchers." When the man asks to speak to the cop's supervisor, he says, "I am the supervisor." While the bald faced liar's word is completely worthless, we'll will know what his "supervisor" and his supervisor's supervisor thinks based on whether or not the cop is fired and charged with intimidation.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.


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Sargent: "What, you can't see my badge?"
he couldn't even see his badge. he barely found it under his tax-fed belly.

"Would anyone out there voluntarily pay these men to protect them?" -Chris

if takes only money, then, i'd prefer to pay police to sit on their asses at home.

videographer did a pretty good job.

the fat prick fabiano in the purple shirt has no right to invade your personal space, i teach this on day one of self-defense - don't even let a person get within your personal space if they're being aggressive because it allows you to be in too much danger, BARK orders at them to back the fuck off you will defend while placing hand on your weapon or if unarmed getting ready to strike or takedown.

fat prick in the purple - if me you'd have been SHOT, you aggressed on a peaceful person WHILE WEARING A GUN - NOT HAPPENING WITH ME PRICK, you'd be dead. ENFORCE THE ACTUAL LAW, YOU'RE NOT JUDGE DREDD.

@18443, actually, "actual law" would be physics and thermodynamics. you're a Christian, so, in your world, "actual law" is only 2 commandments + eight ways to create a serene life.

"statutory law," is not "actual." I can write-up a bunch of rules, trick people into believing in those rules, though, only your belief in them, can make them "actual."

for what reason, would the officer in the purple shirt, have to shoot you? you seem a bit off balance, like you're living the scenario in the video, on a daily basis... i don't like cops - would never be one, but, i wouldn't run about threatening an undercover. what if you threatened someone, who you thought was an undercover cop, but, they turned out not to be? "actual law" just might adhere, and, not to your benefit

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Is NSA Secretly Feeding Spy Intel to Police for Petty Crimes?


Repeated claims that surveillance network only used for counter-terrorism belied by new documents from DEA
by Jon Queally


An exclusive investigative report by Reuters appears to confirm fears held by critics that the vast network of surveillance programs maintained by the National Security Agency is being used not only for countering international terrorism, but also for targeting common criminals within the U.S.

Though NSA officials and their backers have repeatedly said that the spy programs are designed to "keep America safe" from international terrorism, the new revelations show that domestic law enforcement is likely being supplied with data from these same operations.

According to the report, a secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit?called Special Operations Division, or SOD?"is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans."

Documents obtained by Reuters reveal that DEA agents or other law enforcement agencies are supplied with information used from "classified" sources to initiate investigations but that internal protocols demand that investigators then "recreate" the source of where the information came from so to keep SOD's involvement off the books.

Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011, told Reuters she'd "never heard of anything like this."

From Reuters:

Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."

Though the secretive and classified nature of these programs makes it impossible to know the degree to which they betray constitutional and legal norms, the revelations only deepen the suspicions about how the spying capabilities are being used by government agencies.

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist behind much of the recent reporting on the NSA spying programs, read the Reuter's article and tweeted in response:

Defense attorneys who spoke to Reuters called the program "outrageous," "indefensible," and "blatantly unconstitutional."

"You can't game the system," said one former federal prosecutor. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"


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of course many have been saying this is going on all along and we are not suprised.this government is going under one pretence and doing something else. Then stop believing them for Pete's sake. They want to eliminate any opposition at the "speeding ticket" phase. Soon they'll put someone on a database because he chose the wrong toy in the kindergarten. This way troublemakers are identified before they even think of revolting against their masters. Police feed info to the feds, feds feed info to the police. A vicious cycle that needs to be broken. dougo I get it now, speedreading backfired on me but the ugly font on my screen played a part too :) just wondering if people are so scared of their own government they post anonymously or what.want our country back?fight them face to face.I have and it almost cost me my life.I won.there are worse things than the inevitable. Anonymity is like cover in a firefight, one can't last long without it True, 65110.
Also, one won't last long if he doesn't know how to pick his battles.

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The Thin Line Between Service and Threat


Jeffrey Tucker

It was 2:00am and I was sound asleep when the doorbell rang. I thought I had dreamed it. But then it was followed by a knock and another ring. So I got up and went to the door.

Standing there were two policemen decked out in all their contemporary regalia: jack boots, bullet-proof vests, heavy arms, clubs, tasers, and so on. One put a flashlight on my face. I was confused and alarmed, obviously. They explained that there was truck parked in front of my house, with license tags that were not from my neighborhood. Did I know anything about this truck, one ?asked?

I explained that this belonged to a friend, who had gotten off work late and asked to crash at my house. No problem, I said. So, yes, I know this truck and I know its owner.

They were glad to hear it, and explained that they were asking because of a recent string of burglaries in my neighborhood. They were just checking on anything suspicious. They apologized for waking me.

At this point, I?m quite certain that 9 in 10 people would have said something like: ?it?s ok, officers. I really appreciate how you are keeping us safe and keeping a look out. Thank you for the service to this community.?

Instead, I said nothing and said goodnight and closed the door.

In the days since then, I?ve thought about this little incident a number of times. It wasn?t exactly a case of abuse, tyranny, imposition, or anything like that. It felt a bit like what police work is supposed to be about, just making sure we are all safe. And yet, there was something strange about it too. This was not exactly a case of where there?s smoke, there?s fire. This was just a truck parked there, suspicious only because the tags were from elsewhere in town (and I?m not even sure I knew that tags were so easily identified).

So is it just my libertarian paranoia that causes me to feel uneasy about this incident? Well, here?s a test. If a policeman in the course of his routine does something that if you and I did it would be considered menacing, it is a problem. So here was my mental experiment. Let?s say I ventured down the street and rang someone?s doorbell at 2am, introduced myself, and asked about a truck parked in front of the house. I explained that I?ve been concerned about the safety of the community so it is natural for me to seek out answers.

I?m pretty that in this case, my neighbor would have been more than a bit annoyed. The response might have been something like: ?who the eff do you think you are scoping out my house in the middle of the night? Who or what is parked at my house is none of your g-d business. Get out of here and don?t come back.?

Or maybe people would be too polite to say that but surely everyone would think it. Some might have even called the cops to report a creeper wandering around the neighborhood. I myself might have been visited by the cops to account for my actions!

And yet, we put up with this nonsense solely because of their official status. The police believe that their status confers upon them some kind of ownership over my property, my person, and the whole community. Everything that goes on there is their business.

To be sure, I?m not saying that neighborhood watch people are totally useless. But it would be nice to have some say over what they do and how they go about their job. If this were a private service, they would be serving me as a consumer and not seeking to establish their control and ownership over my life, feeling free to intrude anytime.

I?m quite certain that the police don?t see it this way. They believe they are just doing what the community wants, and maybe this indeed is what the community wants. But it is also mixed with a threat: we are watching you, always, so you had better not step out of line. The consequences for disobedience should be apparent. Look at the weapons I carry.

Sometimes there is a thin line between a service and a threat ? and where one become the other is precisely when a contractual service becomes an inherently coercive one.
_
Jeffrey Tucker is the publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, the Primus inter pares of the Laissez Faire Club, and the author of Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo, It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes, and A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Build Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age, among thousands of articles. Click to sign up for his free daily letter. Email him: tucker@lfb.org | Facebook | Twitter | Google


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At 2 am in the morning I have a gun pointed about dick level at my door and I do not open the fucking thing for no mother fucker, no matter what bullshit spews from their pieholes. trm: Agreed. I don't go to the door for strangers. do what Joe Biden suggested.that should go over well.

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