Rise of the Nanny Police State: Town Governments Across the US Ban Sledding

By John Vibes

Dubuque, Iowa ? Local politicians in cities and towns across America have implemented laws that will ban children from sledding.

Town officials in Dubuque, Iowa for example, have banned sledding in 48 of its 50 parks because they fear that children will get hurt and that their parents could sue the city.

?We have all kinds of parks that have hills on them. We can?t manage the risk at all of those places,? Marie Ware, Dubuque?s leisure services manager told reporters.

"Everybody likes sledding, OK? Everyone wants to promote outdoor activities, and we want people to be active. But everyone knows sledding is a risky activity, we want to manage that risk," she added.

In other cities such as Des Moines, Iowa; Montville, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbia City, Indiana, the local governments have not entirely banned sledding, but instead posted signs warning people that they are sledding at their own risk. This approach gives some level of legal protection to the city if someone happens to get hurt, without enacting an all out ban.

In places where these bans have been put into place, many children and family?s have ignored the laws and engaged in civil disobedience. Town officials said that fines are expected for repeat offenders.

It is only a matter of time before the first arrests are made of those ?rebel children? who dare to have fun outdoors.

The natural tendency of the state to control every aspect of our lives is constantly on the rise.?The message from the state is clear, either you keep your kids locked up in the house or you very well may be the one locked up.

Children's book author, Kari Anne Roy, received an unexpected visit from Child Protective Services (CPS) and the Austin Police Department last year. She was being investigated for allowing her son Isaac, 6, to play outside unsupervised.

In June of last year,?Jeffrey Williamson?s 8-year-old son skipped church to play in the neighborhood. Williamson was subsequently arrested for child endangerment after a neighbor called the police to report an unsupervised child on the loose.

Also last year, there was the case of?5-year-old Eric Lopez, who was charged with sexual misconduct after he decided to drop his pants on the playground.

_
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled "Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance" at bookpatch.com.

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I'm not sure it's the government bureaucracy to blame.

"Town officials in Dubuque, Iowa for example, have banned sledding in 48 of its 50 parks because they fear that children will get hurt and that their parents could sue the city."

It's quite likely that this step was made not out of blue, but exactly because there were parents who did sue the city.

Same as when there's yet another incident of an overboard zero-tolerance at yet another school, it may also very well be in response to the paranoia expressed by the parents, and this zero tolerance is exactly what they demanded. Quite likely the same mother who today is crying that her angel was arrested for even mentioning a gun, is the one who only yesterday adamantly demanded exactly that, to "protect" said angel.

I don't need to reach very far for examples - my own spouse is an exhibit #1.

This has nothing to do with 'Nanny-State', it is full-blown fascism .
Sadly, it is what often happens when you give 'The Little Man' any power -
He abuses it to impose whatever twisted idea he may have on people he should have no power ever in the first place . Having grown up in Iowa, I can tell you that there's not much else for kids to do in the winter. They say Dubuque has 50 parks, but I would wager that maybe 5 of them have hills big enough for sledding. I guess there's always Meth..... LOL! No doubt there is plenty of meth! :D Allegheny County, PA had a place called "Sunny Slopes" in South Park. It was a big half-funnel with hay bales at the bottom. Teen agers and some adults would go there at night, get a fire in a tash barrel or two and then we'd ride sleds and inner tubes to the bottom. Great fun for most of the night. They closed Sunny Slopes to sledding about thirty years ago.
Pass any play area and look for "see-saws." They aren't there anymore. Yet the road signs advising of a play area show a see-saw. What irony.
WE are gong to immobilize our selves in this country. Whew, Just had Crazed Suits and Tie Mob gnawing at my Cars Tires coming home from purchasing Bird Food. Must have been Local Politicians. Crikey, Cigs but no Lighter. Dayum am afraid to go back out.

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Should the State Decide What You're Allowed to Eat?

Eating Right
by WENDY MCELROY

Food has always been political. Throughout history, armies have razed crops and demographics have shifted in response to hunger. Political correctness now drives the civics of food with bountiful nations attempting to dictate what people can eat and how much. Why? For their own good.

The public debate revolves around whether a particular food choice is healthy or not. The real debate is, ?Who should choose: you or someone else?? The defense of food freedom needs to turn on the right of people to express themselves through dietary choices that reflect not only their preferences but also their judgment. Food is self-expression as much as music or literature is. If the government can control the flavors of life you choose to swallow, then it can control everything else.

Poe's law comes alive

Poe's law is an Internet adage. It says that without knowing the intent of an online poster, it is impossible to distinguish someone who is expressing an extreme position from someone else who is satirizing that extreme position. A recent news story blurs the line between parody and reality.

The parody goes by various names, including ?Ordering a Pizza from Big Brother? and ?Ordering a Pizza in 2015.? The gist: a pizza parlor with access to all of your personal information refuses to accept an order that is contraindicated by your finances, medical condition, or some other characteristic. The reality is expressed by a December 8 headline in the Telegraph that read, ?The vending machine of the future is here, and it knows who you are.?

The Luce X2 Touch TV is the first commercial vending machine to use facial recognition technology to store data and interact with customers. The vending machines offer advantages to both buyers and sellers. A buyer could voluntarily store his preferences, and the machine could regularly restock those items. A seller could replace expensive employees and stores with machines. But the Telegraph points to possible disadvantages. Luce X2 ?could refuse to vend a certain product based on a shopper?s age, medical record or dietary requirements.? Candy might be refused to the obese, sodas to schoolchildren. Since Luce X2 uses data-sharing cloud technology, going to another machine might not provide the anonymity that allows access.

The prospect of social control via vending machine sounds paranoid to some. But food regulations have become so intrusive and unreasonable as to become self-parodies. Michelle Obama's unpopular school-lunch program has children across America tossing trays full of untouched food into extremely well-nourished wastebaskets. Recent menu-labeling laws require food vendors ? from restaurants to theater popcorn stands ? to provide information on calorie contents that next to no one will read. But the requirement does make fast food more expensive and so discourages its consumption, which may be the laws? real purpose.

Even as food regulation verges on the absurd, many acquiesce on health grounds. Framing the issue as medical gives the government a strong advantage.

Food is much more than a health matter

The State uses two basic arguments to justify the micromanagement of what people eat. First, laws are necessary to force people to make healthy choices. This argument assumes that politically motivated bureaucrats know what is best for people better than they do themselves. Second, people's unhealthy choices make them tax burdens on the socialized medical system. Having "relieved" or deprived people of the responsibility for their own medical maintenance, the State uses their dependence as an excuse to impose social control. It is important to counter both arguments, but doing so often ignores an equally essential point.

Food is not merely a matter of health or sustaining life. It is one of the main ways people express themselves in terms of culture, ethnicity, religion, psychology, family history, and pure preference. Food choices are personal; they define our identity as surely as choices in attire or music do.

Food is an integral aspect of transmitting culture and ethnicity. From Hungarian goulash to Italian sausage, from Indian curries to falafels, food expresses a family?s rich heritage. Recipes and cooking techniques are passed down from one generation to the next in an act that preserves the family bond; it preserves the culture itself.

Food is also a cultural ambassador through which diverse groups appreciate each other's ethnicity. People who would never listen to Chinese music are able to mention dozens of their favorite Chinese dishes. A man who would never learn Spanish might cook pescado a la talla with the same ingredients a woman is using in Acapulco. A couple will return from visiting Germany and rave about its spaetzle and knackwurst. This cultural appreciation occurs naturally, without tax funding or government-mandated tolerance. Indeed, laws interrupt people's appreciation of other cuisines.

Food can be a moral choice, as vegetarians and vegans know. It can be a part of religious doctrine, as any Orthodox Jew will tell you. It is a matter of ritual, as those who carve a turkey each Christmas or children who gather Halloween candy will gladly acknowledge. Food can even be a political statement, as those who prefer raw milk will attest.

As a psychological matter, food has been called ?love.? A mother makes her son's favorite meal or a cake to celebrate his birthday. A lover proposes marriage over a romantic dinner and a good wine. Women recover from a broken heart by emptying containers of ice cream. When a neighbor expresses sympathy for a death in someone's family, she brings over a homemade casserole. At the funeral, there is a spread of food. At festivals, it is featured; for the Super Bowl, it is strategically placed between the couch and the TV.

Digestif

The diversity of plentiful food that every grocery store boasts should be a cause of pride, because it demonstrates not only financial prosperity, but also cultural richness. It showcases the range of choices in our affluent society.

Never mind that subsidies, taxes, and regulations already distort what we find at the supermarket and how much we pay for it. When government tries to dictate what we may eat or the manner in which we eat, it is tampering with our heritage, our ethnicity, our psychology, and our religious or political choices. The ability to control the food you put in your mouth is as fundamental a right as to control the words that come out of it.

The government's increasing interference in food choice is often viewed as benevolent, because it is discussed in terms of health benefits. Food regulation is anything but benevolent. The government is not only trying to define who and what you are; it is, at the same time, trying to convince you that the denial of freedom is ?for your own good.? If you are what you eat, then food laws are an attempt to control your identity.
_
Contributing editor for The Freeman, Wendy McElroy is an author, editor of ifeminists.com, and Research Fellow at The Independent Institute (independent.org).

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Student Punished for Refusing to Pledge Allegiance to the State

Student Punished for Refusing to Pledge Allegiance to the State - informationliberationinformationliberation
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The Obama Deception: The Mask Comes OffOperation Gladio: The Hidden History of U.S. Sponsored False Flag Terrorism in EuropeThe New American Century: The Untold History of The Project for the New American Century(more)Article posted May 09 2014, 8:41 AMCategory: Tyranny/Police StateSource: InformationLiberationPrintStudent Punished for Refusing to Pledge Allegiance to the StateChris | InformationLiberation

From KHOU:

NEEDVILLE, Texas -- Mason Michalec says he loves his country but just not the government.

?I?m really tired of our government taking advantage of us,? said Michalec. ?I don?t agree with the NSA spying on us. And I don?t agree with any of those Internet laws.?

That's why he's taken a pledge of sorts to not say the Pledge of Allegiance with classmates.

?I?ve basically said it from the time I was in kindergarten to earlier this year and that?s when I decided I was done saying it.?

For the most this year, his silent protest has gone unnoticed. But on Wednesday, when a different teacher observed it for the very first time, the Needville High School sophomore ran into trouble.

?And she told me this is my classroom," said Michalec. "This is the principal?s request. You?re going to stand. And I still didn?t stand and she said she was going to write me up.?

Michalec says the principal sentenced him to two days of in school suspension, and warned that he could face more ISS if his protest continued.

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Comments 1 - 5 of 5Add CommentPage 1 of 1AnonymousPosted: May 09 2014, 2:26 PM

Link 19255Tell me again how we're the land of the free?PeterPosted: May 09 2014, 3:26 PM

Link 193180What's next, people refusing to heil the flag with a Bellamy-salute ?
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&um=1&sa=1&q=bellamy+salute&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&start=0&tbo=1&tbm=ischMichael EllisPosted: May 09 2014, 8:47 PM

Link 68189This kid should leave the public school system and do home school. He is obviously too smart to waste any more time on the group think re-education camp he is currently attending.Bill WPosted: May 11 2014, 9:03 AM

Link 96250Good for you, Mason & shame on the school system. Free speech belongs to all. AnonymousPosted: May 11 2014, 10:29 PM

Link 6645Remember this one from the '80s?
I pledge allegiance to the flag
Michael Jackson is a fag
Pepsi Cola burned him up
Now he's drinking 7-Up.Comments 1 - 5 of 5Page 1 of 1

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Total Privacy = Total Destruction Of The State

by Michael Suede

The state cannot exist without invasions of privacy. ?Without invasions of privacy, taxes could not be imposed. ?If all transactions and accounting records were private, incomes and revenues could not be verified. ?Tax evasion could not be prosecuted because no proof of incomes could be obtained.

Further, state currencies could not be imposed. ?If all transactions were private, the state would have no way of knowing what unit of account its subjects may have used to conduct their trades in. ?If a secret private currency were to run along side a state issued currency, the state issued currency would eventually become worthless.

If a person could be paid in secret, not have to pay taxes or the cost of inflation, and knew they could never be caught because the transactions are totally private, and the private currency was accepted everywhere the state currency was, wouldn?t they try to avoid the state issued currency in favor of the private currency??Because of these facts, all forms of privacy are abhorrent to the state.

The state, which is nothing more than a large group of brainwashed individuals who believe they have been granted the legitimate right to control others through the use of force, depends on having total information of all its subjects doings in order to maintain its own survival. ? But survival of what? ?Survival of the belief system. ?There is no ?thing? that anyone can point to and say, ?there is the state!? ?The state isn?t real. ?The state is a belief in peoples? minds.

Since the state is nothing more than a belief that resides in the minds of certain people, the cult members that compose a ?state? must continually check their subjects for signs that belief in the cult might be waning. This natural paranoia of cult members is what drives the expansion of the surveillance state. ?The Snowden leaks have made it clear that the NSA is just as concerned about what its own subjects are thinking as it is about foreigners.

Again, the NSA is just a group of cult members who believe they have the legitimate right to invade the privacy of everyone on the planet to ensure that the belief in the death cult called the American government is not being threatened. ?Since the state isn?t a physical ?thing,? but a belief, the NSA isn?t ultimately concerned about protecting ?things.? ?The cult of the NSA does what it does because they are terrified some other cult belief system will throw them out of power.

Why should Americans be concerned with what the Chinese are doing? ?Americans? are simply people who believe that living under the death cult of the American state is superior to that of living under the Chinese state ? otherwise why bother having any American state at all? ?Why not just let the Chinese run things? Why not hand over the American government to the Chinese? ?What does that question even mean? ? Does it mean handing over the belief in the legitimacy of one death cult to another death cult? ?What the hell?

The state is a belief ? not a thing. ?In order to get someone out of a cult, you have to seclude them from the cult group. ?Privacy is a key component when it comes to the toppling of cult belief systems. ? If I were to transport you to another human world where all transactions were private (no states), would you stand in terror, waiting to be struck down by terrorists or criminals? ?Of course not. ?You would quickly come to accept that as the reality of how things should be.

If the entire world views it as normal to have complete transaction privacy, you would view it as normal. ?It would be ABNORMAL to assume you, or anyone else, had the legitimacy to peek inside peoples? pocketbooks. ?Obviously the death cult called a ?state? could not exist in such a world.

Even if an entire population were to fully believe that the human condition could be improved by having people elect leaders from the masses, and then granting those few elected people the power to use organized threats of violence to assume control over resources; in a world where violating privacy was impossible, the public couldn?t impose such a system on themselves even if they wanted to.

Privacy.

Dig it.

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Nanny State: Mandatory Helmets For Walking

Should the government enforce the mandatory use of helmets while walking? 14 out of 20 people we asked at the University of Texas supported the draconian measure, emphasizing once again how the majority of the general public will accept almost any nanny state measure no matter how ludicrous.

The petition was entitled "Compelled Helmet Use for Misfortunate Public' (CHUMP), and called for the City of Austin to enforce mandatory helmet usage for all citizens in addition to the creation of special walking lanes where people could walk obliviously while texting on their cellphones. Most of the individuals who signed the petition had it explained to them very clearly. Some signed straight away, while others took a little convincing but happily put pen to paper. One woman was told that the petition was to "get people to wear helmets while they're walking," to which she responded "oh perfect, yeah, that's great," and immediately signed the petition. When another man indicated his willingness to sign the petition, a woman responded, "You wanna make everybody wear helmets?," to which he responded, "these dummies need to wear helmets." "It will help keep insurance costs down," another woman is told as she signs the petition. "We have socialized healthcare now, so everyone's responsible for everyone," another couple were told. After being told that schools are now banning dodgeball and other contact sports, another woman agreed to sign, remarking that enforcing helmet use, "Makes sense technically."

First they will ban your God given rights. Now the Sheeple want to make you wear a helmet while you walk --- All for your safety.

http://www.infowars.com/obama-trendie...

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I put him at the top of the list, but I have come to agree with Henry Kissinger that about 3/4 of the public are useless food eaters and should not be breeding. If it supports teh messiah it must be good. Workers of the world unite! To each according to his needs. This kool-aid is so cool and delicous comrade.

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Virginia State Police Used License Plate Readers At Political Rallies, Built Huge Database

By Rebecca Glenberg, Legal Director, ACLU of Virginia

From 2010 until last spring, the Virginia State Police (VSP) maintained a massive database of license plates that allowed them to pinpoint the locations of millions of cars on particular dates and times. Even more disturbing, the agency used automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) to collect information about political activities of law-abiding people. The VSP recorded the license plates of vehicles attending President Obama's 2009 inauguration, as well as campaign rallies for Obama and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. (Documentation of this program, disclosed in response to an ACLU of Virginia public records request, can be found here.) These practices starkly illustrate the need for tight controls on government use of technology for surveillance purposes.

To be sure, there are legitimate law enforcement purposes for ALPR. Some law enforcement agencies maintain "hot lists" of vehicles that are stolen or that have been used in crimes. Data from ALPRs can be instantaneously checked against these lists to quickly locate suspect vehicles. The impact on privacy rights is minimal as long as information about license plates not on the hot list is disposed of promptly.

But by creating and maintaining a database of millions of license plates and targeting political activity, the VSP crossed well over the line from legitimate law enforcement to oppressive surveillance. In the cases of the campaign rallies and the 2009 inauguration, the VSP collected personally identifying information on drivers solely because those drivers were heading to a political event. These drivers were not suspected of or connected to any crime -- their only offense was practicing their First Amendment rights to speak freely and assemble peacefully.

Monitoring protests and political rallies will chill this fundamental form of expression. We must be able to participate in demonstrations and campaign events without fearing that our license plate will be scanned and stored by law enforcement. Surveillance or perceived surveillance of political events -- especially if participation might be controversial -- will make law-abiding people think twice before attending. This is a threat to democracy, and we are not the first to recognize that. Back in 2009, the police themselves beat us to this scoop -- the International Association of Chiefs of Police explained that when it comes to license plate readers, "[t]he risk is that individuals will become more cautious in the exercise of their protected rights of expression, protest, association, and political participation because they consider themselves under constant surveillance."

Belatedly, the VSP asked Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli about the legality of its information-gathering practices. In a strong opinion, Cuccinelli explained that the use of ALPRs for "passive" collection of information violates Virginia's Government Data Collection and Dissemination Act. That is, law enforcement may use ALPRs to search for specific vehicles suspected of involvement in criminal activity, but it may not simply collect and save data on thousands of vehicles for which there is no grounds for suspicion.

Since the Attorney General's opinion was issued, the VSP says that it has purged its license plate database and now disposes of such information within 24 hours of collection, unless it is relevant to a clearly defined criminal investigation. But, return of passive data collection should not be just a bad Attorney General opinion away -- our lawmakers must act to clearly prohibit the VSP from resurrecting this surveillance in the future.

The VSP's former use of ALPR data is just one of the ways government uses technology to obtain detailed information about the everyday lives of Americans, along with the National Security Agency's collection of data on every phone call to or from the United States, or the increasing warrantless tracking of cell phone locations by law enforcement agencies. It is essential that Americans remain alert to these encroachments on liberty and demand that their legislators rein in the use of surveillance technology by local, state, and national government.

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The headline should read "Virginia Police State"

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Elysium: The Technological Side of the American Police State

By John W. Whitehead

From George Orwell?s 1984 and Aldous Huxley?s Brave New World to the Wachowskis? The Matrix, Stephen Spielberg?s Minority Report and most recently Neill Blomkamp?s Elysium, writers and filmmakers have used science fiction to both forecast the future while also holding up a mirror to the present. The best among these transcend what is largely escapist entertainment and engage their audiences in a critical dialogue about what happens when power, technology and militaristic governance converge.

With its dystopian vision of a post-apocalyptic Earth in which the majority of humanity is relegated to an overpopulated, diseased, warring planet while the elite live a life of luxury and perfect health on an orbiting space station, Elysium fits in perfectly alongside the futuristic books and films featured in my new book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, which warn of a totalitarian future at our doorsteps.

However, while much has been said about Blomkamp?s use of Elysium to raise concerns about immigration, access to healthcare, worker?s rights, and socioeconomic stratification, what I found most striking and unnerving was its depiction of how the government will employ technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace, especially dissidents. Mind you, while these technologies are already in use today and being hailed for their potentially life-saving, cost-saving, time-saving benefits, it won?t be long before the drawbacks to having a government equipped with technology that makes it all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful far outdistance the benefits.

For those who insist that such things are celluloid fantasies with no connection to the present, I offer the following.

Robotic Police

Fiction: One of the most jarring scenes in Elysium occurs towards the beginning of the film, when the protagonist Max Da Costa waits to board a bus on his way to work. While standing in line, Max is approached by two large robotic police officers, who quickly scan Max?s biometrics, cross-check his data against government files, and identify him as a former convict in need of close inspection. They demand to search his bag, a request which Max resists, insisting that there is nothing for them to see. The robotic cops respond by manhandling Max, throwing him to the ground, and breaking his arm with a police baton. After determining that Max poses no threat, they leave him on the ground and continue their patrol.

Reality: The United States government is presently developing robot technology that can mimic human behavior. Consider ATLAS, an android being developed by the Department of Defense. Standing at 6 feet tall and 330 pounds, the robot moves, walks, and runs like a human. While still in testing stages, it bears an eerie resemblance to the robotic cops featured in Elysium. It?s not too far-fetched to imagine a time in the near future when artificial intelligence robots are responsible for policing citizens. Considering how difficult it is today to exercise one?s constitutional rights when confronted by SWAT-team attired police with little regard for the Constitution, imagine trying to assert your rights when confronted with autonomous machines programmed to maintain order at all costs?

Drones

Fiction: In another scene ripped from the present, Max Da Costa is hunted by four drones while attempting to elude the authorities. The drones, equipped with x-ray cameras, biometric readers, scanners and weapons, are able to scan whole neighborhoods, identify individuals from a distance?even through buildings, report their findings back to police handlers, pursue a suspect, and target them with tasers and an array of lethal weapons. These drones, strikingly similar to currently existing Quadrotor drones, are depicted in A Government of Wolves.

Reality: Comprising an $82 billion industry, at least 30,000 drones are expected to occupy U.S. airspace by 2020. These drones, some of which will be deceptively small and capable of videotaping the facial expressions of people on the ground from hundreds of feet in the air, will usher in a new age of surveillance in American society. Not even those indoors, in the privacy of their homes, will be safe from these aerial spies, which can be equipped with technology capable of peering through walls. In addition to their surveillance capabilities, drone manufacturers have confirmed that drones can also be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas, and tasers. The FBI, DEA, and US Border Patrol are already using drone technology for surveillance operations.

Biometric scanners and national IDs

Fiction: Throughout Elysium, citizens are identified, sorted and dealt with by way of various scanning devices that read their biometrics?irises, DNA, etc.?as well as their national ID numbers, imprinted by a laser into their skin. In this way, citizens are tracked, counted, and classified. The end result is that there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide to escape the government?s all-seeing eyes.

Reality: Given the vast troves of data that the government in its many forms (NSA, FBI, DHS, etc.) is collecting on all Americans, we are not far from a future where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. In fact, between the facial recognition technology being handed out to police across the country, license plate readers being installed on police cruisers, local police creating DNA databases by extracting DNA from non-criminals, including the victims of crimes, and police collecting more and more biometric data such as iris scans, we are approaching the end of anonymity in America today. It won?t be long before police officers will be able to pull up a full biography on any given person instantaneously, including their family and medical history, bank accounts, and personal peccadilloes.

Behavior/Mood Sensors

Fiction: In a meeting with his robotic parole officer, Max finds his mood and emotions being scanned, analyzed and assessed by his android counterpart. Perceiving a heightened level of stress and frustration in Max, who is finding it difficult to reason with an automaton lacking in reason, the robot offers him mood-altering pills to counteract his perceived ?aggression.?

Reality: Advances in neuroscience indicate that future behavior can be predicted based upon activity in certain portions of the brain, potentially creating a nightmare scenario in which government officials select certain segments of the population for more invasive surveillance or quarantine based solely upon their brain chemistry. Most recently, researchers at the Mind Research Center scanned the brains of thousands of prison inmates in order to track their brain chemistry and their behavior after release. In one experiment, researchers determined that inmates with lower levels of activity in the area of the brain associated with error processing allegedly had a higher likelihood of committing a crime within four years of being released from prison. While researchers have cautioned against using the results of their research as a method of predicting future crime, soon it will undoubtedly become a focus of study for government officials.

Brain to Machine Interface

Fiction: In Blomkamp?s world of Elysium, humans are not only able to store computer data in their brains and transfer this data by way of brain-computer interfaces, but they can also plug directly into computer systems that control every aspect of society and government. In such a world, a single key stroke can establish a dictatorship or unchain an enslaved population.

Reality: Although still in its infancy, there?s no limit to what can be accomplished?for good or ill?using brain-computer interfaces. Scientists have already created machines that allow people to manipulate robotic arms using just their thoughts. In the near future, we may see scientists observing human thought using ?smart dust??nanomachines the size of dust?which can be placed in the brain to observe neural behavior. Furthermore, hackers have already been able to ?steal? information from human brains using extant brain-computer interfaces which read brain waves and are commercially available for $200-300. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have created a brain-to-brain interface between lab rats, which allows them to transfer information directly between brains. In one particular experiment, researchers trained a rat to perform a task where it would hit a lever when lit. The trained rat then had its brain connected to an untrained rat?s brain via electrodes. The untrained rat was then able to learn the trained rat?s behavior via electrical stimulation. This even worked over great distances using the internet, with a lab rat in North Carolina guiding the actions of a lab rat in Brazil.

Making the Leap from Fiction to Reality

When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he was convinced that there was ?still plenty of time? before his dystopian vision became a nightmare reality. It wasn?t long before he realized that his prophecies were coming true far sooner than he had imagined. The question that must be asked, writes Huxley in Brave New World Revisited, is what can be done about it?

Does a majority of the population think it worthwhile to take a good deal of trouble, in order to halt and, if possible, reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything? ? [R]ecent public opinion polls have revealed that an actual majority of young people in their teens, the voters of tomorrow, have no faith in democratic institutions, see no objection to the censorship of unpopular ideas, do not believe that government of the people by the people is possible and would be perfectly content, if they can continue to live in the style to which the boom has accustomed them, to be ruled, from above, by an oligarchy of assorted experts.

That so many of the well-fed young television-watchers in the world?s most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising.

?Free as a bird,? we say, and envy the winged creatures for their power of unrestricted movement in all the three dimensions. But, alas, we forget the dodo. Any bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without being compelled to use its wings will soon renounce the privilege of flight and remain forever grounded. Something analogous is true of human beings. If the bread is supplied regularly and copiously three times a day, many of them will be perfectly content to live by bread alone?or at least by bread and circuses alone.

?In the end,? says the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky?s parable, ?in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ?make us your slaves, but feed us.?? And when Alyosha Karamazov asks his brother, the teller of the story, if the Grand Inquisitor is speaking ironically, Ivan answers, ?Not a bit of it! He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that they have vanquished freedom and done so to make men happy.? Yes, to make men happy; ?for nothing,? the Inquisitor insists, ?has ever been more insupportable for a man or a human society than freedom.?

Nothing, except the absence of freedom; for when things go badly, and the rations are reduced, the grounded dodos will clamor again for their wings?only to renounce them, yet once more, when times grow better and the dodo-farmers become more lenient and generous. The young people who now think so poorly of democracy may grow up to become fighters for freedom. The cry of ?Give me television and hamburgers, but don?t bother me with the responsibilities of liberty,? may give place, under altered circumstances, to the cry of ?Give me liberty or give me death.?

_
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).

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this article is an example of "time travels backwards."
we already live in the matrix, even the bible reads on its construction.

"humans are biobots," according to hell's cartel; that would make this article a smoke screen.

I haven't read Blomkamp's so-called "fiction," though, if the ideal, as presented in the above article is accurate / belongs to him, then, i wouldn't categorize it as "fictional" at all.

"reality" is finite, "fiction," is infinite; doesn't require a "leap," but, merely, "deprograming." the "leap," is attainable after deprograming.

Government plays a H.A.A.R.P.
that sings numbers into your head
there's no 'zombie apocalypse'
for, you are the 'living dead.'

a society of biobots,
you've been programmed to advance the state,
you've been fooled by propaganda,
into believing - you're part of "something great "

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The State: Judge in its Own Cause

by Kevin Carson

At a 2011 press conference President Obama, in response to a question about Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, said ?We are a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make decisions about how the law operates.?

Is this really a nation of laws, though? There?s an old legal principle, ?nemo iudex in causa sua,? which translated into English means ?no one should be the judge of their own cause.? But in fact all the laws theoretically limiting the state?s power are interpreted by ? wait for it ? officials of the state.

The state is, in a very real sense, judge in its own cause. Consider what the security community?s classification system amounts to, stripped of its phony veneer of ?public safety? and disinteredness. The U.S. government, to further the interests that control it, commits atrocities and crimes against the peoples of the world. It then decides for itself how much of its criminal activities it will allow its own domestic population ? supposedly its sovereign masters to whom it is accountable ? to know about. If one of its functionaries possesses the career-killing handicap of a conscience and feels morally bound to let the people know what kinds of criminal stuff ?their? government is really doing, the same government that?s doing all these awful things also sets the criminal penalties for clueing in the American people to what it?s doing.

The commission of the actual military, intelligence and diplomatic crimes themselves, the classification of documents that evidence those crimes, and the setting of civil and criminal penalties for revealing wickedness in high places ? all these things are done by officials of the same government.

During the administration of Richard Nixon, who was less vindictive toward whistleblowers than our current President, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a collection of classified documents showing how the United States had inexorably increased its involvement in Indochina ever since the French withdrawal, lying to the American people about the situation the whole time. That secret decision-making process, uncovered by Ellsberg after the fact, cost over 50,000 American and millions of Vietnamese lives, and turned most of south Indochina into a dioxin-soaked hell.

In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow Iran?s elected government ? an act which eventually led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and thirty subsequent years of war and tension in the Gulf. It led indirectly to a bloody war between Iran and Iraq in which millions died, creating a regional political climate that at times threatened superpower war. It was only in the past month ? sixty years after the fact ? the CIA officially admitted it had written a check to be cashed with the a**es of the American people.

In the late ?70s, under Zbigniew Brzezinski?s foreign policy leadership, the U.S. began backing Islamic fundamentalist rebels against the Soviet-friendly government of Afghanistan, resulting in a Soviet-backed coup and subsequent invasion reminiscent of what the U.S. engineered in South Vietnam in 1963-1965. The explicit goal of Brzezinski?s move in the ?Great Game? was to get the USSR bogged down in its own sucking chest wound of a counter-insurgency war, with the possible side-benefit of destabilizing control in the largely Muslim southern republics of the Soviet Union. Other unintended consequences of this brilliant chess move included the rise of al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. Even after 9/11, though, Brzezinski still said it was worth it. Funny thing is ? I never heard of the American people getting a vote on it.

The farce is made even more absurd by the fact that high-ranking officials like Obama do, in fact, break the law whenever they feel like it ? with impunity. At the same press conference where he gave the quote above, Obama said: ?? I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren't allowed to, I'd be breaking the law.? But Obama does that all the time. The movie ?Zero Dark Thirty? is chock full of classified material leaked with the full complicity of the Obama administration. Last I heard, nobody was in prison, or holed up in an embassy, or had their plane forced down, pursuant to an effort to track down the leakers. Government illegally leaks classified information all the time, to smear its enemies or promote its propaganda line, and heads don?t roll for it. Because, you know, government.

That?s the way it works. The government commits crimes, classifies all the evidence of its criminal activity, and punishes anyone with the audacity to tell you about it. The government is judge of its own cause, every step of the way. This is not a government of laws. The state is the opposite of law.

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How the State Destroys Social Cooperation

by Gary Galles

Many of our present economic difficulties, while blamed by politicians on freedom and markets, are in fact the long-run effects of government policies emphasizing short-run, visible benefits that mask hidden or delayed costs. In particular, our economic woes reflect government's reliance on coercion, whose harmful effects expand over time, in contrast to voluntary cooperation, whose beneficial effects expand over time.

Voluntary market cooperation expands because the more time sellers have to respond to increases in demand, the more their incentives lead to better ways of accommodating buyers with improved output. Similarly, the more time buyers have to respond to increases in supply, the more profitable uses are discovered. That is, when you give individuals better incentives to voluntarily cooperate in the marketplace, over time, they discover and implement more effective ways to do so, expanding cooperation and the mutual benefits that result.

We see this everywhere in personal computing and technology in which convenience, computing power, and portability of devices increase constantly, at rates much faster than most ever anticipated in earlier times. In contrast, when the state employs coercion, it encourages buyers and sellers to act against what would be in their self interest in a free economy. Over time, those who would otherwise spend time thinking about their trading partners, instead respond to coercive measures by expanding the ways they can evade the burdens imposed. In such a situation, social cooperation contracts.

Taxes (including deficits, which are delayed taxes), subsidies, and mandates all illustrate coercion's progressive undermining of social cooperation. For example, when government raises taxes on income earned by benefiting trading partners, those who provide the benefits earn less over time. In response, those burdened with the new taxes have incentive to do less to benefit others while substituting more effort to avoid taxation.

Moreover, when government mandates employer-provided "free" benefits, employers then reduce other parts of compensation that many workers may actually value more than the mandated benefits, to "pay" for them. Or employers may simply hire fewer workers. We see this already in Obamacare's mandated increases to employers' labor costs. Employers have cut jobs and hours (the mandates don't apply to under-30-hour-per-week workers), or employers squeeze other parts of employee compensation, including on-the-job training, which is a crucial mechanism through which workers learn their way to success.

Price ceilings such as rent control, and price floors such as the minimum wage, also illustrate coercion's increasing erosion of social cooperation. In response to such mandates, people increasingly find ways to do less of what violates their self-interest, which entails cooperating less well with others. As Friedrich Hayek noted, "Any attempt to control prices or quantities of particular commodities deprives competition of its power of bringing about effective coordination of individual efforts."

When government holds apartment rents artificially low, they reduce landlords' incentives to continue supplying dwellings. Over time, fewer units are constructed (seen under every rent control regime) and owners find other ways to leave the rental housing market. This takes place through a variety of mechanisms, including condo conversions, which removes units from the available rental stock in order to evade restrictions imposed on rent, but not on mortgage payments. Owners might also respond by reducing maintenance and upkeep of units which rent controls make unprofitable. The end result is less social cooperation and long-term deterioration of the existing housing stock.

When government holds the price of low-skill workers artificially high, as with the minimum wage, government reduces employers' incentives to use low-skill workers in production. Over time, employers find more ways to conserve on that artificially scarce input, reducing employment via changing production processes and products, substituting capital for labor, reducing output, moving jobs elsewhere, and to generally cooperate less with low-skill workers. For instance, restaurant industry responses to minimum wage hikes have included moving to buffets, which require fewer workers, expanding slow-cooked menu choices (essentially substituting crock pots for workers), and self-serve soda dispensing. Similarly, the higher the price of a worker relative to a computer, the more employers will substitute computers for labor.

Furthermore, the constant prospect of endless and arbitrary changes in taxes and regulations and other forms of coercion increases the risks involved in trying new and innovative ways of cooperating with others in search of profits. And because coercion expands evasion efforts over time, more and more resources go to enforcement, taking resources away from productive uses and violating principles of equity (since enforcement is inherently selective and unequal) that can be upheld only when arrangements are voluntary.

Since there are very few areas where coercion is necessary to achieve social cooperation, there are very few areas where government advances it. Instead, the massive expansion of government beyond such bounds has undermined cooperation and violated justice. Yet still more intrusion is constantly offered as a solution. That is why Ludwig von Mises's recognition that "Those who ask for more and more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom" is important and ominous today. Each expansion of government's reach shrinks freedom and restricts otherwise expanding social cooperation, with effects that worsen progressively over time.
_
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. Send him mail. See Gary Galles's article archives.

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The Police State Mindset in Our Public Schools

By John W. Whitehead

Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer's hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm's way and out of trouble. Those were the good old days, before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon and schools, aiming for greater security, transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, instead of making the schools safer, we simply managed to make them more authoritarian. It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school. Nowadays, students are not only punished for transgressions more minor than those--such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight--but they are punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest.

As a result, America is now on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation--one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government. Indeed, as I point out in my book,?A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans--especially young people--have no rights at all against the state or the police. In fact, the majority of schools today have adopted an all-or-nothing lockdown mindset that leaves little room for freedom, individuality or due process.

For example, when high school senior Ashley Smithwick grabbed the wrong lunch sack--her father's--on the way to school, the star soccer player had no idea that her mistake would land her in a sea of legal troubles. Unbeknownst to Ashley, the lunchbox contained her father's paring knife, a 2-inch blade he uses to cut his apple during lunch. It was only when a school official searching through students' belongings found the diminutive knife, which administrators considered a "weapon," that Ashley realized what had happened and explained the mistake. Nevertheless, school officials referred Ashley to the police, who in turn charged her with a Class 1 misdemeanor for possessing a "sharp-pointed or edged instrument on educational property."

Tieshka Avery, a diabetic teenager living in Birmingham, Alabama, was slammed into a filing cabinet and arrested after falling asleep during an in-school suspension. The young lady, who suffers from sleep apnea and asthma, had fallen asleep while reading?Huckleberry Finn?in detention. After a school official threw a book at her, Avery went to the hall to collect herself. While speaking on the phone with her mother, she was approached from behind by a police officer, who slammed her into a filing cabinet and arrested her. Avery is currently pursuing a lawsuit against the school.

Unfortunately, while these may appear to be isolated incidents, they are indicative of a nationwide phenomenon in which children are treated like criminals, especially within the public schools. The ramifications are far-reaching. As Emily Bloomenthal, writing for the?New York University Review of Law & Social Change, explains:

Studies have found that youth who have been suspended are at increased risk of being required to repeat a grade, and suspensions are a strong predictor of later school dropout. Researchers have concluded that "suspension often becomes a 'pushout' tool to encourage low-achieving students and those viewed as 'troublemakers' to leave school before graduation." Students who have been suspended are also more likely to commit a crime and/or to end up incarcerated as an adult, a pattern that has been dubbed the "school-to-prison pipeline."

Moreover, as suspensions and arrests for minor failings and childish behavior become increasingly common, so does the spread of mass surveillance in our nation's schools. In fact, our schools have become a microcosm of the total surveillance state which currently dominates America, adopting a host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, to keep constant watch over their student bodies.

For example, in May 2013, Polk County School District in Florida foisted an iris scanning program on its students without parental consent. Parents were sent a letter explaining they could opt their children out of the program, but by the time the letter had reached parents, 750 children had already had their eyes scanned and their biometric data collected.

Making matters worse, these iris scanning programs are gaining traction in the schools, with school buses even getting in on the action. As students enter the school bus, they will be told to look through a pair of binocular-like scanners which will either blink, indicating that the student is on the right bus, or honk, indicating that they've chosen the wrong one. This technology is linked with a mobile app which parents can use to track their child's exact whereabouts, as each time their eyes are scanned the parent receives a print out with their photo and Google map location, along with a timestamp. Benefits aside, the potential for abuse, especially in the hands of those who prey on the young, are limitless.

It has been said that America's schools are the training ground for future generations. If so, and unless we can do something to rein in this runaway train, this next generation will be the most compliant, fearful and oppressed generation ever to come of age in America, and they will be marching in lockstep with the police state._
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).

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These reasons are precisely why I will not be sending my young'en to the government schools. Hopefully it will still be legal to home school him when the time comes or the guber-ment does not dip their slimy mits into the private schools curriculum. Also, parents beware....COMMON CORE IS COMING!

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Why People Tolerate a Total State

by Wendy McElroy

?Why do so many people not realize America has become a total state??

Anyone who points out the politically obvious and is accused of panic-mongering has considered this question. The NSA's massive spying, the TSA frisking their children, the IRS targeting people politically, the longest war in American history, the militarization of law enforcement, the indefinite detention of prisoners at Gitmo...nothing, nothing seems to budge some people from the belief that the US is the freest, grandest nation on earth. It is an article of faith as deeply held as any belief in God.

But why?

Libertarian Class Analysis

There is no one answer but a good place to start is with a libertarian theory of class analysis. Karl Marx is usually credited with originating class analysis and the Marxist version is the one that most commonly comes to mind. Namely, people are classified based on their relationship to the means of production. Are you a worker or a capitalist?

But class analysis as an analytic tool did not originate with Marx. It was produced by 19th century radical liberal (that is, libertarian) historians who wrote in post-Napoleonic France: Charles Comte, Augustin Thierry and Charles Dunoyer. Their mentor was the great classical liberal economist J.B. Say. Perhaps the best presentation of this version of class analysis occurs in Franz Oppenheimer's book The State. Here he presents the two antagonistic principles upon which most societies operate: the economic and the political means. Or Society and the State.

Oppenheimer wrote, ?I mean by Society, the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man.? It consists collectively of all voluntary exchanges of labor and goods, including intangible 'goods' like culture. It is a productive and peaceful means that brings mutual benefit to all involved or no exchange would occur.

Oppenheimer wrote, ?I mean by it [the State] that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra-economic power.? It consists of the systematic appropriation of labor and goods, including intangible ones like freedom of speech. It is a non-productive and violent means that benefits the thieves and harms the productive.

This one insight is the basis of libertarian class analysis: Society and the State were in basic and constant conflict with each other. The analysis classifies people based on their relationship to productivity. Are you part of an industrious Society or do you belong to the parasitic State?

Oppenheimer explained the social dynamics set in motion by the political means. Parasites naturally multiply and drain ever more resources. As the political means comes to dominate, however those who produce means see an ever diminishing return from their productivity and, so, they have little incentive to labor beyond subsistence. Society stagnates, which means there is less for the parasite to drain. And, yet, the State is now bloated and it needs an increasing amount of resources. Since it no longer has the consent and cooperation of the productive section, it must use conquest. The American State is at the stage of attempting to conquer American Society.

The Political Means Dominates America

The State is not merely the politicians and officials who run the visible structure of government. It includes every civil servant and bureaucrat. The largest employer in America is the federal government. According to the Office of Personnel Management, there were approximately 2.79 million civil servants as of December 2011. But this number is for ?civilian? personnel only and does not include uniformed civil servants, such as law enforcement. Of course, every state, county and city ratchets up the civil servant count with their own employees.

The State also includes the people whose political support is purchased by the stolen labor and goods, such as disability recipients. The ranks of these recipients is swelling as the individual states aggressively encourage the unemployed to pursue disability (a federal expense). For example, in New Mexico, the number of disability recipients jumped 58.7% in nine years. NPR recently (03/22/13) ran an in-depth analysis that estimated the total number of people on disability to be ?about 14 million Americans who don't have jobs and who don't show up in any of the unemployment measures we use.? Disability is only one 'welfare' program among dozens and dozens.

The State includes people ostensibly in the private sector whose job is to facilitate the theft of labor and goods ? for example, lawyers who hit productive businesses with dubious suits based on Nanny State laws. Employees in the military-industrial complex, suppliers to the military, subsidized banks and corporations, the list of those who survive on tax money goes on and on.

This is the first reason why so many people will never recognize that America is deteriorating; it is not deteriorating for them because they are the beneficiaries of the political means, and the police state works to their advantage. They benefit through money and pensions but many also benefit through acquiring status or power over others. A vast number of government employees could never earn these advantages based on merit in the private sector. They have a deep vested interest in not seeing themselves as the enemies of Society. Nor are their families likely to turn against the source of food on their tables.

The Tipping Point Theory

But why are people who are not tax consumers seemingly blind to the danger of the present State? Among the many explanations, I think three are commonplace.

They may not be blind but merely silent.

Or they may not be discontented. The Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once told me how his parents lived far better during the Great Depression than they had before it. They both held onto decent jobs and prices were very low. Such people are not fertile for a discussion about the economic calamity being inflicted by a State under which they prospered.

Equally, people who have never experienced the direct violence of the state are inclined to dismiss disturbing reports from those who have. As long as they live in relative comfort, these people allow the State to process their lives. They go about the business of living instead of focusing on matters they do not control. For many, it will take a tipping within their own lives or within society at large for the business of living to include a recognition of how dangerous the State can be.

A tipping point is the critical point at which an accumulation of minor changes triggers a major and often irreversible one. The build up to a social tipping point occurs on an individual basis. The Arab Spring is an example. Enough people became individually dissatisfied to form a mass protest movement. And it happened with sudden ease. The key is ?enough individuals? need to become dissatisfied for a tipping point to occur. Before it happens, however, the people who simply want to live will tend to ignore political problems out of a feeling of isolation or helplessness. Afterward, some will awaken. Perhaps they will be appalled at the brutality the State heaps upon those who challenge it, perhaps a family member will become involved in a protest, perhaps they will simply cease to feel helpless..

Conclusion

I suspect America is close to a social tipping point. If so, it will be caused by a bloated State consuming more and more from a Society that is already half on its knees.

How many individuals need to feel the tipping point within themselves for it occur in a general manner? The nineteenth century libertarian Benjamin Tucker estimated the figure at 10%. If 10% of society said ?no? to a law, then the law would become unenforceable. The number or percentage is impossible to measure, of course, but it is almost certain to be far, far less than 50%. Fortunately, history has rarely required a majority for social change to occur.

Whether or not the outcome of such a tip would be Society or more of the State depends as much upon how many people become reluctant to say ?yes? as much as it does upon the 10% who say ?no.?
_
Wendy McElroy is a frequent Dollar Vigilante contributor and renowned individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982, and is the author/editor of twelve books, the latest of which is "The Art of Being Free". Follow her work at http://www.wendymcelroy.com.

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The State Doesn't Define What is True or Right

by Will Grigg

Two days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act requiring federal supervision of local elections in some southern states. Because it was seen as outdated and unnecessary, that provision was considered an unwarranted intrusion by the Feds in an area of state responsibility. That ruling prompted universal lamentation and outrage on the Left.

This morning, the same Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited states from recognizing the novel social arrangement called ?same-sex marriage.? As a result, the same Leftists who assailed the Court as a citadel of oppression are now celebrating it as the vanguard of progress.

Marriage is a covenantal institution, rather than a political artifact. The Feds have no authority to define it, any more than a government can decree that a triangle can have four sides or be round.

Whiplash is an affliction to which statists must be uniquely susceptible. For people of that persuasion, the only moral absolute is the belief that the State is the ultimate arbiter of all truth. This is why their moods will oscillate wildly from one day to the next, depending on whether or not a government institution has validated their political prejudices and granted a temporary victory to their faction.

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Sorry Mr. Grigg, but the institution of marriage pre-dates any convenantal artifice: It is not, and never has been, an institution defined solely in religious terms having originated in pre-Judaeo-Christian contexts. That marraige was subsequently re-defined as requiring ordination and sacralisation by temporal religious authorities merely denotes an arbitrariness in its specificity.

Marriage was first conceived as a contract of sale; then defined as a religious rite; and subsequently redefined in the era of the nation-state as a legally-binding and state-sanctioned institution homologous of contact law (even if churches retained the "authority" to ordain religious marriage ceremonies as sacred and holy vessels for the transmission of the word of whichever god save all the rest). Hence, this "convenantal institution" is an inherently political artifact, having been continuously redefined over time as societal needs and values have progressed. The issue of LGBT marriage equality should transcend the conflicting values inherent in the left-right division purely on grounds of constitutionality and the respect for the constitutionally protected liberties of the individual, and it is this that the US Supreme Court has affirmed: They should be, and rightfully are, being applauded for having come to this majority decision. (Upholding the constitution is something conservatives usually clamour for, so their inconsistency on the grounds of LGBT marriage equality is duly noted).

In characterising this as an example of left-wing (if such a thing truly exists anymore; I have my doubts) oscillations of mood, and/or some Statist impulse, is grossly misleading. The Supreme Court is an institution of state, true, but it is not coterminous with the State: Its political and constitutional independence guarantees this. Your retrograde attempt to assert a simplistic assault upon the perceptions and values of "Leftists" on the grounds that such individuals cling to a misplaced notion that the State is the final arbiter of truth is a non sequitur: If it were, what need for the US Suprem Court? Similarly, the accusation is misplaced since conservatives share a similar affliction: National Security and an excessive attachment to a radical nationalism expressed via an ugly militarism.

Thank you for sharing your opinion, but on this, you are mistaken.

Sincerely,

A Rational-Humanist.

...

"Marriage was first conceived as a contract of sale; then defined as a religious rite; and subsequently redefined in the era of the nation-state as a legally-binding and state-sanctioned institution homologous of contract law (even if churches retained the "authority" to ordain religious marriage ceremonies as sacred and holy vessels for the transmission of the word of whichever god save all the rest)"...

Edited.

..."
In characterising this as an example of left-wing (if such a thing truly exists anymore; I have my doubts) oscillations of mood, and/or some Statist impulse, is grossly misleading. The Supreme Court is an institution of state, true, but it is not coterminous with the State: Its political and constitutional independence guarantees this. Your retrograde attempt to assert a simplistic assault upon the perceptions and values of "Leftists" on the grounds that such individuals cling to a misplaced notion that the State is the final arbiter of truth is a non sequitur: If it were, what need for the US Supreme Court? Similarly, the accusation is misplaced since conservatives share a similar affliction: National Security and an excessive attachment to a radical nationalism expressed via an ugly militarism"...

Second edit.

Point well made Mr. Grigg. The government interjecting itself in every aspect of our lives doesn't improve anything. The agendas to be promoted and the direction of the political winds constantly changing ensures inconsistencies in the policies emanating from Washington and the lesser overlords.
Twisting definitions of words and state promotion of particular behaviors doesn't necessarily make something healthy or right. God's nature demonstrates it takes a male and female to procreate. Marriage is an institution established by God. People clamor for a king. They are free to cede their rights to the state if they choose, even having the state condone their affiliation between themselves and whatever object of their desire.
Whenever government decides it is their duty to define marriage as anything other than the union of a man and woman, it is in err. They can shout and fine and jail people as they are able but they cannot make an erroneous decree right and they cannot negate the righteous authority of God. Marriage is under attack, and they don't even bother hiding it anymore The government continues to practice age-based discrimination when it comes to marriage and sex. Stupid fucks.
I was told, by a network node (nonetheless) that it was the "Puritains," which handed over the RELIGIOUS doctrine, that is "marriage," to the State's descretion. Am I , (not to be confused with: "I Am"), the only one who sees the contradiction in this? (Puritans murdered a lot of Mormons, did they not? Where T F was Romney then?)

Red and white = pink; doesn't take a M)aster M)ind to piece the puzzle together. The "blue" is the key / has the key. Though, the (somewhat), people who want control, don't want the sheep to start thinking objectively / logically; stars could make that happen. I wonder... The ram, the one mentioned in the bible-tale... Wasn't there a star constellation that resembled it?

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National-Security State Toadies are Guilty of Hypocrisy on Snowden

by Jacob G. Hornberger

One of the most amusing aspects of the NSA scandal has been watching national-security state toadies berate Edward Snowden, the man who blew the whistle on the NSA's longtime secret surveillance system, for being a "coward."

Their rationale?

They say that Snowden should have stayed here in the United States instead of fleeing to Hong Kong. They say that if he were a genuine hero, as his supporters say he is, he would have remained in the United States, where the national-security state would have incarcerated him, tortured him, and executed him.

Oh?

Well, pray tell, national-security state toadies: Where were you all when those CIA agents skedaddled out of Italy after committing felonious offenses in that country?

Well, I don't know where you all were but I can tell you what you were doing. You toadies were keeping your lips sealed. Unlike what you're saying about Snowden, you all have never issued a peep of protest about the refusal of those CIA agents to face the music in Italy, stand before the accusers, and defend themselves against the charges.

Let's review that case. CIA agents go into Italy and ensconce themselves in luxurious hotels at U.S. taxpayer expense. Then they proceed to kidnap a man on the streets of Milan and forcibly transport him out of the country. They ?take him to Egypt--yes, the same Egypt that was then headed by military strongman and brutal pro-U.S. dictator Hosni Mubarak. Why Egypt? Because Egypt's military dictatorship was great at torturing people. And the U.S. national-security state wanted the man to be tortured.

What's the problem with kidnapping and torture? Well, only that they're criminal offenses under Italian law, which is precisely why those CIA agents got criminally indicted and later convicted and sentenced to serve time by an Italian court.

By the time charges were brought, however, the CIA agents had fled the country, determined never to return to Italy to face justice.

Why not?

Equally important, why didn't the national-security state toadies who are now calling Edward Snowden a coward say the same thing about those CIA felons?

After all, couldn't those CIA agents have returned to Italy and proudly puffed out their heroic chests and proclaimed,

We are here in Italy to defend ourselves. We are proud members of the U.S. national-security state, the most powerful branch of the U.S. government. In our country, national-security state agents are immune from prosecution for murder, assassination, torture, kidnapping, perjury, or any other felony so long as we are operating to protect "national security." And we, not you or anyone else, decides what that term means. Therefore, you have to dismiss the charges against us or find us innocent because when we kidnapped, renditioned, and tortured that guy, we were doing so to protect "national security."

Alas, they didn't do that. They rushed back to the United States, never to return to Italy.

And the national-security state toadies don't dare say a word.

Moreover, let's not forget the unnamed CIA agents who participated in the execution of the young American journalist Charles Horman during the Pinochet military coup in Chile, which the U.S. national-security state helped to bring about. Those CIA killers of an innocent American citizen certainly have never returned to Chile to face justice. Long ago, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

What do the national-security state toadies say about those murderers? Nothing. Nothing at all. While they're screaming like banshees about how Snowden is a coward for refusing to voluntarily return to America to be brutalized, tortured, incarcerated, and executed, their lips are sealed with respect to the CIA agents who murdered American citizen Charles Horman in Chile.

On a related note, what about the Chilean criminal indictment of former national-security state official Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis for purportedly participating in Horman's murder.

Did Davis, who was indicted in 2011, rush back to Chile to face justice? Of course not.

Have the national-security state toadies criticized Davis for "cowardice." Of course not. Their lips have remained sealed about the matter.

What about CIA operative Jose Posada Carriles, who was indicted by the Venezuelan government for the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner, a terrorist act that killed everyone on board, including the young members of Cuba's fencing team? We don't see him rushing back to Venezuela to face his accusers. Instead, this accused terrorist chooses to remain right here in the United States, where the national-security state continues to harbor and protect him, notwithstanding the existence of an extradition agreement between the United States and Venezuela.

And what about the national-security state toadies regarding Posada Carriles? You guessed it! Sealed lips and silence.

So, why the difference? Why do national-security state toadies call Snowden a coward while maintaining strict silence, or even support, for the national-security state agents who steadfastly refuse to face justice in Italy, Chile, and Venezuela?

The difference lies in the mindset that the toadies have toward the national-security state itself. The national-security state is their everything. It's their god. It's their idol. It's their daddy. It's their Big Brother. So, whatever happens to be the position of the national-security state, that's what the position of the national-security state toadies will be. Since the national-security state wants Snowden to return to the United States to be jailed, tortured, and executed, that's what the national-security state toadies want. Since the national-security state wants to harbor and protect its kidnappers, torturers, and murderers from crimes they've purportedly committed, that too is the position of the toadies.
_
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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Latest Commentary
- How Thieves and Terrorists "Apologize" to their Victims
- The True Cycle of Violence
- Will They Assassinate Snowden?
- The State Doesn't Define What is True or Right
- The Trick is to Suspend the Constitution Without Admitting It
- Snowden's Flight to Freedom
- Freedom versus The National-Security State
- The Land of the Blind: The Illusion of Freedom in America

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