Archive for March, 2011

Internet services in Libya, already spotty throughout the country’s violent upheaval, appeared completely halted in an attempt to stifle information about the insurrection.

The move, coming ahead of planned protests in Libya, appears similar to Egypt’s response to the demonstrations that led President Hosni Mubarak to step down last month. The Libyan government controls the country’s primary Internet serviceprovider

Arbor Networks, a Chelmsford, Mass., network security company said Friday that all Internet traffic coming in and out of Libya had ceased, starting at about noon EST Thursday (7 p.m. in Tripoli, Libya). Google’s transparency report, which shows traffic to the company’s sites from various countries, also showed that Internet traffic had fallen to zero in Libya.

Several days into Egypt’s largely nonviolent protest, the government there shut down Internet access for almost a week. Anti-government protesters there had been using social-media services such as Facebook and Twitter to organize and share personal experiences of the unrest.

Last October, St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner published a three-part series critiquing a book, “Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea,” by Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), and Casey Anderson. The series started with “The REAL reason CSGV hates the right to keep and bear arms–it works,” followed by “CSGV says only the government can protect you from . . . the government,” and ended with “Divide and conquer: CSGV’s strategy to disarm us piecemeal.” Something has now come up that perhaps makes revisiting that last piece worthwhile.

CSGV’s favorite bogeyman is a (CSGV-invented) group it calls the “Insurrectionists” (always capitalized)–those terrifying, evil extremists, who believe that the Second Amendment was written to protect the people’s right to the means to resist, and hopefully cast down, a government whose lust for power outstrips its willingness to abide by the confines of the Constitution. You know–terrorists like Tench Coxe, who spouted such villanies as:

Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.

Let’s not even mention the kind of treasonous dog who would talk about refreshring the tree of liberty.

“Moammar Gadhafi’s regime passed out guns to civilian supporters, set up checkpoints and sent armed patrols roving the terrorized capital Saturday to put down a revolt in his main stronghold by residents inspired by the success of rebels elsewhere who hold about half of the North African nation,” AP/The Huffington Post reports.

“Pro-Gaddafi Gangs Terrorize Capital,” the story headline tells us (and yes, I noticed they apparently can’t settle on a consistent internal editorial standard for spelling the man’s name).

It must be a point of view thing, because “terrorists” are what Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam calls “pro-democracy protestors.” The ones his father’s regime opens fire on when unarmed. And the ones Libyan Air Force pilots are strafing from the sky.

As an aside, will anybody else not mind seeing this tyrant-in-waiting opened up on the table like a Kel-Bowl-Pak à la Uday and Qusay Hussein?

That the elder Gaddafi had to open up his arsenals is telling. That means the people—even his supporters—typically don’t have the means to challenge his “monopoly of violence.”

That’s the unchallengeable power imbalance endorsed by leading “gun control” advocates in this country. Besides, they ask, what chance do the people have against a modern military that can deploy troops against them, and that have modern weapons and military aircraft at their disposal?

Federal court documents have confirmed a report from WND columnist and former GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo that U.S. Border Patrol agents were using bean bags against alleged drug gang members who had AK-47s when one agent was killed.

Tancredo reported on Dec. 18, 2010, how the confrontation a few days earlier that left Border Patrol agent Brian Terry dead developed, with the agents using “non-lethal” bean-bag rounds while the alleged drug smugglers “returned fire with real bullets.”

“Real bullets outperform bean bags every time,” Tancredo warned at the time.

Officials at the time reported such a scenario was impossible.

But now the Arizona Daily Star says documents on file in U.S. District Court in Tucson involving the case are confirming Tancredo’s report.

According to the newspaper, the court documents say the U.S. officer was killed after a group of illegal aliens in Peck Canyon near Nogales on Dec. 14 refused commands to drop their weapons when confronted by agents.

The documents show two agents then fired beanbags at the illegals, who returned with real gunfire.

WASHINGTON – There’s a major disconnect between the “political class” in Washington and American voters overall on how to face the budget debate and the wider issue of the growing U.S. debt, a new poll by Rasmussen Reports reveals today.

The survey, taken last week, shows 58 percent of Americans would rather see a partial government shutdown than keep spending at 2010 levels. Only 33 percent would prefer to keep spending at current levels.

Democrats would prefer to avoid a shutdown by 58 percent, but 80 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of independents say a shutdown is a better option.

The issue arises because Congress has not yet passed a budget for 2011, instead authorizing spending for a few months. That authorization is about to expire.

At the same time, Congress will face a vote in the coming weeks on raising the debt limit above $14.3 trillion. House Republicans can freeze it with a no vote, but GOP leaders signaled a willingness to keep borrowing.

Republicans may fear being politically outmaneuvered as they were by President Bill Clinton in 1995 when they allowed a government shutdown – even though the stock market rose during the spending freeze when non-essential federal employees were ordered to stay home.

Have we forgotten our liberties as we trudge along in our daily lives as they are stripped away without notice? We wake up in the morning, throw on the coffee and grab something to eat before we start our day. Some read the paper and some do without because the reporting in them is pretty bad today. We go to work, put in our day in order to make a pay day and provide for ourselves and our families. After work, maybe a quick beer with coworkers or friends to talk about the latest sports news or maybe make plans for the weekend. We come home and see the family and ask the kids how school was today. We sit down to dinner and then relax before we get some sleep and start again tomorrow.

But what really happened? Were your liberties preserved or did something else happen that you are unaware of? How can that happen, our founding fathers drafted a document in order to form a more perfect union. A union of states comprised of sovereign citizens. A more perfect union under our Constitution that guarantees our liberties. Sadly, our Constitution has been twisted, crumpled and stood on its head for a long time now. Where is it?

When I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, I used to drive up to Washington D.C. once or twice a year and spend time in the museums. But my favorite place was the National Archives. Walking into the majestic Rotunda and staying inside that velvet rope as I walked along the display cases. Ever vigilant guards on the lookout for trouble, there to protect those valuable documents. I always found it amazing as I approached and looked at the Declaration of Independence, The United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. There they are safe and sound. Under heavy glass and an environmentally controlled atmosphere. No climate change in there, no sir!

While the Austin, Texas, police were offering grocery cards in exchange for unwanted firearms over the weekend, local activists showed up to outbid the men in uniform, insisting liberty would be better served if the guns were in the hands of law-abiding citizens instead.

At the “no-questions-asked” event held at Oak Meadow Baptist Church in South Austin, the Austin Police Department offered, for example, a $100 Visa grocery card for an unwanted handgun. The activists offered $110 in cash.

“We don’t agree with the ‘Guns for Groceries’ program, because they’re going to destroy most of the firearms,” explained John Bush, executive director of the group Texans for Accountable Government. “The firearms that we purchase, we’re going to put them in the hands of [Texans] who are in need of firearms to protect their families but they can’t afford them.”

The group’s website explains further: “TAG holds strongly to the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms and agrees with the countless studies that show that firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens makes for a safer city – not a more dangerous environment, as APD’s ‘Guns for Groceries’ implies.”

Be sure and tune into the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric tonight at 6:30 pm. And tell everyone you know.

“An ATF agent tells CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson that he was ordered to sit by and watch guns get into the hands of criminals in Mexico,” CBS News reports.

See the sidebar video for a preview of what we’ll see tonight, in what Attkisson says will be an “extraordinary follow up” to her first report which aired on Feb. 23.

“We will hear from an insider,” she says, “who is telling us on the record and on camera, how it worked that thousands of guns were allowed to go in the hands of suspected criminals with ATF knowing that they would turn up in drug cartels in Mexico where they’d be used in crimes.”

But the agents who objected within their own agency were repeatedly rebuffed, they were told to keep their mouths shut, to stop complaining about it, in one case we have an internal email that describes a supervisor telling somebody ‘If you don’t like it you can go work for the Maricopa County Jail—if this isn’t fun to you then you can go find something else to do.’

‘Department of Justice ATF have both denied that it ever happened,” Attkisson concludes, “but we have evidence to the contrary, we have documentary evidence as well as testimony and interviews with agents who are actually involved.”

Power always seeks to preserve itself. Governmental power is, along with financial power, a prime example. In Libya, the dictator Gaddafi has vowed to fight to the last bullet (fired by others), to the last drop of blood (other people’s blood, of course), to keep his power. Yet people around the world, since the advent of the Internet, have been learning much about the numbers game. By that we mean that the average citizen of any nation on earth today knows that there are only a relatively few people in charge of national governments, and there are many people comprising the body of the “governed.” That does not bode well for leaders who fail to satisfy basic expectations within the public at large (such as respect for their natural rights to life, liberty, and property). That’s one thing. The government, however bloated, is always vastly outnumbered by the people. That is a universal truth.

What has changed is now the people have now been made fully aware of the power they hold in their own hands, of that power they have always held in their hands. Now, because of the internet, which makes an end run around official state controlled media, they can get information both in and out of a country ruled by an oppressive regime, and organize from the bottom up to resist. They can know their own numbers and communicate easily, where before there had been a lock and monopoly on mass communications that was most favorable to the powers that be, who could hoodwink the people into thinking “there aren’t many who think like I do, we can’t win.” Now the people of the world know better. They CAN win.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King were two giants of liberty who gave a new paradigm to the 20^th Century, and the Internet has made their message common around the world. People decide to hold peaceful demonstrations to voice concerns or redress grievances. Recall the million plus Tea Party people who hit Washington D.C. in September 2009. That crowd, the largest ever assembled in Washington D.C., was well-behaved, friendly within their collective presence, but were serious in demanding that the Federal government listen to their voice. What would have happened to that crowd had the government sent riot police or troops down upon those demonstrators in Washington D.C.?

While that demonstration brought no clash between the authorities and the people, this newest wave of public protests in Libya has drawn the wrath of the dictator, and something akin to civil war, or the beginnings of one, now dominates the headlines around the world.

A ragtag army of opponents to Col. Moammar Gadhafi began moving west toward Tripoli from the east and the U.S. ordered two warships to the Mediterranean Sea, as the prospect of an extended war loomed over Libya.

A convoy of armed youth, including what appeared to be rebel military forces, was seen heading Tuesday night toward the pro-Gadhafi stronghold city of Sirte, witnesses said. The forces were viewed passing westward through Ajdabiya, a city about 75 miles from the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, said four residents, including a volunteer rebel soldier and an official on the city’s local leadership council. It was unclear how many rebels were on the move.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. ordered two warships and 1200 Marines to the waters off of Libya, but a top Obama administration official stopped short of saying the forces would intervene in the clashes that have consumed the country following anti-Gadhafi protests here in recent weeks.

At a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he had ordered to the Mediterranean the USS Ponce and the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious-assault ship that typically carries infantrymen and troop-transport helicopters. Those ships currently have 800 marines, in addition to 400 U.S.-based Marines who will be airlifted to meet the ships. He said the ships would be ready to perform evacuations and humanitarian relief.

Mr. Gates wouldn’t specify the other military options he has offered President Barack Obama. But he sounded a note of caution about sending U.S. assets into Libya. “We have to think about the use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East,” Mr. Gates said. “We are sensitive about all these things.”

By Drew Zahn – World Net Daily

A new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center on “hate groups” warns of the explosive growth in 2010 of extremist, “patriot” organizations, among them the Constitution Party, Oath Keepers and WorldNetDaily.

In the Spring 2011 issue of its Intelligence Report, titled “The Year in Hate & Extremism,” the SPLC identifies 824 “patriot” organizations it says “define themselves as opposed to the ‘New World Order,’ engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.”

“Hate groups topped 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center began counting such groups in the 1980s,” writes the SPLC’s Mark Potok in the issue’s lead article. “But by far the most dramatic growth came in the antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement – conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their primary enemy – which gained more than 300 new groups, a jump of over 60 percent.”

“Taken together,” he continues, “these three strands of the radical right – the hatemongers, the nativists and the antigovernment zealots – increased from 1,753 groups in 2009 to 2,145 in 2010, a 22-percent rise.”

The SPLC describes itself as a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to “fighting hate and bigotry,” but takes a clearly left-leaning political bent – criticizing in its spring issue alone the tea parties, “anti-gay” groups like the Family Research Council, anti-abortion activists, radio host Glenn Beck, elected Republican officials and, of course, “patriot” groups.