Articles

Rob Port cut to the chase with a disturbing comment: “The truth is that the key to limiting government corruption is to limit government power. The less influence politicians have to sell to people like Abramoff and/or their clients the less corruption it will be. Think of government as a sort of protection racket run by organized crime. Lobbyists facilitate tribute payments to the local bosses in exchange for favors. The more power the government has to sell, the bigger the tribute payments and the more need for lobbyists.”

A presidential initiative called The “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health” has issued a report recommending forced mental health screening for every child in America, including preschool children. The goal is to promote the patently false idea that we have a nation of children with undiagnosed mental disorders crying out for treatment.

One obvious beneficiary of the proposal is the pharmaceutical industry, which is eager to sell the psychotropic drugs that undoubtedly will be prescribed to millions of American schoolchildren under the new screening program.

Here’s another farm raid that hasn’t made the news. Quail Hollow Farm CSA is a farm in Nevada, about 50 miles north of Las Vegas, that grows and sells fresh food to its CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members.

William Norman Grigg:

Obviously, this kind of power simply couldn’t be left in the hands of mere Mundanes. Accordingly, the term “presentment” was conspicuously absent from Rule 6 of the original Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which dealt with the role of the grand jury. Lester B Orfield, who served on the Advisory Committee, later explained that retaining the term “might encourage the use of the `run-away’ grand jury as the grand jury could act from their own knowledge or observation and not only from charges made by the United States attorney.”

“Today, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor, who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury,” wrote federal District Judge William J. Campbell in a 1973 law journal article calling for formal abolition of the institution on the grounds of redundancy. This isn’t to say that the grand jury is considered useless by the prosecutorial caste: It helps maintain the pretense that prosecutors are servants of the public will.”

USA TODAY: “Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.”

U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger issued the order, which state officials did not fight.

“Political expression deserves the highest level of protection and it was unacceptable for the state to suddenly shut down protesters’ speech and forcibly oust them from Legislative Plaza that has long been used as a place for peaceful expression,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director at the ACLU of Tennessee.

The smart prepper understands well that going it alone is not an option, at least not for the long term. Thus, we are required to build relationships with those who live near us. If we cannot find enough like-minded souls in our immediate vicinity, then we must relocate to a place where this process is more viable (at least, if we want to survive). Staying put, wrapped in a web of tract homes or city dwellings filled with dangerously unaware and unprepared people is not an intelligent post collapse strategy. Retreat planning without proper group support and indigenous support is not only a logistical nightmare but a surefire avenue to discomfort of the terminal variety.

Here are eight county sheriffs from Northern CA and Southern OR speaking on a panel at the Defend Rural America event October 22, 2011 in Yreka. Despite the low media coverage there were about 700 people in attendance from all over California, Oregon and as far away as Wyoming. The sheriffs made it perfectly clear that they are the last line of defense for their citizens and given authority by the 10th Amendment.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property. Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

We live in a new world, we are told. It is a global economy, now, and we must adjust with it. That adjustment, according to the liberal progressives, means to let go of our sovereignty and give in to the statist goals of the international community. Communism by a new name. Fascism with a new face. Slavery in the name of progress.

Historian Arnold Toynbee, a subscriber to the rise of a new utopian global society, remarked, “We are approaching the point at which the only effective scale for operations of any importance will be the global scale. The local states ought to be deprived of their sovereignty and subordinated to the sovereignty of a global world government. I think the world state will still need an armed police and the world government will have to command sufficient force to be able to impose peace.”

Stewart Rhodes – “And note that [Bob] Schulz is aware of the very distinct possibility that the organizers behind OWS will try to stifle his work there. If or when they do, that will simply reveal them for the frauds they are. They talk about being open to all views, about welcoming Tea Party people, etc. but I suspect that when it comes down to it, they will try to stop Bob. And they will have to tip their hands to do it, because Bob is himself a formidable organizer, and knows how to get it done, so unless they shut him down in a very overt way, he WILL turn the majority of that crowd into constitutionalists. If anyone can do it, he can. So, whether they shut him down or not, what he is doing has great value. Every other liberty and Constitution loving group and leader in America should be doing the same thing.”

Sadly, these short-sighted and dangerous bills won’t do much to stop online infringement – but they will jeopardize our ability to speak and read online with the kind of freedom we cherish in the offline world. Deep-pocketed Hollywood lobbyists are aggressively pushing to control and censor the open Internet, willing to sacrifice free speech and our Internet culture in hopes of controlling how people view their movies and products.

Numbers alone do not make a movement, and the elites we currently work to supplant are not going to flinch at a few random protests. In all likelihood they will welcome these actions as a useful distraction. Tyrants don’t fear the torches and pitchforks anymore. What they do fear is balanced insight, self reliance, and exceptional force of will. A handful of men with these attributes are far more dangerous to a corrupt system than thousands of citizens driven only by insatiable anger. To overcome oppression, we must first overcome ourselves. The ability to step outside the paradigm, the ability to act without permission, and charge the gates without apprehension, is the key to toppling totalitarian systems and exposing the great lie of our age; that we cannot exist without the cage we were born into.

It’s been idolatry not of the market but of central banks, the institutionalized sources of moral hazard and financial instability around the world. (The aura of infallibility and the cult of personality surrounding Fed chairmen make the language of idolatry more than mere poetic license.)

“I think this case will not only affect Border Patrol agents, but all law enforcement officers whose job requires that they use handcuffs,” Mrs. Diaz explained. “It is rulings like these that give the drug cartels the power to run amok…”

Of course, the damage would likely run deeper than mere “Leftism.” As we try to illustrate virtually every day, Leftism is the stepchild of the Anglosphere power elite, a hypocritical and manipulative conjuring of “people power” by the banking elites that Occupy Wall Street purports to despise.

With his emphasis on cognitive moral principles and natural rights, Spooner must have looked hopelessly old-fashioned to Tucker and the young anarchists of the 1870s and 1880s. And yet now, a century later, it is the latters’ once fashionable nihilism and tough amoralism that strike us as being empty and destructive of the very liberty they all tried hard to bring about. We are now beginning to recapture the once-great tradition of an objectively grounded rights of the individual. In philosophy, in economics, in social analysis, we are beginning to see that the tossing aside of moral rights was not the brave new world it once seemed — but rather a long and disastrous detour in political philosophy that is now fortunately drawing to a close. – Murray Rothbard