the secret history of gun control

Video - Huey P. Newton interviewed by William F. Buckley.

TheAtlantic | Opposition to gun control was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police.

Inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X, Newton and Seale decided to fight back. Before he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X had preached against Martin Luther King Jr.’s brand of nonviolent resistance. Because the government was “either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property” of blacks, he said, they had to defend themselves “by whatever means necessary.” Malcolm X illustrated the idea for Ebony magazine by posing for photographs in suit and tie, peering out a window with an M-1 carbine semiautomatic in hand. Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. “Article number two of the constitutional amendments,” Malcolm X argued, “provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.”

Guns became central to the Panthers’ identity, as they taught their early recruits that “the gun is the only thing that will free us—gain us our liberation.” They bought some of their first guns with earnings from selling copies of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to students at the University of California at Berkeley. In time, the Panther arsenal included machine guns; an assortment of rifles, handguns, explosives, and grenade launchers; and “boxes and boxes of ammunition,” recalled Elaine Brown, one of the party’s first female members, in her 1992 memoir. Some of this matériel came from the federal government: one member claimed he had connections at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California, who would sell the Panthers anything for the right price. One Panther bragged that, if they wanted, they could have bought an M48 tank and driven it right up the freeway.

Along with providing classes on black nationalism and socialism, Newton made sure recruits learned how to clean, handle, and shoot guns. Their instructors were sympathetic black veterans, recently home from Vietnam. For their “righteous revolutionary struggle,” the Panthers were trained, as well as armed, however indirectly, by the U.S. government.

Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as “an arsenal.” William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King’s parsonage.

The Panthers, however, took it to an extreme, carrying their guns in public, displaying them for everyone—especially the police—to see. Newton had discovered, during classes at San Francisco Law School, that California law allowed people to carry guns in public so long as they were visible, and not pointed at anyone in a threatening way.

In February of 1967, Oakland police officers stopped a car carrying Newton, Seale, and several other Panthers with rifles and handguns. When one officer asked to see one of the guns, Newton refused. “I don’t have to give you anything but my identification, name, and address,” he insisted. This, too, he had learned in law school.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?” an officer responded.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?,” Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.

Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.

“What are you going to do with that gun?” asked one of the stunned policemen.

“What are you going to do with your gun?,” Newton replied.

By this time, the scene had drawn a crowd of onlookers. An officer told the bystanders to move on, but Newton shouted at them to stay. California law, he yelled, gave civilians a right to observe a police officer making an arrest, so long as they didn’t interfere. Newton played it up for the crowd. In a loud voice, he told the police officers, “If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I’m going to shoot back at you, swine.” Although normally a black man with Newton’s attitude would quickly find himself handcuffed in the back of a police car, enough people had gathered on the street to discourage the officers from doing anything rash. Because they hadn’t committed any crime, the Panthers were allowed to go on their way.

The people who’d witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the “baddest motherfucker in the world.” Newton’s message was clear: “The gun is where it’s at and about and in.” After the February incident, the Panthers began a regular practice of policing the police. Thanks to an army of new recruits inspired to join up when they heard about Newton’s bravado, groups of armed Panthers would drive around following police cars. When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice.

who rules america?

ucsc.edu | This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.

Some of the information may come as a surprise to many people. In fact, I know it will be a surprise and then some, because of a recent study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) showing that most Americans (high income or low income, female or male, young or old, Republican or Democrat) have no idea just how concentrated the wealth distribution actually is. More on that a bit later.

As far as the income distribution, the most amazing numbers on income inequality will come last, showing the dramatic change in the ratio of the average CEO's paycheck to that of the average factory worker over the past 40 years.

First, though, some definitions. Generally speaking, wealth is the value of everything a person or family owns, minus any debts. However, for purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define wealth in terms of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale (see Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a person's net worth. In addition, economists use the concept of financial wealth -- also referred to in this document as "non-home wealth" -- which is defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied housing. As Wolff (2004, p. 5) explains, "Financial wealth is a more 'liquid' concept than marketable wealth, since one's home is difficult to convert into cash in the short term. It thus reflects the resources that may be immediately available for consumption or various forms of investments."

We also need to distinguish wealth from income. Income is what people earn from work, but also from dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a great deal of wealth may or may not have high incomes, depending on the returns they receive from their wealth, but in reality those at the very top of the wealth distribution usually have the most income. (But it's important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand. To get an idea of the differences, take a look at an insider account by a long-time investment manager who works for the well-to-do and very rich. It nicely explains what the different levels have -- and how they got it.

As you read through the facts and figures that follow, please keep in mind that they are usually two or three years out of date because it takes time for one set of experts to collect the basic information and make sure it is accurate, and then still more time for another set of experts to analyze it and write their reports. It's also the case that the infamous housing bubble of the first eight years of the 21st century inflated some of the wealth numbers. The important point to keep in mind is that it's the relative positions of wealth holders and income earners that we are trying to comprehend in this document. (To get some idea about absolute dollar amounts, read the investment manager's insider account that was mentioned in the previous paragraph.)

So far there are only tentative projections -- based on the price of housing and stock in July 2009 -- on the effects of the Great Recession on the wealth distribution. They suggest that average Americans have been hit much harder than wealthy Americans. Edward Wolff, the economist we draw upon the most in this document, concludes that there has been an "astounding" 36.1% drop in the wealth (marketable assets) of the median household since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. By contrast, the wealth of the top 1% of households dropped by far less: just 11.1%. So as of April 2010, it looks like the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was in 2007. (See Wolff, 2010 for more details.)

One final general point before turning to the specifics. People who have looked at this document in the past often asked whether progressive taxation reduces some of the income inequality that exists before taxes are paid. The answer: not by much, if we count all of the taxes that people pay, from sales taxes to property taxes to payroll taxes (in other words, not just income taxes). And the top 1% of income earners actually pay a smaller percentage of their incomes to taxes than the 9% just below them. These findings are discussed in detail near the end of this document.

the economic elite vs. the people of the u.s.

AmpedStatus | It’s time for 99% of Americans to mobilize and aggressively move on common sense political reforms. Yes, of course, we all have very strong differences of opinion on many issues. However, like our Founding Fathers before us, we must put aside our differences and unite to fight a common enemy.

It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.

Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.

To those who feel I am using extreme rhetoric, I ask you to please take a few minutes of your time to hear me out and research the evidence put forth. The facts are there for the unprejudiced, rational and reasoned mind to absorb. It is the unfortunate reality of our current crisis.

Unless we all unite and organize on common ground, our very way of life and the ideals that our country was founded upon will continue to unravel.

Before exposing exactly who the Economic Elite are, and discussing common sense ways in which we can defeat them, let’s take a look at how much damage they have already caused.

corporations are people, my friend!

Video - Mitt Romney moderate centrist conservative?

NYTimes | Emerging on the campaign trail in Iowa after largely shunning the state, Mitt Romney was confronted on Thursday by hecklers on corporate tax policy and told one of them, “Corporations are people, my friend.”

Mr. Romney was speaking at the Iowa State Fair’s soapbox on Thursday morning, but when it was time for the question-and-answer session, the mood turned heated, with a small group of angry hecklers calling on Mr. Romney to support raising taxes on the wealthy to help finance social entitlement programs.

“We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” Mr. Romney said. “One is, we can raise taxes on people.”

“Corporations!” the protesters shouted, suggesting that Mr. Romney, as president, should raise taxes on large businesses.

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mr. Romney responded, as the hecklers shouted back, “No, they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Mr. Romney said, chuckling slightly. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

It was a telling, unscripted moment for Mr. Romney likely to be replayed on YouTube. In an instant, he seemed to humanize himself by pointedly squabbling with the group of hecklers, showing flashes of anger and defying his reputation as a sometimes stilted, unfeeling candidate.

But at the same time, he seemed to reinforce another image of himself: as an out-of-touch businessman who sees the world from the executive suite.

Mr. Romney’s remarks drew a quick response from Democratic Party officials. “It is a shocking admission from a candidate — and a party — that shamelessly puts forward policies to help large corporations and the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class, seniors and students,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

The remarks and the reaction touch a sensitive spot. Mr. Romney’s past as co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, gives him the business credentials that he says are needed to steer a troubled economy. But Democrats have depicted Bain under his tenure as destroying jobs through corporate takeovers in search of profits.

all of us are corporations

Video - Rand Paul backs Mitt Romney's play.

ThinkProgress | ThinkProgress asked Paul about Romney’s comments prior to the Republican presidential debate in Ames. Paul rushed to the former governor’s defense, arguing that Romney was correct in his equivalency between man and mega-company. “I think we’re all corporations,” Paul said. “All of us are corporations.” The Tea Party senator later went on to blur the lines further between corporations and people by declaring, “They’re us. They’re the middle class”:

KEYES: What did you make of Mitt Romney’s statement today that “corporations are people”?

PAUL: Corporations are collections of people. I think we’re all corporations. To say we’re going to punish corporations like they’re someone else. All of us are corporations.

KEYES: Do you think that was basically in line with what he was saying?

PAUL: You think about, if you own a retirement fund, you have a 401k, everybody who has a 401k has parts of corporations, so in a sense we are.

KEYES: I think people might argue that corporations can’t be sent to jail.

PAUL: I think those arguments can be made, but I think the fact that a lot of times people want to vilify corporations, saying they’re someone else, that they’re these other rich people. They’re us. They’re the middle class. We all own parts of corporations.

people pay the taxes, not an entity the corporation itself

Video - Sarah Palin still looking good, still making no sense...,

ThinkProgress | Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) kicked off a bus tour of Iowa at the state fairgrounds where Romney had stumped the day before. ThinkProgress asked Palin if she agreed with Romney’s belief that corporations are people. Tossing aside previous efforts to position herself as a populist leader, Palin sided with corporations, declaring, “Mitt Romney was right.”

KEYES: Governor, are corporations people?

PALIN: The people pay the taxes. It’s not an entity — the corporation itself — that pays the taxes. It’s the people who pay the taxes. So Mitt Romney was right.

the pointy hats who will set it off...,

aljazeera | Towards the beginning of the original Terminator film, Kyle Reese, who has come back to the past to save Sarah Connor - whose spawn will save mankind - lets her know what she's facing in her new cybernetic stalker. "Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

Substitute "Tea Party" for "Terminator" and "U.S. Government" for "you," and with the exception of "fear" (which I'd argue is what drives them), this pretty much sums up the story of the 60-odd birdbrain Birchers who have rebranded themselves Tea Partiers and brought more crazy than Kanye West to the House of Representatives.

The recent war over the federal budget and debt ceiling were simply the latest in a long line of skirmishes where Democrats - the self-described practitioners of "good faith" and seekers of compromise - found themselves in a pitched policy battle with recalcitrant Republicans. Right wingers so high on radical, Randian, Tea-Party-brewed, Kool Aid, that anything short of dismantling the Federal Government and requiring universal tattooing of Milton Friedman where-the-sun-don't-shine was treason.

Humble beginnings
After its humble beginnings as an astroturf, Koch-Brothers-funded revival aimed at mobilising ill-informed, reactionary, mostly older white Americans against health care reform and other psychologically-constructed monsters under the bed, the Tea Party has become an malignant force that now holds the Republican Congressional Caucus - and with it the country - hostage.

While the Stockholm Syndrome may not have quite set in yet among all Republicans, the tri-corner-hat crowd seems to behave much like the giant Brain Bug in the movie Starship Troopers, jamming a claw into the heads of their fellow GOPers and slowly sucking out cerebral tissue until only the brainless body remains.

Most problematic, most of the Tea Partiers, private citizens and elected officials alike, seem to possess just slightly less understanding of the Federal budget or tax code of than say, Mater from Cars. Yet, these are the people in the driver's seat as the country heads for what might be Act II of the Great Recession, unless progressives, centrists, and others edified with high school civics adopt a new strategy to counter them.

And counter them we must, for they and their ilk are nothing new, but representative of a recurring and quite dangerous political strain that has always been with us since the dawn of civilization. Their undermining of the traditions, culture, and give-and-take necessary for any democracy to function has had destructive results on free societies in the past, and taken down a Republic or two.

Compromise is evil
This is what President Obama seems constitutionally unable to grasp. That even if they are a sometimes useful foil, and (sadly) sometimes equally useful in getting him the policy results he wishes, by definition the Tea Party brigade sees any compromise as evil, because everyone to the left of Pat Buchanan is viewed as a mortal threat to their imagined perfect society, which looks a lot like Utah.

You know, with fewer minorities. And a lot more Jesus. Fist tap Arnach

the federal north

arnorth.army.mil | U.S. Army North (FIFTH ARMY) was conceived in 2004 as the dedicated Army Service Component Command to U.S. Northern Command, the unified command responsible for defending the U.S. homeland and coordinating defense support of civil authorities. The command achieved initial operating capability in September 2005 and full operating capability in October 2006. Army North assumed responsibility for operational control of Joint Task Force – Civil Support and Joint Task Force – North in October 2008.

Army North Mission

• Execute DoD’s homeland defense and civil support operations in the land domain.
• Further develop, organize and integrate DoD CBRNE response capabilities and operations.
• Build the capability to perform the Joint Force Land Component Command and the Army Service Component Command functions.
• Secure land approaches to the homeland.
• Continue to build a highly competent, disciplined workforce in a world class organization.
  

Army North Vision

U.S. Army North is the Army’s Center of Excellence for Civil Support and Domestic Operations and U.S. Northern Command’s “Go-To” command to lead, coordinate and support DoD land-domain operations in NORTHCOM’s area of responsibility.

There are five areas the command must be best at: Training, Theater Security Cooperation, Planning, Command and Control, and Synchronization and Integration.

ARNORTH operates in a complex environment and must aid others — international, interagency, intergovernmental partners, our subordinate joint task forces and the Defense Coordinating Officers/Elements — to accomplish their missions.

the confederate south

Video - Oathkeepers 10 Orders We Will Not Obey

Oathkeeper.org | “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army” -- Gen. George Washington, to his troops before the battle of Long Island

Such a time is near at hand again. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this Army -- and this Marine Corps, This Air Force, This Navy and the National Guard and police units of these sovereign states.

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, peace officers, fire-fighters, and veterans who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic … and meant it. We won’t “just follow orders.”

Below is our declaration of orders we will NOT obey because we will consider them unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral violations of the natural rights of the people. Such orders would be acts of war against the American people by their own government, and thus acts of treason. We will not make war against our own people. We will not commit treason. We will defend the Republic.

Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey
Recognizing that we each swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and affirming that we are guardians of the Republic, of the principles in our Declaration of Independence, and of the rights of our people, we affirm and declare the following:

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.

The attempt to disarm the people on April 19, 1775 was the spark of open conflict in the American Revolution. That vile attempt was an act of war, and the American people fought back in justified, righteous self-defense of their natural rights. Any such order today would also be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason. We will not make war on our own people, and we will not commit treason by obeying any such treasonous order.

Nor will we assist, or support any such attempt to disarm the people by other government entities, either state or federal.

In addition, we affirm that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to preserve the military power of the people so that they will, in the last resort, have effective final recourse to arms and to the God of Hosts in the face of tyranny. Accordingly, we oppose any and all further infringements on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. In particular we oppose a renewal of the misnamed “assault-weapons” ban or the enactment of H.R. 45 (which would register and track gun owners like convicted pedophiles).

2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects -- such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the use of “writs of assistance,” which were essentially warrantless searches because there was no requirement of a showing of probable cause to a judge, and the first fiery embers of American resistance were born in opposition to those infamous writs. The Founders considered all warrantless searches to be unreasonable and egregious. It was to prevent a repeat of such violations of the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects that the Fourth Amendment was written.

We expect that sweeping warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, under some pretext, will be the means used to attempt to disarm the people.

3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the denial of the right to jury trial, the use of admiralty courts (military tribunals) instead, and the application of the laws of war to the colonists. After that experience, and being well aware of the infamous Star Chamber in English history, the Founders ensured that the international laws of war would apply only to foreign enemies, not to the American people. Thus, the Article III Treason Clause establishes the only constitutional form of trial for an American, not serving in the military, who is accused of making war on his own nation. Such a trial for treason must be before a civilian jury, not a tribunal.

The international laws of war do not trump our Bill of Rights. We reject as illegitimate any such claimed power, as did the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1865). Any attempt to apply the laws of war to American civilians, under any pretext, such as against domestic “militia” groups the government brands “domestic terrorists,” is an act of war and an act of treason.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the attempt “to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power” by disbanding the Massachusetts legislature and appointing General Gage as “military governor.” The attempt to disarm the people of Massachusetts during that martial law sparked our Revolution. Accordingly, the power to impose martial law – the absolute rule over the people by a military officer with his will alone being law – is nowhere enumerated in our Constitution.

Further, it is the militia of a state and of the several states that the Constitution contemplates being used in any context, during any emergency within a state, not the standing army.

The imposition of martial law by the national government over a state and its people, treating them as an occupied enemy nation, is an act of war. Such an attempted suspension of the Constitution and Bill of Rights voids the compact with the states and with the people.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

In response to the obscene growth of federal power and to the absurdly totalitarian claimed powers of the Executive, upwards of 20 states are considering, have considered, or have passed courageous resolutions affirming states rights and sovereignty.

Those resolutions follow in the honored and revered footsteps of Jefferson and Madison in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and likewise seek to enforce the Constitution by affirming the very same principles of our Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights that we Oath Keepers recognize and affirm.

Chief among those principles is that ours is a dual sovereignty system, with the people of each state retaining all powers not granted to the national government they created, and thus the people of each state reserved to themselves the right to judge when the national government they created has voided the compact between the states by asserting powers never granted.

Upon the declaration by a state that such a breach has occurred, we will not obey orders to force that state to submit to the national government.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the blockade of Boston, and the occupying of that city by the British military, under martial law. Once hostilities began, the people of Boston were tricked into turning in their arms in exchange for safe passage, but were then forbidden to leave. That confinement of the residents of an entire city was an act of war.

Such tactics were repeated by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, and by the Imperial Japanese in Nanking, turning entire cities into death camps. Any such order to disarm and confine the people of an American city will be an act of war and thus an act of treason.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

Mass, forced internment into concentration camps was a hallmark of every fascist and communist dictatorship in the 20th Century. Such internment was unfortunately even used against American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Whenever a government interns its own people, it treats them like an occupied enemy population. Oppressive governments often use the internment of women and children to break the will of the men fighting for their liberty – as was done to the Boers, to the Jewish resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, and to the Chechens, for example.

Such a vile order to forcibly intern Americans without charges or trial would be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason, regardless of the pretext used. We will not commit treason, nor will we facilitate or support it.”NOT on Our Watch!”

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.

During the American Revolution, the British government enlisted the aid of Hessian mercenaries in an attempt to subjugate the rebellious American people. Throughout history, repressive regimes have enlisted the aid of foreign troops and mercenaries who have no bonds with the people.

Accordingly, as the militia of the several states are the only military force contemplated by the Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, for domestic keeping of the peace, and as the use of even our own standing army for such purposes is without such constitutional support, the use of foreign troops and mercenaries against the people is wildly unconstitutional, egregious, and an act of war.

We will oppose such troops as enemies of the people and we will treat all who request, invite, and aid those foreign troops as the traitors they are.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the seizure and forfeiture of American ships, goods, and supplies, along with the seizure of American timber for the Royal Navy, all in violation of the people’s natural right to their property and to the fruits of their labor. The final spark of the Revolution was the attempt by the government to seize powder and cannon stores at Concord.

Deprivation of food has long been a weapon of war and oppression, with millions intentionally starved to death by fascist and communist governments in the 20th Century alone.

Accordingly, we will not obey or facilitate orders to confiscate food and other essential supplies from the people, and we will consider all those who issue or carry out such orders to be the enemies of the people.

10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

There would have been no American Revolution without fiery speakers and writers such as James Otis, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and Sam Adams “setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

Patrick Henry: “Give me Liberty, or Give me DEATH!”

Tyrants know that the pen of a man such as Thomas Paine can cause them more damage than entire armies, and thus they always seek to suppress the natural rights of speech, association, and assembly. Without freedom of speech, the people will have no recourse but to arms. Without freedom of speech and conscience, there is no freedom.

Therefore, we will not obey or support any orders to suppress or violate the right of the people to speak, associate, worship, assemble, communicate, or petition government for the redress of grievances.

— And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually affirm our oath and pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Oath Keepers

The above list is not exhaustive but we do consider them to be clear tripwires – they form our “line in the sand,” and if we receive such orders, we will not obey them. Further, we will know that the time for another American Revolution is nigh. If you the people decide that you have no recourse, and such a revolution comes, at that time, not only will we NOT fire upon our fellow Americans who righteously resist such egregious violations of their God given rights, we will join them in fighting against those who dare attempt to enslave them.

NOTE: please also read our Principles of Our Republic We Are Sworn to Defend

More About Oath Keepers

Oath Keepers is a non partisan association of currently serving military, peace officers, fire-fighters, and veterans who will fulfill our oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God.

Our oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and not to any political party. In the long-standing tradition of the U.S. military, we are apolitical. We don’t care if unlawful orders come from a Democrat or a Republican, or if the violation is bi-partisan. We will not obey unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral orders, such as orders to disarm the American people or to place them under martial law. We won’t “just follow orders.” Our motto: “Not on Our Watch!” or to put it even more succinctly, in the words of 101st Airborne Commander General Anthony McAuliffe at the Battle of the Bulge, “NUTS!”

There is at this time a debate within the ranks of the military regarding their oath. Some mistakenly believe they must follow any order the President issues. But many others do understand that their loyalty is to the Constitution and to the people, and understand what that means.

The mission of Oath Keepers is to vastly increase their numbers.

We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of our own troops.

Help us win it.

wearable computing...,

TheIndependent | It may soon be possible to wear your computer or mobile phone under your sleeve, with the invention of an ultra-thin and flexible electronic circuit that can be stuck to the skin like a temporary tattoo.

The devices, which are almost invisible, can perform just as well as more conventional electronic machines but without the need for wires or bulky power supplies, scientists said.

The development could mark a new era in consumer electronics. The technology could be used for applications ranging from medical diagnosis to covert military operations.

The "epidermal electronic system" relies on a highly flexible electrical circuit composed of snake-like conducting channels that can bend and stretch without affecting performance. The circuit is about the size of a postage stamp, is thinner than a human hair and sticks to the skin by natural electrostatic forces rather than glue.

"We think this could be an important conceptual advance in wearable electronics, to achieve something that is almost unnoticeable to the wearer. The technology can connect you to the physical world and the cyberworld in a very natural way that feels comfortable," said Professor Todd Coleman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research team.

A simple stick-on circuit can monitor a person's heart rate and muscle movements as well as conventional medical monitors, but with the benefit of being weightless and almost completely undetectable. Scientists said it may also be possible to build a circuit for detecting throat movements around the larynx in order to transmit the information wirelessly as a way of recording a person's speech, even if they are not making any discernible sounds.

Tests have already shown that such a system can be used to control a voice-activated computer game, and one suggestion is that a stick-on voicebox circuit could be used in covert police operations where it might be too dangerous to speak into a radio transmitter.

"The blurring of electronics and biology is really the key point here," said Yonggang Huang, professor of engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "All established forms of electronics are hard, rigid. Biology is soft, elastic. It's two different worlds. This is a way to truly integrate them."

Engineers have built test circuits mounted on a thin, rubbery substrate that adheres to the skin. The circuits have included sensors, light-emitting diodes, transistors, radio frequency capacitors, wireless antennas, conductive coils and solar cells.

"We threw everything in our bag of tricks on to that platform, and then added a few other new ideas on top of those, to show that we could make it work," said John Rogers, professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.

"useful idiots" engineering the gulag for us all?

SovereignIndependent | pro·vo·ca·teur

1. A person who provokes trouble, causes dissension, or the like; agitator.

2. ( italics ) French . agent provocateur.

a·gent pro·vo·ca·teur

A secret agent hired to incite suspected persons to some illegal action, outbreak, etc., that will make them liable to punishment.

And here we have the crux of this article.

The youth involved in this through the incitement of ‘agent provocateurs’ will undoubtedly bring about further Draconian police measures to curb such measures in the future.

This is regardless of the fact that police were ordered to stand back and allow this to happen to such an extent that the outcry would facilitate such Draconian measures being brought to bear, not only on the ‘useful idiots’ who’ve blindly followed establishment provocateurs in carrying out their idiotic rampage, but on us all.

These few hundred or so idiots are going to ensure that water cannon, rubber bullets and real bullets and other sinister weapons, such as sound cannon and other devices designed to immobilise members of the public individually, in the case of tasers, and in groups by other means, are going to be used in the near future. This will of course serve to discourage any legitimate ‘protests’ which can be hijacked by mindless yobs or agent provocateurs.

The army may well now be deployed on the streets of our cities ensuring that our children will now grow up in a similar environment to the children in Nazi Germany prior to and during the Second World War. We will no doubt see the roll out of ID cards and ‘stop and search’ legislation being introduced across the board for all of us who are simply trying to go about our daily business.

The coup de grace of course will be the introduction of conscription as a means of getting the so called ‘disenfranchised’ off our streets. Better they kill innocent Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Iranians or whoever the globalist elite establishment wish to go to war with than have them stealing iPods in London right?

These boys and girls who think they’re so clever at getting away with looting and arson will get a real shock to the system when people in a war zone are firing real bullets at them and might just wonder if that ‘free’ Blackberry phone was really worth it.

Of course they won’t all get conscripted but it might just be that those who either attempt to escape such a draft are simply rounded up and detained in what would be nothing less than concentration camps.

The other aspect of this is of course the mainstream media’s attempt to promote this as ‘race rioting’ but for anyone who’s watched some of the footage from the ‘riots’ it’s very much apparent that despite David Cameron’s tirade on the failures of multiculturalism, it is obvious that the youth in Tottenham and other cities around the country are working together in great harmony to loot and burn down business premises.

We cannot allow the mainstream media to force a racial war onto the streets of Britain. Whether Black, White, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or any other race or religion it is vital that we all stick together to thwart the social engineers despotic plans to start what would amount to civil war within communities which will simply allow the despots to win using their tried and tested ‘divide and rule’ tactics which have worked for centuries.

If the youth of today, regardless of how ‘deprived’ they feel they are, are not brought back into society by whatever means possible without force or compulsion, they will continue to be used by the social engineers to create havoc on our streets and will be nothing less than thug gangs who will be met with real bullets on their streets by soldiers coming back from a war zone who are well used to shooting first and asking questions later, who will be under no civil authority and therefore unanswerable to local community groups

These gangs of youths must realise that their actions have direct consequences on them and their children in the long term and that they are simply facilitating the implementation of the establishment’s goal of bringing about a despotic totalitarian gulag state for us all.

revolution, flashmobs, brainchips: a grim vision of the future

Guardian | Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.

This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than predictive".

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

europe's turn to the right

TheNation | Right-wing gunmen are a rarity in postwar Europe. There have, of course, been instances of right-wing violence. In the 1990s, gangs composed mostly of former East German youths, prey to neo-Nazi fantasies, set upon Turks and other clearly identifiable immigrants, beating people up in the streets and torching refugee shelters.

One reason radical right-wing parties were marginalized for a long time in Europe is that they were simply too disreputable. It was worse than uncouth to agitate openly against minorities, let alone to flirt with ideologies that had caused the death of millions. Even to suggest that large-scale immigration could be a problem was considered racist until not so long ago. In such countries as Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands and France, mainstream parties have tended to gang up against radical right-wing parties, blocking them behind what the French call a cordon sanitaire. On the whole, voters for the far right hovered between 10 percent and 15 percent—more than is desirable, perhaps, but few people worried that they would ever get much more.

The cordon first began to crack in Austria and Italy, during the ’90s. This was not so much because Austrians were rediscovering their Nazi sympathies. Indeed, by the late ’90s most politicians on the democratic far right in Europe had tried to distance themselves from Nazi or fascist antecedents. The reason for the Freedom Party’s success was that the Social and Christian Democrats had been in government too long. People voted against a sclerotic establishment. Many Italians felt the same way about the Christian Democrats, who had been propped up for decades, with the help of the United States, to keep the left out. But once the Christian Democrats finally lost power, it wasn’t the left that leapt into the vacuum but Berlusconi, backed by neo-Fascist and anti-immigrant parties, such as Fini’s National Alliance and Umberto Bossi’s Northern League.

Governments of the European Union were outraged in 2000, when the Austrian Freedom Party garnered enough votes to form part of a coalition government. Boycotts were threatened. Austrian officials were snubbed. This was a mistake. It only helped to burnish the right’s anti-establishment credentials. After all, the AFP was democratically elected, as were the right-wing Italian parties in 1994.

Perhaps being part of a government had a civilizing effect. In 1995 Fini disavowed his party’s Fascist heritage. But when it comes to immigration and, especially, “the Muslim problem,” Fini and his right-wing allies in Berlusconi’s coalition, as well as the Austrian AFP, are if anything even more ferocious than before. In this, they are not alone.

british youths the most unpleasant and violent in the world?

Video - PM Cameron promises action against protesters

DailyMail | British youths have been branded as 'the most unpleasant and potentially violent young people in the world' by a renowned doctor-writer.

Anthony Daniels, a retired prison doctor and psychiatrist who has worked in some of the hardest-hit areas on the planet, said the British were now in great fear of their own arrogant, knife-wielding children.

The author said Britain's young had a 'sense of entitlement' and were unwilling to change their ways for anyone else - with the only difference between the rich and the poor being that the former had the money to buy what they wanted, whereas the poor had to 'wheedle, cajole, swindle and steal it'.

Writing for the New York Daily News in a comment piece on the riots, he said: 'Of course it is true that not all young Britons are unattractive in appearance and conduct, only a far higher proportion of them than of the young of any other nation.

'It requires but an overnight stay on a Friday or Saturday in any British city to prove it. Even Russians are appalled by what they witness.

'The rioting is only the extreme end of the spectrum of bad behaviour by British youth and young adults.'

Mr Daniels, who often writes for The Spectator under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, said the riots 'did not emerge from a cultural vacuum' but was rather 'the British way of life'.

He claimed many American visitors to the UK were astounded at how quickly Britons became angry over trifling matters.

And he revealed that it was now 'quite literally' difficult to 'distinguish the sound of people enjoying themselves from that of someone being murdered.'

He said: 'Recently in Manchester, I woke at 1 on a Wednesday morning in my hotel to hear drunken screaming and shouting down below on one of the city's main streets, the sound of which continued until 4.30.

'Lo and behold, when I left the hotel at 8 in the morning, I discovered that a man had been savagely beaten nearly to death at about 2 am and was still in a coma - but the drunken revelling had continued nonetheless, uninterrupted by the police.

'So the sheer viciousness and destructiveness of the riots certainly do not surprise me.'

He ended his piece by saying that the only thing that will stop the 'not well-educated' rioters is 'boredom or exhaustion'.

Mr Daniels' piece, which will be consumed by a worldwide audience, heaps further embarrassment on the UK, which has today again made headline news across the world.

Newspapers from Ireland, Iceland and even Iran have used the sickening images of the looting on their front pages.

In the U.S. the popular Washington Post, New York Daily News and New York Times all dedicated extensive coverage to the events.

Even regional newspapers, such as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which covers Little Rock in Arkansas, led on the riots with the headline 'British add 10,000 police as rioting starts a 4th

The financial daily Handelsblatt said: 'The riots reveal fundamental societal problems that extend far beyond London and England.

'They are too deep for the short-term austerity measures to have had much influence. There wasn't just looting in troubled areas, but also in the affluent district of Notting Hill and among the middle class in trendy Clapham.

'The riots reveal the decay of society at its edges, brought on by deeply cemented inequality, the erosion of social norms, great frustration and a lack of opportunity for the lower class.'

The Financial Times Deutschland added: 'The British elite has systematically compromised itself in recent years. They claimed to be a role model, or at least trustworthy.

'In the economic crisis the financial establishment declared bankruptcy, and British politicians became mired in the expenses scandal of 2009. Then this year the media and politicians have been damaged by the Murdoch scandal.

'When the country's elites don't take the law seriously, why should we? No question is more dangerous for a society.'

Left-leaning Berliner Zeitung said: 'The country has lost faith in every authority: the banks, politicians, the media, the police. The corruption has reached even the smallest unit - the family. There is a generation growing up without values of any kind.'

Finally, the conservative Die Welt commented: 'The unrest in London is a form of hooliganism by losers who are living in a society which no longer has anything left to offer losers. Among the arsonists are people who no longer possess any values.

social class as culture

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ScienceDaily | Social class is more than just how much money you have. It's also the clothes you wear, the music you like, the school you go to -- and has a strong influence on how you interact with others, according to the authors of a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People from lower classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world than people in upper classes -- a fact that should figure into debates on public policy, according to the authors.

"Americans, although this is shifting a bit, kind of think class is irrelevant," says Dacher Keltner of the University of California-Berkeley, who cowrote the article with Michael W. Kraus of UC-San Francisco and Paul K. Piff of UC-Berkeley. "I think our studies are saying the opposite: This is a profound part of who we are."

People who come from a lower-class background have to depend more on other people. "If you don't have resources and education, you really adapt to the environment, which is more threatening, by turning to other people," Keltner says. "People who grow up in lower-class neighborhoods, as I did, will say,' There's always someone there who will take you somewhere, or watch your kid. You've just got to lean on people.'"

Wealthier people don't have to rely on each other as much. This causes differences that show up in psychological studies. People from lower-class backgrounds are better at reading other people's emotions. They're more likely to act altruistically. "They give more and help more. If someone's in need, they'll respond," Keltner says. When poor people see someone else suffering, they have a physiological response that is missing in people with more resources. "What I think is really interesting about that is, it kind of shows there's all this strength to the lower class identity: greater empathy, more altruism, and finer attunement to other people," he says. Of course, there are also costs to being lower-class. Health studies have found that lower-class people have more anxiety and depression and are less physically healthy.

Upper-class people are different, Keltner says. "What wealth and education and prestige and a higher station in life gives you is the freedom to focus on the self." In psychology experiments, wealthier people don't read other people's emotions as well. They hoard resources and are less generous than they could be.

One implication of this, Keltner says, is that's unreasonable to structure a society on the hope that rich people will help those less fortunate. "One clear policy implication is, the idea of nobless oblige or trickle-down economics, certain versions of it, is bull," Keltner says. "Our data say you cannot rely on the wealthy to give back. The 'thousand points of light' -- this rise of compassion in the wealthy to fix all the problems of society -- is improbable, psychologically."

top 5 places not to be when the dollar collapses

DontTreadOnMe | The dollar collapse will be the single largest event in human history. This will be the first event that will touch every single living person in the world. All human activity is controlled by money. Our wealth, our work, our food, our government, even our relationships are affected by money. No money in human history has had as much reach in both breadth and depth as the dollar. It is the de facto world currency. All other currency collapses will pale in comparison to this big one. All other currency crises have been regional and there were other currencies for people to grasp on to. This collapse will be global and it will bring down not only the dollar but all other fiat currencies, as they are fundamentally no different. The collapse of currencies will lead to the collapse of ALL paper assets. The repercussions to this will have incredible results worldwide. (Read the Silver Bullet and the Silver Shield to protect yourself from this collapse.)

Thanks to the globalization and the giant vampire squids of the Anglo-American Empire, the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. It supports the global economy in settling foreign trade, most importantly the Petro Dollar trade. This money is recycled through the City of London (not to be confused with London) and New York. This fuels our corporate vampires that acquires and harvests the wealth of the world. The corporate powers suppress REAL assets like natural resources and labor to provide themselves massive profits. This Fascist, Statist, Collectivist model provides the money into the economy to fund an ever increasing federal government. That government then grows larger and larger enriching its minions with jobs to control their fellow citizens. Finally, to come full circle, the government then controls other nations through the Military Industrial Complex.

This cycle will be cut when the mathematically and inevitable collapse of the dollar occurs. In order for our debt based money to function we MUST increase the debt every year in excess of the debt AND interest accrued the year before or we will enter a deflationary death spiral. When debt is created, money is created. When debt is paid off, money is destroyed. There is never enough to pay off the debt, because there would be not one dollar in existence.

We are at a point where we either default on the debt, willingly or unwillingly, or create more money/debt to keep the cycle moving. The problem is if you understand anything about compounding interest, we are reaching the hockey stick moment where the more debt that is incurred, the less effective it is and this leads us to hyper inflation. There are only two actors needed for this hyper inflation, the Lender of Last Resort, the Fed, and the Spender of Last Resort, the government. These two can, and will, blow up the system. I believe they will wait until the next crisis and the whiff of deflationary depression before they fire up the printing presses. That crisis is coming very soon at the end of this summer or fall. The money and emergency measures are worn out. The fact that NONE of the underlying problems that caused the 2008 crisis have been resolved. The only thing that has happened is that instead of corporate problems, we now have nation problems. In this movie Greece will play the role of Lehman Brothers and the United States will play the role of AIG. The problem is there is nowhere to kick the can down the road and there is no world government to absorb the debt, yet…

ahmadinejad calls for UN intervention in britain

Guardian | Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticised the UN security council for remaining silent over the riots in Britain. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

Having already offered to send an expert team to investigate human rights abuses amid the riots, the Iranian regime has gone one step further and called on the UN security council to intervene over the British government's handling of the unrest rocking the country.

Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, condemned the British government for its "violent suppression" of the protesters and called for an end to what he described as the "killing and brutal beating" of "the opposition" angry with the government's financial policies.

"The real opposition are the people who are beaten up and killed on the streets of London, those whose voices are not heard by anyone," Iran's Irna state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

The foreign ministry, went so far as to issue a statement advising against any unnecessary travel to the UK.

On Tuesday night, conservative websites sympathetic to the Islamic regime called on the Iranian government to offer refuge in its embassy in London to "UK protesters in need of protection".

In the aftermath of Iran's disputed presidential election in 2009, some European embassies in Tehran opened their doors to opposition protesters.

Iranian officials infuriated by the UK's condemnation of Iran's human rights violations in recent years, have found a unique opportunity with recent events to get back at the British government by criticising the police force for "exercising violence".

The Iranian opposition, on the other hand, has accused the regime of hypocrisy and opportunism in "deliberately portraying rioting and looting as political protests".

Ahmadinejad criticised the UN security council for remaining silent over the riots in Britain. "What else should happen for the security council to react and condemn one of its own members?"

He accused the UK authorities of portraying its opposition as a group of "looters, rioters and drug dealers", adding: "Does Britain have this extent of drug dealers? If this is the case, they should be tried and UN should build walls surrounding their country."

Ahmadinejad said the protests were the result of London's imperialist policies of the past three centuries and of ignoring the poor. "Time is up for few capitalist families with different titles to loot other nations and governments and making them slaves," he said.

"Instead of giving up their wealth to control their deficit, the burden has been put on masses. There are pressures in crisis and it's evident that people would protest in such a situation," he said.

Ahmadinejad said British officials should stop meddling in other people's affairs and instead worry about their own. "Instead of interfering in others' affairs in Afghanistan, Iraq and attacking Libya, they should deal with their own people."

He asked Britain to listen to the demands of its people and criticised human rights organisations for remaining silent over the violence used against British protesters.

where will growth come from?

NYTimes | Never has the world economy depended so much on the success of developing nations. A misguided focus on budget cutting has plunged the European Union and the United States down paths that will prolong their economic stagnation and perhaps tip them into another recession. The International Monetary Fund was forecasting 2 percent growth in the euro zone before the financial crisis spread to Italy. The Japanese economy is shrinking. Some top economists put the odds of a double-dip recession in the United States at 1 in 2.

These dire prospects, along with the realization that economic policy is blocked by political gridlock in the United States and complacency in Europe, have sent spasms through financial markets, which could further sap growth. Fortunately, developing countries, which account for almost half the globe’s economic output, are growing faster than the industrialized world: in June the I.M.F. forecast that they would grow some 6.5 percent this year and next. Their growth spares the world utter economic stagnation.

Yet developing countries are not robust enough to keep the global economy from sinking in a morass for long. Their economies remain vulnerable to financial turbulence and economic weakness in wealthy nations.

Even a flood of money moving to developing nations, as investors react to the lack of growth in the industrial world, would create new challenges. It would stoke inflation and asset bubbles in developing economies: annual inflation in Brazil is running at 6.85 percent. And it would push up the value of their currencies, hindering exports.

China, the biggest developing economy, is still more a caboose than a growth engine, dependent on rich countries to buy more than 40 percent of its exports. In 2009, China led efforts to help the global recovery, investing heavily in infrastructure and boosting consumer spending, but today it is taking the opposite tack and trying to combat inflation, which is running at 6.4 percent.

british in denial about their "arab" spring

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GlobeandMail | This isn't the Arab Spring. But the riots in London and beyond do pose a challenge to one of the world's most stable democracies. As Home Secretary Theresa May put it, Britain relies on the consent of communities, not on water cannons, to keep social order. And when thousands of people are hell-bent on destroying order, even if for no other purpose than the cruel joy of it, it does tend to raise the question of what happened to the consent.

But that is a question that can be dealt with down the road, when the streets are calm again. One doesn't ask a young man with a Molotov cocktail in his hand why he wishes to burn the city down. One calls in the police.

Riots involving thousands of hooded people rolling from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and city to city are not, however, easy to beat back. David Green, the director of Civitas, a British think tank, verges on panic when he writes that “being reluctant to use force can be admirable. But when events have got out of control, the fullest use of police powers is justified.” He implies that anything goes. But how many deaths would be justified? Democratic societies need to protect public order and property, but not at any cost to life.

What is happening is sickening to watch – the mob mind unable to conceive of anything beyond the twisted pleasures of destruction. The fires raging in London and, Tuesday night, in Manchester, show humankind reduced to its most elemental drives. There is no reason to think that these nihilistic riots are anything but a way to fill the boredom of summer. They are not a protest against tuition increases, or social-service cuts, or the fatal police shooting of a black man in Tottenham. That shooting was no more the cause of these riots than the Vancouver Canucks' disappointing loss in the Stanley Cup finals in June caused thousands to engage in an orgy of looting and fighting and burning cars. It was an excuse for those people who feel most alive when rioting.

lack of awareness...,

Video - Malcolm X you are afraid to bleed...,

aljazeera | On Twitter late last night, following the main bulk of the riots, I was astonished at the incomprehension generally expressed as to why they had occurred. There seemed to be an extraordinary lack of awareness that working class youth in Britain are being punished for the financial excesses of the banking collapse.

The public spending cuts this year meant many of the youth summer schemes in London did not run. These riots suggest boredom - and inarticulate rage. The youth are smashing and grabbing the things society tells them to want.

The coalition government's austerity measures have hit this generation hard. There will be no higher education for those who cannot take on burdensome debt. The chance of ever being able to afford to buy a home in London seems remote - except for those whose wealthier parents can provide the deposit for a home loan.

A generation of young people have been left behind by this coalition's policies and the policies of previous governments. How can these young people see that they have anything invested in British society that will enable them to become fulfilled and successful adults?

The comments on Twitter and Facebook, following Monday's riots in London, starkly reflect the class divides within Britain today.

Hitting the streets

After spending much of the day deliberating over whether I should go and see what was happening, on Monday I set off on my bike with a stills camera. I cycled from my apartment in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets across Victoria Park toward the Borough of Hackney, to check out the scene. Would this just be a copycat riot that the police would quickly put down, or was it going to explode into something bigger?

Knowing that the local kids would not appreciate my taking the pictures mid-riot, I planned to get the aftermath shots: upturned, burned-out bins; trashed vehicles; local people wandering through the broken glass...

As I turned onto the main road I saw a red-faced man with a Union Jack flag tattooed on his forehead walking along with two women, drinking cans of beer. One said: "There were loads of masked up Asians swarming outside the Tube station, ready to riot." This man and women were drunk, seemed furious, spoke racist and walked scared.

police there to be against them rather than to protect them...,

Video - Malcolm X We are living in a police state.

CNN | Officers from Operation Trident -- the Metropolitan Police unit that deals with gun crime in London's black communities -- stopped the cab in the working-class, predominantly Afro-Caribbean district of Tottenham during an attempted arrest, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said. Soon after, shots were fired and Duggan, a father of four, was killed. Shooting deaths are rare in England.

The IPCC said Tuesday an illegal firearm had been found at the scene, with a "bulleted cartridge" in the magazine, but there was "no evidence" it was fired during the incident.

A bullet that lodged in a radio carried by an officer was police issue, the IPCC said.

"A post-mortem examination concluded that Mr. Duggan was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest. He also received a second gunshot wound to his right bicep," the IPCC said, without saying who fired the bullets nor why police had stopped the cab.
Violence and looting across London

The man's family and friends, who blamed police for the death, had gathered peacefully Saturday outside the Tottenham police station to protest.

The protest soon devolved into violence as demonstrators -- whose numbers included whites and blacks -- tossed petrol bombs, looted stores and burned police cars.

Violence continued in isolated pockets on Sunday, spread Monday to other parts of the nation and continued Tuesday.

Metropolitan Police and Duggan's family have appealed for calm. Police said they were stretched thin as they tried to respond to emergency calls -- which were up nearly 400% Tuesday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's vow of action to quell rioting in Britain's cities was backed up by an increased police presence -- about 16,000 officers were set to be on London's streets Tuesday night -- twice the number on Monday night.

"People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and make them safe for the law-abiding," said Cameron, who called the events "criminality, pure and simple."

The trouble -- described by police as "'copycat criminal activity" -- takes place against a backdrop of austerity measures and budget cuts that have led to high rates of unemployment, particularly among the nation's youth.

Some 685 people have been arrested in London since the violence began, police said late Tuesday. With Metropolitan Police detention cells full, authorities were taking those they arrested to facilities belonging to surrounding police forces.

when did gary busey become the mayor of london?

Video - Mayor of London gets heckled after riots.

forget london, this commercial set y'all back 150 years or more...,

Video - Trojan Twister "blow her hair back" commercial.

jesus loves nukes...,

Telegraph | For 20 years the course on “Christian Just War Theory” was taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to those who would turn the key should World War III break out.

The training, which used passages from the Bible and religious imagery to demonstrate the moral justification for atomic warfare, has now been suspended.

The Air Force acted after receiving an inquiry from Truthout, a news website which first broke the story.

A PowerPoint presentation which was part of the course had consisted of 43 slides which included references to Biblical figures like Abraham and John the Baptist, and paintings of the Visigoths attacking Rome in AD410.

Instructors quoted St Augustine’s just cause for war, telling them it was right “to avenge or to avert evil, to protect the innocent and restore moral and social order.”

They also recounted how, in the Book of Genesis, Abraham had organised an army to rescue Lot, and how there were “Old Testament believers who engaged in war in a righteous way.” Officers were also told that in Judges, God is “motivating judges to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors,” and that there was “no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history.”

In the New Testament, they were told, Jesus used the Roman centurion as a “positive illustration of faith.” One slide read: “Revelation 19:11 Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior.”

The course literature also quoted Werner von Braun, the leading German rocket scientist who went on to work for the United States after the Second World War, saying that it was a “moral decision” to surrender his technology to the US.

Von Braun said: “We felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”

Before the the course was stopped 31 nuclear missile launch officers, including Protestants and Roman Catholics, had complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that campaigns for the separation of church and state.

Its founder Mikey Weinstein said the officers were being told that “under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing”.

He said the officers found that “disgusting.” Mr Weinstein said: “The United States Air Force was promoting a particular brand of right wing fundamentalist Christianity.

“The main essence was that war is a natural part of the human experience and it’s something that is favoured by this particular perspective of the New Testament.”

David Smith, spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, said ethics courses were “especially important” for nuclear missile launch officers.

But he added: “Our commander here reviewed the course and decided immediately that it was not appropriate for what we want to do.

“The use of Bible passages and other elements was just inappropriate. The military is made up of people from all walks of life, all faiths.” However, critics accused the Air Force of bowing to political correctness.

Commander Daniel McKay, a retired US Navy chaplain, said: “Why is it inappropriate to give our people guidelines that have withstood the test of time, to give us moral guidance?

“History will prove that if you stay true to God’s wisdom, it will serve us well and it has served us well.”

NEETS: not in employment, education, or training...,

Video - Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK.

GlobeandMail | These are not race riots: Though they began, on Saturday afternoon, with a small protest in Tottenham, north London, over the shooting of a dark-skinned man by police under suspicious circumstances, they quickly became a much wider and less purposeful explosion of youth criminality.

Tottenham was the site of the terrible Broadwater Farm riot of 1985, which also began with a protest over a police shooting – but that was another London, deeply divided along racial lines, with a furious and socially excluded Caribbean community battling an all-white and explicitly racist police force. This week, by contrast, both the rioters and the police are multicoloured.

Nor are these explicitly political riots: There is no message, no motive, no cause, no slogan. Efforts by some opposition politicians to link these events to Prime Minister David Cameron’s spending cuts have been met with incredulity in the affected neighbourhoods, where those cuts have not yet had any municipal effect.

But this is clearly an event with far deeper causes than simple random hooliganism. A night of protesting and looting in one neighbourhood is not an unusual phenomenon in London, where a certain sort of mass drink-fuelled petty crime and low-level rioting never lies far beneath the surface. But three nights, spread across a dozen large neighbourhoods covering the entire expanse of this city of 10 million with scores of buildings set alight – this is an event of a much different magnitude.

There are some things uniting the London rioters. Almost all are under 20. Police reported that the youngest arrested over the weekend was 11 years old, and that almost all were born in the 1990s.

And most, according to their own accounts in interviews and Facebook postings, come from the same neighbourhoods they are looting and burning: Mostly poor neighbourhoods, thick with public-housing towers and short on employment opportunities.

“I think that there was disillusionment among some segments of the rioters,” said Heidi Alexander, the Member of Parliament for Lewisham, south London, where huge fires and large-scale rioting erupted Monday night. “There are high levels of youth unemployment in my district, they have trouble staying on in work or getting education, and they get caught up in this.”

Whether the thousands of rioters actually did express disillusionment – some did say they were angry at police or the world, but many appeared gleeful or greedy – it is clear that most had nothing else to do with themselves, and no reason to fear or feel responsible for the consequences of their actions.

This is a chronic problem in Britain, which has a “lost generation” of young high-school dropouts far larger than most other Western countries.

One European Union study this year found that 17 per cent of Britain’s youth are classified as “NEETs” – for Not in Employment, Education or Training, in other words high-school dropouts with no prospects of employment – the fourth-highest percentage in the European Union. There are 600,000 people under 25 in Britain who have never had a day of work.

Why these disenfranchised youth so explosively made their presence known in such a devastatingly violent way, and how this will all end, is not yet understood. But it puts a dark punctuation mark on what had, until this weekend, been London’s brightest modern era.

streets littered with the remnants of cash register tills...,

Video - The Clash London Calling

SydneyMorningHerald | British Home Secretary Theresa May described the rioting as "sheer criminality", vowing that those responsible would be brought to justice.

Asked if the army would be brought in to restore order, Ms May said an end to the riots could be brought with policing, the use of intelligence and the help of local communities.

"The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon," she told Sky News.

News footage in Britain has shown brazen aggressors in broad daylight using street bins to smash business windows.

In one piece of footage, women can be seen and heard directing men to steal particular pieces of jewellery from a retailer while alarms scream.

Streets have been littered with the remnants of cash register tills and in at least one instance a cash machine was dragged from a business onto the street and forced open.

With many of the perpetrators identified as youths - some as young as 10 years old - authorities have appealed to parents to keep their children at home.

London's everyday operations have been impacted by the violence, with public transport routes modified and cancelled, and some suburbs put in lockdown.

British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his holiday in Italy and flew back to Britain early Tuesday to chair a meeting of the government's emergency committee amid fears there will be a fourth night of violence.

london riots spread...,

VoiceofAmerica | Violence has broken out in two more British cities, while London endures its third straight night of rioting.

Police in Birmingham and in Liverpool report fires and looting. A Liverpool police spokesman says police are taking swift and robust action to what he calls "isolated outbreaks of disorder."

British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a vacation in Italy and rushed back to London to deal with some of the city's worst rioting in years.

Buildings, cars and bus stops burned and police fought with young people for a third straight night Monday in several London neighborhoods. Stores and restaurants were looted and police were pelted with gasoline bombs.

u.s. widens role in battle against mexican drug cartels

NYTimes | The United States is expanding its role in Mexico’s bloody fight against drug trafficking organizations, sending new C.I.A. operatives and retired military personnel to the country and considering plans to deploy private security contractors in hopes of turning around a multibillion-dollar effort that so far has shown few results.

In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, where, for the first time, security officials from both countries work side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of American contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counternarcotics police unit.

Officials on both sides of the border say the new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws that prohibit foreign military and police from operating on its soil, and to prevent advanced American surveillance technology from falling under the control of Mexican security agencies with long histories of corruption.

“A sea change has occurred over the past years in how effective Mexico and U.S. intelligence exchanges have become,” said Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. “It is underpinned by the understanding that transnational organized crime can only be successfully confronted by working hand in hand, and that the outcome is as simple as it is compelling: we will together succeed or together fail.”

The latest steps come three years after the United States began increasing its security assistance to Mexico with the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative and tens of millions of dollars from the Defense Department. They also come a year before elections in both countries, when President Obama may confront questions about the threat of violence spilling over the border, and President Felipe Calderón’s political party faces a Mexican electorate that is almost certainly going to ask why it should stick with a fight that has left nearly 45,000 people dead.

“The pressure is going to be especially strong in Mexico, where I expect there will be a lot more raids, a lot more arrests and a lot more parading drug traffickers in front of cameras,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution. “But I would also expect a lot of questioning of Merida, and some people asking about the way the money is spent, or demanding that the government send it back to the gringos.”

Mexico has become ground zero in the American counternarcotics fight since its cartels have cornered the market and are responsible for more than 80 percent of the drugs that enter the United States. American counternarcotics assistance there has grown faster in recent years than to Afghanistan and Colombia. And in the last three years, officials said, exchanges of intelligence between the United States and Mexico have helped security forces there capture or kill some 30 mid- to high-level drug traffickers, compared with just two such arrests in the previous five years.

The United States has trained nearly 4,500 new federal police agents and assisted in conducting wiretaps, running informants and interrogating suspects. The Pentagon has provided sophisticated equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters, and in recent months it has begun flying unarmed surveillance drones over Mexican soil to track drug kingpins.

Still, it is hard to say much real progress has been made in crippling the brutal cartels or stemming the flow of drugs and guns across the border. Mexico’s justice system remains so weakened by corruption that even the most notorious criminals have not been successfully prosecuted.

“The government has argued that the number of deaths in Mexico is proof positive that the strategy is working and that the cartels are being weakened,” said Nik Steinberg, a specialist on Mexico at Human Rights Watch. “But the data is indisputable — the violence is increasing, human rights abuses have skyrocketed and accountability both for officials who commit abuses and alleged criminals is at rock bottom.”

Mexican and American officials involved in the fight against organized crime do not see it that way. They say the efforts begun under President Obama are only a few years old, and that it is too soon for final judgments. Dan Restrepo, Mr. Obama’s senior Latin American adviser, refused to talk about operational changes in the security relationship, but said, “I think we are in a fundamentally different place than we were three years ago.”

A senior Mexican official, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed. “This is the game-changer in degrading transnational organized crime,” he said, adding: “It can’t be a two-, three-, four-, five- or six-year policy. For this policy investment to work, it has to be sustained long-term.”

Several Mexican and American security analysts compared the challenges of helping Mexico rebuild its security forces and civil institutions — crippled by more than seven decades under authoritarian rule — to similar tests in Afghanistan. They see the United States fighting alongside a partner it needs but does not completely trust.