National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Buys 72,000 Rounds of Ammo

Weather agency makes another contract for even more hollow point bullets.

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
July 26, 2013


Not satisfied with last year’s purchase of 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently solicited bids for an additional 72,000 rounds.

A solicitation by the scientific agency posted on July 8 on the Federal Business Opportunities web site requested “56,000 rounds of .40 caliber 180 grain jacketed hollow points” and “16,000 rounds of .40 caliber frangible lead free rounds.”

The NOAA appears to have had an immediate need for the rounds as their requested response date was only four days later on July 12.

Jacketed hollow points (JHPs) are not practice rounds.

They are designed to expand (or “mushroom”) on impact and are more expensive than ball ammo used for practice.

As reported last August by Paul Joseph Watson, the National Weather Service, which operates under the NOAA, supposedly purchased 46,000 JHPs and 500 paper targets for various weather stations.

The Washington Times later reported, via a statement from NOAA spokesperson Scott Smullen, that last year’s ammunition request contained a “clerical error” and that the “solicitation for ammunition and targets for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement mistakenly identified NOAA’s National Weather Service as the requesting office.”

As Watson pointed out, this explanation still doesn’t explain why JHPs are needed for paper targets when they are obviously not practice rounds.

“You should always practice with what you’re going to use in real life,” Steven Howard, a former federal agent said in support of training with JHPs, in an interview with TribLive.

Yet with “defense load” JHPs costing at least one dollar a round for common service calibers, it is hard to imagine concealed handgun license holders and local police departments constantly spending that much money to stay proficient in shooting.

Even if costs are not an issue, local police departments may still have trouble procuring enough ammo for training due to the ammo shortage encouraged by our federal government, as Steve Watson reported back in May.

But in further response to Howard’s comment, bullet designs are not that significant in training as long as shooters use ball ammunition that is just as powerful as their defense load JHP, generating the same recoil and shooter reaction.

An expanding bullet means little to a paper target.

In regards to the quantity of ammo requested by the NOAA, why does the Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement (FOLE) even need 56,000 JHPs, especially if the agency supposedly received 46,000 rounds last year?

Assuming that this latest solicitation is going directly to the FOLE for the agency’s own use and not somehow funneled into the Department of Homeland Security.

The FOLE is tasked primarily with enforcing fishing regulations, supporting scientific studies and protecting endangered marine species.

According to Smullen in a Fox News interview, the ammunition purchased is “standard issue” and will be used by 63 agents during training and qualifications.

That is the key point.

Sixty-three federal agents are armed with .40 caliber sidearms in order to enforce fishing regulations, “protecting the ecosystem” and “promoting marine conservation.”

As more regulations are added every year and more agents are hired for enforcement, more ammo will be purchased compared to the previous years.

This is true with the entire federal government as the cancer of tyranny grows and the roots of liberty decay.

As surreal as it sounds, the NOAA’s massive purchase of over 100,000 rounds of JHPs in the past two years follows the trend of other federal non-military agencies which combined have purchased conservatively 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in little over a year.

In an interview with Breitbart, Jeff Knox, director of The Firearms Collective said that it’s the number of feds with guns that’s important, not necessarily the number of rounds.

“There are currently more than 70 different federal law enforcement agencies employing over 120,000 officers with arrests and firearms authority,” Knox said. “That’s an increase of nearly 30 percent between 2004 and 2008.”

“If the trends have continued upward at a relatively steady rate, that would put the total number of federal law enforcement officers at somewhere between 135,000 and 145,000.”

Knox said that’s a staggering number considering there’s only an estimated 765,000 state and local law enforcement officers.

“That means that about one in seven law enforcement officers in the country works directly for the federal government,” he said. “Not a local jurisdiction.”

The Second Amendment may simply suffocate under the weight of big government as ammunition manufacturers struggle to equip additional federal agents, leaving the ammo cans of the American people empty.

Secret court Allows NSA To Keep Collecting Verizon customers’ phone records

Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
July 20, 2013

The National Security Agency has been allowed to extend its dragnet of the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon through a court order issued by the secret court that oversees surveillance.

In an unprecedented move prompted by the Guardian’s disclosure in June of the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of Verizon metadata, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has publicly revealed that the scheme has been extended yet again.

The statement does not mention Verizon by name, nor make clear how long the extension lasts for, but it is likely to span a further three months in line with previous routine orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa).

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TSA Expands Searches From Airports to Everywhere

TSA creates atmosphere of fear as the agency broadens its reach into our daily lives.

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
July 19, 2013


The TSA recently ordered airport valet attendants to search a parked car without a warrant and without prior notification given to the vehicle’s owner.



The owner, Laurie Iacuzza, told News10NBC that she found a search notice on her car parked at the Greater Rochester International Airport after she returned from her trip.

When she dropped her car off at the valet prior to her flight, she received no warnings that her car could be subjected to search.

“I think the public should be aware of the fact that if their car is going to be searched, they should be informed of it,” she said to News10NBC.

This TSA-ordered search is yet another example of the agency’s expansion beyond the concrete confinements of airport terminals and into Americans’ daily lives.

In a statement made to the LA Times, TSA air marshal Ray Dineen could not have explained the agency’s intentions more clearly.

“We are not the Airport Security Administration,” he said. “We take that transportation part seriously.”

That wasn’t just rhetoric.

In 2012, TSA agents dug through the bags and belongings of Houston bus riders while asking intrusive questions about the nature of their trips.

In response, enraged Houston residents stormed a METRO board meeting to complain about the TSA’s random passenger interrogations.

“I don’t feel like by purchasing a ticket or riding a bus that I have to forfeit my Constitutional rights and my protections and be subject to search or seizure,” passenger Derrick Broze told METRO board members.

“We don’t plan on letting this issue die if the TSA stays in our city.”

But the TSA wants to stay and expand, not just in Houston but in every American city.

Later that year, for example, TSA inspectors were spotted at a Southern California train station.

Teams of armed TSA officers prowl subways, train stations, bus stations and other mass transit hubs across the country.

Operating since at least 2010, these VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams use German shepherds to sniff passengers while tearing through their personal belongings.

VIPR teams are also expected to litter the highway with checkpoints to routinely stop, search, and radiate drivers with security scans.



The TSA even admitted in 2011 that the VIPR teams have not foiled any terrorist plots.

But they certainly make their presence known and in the future the TSA may even spread outside of “transportation security.”

Earlier this month, we reported on a video of a uniformed TSA agent handling a dog inside the Ingram Park Mall in San Antonio, Texas.

According to the reader who submitted the video, mall management admitted that they were providing the agency a “place to train.”

The TSA simply want its armed officers roaming amongst us, searching our bags and terrorizing us in the name of safety.

Eye Witness to Michael Hastings Murder Says Body Not Charred Beyond Recognition

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
July 19, 2013

Description of accident scene at odds with story provided by officialdom.

A witness to the aftermath of the Michael Hastings accident on June 18 in Hancock Park in Los Angeles, California told Infowars Nightly News that the journalist’s body was not badly charred as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The LAPD and the Los Angeles County Coroner were “trying their best” to hide the body from the witness, who asked to remain anonymous, when it was pulled from the vehicle approximately three hours after the fire was extinguished, between 7:20 to 7:40 AM.

After the ferocity of the fire, the witness expected to see a body charred beyond recognition. “What I saw was the full body,” she told Infowars Nightly News, “with a completely burned face, up to say the shoulders. From the shoulders down I saw the whole body, completely intact, not burned in any way.”

She identified the body as a “white guy about 25 to 30… a white young guy… I saw full, white arms.”

This contradicts the official story. “The body was badly charred and identified only as ‘John Doe 117,’ law enforcement authorities told The Times. Coroner’s officials were attempting to match dental records to help make a positive identification, according to authorities,” the LA Times reported.

According to the witness, police and the coroner removed something from the back pocket of the victim. She told Infowars Nightly News she assumed this was a wallet that would have likely contained a driver’s license and other identification.

Evidence Reveals Michael Hastings Was Assassinated

Infowars.com and the alternative media have pointed out a number of suspicious anomalies that demonstrate the crash was part of a conspiracy to assassinate the award-winning journalist.

Prior to his murder, Hastings said the Obama administration had declared war on the press. His desire to go into hiding – expressed in an email mere hours before his assassination – demonstrates the ability of the government to monitor opponents by using a well-developed NSA surveillance grid and take executive action against investigative journalists and others who dare to stand up to the national security state.

U.S. Army brass told Hastings he would be hunted down and killed over his story that led to the downfall of General McChrystal’s, according to one of his closest friend during a June 26 interview on the Alex Jones Show.

“I remember when the story broke with General McChrystal and he [Hastings] gave me a call and he’s like ‘man, I’m pretty scared,’” SSG Joe Biggs said. “I told him, ‘You have a reason to be, brother. You basically just got a general of a war fired. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t sit too well with him right now.’”

Biggs, who met Hastings when the journalist was covering the war in Afghanistan, also said a story he was working on about the CIA was apparently what led to his assassination.

“Hastings had the Central Intelligence Agency in his sights is no surprise to those who knew his work,” Dennis Romero wrote last month, adding that “the shadowy world of intelligence and off-the-record American aggression was a favorite topic of the journalist.”

Biggs told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in late June that “something didn’t feel right” after Hastings sent a panicked email saying the authorities were on his tail, adding that the story of him driving at high speed in the early hours of the morning was completely out of character.

“His friends and family that know him, everyone says he drives like a grandma, so that right there doesn’t seem like something he’d be doing, there’s no way that he’d be acting erratic like that and driving out of control,” said Biggs, adding that “things don’t add up, there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered.”

Earlier this week, it was reported that Hastings’ body was cremated against his family’s wishes, destroying potential evidence that could have contradicted the explanation that he died as a result of an accident, according to San Diego 6 reporter Kimberly Dvorak.

“Despite the LAPD’s categorization of the Hastings fatal accident as a ‘no (evidence of) foul play,’ LAPD continues to ignore FOIA (CPRA in Calif.) requests made by San Diego 6 News for the police report, 9/11 call, autopsy, bomb squad and toxicology reports, or make the Mercedes available for inspection which only fuels conjecture,” writes Dvorak.

Dvorak’s investigation also uncovered the fact that police and firefighters in the area were given a gag order and told not to talk to the media about the death. This would also explain the attempt by the LAPD and Coroner to hide Hastings’ body from witnesses at the scene of the accident.

The corporate media has gone out of its way to dismiss evidence that Hastings was the victim of foul play and has characterized the evidence as little more than baseless conspiracy theories.

Soon after the accident, it was conclusively demonstrated that it is possible to hack into a car’s computer and take control of a vehicle. In 2011, Car and Driver magazine published an article substantiating Pentagon research into the subject.

“What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it’s relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn’t want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn’t want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,” Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post. “You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard.”

A number of experts dispute the official explanation of the accident.

“No matter how you slice this particular pie, a Mercedes is not just going to explode into flames without a little assistance,” writes freelance journalist Jim Stone. “Car fires in new cars happen for three main reasons — running the engine out of oil, or running the engine out of coolant, or after an absolutely huge car mangling accident, having the hot side of the battery short out against the frame before it reaches the fuse panel. And for all 3 of those normal reasons, which account for virtually all car fires in modern cars, the fire would have started in the engine compartment, progressed slowly, and scorched the hell out of the paint before ever reaching the gas tank. That clean paint is the be all tell all, Michael Hastings was murdered, and the rest is detail.”

74% of small businesses will fire workers, cut hours under Obamacare

Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
July 16, 2013

Despite the administration’s controversial decision to delay forcing companies to join Obamacare for a year, three-quarters of small businesses are still making plans to duck the costly law by firing workers, reducing hours of full-time staff, or shift many to part-time, according to a sobering survey released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. Twenty-seven percent say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24 percent will reduce hiring, and 23 percent plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate,” said the Chamber business survey provided to Secrets.

Under Obamacare, just 30 hours–not the nationally recognized 40 hours–is considered full-time. Companies with 50 full-time workers or more are required to provide health care, or pay a fine.

Read More

Zimmerman verdict vindicates citizen patrols, self-defense

Ted Nugent
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013


So this guy’s neighborhood has been burglarized off and on and the residents are very concerned for their safety and well-being. Neighbors agree to upkick their vigilance and overall level of awareness to watch out for each other and keep an eye out for suspicious individuals and behavior. It could be considered by an official designation such as “Neighborhood Watch”, but officially labeled or not, it is the purest form of Americans watching out for each other and being good neighbors.

So far so good.

So George Zimmerman sees what he believes is a suspicious individual in suspicious circumstances, and intelligently and responsibly pays attention and calls 9-1-1 to report what he sees to the officials. This gesture is proof positive he was not looking to do anyone harm or break any laws, but rather perform the fundamental responsibility of a neighbor who cares.

Doing nothing illegal or improper, he follows the individual while answering all the questions from the 9-1-1 operator to the best of his ability, keeping an eye on the individual so the authorities can hopefully intercept and determine exactly what is going on.

For reasons unknown, though I will comment on momentarily, after expressing racism and hostility on the phone to a friend in response to being followed, the suspect now changes course and turns towards George and immediately initiates a hostile verbal confrontation that quickly escalate to a violent physical assault. Within seconds, the suspect has overwhelmed George, has gained the advantage on top, pinning George to the ground, and further escalates the assault to deadly force by smashing George’s face, breaking his nose, and violently slamming his skull onto the concrete with all his youthful athleticism.

George screams frantically for help as Trayvon Martin pummels his face and head furiously, inflicting damaging and potentially life threatening wounds. Fearing for his life and about to lose consciousness at the hands of an enraged, violent attacker, George Zimmerman does what anyone who wishes to live would do, and he reaches for his concealed handgun, firing a single shot to neutralize the deadly force being wreaked upon him.

This represents the purest form of self-defense there is. It is exactly why people who believe in good over evil carry a gun to protect themselves from the well documented violence that plagues our country, in order to save our lives from a life threatening attack. Period.

Based on all evidence available to them, the professional law enforcement officers did not hold George Zimmerman on charges later that night. They saw it for what it was: cut and dried self-defense.

And so it was for a few weeks until the race-baiting industry saw an opportunity to further the racist careers of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Panthers. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, et al, who then swept down on the Florida community refusing to admit that the 17-year-old dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe Trayvon Martin was at all responsible for his bad decisions and standard modus operendi of always taking the violent route.

With an obvious racist chip on his shoulder, referencing the neighborhood watch guy as a “creepy ass cracker” to his fellow racist female friend who admitted under oath that that is how non-blacks are referred to normally in their circles, Trayvon had no reason not to attack, because it was the standard thug thing to do. See Chicago any day of the week.

With nearly 700 examples of this truism played out in Chicago in 2012 alone, no one can possibly dispute the recent surge in black racism increasing throughout Barack Obama’s presidency. To attempt to claim otherwise is a laughable lie.

The jury got it right, and non-racist America rejoices that there is still common sense, honesty and decency aware of identifying justice in this country. America also believes that the entire prosecutorial team should be ashamed of themselves and disbarred for ignoring the obvious and kowtowing to the pure racism that forced the politically correct lie that only black lives killed by non-blacks matter, which is why there are no headlines, no protests, no prosecutions and no Barak Obama or Eric Holder meddling in the nonstop black-on-black slaughter in their gun-free zone of Chicago.

Martin Luther King Jr. is rolling over in his grave that he sacrificed his life for the cause of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, as so many of his own race carry in in self-destructive behavior while professional race mongers blame everything on racism. It is painful and heartbreaking to say and write this, but horrifically it is true. Blacks kill more blacks in a weekend in Chicago than the evil, vile Ku Klux Klan idiots did in 50 years. Truly earth shattering insane. And not a peep from Obama or Holder. Tragic.

The only racism on that night was perpetrated by Trayvon Martin, and everybody knows it.

Here’s the lesson from all this, America: Teach your children to not attack people for no good reason whatsoever. Conduct yourself in a responsible, civil manner, and everything will be just fine. Try to kill someone and that someone just may be exercising his or her Second Amendment rights and you could get shot. It’s called self-defense, and it is the oldest, strongest and most righteous instinct and God-given right known to man.

Ted Nugent is a rock and roll legend and is probably one of the greatest advocates for self defense in the world today. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ’N’ Roll”, released by Regnery Publishing. Learn more at Ted’s official website.

Scientists Are Developing Robot Farmers

Gosia Wozniacka and Terence Chea
Seattle Times
July 15, 2013

On a windy morning in California’s Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds.

The engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a machine that can “thin” a field of lettuce in the time it takes about 20 workers to do the job by hand.

The thinner is part of a new generation of machines that target the last frontier of agricultural mechanization – fruits and vegetables destined for the fresh market, not processing, which have thus far resisted mechanization because they’re sensitive to bruising.


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Obama Exploits Zimmerman Verdict to Attack Second Amendment

Infowars.com
July 14, 2013


Obama responded to the Zimmerman verdict on Sunday by calling for renewed legislation aimed at the Second Amendment.


He did not attack the Bill of Rights directly, but instead admonished Americans for not doing enough “to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis.”

Here is the entire statement by Obama. It was posted today on the White House website:

The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.

It appears Obama, in addition to instructing the Justice Department to prosecute George Zimmerman for violating the “civil rights” of Trayvon Martin, will attempt to revisit so-called “gun control,” an effort that failed dismally earlier this year in a Democrat-controlled Senate.

NOT GUILTY: George Zimmerman Acquitted in the Death of Trayvon Martin

Manuel Roig-Franzia
The Washington Post
July 13, 2013

A Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter Saturday night in a case that alternately fascinated and appalled large segments of a spellbound nation.

Zimmerman bowed his head in the moments before the verdict was read. As the judge confirmed the verdict with jurors, one of the six women in the jury sat with a face flushed with emotion.

After the jury filed out of the courtroom, the defendant’s brother, Robert Zimmerman, sitting in the second row, hugged his mother, Gladys Zimmerman. The row became a swirl of tears and hugs. A man sitting next to Zimmerman’s brother slapped his hands together in joy and sobbed.

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Obama Conquers Internet Through Executive Orders

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
July 12, 2013


Obama’s policies will allow for a future government takeover of the Internet, involving multiple agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, under the guise of “national security needs” and “crisis management.”


In July 2012, Obama quietly released an executive order entitled Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.

The order created the National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) Executive Committee consisting of federal agencies such as:

- Department of Defense
- Department of Homeland Security
- Department of State
- Department of Justice
- Department of Commerce
- General Services Administration
- Federal Communications Commission
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence

It should be noted that the Director of National Intelligence is James Clapper, notorious for lying to Congress in March on the extent of the NSA’s domestic surveillance.

Here are some highlights of the executive order, which is available in full.

Sec. 5.2. (Responsibilities of the DHS) (e) satisfy priority communications requirements through the use of commercial, Government, and privately owned communications resources, when appropriate; (f) maintain a joint industry-Government center that is capable of assisting in the initiation, coordination, restoration, and reconstitution of NS/EP communications services or facilities under all conditions of emerging threats, crisis, or emergency;

This allows the DHS, working jointly and directly with private Internet Service Providers, to easily take over the Internet by claiming priority over private communication lines in the name of “national security.”

In the future, the DHS and other federal agencies can respond to whistleblower leaks, such as Edward’s Snowden’s revelation that the NSA has direct access to major Internet servers, by claiming they are “emerging threats” and “violations of National Security communications.”

Unconstitutional abuses leaked to media outlets can be suppressed by the government with this framework created through Obama’s executive orders.

Internet censorship will be brought to you by “national security needs” and “crisis management.”

Earlier this year, Obama released another executive order entitled Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.

This order created “essential” public-private partnerships with Internet infrastructure owners and operators “to improve cybersecurity information sharing.”

Amusingly, the executive order has provisions to ensure privacy and civil liberties. Edward Snowden exposed this complete lie several months later with the PRISM slides.

This is a great example of the doublespeak within these executive orders.

Under innocent-sounding guise, Obama dictates policies that are intended for more sinister purposes.

The further involvement of DHS into Internet “security” could very well highlight this point.

The next 9/11 could easily be a cyber attack, such as a massive financial collapse blamed on “foreign hackers.”

This is a very real possibility considering that the majority of the money supply is digital in our fractional reserve, fiat economy (explained starting at the 7:54 mark of this G. Edward Griffin interview).

Could the DHS take advantage of a claimed cyber warfare attack by imposing a virtual TSA on the American people, requiring them to be identified and screened before using sections of cyberspace?

We’ve already seen a New York bill trying to outlaw the on-line use of anonymous screen names.

Google and Yahoo are also now asking for telephone numbers upon registration of new user accounts.

Between the NSA soaking up all the digital communications by the public and the DHS’s increased involvement in cyber security, the freedom of anonymous expression is in great peril.

There Is No Right to Privacy

Walter Block
lewrockwell.com
July 13, 2013

Don’t get me wrong. I am a BIG fan of Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsberg and all other whistleblowers who have undermined the legitimacy of the state apparatus. I go further; no one is a greater supporter of these heroic men than me. So when I say there is no right to privacy, this should not be interpreted as in any way a criticism of them. Rather I am attempting to call into account numerous libertarians, all of whom should know better, when they write in support of these magnificent men and say things like: “The liberty of which I write is the right to privacy: the right to be left alone. The Framers jealously and zealously guarded this right by imposing upon government agents intentionally onerous burdens before letting them invade it.”

There is no right to privacy; none at all. It is not a negative right, all of which are supported by libertarian theory; e.g., the right not to be molested, murdered, raped, etc. Rather, the so called right to privacy is a so called “positive right,” as in the “right” to food, clothing, shelter, welfare, etc. That is, it is no right at all; rather the “right” to privacy is an aspect of wealth. As Murray N. Rothbard (The Ethics of Liberty, chapter 16) made clear, there is only a right to private property, not privacy:

It might, however, be charged that Smith does not have the right to print such a statement, because Jones has a “right to privacy” (his “human” right) which Smith does not have the right to violate. But is there really such a right to privacy? How can there be? How can there be a right to prevent Smith by force from disseminating knowledge which he possesses? Surely there can be no such right. Smith owns his own body and therefore has the property right to own the knowledge he has inside his head, including his knowledge about Jones. And therefore he has the corollary right to print and disseminate that knowledge. In short, as in the case of the “human right” to free speech, there is no such thing as a right to privacy except the right to protect one’s property from invasion. The only right “to privacy” is the right to protect one’s property from being invaded by someone else. In brief, no one has the right to burgle someone else’s home, or to wiretap someone’s phone lines. Wiretapping is properly a crime not because of some vague and woolly “invasion of a ‘right to privacy’,” but because it is an invasion of the property right of the person being wiretapped.

The government, of course, has no right to invade our privacy, since it has no rights at all. It should not exist. Period. It is an illegitimate institution, since it initiates violence against innocent people. Therefore, it can have no right to do anything. Anything. A forteriori, the state has no right to privacy, either. And this for two reasons. First, is has no rights of any kind, since it is an illicit institution. Therefore, it cannot have any privacy “rights.” Second, even if it did have some rights, it could not possibly have a right to privacy, since there is and can be no such thing. As a corollary, we need pay no attention to its “secret” classifications, apart of course from pragmatic or utilitarian considerations: Edward Snowden’s personal life has been threatened by these criminals; this evil institution still has a lot of power. But as a matter of deontology, we are free to ignore statist “secret” classifications.

But suppose a private individual were to invade our privacy without violating our private property rights. Would he have a right to do that? Yes, at least insofar as I understand the libertarian perspective. The paparazzi have a right to take pictures of movie stars, professional athletes, without permission, provided only they do not violate private property rights. If the streets and sidewalks were privately owned (I make a case for that in this book, The Privatization of Roads and Highways: Human and Economic Factors; Auburn, AL: The Mises Institute; available for free here), their owners would presumably supply an environment desired by customers. If they wanted to attract famous camera-shy people to their property, it is to be expected that they would protect them from the shutterbugs. If not, not. The market would determine these sorts of things. In a forthcoming book in my Defending the Undefendable series, the first of which is available for free here, I shall be devoting a chapter to the Peeping Tom who looks at people who would prefer not to be seen. For a more scholarly treatment of this issue, I recommend the following article: Block, Walter, Stephan Kinsella and Roy Whitehead. 2006. “The duty to defend advertising injuries caused by junk faxes: an analysis of privacy, spam, detection and blackmail.” Whittier Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 925-949.

All men of good will owe a great debt of gratitude to those who told truth to power, preeminently Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg. When and if the present rash of statist murder ever ceases they are the people who will have done more than pretty much anyone else to stop it. We must all take our hats off to them. However, to claim that there is a right to privacy is to misunderstand the libertarian philosophy, the last best hope for our prosperity, and even the very survival of mankind. It does us our movement no good to mischaracterize libertarianism in this very proper libertarian outpouring of appreciation for these whistle-blowers who very properly denigrated and exposed governmental attacks on our privacy. The state should not reduce our privacy. The state should not be doing much of anything at all. But private incursions into privacy, as long as achieved without private property rights violations, are licit under libertarian law.

Privacy is a benefit, not a right. It is a benefit that the market, when and if it is freed, will confer on those of us who wish it.

DHS’ Napolitano Leaves Legacy of Corruption, Lies, Lawsuits, and Waste

Bob Adelmann
thenewamerican.com
July 13, 2013

Many were surprised at Janet Napolitano’s announcement that she will leave her position as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at the end of August to become president of the University of California. Chosen from more than 300 candidates vying for the position, Napolitano managed to keep her interest in that position, and her successful bid for it, from the public until Friday.

She issued the usual departure appreciation statement:

I thank President Obama for the chance to serve our nation during this important chapter in our history. And I know the Department of Homeland Security will continue to perform its important duties with the honor and focus that the American public expects.

In response the president issued his dutiful reply:

Since day one, Janet has led my administration’s effort to secure our borders, deploying a historic number of resources, while also taking steps to make our immigration system fairer and more consistent with our values.

And the American people are safe and more secure thanks to Janet’s leadership in protecting our homeland against terrorist attacks.

Senator Jeff Sessions, (R-Ala.), saw things just a little differently: Napolitano’s tenure has been marked “by a consistent disrespect for the rule of law,” he observed.

Almost from her first day in office Napolitano failed to grasp the difference between truth and falsehood. Taking office in January 2009, she stoked controversy and an angry response from the Canadian ambassador when she incorrectly claimed that the September 11, 2001 attackers had entered the United States from Canada. When caught, she demurred without apology:

To the extent that terrorists have come into our country … across a border, it’s been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there.

Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, angrily corrected Napolitano:

All of the 9/11 terrorists arrived in the United States from outside North America. They flew to major U.S. airports. They entered the U.S. with documents issued by the United States government, and no 9/11 terrorists came from Canada.

Thus began the long litany of inaccuracies, distortions, and cover-ups issued by Napolitano and her agency. In an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley about how the DHS “system” worked in deflecting an attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, Napolitano said:

One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight.

When forced to correct the account, Napolitano told Matt Lauer on December 28 that her comments “were taken out of context” and admitted that in fact “our system did not work.”

Napolitano either allowed or encouraged a “female sorority house” environment at the highest levels of her department that resulted in a federal discrimination lawsuit being filed by special Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent James Hayes which claimed her subordinates, Dora Schriro and Suzanne Barr, mistreated and sexually harassed him and other male staffers. When Hayes first reported the misbehaviors (beyond propriety to describe here) to the Equal Employment Opportunity Office, Napolitano launched a series of misconduct investigations against him. Soon thereafter Barr went on leave and then resigned altogether in September, 2012.

One of the most outrageous incidents concerned the publishing of a threat assessment report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence of Radicalization and Recruitment” in April, 2009. The report claimed that the election of a black president, the economic meltdown, home foreclosures, concerns about impending gun control legislation, illegal immigration, and other factors were likely to drive recruiting into right-wing extremist factions. From that report:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment…

The consequences of a prolonged economic downturn — including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit — could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.

The report referred to various “conspiracy theories” that might put the country at risk, along with a porous Mexican border:

Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent anti government conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty…

DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence.

When challenged about those “findings,” Napolitano was forced to make numerous apologies and her department admitted to a “breakdown in internal processes” in creating the report.

Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, noted in an editorial in March that the Government Accounting Office (GAO) identified billions of dollars in cost overruns incurred by the DHS and that even the DHS Inspector General’s office identified more than $1 billion in “questionable” expenses. He pointed out that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), one of Napolitano’s agencies, pays salaries of more than $100,000 a year to over 3,500 bureaucrats while the DHS itself was paying out performance bonuses of $61 million in 2011. As Duncan noted:

Our country is over $16 trillion in debt. Numerous examples of departmental cost overruns, schedule delays and performance problems cannot continue in this constrained budget environment.

One is reminded of General Sherman’s March to the Sea where total war against Georgia citizens was waged in late 1864 in order to destroy Georgia’s economy. The obvious benefit of Napolitano’s departure for the University of California is that she may be likely to inflict less damage there than she did as head of the DHS.

Money, guns flowing from Kuwait to Syria’s most radical rebel factions

Jamie Dettmer
foxnews.com
July 12, 2013

Syrian rebels have a new source of weapons and cash from inside Kuwait, and their benefactors in the oil-rich state are sending the aid to the most militant and anti-West factions involved in the fight to topple Bashar al-Assad.

The role of Saudi and Qatari governments and individuals in the funding and arming of Islamist fighters in Syria has been well known since the civil war began more than two years ago. But now, guns and money are flowing from private sources and Salafist-controlled NGOs based in Kuwait, and they are going to rebel factions aligned with Al Qaeda.

“We are collecting money to buy all these weapons, so that our brothers will be victorious,” hard-core Sunni Islamist Sheikh Shafi’ Al-Ajami announced on Kuwaiti television last month, listing the black-market prices of weapons, including heat-seeking missiles, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Read more

Obama Orders Fed Workers to Spy on Each Other

Jonathan S. Landay and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy
July 10, 2013

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Under the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”

Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.” Managers of special insider threat offices will have “regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access” to employees’ personnel, payroll, disciplinary and “personal contact” files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial disclosure forms.

Full article here

Bonuses Given to Bank of America Employees for Home Foreclosures

Bank of America employees were told to disappear records, falsify documents and blatantly lie to its’ customers

Julie Wilson
Infowars.com
July 10, 2013


Homeowners have filed a multi-state class action lawsuit against Bank of America (BOA) for scamming them into foreclosure.

Last week, six former BOA employees revealed in a sworn statement to a federal court in Massachusetts that they were given financial incentives for deliberately foreclosing on peoples’
homes.



According to Salon, BOA employees in the mortgage servicing unit “systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid staff bonuses” for foreclosing on peoples’ homes.

On June 1, 2012 Obama expanded the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) to help struggling homeowners.

HAMP was supposed to lower homeowners’ monthly payments so that they could afford their payments and sustain their home for the long-term. Instead of providing homeowners with the modifications to their loans, former employees say BOA used it as a tool, attempting to squeeze out as much money as possible from the struggling borrowers before eventually foreclosing on them.

Under the program’s guidelines, borrowers were supposed make “three trial payments before the loan modification became permanent.” Instead, the borrowers were left making trial payments for up to one year and were then rejected for “permanent modification.” Homeowners were left owing the difference between the trial modification and the original payment.

The BOA employees were told to lie to customers telling them their files were incomplete or missing, when they weren’t. Or, customers were told their file was “under review,” but would then be thrown out for being more than 30 days old.

Former case management supervisor William Wilson said, “I personally reviewed hundreds of files in which the computer system showed the homeowner had fulfilled a Trial Period Plan and was entitled to a permanent loan modification, but was nevertheless declined for permanent modification.”

Some employees even went as far as falsifying electronic records and also blatantly removed documents from the homeowners’ files to make it look like the borrower had failed to submit the required information.

Simone Gordon, a former BOA employee, said managers created quotas for lower-level employees, and a bonus system for reaching those quotas. Employees “who placed ten or more accounts into foreclosure in a given month received a $500 bonus,” said Gordon.

BOA employees even received gift cards to places like Target and Bed Bath & Beyond for their “good work.”

Reportedly, employees who refused to lie to customers, didn’t meet the quotas, or questioned the bank’s ethics, were fired.

The U.S. Department of Treasury, the entity in charge of overseeing HAMP, failed to discipline a single bank for their blatant misconduct and refusal to follow the program’s guidelines.

Ex-employees listed specific names of top BOA executives that were involved in directly authorizing these fraudulent transactions.

“The delay and rejection programs were methodically carried out under the overall direction of Patrick Kerry, a Vice President who oversaw the entire eastern region’s loan modification process,” wrote William Wilson.

Other executives included John Berens, Patricia Feltch and Rebecca Mairone, who is now working for JP Morgan Chase, and happens to be under investigation for a separate financial fraud case.

Poll shows “Massive Swing” In Public View Of Terror/Liberty Trade Off

Majority of Americans see Snowden as hero, despite relentless government and media attacks

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
July 10, 2013

A new scientific poll out this week finds that former NSA leaker Edward Snowden is viewed by the majority of Americans in a positive light as a whistleblower, and not a “traitor”, as the mainstream media and government officials would have it.

The poll from Quinnipiac, also reveals that a plurality of registered voters believe that government anti-terrorism programs have gone too far in stripping away liberties.

When given the two options, 55% of poll respondents said that they believed Snowden to be a “whistleblower”, while only 34% see him as a “traitor.”

The terms were used as an acknowledgement of the media talking point that has been repeated again and again since Snowden fled the US to Moscow, from where he is still seeking political asylum.

The poll found that the description of Snowden as a whistle-blower and not a traitor was the majority opinion in practically every demographic of voter, regardless of party, gender, income, education or age.

Only amongst black voters did more people say they thought Snowden to be a traitor, with the margin at 43% to 42%.

“The verdict that Snowden is not a traitor goes against almost the unified view of the nation’s political establishment,” commented Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac’s polling institute.

Several elected officials, including House Speaker John Boehner, have referred to Snowden as a traitor, and have called for him to be given the harshest possible punishment.

The findings have bolstered the results of similar polls undertaken when the news first broke last month in early June, and underscore the fact that people no longer believe the idea that exposing government surveillance of Americans makes the country less safe.

Perhaps the more telling revelation from the poll is the fact that by a 45-40% margin, voters now believe that the government goes too far in restricting civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism efforts.

Those figures represent a monumental reversal from just over three years ago when the public told Quinnipiac by a 63-25 margin that the government didn’t go far enough.

“The massive swing in public opinion about civil liberties and governmental anti-terrorism efforts, and the public view that Edward Snowden is more whistle-blower than traitor are the public reaction and apparent shock at the extent to which the government has gone in trying to prevent future terrorist incidents,” said Peter Brown.

Put simply, Americans are no longer buying the idea that the threat of terrorism warrants their own government spying on them en mass. Neither do they believe that it is right to punish and demonize anyone who speaks out about it, just as an authoritarian regime would.

The poll also revealed that both Democrats and Republicans were evenly divided on whether government counter-terrorism measures have become excessive. By a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, independent voters said the government has taken things too far.

“The fact that there is little difference now along party lines about the overall anti-terrorism effort and civil liberties and about Snowden is in itself unusual in a country sharply divided along political lines about almost everything,” Brown said.

“It would be naive to see these numbers as anything but evidence of a rethinking by the public about the tradeoffs between security and freedom,” Brown added.

In related news, Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the Snowden leaks has revealed that Snowden has this week “vehemently denied media claims that he gave classified information to the governments of China or Russia.”

” He also denied assertions that one or both governments had succeeded in ‘draining the contents of his laptops’. ‘I never gave any information to either government, and they never took anything from my laptops,’ he said.”

Greenwald explains how the claim was generated in the media without a shred of evidence, and subsequently spread everywhere as “truth”, being repeatedly cited in an effort to demonize Snowden.

Gerald Celente Unleashed - July 3, 2013

The U.S. Border: A Constitution-Free Zone

Where Officials Can Grab Your Computer And Copy Your Hard Drive

Michael Snyder
The American Dream
July 7, 2013

Did you know that the U.S. government considers the U.S. border to be a “constitution-free zone”? Did you know that customs officials can take your computer away from you, keep it for 30 days or more, and make a copy of everything that is on your hard drive? Sadly, this is actually true. According to the government, when you choose to cross the U.S. border you temporarily give up your constitutional rights. They can look at anything on your computer that they want to, and if they find anything that violates any law, they can use it against you in court. You may think twice about taking your computer out of the country after you read the rest of this article.

A lot of people think that it is the TSA that is doing this, but they are not supposed to be doing these kinds of searches. According to the official TSA blog, only customs officials are authorized to search laptops and other electronic devices…

Our officers might visually inspect your laptop and perform anexplosives trace detection test, but that’s it. Our officers don’t even turn computers on during inspection.
So where are the reports coming from? They’re coming from people who have had their laptops searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

According to the Fourth Amendment, U.S. citizens are never supposed to be searched without probable cause. But the U.S. government has decided to throw out the Fourth Amendment, and the courts have gone along with it. So now customs officials can search anything that you bring across the border – including your computer. The following is from Wikipedia…

The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), ICE-HSI Special Agents, and Coast Guard officers (E4 grade and above) who are all customs officers (those tasked with enforcing Title 19 of the United States Code) with the United States Department of Homeland Security, are permitted to search travelers and their belongings at the American border without probable cause or a warrant. Pursuant to this authority, customs officers may generally stop and search the property of any traveler entering or exiting the United States at random, or even based largely on ethnic profiles.

If you get “flagged” for some reason, you are much more likely to have your computer searched.

Of course this is going to make people much more hesitant to speak out against the government and it is going to have an incredibly chilling affect on our First Amendment rights, but that is probably what they want anyway.

One example of an individual that was “flagged” for special treatment was described in an article by Lisa Vaas…

According to a report in Sunday’s Boston Globe, the consultant – a former MIT researcher, David House – was returning from rest and relaxation in Mexico when federal agents seized his laptop.
According to the Globe, the government wanted to know more about House’s connections to Bradley Manning, the US Army private accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.
The seizure comes as no surprise. As Globe writer Katie Johnston notes, United States ports of entry are dubbed “Constitution-free zones” by civil liberties advocates.
Barring invasive techniques such as strip seizures, government agents are free to disregard Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They don’t need reasonable suspicion or probable cause, and they can take what they like, be it laptops or smart phones.

It has been estimated that 5,000 laptops, cell phones, iPods and cameras are searched each year, but nobody really knows.

And if they do take your computer, you might not get it back for a very long time…

Two years ago The Constitution Project issued a report on the issue, “Suspicionless Border Searches of Electronic Devices: Legal and Privacy Concerns with the Department of Homeland Security’s Policy.”
The group explained: Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “officers may detain electronic devices for significant periods of time. For CBP, detentions can be extended well beyond the minimum five-day guideline with supervisory approval. If the device is detained by ICE, the detention can last for ‘a reasonable time,’ which according to its Directive can last 30 days or more.” Neither agency sets any firm time limit.

Does this upset you?

It should.

When I first heard about this, I was hesitant to believe it.

It just seemed too crazy to me.

But we live in a crazy world that is rapidly getting crazier.

The U.S. government has decided that any American citizen that chooses to cross the border temporarily gives up their constitutional rights, and the courts are going along with it.

So what should we do?

Well, number one, you might want to avoid going across the border if you can.

Secondly, you might want to consider not taking any computer with you when you do travel internationally. Any little thing that they find can be used to put you away behind bars.

We are very quickly being transformed into a “Big Brother” society, and our rights are constantly being eroded. Hopefully the American people will begin to stand up and say something about these issues, because if they don’t eventually we won’t have any privacy left at all

Video: Cop Enraged As Citizen Attempts To Defy Independence Day DUI Checkpoint

Mikael Thalen
Infowars.com
July 7, 2013

A young man in Murfreesboro, Tenn. attempted to uphold his constitutional rights to enraged officers this Independence Day, at a DUI checkpoint.



As the man in the video pulls up, officers immediately demand he roll down his window further, to which the man refuses, a right he is entitled to.

The officer then demands to know the man’s age, to which the driver also refuses. The officer then lies to the driver, telling him that he is required to give his age despite there being no law stating you must give an officer your date of birth if not being legally detained.

The officer then orders the driver to pull over to a secondary area for further investigation despite no concrete probable cause or reasonable suspicion.

“Am I being detained?” the driver asks.

The officer becomes enraged almost instantly, refusing to answer the man’s question, knowing full well he has to legally let the man go.

After the driver’s car is surrounded by officers, who are now attempting to intimidate the driver into complying, the driver decides to pull up to the secondary checkpoint.

The officer then orders the driver out of the car, continuing the illegal detainment.

“Are you an attorney or something? You know what the law is?” the officer asks.

The officer, knowing he can’t search the car without the driver’s permission, demands access to the vehicle, which the driver refuses.

Officers then unleash the K9 Unit, now searching for drugs at the DUI checkpoint despite no questions regarding alcohol ever being brought up to the driver.

At 3:56 in the video, the officer appears to make the dog give a “false positive,” making it seem as if the dog found drugs despite the fact that there were none in the vehicle.

As officers enter the man’s car illegally, they notice the man’s video camera on the seat and instantly become silent. The officer searching the vehicle then grabs the man’s camera and turns it the opposite direction, so the officers’ actions can not be seen.

Despite the officer’s admission that the driver is well within his rights, he continues to ignore them at every possible moment.

“He’s perfectly innocent and he knows his rights. He knows what the constitution says,” the officer says as he searches the man’s vehicle illegally.

While most everyone agrees on the importance of keeping drunk drivers off the streets, it cannot be done while defying and ignoring the Constitution.

As social media and the internet continues to educate citizens on their rights at government checkpoints, officers are now beginning to engage a growing and informed public.

AT&T joins Verizon, Facebook in selling customer data

RT
July 7, 2013


AT&T has announced that it will begin selling customers’ smart phone data to the highest bidder, putting the telecommunications giant in line with Verizon, Facebook and other competitors that quietly use a consumer’s history for marketing purposes.


The company claims its new privacy policy, to be updated within “the next few weeks,” exists to “deliver more relevant advertising” to users based on which apps they use and their location, which is provided by GPS-tracking. Apparently recognizing the natural privacy concerns a customer might have, AT&T assured the public that all data would be aggregated and made anonymous to prevent individual identification.

A letter to customers, for instance, described how someone identified as a movie fan will be sent personalized ads for a nearby cinema.

“People who live in a particular geographic area might appear to be very interested in movies, thanks to collective information that shows wireless devices from that area are often located in the vicinity of movie theaters,” the letter states. “We might create a ‘movie’ characteristic for that area, and deliver movie ads to the people who live there.”

A June 28 blog post from AT&T’s chief privacy officer Bob Quinn said the new policy will focus on “Providing You Service and Improving Our Network and Services,” but the online reaction has been overwhelmingly negative, with many customers looking for a way to avoid the new conditions.

“You require that we allow you to store a persistent cookie of your choosing in our web browsers to opt out,” one person wrote. “No mention of how other HTTP clients, such as email clients, can opt out. If you really did care about your customers, you would provide a way for us to opt out all traffic to/from our connection and mobile devices in one easy setting.”

One problem for any customer hoping for a new service is the lack of options, smartphone or otherwise. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Verizon each store consumer data for purposes that have not yet been made clear. And because of the profit potential that exists when a customer blindly trusts a company with their data, small Internet start-ups, including AirSage and many others, have developed a way to streamline information into dollars.

The nefarious aspect of AT&T’s announcement is underscored by the recent headlines around the National Security Agency, which has spent years has compelling wireless corporations to hand over data collected on millions of Americans. Unfortunately for the privacy of those concerned, AT&T’s new policy may only be a sign of things to come.

“Instead of merely offering customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google and Facebook,” the Wall Street Journal wrote about the matter in May.

Only 47% of Adults Have Full-Time Job

Mike Flynn
Breitbart
July 6, 2013

The release of the June Jobs’ Report Friday was something of a relief for the markets. The Labor Department reported that the economy gained 195,000 jobs in June, which beat economists’ expectations. The Department also reported that the economy gained 70,000 more jobs in April and May than it originally estimated. The report, however, also provides clear evidence that the the nation is splitting into two; only 47% of Americans have a full-time job and those who don’t are finding it increasingly out of reach.

Of the 144 million Americans employed last month, only 116 million were working full-time. Friday’s report showed that 58.7% of the civilian adult population of 245 million was working last month. Only 47% of Americans, however, had a full-time job.

The market’s positive reaction to Friday’s report is another sign of how far our economic expectations have fallen. If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would be almost 9 million more people working. Just in the last year, almost 2 million Americans have left the labor force. With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn’t surprising that economic growth has been so weak.

Read full article

Police chief killed with rifle lost in ATF gun-tracking program

Richard A. Serrano
L.A. Times
July 6, 2013

A high-powered rifle lost in the ATF’s Fast and Furious controversy was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco earlier this year, according to internal Department of Justice records, suggesting that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico.

Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire. Also killed was one of his bodyguards. His wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.

Local authorities said eight suspects in their 20s and 30s were arrested after police seized them nearby with a cache of weapons — rifles, grenades, handguns, helmets, bulletproof vests, uniforms and special communications equipment. The area is a hot zone for rival drug gangs, with members of three cartels fighting over turf in the region.

Read full article

The Real Meaning of the Fourth of July

Jacob G. Hornberger
lewrockwell.com
July 3, 2013

Contrary to popular myth, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not great Americans. Instead, they were great Englishmen. In fact, they were as much English citizens as Americans today are American citizens. It’s easy to forget that the revolutionaries in 1776 were people who took up arms against their own government.

So how is it that these men are considered patriots? Well, the truth is that their government didn’t consider them patriots at all. Their government considered them to be bad guys — traitors, all of whom deserved to be hanged for treason.

Most of us consider the signers of the Declaration of Independence to be patriots because of their courage in taking a stand against the wrongdoing and tyranny of their own government, even risking their lives in the process.

Yet not even the patriotism and courage of these English citizens constitutes the foremost significance of the Fourth of July, any more than the military victory over their government’s forces at Yorktown does.

Read more

Colorado Gun Shops Suffer Under New Firearm Laws

Julie Wilson
Infowars.com
July 2, 2013


New gun laws enacted in Colorado yesterday have crippled some gun and pawn shops.


The state once considered part of the Wild West is now reduced to imposing universal background checks on gun purchases and is also banned from selling ammunition magazines that hold over 15 rounds.

New gun laws followed in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school last December in Newtown, Conn. where 20 children and 6 adults were killed. Although the story has been widely publicized and city governments nationwide have even implemented legislation based on this event alone, many questions remain unanswered about the gruesome killings.

The most important question left unanswered is why? Why did Adam Lanza suddenly slay 20 school children at a school that he himself once attended? When tragedies like this occur, usually the public is interested in getting inside the mind of the killer and finding out why. But in this case more questions were left unanswered than information was provided.

Blogs and alternative media websites questioned what type of mental state Adam Lanza was in, asking what prescription drugs, if any, he was on.

The establishment media sidestepped these questions completely, and it was never made public what prescription drugs Lanza was on.

Despite loads of unanswered questions, the mainstream media waged a war against AR-15s demanding they be abolished and even managed to inflict hoplophobia, the fear on firearms, on the entire country.

Since then, all sorts of gun laws have been proposed including gun taxes, mandated firearm insurance, universal background checks, mandatory gun-registration, magazine restrictions and even all-out bans on particular firearms.

While the US government is the world’s largest firearms distributor, they are now adamant to stop private gun companies from selling certain firearms and magazines.

Colorado is the most recent state to be hit with new gun laws. Rod Brandenburg, the owner of Grandpa’s Pawn and Gun, says the new law “bars him from returning such magazines to the customers who show up at his shop to repay the principal and interest on the loans they got,” according to local Colorado newspaper.

Last Saturday Brandenburg said his business had “between 50 and 100 ammunition magazines that will be in violation of the 15-round limit.”

Brandenburg was able to call customers in advance of the new law and warn them that they needed to come pick up their magazines and bring something else to pawn before the law went into effect on Monday. However, many customers were not able to retrieve them in time.

The owner told the local newspaper that “the new law is forcing him to violate the contract between him and his customers”, adding that he’s meeting with his local sheriff on Tuesday for “advice on what to do.”

Gander Mountain, a Colorado sporting goods store that previously sold so called high-capacity magazines prior to the law going into effect, told Infowars.com how the new laws were affecting them. “We are currently waiting to hear from the corporate office on what to do with the left over stock of high-capacity magazines. We will most likely ship them out to states that don’t have the same firearm restrictions.”

It seems silly to ban the magazines in one state just to have them shipped out and sold in another state. But fortunately for the franchises, they have the option of transferring their merchandise to another store, but what about the mom and pop shops?

Lamont Norris, an employee at Pawn Bank in Englewood, Co., told Infowars.com there’s absolutely nothing they can do with their high-capacity magazines, and as of now they’re just sitting idly on the shelves. Norris also said, “It is illegal to release them, so as of now we have no plans on what to do with them.”

The Colorado State Patrol Office, the entity who’s supposed to be in charge of answering questions regarding the new law, said they don’t have any information or instructions to offer businesses that are stuck with these now illegal magazines.

In fact the Colorado State Patrol office couldn’t even provide direction on who to contact regarding this issue.

Even some Colorado sheriffs are against the new gun restrictions. Last Saturday at a rally protesting the new laws, Weld County Sheriff John Cooke told thousands of participants that “he didn’t intend to enforce the new laws because they’re unenforceable.”

According to the Daily Caller, Cooke and 54 other elected sheriffs are suing the state in an attempt to overturn the new law. In a July 10^th hearing, the plaintiffs will request a suspension on the law until the lawsuit is settled.

Police set up fake checkpoint, pull drivers over turning around

RT
July 1, 2013

Can police officers trick automobile drivers with bogus traffic stops? Cops in a small Ohio town seem to think so, and now they’re under attack for trying to sweep the city of drugs using a creative little loophole.

The Mayfield Heights, Ohio Police Department is under fire after the city recently decided to establish a “drug checkpoint” on Interstate 271. Randomly stopping cars and combing them for contraband is illegal, though, so law enforcement has been using the next best thing: fake checkpoints.

Cops in the Cleveland suburb of only 19,000 have been placing warning signs ahead of a bogus stop and then monitoring the behavior of drivers. If any cars demonstrate suspicious activity after being alerted of the phony roadblock, police say that’s enough to stop and search them.

Read more

5-year-old’s Suspension Over Toy Cap Gun Reversed

Child who wet himself in fear will not have permanent black mark on record


Steve Watson
Infowars.com
July 1, 2013



A Maryland kindergartner who wet himself with fear while being interrogated over a toy gun back in June has had a suspension reversed, with the incident being struck from the record after the child’s family hired a lawyer and fought school officials on the matter.

As we reported at the time, the five-year-old from Dowell Elementary School in Lusby, Maryland was questioned alone by school officials for over two hours after he showed a friend his cowboy-style cap gun on the way to school.

Officials finally called the boy’s mother in when he wet his pants. The school principal even stated that had the gun been “loaded” with caps, then it would have been “deemed an explosive and police would have been called in.”

The Washington Post reports that officials wrote to the boy’s family last week to inform them that the 10 day suspension will be reversed “in its entirety”.

The letter, sent to the family’s attorney, says school officials reviewed the record, “carefully considering both the needs of the student and those of the school system.”

The school had previously refused to remove the incident from the boy’s school record, stating that it should remain on the permanent record because other children had been traumatized by the incident.

After repeated efforts by the attorney Robin Ficker, the school finally relented and agreed to rescind the punishment and the mark on the boy’s record. The mother, who refused to back down on the case, stated “I’m just glad they finally decided to make right what they had done so wrong.”

“We need to talk about having common sense when it comes to talking about school safety. We need not to overreact on young children and terrorize them… “He was a normal, typical 5-year-old who had a toy.” the mother added.

Ficker, who was also the attorney involved in the infamous Hello Kitty bubble gun incident back in January, filed a detailed and lengthy report that alleged teachers bribed other students with a school currency called “Husky Bucks” to provide “statements” about the incident. The statements were then written by the principal, and were not sent to the boy’s family.

Ficker’s report also made note of the fact that both the boy and his sister were questioned in an “intimidating manner at length.” Ficker also made the point that five-year-old’s often do not have the understanding to grasp the gravity of student conduct codes.

“It is common for kindergartners to play Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers or to bring things to Show and Tell,” the appeal said. “In any case, telling a little 5 year old something once or twice, is often not enough.”

The reversal of the suspension comes at the same time as the dismissal of criminal charges against 14-year-old Jared Marcum who refused to stop wearing a gun rights T-shirt to school in West Virginia.

If a Petition Can Force Morsi From Office, Why Can’t the Same Remove Obama?

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
July 1, 2013


Egypt’s Tamarod Campaign is an unprecedented petition drive calling for the impeachment of Mohamed Morsi. Tamarod claims to have more than 15 million signatures. That’s 2 million more than voted for Morsi in last year’s presidential elections. The Egypt Independent, an English-language newspaper, claims the number is much higher – around 22 million signatures, a significant percentage of the nation’s 82 million citizens.

The group plans “to announce their full count ahead of Sunday’s protests but have claimed to have as many as 20 million signatures, which they collate, confirm and record in a database in a precise operation, knowing their count will be questioned,” ABC News reported last week.

Tamarod – Arabic for “rebellion” – rapidly expanded from a petition drive into a full-blown grass roots political movement that is now challenging the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical Sunni Salafist allies in the north African country. It is calling for a long-term sit-in and boycotts of payment to the government for electricity, water, gas, taxes, and taxi fees. If Morsi refuses to step down, Tamarod proposes the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court serve as acting president until new elections can be held.

The demand was echoed by Egypt’s military. On Monday, it issued a statement warning it will take over the government if Morsi does not agree to step down.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a number of petitions calling for the removal of Barack Obama from office – for violating the Constitution and waging illegal wars – have not only floundered, they have devolved into a corporate media joke and are dismissed as the meandering of extremists and lunatics.

Our petition calling for Obama to resign posted on the “We the People” website back on June 7 has so far received 26,000 signatures, far short of the 100,000 required to have it officially considered by the government. It now has less than a week to get more than 73,000 signatures.

A World Net Daily petition urging Congress to impeach Obama for numerous “high crimes and misdemeanors” has so far reached 106,000 signatures, a miniscule number in a nation of over 300 million people.

Polls consistently show Obama in negative popularity territory. “The Presidential Leadership Index fell to 43.2 from 48.9 a month earlier, the lowest since Obama took office. The 11.7% monthly decline also was his worst ever. It’s the fourth straight reading below 50, signaling disapproval,” reports Investors.com today.

“Revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of Americans’ phone records and Internet activity dominated headlines over the past month. Meanwhile, more news came out of the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.”

Despite multiple scandals, millions of Americans either approve of Obama’s performance or just don’t give a damn (or more likely, are not paying attention enough to form an opinion), a situation that sends a strong message about the political situation in the United States.

It is not clear if Americans will ever care about what happens politically in the United States or if they will ever take definitive action against the government like the people of Egypt have done.

Of course, a lot of the impetus in Egypt is driven by poverty and the globalist wrecking ball, a situation that has yet to reach America to the degree it has reached Egypt and the third world.

A rising chorus of voices warn that it will soon enough. Unfortunately, those voices are more often than not ignored, or dismissed as alarmism by the establishment and the corporate media.