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CAMPAIGNFORLIBERTY Fri, 04 Jul 2008
The following statement is written by Congressman Paul about the pending financial disaster.
...
Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world—unless we quickly change our ways.
The notion that a country can afford “guns and butter” with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and a massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.
If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age—a globalism we could accept.
Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure. It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.
I’m fearful that my concerns have been legitimate and may even be worse than I first thought. They are now at our doorstep. Time is short for making a course correction before this grand experiment in liberty goes into deep hibernation.
There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it’s been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers.
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COUCHTRIPPER JUNE 25, 2008
We have received repeated threats of legal and police action from Alastair Brett, legal manager of News International’s Times Newspapers on June 28 and July 2. Brett claims a Times Journalist, Bronwen Maddox, has been subject to threatening emails from Media Lens readers. Brett also claims that we have breached copyright by publishing an email from Maddox without permission. We have sought legal advice and, having essentially zero resources for fighting a court case, feel we have no choice but to delete Maddox’s email from our media alert, ‘Selling The Fireball’, as demanded. You can see the amended version here:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080625_selling_the_fireball.php
With more than 1 million people lying dead in Iraq, it pains us greatly to see our attempt to host an honest, rational discussion on the looming threat of war with Iran butchered in this way.
It is almost exactly seven years since we started Media Lens and this is the first time we have been threatened with legal action. We will have more to say about this in due course, as will others. As ever, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone in communicating with journalists.
Best wishes
The Editors
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OHMPROJECT Mon, 30 Jun 2008
Oh yeah. 9/11 did change everything.
Remember the 90s? It was the dawn of an era of globalization and easy, instaneous movement of information. The hero of this new age was the "road warrior" who jetted around the globe solving problems, selling Infomation Age products and making deals. And the warrior's chief weapon was the state-of-the-art laptap crammed with all the features and data needed to accomplish the task.
Not any more. The Patriot Act, zealous U. S. Customs and TSA officials and a Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling giving a green light to warrantless searches and seizures has made traveling with a laptop very difficult. And if you carry sensitive data on that laptop these days, you're a fool.
The Baltimore Sun reports that U. S. Customs officials are routinely seizing 5-10% of the laptop s brought back in to the country by U. S. citizens returning home after international travel. There's no warrant or reasonable cause, just a program to radomnly expropriate laptops and keep them for 2 weeks or longer for "random inspection of electronic media." The "program," in effect for the last few years, is also being applied to digital cameras, cell phones and PDAs.
Don't expect the courts to step in and stop the intrusion. In United States v. Arnold, the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Constitution afforded no protection against random searche s of laptops and other personal electronic equipment when citizens bring it back in to the U. S. Under this ruling, customs agents can seize a laptop, require you to open its files for their inspection, or download all your data to their computers.
The trial judge in Arnold had ruled in favor of defendant (in a child porn case, of course), noting that our laptops these days carry:
vast amounts of private information, including passwords, financial records, health information, business documents and communication records.
“You can’t treat them like other devices,” he said.
Not so, said an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit. Arnold's lawyer, with the support of civil liberties and privacy advocates like the Electronic Freedom Foundation, will seek Supreme Court review.
Senate hearings last week revealed a pattern of overreaching and abuse by federal border officials.
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INFOWARS Fri, 27 Jun 08
Anti-war MP George Galloway has accused London Metropolitan Police of engaging in "a deliberate conspiracy to bring about scenes of violent disorder" during President George W. Bush's visit to the UK last week.
In addition to this information, other demonstrators have described similar incidents with strange looking protesters.
It has been common practice at previous demonstrations for authorities to employ police or special forces to intentionally infiltrate peaceful protests and cause violence.
Last year peaceful protestors at the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello captured sensational video of hired agent provocateurs attempting to incite rioting and turn the protest violent, only to encounter brave resistance from real protest leaders.
Quebec provincial police later admitted that their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.
In Seattle in 1999 at the World Trade Organisation meeting, the authorities declared a state of emergency, imposed curfews and resorted to nothing short of police state tactics in response to a small minority of hostile black bloc hooligans. In his film Police State 2, Alex Jones covered the fact that the police allowed the black bloc to run riot in downtown Seattle while they concentrated on preventing the movement of peaceful protestors. The film presents evidence that the left-wing anarchist groups are actually controlled by the state and used to demonize peaceful protesters.
At WTO protests in Genoa 2001 a protestor was killed after being shot in the head and run over twice by a police vehicle. The Italian Carabinere also later beat on peaceful protestors as they slept, and even tortured some, at the Diaz School. It later emerged that the police fabricated evidence against the protesters, claiming they were anarchist rioters, to justify their actions. Some Carabiniere officials have since come forward to say they knew of infiltration of the black bloc anarchists, that fellow officers acted as agent provocateurs.
At the Free Trade Area of Americas protests in Miami in late November 2003, more provocateuring was evident. The United Steelworkers of America, calling for a congressional investigation, stated that the police intentionally caused violence and arrested and charged hundreds of peaceful protestors. The USWA suggested that billions of dollars supposedly slated for Iraq reconstruction funds are actually being used to subsidize ‘homeland repression’ in America.
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FSPINVEST Thu, 26 Jun 2008
Today, we are talking about one of the most boneheaded miscalculations of all time. Almost with a single maladroit stroke, a relatively small group of world-improvers undermined the progress of 9 generations. Five years later, Americans are on the losing end of the "biggest transfer of wealth in history," as T. Boone Pickens described the oil market of 2008. George W. Bush has the highest disapproval ratings of any US president in history. America’s most profitable industry - finance - has collapsed...its currency has lost a third of its value...and European, Chinese and Indian economists are wagging their fingers saying "I told you so."
But here at the Daily Reckoning we always look on the bright side. And the sunny side of this story is that the US needed to be humbled. After the Soviet Union fell to its knees in 1990, America had a monopoly on worldwide military force. Nature abhors a monopoly; she needed to take the US down a peg. Who better to do the job than this group of neo-cons? They knew no history; nor did they understand economics. They were the perfect people to lead the nation to disgrace and bankruptcy.
Mr. Kudlow continued his miscalculation by referring to a survey, in which 69% of respondents said they would gladly pay $300 for the war.
So far this year alone, the price of crude has risen 40%. It’s now $100 higher than when the neo-cons took America into the Iraq War. Each American uses 25 barrels of oil per year. This is equivalent to a tax of $2,500 in additional energy expense per person...or $10,000 for a family of four, annually. In addition, the war itself is estimated to cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. Divide that by the number of US families and you get a figure of $10,000 or more.
Ooops.
"Rethinking the country life," begins an article in the New York Times. "Suddenly the economics of American suburban life are under assault
"Prices in outer suburbs will get clobbered," concludes economist Mark Zandi.
If you are among another rank of oil-exporters, you are very happy with high prices, and you only wish that the prices were higher ... In that case, heck, if the price of oil drops, you are in trouble. So you like the high prices, and wish that the prices would continue to climb. Indeed, if the price of oil falls you probably have enough money to go out and engage your own bunch of personal traders to bid the price back up for your own account. Really, why be a price taker if you can be a price maker?
Another way of saying it is that we've collectively built "tomorrow's ruins" today. And I don't mean just the physical structures, the bad architecture and stranded infrastructure that is worthless when energy is expensive. Think as well about the social structures that are beyond worthless when energy gets expensive. Tell me when you start to get worried.....
Much of what happens in our time only happens because energy is relatively cheap and abundant. So when energy gets expensive, a lot of what happens is going to stop happening.
I leave the rest to your imagination.
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YAHOO Thu, 26 Jun 2008
Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan's luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? "Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop," says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.
The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler's privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies 'so-called "mirror images" of drives' are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.
A ruling this year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that DHS does indeed have the authority to search electronic devices without suspicion in the same way that it would inspect a briefcase. The lawsuit that prompted the ruling was the result of more than 20 cases, most of which involved laptops, cellphones, or other electronics seized at airports. In those cases, nearly all of the individuals were of Muslim, Middle Eastern, or South Asian background.
Travelers who have their computers seized face real headaches. "It immediately deprives an executive or company of the very data 'and revenue' a business trip was intended to create," says Susan Gurley, head of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which is asking DHS for greater transparency and oversight to protect copied data. "As a businessperson returning to the U.S., you may find yourself effectively locked out of your electronic office indefinitely." While Hogan had his computer returned after only a few days, others say they have had theirs held for months at a time. As a result, some companies have instituted policies that require employees to travel with clean machines: free of corporate data.
The security value of the program is unclear, critics say, while the threats to business and privacy are substantial. If drives are being copied, customs officials are potentially duplicating corporate secrets, legal records, financial data, medical files, and personal E-mails and photographs as well as stored passwords for accounts from Netflix to Bank of America. DHS contends that travelers' computers can also contain child pornography, intellectual property offenses, or terrorist secrets.
It makes practical sense to X-ray the contents of checked and carry-on luggage, which could pose an immediate danger to airplanes and their passengers. "Generally speaking, customs officials do not go through briefcases to review and copy paper business records or personal diaries, which is apparently what they are now doing now in digital form .. More troubling is what could happen if other countries follow the lead of the United States - "We wouldn't be in a position to strongly object to that type of behavior,"
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NEWS SUMMARY
'Bush impeachment faster by Taguba'
Obama urges need for national service
Israeli option
McCain shakes up staff atop campaign
Chavez to US: Stop your Iran threats
Poll: America wants to picnic with Obama
Officers identify car park body
Russia: US in no position to advise
'Documents will expose West's dishonesty'
Obama aide: A Nuclear-Iran major threat
Bush: Diplomacy, Iran war both likely
'Cheney prefers US attack on Iran'
US: Pentagon Iran remarks 'foolish'
Obama defends his patriotism
Pentagon: Israel will soon attack Iran
HUGE CREDIT CARD CRISIS NEXT FOR AMERICA
Obama rejects Clark remarks on McCain
Ex-agent: CIA suppresses Iran's N-facts
US keeps mum on covert ops in Iran
US: Oil blockade will be an act of war
Obama visits wounded war veterans
Obama, McCain court Latino voters
Bush declares state of emergency in CA
McCain: Obama's words cannot be trusted
US rivals clash over immigration
Vidal: Bush ended US as a republic
New war funds for Bush through 2009
Obama, Clinton finally on same team
Iran: US guilty of downing Flight 655
Paul: Iran war will triple energy prices
Israel: Air strike on Iran will succeed
Iran: US and Israel should disarm chemical weapons
Will Smith gives backing to Obama
Obama disagrees with SC ruling
Kucinich: We went to Iraq for oil
Will Gitmo mock-up affect Americans?
America gives thumbs down to Bush
Homeless man gets nearly 5 years for Bush threats
Hillary Clinton returns to Senate
Obama leads McCain in opinion polls
J’ACCUSE! - THE DREYFUS AFFAIR
George Galloway - love him or hate him but ignore him not.
WHO WAS TO BLAME FOR VIOLENCE AT ANTI-WAR PROTEST?
Galloway to meet senior Met police over Stop The War demo complaint
Obama snubs McCain's nuclear offer
Bahrain: Tip us off before Iran war
McCain: Obama's NAFTA stance retreat
Clinton, Obama to campaign in NH
Biden: I will say yes to Obama's veep offer
Bill Clinton backs Obama's energy policy
Poll: 30 % Americans admit to race bias
'Ohio will tip race in Obama's favor'
Internet voters shake up US election
Obama's double-digit lead over McCain
Obama predicts fear-mongering tactics
McClellan testimony implicates Cheney
World Poll Finds Global Leadership Vacuum
Clinton to campaign alongside Obama
Obama says no to public funding
Pakistanis 'consider US biggest threat'
Did Switzerland give in to US pressure? "monstrosity" - "Switzerland got down on its knees before the United States" - "Swiss neutrality and sovereignty appear not to count with the US"
Obama: Israeli decisions always justified
Will the Mossad Assassinate Obama?
