Month: May 2017

If I had kids of college age or late high school, I would say if you really want to go to college, pay for it yourself. I would discourage them from going to college, because the colleges now are loony bins. It is like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest now, based on what I’ve read. I would encourage the kids to work PT during high school, and expand that to FT after high school. If you want to eventually get a college degree, take courses online while working FT and get the degree that way. But today’s college campuses are not worth it.

First, there’s this race obsession stuff. The lunatic “snowflakes” on the Left are obsessed with race and skin color to such an extent that they are the new racists now. At Evergreen College, for instance, this white biology professor objects to a proposal that white people leave the campus for one day — for whatever stupid reason the racist snowflakes have — and to show how open-minded they are, the morons there are calling for that professor to be fired to punish him for objecting to anti-white racism.

And at University of Chicago, students want totally new academic departments to be created that are all race-based. What is causing all this irrationality on college campuses? I know I referenced this recently, but the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. suggested that we ought to view others by the “content of their character” and not by the color of their skin. (Duh.)

But racists object to that.

So, the racism in Amerika has gone the other way, in which those of certain races who in the past were discriminated against (not just by businesses but by law), are now the ones who want to discriminate against others based on race, or who want special privileges based on race. And by the way, there is no such thing as “white privilege.” (But there is definitely wealth privilege, such as someone born into wealth and a family business and becoming powerful, like The Donald.)

So if I had kids of college age, I would not pay to put them through college. It’s a waste of time and money, and they would be white and get discriminated against, especially the males. On some college campuses like as part of dorm orientation there is this new Two Minute Hate imposed on the white males to remind them of all the guilt they have. Guilt for what? Being a white male. Imagine if there were a program making the black students sit through a lecture in which they are told of their guilt for being black? Obviously, that would not happen. That would be just as crazy. And this stuff now really is literally crazy.

And white or black, Asian or Hispanic, the shouting down of speakers, censorship and intolerance of intellectual diversity are coming mainly from the Left, from those precious “snowflakes,” and not from the conservatives or Tea Party people. The hate and intolerance is on the part of those who can’t stand to hear an opposing point of view on climate matters, economics or social matters. We don’t hear about conservative students shouting down liberals or progressives, and we don’t hear about conservatives physically attacking others (except when it’s a hoax and a false accusation!). And those leftist loony-tunes are getting away with their shouting down tantrums and suppression of others and their physical violence as well.

So now it appears that Middlebury College has decided to not punish the students who shouted down Charles Murray, or even punish, or criminally charge, the student(s) who physically assaulted the lady professor who was accompanying Murray. According to Legal Insurrection, Middlebury stated that because of the criminal assaulter(s) being masked it was impossible to identify anyone responsible for putting the professor in the hospital. So, the message is that whether you just want to shout down a speaker because you are so weak-willed and emotionally immature and intolerant to handle hearing a different point of view, or want to go beat the crap out of a speaker or anyone who might happen to be appearing with him or her, just wear a mask and cover your identity like a coward and a criminal bully. However, eventually more and more states and campuses will allow students, professors or others to carry firearms on campus for self-protection, and I hope that when punks criminally assault some innocent human being that the victim will be armed and fight back. Usually, all you have to do is brandish the firearm and the coward runs away.

But what is it with these young morons? They say that certain words or phrases are “triggering” them, and that their responding with physical aggression is justified? That’s nuts. A lot of idiot professors are encouraging all this crap now, too. And like many of the hippie professors, many university administrators also had their brains fried by all the drugs they did in their earlier years, and all that frying of the brains is being reinforced by all their prescription drugs like Xanax and Zoloft now. College is a mess.

There was yet another terrorist suicide bombing, this time at a concert in Manchester, England. I had never even heard of Ariana Grande before this. She had nothing to do with the attack, obviously. But already the fear-mongers of the British regime are increasing the threat level to maximum, even though your chances of experiencing a terrorist attack are far less than being hit by lightning or dying from falling out of bed. And all the paranoids on talk radio sound like they’re chickens running around with their heads cut off.

So for a dose of reality, Justin Raimondo writes that the war on terrorism isn’t working, because since 9/11 and the always escalating wars of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and the increasing police state here at home, there have also been an increasing number of Islamic-based terrorist attacks.

In Manchester, England the typical response of the suicide bombing that killed 22 is another example of government officials being either totally clueless or just drunk on power. In many cases, I believe, they are drunk on power. In my view, those government officials would have to know that their wars in the Middle East, their bombings and murders of innocents, are what have been provoking terrorist retaliation against the West. It’s a grandiose exhibition of the intentional poking of hornets’ nests. However, because many government bureaucrats are ignorant buffoons, it is possible that they don’t know about the history of U.S. government’s wars, intrusions, invasive military bases in the Middle East since well before 9/11/2001.

And the police state, with the CIA spying on innocents, deliberately funding and providing weapons to extremists, the FBI infiltrating mosques to motivate previously uninvolved young Muslim males who then go on to attempt terrorist acts for the FBI morons to thwart, and England’s equivalent of NSA the GCHQ spying and provoking. I think these people love the powers they give themselves and are absolutely drunk on it. And the new escalation of police state surveillance and harassment of innocent concert-goers, sporting event attendees and travelers at home now, the enforcement minions of the national security state also love their hightened powers, I believe.

So rather than criminally harassing, spying on and treating as suspects millions and millions of innocent civilians in the U.S., England and elsewhere, and continuing the wars and bombing and murdering innocents overseas, the real solution is to stop bombing them and stop murdering their people and destroying their countries, that the U.S. government and other Western governments have been doing in the Middle East for decades (.pdf).

Frankly, we’re not dealing with rational people over there. We’re dealing with mainly people of primitive and barbaric cultures. So it has not been a good idea to poke those hornets’ nests. And I’m not sure if much of this is about oil and other natural resources as it might be more to do with the power-lust and egos, and greed, of very corrupt and immoral politicians and their cronies. Provoking primitive-minded foreigners to become even more radicalized in their repressive religious beliefs and practices by militarily starting wars against them and invading their territories to provoke retaliation, justifies higher tax-funded military budgets and contracts for weapons makers who return the favor to those corrupt politicians in power.

I do have an issue with one thing that Raimondo wrote, however, that the roots of the current crisis are with the George W. Bush presidency. Actually, largely responsible for all this is Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who started the first U.S. government war of aggression against Iraq in 1991, based largely on propaganda, in which the U.S. military bombed and destroyed civilian water and sewage treatment centers, intentionally, and with sanctions caused the Iraqis to have to use untreated water and thus the skyrocketing rates of disease and the subsequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq throughout the 1990s. I’ll never understand how the conservatives and “Christians” defend all that, and at the same time claim to promote morality. The supporters of the U.S. government’s wars in the Middle East since the 1990s have been the most guilty of moral relativism, in my view.

But even before the elder President Bush started the first war on Iraq in 1991, the U.S. government has for decades and decades been invading and trespassing the Middle East with the placement of U.S. military bases there supposedly on what some consider to be sacred land, which the actual inhabitants of those territories don’t like. Christians and conservatives who believe in the Golden Rule should understand that if we here in the U.S. wouldn’t like it if Saudis, Iraqis or Kuwaitis (or Russians or Chinese or Iranians, etc.) placed their military bases or apparatus in Virginia, Florida, or Utah, then there’s a good chance that those foreigners wouldn’t like our government’s doing that on (or around) their lands as well. Even more with that Golden Rule principle, if we wouldn’t like it if those foreign governments started wars here on U.S. territory and bombed our cities and murdered our people, and broke into our homes stealing guns and money, and raped our daughters, wives, or sisters, then perhaps it was never a good idea for our government and military to do all those things to them!

Sadly, a lot of people are ignorant and don’t know their history, combined with being bamboozled by a lot of government propaganda, which is repeated word for word by the lazy stenographers of the mainstream media, and a lot of people are indoctrinated with the pathological narcissism and arrogance of “Exceptionalism,” which has negative effects as well.

So the war on terrorism continues, waged by the bureaucrats and militarists like frothing dogs chasing their tails, and the gullible sheeple are right behind them, unfortunately.

Ron Paul says that Donald Trump should toss his generals’ war escalation plans in the trash.

And Gareth Porter asks whether Trump will agree to the Pentacon’s permanent war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Jacob Hornberger says that the Buttinski should butt out of Korea.

Justin Raimondo on “Donald of Arabia”: a disgusting spectacle.

While the US government, under both Trump and Obama, has routinely maintained that Iran is the biggest exporter of terrorism, that is utter nonsense: the Saudis easily outdo the mullahs of Tehran. Riyadh funds radical madrassas throughout the world that preach pure hatred of the West: they are incubators of terrorism, and have been wreaking havoc from one end of the globe to the other for decades. The terrorist groups that have destroyed Syria are the progeny of the Saudis, and their allies among the Gulf states.

Sheldon Richman gives some more background on the Saudi-Israel-Iran aspect of Trump’s meddling in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, as Donald Trump is so caught up in his sick Saudi suck-up, he completely ignores the landslide election win for moderates and reformers in Iran, as Robert Mackey of the Intercept points out.

And also at the Intercept, Lee Fang describes the bunch of Saudi foreign agents in Washington who have been lobbying for more of those U.S. taxpayer-funded goodies.

Marine veteran Thomas Knapp writes in response to those who constantly say “Thank you for your service.”

Wendy McElroy on NSA’s leaked malware that is being weaponized by criminals.

Trevor Aaronson says that the FBI did terrible things under James Comey.

Derrick Broze discusses the possible new assistant secretary of DHS, David Clarke, who has called for rounding up protesters sans due process.

Kit Daniels discusses rape legalization amid migrant influx in Europe. (Huh?)

In other news, Laurence Vance discusses the latest failed Republican Revolution.

Gary North discusses Snowflake America and the Great Default.

Ars Technica says that 1/3 of FDA-approved drugs still have safety issues.

Bill Sardi has this suggestion for FDA-approved drug package inserts.

And WND with an article on what not to do with your cell phone.

Robert Mueller, FBI director from 2001 to 2013, has been picked to be the “special counsel” to investigate claims of collusions between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government. Mueller sure has a lot of credibility when it comes to government transparency and getting to the truth of the matter.

According to the U.K. Independent in 2004, FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds claimed that when she worked as an FBI translator in 2001-2002 she “saw papers that show US knew al-Qa’ida would attack cities with aeroplanes.”

She told The Independent yesterday: “I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.”

She added: “There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used ­ but not specifically about how they would be used ­ and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities ­ with skyscrapers.”

According to Wikipedia,

In April 2004, Edmonds claimed she had provided information to the panel investigating the September 11 attacks in February that year. Although she started work shortly after 9/11 and worked for just over six months, she claimed knowledge of information circulating within the FBI during spring and summer of 2001. The session was closed and over three hours long, she said. Reportedly, she told the commission that the FBI knew of a planned attack months away and the terrorists were in place…a deposition of Edmonds was quashed under the state secrets privilege. [Source.]

On 13 May 2004, (Attorney General) Ashcroft submitted statements to justify the use of the State secrets privilege against the planned deposition by Edmonds,^[20] and the same day, the FBI retroactively classified as Top Secret all of the material and statements that had been provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 relating to Edmonds’s own lawsuit, as well as the letters that had been sent by the Senators and republished by the Project on Government Oversight.^[21]

On 23 June 2004, the retroactive reclassification was challenged in a suit filed by the Project on Government Oversight, citing fear that the group might be retroactively punished for having published the letters on its website. The Justice Department tried to get the suit dismissed, and the Justice Department explicitly approved their release to the Project on Government Oversight.^[22] The reclassification did, however, keep Edmonds from testifying in the class action suit as well as her own whistleblower suit.^[23][24] The latter decision was appealed, and Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a summary of the audit report, claiming “that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services. Rather than investigate Edmonds’s allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract.”^[25]

So, will Robert Mueller be as objective as possible in this inquiry, or will he be typically subservient to all that really matters in Washington (i.e. the government power-grabbers)? In other words, will he sweep under the table the truth that there is no actual evidence backing up “Russian election involvement” claims yet there is evidence to show that a DNC insider was the leaker in question and not the Russians?

And it looks like former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is being considered to be the new FBI director. Here are some excerpts of a 2011 article by Glenn Greenwald on Lieberman when he announced his retirement from the senate:

But the blood on Joe Lieberman’s hands is accounted for by far more than support for the Iraq War. He’s long been one of Washington’s most indiscriminate, toxic and deceitful supporters of aggressive war generally. Even as the two wars he cheered on were spiraling out of control, he was repeatedly urging new American attacks against Iran, Syria and, most recently, Yemen. Lieberman — who, needless to say, never served in the military nor have any of his children — devoted his entire career to attempting to send other Americans’ children to fight war after war after war. In sum, as The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Will Bunch put it when examining the muddled history of Lieberman’s opposition to the war in Vietnam: “the only war he ever opposed was the only war he might actually have had to fight in.” But, of course, being a relentless warmonger while cowardly hiding yourself and your family far away from the wars you cheer on is not remotely inconsistent with being a Man of Decency and Conscience, as David Brooks and his many Beltway admirers will be the first to tell you….

And then there’s the leading role Lieberman played in lending Democratic support to the whole litany of Bush/Cheney assaults on basic liberties. He defended the “Bush interrogation program” and even waterboarding, and was one of only two Democrats to vote against banning it. He led the way — along with his close friends John McCain and Lindsey Graham — in enacting the Military Commissions Act, which explicitly denied all detainees the right to contest their detention in a court of law: a measure so repressive that the Supreme Court in Boumedienestruck it down as unconstitutional, citing Alexander Hamilton’s warning that “the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.” Once the Court re-established the habeas right which Lieberman and his comrades snuffed out, it turned out, as federal courts found, that there was no credible evidence to justify the detention of a huge percentage of remaining detainees at Guantanamo: innocent people who would have been imprisoned indefinitely to this day — without a shred of due process — if Lieberman had his way.

This “Democratic hero” has spent decades posing serious threats to basic liberties, including free speech. It was Lieberman who, just a few weeks ago, publicly threatened and bullied all companies to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks despite its not even being charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime. That was just a repeat of his censoring behavior, two years earlier, when he successfully demanded that YouTube remove videos he disliked, causing The New York Times to editorialize: “it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech.” …

Then there’s the bill introduced last year by Lieberman and McCain — the so-called “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act” — which is probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It would literally empower the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they “may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It’s basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla or what was done to Japanese-Americans during World War II — arrest them on U.S. soil and imprison them for years in military custody with no charges.

As for Lieberman’s Principled Integrity, just consider this article from The Hill yesterday, which describes how the Connecticut Senator has been so loyal to defense contractors that they are lamenting that he’ll be “hard to replace.” And then there’s the matter of his virulent servitude to the health insurance industry placed next to his wife’s “professional lifetime devoted to the corporate health sector.” And, needless to say, he was the receipient of millions of dollars from the industries he so loyally served.

While Trump has not yet decided who will be the next FBI director, let us pray that he does not choose Joe Lieberman.

But whoever it will be, I’m sure we will get the usual statist, Establishment crony totalitarian, as we can just look at all of them now swarming throughout the whole Trump administration. (Yes, he got rid of Comey, but obviously for more personal reasons, and not out of principle. In that case he would be moving to abolish the entire FBI forthwith.)

The snowflakes are now reversing desegregation by re-segregating themselves, it seems. Now we have black students who want to have separate graduation ceremonies at Harvard. Supposedly other universities such as Stanford have been doing this as well. At Harvard the black graduates attending the black graduation ceremonies will also attend the official integrated graduation later this month. Well jeepers, I hope such ceremonies with those other graduates will not be too “triggering” for those precious black snowflake graduates.

Can you imagine if white students wanted to have whites-only graduations? Walter Williams wrote back in 2009 that such would be called “intolerable racism.” Ya think?

As I have stated previously, if the idiocy, intolerance and hypocrisy we see now on college campuses were going on 35 years ago when I was in college, I’d have dropped out in my first year. Especially being a white male, and all the “Two Minute Hate” sessions being imposed now on the young white males in college.

Have these black college students learned anything at all about the philosophy and teachings of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.? He believed that it was the “content of our character,” not the color of our skin that mattered. That does not seem to be the case now with the race-obsessed.

However, the re-segregation folks say it’s about heritage, not “skin color.” But, there are some white people, such as Ilana Mercer who grew up in South Africa, who are of African heritage. And there are black people whose heritage is from the Caribbean or Central or South America, and not Africa. Will they be attending the “black” graduation ceremonies, too, if this is just about “heritage”?

And is “heritage” so important to you that you have to have separate ceremonies, segregated dorms, and so forth? Do the self-segregators really just hate white people? I’m not suggesting or accusing, only asking. It’s an honest question. There’s a lot of brainwashing going on in the public schools i.e. government schools these days.

In my view, these people (and by “these people,” I’m referring to goofballs who believe that race and skin color are important, whether they are black or white race activists, or white supremacists, or whatever) are very much brainwashed throughout their aforementioned public school i.e. government school youths to obsess about superficial qualities of people such as skin color. The government schools victims being indoctrinated with climate fanaticism, worship of centralized government-controlled “cradle-to-grave care,” and so on, is bad enough.

And there was another example this week of race-related goofballism, if you don’t mind my using that word. The novelist Dennis Lehane was pressured to apologize for his using the “n-word” in his commencement speech at Emerson College. According to CBS Boston,

Lehane used the word during his speech while he talked about growing up during Boston’s busing crisis and the racial tensions of the time.

He says he was in a car with his parents when they came upon a riot and saw people burning effigies of Judge Arthur Garrity and Ted Kennedy.

“And they were screaming ‘[N-Word] out,’” Lehane said.

Lehane’s language has drawn criticism from some on social media.

The story then goes on to quote the twitter posts of some obvious snowflakes whose twits express how they can’t bear to hear offensive language even in the context of the speaker merely describing a past situation.

Now, Lehane didn’t use the “n-word” in an inflammatory or derogatory way or directed at another individual, he merely used it to quote what someone else said, someone he heard while he was young during Boston’s attempt at school desegregation. In Boston’s 1974 school desegregation was the insane busing of white kids from South Boston to schools in Roxbury’s mainly black neighborhood, and vice versa (I think).

The Boston schools desegregation crisis was bad because of being controlled by government central planners. How stupid is it to forcibly bus one kid all the way across town to attend a school when he can just walk to a much closer school? It’s nuts.

In a way, we see in Boston busing some of the origins of the modern idiocy of race-obsession. (“Affirmative Action,” the hiring to jobs or accepting to college of less qualified black or other minority applicants by discriminating against more qualified white or Asian applicants, is another loony-tunes, counter-productive, racist scheme that is also contributing to our current Orwellian irrationality, in my view.)

Do the precious little microaggressed and triggered ever complain about all the comedians and rap artists who use the “n-word” constantly? Especially when many of them use the word in a very derogatory and degrading way, especially toward women and girls! Nope, no complaints.

Seriously, regarding this hypocritical intolerance of the “n-word,” are they going to ban Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Will the race-obsessed intolerant censors of nasty words have Nazi-like book-burnings of books and other materials that are “offensive”? And how childish now that people such as newscasters have to say “n-word.” They might get sued by the speech fascists. Frankly, I’m afraid that if I actually spell out the whole word here simply as a means of describing the above situation, I might get indicted or something. That’s how intolerant and irrational these anti-speech morons are now.

And, as George Will writes, there is this “cultural appropriation” phenomenon. The complainers are complaining that white people or other non-black people are using hair-styles or clothing that comes from the black people’s culture. Huh? What, do you own the concept of braided hair? Are the narcissists so brainwashed now that they can’t see that “their” culture being emulated by white people could possibly be flattering to “their” culture?

Now that President Donald Trump has fired FBI director James Comey, people are asking, “Who should replace James Comey as head of the FBI?” I know I’m asking that. (No, not really.)

Now, what good are the goon bureaucrats of the FBI? They were off the ball on Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev who went on to bomb the Boston Marathon, and the FBI dropped investigations in 2013 and 2014 of Omar Mateen who went on to murder 49 innocents at an Orlando nightclub.

To make matters worse, what the FBI has been doing is infiltrating mosques and social media and exploiting unsuspecting young Muslim males, mainly those who were mentally unstable, who otherwise had no thoughts of getting involved with Islamic terrorism or ISIS, and then the FBI intentionally indoctrinates these hapless schmucks and motivates them to then want to commit terrorist or violent acts, so that the FBI can then go and thwart its own terror plot the FBI itself has concocted. (See Glenn Greenwald, Trevor Aaronson, Petra Bartosiewicz, Craig Monteilh, and Cora Currier , or Google “FBI infiltrate mosques” or “FBI thwart own terror plots,” on that issue you probably haven’t heard about from the nearly brain-dead mainstream media.)

So besides being incompetent, we know that the FBI has a history not only of surveillance of political activists and religious groups, but of blackmail. Many congressmen and senators were terrified of the FBI’s first director J. Edgar Hoover, who author Ronald Kessler believes would have blackmailed Gen. David Petraeus regarding Petraeus’s affair with his publicist Paula Broadwell.

These “intelligence” and government investigative bureaucracy shady characters are known to surveil, snoop on and blackmail not only U.S. congressmen and senators but judges, U.S. Supreme Court Justices, the State Department, and non-government groups such as banks and the Red Cross, according to NSA whistleblower Russell Tice. According to Washington’s Blog, the blackmail schemes are widespread. In my view, no wonder Chief Justice Roberts voted twice to rubber-stamp ObamaCare, and no wonder the FBI has not indicted Crooked Hillary.

The incompetence, corruption, and criminality are combined with their operating with political motivation, as cracking down on dissent is with these government bureaucrats the main #1 purpose of their existence.

Which is no big surprise. It is a government monopoly, after all.

As Naomi Wolf wrote in 2012 regarding the FBI’s infiltration of Occupy Wall Street,

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

Hmm. Occupy Wall Street was big during the later months of 2011, but where did they go after that? And what happened to the Tea Party movement from 2009-2010? I recall hearing Michael Savage and/or callers to his show that people were at Tea Party events taking down license numbers of cars parked at those events. Like to intimidate people later on?

And more recently we saw how DNC and Clinton campaign operatives infiltrated Trump rallies to cause or provoke violence, so they didn’t need the FBI to do that. But we do see similarities between FBI/NSA/IRS/Etc. (government bureaucracies) and unions which are often heavily aligned with Big Government and expanded government power.

But FBI and other government agencies nevertheless infiltrate and/or attempt to intimidate left-wing Big Government-advocating groups. The FBI did attempt to manipulate anti-Trump protesters or other activist organizations such as Black Lives Matter during the 2016 campaign.

The FBI treats dissenting protest groups and legitimate peace activist groups as “terrorists.”

So the FBI doesn’t go after the Clinton Foundation, which “allegedly” engaged in “quid pro quo” (as George Bush the Elder would say) with the Saudi regime, and the FBI doesn’t go after shady characters who concoct phony “evidence” as an excuse to start a whole new war on Iraq for no good reason.

But they do go after honest, peaceful and harmless organizations like Antiwar.com, treating them as terrorism suspects. In 2011, Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo wrote:

… FBI documents recovered through the Freedom of Information Act that detail surveillance of Antiwar.com, the staff, and specifically yours truly.

…

These documents – including one posted on the web site of an Italian banking association – contained the names of those on a “watch list,” the product of an FBI operation dubbed “Operation Lookout.” The memo acknowledges the list “was posted on the internet” in “different versions,” but says the FBI “assessment was conducted on the findings discovered on www.antiwar.com.”

…

The FBI’s intense interest in this “suspect list” verifies that, as I wrote on several occasions, it is indeed authentic. The “enclosures” accompanying the memo include two pieces written by me on the subject: one a piece I wrote for Chronicles magazine about the New Jersey incident, and another antiwar.com column which they wrongly attribute to some website styling itself as “Pravda” (a site which was never authorized to publish my work). While the FBI and the US government have long denounced the persistent stories [.pdf] of “Israeli art students” and “Urban Movers” conducting covert activities on Israel’s behalf in the US as an “urban myth,” their inclusion of Suter and his spouse on their “Operation Lookout” list and their apparent panic that I publicized this fact directly contradicts their denials.

Here’s how the law enforcement resources devoted to “counterterrorism” are being spent: scouring for useful “intelligence” on Antiwar.com on the internet turned up an article – title and author redacted – “reporting on the magnitude and value of American military and economic assistance to Israel” whose author cited “one of his sources of information as www.antiwar.com.”

…

Of course, we’re terrorists – yes, that must be it. Otherwise why would the FBI Counterterrorism Unit be taking such an interest in Antiwar.com? And the proof? Well, someone snared in one of their investigations actually went to our website – more than once! If that isn’t a good reason for the feds to set their dogs sniffing around our garbage cans, well then I don’t know what is.

Now, another thing he mentions is that the FBI were interested in knowing his “real” name, which Raimondo notes they could easily have found out by Googling or going to Wikipedia. (He uses a different first name as a pseudonym for his writing.) And also he mentioned that the FBI indicated an intention to find out who Antiwar.com’s financial contributors were. Antiwar.com states: “Antiwar.com is a ward of the nonprofit Randolph Bourne Institute. Your contribution to Antiwar.com is tax-deductible.” So this seems similar to the Obama IRS and Lois Lerner targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups, including the IRS’s demanding names of financial contributors to the groups, a direct violation of the First Amendment if there ever was one.

More recently, Antiwar.com has won its lawsuit against the FBI. According to Courthouse News, “… a win for government-transparency advocates, the FBI has agreed to turn over records it created when it spied on two anti-war journalists and pay $299,000 to settle their attorneys’ fees.

“The deal, which brings to a close a four-year battle for the records under the Freedom of Information Act, is spelled out in two stipulations filed in San Francisco federal court – one on Friday and the other in January.”

So as James Bovard notes, the Comey firing justly knocks the FBI off its pedestal. (Its government bureaucracy-parasite pedestal, that is.)

And As Ron Paul has stated, now that James Comey has been fired, now fire the FBI!

Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute agrees, stating that we should dismantle the romanticized FBI and give its money back to the states.

And after dismantling the FBI, then dismantle the IRS, the DHS, TSA, CIA, NSA, and all the other central-planning bureaucracies that have for decades been going against our freedom, security, and prosperity.

The government should decide who is a legitimate journalist? Prosecute publishers? No, says Margaret Sullivan who stands up for freedom of speech and the First Amendment. (That’s in the “Lifestyle” section of the Washington Pest, which shows us that paper’s priorities. Well, at least they’re running the column.)

Justin Raimondo on how the “liberals” are today’s censorship fascists.

Jeff Jacoby also discusses the anti-free speech fascists on the Left, this time regarding those who want to ban sexual orientation “conversion therapy” advice or treatment.

Richard Ebeling distinguishes between the personal life planning of each individual and the political central planning of our overlords.

Jacob Hornberger on separating healthcare and State.

Michael Cannon says that the GOP healthcare bill does not repeal ObamaCare, and is worse.

Laurence Vance analyzes Donald Trump’s tax reform proposals.

Robert Wenzel says that libertarians shouldn’t be arguing as statists for power grabs, but on behalf of private property rights.

Glenn Greenwald says that Trump’s support and praise of despots is central to the U.S. tradition, not a deviation from it.

Ron Paul to Donald Trump: Play more golf, stop trying to solve the world’s problems.

Chris Martenson on the relentless push toward war, but why North Korea?

Eli Lake says that Trump’s advisors and his inner circle are clashing. (Good for them! Yes, we love it when hacks and parasites fight each other.)

And Brian Wilson has these tips for your next job interview.

Here is my latest article on Activist Post: Who Controls the Government?

May 8, 2017

It is quite ironic that the previous Drone-Bomber-in-Chief, Barack H. Obama, has been given the “profile in courage” award, which is being presented to him this week by the JFK Library Foundation. But how much courage did it take for Obama to order the bombings of several different countries, killing mostly innocent civilians, when those countries were of no threat to us?

How insulting to President John F. Kennedy, who promoted peace after recognizing that the post-World War II Cold War and national security state were destructive and unnecessary, and who wanted to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

In a June, 1963 speech promoting peace, nuclear disarmament, and diplomacy, Kennedy stated, “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find Communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements — in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.”

The hard-core Cold Warriors probably didn’t like that. Their existence as “security” bureaucrats and their little fiefdoms in Washington were dependent on the fear and paranoia of those “commies,” just as the modern day bureaucrats are dependent on post-9/11 fear-mongering.

And the corporatist cronies back then also probably didn’t like Kennedy’s assertion that “the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles — which can only destroy and never create — is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.”

So there were reasons why those within the national security state apparatus would have wanted to assassinate John F. Kennedy. In my view, the national security apparatus provides the career bureaucrats with power, and is quite profitable. War is a racket, as Gen. Smedley Butler would say.

Some people believe that the military and CIA have controlled the U.S. government since at least when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

But now there are renewed concerns that the U.S. military may no longer be under civilian control because of the influence all the military generals have on President Donald Trump, who has deferred important military decision-making down the chain of command.

Trump picked generals to advise him because he is enamored with their stars and medals, and seems to have some kind of gut response to their swagger, which might be typical of your average authoritarian like Trump.

But so far there have been bad decisions made by the bureaucrats of the Trump administration: bombing Afghanistan caves and tunnels, which hasn’t affected anything or gotten any ISIS militants, and bombing Syria which may have actually helped ISIS.

I guess we can’t expect bureaucrats (and many others now) to learn from history. The U.S. government’s participation in World Wars I and II seemed to have inflated the egos and hubris of career government and military bureaucrats, their future generations of career government and military bureaucrats, and the institutions they have controlled since then.

The narcissistic arrogance could be seen in the military bureaucrats when they consciously and knowingly pursued continued aggressions in Vietnam despite their knowing by the mid-1960s that the war could not be won, as revealed by the Pentagon Papers. Those “leaders” contributed to the deaths of a million innocents and tens of thousands of American soldiers who died for no good reason but to serve the deranged egos of the military bureaucrats.

And Iraq in 1990-91, the decision by President George H.W. Bush to start a whole new war and bombing campaign against a country, Iraq, that didn’t attack us and was of no threat to us, was not just an act of incompetence, but a criminal act.

Bush approved of the U.S. military’s bombings of civilian water and sewage treatment centers and electric service facilities, followed by sanctions and no-fly zones that were continued by President Bill Clinton throughout the 1990s which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian Iraqis. It was an intentional policy of sadism and psychopathic cruelty, that perhaps involved more sinister long-term goals than just to do with oil.

Who would purposely cause a whole population to be vulnerable to disease and death? Who would do that?

But now we have President Donald Trump, who campaigned with anti-war, anti-imperialism rhetoric, but is now the Happy Warmonger. And Trump’s civilian cabinet advisors include military general graduates from West Point or other top military academies but they aren’t exactly trained in the ideas of restraint, diplomacy, the rule of law, and the U.S. Constitution.

No, post-World War II  military people are trained to suppress their consciences, their moral scruples, in order to rationalize their invasions of other territories and the deaths of innocents they cause.

And oh how happy the Trump-advising generals and the other higher-ups in the military must be that Donald Trump is so easily manipulable and spongy. Their psy-ops are working on him like a charm.

It used to be that psy-ops were used by the military and CIA on foreign agents, to manipulate the enemy’s emotions and their decisions. And then the military saw how useful such a technique had been on their own U.S. senators, as reported by the late Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone.

Which is apparently illegal, under U.S. law. Unless they view their own fellow Americans as the “enemy.” Hmm.

Foreign policy analyst Gareth Porter recently tweeted: “Military now seeking permanent US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Time to say loud ‘No’ to permanent war.”

So it’s getting worse now.

Some theorists believe the zealous bureaucrats of the military need permanent war and occupation abroad in order to achieve such a takeover at home. (There may be other reasons, however.)

When the military controls the government, and then there is some kind of emergency or economic collapse, of course they will not think twice about imposing martial law, legal or not, constitutional or not. They will also not think twice about disarming law-abiding Americans.

In Revolutionary times, the early Americans were rightfully wary of militarism, because they knew that would lead to tyranny. But the immoral and incompetent bureaucrats of the modern U.S. government long ago abandoned any concern for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

The Republicons passed their revision of ObamaCare, with 20 more reasonable ones voting against the “American Health Care Act” (sic). Among those 20 were only a few who voted against it out of principle because it didn’t go far enough in repealing the whole “Affordable Care Act” (sic), while most of them voted against it because they were afraid that some of their constituents would lose their coverage.

Well, of course some or many people will lose their coverage and will have to start all over again because of these newest changes that Congress is forcing on us. Any new form of central planning will cause chaos and disruption in the market.

What they should have done is just repeal the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) and let the insurers, doctors, hospitals, patients make their own adjustments. But noooo, central planning-obsessed control-freak bureaucrats can’t have that.

It would be easier for everybody involved if, after actually repealing ObamaCare (and not just pretending to do it) the bureaucrats would continue repealing all the other bad laws, regulations, mandates and restrictions which have been driving up the costs of health care since long before ObamaCare intruded itself into the lives of its victims.

TrumpCare is just more central planning, and, as Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal put it, “crony anti-consumerism” care, and is not a repeal but a “nip and tuck” of ObamaCare.

One of the main parts of ObamaCare was its unconstitutional mandate, requiring all Americans to have to have health insurance, or else pay a fine. Yes, ObamaCare is unconstitutional, regardless of the ignorant Chief Bureaucrat John Roberts and his rhetorical contortions.

ObamaCare had other draconian requirements for doctors as well, as Dr. Elaina George pointed out.

In Robert Wenzel’s summary of the House version of TrumpCare, regarding the ObamaCare mandate, he notes, “The Trumpcare bill does away with the mandate under the ACA that requires people have health insurance or pay a fine. However, under the new bill people who go 60 days without health coverage will be penalized when they rejoin a health plan. They will face a 30 percent penalty on their insurance policy for one year.”

So is that “repealing the mandate”? No, of course not. It is merely rearranging the fascist deck chairs, and that is all. And the penalty goes to the insurance company rather than the government. I’m sure the cronies of Big Insurance will love it.

Now, on the Congress.gov text of the bill, I don’t see where it states those changes regarding the mandate. But Wenzel cites an ABC News report and what they report is also in a CBS News article on that, so it must be the case. (I guess that Congress.gov page isn’t yet updated on yesterday’s vote, even though all these other sources are updated. Oh, that’s right, Congress.gov is a government website. Never mind, as Emily Litella would say.)

But I digress. Anyway, besides all this being a continuation of destructive central planning that violates our rights to medical privacy and the doctor-patient privilege, it is simply unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t authorize the federal government to get involved in health care. It doesn’t mention medical care, it doesn’t mention hospitals, it doesn’t mention insurance. This entire area of life is not mentioned in the specific powers of Congress as enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. It is unconstitutional, regardless of what 5 lettered robed nincompoops had to say.

So, like ObamaCare, TrumpCare will violate our rights. You own your life, your person and property and your earnings, and have a right to do with them whatever you want, as long as you don’t violate anyone else’s same rights. You have a right to establish contracts with others, with doctors or insurers, voluntarily, and you agree to the terms of contracts or you don’t. Or if an insurer provides a policy with terms you don’t like, you can try to negotiate, and it is between you and the company — it’s none of any third party’s business, including smug, invasive and corrupt bureaucrats!

In contrast, if the government owns your life, then of course its employees — bureaucrats — have a right to order you to do this or that, order you to report your private matters to them, order you to do what you are told, and order you to involuntarily pay them your earnings that you worked for.

So that second choice is the way it is now, with ObamaCare and will be with TrumpCare as passed by the FOS GOP, because the “public servants” of Congress care about you, and your health. And the caring crooks of Congress many of them are lawyers, and they want to make their fellow shysters and hooligans lawyers rich with these laws, mandates, requirements, prohibitions and tax-thefts. A nation of many more filthy-rich lawyers thanks to these monster freedom-killing, prosperity-crashing laws passed by the Congresscrooks.

But the truth is, none of the rearranging of deck chairs in Washington will help, as this RepubliCrap intrusive central planning will not prevent the medical system from further sinking. The real goal of the Planners is even further control over the people, i.e. SovietCare. The ignorant delusionals of grandiosity of the GOP (Grand Old Progressives) have as much of that “fatal conceit” as the Democrats in this business of central panning, but they don’t really care as long as they win reelections and get their big government pensions that private sector bourgeoisie couldn’t dream of.

Too bad “Doctor” Tom Price became such a sell-out. And I wonder if Rand Paul will also be a sell-out, like he was during campaign 2016, and support all this central planning.

Another aspect of all this is how irresponsibility has been conditioned in people who don’t want to actually take care of themselves, and a reinforcement of dependence on doctors and the whole medical system. Doctors and hospitals have made thousands of people every year worse off, and I wonder if so much government control and intrusion have greatly contributed to that.

But regarding the continuing chaos that bureaucrats are causing with health care, whether mainstream America or social activists want to acknowledge it or not, health care will continue to be difficult, expensive, and inaccessible for some or for many as long as the main sources of those disturbances continue to exist. And those are Medicare and Medicaid, mainly. Those schemes have caused chaos for doctors by making medical equipment and devices less affordable for them to run their practices and provide medical care for free for those who can’t afford to see a doctor. And those socialist schemes have also caused chaos for hospitals, clinics and insurers as well.

But the government schemes did give rise to a whole class of professional bureaucrats and have, as mentioned above, contributed to a whole bunch of undeserving parasites, the graduates of the nation’s most prestigious (and not so prestigious) law schools.