Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:41:03
Posted by mcarr December 12, 2007 09:35AM
Demolition crews this afternoon began tearing down 14 brick buildings at the B.W. Cooper public housing development -- work that had been scheduled long before Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago.
That meant nothing to protesters who tried to block a second crane that arrived to the 3400 block of Erato Street after 3 p.m., chanting "Housing is a human right."
"This is immoral and must be stopped," said Don Everard, an activist who stood right in front of the wrecking crew's path. "It's a hate crime. It's a hate crime against poor people."
Attorney Bill Quigley, a Loyola Law School professor who is leading a civil rights lawsuit against the demolition of public housing, said that more protests will follow the wrecking crews, which are set to descend on Cooper and two other complexes Saturday.
"At least," said Quigley, eyeing the scores of protesters, which included members of Safe Streets New Orleans.
Known as the "new side" to Cooper residents, the flat-topped dormitory-style buildings were opened around 1950 and were designed much differently than the handsome pitched-roof style buildings that flank Earhart Bouelvard.
With open, common-use hallways, the buildings became crime havens, said B.W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation president Darrell Williams.
"They were never upgraded," said Williams. "The criminal element was always present. We welcomed those being torn down."
Sharon Sears Jasper, who lived at the St. Bernard complex before the storm forced her out, held a bullhorn and led protesters to condemn the demolition. By 6 p.m., a crowd of about 500 protesters had winnowed down to around 200, and backhoes had been silent since about 3 p.m. The crowd was a mix of residents with small children, and seasoned protestors who alternated chanting into a bullhorn.
In June, the Housing Authority of New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced they would demolish the city's four largest developments -- B.W. Cooper, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete and Lafitte, to make way for "mixed income" modern-day housing.
Demolition on all sites except Lafitte is scheduled for Saturday
Thursday, December 13, 2007
City of New Orleans Starts Demolition of Public Housing
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Why Has the U.S. Forest Service Purchased $600,000 Worth of Tasers?
JBS
Tuesday December 11, 2007
Already in debt and understaffed, the U.S. Forest Service just spent $600,000 in purchasing handheld Tasers for every member of its Law Enforcement division.
Follow this link to the original source: "Cash Starved Forest Service Spends $600,000 to Buy Tasers"
Near the end of the U.S. Forest Service's fiscal year in September, there was a hurried single-source purchase of 700 Tasers for the Law Enforcement and Investigations division of the U.S. Forest Service. The Tasers are now sitting in storage, as there were no rules governing their use or a required training program yet developed by the USFS.
In fact, there was no public input, or congressional review of the purchase. There wasn't even a written explanation as to why the devices were needed. There was a very brief justification statement that really only described the item for purchase.
Jeff Ruch of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) did request and receive, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), records relating to the amount the Forest Service paid for the devices ($600,001.52 — $857 apiece), and the justification statement, but not any information that described the training that would have to be provided to agency personnel who will use the electronic Tasers. USFS director John Twiss issued a statement: "In the interest of customer service", we can tell you that the Forest Service is currently developing the required training and law enforcement officers will be required to attend prior to the issuance of, or authorization to carry or use, an Electronic Control Device."
OBM: So now, I guess...when your home are property is being threatened by fire and you want to stay to try and save your property using your own water hose your friendly forest fire fighter is authorized to tase you until you leave.
With the devastating forest fires of the past summer, one would think that director Twiss would have more important matters to address than the purchase of what we now know to be lethal weapons. The agency is presently a quarter of a billion dollars in debt and has 200 vacant positions, some lost to budget cuts and more to agents who have been reassigned to other obligations such as border patrol for the Department of Homeland Security. The USFS has over 750,000 million annual visitors and that leaves one officer overseeing approximately 1.5 million visitors and covering 300,000 acres of forest, and even more budget cuts are looming.
PEER, in 2005, released information on director John Twiss, claiming he is the first person without any law enforcement qualifications or credentials to head the USFS — he's a civilian with desk experience and nothing more. In the early 1990s, Congress mandated that the Forest Service law enforcement division be independent of the agency chain-of-command, in order to ensure fair and independent investigations and internal probes. But Twiss signaled that he would see an end to such independency, and according to Ruch would see to it, "that all future Forest Service investigations will be politically vetted."
Lethal Tasers in the hands of untrained federal agents, compounded by the bureaucratic management style of the present director, with the accompanying potential for serious abuse certainly doesn’t bode well for park visitors.
Jeff Ruch of PEER said it best when he opined, "As a result, in addition to the howl of the coyote and the hoot of the owl, the plaintive cry of "Don't tase me, bro!' may soon echo through the forest night."
The Persuaders - Front Line Special
Americans are swimming in a sea of messages.
Each year, legions of ad people, copywriters, market researchers, pollsters, consultants, and even linguists—most of whom work for one of six giant companies—spend billions of dollars and millions of man-hours trying to determine how to persuade consumers what to buy, whom to trust, and what to think. Increasingly, these techniques are migrating to the high-stakes arena of politics, shaping policy and influencing how Americans choose their leaders.
In "The Persuaders," FRONTLINE explores how the cultures of marketing and advertising have come to influence not only what Americans buy, but also how they view themselves and the world around them. The 90-minute documentary draws on a range of experts and observers of the advertising/marketing world, to examine how, in the words of one on-camera commentator, "the principal of democracy yields to the practice of demography," as highly customized messages are delivered to a smaller segment of the market.
WATCH ALL PARTS HERE: (windows media player needed)
Part 1 A High Concept Campaign
Part 2 Emotional Branding
Part 3 The Times They Are A-Changin'
Part 4 The Science of Selling
Part 5 Give Us What We Want
Part 6 The "Narrowcasting" Future
Take the 2004 presidential sweepstakes for example. Both the Republicans and the Democrats were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to custom craft their messages. "What politicians do is tailor their message to each demographic group," says Peter Swire, professor of law at Ohio State University and an expert on Internet policy. "That means…Americans will live in different virtual universes. What's wrong with living in different universes? You never confront the other side. You don't have to deal with the uncomfortable facts that go against your worldview….It hardens the partisanship that's been such a feature of recent American politics."
FRONTLINE analyzes the 2004 campaign where, for the first time, the latest techniques in narrowcasting were put into effect. The antithesis of traditional broadcasting, narrowcasting involves crafting and delivering tailored messages to individual voters based on their demographic profiles.
Political marketers are just now discovering new ways to use the techniques that have long been employed by the private sector. FRONTLINE visits Acxiom, the largest data mining company in the world, where vast farms of computers hold detailed information about nearly every adult in America. Data mining, a practice that predicts likely behavior based on factors such as age, income, and shopping habits, has been the gold standard of commercial advertisers. Acxiom promises its clients a better way to target their messages to individual consumers.
"There is an age-old anxiety among advertisers that they are wasting their money, that they cannot know whom they are reaching and with what impact," says Rushkoff, who collaborated with Dretzin and Goodman on FRONTLINE's "The Merchants of Cool," which examined the process by which corporate conglomerates have co-opted teen culture in order to capture the multibillion-dollar adolescent market.
But Rushkoff predicts, "Anxiety is giving way to a confidence that they will soon have access to the core emotional needs of nearly every American shopper and voter."
There is, however, a paradox. While the techniques of the persuaders have become more sophisticated, consumers have never been more resistant to marketing messages. Yet today, advertisements fill up nearly every available inch of the landscape.
"You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded," advertising writer Bob Garfield says. "You go to fill your gas tank and you look at the pump and you're seeing news headlines in advertising. You go into the bathroom and you look in the urinal and you're staring at an ad. You look up at the sky and there's skywriting."
This clutter creates a dilemma for advertisers, Garfield observes. "The advertisers know they need to have more and more advertising to get an ever narrower slice of your attention," he says. "And that means we are going to be ever more inundated. And then of course ever more resistant, requiring ever more advertising, making us ever more resistant and so on."
But clever marketers have found ways of overcoming the clutter conundrum. As television viewers have found ways of avoiding ads by using personal video recorders like Tivo, advertisers have responded by becoming a part of the program through sophisticated product placement. FRONTLINE follows this new trend in advertising known as "branded entertainment." Rather than marketing products around a TV show or other entertainment vehicle, industry insiders predict the future will bring a seamless blend of marketing and entertainment. Producers are already moving in that direction. Take for example a recent Sex and the City story line in which a character becomes a poster-boy for Absolut Vodka. The idea was actually proposed to HBO by Absolut's public relations agency.
Some industry leaders claim that such tactics have evolved in response to consumer preference. But others worry that as advertising becomes more deeply integrated into television, movies, and music, those cultural forms will become ever more homogenous. "The worry is not so much that the actual ads themselves will become ubiquitous," says media critic Mark Crispin Miller. "Rather, it's that advertising desires for itself a background that will not contradict it….The aim here is not so much to find a show that people like and then get your ads on it. The aim here is for the advertisers to create a show that is itself an extended ad."
As consumers grow more cynical toward marketing claims, the persuasion industries are developing and refining techniques to reinforce an emotional attachment between Americans and the brands they buy.
"What consumers want now is an emotional connection—they want to be able to connect with what's behind the brand, what's behind the promise," says Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising. "The brands that can move to that emotional level, that can create loyalty beyond reason, are going to be the brands where premium profits lie."
Douglas Atkin, a partner at advertising agency Merkley + Partners, goes even further, comparing the brand loyalty that companies are trying to create to the passionate zeal once enjoyed only by cultists and religious fanatics.
"I've interviewed people who are brand loyalists of Saturn Car Company," Atkin says, "and they will use the same vocabulary as someone who is a cult member of Hare Krishna. They will say that other car users need to be `saved,' or that they are part of the `Saturn family' with no hint of irony. [They] absolutely and completely believe it."
Although some brands have been more successful than others in making the magic connection to consumers, the techniques the marketers are developing are startling and include the hiring of anthropologists, ethnographers, linguists, and brain researchers to plumb our unconscious desires and urges so as to better influence our decision making.
But there is reason to wonder if these emotional connections are real. Says author Naomi Klein, "When you listen to brand managers talk, you can get quite carried away in this idea that they actually are fulfilling these needs that we have for community and narrative and transcendence. But in the end it is…a laptop and a pair of running shoes. And they might be great, but they're not actually going to fulfill those needs."
Correspondent Rushkoff observes: "We Americans value our freedom of choice—choice in the marketplace of goods, and choice in what has become a marketplace of ideas. When the same persuasion industry is engaged to influence these very different kinds of decision-making, it's easy for our roles as consumers and our roles as citizens to get blurred. By revealing some of the most effective practices of the persuasion business, we may better understand our choices and perhaps make wiser ones."
MARTIAL LAW SURVIVAL GUIDE
by J. Croft
March 9, 2006
This article will start off assuming that the Reader (you) is already subject to MARTIAL LAW; that is, the "suspension" of the Constitution. Curfews, rationing of basic goods, enforced relocations, confiscation of firearms and supplies, and summary arrest/execution by soldiers, paramilitary police and other jack booted chumps in black wielding assault rifles. Basic survival tips will be followed by more detailed ideals on how to counter this coup against the American People.
The remainder will apply IF you're reading this before MARTIAL LAW is imposed by the current corrupt government. IF you are reading this while you still nominally under Constitutional Law, it's urgent you read from the beginning to end so as to appreciate the opportunities you currently have to not only protect yourself and yours, but to attempt to stop a coup.
SECTION ONE: SURVIVING MARTIAL LAW
Rule #1 Never take the government's word at face value-except when they tell you that they'll kill you.
Government-it's components of career politicians, bureaucratic vermin, and SS ninja wannabes live, have lied. For a lot longer than you'd think. It's the very job; being part of an empire wrapped in the cloak of American political traditions of Freedom, that corrupts. All that power, attracting the most venal along with the most patriotic to defend America. All that license under ever mutable law written by money whores to lie, steal, embezzle, blackmail, extort, poison, torture, enslave, murder.
Is it any wonder then that such human scum would get together and work "the system" to set themselves up as kings, dispensing with the pretty coverings of Constitutional limitations that trip their crimes like a prom dress? Taking as much as they can, while keeping YOU ASLEEP AS YOU LET YOURSELF BE SEDUCED AND PUT ASLEEP BY THEIR FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN THE MEDIA AND CORPORATE BOARDS?
Yes: a lot of the blame can be laid on your shoulders, American. You dropped the ball with going along with not finding the truth about JFK's assassination. Dropped the ball with MLK, RFK, Malcolm X. Dropped the ball with Vietnam, the air trafficker's strike that Reagan crushed, Iran-Contra. Dropped the ball with the 92 election-picking that drug runner and murderer Bill Clinton because he was charming… like a pimp. And boy did he pimp you out at the expense of Randy Weaver and his family, the 81 casualties at Waco, the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. You were too busy following Micheal Jordan and watching Friends.
Then you assholes really dropped it when George W. Bush STOLE the Presidency, with the media not even allowing a Ross Perot to run. If you would've elected him in 1992 in fact America could've been saved. BUT, you'd rather take government careerists at their word and plan your next outing to the mall than save your nation. Save your jobs, your freedoms, YOUR government.
Now it's gone. The criminals that've systematically taken over YOUR government they've removed the last vestiges of Constitutional law. Now it's law by the barrels of their assault rifles in your face-do ANYTHING other than obey in utter fear and you're dead. Or worse. You listened to their lies for over a century, you and your ancestors-where has it gotten you? Don't take their word on any "news" they have. Nor take their advice, their "assistance" their laws at face value because they manipulate everything they do to screw you.
What you can take their word on is, if you DON'T go along with them screwing you, they'll kill you for it.
Rule #2 KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
Do NOT tell anyone anything that could get you in trouble. Assume anything can get you in trouble, because it probably will. Especially with any government official, but anyone looking to gaining a favor with the state can and will snitch on you. The rat who would sell you out for his thirty pieces could be:
*A small businessman looking for an in with the state so he can make money a little easier.
*A former friend who's looking to get some revenge.
*Someone desperate for even some food. Times are tough and will get tougher.
Again, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
Review the remaining rules of surviving MARTIAL LAW with Rule #2 ALWAYS in mind. Because some rat on two legs you say the wrong thing to WILL snitch to the "authorities" in exchange for favors or even brownie points… and then you get to find out how ironclad Rule #1 is.
KEEP YOUR BIG MOUTH SHUT!!
Rule #3
ANY AUTHORITY FIGURE IS THE ENEMY! Unless you are waging a war of liberation-gathering intelligence or spreading disinformation or infiltrating-have no relation with nor voluntary contact with any soldier, police officer, bureaucrat, or anyone in authority in private life cooperating with MARTIAL LAW. Review Rule #1: they're all liars, con artists, hustlers, thieves, murderers. Same goes to any fellow travellers in big business; they and government have been in the same bed for a century.
Stay away from them as much as possible. Tell them lies. Don't do any business with them. Unless they're sticking a gun in your face don't even acknowledge that they exist.
Shun them, their family and any sycophants that fawn over them for a few favors...
Rule #4
YOUR PERSONAL SURVIVAL IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OBEYING ANY DICTATE! If you're prohibited from having an item that helps you survive, get the item, review Rule #2 AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.
If you're prohibited from having extra food, medicine, guns (no brainer) then you will CACHE your prohibited items in a place where it won't easily be found. Foods, after properly sealed for storage, and medicines can be placed in hollow spaces in walls, floorboards, stairs, behind false walls in closets, or even in a hidden underground pantry dug underneath your foundation or basement.
Firearms are metallic; they can be detected by metal detectors unless you store them deep underground or in a place they won't think of looking right away… like sealed in wider metallic tubes, or away from your property. And if you by chance acquire or keep firearms knowing HOW TO USE THEM(sight alignment, trigger squeeze) and RELOADING AMMUNITION will be mandatory.
(IF YOU'VE NEVER USED A GUN BEFORE)
To use a gun, first find the PROPER AMMUNITION FOR IT. After loading, pointed end forward, the ammo into the magazine, cylinder, or chamber load the weapon. On semiautomatic pistols if the slide-that moving part on top-is locked back there's a small lever on the left side of the gun. Push on it and it will close. Otherwise you'll have to pull the slide back yourself.
Pistols are concealable, rifles and shotguns are for starting a fight. Shotguns you load from a port on the underside, behind the fore stock or it breaks open. Rifles come in several flavors; single shot, pump, bolt action, automatic, and feed from the chamber, a internal magazine or has a detaching magazine. The rifle you want first and foremost is a automatic rifle in a military common caliber. That coupled with proper marksmanship transforms you from a victim to a freedom fighter.
Here's the most important part: see what you're aiming at… put your FRONT SIGHT where you want the bullet to go… then WHILE YOUR FRONT SIGHT'S ON TARGET align your REAR SIGHT with your FRONT SIGHT. …When your FRONT SIGHT and REAR SIGHT aligned like this more or less:
O target
( ( I ))
IIIIII I GUN WITH FRONT AND REAR SIGHTS ALIGNED
…when you're aligned and aimed AT THE SAME TIME DO A SMOOTH, QUICK PRESS ON YOUR TRIGGER. The gun will go BOOM! and will push back in RECOIL. Don't be afraid; think of it like setting off a firework, only you're also sending a lead bullet at someone. If you did all the steps right you'll hit.
Dry firing a empty gun at a target is one way to practice. Even better is getting a air gun, paint some targets on a sheet of paper and going at it until you can aim and land every round in the black as fast as possible.)
Rule #5
While keeping the above rules in mind ALWAYS HELP OUT THOSE WHO ARE RESISTING! They, unlike you, have decided that there's nothing to lose and therefore deserve anyone's help who's willing to risk their lives. You think MARTIAL LAW is going away on it's own? Those bastards in black will have a sudden change of heart and do something worthwhile for a change and not oppress you? I like to dream too…
The VERY LEAST: have extra food, water for resistance fighters, basic medical supplies, ammo caches(hint, these should be concealed).
A secret room either built from some closet space or under the home can house a couple of fighting Patriots. Those who fight will need to keep hidden, yet able to communicate with fellow fighters. You can be a intermediary.
You have skills, like welding, machine tools, chemistry? You can take that secret room and make weapons, ammo, other things the resistance needs.
You have inside information? Share it. You have videography experience, tools? Make how-to videos on resisting the theft of your freedoms. You have medical training? Set up a underground hospital.
Not all Patriots can or should pick up a rifle and blow a traitor's head off. Riflemen need ammo, food, a place to rest, medical assistance, repairs for their weapons, intel on their next target. Most of all they and you need each other because a man alone doesn't stand a chance. Only by uniting in common cause with all one has to offer can the traitors be defeated, and Freedom restored to the land.
…If you're not at least giving aid to those helping to liberate you put this article down, go back to being a victim of government oppression; maybe you can get by being a pathetic lackey they'll thieve from and occasionally beat or take sex from.
Rule #6
With the utmost care develop a SURVIVAL NETWORK. This is a group of people with skills and/or resources who can help each other in areas they would be lacking on their own. It could be anything from extra food, medicine, repair parts, fuel, transportation-whatever.
In any given neighborhood you can have machinists(weapon makers), medical personel, drivers(good knowledge of local roads), gardeners(agriculture knowledgebase).
Petty bureaucrats secretly opposing martial law are prime candidates to spy, steal, or commit sabotage.
Computer technicians can hack government systems and create surveillance systems and guidence packages for missiles.
Construction workers can build secret rooms to hide anything from a arms cache to a secret factory. People in the media can smuggle cameras and work with computer techs to: bug enemy meetings, produce freedom media that documents sucessful means of resisting and present government atrocities for the reasons why.
Salesmen can "borrow" merchandise from their stores for use-anything and everything is useful.
Especially useful will be disgruntled cops and military who can provide everything from intel on raids to weapons to training.
Keep the numbers of your group "small": smaller cells are more difficult to penetrate by enemy agents and professional snitches. Keeping that in mind, a means of communication independent from wiretapped phones and audible eavesdropping devices must be developed amongst you.
Runners can be a athlete or a kid on a bike. They can carry small packages, or notes with a handy breakable vial of flammable liquid if discovered. With a sealed packet of potassium chlorate taped to it the gasoline(preferable) will automatically ignite; otherwise you'll have to actually light that incriminating evidence.
A mail drop can be a home, a hollowed out tree trunk, a hole in the ground, a open fence pole-anything. Just be sure it's discreetly out of sight of surveillance.
If God's really liking you, one of your group will be a SMART SURVIVALIST. This will be a exceedingly rare breed, because most in this group were smart enough to begin preparing for the collapse to begin with. They WEREN'T smart enough to avoid detection of their awareness and distrust of government. They signed form 4477 registration forms for their firearms, used credit cards and checks for their weapon and ammunition purchases, registered for weapons permits, or registered themselves with gun clubs and shooting organizations. These people more than likely got swept up in pre-dawn raids or got blasted resisting.
No the SMART SURVIVALIST prepared-and kept his mouth shut about those preps. He or she never signed federal permit forms for purchases or carry license. He or she presented a "average American" profile or totally disappeared. Get or find one in your group and you'll have a literal treasury of knowhow and resources to survive… maybe even start taking back a little?
Rule #7
AVOID GOVERNMENT MONITORING AND CONTROL! Know where the cameras are and how to avoid them. Know who patrols where, and what routine they follow so as to avoid contact. Know your snitches and always feed them b.s. if you can't avoid them.
Find ways around checkpoints. Side streets, forest paths, neighbor's yard, railroad tracks, tunnels; whatever go arounds to getting from point a to point b without a pack of government troops searching you, checking your ID. I can't and won't go into detail; how you find your ways is up to you.
Rule #8
AVOID A GOVERNMENT ROUNDUP. It could be from a disaster, a attack, or even because they've decided to end the pretense and show you what they really think of you and your "rights". You'll just wind up in a detention camp where your freedom of movement and resources will be strictly controlled. That means having a place to go away from your area, a means to get there, and supplies.
Very difficult to do in a martial law situation, with shortages and rationing at gunpoint. Remember the victims of Hurricane Katrina; how they were set up to be stranded in New Orleans by the government? How they were constantly baited with false hope of rescue for a week after the catastrophe? How they eventually were herded by FEMA into concentration camps?
You disregard Rule #1, you'll find out.
Get a safe house of your own-a friend or a abandoned home, a empty storefront or even a patch of woods. When the troops start going street to street, house to house have escape routes by lesser used streets, trails, whatever. You may have to go on foot, so have a light backpack with a few days worth of nonperishable food, portable water purifier, a first aid kit, a light sleeping bag-and your weapon. A mountain bike may be a more optimal and versatile escape mode than your road-dependent car. Better to be on the run, desperate-and have your freedom-than be imprisoned in a FEMA slave camp.
Rule #9
Find a way you can successfully resist. Probably not with guns or bombs unless you have the training, but there's plenty of ways you can monkeywrench the basic functioning of the state during MARTIAL LAW.
If you work for the state you have plenty of opportunities to mess things up, but even private firms are subcontracted by the government. You know who's just earning a paycheck, who's backing this war against the people, and who's getting off on "just following orders". If you can take action, great; concentrate most of your planning on getting away with the job. Otherwise, get contacts with Patriots and be the most reliable source of intelligence you can be.
Every bit of drag on the government beast helps-perhaps in botching that paperwork, breaking that surveillance camera in disguise, or misdirecting that bureaucrat or soldier cop that act might be the beginning of a butterfly effect of bringing down the state of MARTIAL LAW and restoring Freedom to our nation. Always keep that in mind. You must find your own way, but find it you must if you want what was stolen from you back.
SECTION 2: HOW DO YOU TAKE A NATION BACK THAT'S UNDER MARTIAL LAW?
To be honest it's probably the most difficult challenge anyone can face. Because you're starting a conflict from scratch inside the belly of the beast. You can't fight for territory when you've only got a few guns against divisions of enemy troops equipped with automatic weapons, armor, air support, the pitiful acquiescence of a "people" who long ago gave up Liberty for the trap of existence of a childlike, cushy debt slavery.
So the smart coup leaders that prosecute a martial law takeover will do it against a population that's already been pacified in one way or another. Now with the gilding stripped off their chains they're as frightened hostages willing to go along with ANYTHING massah state wants so long as they have some semblance of their former "lives". Aside from sickened, disgruntled vets, the American People; untrained in the military arts or even basic survival have been pacified-or the coup would never have taken place.
It is simply fear of loss after being so coddled, so divorced as a culture from personal responsibility -although enough exposure to fear and the human psyche has a way of becoming psychologically inured to it… which can lead to anger, and then revenge.
No: better way to pacify is to bring it on in a overwhelming torrent onto a population unprepared for it, unprepared for hardships. Take away their culture, their moral cores, their connections to God. Ply them with trinkets and baubles and other junk-get them to find solace in material things, in distractions like spectator sports, television. "Our" junk culture.
Keep them hypnotized by a junk culture while their means of sustenance-their jobs-are shipped overseas piecemeal, so they don't wake up.
Keep them hypnotized by a junk culture while their rights are legislated into impotence, irrelevance to the state's enforcers.
Keep them hypnotized by a junk culture, as even the know how of being able to survive outside the system; basics like growing food, repairing stuff, marksmanship is slowly stifled.
And all the time tell them they're free and prosperous. Eventually you'll have a people much like modern America's dumbed down materialistic debt slave. Such a people as ours, fed lies about our evil corrupt system as you find on TV are ready for a fall now as I write this. All that's needed is a plausable pretext, a cover story for the sheeple to accept the loss of their freedom in exchange for a impression of security in a land where the plenty of food and goods has been taken away.
Now some will see through the b.s.; but Humans can be stubbornly stupid when it comes to misdirected hope. These slaves, in every sense of the word, will actually defend the system that has enslaved them. Such is the enemy's genius at their social engineering. All those slavishly obeying the state in a martial law enviroment for some forlorn hope that their lives will somehow go back to the false paradise of the late 20th century will in effect be the enemy themselves.
You won't be alone. The enemy's genius is formidable, but not perfect. Quite frankly they're overconfident-and even if they weren't they're not God. They can't see all and will make fatal mistakes. The question will be, will you be man enough to exploit those mistakes to bring their downfall and save the Human Race?
How to beat the state when it has all the cards; can't take on an army with a pistol… but you can take on one of it's soldiers when you sneak up on him when they're not looking for it. If you're skilled with a rifle you can kill at distance and sneak off… if you have a supressor on your weapon you can do a whole lot of killing and not be detected. If you know chemistry, you can come up with all sorts of nasty stuff that can do damage to the enemy's expensive stuff.
If you have friends or fellow travellers you can do a lot more damage, even recruit if you have a video camera, editing system, and dvd duplicators(get someone skilled in video production) to advertise your victories and how others can duplicate your efforts, plus why they should fight in the first place.
If you're successful your area of operations will be overflowing with Patriots looking to bag as many jack booted thugs, bureaucrats and other traitors as they can get at. The excess Patriots can then spread out to other areas of our country, replicating as best they can what you've done.
With whole regions of the country infiltrated and secured secret industry can develop. Light weapons can be constructed at first, but eventually heavy weapons will be designed and made, and distributed. Ammunition, food, fuel, medicine-all can be manufactured on or made with basic machine tools and chemistry.
The time will come… if the enemy still clings to their forlorn hope of defeating the American People with the brainless thugs and sheeple that lick their boots… the time will come that OPEN WARFARE can begin and territory openly liberated.
After that… it'll probably devolve into a stalemate. The enemy isolated in their city/prison states unable to retake the surrounding countryside, but the Patriots not having enough strength to retake the cities. Or perhaps enough time because either the enemy develops some funky new superweapon, or their continued control of military assets overseas causes a outside power to intervene… on whose side… who knows?
BUT LET'S NOT LET THIS SCENARIO PLAY OUT!
Because a MARTIAL LAW will lead to CIVIL WAR… and national destruction… what I just described to you.
Let's NOT have a civil war, and spend the next century rebuilding. Much better to organize right now, as I write in October, 2005! We still have a political process we can use if we learn how to use it effectively. We can together find a small town and take it over-like the Libertarian's Free State Projects, only focused onto one town. Take that over, free it, and spread out from there. We as Americans need a standing example of what a Free State is; since we don't have the numbers to take over a state, we have to take over a town… so we can get the numbers to take over a state.
Even some in the traitorous elite don't want to see MARTIAL LAW because they recognize the exquisite control and enslavement the current American political system has over Americans, and want to keep their power. They can be used, then abused.
Individually, if you have guns, bury spares of your fighting arms, or sell them privately to new Patriot recruits. This will get easier as deteriorating conditions bring the reality of our situation home, and the government's conduct in New Orleans make personal preparation a priority.
Buy lots of ammo, food, medicine, reloading supplies. Get these at gun shows for CASH ONLY. Go to gun shows while they're still legal!
Find books on basic manufacturing processes-that's vital!
If you have EVER joined a gun group, bought guns and ammo with credit cards, checks, and/or signed registration forms and permits HIDE AND/OR SELL YOUR EXCESS GUNS TO MOTIVATED PATRIOTS! You WILL be searched first on "The Day", and if so much as a empty shell casing's found you can count on being starved, beaten and raped to death in a internment camp. Or maybe they'll take you anyway for being on record.
Start driving around: look for abandoned homes, businesses, and roads or trails that'll get you to them. Caves, forest haunts, old barns, the nastiest trailer in that tired old trailer park.
When you recruit, don't let them put their names on any forms that could implicate them in the eyes of the government. Keep their profile low-Patriots will need infiltrators, safe houses, spies… can't do that if you're still running around openly displaying a "I'm the NRA" sticker or a Gadsen Flag. Sorry.
Take your Recruits and:
*Toughen them up. Camping, survival courses, hand to hand combat courses. Even getting them to let their TV gather dust to do… anything will be of benefit. Demonstrations, projects, meetings, find places to hole up like anything without people around…
*Shooting, and lots of it! Paintball to teach tactics. A range of some sort for battle rifle practice. Airguns and required turning in of targets for their own practice-the airsoft guns are coming along as viable training tools and as soon as they perfect a paintball that'll cycle through them you should splurge a couple hundred bucks and get some guns and paintballs.
*Group buy ammo, parts, food, knowledge, a legal fiction to acquire property not under your own name, nor any connection to you. Have your stashes in several small units throughout the area you figure you're going to operate. The more the better, and, no one person should have knowledge of where all the caches are at. A cache should have ammo for the standard weapon/caliber your group should standardize on. I recommend a military pattern rifle in 7.62NATO, along with spare parts because they'll break down with all the shooting and abuse you're gonna heap on them. Enough ammo to refill all your carry mags for a mission. Also, nonperishable food. Should have lots of calories, carbs, protein. Medical supplies.
…No you're not going to get a lot of recruits. The enemy's cultural weapons are pretty damn powerful, and their mind control of Americans is exquisite-but not foolproof! On occasion a event will occur that will defy their spin control and b.s.-like the live coverage of Hurricane Katrina and their criminal abandonment of the Black Community to die in that open sewer so they'll abandon the city to foreclosers wanting a "Las Vegas on the Gulf". Point out the criminal abandonment of the government of their People. A lot of eyes were opened by that hurricane, and not all of them are going to shut again by the system's lies. Take your opportunities as they come.
I have a plan of peaceful political action that can be used, so here's a excerpt of my essay, "Message to Mr. and Mrs. America" at my blog freedomguide.blogspot.com:
Taking back the government-peacefully!
This is the preferable manner of us as groups reclaiming our Freedom. To be effective, one must have a understanding of America's political system as it relates to our cause. We have a president, a vice-president and their agents, a congress, a federal judicial system, and the duplication of this political layout among the states. Beyond that you have the many thousands of county and local governments. So what will work?
Take over the presidency?
It's long been proven that unless you have the blessings of the two official parties of this nation, you cannot seriously run for president. The closest independent candidate was Ross Perot back in 1992, and even being a billionaire didn't shield him from getting shredded by the media.
So, assuming the voting machines are honest(not)and the media's fair(not) you need the machine of a major party backing you(won't happen).
And the president can only do so much; America's system of government is extremely compartmentalized, so that unless you have a common ideology and party mechanism guiding and controlling the various components, it's impossible for one man to dictate policy. So a independent party president, one lone person against the rest of the hydra headed federal monstrosity is not only impossible, it's retarded even planning such a thing.
Congress?
Congress is made up of 540 members-100 senators and the rest in the house of representatives. All are elected in staggared election cycles so it would take approximately a decade of successful nationwide campaigning to create a majority party. Yes, congress writes the laws and taking it back is essential in our struggle, but even factoring out the two official parties and their political machines the structure of this body demands a massive political machine of our own.
Massive organizations that have a heirarchial structure have been penetrated, subverted and corrupted by our enemies since the beginning of time. It's a process that to them is a natural as breathing. Then there's all the fundraising that will be needed and we're not rich-the only ones with money in America are the same pack of vampires who've been sucking us dry. So a singular, national organization will not be sucessful.
Independent and rogue candidates however do have some success. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Ron Paul of Texas, and at one time James Trafficant of Ohio sadly represent the successes. Most candidates are attorneys who've long ago prostituted themselves. They whore themselves to the political machine that will take them where they want to go. All they want is power and in exchange have legislated the monstrosity American government has become. The democrats and republicans, their bosses for all practical purposes appoint these elitists their congressional seats and they're prepared to spend whatever cash it takes to take or retain that seat. Vote fraud of course is part of their arsenal.
There are no rich left in these times who would willingly sacrifice their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor-they're either sold out or scared. So any candidates for congress will have to be raised and funded by us. That means we have to do it in a grass roots manner. We have to build not one political machine, but a army of political machines that are independent of one another, yet cooperative.
Many small parties, one common agenda
This form of political resistance lends itself naturally to our groups. It will go like this:
The group helps other groups form. They in turn during the next local election cycle turn out and get the candidates they choose elected in town and county governments. Much of the oppressive laws plaguing us are drafted and enforced locally. Taking over local governments will not only give the freedom groups relief from local law enforcement harassment, it will give us the tools to revoke and repeal such things as:
Property taxes that allow the government to sieze that home you're working a lifetime to pay for if you miss one "rent" installment. Those in power whine that property taxes are for the schools and the children-isn't that what their gambling rackets known as the lotto are for? And they're willing to make you and yours homeless for the children… such evil makes me just want to shoot them. But let's try not to go there yet.
All those damned zoning restrictions, regulations, speed trap traffic laws designed to churn up "tax" revenue, laws criminalizing all sorts of things and actions that bother nobody. Think of any local ordinance that seems to have been drafted by a neurotic control freak… the list would be endless really!
Un-Constitutional, pro criminal gun control legislation. A big part of their program's disarming us so that we're helpless and have to rely on them exclusively for protection, establishing dependence. Not that the cops are legally obligated to your personal protection of course.
Anything that pledges cooperation with state and federal authorities, at least until we take our nation back!
Another book recommendation: HOW TO WIN A LOCAL ELECTION. Should be in your local bookstore.
When we take back a local government and bring that jurisdiction back into line with the classic tenants of American government, it will be a beacon of light, an example of successful peaceful resistance. It will immediately inspire and launch similar efforts in neighboring communities. Each composed of small, decentralized groups working together on the big problem, so that one day they can afford to bicker on the small stuff-that the Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Christian Patriots and Conservatives currently do. So together, with control of enough cities and townships, the combined efforts of those groups can take over counties. With control of enough counties, an entire state can be taken over by our groups.
Why take that next step? The list of things we can do when we take back our local governments is vast, but then there would be the call to centralize governmental control with state and federal authorities. So when this begins we must be as aggressive as possible-being examples to others, advising, and most importantly WE MUST NOT FIGHT AMONGST OURSELVES OVER STUFF WE CAN DEBATE AFTER WE RETAKE OUR LAND! Backbiting will be exploited by our enemies, it will be our biggest downfall.
And if we can take the nation back…
There are many things we must do immediately, as soon as we can take back control of America's destiny.
(1)Secure our borders from any further infiltration. Whatever that takes, whatever manpower's available, we must find a way to seal up thousands of miles of hinterland border, and many thousands of miles more of coastline. This will take bringing our troops and ships home, and in effect end America's era of being used as a tool of global empire. It will be good, as being number one just makes you the one everyone else wants to take out.
At the same time, a heightened state of alert must be maintained if another power were to take advantage of our transistional phase and attempt some economic or military adventure against our interests. America will be painfully contracting from it's global economic empire as we attempt to revive a self-sufficient free republic and the last thing we'll need is for Muslims seeking revenge against the Empire, or China rolling the dice on a military adventure against us.
(2)Impose a flexible series of tariffs so that no matter where on Earth a imported good is made, it's cost after going through customs is just a few percent more than one made in America-with all the taxes still imposed. This must be implemented by law for I'd calculate twenty years; because this is the minimum time required to rebuild America's manufacturing economy. The rest of the world's just going to have to learn to live economically without the American consumer, and the American consumer is going to have to learn basic economics. It will be a horrifically shocking adjustment, and lead to a economic collapse-of the megacorporations. It's the bitterest medicine, but America and Americans have become almost terminally sick with the current system imposed upon us and those that don't immediately take steps to save themselves will need some hard lessons quick to bring them back to reality.
AND WHAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO?
Most important thing you can do? Pray. I'm serious. Don't do it in some gay mega-church and tithe to some blowdried huckster-do it like Jesus taught. Find a quiet place, quiet your mind, and open your heart. God WILL talk to you, or at least convey some feeling. You can't listen because you're out of practice listening so, practice. Eventually God will talk to you, and it's in your best interest to listen because God does love you!
He isn't looking to burn you for eternity for your petty imperfections. He's looking to liberate His People-all of us. Can't liberate a people if they're dead from some "bible prophecy" going on as scripted: wouldn't the events of Revelation carried out as written be a victory for the devil… wanting to possess and destroy? Humanity's all but destroyed in the end of that book. Why not fight to derail that outcome?
Monday, December 10, 2007
AT&T saying good-bye to its last pay phones
By Jon Van and Wailin Wong
Tribune staff reporters
December 4, 2007
After years of seeing its public pay-phone business migrate to cell phones, AT&T Inc. said Monday that it will phase out its pay phones in Illinois and 12 other states by the end of 2008.
While AT&T's decision doesn't mean the end of the pay phone -- independent firms still will offer the service -- public phones will become even more difficult to find.
The days when pay phones were stationed on nearly every busy street corner ended a decade ago. In 1998, there were an estimated 2.6 million pay phones operating nationwide, a figure that has declined to 1 million today, according to AT&T. About 250 million cell phones are in use in the United States.
The trend has been obvious for a long time. A decade ago, Ameritech Corp., the Chicago-based phone company that was dominant in the five Great Lakes states, tried to sell its pay-phone business, which included about 70,000 pay phones in Illinois, but failed to make a deal. When Ameritech was taken over by SBC Communications Inc., SBC executives also shopped around the pay-phone business and found no takers.
The company, now operating under the name AT&T, has been phasing out pay phones and is down to 9,000 in Illinois. That is fewer than the 11,000 pay phones in the state that are operated by about 50 independent firms.
AT&T will walk away from the pay-phone business, turning phones over to independent pay-phone companies in some cases and taking out the phones altogether in others.
"We expect that independent providers will pick up much of this business," said David Huntley, AT&T senior vice president for customer information services.
These days there are no visible pay phones along Michigan Avenue from the Chicago River to Ontario Street. The closest phones are on Ontario at LaSalle Street and are owned by Schaumburg-based Express Telephone Systems, a five-employee outfit that operates roughly 600 public phones in Chicago and Milwaukee, according to company President Mike Simon.
Simon said pay phones remain important for public safety, especially in emergency situations when cell phone networks suffer major disruptions or overloads, like on Sept. 11.
OBM: Ok I thought local utilities were suposed to serve the local public??? That's suposed to be apart of of their exscluive city deal. Also...should the pay phones in lower income areas not still be maintained??? OH...I forgot...low income people are not citizens. Privet companies will not maintain the few phones properly because they are under no regulation. Are pay phones important for public safety, especially in emergency situations when cell phone networks suffer major disruptions or overloads, like on Sept. 11 & Katrina. Ok so during desaster or trouble we "the phone company" will assure there are few or no working pay phones, we will turn off cell towers and disable cell phones, but you can gladly take our RFID Tracking Arm band for your processing & safety....
AT&T RFID Tracking
"We're just trying to survive and provide a good service I think is necessary," Simon said.
He acknowledged that the boom in cell phones has caused pay-phone traffic to drop off sharply, but Simon said the real culprit is the growth of toll-free dialing. Simon estimates that 70 percent of calls made from pay phones and 80 percent of call time are toll-free calls. On his pay phones, it costs 50 cents to make a 10-minute local call.
In exiting the business, AT&T is following a path taken by BellSouth Corp., which quit operating pay phones several years ago. When that happened, independent operators took over many of the phones, said Michael Ward, an attorney for the Illinois Public Telephone Association.
"BellSouth's exit helped the independents," said Ward. "The business has been difficult for incumbents and independent operators."
Because most people carry a cell phone in a pocket or purse, few bother with putting 50 cents into a public phone to make a local call. Five years ago, AT&T stopped allowing people to make long-distance calls from pay phones using coins, requiring that they use a credit card instead.
Ward said that much pay-phone traffic these days comes from people whose cell phone batteries have gone dead or who are getting poor reception, as well as from people who don't own cell phones.
"The industry has suffered from some bad public policies," Ward said. "Some municipalities wanted them removed because city officials wrongly associate pay phones with crime. We've argued that if there's crime on a street corner, don't tear out the phone, put in a video camera."
AT&T's decision will affect some 65,000 pay phones the company operates in 13 states, said Chris Comes, a company spokesman based in Chicago.
Qwest Communications International Inc., the one-time Bell company based in Denver, also has left the pay-phone business, leaving only New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. as the only large U.S. telecommunications carrier that maintains a pay-phone business.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Hearing Impaired Man Tased by Police
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Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub...when Wichita Police shot him with a Taser.
KWCH - Kansas News
OBM: People remember it is leagel for citizens to carry fire arms & tasers to defend yourself!!!!!!
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Hormel, Cargill agree to label food if treated with carbon monoxide
The use of carbon monoxide packaging was discussed at a hearing today before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, where Chairman Bart Stupak of Michigan said this technique in food packaging is 'highly deceptive' because it keeps meat looking fresh even though it may have spoiled.
He also offered evidence from an internal company email from Hormel indicating that there is some evidence this technique may not be safe.
Daniel Engeljohn of the US Food Safety and Inspection Service said in response to a question from Stupak that his agency is open to looking at this data or any new data that indicates the process is unsafe.
'We clearly will look at the data,' he said. Officials were silent, however, on whether they would temporarily suspend the use of this technique until further study is completed.
Engeljohn also said his office is considering a request from Target Corp. to use a label for carbon monoxide-treated meat saying that this treatment was used to preserve the color of the product, and that consumers should not rely on color alone to judge freshness.
click link to read full article
Rare robbery case brings cries of racism
By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 16, 10:20 AM ET
Three young black men break into a white man's home in rural Northern California. The homeowner shoots two of them to death — but it's the surviving black man who is charged with murder.
OBM: YEP....YOU READ IT RIGHT....
In a case that has brought cries of racism from civil rights groups, Renato Hughes Jr., 22, was charged by prosecutors in this overwhelmingly white county under a rarely invoked legal doctrine that could make him responsible for the bloodshed.
"It was pandemonium" inside the house that night, District Attorney Jon Hopkins said. Hughes was responsible for "setting the whole thing in motion by his actions and the actions of his accomplices."
Prosecutors said homeowner Shannon Edmonds opened fire Dec. 7 after three young men rampaged through the Clearlake house demanding marijuana and brutally beat his stepson. Rashad Williams, 21, and Christian Foster, 22, were shot in the back. Hughes fled.
Hughes was charged with first-degree murder under California's Provocative Act doctrine, versions of which have been on the books in many states for generations but are rarely used.
The Provocative Act doctrine does not require prosecutors to prove the accused intended to kill. Instead, "they have to show that it was reasonably foreseeable that the criminal enterprise could trigger a fatal response from the homeowner," said Brian Getz, a San Francisco defense attorney unconnected to the case.
The NAACP complained that prosecutors came down too hard on Hughes, who also faces robbery, burglary and assault charges. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.
The Rev. Amos Brown, head of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Hughes' church, said the case demonstrates the legal system is racist in remote Lake County, aspiring wine country 100 miles north of San Francisco. The sparsely populated county of 13,000 people is 91 percent white and 2 percent black.
Brown and other NAACP officials are asking why the homeowner is walking free. Tests showed Edmonds had marijuana and prescription medication in his system the night of the shooting. Edmonds had a prescription for both the pot and the medication to treat depression.
"This man had no business killing these boys," Brown said. "They were shot in the back. They had fled."
On Thursday, a judge granted a defense motion for a change of venue. The defense had argued that he would not be able to get a fair trial because of extensive local media coverage and the unlikelihood that Hughes could get a jury of his peers in the county. A new location for the trial will be selected Dec. 14.
The district attorney said that race played no part in the charges against Hughes and that the homeowner was spared prosecution because of evidence he was defending himself and his family, who were asleep when the assailants barged in at 4 a.m.
Edmonds' stepson, Dale Lafferty, suffered brain damage from the baseball bat beating he took during the melee. The 19-year-old lives in a rehabilitation center and can no longer feed himself.
"I didn't do anything wrong. All I did was defend my family and my children's lives," said Edmonds, 33. "I'm sad the kids are dead, I didn't mean to kill them."
He added: "Race has nothing to do with it other than this was a gang of black people who thought they were going to beat up this white family."
California's Provocative Act doctrine has primarily been used to charge people whose actions led to shooting deaths.
However, in one notable case in Southern California in 1999, a man who robbed a family at gunpoint in their home was convicted of murder because a police officer pursuing him in a car chase slammed into another driver in an intersection, killing her.
Hughes' mother, San Francisco schoolteacher Judy Hughes, said she believes the group didn't intend to rob the family, just buy marijuana. She called the case against her son a "legal lynching."
"Only God knows what happened in that house," she said. "But this I know: My son did not murder his childhood friends.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Corporate exploitation and prison phone calls: Why are phone calls from jails so expensive?
By James Clingman
NNPA Columnist
Updated Oct 31, 2007, 01:26 pm
Ever thought about that? Many of us have heard that recording telling us the call is coming from a jail, the cost of which is $1.50 or more for the first minute or so, and that we should say “Yes” to accept the charges. Why do local calls from jails cost so much?
I thought all calls were pretty much the same. Long distance calls from prisons are expensive enough, and we know the phone carriers are ripping us off for them, but local calls? Why the exorbitant charge? That’s a rhetorical question, Brothers and Sisters—I know you know the answer.
Like other greedy, unethical, money-grubbing, corporate thieves, the phone companies that charge those outrageous rates for jail phone calls are among the list of profiteers that are steadily taking advantage of this country’s prison industrial complex by exploiting prisoners and their families.
Why do some local calls cost more than other local calls? The answer: Because the phone companies say they do.
I don’t know, but I would imagine that one of the rationales used to justify the high cost is the number of men and women who would be on the phones if the costs were normal. But, couldn’t that be solved by prison officials regulating the number of calls and the time spent on the phone by each prisoner?
This is probably a trivial point to many of you, but my reason for writing about it is to illuminate the fact that Black folks are, in many cases, allowing ourselves to be used as wealth creators for others, even to the ridiculous extent of doing stupid stuff that will land us in jail or prison. Then when we get to jail, we want to call our friends and families, at usury phone rates, to help get us out or just to “stay in touch.”
Of course, that does not excuse the greed of the phone companies, and the only thing we can do about it is what Nancy Reagan said, “Just say no” to accepting the charges; but you know that’s not going to happen. We are going to continue to go to jail, and we are going to continue to accept the charges for the millions of phone calls that go out from jails and prisons everyday. Thus, a trivial thing like a phone call becomes a billion dollar advantage.
A close look at the jails will reveal that Blacks occupy the cells at a disproportionate rate.
Black people are not building jails, supplying the needs of the jails, doing the maintenance in the jails, or selling hair grease, toilet paper, T-shirts, jumpsuits, flip-flops, books, or anything else to the jails.
A multi-billion dollar industry located in our hometowns, in many cases funded by our tax dollars, and we have no economic interest in that industry. All we do is fill the cells.
Phone companies that charge $1.50 for a local call are ripping us off, but filling their coffers with the easiest money they have ever made.
No increase in their cost of goods sold, no added cost for personnel, and no additional expense for advertising and marketing; they are just sitting there raking it in, hearing cha-ching every minute of the day. Who’s the sucker in that scenario? We have given new meaning to the term, “phone home.”
It’s all about economics. The prison-jail system, both supply and demand, has grown exponentially, because of the high profit from prison-building and prisoner warehousing. We already account for the profit margins of many consumer product companies—that we do not own, spending our $800 billion willy-nilly on whatever someone else makes.
Now we are providing a huge profit margin for the prison industrial complex as we do our daily Bataan Death March into court rooms to stand in front of corrupt prosecutors and judges and be accused by “testi-lying” cops, in many cases. And the first thing we want to do when they escort us to that cell is make a phone call that cost the person on the other end an arm and a leg.
That’s stupid, as I have said before, especially if you intentionally do a crime or neglect to pay your child support or fail to show up for a court appearance for an outstanding warrant or traffic ticket. That’s stupid! It is also evil and just plain wrong if you are doing the more serious crimes like robbing, raping, assaulting, or killing. At the end of it all there will be someone, who looks nothing like you, who will profit from your stupidity and your evil deeds, while you sit in a cell and waste your life away.
When you get out of jail you look for a job, mostly from someone who does not look like you, and get frustrated because you can’t get hired. Then after so many turn-downs you decide to do something else stupid and go right back into the same system. Can’t you see the pattern here?
It is sad that Black people, especially, would subject ourselves to such a no-win situation, but we do it everyday. Even sadder is the fact that our illogical actions have a negative and exacerbating effect on our friends and families. We end up paying on both ends of the system folks.
This article started with a simple phone call, but you can see the implications of our behavior when it comes to crime and punishment—and, I might add, wealth. In a system, things work together, in conjunction with one another; everything fits together, Brothers and Sisters.
As for the money-making prison system, let’s stay out of the cells and get into sales—legal sales. In the meantime, maybe we should look into using carrier pigeons to talk to one another.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Cloned meat, dairy make way to the table
John Upton, The Examiner
2007-10-29 10:00:00.0
Current rank: # 5 of 6,919
SAN FRANCISCO -
Families and friends who share eggnog, lamb curry or beef stew this winter may not know whether the main ingredients came from cloned animals, after the governor vetoed a San Francisco lawmaker’s labeling bill.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to end a voluntary moratorium on the sale of dairy and meat from cloned cattle, goats, pigs and sheep, after it ruled last year that the food is safe for humans. The agency published a health risk assessment in December that noted high death rates among cloned animals and host mothers, partly because of incidents of ‘large animal syndrome’ in cloned cattle and sheep.
A federal bill to require labels on food from cloned animals and their descendents has been stalled in Democratic-controlled congressional committees since February. A similar bill by state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, passed the Legislature last month, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently refused to sign it.
To clone an animal, scientists move its genetic material into excavated donor embryos, which are planted in host mothers to grow as genetic doppelgängers of the prized beast. A Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology survey last year found that two-thirds of Americans are “uncomfortable” with the technology.
Migden said labels on cloned food would let consumers know and choose what they put on the dinner table, but Schwarzenegger told lawmakers in a veto statement that Migden’s proposed rules “could be unworkable, costly and unenforceable,” and might violate federal law.
About a dozen agricultural and retail groups opposed Migden’s bill. California Farm Bureau lobbyist Noelle Cremers said cloning lets livestock producers “more quickly respond to consumer demand” by replicating valued animals, and that it would be “next to impossible” to segregate food, for labeling purposes, from cloned animals and their descendents.
Labels for cloned food would mislead consumers, which would violate federal law, said Cremers, because there’s “absolutely no difference” between food from cloned and non-cloned animals.
But food-safety and animal-welfare groups criticized Schwarzenegger’s decision. “The animals are injected with large amounts of hormones — and that’s a food safety issue,” said Rebecca Spector, the San Francisco-based West Coast director of The Center for Food Safety.
The nonprofit noted in a report that the federal government’s risk assessment relied heavily on studies that weren’t reviewed by other scientists. “We feel very strongly,” Spector said, “that there hasn’t been adequate testing.”
UC Davis biotechnologist Alison Van Eenennaam said overgrown young are a side effect of in vitro fertilization, and that they’re usually delivered safely by Caesarean section. “Most of these companies have got a few vets on staff,” she said. “It’s not like it’s Joe Blow out in the field hoping for the best.”
How The Bible Became
By Rev. Ted Pike
10-30-7
Recently, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law S.B. 777, outlawing Biblical criticism of homosexuality in CA public schools (See, California 'Mom,' 'Dad' ban garners international scorn). California's Christians face the alternatives of withdrawing their children to private education or watching them progressively corrupted by an educational system that demonizes their religious bias against sodomy.
This ban on the Bible is not a recent capricious edict from Sacramento liberals or the Republican "Terminator" Governor Schwarzenegger. It's the result of massive social engineering throughout the past half century but begun in earnest in 1985 by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. ADL is architect of "anti-bias" educational programs worldwide. Here's how this Jewish activist group helped make it criminal to criticize sodomy in California--and intends to do so everywhere.
Re-Defining Hate
America was founded on tolerance--as a place where people of widely diverse races, religions, and creeds could follow their convictions free from persecution. But America's founders hardly believed that vice should be tolerated or that it's wrong to be prejudiced against it! Early American social ethics (as taught in homes, schools and churches) said the opposite: Families, social groups and even government should encourage "bias" against all forms of vice. These include robbery, graft, prostitution, etc. and that vice so unnatural that for thousands of years it was virtually unmentionable--sodomy.
Yet, in the early 1980s, Jewish-dominated media determined to create as much damage as possible from the sixties' sexual revolution (which they promoted). I vividly remember how, more than ever before, they encouraged not just the drug culture, abortion and fornication but especially "gay rights." In fact, sodomy is being pushed down the throats of Christian America until it will soon become criminal not to be a homosexual but a Christian! (See, http://truthtellers.org/alerts/judaismhomosexuality.html) Judaism and Homosexuality: A Marriage Made in Hell and Jews Confirm Big Media Is Jewish)
In league with the Jewish media, ADL's social re-engineering of America and the world has been largely accomplished through its massive "World of Difference" educational program. In 1985, ADL began an educational thrust that encompassed all levels of public education, government, corporations, and social organizations. ADL relentlessly taught millions that we are entitled to no bias against race, religion, or "sexual orientation." All bias, ADL teaches, is very bad. No one is entitled to claim that he, his religion, or sexual orientation is right and others wrong. "When we convince ourselves that our way is the "right way," we are more likely to strike out at those who are different. In fact, intolerance of differences is at the roots of most violence." (http://www.adl.org/guide/default.asp)
ADL teaches that, for practical purposes, bias and "hate" are the same. Biblical bias expressed against homosexuality constitutes "harassment" and "verbal violence," the precursor of hate-motivated violence (hate crimes).
First Step: Make Bias Socially Taboo
Wanting to eventually criminalize bias against homosexuality, ADL first had to make it a violation of social norms. Since 1985, "more than 375,000 elementary and secondary school teachers, responsible for nearly 12 million students," have participated in ADL's "World of Difference" program. These included anti-bias programs beginning as early as age 3-5. Lesson formats such as "I Belong to Many Groups" foster global--not religious or national--loyalties in young people.
ADL sensitivity training programs in corporate America taught business owners to defer to homosexuals as almost a protected species in regard to hiring or firing. After decades of conditioning, American business has been prepared for ADL's workplace bias crime laws on the federal and state level. (This includes ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, now before Congress.)
ADL also teaches law enforcement at all levels how to recognize and report bias crimes. It conditioned US Justice Department officials, FBI, and all police departments to believe that verbal "intimidation" of homosexuals is virtually a hate crime and that "gay bashing" may well be traceable to evangelical pulpits.
The Fruits of ADL's Labors
In the 1980s, ADL led countless young people away from Christians' "homophobic" bias against homosexuality. They are now the teachers, police officers, jurists, and administrators who guide America's public policy. As exists in Canada and now in California, this policy increasingly empowers legislative provision for stiff protection of homosexuals as beleaguered victims of Christian intolerance.
For 23 years, ADL has cultivated, watered and fertilized the moral and cultural soil of America toward acceptance of homosexuality. This contradicts moral standards that prevailed for at least the last 5,000 years.
So it was no surprise when the first openly lesbian member of California's state assembly, Sheila Koehl, submitted a bill banning criticism of homosexuality in the public school systems. Gov. Schwarzenegger then enshrined on the legislative level a program of moral transformation begun more than 20 years earlier by ADL.
Yet ADL remains unexposed, unidentified, and uncriticized by Christian evangelicals and their leaders. Why the silence? ADL is 100% Jewish. The majority of evangelicals believe that God will "curse" the nation or person who criticizes Jews. (Gen. 12:3) Their leaders, who are becoming more aware of ADL origins of hate laws and organized anti-Christianity, fear they will be cursed by a mass exodus of support if they criticize God's chosen people.
Yet, if the church remains silent concerning those who invented and foment "anti-bias" laws, there is little to ultimately restrain passage of a virtual epidemic of hate laws identical to S.B. 777. Like poisonous mushrooms sprouting in profusion after extended rain, such laws will crop up in state and federal capitals and dominate the moral and political landscape, not only in America but throughout the world.
Bronx resident creates Afrocentric puzzles to teach children about culture
Monday, October 29th 2007, 4:00 AM
Kevin Dunn is a puzzling guy.
The 52-year-old Bronx resident and father of five creates Afrocentric crossword and word-search puzzles to teach children young and old about African and African-American culture and history.
Marketed under the "Puzzles For Us ... the puzzles with a purpose" label, Dunn's puzzles have started appearing in New York City public school classrooms - a nice turn of events, since that's where the first one appeared more than 15 years ago.
He's also under contract to create puzzles for both the American Civil Liberties Union - on racial profiling - and the legendary Apollo Theater.
"I call these cultural entertainment," Dunn said. "The idea is to whet people's appetites so they want to know more." Though schoolchildren are the target audience, the scholarship behind each puzzle is more college-level. Dunn's puzzle clues are taken from history, culture and popular culture; solutions to one puzzle include a speech by Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, ancient Egyptian ethics and an award-winning recording by local radio personality Gary Byrd.
Dunn was born and raised in Brooklyn. His mother, Juanita Francis, was a seamstress, and his father, Silas, was a longshoreman with an interesting history of his own - he was once offered a spot on a Negro Baseball League team but had to turn it down because his mother didn't like the idea of her son playing baseball on Sunday.
Dunn is a data programmer and a former after-school counselor who also ran a computer club for students.
He created his first crossword puzzle in 1991 as a way to help his stepdaughter Ebony learn more about history. His other children are stepdaughter Latoya, and sons Jisun and Lordikim. Another son, Ikim, died in 2001.
"I was really trying to find something for the kid to do, besides watch television," Dunn said. "I wanted to get her interested in finding out more about her history."
His daughter took the puzzle to her junior high school, where approving teachers made sure it found its way to the principal, who copied it and distributed it across the school.
"They asked me if I could make more of them," Dunn said. "I told them I'd make more, since it gave me something to do."
Dunn had created three puzzles when his sister Zenola Smalls told him he was onto something.
"She convinced me to go out on the street and sell them," he said.
He put them in a little booklet and stood - rather tentatively - in front of the old Mays Department Store on Fulton St.
"I didn't want any of my friends to see me," he said. "But then a couple of pretty girls came by, and I thought maybe it wasn't so bad after all."
Dunn found himself energized by the favorable public reaction to his puzzles. He kept creating them - "I spent a lot of time at the New York Public Library and at the Schomburg [Center for Research in Black Culture]," he said.
By 2001, Dunn had a collection of puzzles and was looking for ways to expand his business. He turned to Project Enterprise, a nonprofit with offices in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that provides advice and seed money to budding entrepreneurs looking to get businesses off the ground.
That group helped Dunn launch "Invision Publications" his puzzle-making company. Last month, Dunn was named Project Enterprise's 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year.
Public school teachers can order his puzzles from the Education Department's Web site, www.shopdoe.com.
Others can get it from www.puzzlesforus.com, or by calling (718) 538-6102.
