Saturday, September 22, 2018

James Woods Suspended From Twitter Over Satirical Meme That Could "Impact An Election" 

ORIGINAL LINK

Outspoken conservative actor James Woods was suspended by Twitter over a two-month-old satirical meme which very clearly parodies a Democratic advertisement campaign. 

The offending tweet from July 20, features three millennial-aged men with "nu-male smiles" and text that reads "We're making a Woman's Vote Worth more by staying home." Above it, Woods writes "Pretty scary that there is a distinct possibility this could be real. Not likely, but in this day and age of absolute liberal insanity, it is at least possible."

According to screenshots provided by an associate of Woods', Twitter directed the actor to delete the post on the grounds that it contained "text and imagery that has the potential to be misleading in a way that could impact an election."

In other words, James Woods, who has approximately 1.72 million followers, was suspended because liberals who don't identify as women might actually take the meme seriously and not vote. 

In a statement released through associate Sara Miller, Woods said "You are a coward, @Jack," referring to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. "There is no free speech for Conservatives on @Twitter." 

Hey guys, @Twitter has locked @RealJamesWoods’ account.

His statement: “You are a coward, @jack. There is no free speech for Conservatives on @Twitter.”#JamesWoods pic.twitter.com/zGVOnxP0D6

— Sara Miller (@Millerita) September 21, 2018

Earlier this month, Woods opined on the mass-platform ban of Alex Jones, tweeting: "“I’ve never read Alex Jones nor watched any of his video presence on the internet. A friend told me he was an extremist. Believe me that I know nothing about him. That said, I think banning him from the internet is a slippery slope. This is the beginning of real fascism. Trust me."

I’ve never read Alex Jones nor watched any of his video presence on the internet. A friend told me he was an extremist. Believe me that I know nothing about him. That said, I think banning him from the internet is a slippery slope. This is the beginning of real fascism. Trust me.

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 9, 2018

Nu-males everywhere non-threateningly smirk at Woods' bad fortune...

 

(h/t Adan Salazar @ Infowars, Twitchy)



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Evidence The Housing Bubble Is Bursting?: "Home Sellers Slashing Prices At Fastest Rate In Over Eight Years"

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The housing market indicated that a crisis was coming in 2008.  Is the same thing happening once again in 2018? 

For several years, the housing market has been one of the bright spots for the U.S. economy.  Home prices, especially in the hottest markets on the east and west coasts, had been soaring.  But now that has completely changed, and home sellers are cutting prices at a pace that we have not seen since the last recession.  In case you are wondering, this is definitely a major red flag for the economy.  According to CNBC, home sellers are “slashing prices at the highest rate in at least eight years”…

After three years of soaring home prices, the heat is coming off the U.S. housing market. Home sellers are slashing prices at the highest rate in at least eight years, especially in the West, where the price gains were hottest.

It is quite interesting that prices are being cut fastest in the markets that were once the hottest, because that is exactly what happened during the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2008 too.

In a previous article, I documented the fact that experts were warning that “the U.S. housing market looks headed for its worst slowdown in years”, but even I was stunned by how bad these new numbers are.

According to Redfin, more than one out of every four homes for sale in America had a price drop within the most recent four week period…

In the four weeks ended Sept. 16, more than one-quarter of the homes listed for sale had a price drop, according to Redfin, a real estate brokerage. That is the highest level since the company began tracking the metric in 2010. Redfin defines a price drop as a reduction in the list price of more than 1 percent and less than 50 percent.

That is absolutely crazy.

I have never even heard of a number anywhere close to that in a 30 day period.

Of course the reason why prices are being dropped is because homes are not selling.  The supply of homes available for sale is shooting up, and that is good news for buyers but really bad news for sellers.

It could be argued that home prices needed to come down because they had gotten ridiculously high in recent months, and I don’t think that there are too many people that would argue with that.

But is this just an “adjustment”, or is this the beginning of another crisis for the housing market?

Just like a decade ago, millions of American families have really stretched themselves financially to get into homes that they really can’t afford.  If a new economic downturn results in large numbers of Americans losing their jobs, we are once again going to see mortgage defaults rise to stunning heights.

We live at a time when the middle class is shrinking and most families are barely making it from month to month.  The cost of living is steadily rising, but paychecks are not, and that is resulting in a huge middle class squeeze.  I really like how my good friend MN Gordon made this point in his most recent article

The general burden of the American worker is the daily task of squaring the difference between the booming economy reported by the government bureaus and the dreary economy reported in their biweekly paychecks. There is sound reason to believe that this task, this burden of the American worker, has been reduced to some sort of practical joke. An exhausting game of chase the wild goose.

How is it that the economy’s been growing for nearly a decade straight, but the average worker’s seen no meaningful increase in their income? Have workers really been sprinting in place this entire time? How did they end up in this ridiculous situation?

The fact is, for the American worker, America’s brand of a centrally planned economy doesn’t pay. The dual impediments of fake money and regulatory madness apply exactions which cannot be overcome. There are claims to the fruits of one’s labors long before they’ve been earned.

The economy, in other words, has been rigged. The value that workers produce flows to Washington and Wall Street, where it’s siphoned off and misallocated to the cadre of officials, cronies, and big bankers. What’s left is spent to merely keep the lights on, the car running, and food upon the table.

And unfortunately, things are likely to only go downhill from here.

The trade war is really starting to take a toll on the global economy, and it continues to escalate.  Back during the Great Depression we faced a similar scenario, and we would be wise to learn from history.  In a recent post, Robert Wenzel shared a quote from Dr. Benjamin M. Anderson that was pulled from his book entitled “Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946”

[T]here came another folly of government intervention in 1930 transcending all the rest in significance. In a world staggering under a load of international debt which could be carried only if countries under pressure could produce goods and export them to their creditors, we, the great creditor nation of the world, with tariffs already far too high, raised our tariffs again. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of June 1930 was the crowning folly of the who period from 1920 to 1933….

Protectionism ran wild all over the world.  Markets were cut off.  Trade lines were narrowed.  Unemployment in the export industries all over the world grew with great rapidity, and the prices of export commodities, notably farm commodities in the United States, dropped with ominous rapidity….

The dangers of this measure were so well understood in financial circles that, up to the very last, the New York financial district retained hope the President Hoover would veto the tariff bill.  But late on Sunday, June 15, it was announced that he would sign the bill. This was headline news Monday morning. The stock market broke twelve points in the New York Time averages that day and the industrials broke nearly twenty points. The market, not the President, was right.

Even though the stock market has been booming, everything else appears to indicate that the U.S. economy is slowing down.

If home prices continue to fall precipitously, that is going to put even more pressure on the system, and it won’t be too long before we reach a breaking point.



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Just Two NY Times Paragraphs On Russiagate - A Striking Admission

ORIGINAL LINK

This week The New York Times published an epic 10,000 word piece entitled "The Plot to Subvert and Election - Unraveling the Russia Story So Far."

It's essentially the Times' summary of everything that can be definitively established thus far after two years of national obsession and inquiry into alleged Russian election meddling and influence that supposedly ushered Trump into the White House in 2016. 

The massive investigative piece has the following lede at the top: For two years, Americans have tried to absorb the details of the 2016 attack — hacked emails, social media fraud, suspected spies — and President Trump’s claims that it’s all a hoax. The Times explores what we know and what it means.

But what do we learn? Buried among the nearly 200 paragraphs of seemingly endless intelligence "claims" wherein the reader will be disappointed to find no smoking gun detailing any actual conspiracy of meddling and collusion, we find two specific paragraphs — which though contradictory  are incredibly revealing about the nature of the whole 'Russiagate' scandal.  

First, in paragraph 5 we are told by the Times journalists

President Trump’s Twitter outbursts that it is all a “hoax” and a “witch hunt,” in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, have taken a toll on public comprehension.

And as Moon of Alabama blog astutely observes, after one-hundred-and-seventy-eight paragraphs featuring repetition of "unproven intelligence claims, spin around a few facts and lots of innuendo" the same authors finally admit that Trump is actually right.

Near the end of an exhaustively long piece meant to chronicle the "evidence" that few are likely to ever read in full, we find this bombshell candid admission:

Mr. Trump’s frustration with the Russian investigation is not surprising. He is right that no public evidence has emerged showing that his campaign conspired with Russia in the election interference or accepted Russian money.

In an astounding contradiction within a single NYT article, the "mountain of evidence" at the opening becomes Trump "is right that no public evidence has emerged" by the story's closing.

Enough said?... 

That's right, after two years of almost 24/7 media coverage and frenzy over the Trump campaign and White House supposedly being under a perpetual Kremlin shadow of compromise, we have a 10,000 word piece by the "paper of record" attempting to tie all the "evidence" together which ultimately ends on a whimper.

Buried in this 10k-word NYT piece: "no public evidence has emerged showing that [Trump's] campaign conspired with Russia." This is a pattern: ample words for Trump-Russia innuendo; quiet acknowledgment of no evidence. And 0 words on what has been debunked. https://t.co/rew5FLEfKD pic.twitter.com/igNIxEXuHr

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 20, 2018

Again, The Times began by citing "a mountain of evidence" in paragraph 5, but ends with: "Mr. Trump’s frustration with the Russian investigation is not surprising. He is right that no public evidence has emerged..."

Journalist Aaron Maté rightly concludes, "This is a pattern: ample words for Trump-Russia innuendo; quiet acknowledgment of no evidence. And 0 words on what has been debunked."



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Friday, September 21, 2018

Evidence The Housing Bubble Is Bursting?: “Home Sellers Are Slashing Prices At The Highest Rate In At Least Eight Years”

ORIGINAL LINK

The housing market indicated that a crisis was coming in 2008.  Is the same thing happening once again in 2018?  For several years, the housing market has been one of the bright spots for the U.S. economy.  Home prices, especially in the hottest markets on the east and west coasts, had been soaring.  But now that has completely changed, and home sellers are cutting prices at a pace that we have not seen since the last recession.  In case you are wondering, this is definitely a major red flag for the economy.  According to CNBC, home sellers are “slashing prices at the highest rate in at least eight years”…

After three years of soaring home prices, the heat is coming off the U.S. housing market. Home sellers are slashing prices at the highest rate in at least eight years, especially in the West, where the price gains were hottest.

It is quite interesting that prices are being cut fastest in the markets that were once the hottest, because that is exactly what happened during the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2008 too.

In a previous article, I documented the fact that experts were warning that “the U.S. housing market looks headed for its worst slowdown in years”, but even I was stunned by how bad these new numbers are.

According to Redfin, more than one out of every four homes for sale in America had a price drop within the most recent four week period…

In the four weeks ended Sept. 16, more than one-quarter of the homes listed for sale had a price drop, according to Redfin, a real estate brokerage. That is the highest level since the company began tracking the metric in 2010. Redfin defines a price drop as a reduction in the list price of more than 1 percent and less than 50 percent.

That is absolutely crazy.

I have never even heard of a number anywhere close to that in a 30 day period.

Of course the reason why prices are being dropped is because homes are not selling.  The supply of homes available for sale is shooting up, and that is good news for buyers but really bad news for sellers.

It could be argued that home prices needed to come down because they had gotten ridiculously high in recent months, and I don’t think that there are too many people that would argue with that.

But is this just an “adjustment”, or is this the beginning of another crisis for the housing market?

Just like a decade ago, millions of American families have really stretched themselves financially to get into homes that they really can’t afford.  If a new economic downturn results in large numbers of Americans losing their jobs, we are once again going to see mortgage defaults rise to stunning heights.

We live at a time when the middle class is shrinking and most families are barely making it from month to month.  The cost of living is steadily rising, but paychecks are not, and that is resulting in a huge middle class squeeze.  I really like how my good friend MN Gordon made this point in his most recent article

The general burden of the American worker is the daily task of squaring the difference between the booming economy reported by the government bureaus and the dreary economy reported in their biweekly paychecks. There is sound reason to believe that this task, this burden of the American worker, has been reduced to some sort of practical joke. An exhausting game of chase the wild goose.

How is it that the economy’s been growing for nearly a decade straight, but the average worker’s seen no meaningful increase in their income? Have workers really been sprinting in place this entire time? How did they end up in this ridiculous situation?

The fact is, for the American worker, America’s brand of a centrally planned economy doesn’t pay. The dual impediments of fake money and regulatory madness apply exactions which cannot be overcome. There are claims to the fruits of one’s labors long before they’ve been earned.

The economy, in other words, has been rigged. The value that workers produce flows to Washington and Wall Street, where it’s siphoned off and misallocated to the cadre of officials, cronies, and big bankers. What’s left is spent to merely keep the lights on, the car running, and food upon the table.

And unfortunately, things are likely to only go downhill from here.

The trade war is really starting to take a toll on the global economy, and it continues to escalate.  Back during the Great Depression we faced a similar scenario, and we would be wise to learn from history.  In a recent post, Robert Wenzel shared a quote from Dr. Benjamin M. Anderson that was pulled from his book entitled “Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946”

[T]here came another folly of government intervention in 1930 transcending all the rest in significance. In a world staggering under a load of international debt which could be carried only if countries under pressure could produce goods and export them to their creditors, we, the great creditor nation of the world, with tariffs already far too high, raised our tariffs again. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of June 1930 was the crowning folly of the who period from 1920 to 1933….

Protectionism ran wild all over the world.  Markets were cut off.  Trade lines were narrowed.  Unemployment in the export industries all over the world grew with great rapidity, and the prices of export commodities, notably farm commodities in the United States, dropped with ominous rapidity….

The dangers of this measure were so well understood in financial circles that, up to the very last, the New York financial district retained hope the President Hoover would veto the tariff bill.  But late on Sunday, June 15, it was announced that he would sign the bill. This was headline news Monday morning. The stock market broke twelve points in the New York Time averages that day and the industrials broke nearly twenty points. The market, not the President, was right.

Even though the stock market has been booming, everything else appears to indicate that the U.S. economy is slowing down.

If home prices continue to fall precipitously, that is going to put even more pressure on the system, and it won’t be too long before we reach a breaking point.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The post Evidence The Housing Bubble Is Bursting?: “Home Sellers Are Slashing Prices At The Highest Rate In At Least Eight Years” appeared first on The Economic Collapse.



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Dershowitz: Why Should We Automatically Believe Kavanaugh's Accuser? 

ORIGINAL LINK

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz made the rounds on Fox News this week, saying that he rejects the idea that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, should be automatically believed just because she is a women - and that people who say "I believe her" are basing that opinion on virtually no evidence. 

"The most disturbing thing is these people who are on television, some people I know and respect, [who say] 'I believe her,'" said Dershowitz, adding "You never met her. You don't know anything about her. Are women born with a special gene for telling the truth, and men with a special gene for lying?

"I don't believe her. I don't believe him," he added. "I have an open mind, I want to hear both sides of the story and make a determination."

Dershowitz warned against the creation of multiple standards of justice in America, and said that would lead to a politicization of the justice system. He said in this case, the decision to confirm or not confirm Kavanaugh should be based on evidence, "not genetic belief in the inferiority or superiority of one gender." -Washington Examiner

On Thursday, Dershowitz told Fox: "Look, nobody should be referring to her as a victim or him as a perpetrator until we hear from both of them, under oath, subject to cross-examination. There is nothing more essential to American justice than the opportunity to cross-examine your accuser - to confront your accuser, it's in the Constitution. Essentially it goes back to Magna Carta. 

The idea that we're calling somebody a perpetrator and somebody else a victim, based simply on he-said / she-said, is just wrong and it's un-American."

Ford's supporters say they find her story that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982 "credible," while Kavanaugh has denied it ever happened - agreeing to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the accusation. Ford said that she is willing to testify next week, however she laid out a series of conditions; not on Monday, only if her "safety is guaranteed, and only if Kavanaugh goes first.



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Google Staff Discussed Search "Tweak" To Bias Trump Travel Ban Results

ORIGINAL LINK

The notion that Google's search algorithm is biased (explicitly or implicitly) against conservative voices and media outlets is nothing new. President Trump slammed Google for this tendency over the summer when he tweeted a screen shot of the results from a search using the terms "Trump news"...

Google

...and it came back with only left-leaning news organizations in the top spots.

So it's hardly surprising that, according to a late Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal, two tech reporters exposed an incident where Google employees considered actively biasing the company's search algorithm to favor news sources that would offer the perspective that Trump's then-newly issued travel ban was unconstitutional, illegal and dangerous, while also surfacing links to resource and information that would allow users to contribute to the ACLU or other organizations working against the ban, while also providing resources for people impacted by the ban.

Google

The list of suggestions included:

"Actively counter islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms 'Islam', 'Muslim', 'Iran', etc."

"Actively counter prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms 'Mexico', 'Hispanic', 'Latino', etc."

"Can we launch an ephemeral experience that includes Highlights, up-to-date info from the US State Dept, DHS, links to donate to ACLU, etc?" the email added.

Several officials responded favorably to the overall idea. "We’re absolutely in…Anything you need," one wrote.

But a public-affairs executive wrote: "Very much in favor of Google stepping up, but just have a few questions on this," including "how partisan we want to be on this."

"To the extent of my knowledge, we’d be breaching precedent if we only gave Highlights access to organizations that support a certain view of the world in a time of political conflict," the public-affairs executive said. "Is that accurate? If so, would we be willing to open access to highlights to [organizations] that…actually support the ban?"

While these suggestions were being bandied about, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who moved to the US from the former Soviet Union as a child, was attending rallies in the Bay Area protesting the ban. Google also joined nearly 100 technology companies in filing a joint amicus brief that February challenging the ban. "The order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth."

According to the email chain, which was leaked to WSJ, employees responsible for search marketing said they were engaged in a "large brainstorm" about how to react to the search.

"Overall idea: Leverage search to highlight important organizations to donate to, current news, etc. to keep people abreast of how they can help as well as the resources available for immigrations [sic] or people traveling," the email says. Some suggested ways to "actively counter" Google searches that produced anti-Islamic and anti-Hispanic search results. Others focused on how the company could use its "highlights" function, the code name for an experimental project that allowed influencers like politicians and musicians to post text updates that would appear directly in Google's search feed.

A spokesperson for Google emphasized in a statement that none of these ideas was ever implemented, and that "Google has never manipulated its search results" - which is, of course, objectively untrue. In fact, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to meet with states' attorneys general next week to discuss possible criminal action against tech firms that bias their products against conservatives.

"These emails were just a brainstorm of ideas, none of which were ever implemented," a company spokeswoman said in a statement. "Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology - not in the current campaign season, not during the 2016 election, and not in the aftermath of President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies."

Because who could ever forgot how Trump's electoral victory caused such "panic and dismay" among top Google executive, after the company actively aided the Clinton campaign only to find that its vast influence on the culture still wasn't enough to push her over the line.



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Heroes & Whores

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Certainly one of the most important things I learned is that numbers can be deceiving. There is a logic to mathematics, but there is also the underlying human element that must be considered. Numbers can’t lie, but the people who create those numbers can and do. As so many people have learned, forgetting to include human nature in an equation can be devastating.” - Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen

The quote I used from Harry Markopolos’ No One Would Listen book about the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme in my last article triggered a bittersweet recollection. For me, the experience captured the true nature of our warped financial markets, a culture  glorifying wealthy arrogant criminal assholes, while ignoring or ridiculing honest, hard working, highly intelligent truth tellers.

The picture of Markopolos above shows an average looking middle aged guy, with a five o’clock shadow, bad haircut, and wearing a modestly priced suit and tie. Since reading about his fruitless effort to expose Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme and his fifteen minutes of fame in 2009, I have felt an affinity towards him. We both have a brother and sister. We were both brought up in Catholic households and went to Catholic schools. We both have degrees in finance. We have both had financial careers. We are both married with three sons. And we both believe facts and an accurate assessment of the numbers always reveals the truth.

Through his job as a portfolio manager with a small investment firm Bernie Madoff’s investing record was brought to his attention. As a numbers guy, he immediately began assessing the returns.  Markopolos said he knew within five minutes Madoff’s numbers didn’t add up. It took him another four hours to mathematically prove that they could have only been obtained by fraud.

In 2000, 2001, and 2005, Markopolos alerted the SEC of the fraud, supplying supporting documents, but each time, the SEC ignored him or only gave his evidence a cursory investigation. The incompetence or willful ignorance of factual proof by these government drones ultimately resulted in the financial ruin of thousands to the tune of $18 billion and the suicides of a number of people, including Madoff’s son.

The culmination of Markopolos’ analysis was a twenty one page memorandum sent during November 2005 to SEC regulators, entitled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud”. It outlined his unequivocal mathematical findings in more detail and invited officials to check his theories. He outlined 30 red flags proving Madoff’s returns could not possibly be legitimate.

His analysis was based on more than 14 years of Madoff return numbers. During that time, Madoff reported only four losing months – a statistically impossible scenario Markopolos said could only be achieved by fraud. He was ignored because he was a nobody in the view of SEC Wall Street wannabes.

The truth is the low IQ flunkies at the SEC had one goal in life – get high paying jobs on Wall Street with the firms they were supposed to regulate. Actually enforcing securities laws and holding bankers accountable for their criminal activities would limit their career advancement possibilities. Therefore, they pretend to regulate the financial industry and the financial industry pretends to obey the laws. The SEC apparatchiks Markopolos dealt with were nothing more than cheap whores looking for their chance at a sugar daddy Wall Street gig.

It wasn’t until markets began to freeze up in 2008 that Madoff’s ponzi empire of lies came crashing down and he came clean to his sons, who turned him in to the FBI. This was another example of Buffet’s witty quote, “You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out”. Madoff’s ponzi never passed the smell test.

Executives at JP Morgan and numerous other Wall Street firms knew Madoff’s fund wasn’t above board, but being nothing but greedy immoral whores, they loved the millions in fees generated by all his fake trades, and pretended he was just a brilliant money manager who never had a down month. Just like our current ponzi financial markets, built on trillions of debt, all ponzi schemes ultimately collapse due to running our of suckers. It’s always a matter of time.

“Ponzi schemes exist in stable disequilibrium. This means that while they can’t ultimately succeed, they can persist indefinitely—until they don’t.” ― Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen

The brief intersection of our lives occurred sometime in 2010 and captures the essence of how the world treats a real hero and average family man versus the how the world treats Wall Street villains and whores. My family was taking a day trip to NYC to do some sightseeing. My three boys ranged in ages between 11 and 17 and they were briefly experiencing the materialism whirlwind of NYC, with all its glitz and glitter.

After a hectic day, everyone was good with a relatively cheap meal at the Ruby Tuesday in Times Square. Middle class families don’t eat fig-stuffed quail and fluke ceviche at Gotham’s playpen of power in the Four Seasons with Dimon, Blankfein, and other masters of the universe.

We settled into our seats about to order some burgers and fries when I looked up from my menu and saw somebody I recognized a few tables away. It was Harry Markopolos eating dinner with a friend. I am absolutely sure I was the only person in the restaurant who recognized him. To this day he is a virtually unknown character to the world. I, on the other hand, have tremendous admiration for his heroic yet futile effort to reveal the truth regarding Madoff’s ponzi scheme. I wanted to go shake his hand and tell him he was a real hero, but didn’t want to interrupt his dinner.

I just sat there and pondered the irony of this noble honest truth telling hero dining at a chain restaurant while scum sucking Wall Street whores like Dick Fuld and Angelo Mozilo committed crimes which destroyed the global financial system and destroyed the lives of millions, but walked away with hundreds of millions in ill-gotten profits. They were surely drinking champagne and eating caviar, while Harry and his friend were pondering the 2 entrees for $20 special. This is considered justice in a crony capitalist society controlled by a small cabal of wealthy financiers and corporate goliaths.

“Remember when nurses, caregivers, teachers and students crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax? No, me neither.” – Fuad Alakbarov

The past couple weeks has been a never ending orgy of accolades for the Wall Street whores who “Saved the World” in 2008/2009. Watching Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner being bathed in glory by the dimwitted CNBC talking heads and bubble headed Bloomberg bimbos was beyond infuriating. Men like Harry Markopolos have been tossed into the waste bin of history as an asterisk, while arrogant assholes like Jamie Dimon are applauded, esteemed, and held on high as a potential presidential candidate in 2020. I guess when you run a criminal organization that has paid $45 billion in fines since 2009, that qualifies you for the highest office in the land.

This nine year Federal Reserve/Wall Street/Treasury-created “Everything Bubble” has driven the Wall Street CEO hubris-arrogance-meter off the charts. When a society idolizes and venerates psychopaths in suits like Dimon while disregarding and scorning good men like Markopolos, a reckoning is not far off. If I ever have the privilege of being in the presence of Harry again, I will shake his hand and tell him he is a hero to those of us who value the truth. I apologize to all hard working whores for lumping them in the same class as Dimon, Fuld, Mozilo, Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street scum who continue to foul this earth with their mere presence.



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The Next Big Geomagnetic Storm Poses An Astronomical Risk To Modern Man

ORIGINAL LINK

Scientists are concerned about the next significant "space weather" event, which begins at the sun in the center of the solar system. Severe space weather occurs less frequently than traditional weather on Earth but can be more destructive in nature.

The sun is now headed towards a solar minimum, forecasted to arrive in 2019 as the Sun changes over from Solar Cycle 24 to Solar Cycle 25. The Sun goes through 11-year cycles, during which solar activity increases and decreases.


Tracking sunspot activity dates back to the start of the first solar cycle in 1755. Today, simple sketching and counting of sunspot numbers have given way to land-based and space-based technologies that continuously monitor the Sun.

Scientists have discovered that intense activity such as sunspots and solar flares generally subside during a solar minimum. Dean Pesnell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said during a solar minimum, that does not mean the sun becomes dull.

He said solar activity simply changes.

For instance, Pesnell warned, "during a solar minimum, we can see the development of long-lived coronal holes."

Coronal holes are large regions in the sun’s atmosphere where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows streams of solar particles known as coronal mass ejection (CME) to escape the sun as fast solar wind.

If the coronal hole is Earth-facing, then electrically charged particles from the Sun slam into Earth's magnetic field and cause intense electromagnetic storms around the planet. The impact of these particles on the electronic infrastructure underlying modern industrial civilization can be devastating, said the Financial Times.

CMEs disrupt GPS, satellites, and astronauts currently in space. Even airline crew and passengers get a markedly higher dose of radiation during solar storms, especially during polar-crossing, trans-oceanic flights.

And a repeat of the most significant solar storm on record, the 1859 Carrington Super-flare, would cost trillions of dollars in damage as power grids, communication networks, and electronic equipment worldwide would be knocked out.

Some scientists believe that Earth is due for a severe space weather event that could send civilization temporarily into reverse.

Another incident occurred in 1989, when an Earth-facing CME rocked the planet, producing a surge in voltage that caused Hydro-Québec power grid in Canada to collapse, leaving millions of people without electricity.

"During a big geomagnetic storm in 2003, a Japanese scientific satellite was lost and 10 percent of the world’s satellite fleet suffered malfunctions," said Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey.

"Today we have around 1,500 satellites in orbit, with thousands more due to be launched in the next few years," Prof Horne adds. "People are trying to use more commercial off-the-shelf components, rather than components made to operate in space, and many systems have not been tested in a major storm, so there is a lot of uncertainty about what might happen."

A recent space weather event in late April 2017, allegedly knocked out power grids across the entire country in one simultaneous fashion. San Fransisco, New York, and Los Angeles were the three main areas affected. Each region experienced challenges or shutdowns in basic infrastructure such as communication networks and mass transportation.

An unfortunate coincidence of adverse space and Earth weather came in September 2017, when space storms disrupted shortwave radios for hours -- preventing emergency response to hurricanes tearing apart the Caribbean.

"The Sun’s been very quiet for the last 10 years. It reminds people not to be complacent," said Mike Hapgood, head of space weather at the UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Scientists tell the Financial Times that satellites can monitor potentially troublesome activity on the sun days ahead of a possible eruption, forecasting the path and effects of an actual CME, well, that is very difficult. If the CME is Earth-facing it takes about 24-hours to arrive, so when the next big solar flare comes racing towards Earth, government officials do not have enough time to prepare the nation or even the world for impact -- it would be devastating.

According to Prof Horne, the most notable satellite for short-term space weather forecasting today is the US Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, launched into low-Earth Orbit (LEO) in 2015. From this tactical position about 1m miles from Earth, DSCOVR provides an early warning of about one hour before impact.

In late 2016, the Obama administration quietly passed an executive order titled "Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events," which prepares the fragile nation for economic collapse from a space weather event. The mainstream media, for a good reason, were not allowed to cover the passage of this executive order because it would cause too much panic among the American people. When the next significant solar event strikes, most will not be prepared -- not even government.



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Leaked Memo Shows US Overlooked Mass Civilian Deaths In Yemen To Preserve Arms Sales

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On rare occasion a story is unearthed in the mainstream media which demonstrates in stunning clarity how major foreign policy decisions are really made in Washington, especially when it comes to waging perpetual war in the Middle East often under the official rhetorical guise of "protecting civilians".

A bombshell Wall Street Journal report details a leaked classified memo which shows Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided to continue US military involvement in the Saudi war on Yemen in order to preserve a massive $2 billion weapons deal with Riyadh

Human Rights Watch 2016 report: Saudi Arabia Uses US-Made Cluster Bombs and Guided Missiles in Yemen.

This should come as no surprise to those aware of the decades long "oil for weapons" relationship that has defined Gulf countries' ties to the West in modern history, but it's unusual to have such high level confirmation of the decision-making process almost in real time. 

The WSJ summarizes the importance of the classified memo, which its reporters have seen in full:

Mr. Pompeo overruled concerns from most of the State Department specialists involved in the debate who were worried about the rising civilian death toll in Yemen. Those who objected included specialists in the region and in military affairs. He sided with his legislative affairs team after they argued that suspending support could undercut plans to sell more than 120,000 precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a classified State Department memo and people familiar with the debate.

The number of civilian casualties cited in the WSJ report  16,700 killed or injured  is on the very lowest end of estimates to emerge over the past three years of the conflict. Some Yemeni reporters and regional humanitarian organizations have suggested the actual figure is closer to 70,000 killed

In August the Saudi-US coalition bombing campaign, which has been largely ignored in international media since it began in 2015, was thrust into the American media spotlight after a bus full of school children was struck by a guided bomb produced by Lockheed Martin.

The attack, which killed 40 children, was described by the Saudi coalition   of which the US plays a central role  as part of ongoing "legitimate" military operations against pro-Iran Houthi forces. 

Astonishing graphic from @CNN, identifying civilian massacres in Yemen with the bomb makers - Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. This should be standard in war reporting. Searing images. https://t.co/EZqkSsAri6 pic.twitter.com/NWJvPuN7ct

— Tim Shorrock (@TimothyS) August 18, 2018

The school bus bombing and prior documented attacks on hospitals, funerals, and civilian residents, caused a bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers to attempt to shut down US support to the Saudi/UAE coalition. 

NPR has previously described the US role in Yemen while reporting from inside the country as focused on providing "targeting information, equipment and aircraft refueling to the Saudi air campaign, which has been widely criticized for being indiscriminate and killing civilians in places like hospitals, funerals and homes."

When earlier this month Pompeo certified before Congress that the Saudi coalition was working to reduce harm to civilians in Yemen  something Congress recently put into effect — is was an obvious sham

And now there's overwhelming proof that this was the case. Just prior to Pompeo's certifying that US support for the Saudi coalition bombing campaign should continue, officials within the State Department argued against it, per the WSJ report

Most of the State Department’s military and area specialists urged Mr. Pompeo in the memo to reject certification “due to a lack of progress on mitigating civilian casualties.”

That included the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Their recommendation was also backed by the legal advisers who took part in the policy review.

But what ultimately tipped to scales in favor of continued support? The WSJ reports the following based on the leaked memo and the testimony of officials close to the matter.

The only group that urged him to fully support the Saudi-led coalition was the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, which argued in the memo that “lack of certification will negatively impact pending arms transfers.”

The State Department’s legislative team said “failure to certify may also negatively impact future foreign military sales and direct commercial sales to the region.”

Pompeo's official endorsement of the US Gulf allied military campaign came last week in spite of the memo informing Congress that “Recent civilian casualty incidents indicate insufficient implementation of reforms and targeting practices.” And the memo spells out that “Investigations have not yielded accountability measures.”

Thus the Raytheon sale of 120,000 precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates  a deal said to be worth over $2 billion  appears the ultimate decider here

The certification authorized the Pentagon to continue fueling coalition jets, and other areas of partnership such as intelligence sharing. Ironically this came last Wednesday during the same week the United Nations issued its own statement declaring the Yemen war the world's "worst humanitarian crisis".



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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Fraternity Holds Charity Fundraiser, Gets Accused Of "Cultural Appropriation"

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Authored by Grace Gottschling via Campus Reform,

A Washington State University fraternity was accused of culturally appropriating the Asian-American Pacific Islander community after the group wore grass skirts for charity.

The WSU Phi Gamma Delta fraternity (FIJI) held an event Monday to raise money for an unknown charity cause. During the event, they wore grass skirts to “serenade” several sororities on campus, according to a statement released by the Interfraternity Council (IFC), an organization which oversees Greek life at WSU.

“Their actions represent clear examples of cultural appropriation which does not align with the values of the Interfraternity Community, or Washington State University,” the statement, released Tuesday, read.

“The Interfraternity Council condemns these and all acts of cultural appropriation regardless of the intention behind them.”

It is unclear if complaints were filed against FIJI by students or if WSU administration will punish the organization. However, the IFC has taken responsibility for the incident and is disciplining the fraternity. 

A video of the incident can be found here.

I’m going to bed tonight exhausted, angry and tired. Tired of this. Tired of the work our communities have to do to fight this. Tired of students we have to sit next to everyday thinking this is ok. Tired of the lack of action on the part of WSU administration. Tired of it all. pic.twitter.com/3rpmtN6II8

— Harald Hyllseth (@HHyllseth) September 18, 2018

FIJI members have agreed to apologize to “those harmed,” receive education on cultural appropriation and cultural competency, as well as “participate in cross-community forums” with groups affected by the incident. The fraternity has also been called to go before the WSU Greek Standards Board, according to the IFC.

FIJI also released a statement Tuesday, apologizing for the incident. 

“We understand that our behavior was inappropriate and culturally insensitive,” the apology stated.

“We are committed to creating a more understanding culture through education on racial, ethnic, and cultural sensitivity and appreciation.”

“Our hope is that, through this process and education, that our chapter will become more aware about our community, that this behavior does not happen again,” FIJI added. “We also commit to working with leaders of the multicultural community and residential Greek community to ensure these incidents are prevented in the future.”

“The punishment of the FIJI fraternity for their islander philanthropy represents the growing target on the back of fraternities all over campus,” a WSU student, who is a member of a different campus fraternity, told Campus Reform on the condition of anonymity. 

“If the fraternity members were poorly representing the Pacific Island culture by acting inappropriately, then an argument could be made for action, however they were doing nothing more than raising money for a charitable cause, and wearing grass skirts,” the student added.

“I believe very few people were offended by this act, and if the IFC wants to take action on a cause like this, it should be expected that they also punish the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority for their "Rock the Casa" philanthropy, where they serve Mexican food for a charitable cause."

IFC, FIJI, and WSU administration did not respond to Campus Reform’s requests for comment. 



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"Transphobic" Swedish Professor May Lose Job After Noting Biological Differences Between Sexes

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A university professor in Sweden is under investigation for "anti-feminism" and "transphobia" after he said that there are fundamental differences between men and women which are "biologically founded" and that genders cannot be regarded as "social constructs alone," reports Academic Rights Watch

For his transgression, Germund Hesslow - a professor of neuroscience at Lund University - who holds dual PhDs in philosophy and neurophysiology, may lose his job - telling RT that a "full investigation" has been ordered, and that there "have been discussions about trying to stop the lecture or get rid of me, or have someone else give the lecture or not give the lecture at all." 

“If you answer such a question you are under severe time pressure, you have to be extremely brief — and I used wording which I think was completely innocuous, and that apparently the student didn't,” Hesslow said.

Hesslow was ordered to attend a meeting by Christer Larsson, chairman of the program board for medical education, after a female student complained that Hesslow had a "personal anti-feminist agenda." He was asked to distance himself from two specific comments; that gay women have a "male sexual orientation" and that the sexual orientation of transsexuals is "a matter of definition." 

The student's complaint reads in part (translated): 

I have also heard from senior lecturers that Germund Hesslow at the last lecture expressed himself transfobically. In response to a question of transexuallism, he said something like "sex change is a fly". Secondly, it is outrageous because there may be students during the lecture who are themselves exposed to transfobin, but also because it may affect how later students in their professional lives meet transgender people. Transpersonals already have a high level of overrepresentation in suicide statistics and there are already major shortcomings in the treatment of transgender in care, should not it be countered? How does this kind of statement coincide with the university's equal treatment plan? What has this statement given for consequences? What has been done for this to not be repeated? -Academic Rights Watch

After being admonished, Hesslow refused to distance himself from his comments, saying that he had "done enough" already and didn't have to explain and defend his choice of words. 

"At some point, one must ask for a sense of proportion among those involved. If it were to become acceptable for students to record lectures in order to find compromising formulations and then involve faculty staff with meetings and long letters, we should let go of the medical education altogether," Hesslow said in a written reply to Larsson.

He also rejected the accusation that he had a political agenda - stating that his only agenda was to let scientific factnot new social conventions, dictate how he teaches his courses



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School District To Begin Randomly Drug-Testing High School Students

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Via TheAntiMedia.com,

A school district in Clark County, Indiana, will soon be randomly drug testing students who want to participate in extracurricular activities like sports, band, and driving to school.

“Henryville High School and Borden High School will randomly select ten students each quarter and test them for ten drugs that teenagers are most likely to use,” local ABC 13 reported.

If students test positive, they will be ineligible for one-third of scheduled extracurricular activities after the first offense.

“After the third offense, the student will become ineligible for the rest of their high school career.”

While some parents support the new policy and hope it will discourage students from bringing drugs to school, others, like Lance Leach, feel it is too invasive.

There has to be a reasoning, and you have to talk to a parent beforehand,” he said.

Like suspicious behavior or they got caught doing something, then maybe, but not just random drug testing.

The ACLU agrees. The civil liberties organization has long fought against drug testing in schools. In 1998, the organization attempted to challenge drug testing for afterschool activities in Indiana schools, but the Supreme Court refused to hear their arguments. The following year, they challenged an Oklahoma school district, arguing in that case, the after school activities were directly linked with coursework throughout the normal day, and that drug testing infringed on students’ “right to a public education, as well as of the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure,” the New York Times reported at the time.

In 2002, however, the Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional for schools to drug test students participating in extracurricular activities because it was an effective method of deterring drug use.

This assessment turned out to be untrue.

The Washington Post examined one 2013 study that “looked at 14 years of data on student drug use and found that school drug testing was associated with ‘moderately lower marijuana use,’ but increased use of other, more dangerous illicit drugs.”

Another study found “drug testing was ‘was not associated with changes in substance use.’”

Over the years, a number of other experts have expressed their opposition to the practice over legal concerns and the sheer fact that it doesn’t work. The ACLU has cited the American Academy of Pediatrics, while other doctors have also expressed skepticism.

Nevertheless, in 2015, nearly one in five public high schools had drug testing policies in place:

[A] nationally-representative survey of 1,300 school districts found that among the districts with drug testing programs, 28 percent randomly tested all students — not just ones participating in after-school programs. These schools are opening themselves up to a legal challenge.”



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Trump Weighs In On The Single Worst Mistake In American History

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In a wide ranging interview with The Hill on Tuesday conducted in the Oval Office, President Trump was asked to give his take on the biggest mistake in American history. 

Considering just how open-ended a question that is, it's perhaps surprising that he merely went back less than a couple decades into the Bush presidency, though Trump's base will certainly welcome it as it hearkens back to his "America First" foreign policy vision of the campaign trail. 

“The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country: going into the Middle East, by President Bush,” the president during his interview with Hill.TV.

“Obama may have gotten them (U.S. soldiers) out wrong, but going in is to me the biggest single mistake made in the history of our country,” he said.

Trump explained the reasoning behind this choice, and why it wasn't something like the civil war or another defining and devastating event reaching far into American History. 

“Because we spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. Now if you wanna fix a window some place they say, 'oh gee, let’s not do it. Seven trillion, and millions of lives — you know, ‘cause I like to count both sides. Millions of lives,” the president explained.

Some scholars and humanitarian groups estimate that over one million Iraqis were killed in the US invasion and occupation of Iraq starting in 2003. A 2008 Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll, for example, found that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war.

“To me it's the worst single mistake made in the history of our country. Civil war you can understand. Civil war, civil war. That’s different. For us to have gone into the Middle East, and that was just, that was a bad day for this country, I will tell you.”

Various estimates on the Iraq war's cost have put the total taxpayer bill as low as near $2 trillion, but none dispute that it is in the multiple trillions, and estimates will vary widely depending on if veteran care is factored into it. 

The comments echo things Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016. For example during one of his first major foreign policy speeches then candidate Trump said, “I will never send our finest into battle unless necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital V.” And referencing the famous quote of John Quincy Adams, he said during the same speech, “The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies.”

He had previously shocked pundits for being the first Republican nominee for president to trash George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, and has more recently likened it to "throwing a big fat brick into a hornet's nest".

All of this is a hopeful sign considering the extremely heightened and dangerous tensions over Syria this week, and given Trump seems to have vacillated between "bringing the troops home" and getting more involved. On Monday Trump hinted that a decision on the U.S. role in Syria is coming soon.

Commenting on the over 2,000 troops now in Syria ostensibly as part of the "anti-ISIL" coalition campaign, Trump indicated this mission could end soon: “We’re very close to being finished with that job,” he said. He followed with: “And then we’re going to make a determination as to what we’re going to do.”

We consider it a hopeful and a good sign that Trump is possibly revisiting his "America First" foreign policy pledges by identifying the Iraq War as the worst mistake in US history. 

 



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Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Eroding Freedoms: Pinterest Removes NVIC’s Account

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By Theresa Wrangham As Vaccine Awareness Week 2018 approaches, I am reminded how precious freedom of speech is in our country and how important it is to defend it. This week, NVIC was informed that Pinterest removed our account. The Pinterest Team stated, “many of your pins violate our...

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Suspending The Constitution: In America Today, The Government Does Whatever It Wants

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Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document.

The reality we must come to terms with, however, is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

“We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces may change over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, etc.), but the end result remains the same: our unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security.

Thus, in the so-called named of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago.

Most of the damage, however, has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse. 

A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, the courts and the like)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

Here is what it means to live under the Constitution today.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being arrested and charged with bogus “contempt of cop” charges such as “disrupting the peace” or “resisting arrest” for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against SWAT team raids and government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited for the battlefield. As such, this amendment has been rendered null and void.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise) and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts. Indeed, the federal governmental bureaucracy has grown so large that it has made local and state legislatures relatively irrelevant. Through its many agencies and regulations, the federal government has stripped states of the right to regulate countless issues that were originally governed at the local level.

If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

Yet those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

In other words, we have the power to make and break the government. We are the masters and they are the servants. We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”

Americans are constitutionally illiterate.

Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For instance, when Newsweek asked 1,000 adult U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test44% were unable to define the Bill of Rights.

A survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that a little more than one-third of respondents (36 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, while another one-third (35 percent) could not name a single one. Only a quarter of Americans (27 percent) know it takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to override a presidential veto. One in five Americans (21 percent) incorrectly thinks that a 5-4 Supreme Court decision is sent back to Congress for reconsideration. And more than half of Americans do not know which party controls the House and Senate.

A 2006 survey by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that only one out of a thousand adults could identify the five rights protected by the First Amendment. On the other hand, more than half (52%) of the respondents could name at least two of the characters in the animated Simpsonstelevision family, and 20% could name all five. And although half could name none of the freedoms in the First Amendment, a majority (54%) could name at least one of the three judges on the TV program American Idol, 41% could name two and one-fourth could name all three.

It gets worse. 

Many who responded to the survey had a strange conception of what was in the First Amendment. For example, 21% said the “right to own a pet” was listed someplace between “Congress shall make no law” and “redress of grievances.” Some 17% said that the First Amendment contained the “right to drive a car,” and 38% believed that “taking the Fifth” was part of the First Amendment.

Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.

In fact, while some educators want students to learn about freedom, they do not necessarily want them to exercise their freedoms in school. As the researchers conclude, “Most educators think that students already have enough freedom, and that restrictions on freedom in the school are necessary. Many support filtering the Internet, censoring T-shirts, disallowing student distribution of political or religious material, and conducting prior review of school newspapers.”

Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

So what’s the solution?

Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties”  is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.

As Jefferson wrote in 1820: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of our society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

If this constitutional illiteracy is not remedied and soon, freedom in America will be doomed.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have managed to keep the wolf at bay so far. Barely.

Our national priorities need to be re-prioritized. For instance, some argue that we need to make America great again. I, for one, would prefer to make America free again.

As actor-turned-activist Richard Dreyfuss warned:

Unless we teach the ideas that make America a miracle of government, it will go away in your kids’ lifetimes, and we will be a fable.You have to find the time and creativity to teach it in schools, and if you don’t, you will lose it. You will lose it to the darkness, and what this country represents is a tiny twinkle of light in a history of oppression and darkness and cruelty. If it lasts for more than our lifetime, for more than our kids’ lifetime, it is only because we put some effort into teaching what it is, the ideas of America: the idea of opportunity, mobility, freedom of thought, freedom of assembly.”



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