Public Affairs Director falsely claims document does not apply within U.S.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Fort Leonard Wood Public Affairs director Tiffany Wood has provided the first official response to the shocking U.S. Army document that outlines the implementation of re-education camps, admitting that the manual was “not intended for public release” and claiming that its provisions only apply outside the United States, a contention completely disproved by the language contained in the document itself.

After a reader sent Wood a link to where the manual, entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations (PDF), can be downloaded on thearmy.mil website (but only by military employees with special credentials), Wood responded by stating that the document should not be in the public domain.

“The document was not intended for public release,” said Wood, adding, “Any other questions regarding the
document, you will need to file a FOIA request.”

This means that either hackers have obtained access to a secure military website and downloaded the manual or it was leaked by a military employee concerned about the content of the document.

As we have exhaustively illustrated, the document is a training manual for U.S. Army personnel that details how to treat detainees incarcerated in prison camps both abroad and inside the United States.

The manual outlines how officers will develop programs to “indoctrinate” “political activists” incarcerated in detention camps into developing an “understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions.” The document also explains how “reeducating the I/R facility population or setting the stage for acceptance of future operations,” is the responsibility of ‘PSYOP’ personnel within the camp.

The document also makes clear that the internment facility is not only a re-education camp but also a forced labor camp. Page 277 of the manual states, “Detainees constitute a significant labor force of skilled and unskilled individuals. These individuals should be employed to the fullest extent possible in work that is needed to construct, manage, perform administrative functions for, and maintain the internment facility.”

The manual also directs that political activists be confined to isolation and that prisoners be silenced using by “muffling them with a soft, clean cloth tied around their mouths and fastened at the backs of their heads.”

In her email response, Wood falsely claims that, “The document is intended for operations outside of the continental United States. Depending on the nature and magnitude of an event will determine the level of U.S. military involvement.”

As we have proven using only direct quotations and screenshots from the manual, it is clearly designed to be applied both abroad and “within U.S. territory,” including against “civilian detainees” incarcerated for “security reasons, for protection, or because he or she committed an offense against the detaining power,” as part of “domestic civil support operations” involving FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.

The manual also details how prisoners will be identified by their “social security number,” another glaring confirmation that the rules apply to U.S. citizens.

The document makes it clear on page 193 that the rules apply to processing American detainees on U.S. soil so long as the President passes an executive order to nullify Posse Comitatus, the law that forbids the U.S. military from engaging in domestic law enforcement.

It is clear from Wood’s response that she has either not read the documents properly or has been directed to downplay their significance by asserting they do not apply within the United States, a claim clearly disproved by the numerous references within the manual to how its instructions can be applied as part of “domestic civil support operations.”

Read the full email from Fort Leonard Wood Public Affairs director Tiffany Wood below.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

AFP – May 12, 2012

The top-secret US National Security Agency is not required to reveal any deal it may have with Google to help protect against cyber attacks, an appeals court ruled Friday.

The US Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower court decision that said the NSA need not confirm or deny any relationship with Google, because its governing statutes allow it keep such information secret.

The ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public interest group, which said the public has a right to know about any spying on citizens.

The appeals court agreed that the NSA can reject the request, and does not even have to confirm whether it has any arrangement with the Internet giant.

"Any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA's implementation of its information assurance mission," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in the appeals opinion.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a formal request to make public documents related to the dealings, and said much of the information had already been in news media.

The request stemmed from a January 2010 cyber attack on Google that primarily targeted the Gmail email accounts of Chinese human rights activists...

Published May 11, 2012
FoxNews.com

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, seen in a 2010 interview from Singapore, where he lives. (YouTube)

The Facebook page of company co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who renounced his U.S. citizenship ahead of the social network's hotly anticipate IPO. (Facebook)

He lived the American Dream -- and then he packed up and left.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who made billions off the world’s most popular social network, stands to rake in about $3.84 billion from his 4 percent share of Facebook, Bloomberg reported. 

American citizens pay several taxes, including taxes on salary and investments. Saverin would be hit with about $600 million in capital gains taxes whenever he sold the Facebook shares (or "realized the income," in financial speak).

But Saverin may not have to pay -- he's chosen to renounce his U.S. citizenship for residence in Singapore, Bloomberg reported, where there is no capital gains tax.

Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, told Bloomberg the move was “practical.”

“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” said Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, in an e-mailed statement.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/11/facebook-co-founder-renounces-citizenship-ahead-of-ipo/#ixzz1ubsTxWD6

by Colleen Taylor
Tech Crunch
May 4, 2012

Updated. Today was just another Saturday morning in blog land when Robert Scoble, the well-known tech startup enthusiast, went to post a comment on a Facebook post written by Carnegie Mellon student (and TechCrunch commenter extraordinaire) Max Woolf about the nature of today’s tech blogging scene. Scoble’s comment itself was pretty par-for-the-course — generally agreeing with Woolf’s sentiments and adding in his own two cents.

But when Scoble went to click post, he received an odd error message:

“This comment seems irrelevant or inappropriate and can’t be posted. To avoid having comments blocked, please make sure they contribute to the post in a positive way.”

Now, Facebook makes no apologies for working to create a safe and clean environment on its corner of the web by shutting down abusive or harassing behavior, content such as pornography, or generally spamming of the system. This particular method policing “inappropriate” comments may be new, but it would fall within the same general realm.

But even so, this instance seems to be a very strange enactment of any kind of Facebook policy. Scoble posted his original comment in its entirety on his Google+ page, and it’s clear that it contains no profanity or even any obvious argumentative language.

Of course, what makes a comment “positive” or “negative” is a very subjective thing. Since Facebook is a global site, and what is acceptable in one culture is offensive in another, the company generally relies on a combination of software algorithms and notifications from other users to identify inappropriate behavior. This seems to show a glitch in that system...

Published May 01, 2012
Associated Press

Usama bin Laden was killed by CIA-led Navy SEALS on Sunday night at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, ending the U.S.' decade-long search for the Al Qaeda leader.

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan – One year since U.S. commandos flew into this Pakistani army town and killed Usama bin Laden, Islamabad has failed to answer tough questions over whether its security forces were protecting the world's most wanted terrorist. Partly as a result, fallout from the raid still poisons relations between Washington and Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment, support for Islamist extremism and anger at the violation of sovereignty in the operation can be summed up by a Twitter hashtag doing the rounds: 02MayBlackDay.

The Pakistani government initially welcomed the raid that killed bin Laden in his three-story compound, but within hours the mood changed as it became clear that Pakistan's army was cut out of the operation. Any discussions over how bin Laden managed to stay undetected in Pakistan were drowned out in anger at what the army portrayed as a treacherous act by a supposed ally. That bin Laden was living with his family near Pakistan's version of West Point -- not in a cave in the mountains as many had guessed -- raised eyebrows in the West.

The Pakistani army was already accused of playing both sides in the campaign against militancy, providing some support against Al Qaeda but keeping the Afghan Taliban as strategic allies. A week after the raid, President Barack Obama said bin Laden had a "support network" in Pakistan and the country must investigate how he evaded capture. Pakistan responded by announcing the formation of a committee to investigate bin Laden's presence in Pakistan as well as the circumstances surrounding the U.S. raid.

Soon after it began its work, the head of the committee said he was sure that security forces were not hiding bin Laden. Other statements since then have also suggested the report will be more of a whitewash than a genuine probe. Last week, committee spokesman retired Col. Mohammad Irfan Naziri said its findings were being written up but they might not be released publicly.

"We're disappointed," said a U.S. official about the investigation. "They promised to do it, but they haven't yet." The public line of the Obama administration is that no evidence has emerged to suggest bin Laden had high-level help inside Pakistan. Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency said bin Laden's long and comfortable existence in the country was an "intelligence failure."

But suspicions have increased following recent disclosures by one of bin Laden's wives in a police interrogation report that the Al Qaeda leader lived in five houses while on the run and fathered four children, two of whom were born in Pakistani government hospitals.

"I just find the idea that he lived in a place like Abbottabad without the ISI's knowledge strains credibility," said Shawn Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Bradford University in the U.K. "It is ridiculous that he wasn't being protected." Since the raid, Pakistan has tried to close one of the most notorious chapters in its history.

The three-story compound in Abbottabad that housed him for six years was razed by bulldozers in a surprise, nighttime operation. Just last week, his three wives and 11 daughters, children and grandchildren were deported to Saudi Arabia; their side of the story is unlikely to be told anytime soon...

and the wines that love them

If the thought of cheese conjures up images of bland snack food hermetically sealed in cellophane sheets, cardboard tubes or aerosol cans, it's time to wake up and smell the aromas. There's a universe of cheese out there that'll either completely disgust you or change your life. Yah baby, I'm talking about stinky cheeses, the bacterial mutations covered in festering mold. The kind that if you get them just ripe enough they ooze like slime and emit aromas that make your dirty socks smell like the latest Calvin Klein fragrance by comparison. In other words, cheese nirvana. Like glistening pearls in barnacle-covered oyster shells, stinky cheeses offer a gastronomic bonanza to those who can get past the appearance -- and of course the nearly toxic fumes. The reward for perseverance is a decidedly unstinky taste sensation that saturates every last taste bud with a robust, creamy -- yet tangy -- fusion of flavors.

I was introduced to the world of stinky fromage during a wine trip to Bordeaux. In no time, I found myself neglecting the elaborate multi-course meals in order to save room for the cheese service that inevitably follows every grandiose French dinner. Years later, my true stinky cheese epiphany happened at Mraz + Sohn, a restaurant in Vienna, Austria. After a sumptuous meal, I bolted for the cheese cart to survey the odoriferous delicacies. Half-jokingly I asked the waitress where the really, really stinky cheeses were. Without missing a beat, she pulled out a drawer to reveal the holy grail of mold-covered, runny cheeses. The motley assemblage looked as threatening as it did appealing. The uninitiated might have turned and run, but I asked for a taste of each, along with a glass of Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet-Shiraz (my server's recommendation). The gloriously pungent French cheeses, alongside a wine exploding with ripe supple fruit, created a spine-tingling culinary orgasm. It was the closest I've ever come to a perfect marriage of food and wine.

In my never-ending quest to help you get a lot out of life, regardless of what your lot in life is, I set out to learn why the artisan cheeses eaten in Europe are so different from what we've all grown up to accept as cheese in America.

I soon discovered that the nose-numbing smell and moldy rind that're the hallmarks of stinky cheese are the result of polycultures and bacteria that form on the outer skin of the cheese as it ripens. As it's aged, the cheese skin absorbs the earthiness of the damp cellars, and the mold that develops on the rind, called Bacillus linens, generates an ammonia-like smell. Some of the finished cheeses are also "washed" in locally produced spirits, such as marc, a rough Burgundian brandy, which ferments the natural fats and adds another layer of complexity to the already heady aromas.

There's another element that contributes to the difference between European and American cheeses, although there are dissenting opinions as to its importance. In America, most cheeses are required by law to be pasteurized, a process that heats the milk to 161 degrees Fahrenheit, thus killing potentially dangerous bacteria (and unfortunately some of the flavor). In France, where cheese isn't required to be pasteurized, the milk is heated to a lower temperature, which preserves the integrity of the raw ingredients. Of course the quality of the milk itself, determined by what the cows graze on, is also a key factor. Then there's the issue of making the cheese to suit the taste of the consumer. European cheeses are crafted to meet European tastes, which tend to be bigger, bolder and less convenience-driven. Most French cheeses imported to America, such as familiar cheese-tray staples like brie and camembert, conform to American regulations and tastes. This double fault produces much milder cheeses. They may be French, but they're not Frrrrench.

There's no question that stinky cheese is an acquired taste. But if you hold your nose and take the leap, you may never wrestle with a cellophane wrapper again.

the ultimate stinky cheese list

Epoisses - Burgundy
Le Cados - Normandy
Ami du Chambertin - Burgundy
Chablis - Burgundy
Camembert au Calvados - Normandy
Muenster - Alsace
Appenzeller - Switzerland

wine and stinky cheese pairing

It takes a big wine to stand up to a stinky cheese. To play it safe, select powerful reds with lots of body. Well-structured wines, such as big California cabs and French Bordeaux, are safe bets. The Australian Penfolds cabernet-shiraz blend that rocked my world is a perfect example of a more supple, less tannic wine with enough intensity to meet its match. If you're adventurous, you can dabble in the art of regional pairings (i.e., Burgundies with Burgundian cheeses and gewurztraminer with Alsatian muenster). Select the biggest wines each region has to offer...

• "We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box."[37][38]
• "[T]he drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government, combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."[39][40]
• (Speaking of Carroll Quigley, a history professor at Georgetown University:) "He says, Sure we've been working it, sure we've been collaborating with communism, yes we're working with global accommodation, yes, we're working for world government. But the only thing I object to, is that we've kept it a secret."[41]
• "I personally believe that we don't need a lot more laws, I think we've got far too many laws on the books now, that's part of the problem. ... we don't need more government, more laws; we need a lot less. I'm up there [in Washington, D.C.] trying to dismantle a lot of this giant government. ... when you 'pass a law' with the current attitude in the Congress what do you get in a law today? You get either more spending, or more taxes, or more controls. ... which do you want? Do you want more spending? I think we've got too much. Do you want more taxes? I think we're taxed too heavily now. Do you want more controls over your life? Does anybody say 'Hey look, I really believe the federal government needs to control me. I want to be a slave. Please tell me how to run every facet of my life.' I don't hear many people saying that. I think most people say 'I think it's time we get the government off our backs, and out of our pockets.'"[13]
• "The complexity of social organization does not change. Our technologically sophisticated industrial society is more complex than the agrarian society of America in the eighteenth century. In this regard, that was 'a simpler world.' But the complexities of politics (politics here meaning the science of governing) do not change much. The basic political problems confronting the Framers of our Constitution were as complex as our political problems today—perhaps more so, because they were striking off into the dangerous unknown, whereas all we need do is return to the fine highway we were once on."[42]

• "There is a real question in my mind that the Soviets may have actually murdered 269 passengers and crew on the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in order to kill Larry McDonald." – Jerry Falwell, The Washington Post, September 2, 1983
• "He was the most principled man in Congress." – Ron Paul, The Philadelphia Inquirer

This is less about prostitution than the president’s safety, Charles Grassley said.

By MACKENZIE WEINGER
Updated: 4/24/12 3:48 PM EDT

The Colombian prostitutes entangled in the Secret Service sex scandal could have been Russian spies, Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested Tuesday.

“We’re looking at something that is very, very serious when national security might not be protected properly,” Grassley told Radio Iowa. “Who knows who might be using prostitutes? The Russians are famous for that to get information out of us.”

In a letter last night, the Iowa Republican called on the White House to answer questions about an internal review that cleared the advance team of any involvement in the scandal. Secret Service agents and military personnel are accused of bringing prostitutes back to their hotel before President Barack Obama’s trip to Cartagena, Colombia, earlier this month.

“You find a lot of problems come from a culture within the agency,” Grassley said on Radio Iowa. “Now, I don’t think the Secret Service would have that sort of a culture, but this may be the tip of an iceberg.”

This is less about prostitution than the president’s safety, he added.

“The issue here isn’t just people messing around with prostitutes, the issue is the security of the president of the United States and the issue is any national security implications that it might have because of the secrecy and the documents and things of that nature,” Grassley said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75534.html#ixzz1t2YbR71n

Provision that allows feds to suspend passports of accused tax delinquents expected to pass Congress

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
Monday, April 16, 2012

Efforts to pass a bill that would allow the IRS to deny travel rights to U.S. citizens who the feds merely claim owe $50,000 or more in delinquent taxes represents a de facto move to revoke the citizenship of Americans without due process and in complete violation of the Constitution.

Thanks to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a recently passed Senate bill, the suitably Orwellian entitled ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act’, includes a provision that allows the federal government to revoke passports of Americans accused of owing back taxes.

The legislation now moves to the Congress where, despite a Republican majority, the IRS provision is expected to be retained in the final version of the bill because it will raise an estimated $750 million dollars over ten years.

“There is no requirement that the tax payer be guilty of or even charged with tax evasion, fraud, or any criminal offense — only that the citizen is alleged to owe the IRS back taxes of $50,000 or more,” reports the Daily Economist.

Empowering the IRS to deny fundamental rights on a whim is completely illegal and unconstitutional.

“There are also numerous Supreme Court precedents protecting these same rights,” writes Jack Swint. “Furthermore, the law appears to violate Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution, which forbids “Bills of Attainder”, which are laws providing for the punishment of an individual without benefit of judicial process.”

“It takes away your right to enter or exit the country based upon a non-judicial IRS determination that you owe taxes,” Constitutional Attorney Angel Reyes told FOX Business. “It’s a scary thought that our congressional representatives want to give the IRS the power to detain US citizens over taxes, which could very well be in dispute.”...

By Justin Fishel, Jennifer Griffin
Published April 13, 2012
FoxNews.com

To understand North Korea, you must first wrap your mind around the utter horror of its gulag system. More than 200,000 men, women and children are currently interned in these concentration death camps. Only 3 people have ever escaped. Fox News interviewed one of them this week. The man's name is Shin Dong-hyuk. He was born inside Camp 14, the notorious labor camp for political dissidents just south of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

"The first rule was that you cannot escape," Shin said. "And there were other parts to that first rule such as if you attempt to escape you will be shot to death and those that sought the attempt to escape another prisoner and failed to report, they themselves would be shot as well."

But at the age of 22 Shin did manage to escape. After plotting with a fellow inmate, who had grown up on the outside, Shin Dong Hyuk and his friend made a run for the electric fence as they were gathering wood. His friend was electrocuted on the fence. That allowed Shin to climb over the body and avoid injury. Shin said he was willing to risk death for the chance to be free.

"My feeling at that time, even if I were to get shot and die, was that I would want to experience even just for one day of that freedom and that life that this prisoner had told me so much about. Unfortunately, it was only I who was able to escape successfully."

He then made his way to the border, walking across a frozen river to China. To this day Shin bears both the physical and emotional scars of his time in prison. As a child, he worked in a sewing factory. One day when he mistakenly dropped one of the machines, his punishment was to have the tip of his middle finger cut off. He has severe burn scars on his back from being tortured. He described how prison guards punished him after his mother and brother tried to escape, even though Shin was the one who turned them in. They hung him by his arms and feet and set him over an open fire. Shin said he didn't understand family in the normal sense. He knew that he would be punished if his mother and brother tried to escape. So to him, there was no choice but to tell the guards of their plan and avoid certain execution.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/13/inside-north-korea-concentration-camp/?test=latestnews#ixzz1s0CttOsq

Published December 11, 2011

| Associated Press

GREENVILLE, N.C. –  Long before he discovered Friedrich Hayek and other free-market economists, Ron Paul got a lesson in sound money from his oldest brother, Bill.

It was the height of World War II, and the Paul boys were laying aside quarters from their Pittsburgh Press routes and pooling pennies earned from pulling dirty milk bottles off the line at the family dairy to buy war bonds. One day, Ronnie suggested what was, in retrospect, a rather Keynesian solution: "Why doesn't the government just PRINT this money?"

"Well," Bill responded, "then the money wouldn't have any value."

Bill was 10. Ron was about 7.

Washington bureaucrats, Paul says now, "would like it to be complicated, and that we have to accept this complex monetary system of the Federal Reserve. But it's no more complicated than two little kids talking ..."

It's not complicated, he insists. These are the themes he has been addressing, consistently, since he entered politics in 1974, over the course of 12 terms in Congress, through his third bid for the White House: Free markets are good. The Federal Reserve is evil. The gold standard should be restored. Government is the cause, not the cure, of the nation's troubles.

"If it tries to make us virtuous and it tries to make us better people and fairer people and make us more generous and make sure that nobody's richer than the other person, redistribute your wealth, the ONLY way they can do that is the undermining of our personal liberties," Paul told a raucous crowd of several hundred supporters during a recent "Restore Liberty Rally" at the Greenville Convention Center.

"And that isn't the purpose of government. The purpose of government is exactly the opposite. The purpose of government is to protect our liberties."

At 76, this former obstetrician has seven years on the oldest man ever to take office as president, Ronald Reagan. But where Reagan was the genial conservative, Paul is an evangelical libertarian — a prophet who preaches that the United States is flat broke, foundering under the too-great weight of a bloated bureaucracy and its imperial — albeit generally well-intentioned — foreign interventionism.

This is a man who would eliminate five of the 15 cabinet-level departments (Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior — he has no problem reciting them all); recall American troops from all foreign lands, not just war zones; repeal the 16th Amendment, which created the federal income tax; reduce his own presidential salary from $400,000 to $39,336 — the median salary of an American worker.

These are not the planks of a mainstream candidate's platform. But Paul rolls along, attracting a hard-core following and collecting millions in contributions.

How does he do it?

Perhaps it is not so complicated: He applies the lessons learned in a life that stretches back to the Depression.

___

Paul's grandfather, Casper, fled the economic wreckage of post-World War I Germany and went to work in the Pittsburgh steel mills at age 14. Ron Paul grew up on stories about rampant inflation and the dangers of paper currency.

By Dianna Cotter
Pravda
March 7, 2012

A singularly remarkable event has taken place in the United States of America. This event occurred in Arizona on March 1st and was an earth shattering revelation.

A long awaited press conference was given by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a five time elected Sheriff, which should have made national and international headlines. Arpaio's credentials include serving in the United States Army from 1950 to 1953, service as a federal narcotics agent serving in countries all over the world with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and served as the head of the Arizona DEA. Without doubt, this is a serious Law Enforcement Officer, not one to be taken in by tin-foil-hat wearing loons.

Yet, in the five days since his revelations there has been little in the way of serious reporting on the findings he presented in his presser. With 6 short videos, the Sheriff and his team presented a devastating case, one the tame US press is apparently unable to report.

On April 27, 2011, President Barack walked into the White House Press room with a Cheshire cat like grin and a "Long Form Birth Certificate" from the State of Hawaii in hand.  From the podium in the press room, Mr. Obama said, "We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,". Quite the barb from a man holding a forged document.

That's right, forged.

The president himself created the scene; one filled laughter from an adoring press corp., a scene of unprecedented fanfare while holding a forged document which was later posted on the White House website. This was the news Sheriff Arpaio revealed on March 1, 2012 in Arizona.

Arpaio asserts that his investigators discovered, during a 6 month long investigation which is ongoing, not only was the "Long Form" likely a digitally created forgery, but the presidents Selective Service Card (Draft Card), allegedly filed in 1980, was also a forgery. These documents are what Barack Hussein Obama relies upon to prove his constitutional eligibility to the office of President of the United States.

Forged documents are being used to qualify a President of the United States for the office he holds. Or is usurped the more accurate term?

The silence from the main stream media in the US is deafening. It almost seems as if the press is terrified to even think the question, let alone ask it: Is the President a criminal? The press in Arpaio's audience were certainly asking him to state precisely that, yet nowhere has the question been asked of the White House by the press. Instead the American Press is aggressively protecting the presumed President of the United States, pushing the fraud upon both America and the world, supporting a man who may well have usurped the office.

For months before Mr. Obama released the April 2011 forgery, American businessman Donald Trump had been demanding that the president show the country definitive proof that he was born in the state of Hawaii, and eligible for the Office of President. The birth certificate forgery which was presented by Mr. Obama was in response to the repeated public requests from the billionaire businessman.

One can easily imagine the reaction of the press had this scenario been about George W. Bush in 2004.

On the contrary, the press itself forged documents regarding the 43rd President: Long term CBS newsman Dan Rather lost his credibility along with his job when he presented forged Air National Guard documents allegedly denigrating the president's service in the 1970's. One can imagine the glee evidence presented by law enforcement officials of a real forgery made by President Bush would have generated. The press feeding frenzy would have eclipsed that of Watergate, the most controversial political event in modern America history which led to the resignation of President Nixon in August of 1974.

The questions in the White House Press room would have been merciless to say the very least.

What has been the response from the Obama era press?

Silence.

Silence so loud it can be felt.

What has been the response from the 44th president so far?

A tweet from Obama Campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt, containing a link to the conspiracy theory television show "The X-files" theme song: a mocking, Saul Alinsky like, retort.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors appear to have been committed by the President of the United States or his personal representatives in presenting a forged document to the press and the Nation as a legitimate document, and this information has been delivered from Law Enforcement Officials.

Arpaio refused to take the bait offered by a clearly hostile press in the conference room. He refused to accuse the president directly, instead informing the world that they had a "person of interest" in the forgery, and were continuing with the investigation. 

Where is the outrage from the press??

As surreal as this is, it isn't the main event. It's only a part of a larger story...

Friday, March 02, 2012

NOTE: In case you missed the news conference of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse,” WND plans to have the entire event available in 15-minute increments beginning Friday morning at this online location.

PHOENIX – An investigative “Cold Case Posse” launched six months ago by “America’s toughest sheriff” – Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County – has concluded there is probable cause that the document released by the White House last year as President Obama’s birth certificate is a computer-generated forgery.

The investigative team has asked Arpaio, who is at a news conference in Phoenix live-streamed by WND TV that began at 3 p.m. Eastern time, to elevate the investigation to a criminal probe that will make available the resources of his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The posse says it has identified at least one person of interest in the alleged forgery of Obama’s birth certificate.

Arapaio, known for his strict enforcement of immigration laws, commissioned the investigative team after local citizens presented him with a petition expressing concern that Obama might not be eligible for Arizona’s presidential ballot.

In addition to the live-streaming, WND is making available to the public a report distributed to media today by Arpaio’s investigators.

GET A FREE COPY OF THE ARPAIO REPORT THAT WAS DISTRIBUTED TO PRESS TODAY

The posse, comprised of former law enforcement officers and lawyers with law enforcement experience, has interviewed dozens of witnesses and examined hundreds of documents. It also has taken numerous sworn statements from witnesses around the world.

Mike Zullo, Arpaio’s lead investigator, said his team believes the Hawaii Department of Health has engaged in a systematic effort to hide from public inspection any original 1961 birth records it may have in its possession.

“Officers of the Hawaii Department of Health and various elected Hawaiian public officials may have intentionally obscured 1961 birth records and procedures to avoid having to release to public inspection and to the examination of court-authorized forensic examiners any original Obama 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may or may not have,” Zullo said.

The investigators say the evidence contained in the computer-generated PDF file released by the White House as well as important deficiencies in the Hawaii process of certifying the long-form birth certificate establish probable cause that a forgery has been committed.

The investigation was launched after 250 members of the Surprise, Ariz., Tea Party, presented a signed petition to Arpaio in August 2011 asking him to undertake the investigation.

The Tea Party members petitioned under the premise that if a forged birth certificate was used to place Barack Obama on the 2012 Arizona presidential ballot, their rights as Maricopa County voters could be compromised.

Arpaio believes a congressional investigation might be warranted and has asked that any information relevant to the investigation held by other law enforcement agencies be forwarded to his office...

Some voters who supported Barack Obama for president four years ago are now backing Republican Ron Paul. They've been dubbed Blue Republicans.

By Elizabeth Hunter
UW Election Eye
Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 8:47 PM

William Knight is 26, lives in Seattle and voted for Barack Obama in 2008. In demography and geography, he embodied the Obama youth movement.

Now, as Washington Republicans hold their presidential caucuses on Saturday, Wright has a new political hero: Ron Paul.

He's among a group of voters nationwide who went for Obama four years ago and now support Paul. They've been dubbed Blue Republicans by organizer and blogger Robin Koerner, of Seattle, who also backs the Texas congressman.

Koerner is a British expatriate looking to become a U.S. citizen in the next few years. He says Blue Republicans are concerned with what they see as an erosion of civil liberties and the continuation of costly overseas wars. They voted for Obama because they believed he would end the wars and repeal the Patriot Act while focusing on creating economic opportunity in America.

It's impossible to say how many people consider themselves Blue Republicans, but the group's Facebook page has 10,900 "likes."

Knight says he was an "uninformed voter" when he backed Obama four years ago.

"I believe I had an emotional reaction to a 'monumental' election and was swept away in agreement with liberal ideas just because they seemed to be well-intentioned," he said in an email.

He said the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and other countries is the No. 1 reason he is switching his vote. Obama has effectively ended combat operations in Iraq, but there are still over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan.

"Some people call Ron Paul's foreign policy 'isolationist' to make it sound negative," said Knight, who will attend Saturday's caucuses. "But I just see it as a way to end the wars and stop the unnecessary violence."

Also, Knight and a number of these Blue Republicans were outraged by the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains a clause that allows terrorist suspects to be detained indefinitely.

Blue Republicans see this position as unconstitutional.

Beyond dissatisfaction with the current administration, most of the new Paul supporters have embraced him as the ultimate alternative, neither neoconservative Republican nor liberal Democrat.

Paul emphasizes traditionally Republican views on states' rights, fiscal conservatism and opposition to abortion, as well as a noninterventionist foreign polity and personal liberty. He'd also return the U.S. to the gold standard, eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and do away with Environmental Protection Agency...

By DAVID A. LIEB
Associated Press
Feb 18, 10:33 PM EST KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul warned the U.S. is "slipping into a fascist system" dominated by government and businesses as he held a fiery rally Saturday night upstaging established Republican Party banquets a short distance away.

The Texas congressman drew a couple thousand standing and chanting people to Kansas City's Union Station as the party's establishment dined on steak across the street at the Missouri GOP's annual conference. Kansas Republicans were holding a similar convention in a suburb across the state line.

Paul staged his rally near the nation's World War I museum, asserting that the U.S. got off track about 100 years ago during the era of President Woodrow Wilson, who led the nation through World War I and unsuccessfully advocated for the nation's involvement in a forerunner of the United Nations.

"We've slipped away from a true Republic," Paul said. "Now we're slipping into a fascist system where it's a combination of government and big business and authoritarian rule and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen."...

Grace Wyler|February 15, 2012

Today is the 99th anniversary of the signing of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It enshrined into law an idea that stands in total contradiction to the driving force behind the American Revolution and the whole idea of freedom itself.

The great “old right” commentator Frank Chodorov once described the income tax as the root of all evil. His target was not the tax itself, but the principle behind it. Since its implementation in 1913, he wrote, “The government says to the citizen: ‘Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide.’”

He really does have a point. That’s evil. When Congress ratified the 16th Amendment on Feb. 3, 1913, there was a sense in which all private income in the U.S. was nationalized. What was not taxed from then on was a favor granted unto us, and continues to be so.

This is implied in the text of the amendment itself: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

Where are the limits? There weren’t any. There was some discussion about putting a limit on the tax, but it seemed unnecessary. Only 1% of the income earners would end up paying about 1% to the government. Everyone else was initially untouched. Who really cares that the rich have to pay a bit more, right? They can afford it.

This perspective totally misunderstand the true nature of government, which always wants more money and more power and will stop at nothing to get both. The 16th Amendment was more than a modern additive to an antique document. It was a new philosophy of the fiscal life of the entire country.

Today, the ruling elite no longer bother with things like amendments. But back in those days, it was different. The amendment was made necessary because of previous court decisions that stated what was once considered a bottom-line presumption of the free society: Government cannot tax personal property. What you make is your own. You get to keep the product of your labors. Government can tax sales, perhaps, or raise money through tariffs on goods coming in and out of the country. But your bank account is off-limits.

The amendment changed that idea. In the beginning, it applied to very few people. This was one reason it passed. It was pitched as a replacement tax, not a new money raiser. After all the havoc caused by the divisive tariffs of the 19th century, this sounded like a great deal to many people, particularly Southerners and Westerners fed up with paying such high prices for manufactured goods while seeing their trading relations with foreign consumers disrupted.

People who supported it — and they were not so much the left but the right-wing populists of the time — imagined that the tax would hit the robber baron class of industrialists in the North. And that it did. Their fortunes began to dwindle, and their confidence in their ability to amass and retain intergenerational fortunes began to wane.

We all know the stories of how the grandchildren of the Gilded Age tycoons squandered their family heritage in the 1920s and failed to carry on the tradition. Well, it is hardly surprising. The government put a timetable and limit on accumulation. Private families and individuals would no longer be permitted to exist except in subjugation to the taxing state. The kids left their private estates to live in the cities, put off marriage, stopped bothering with all that hearth and home stuff. Time horizons shortened, and the Jazz Age began.

Class warfare was part of the deal from the beginning. The income tax turned the social fabric of the country into a giant lifetime boat, with everyone arguing about who had to be thrown overboard so that others might live.

The demon in the beginning was the rich. That remained true until the 1930s, when FDR changed the deal. Suddenly, the income would be collected, but taxed in a different way. It would be taken from everyone, but a portion would be given back late in life as a permanent income stream. Thus was the payroll tax born. This tax today is far more significant than the income tax.

The class warfare unleashed 99 years ago continues today. One side wants to tax the rich. The other side finds it appalling that the percentage of people who pay no income tax has risen from 30% to nearly 50% in this period of economic downturn. Now we see the appalling spectacle of Republicans regarding this as a disgrace that must change. They have joined the political classes that seek advancement by hurting people.

It’s extremely strange that the payroll tax is rarely considered in this debate. The poor, the middle class and the rich are all being hammered by payroll taxes that fund failed programs that provide no security and few benefits at all.

It’s impossible to take seriously the claims that the income tax doesn’t harm wealth creation. When Congress wants to discourage something — smoking, imports, selling stocks or whatever — they know what to do: Tax it. Tax income, and on the margin, you discourage people from earning it.

Tax debates are always about “reform” — which always means a slight shift in who pays what, with an eye to raising ever more money for the government. A far better solution would be to forget the whole thing and return to the original idea of a free society: You get to keep what you earn or inherent. That means nothing short of abolishing the great mistake of 1913. Forget the flat tax. The only just solution is no tax on incomes ever.

But let’s say that one day we actually become safe from the income tax collectors and something like blessed peace arrives. There is still another problem that emerged in 1913. Congress created the Federal Reserve, which eventually developed the power to create — on its own — all the money that government would ever need, even without taxing.

For the practical running of the affairs of the state, the Fed is far worse than the income tax. It creates the more-insidious tax of inflation. In a strange way, it has made all the debates about taxation superfluous. Denying the government revenue does nothing to curb its appetites for our liberties and property. The Fed has managed to make it impossible to starve the beast.

Chodorov was correct about the evil of the income tax. Its passage signaled the beginning of a century of despotism. Our property is no longer safe. Our income is not our own. We are legally obligated to turn over whatever our masters say we owe them. You can fudge this point: None of this is compatible with the old liberal idea of freedom.

You doubt it? Listen to Thomas Jefferson from his inaugural address of 1801. What he said then remains true today:

“…what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one more thing, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression." --James Madison (1788)

The FBI held a press conference this week on a terrorist alert bulletin, which it sent to every federal, state and local law enforcement agency across the country. Unfortunately, that bulletin continued a trend of "terrorist profiles" issued since Barack Hussein Obama has been in office. This particular alert identified such broad ideological characteristics that it can be construed to include the activities of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans.

The FBI counterterrorism division report concluded that those who believe that our government has exceeded its constitutional limits or are protesting for restoration of constitutional integrity might pose a threat. By that definition, anyone associated with the "Tea Party movement" is suspect, and that's the problem with this sweeping and politically motivated "bureaucrap."

Make no mistake: There are some deadly anti-government socialist and fascist radicals in America. For example, consider the man who launched someone's political career in 1994 -- Obama mentor William Ayers, who was previously the leader of the Weathermen, a murderous group of radical "useful idiots." They bombed the U.S. Capitol twice, the Pentagon, the Department of State, several federal courthouses, plus state and local government buildings -- with intent to kill. Unfortunately, the FBI never assembled sufficient evidence to convict Ayers. (Lucky break for Obama's career!)

Or how about Obama's radical, racist, hate-spewing pastor, Jeremiah Wright? This is the man who married the Obamas and baptized their children; the same man who regularly sermonized about "the US-KKK-A" with assertions that "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color;" the man who said that the U.S. government "gives [black people] drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, g-d d--- America!"

Does that constitute a threat to the government?

Post Your Opinion

The aforementioned FBI alert focused on the so-called "sovereign citizen" movement, which the FBI believes may have more than 500,000 members -- though it has no leaders, no membership roster, no organization at all. There is a "sovereign citizens" website which notes boldly, "We do NOT endorse non-payment of taxes or violence to achieve these changes. We do NOT endorse giving up a social security number and we do NOT endorse violence against the police or the government."

According to the FBI, some of those associated with this movement are engaged in crimes like underpaying taxes and other fraud, none of which should be classified as terrorism. According to a Reuters report on the press release, "Legal convictions of such extremists, mostly for white-collar crimes such as fraud, have increased from 10 in 2009 to 18 in 2011, FBI agents said."

We did the math, and that's an increase of eight convictions.

Meanwhile, more than 5,200 of Obama's Occupy movement radicals were arrested in 2011, many for violent offenses, and some of those directed at police.

This is not to say that the FBI didn't have reason to warn law enforcement agencies. In May of 2010, two sociopaths, one of whom had mentioned "sovereign citizen" on a website, murdered two Arkansas police officers. But why wait almost two years to issue the warning?

Now, I spent some years in law enforcement, and some of those devoted to counter-terrorism. I still hold a reserve national security position with the Department of Homeland Security and, as such, maintain threat currency and contacts with both domestic counter-terrorism folks. I mention this to say I can assure you that most federal, state and local law enforcement personnel abide by their oath to "support and defend the Constitution" and are steadfastly accountable to that oath. In other words, they understand that broadly labeling as "terrorists" those who support constitutional limits on government is offensive to that oath.

However, we now have an established Obama-era pattern of applying such broad labels, which began in 2009 when the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis issued a report on "Right-Wing Extremism." It claimed that those who use terms including "patriot" or "constitutionalist," and "link their beliefs to those commonly associated with the American Revolution," are a threat. It even went so far as to identify returning war veterans as "potential threats."

That report was so repulsive that it received a prompt rebuke from liberal Democrat Bennie Thompson, then chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Republican Peter King, its ranking member. Thompson wrote, "This report appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans. ... Freedom of association and freedom of speech are guaranteed to all Americans. ... I am disappointed that the Department would allow this report to be disseminated to its State and local partners. ... I am dumbfounded that I&A released this report."

Thompson protested that the DHS report "blurred the line" between legal and illegal activity.

At the time, DHS spokesperson Amy Kudwa claimed the report was not finished and had been recalled: "This product is not, nor was it ever, in operational use." That notwithstanding, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report and insisted, "We do not -- nor will we ever -- monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people." (Trust her, she's from the government!)

However, such monitoring is not the contiguous prerogative of DHS, but that of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. This is why the latest national alert issued by the FBI should raise many red flags with overseers in the House and Senate.

Here are some excerpts from the FBI bulletin: "This ... domestic terrorist movement, which, scattered across the United States, has existed for decades. ... They do not represent an anarchist group, nor are they a militia. ... They operate as individuals without established leadership and only come together in loosely affiliated groups to ... socialize and talk about their ideology. They may refer to themselves as 'constitutionalists.' ... Several indicators can help identify these individuals. References to the Bible, The Constitution of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, or treaties with foreign governments..."

Share Your Opinion

Those clips are taken out of context, but the problem with such broad profiles is that by the time they filter down through the channels, there are, inevitably, those who are not able to distinguish good from evil, or those whose political bias blinds them from such distinctions.

For example, shortly after DHS released its "Right-Wing Extremist" profile, I was contacted by Patriot readers, both officers and enlisted personnel, about a security exercise scenario at Ft. Knox. That scenario identified attackers as "Tea Party members" among "white supremacists" armed with "military grade weapons" and "bomb making components." (In fact, many military and law enforcement personnel identify with the Tea Party movement, which is why we were contacted by military readers.)

Within hours of posting that report, senior command staff at Ft. Knox contacted us and conceded that an officer in the security loop altered the scenario to include "the Tea Party in order to make it more realistic." The commanding officer assured us, "an official investigation has been initiated to determine the manner in which this information was included in the exercise scenario."

To make it "more realistic"? Every reader of this column can accurately profile the political views and racial/ethnic identity of the individual who "altered the scenario."

So, given the current FBI profile, if these "terrorists" are members of an organization with no leaders, no membership and, in fact, no organization, how exactly are they to be distinguished from law-abiding political activists who believe our government has exceeded its constitutional authority? How are they to be distinguished from patriotic Americans who advocate for the restoration of constitutional integrity and proper limits on the role of government? There are plenty of us who, in the course of our objections to the erosion of the Rule of Law, might make "references to the Bible, The Constitution of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, or treaties with foreign governments..."

What purpose does this FBI memo really serve?

In October 2011, DHS attempted to make amends by publishing a training guide for "Countering Violent Extremism." In that directive, Section 2 notes, "Training should be sensitive to constitutional values," and it asserts, "training should support the protection of civil rights and civil liberties as part of national security. Don't use training that equates religious expression, protests, or other constitutionally protected activity with criminal activity."

Perhaps Obama's executive appointees to the FBI should adopt a similar policy and -- unlike DHS -- abide by it. In the meantime, we are waiting for objections from oversight committee Republicans concerning Obama's latest attack on Bible-citing, Constitution-abiding Patriots....

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Libertas aut Mortis!

Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

(Reuters) - Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division...

January 26, 2012
Alexander T. Tabarrok
The Atlantic

This is our national identity crisis in a nutshell: Do we want government spending half its money on redistribution and military, or re-dedicating itself to science, infrastructure, and health research?

We like to think of ourselves as an innovation nation, but our government is a warfare/welfare state. To build an economy for the 21st century we need to increase the rate of innovation and to do that we need to put innovation at the center of our national vision.

Innovation, however, is not a priority of our massive federal government. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. federal budget, $2.2 trillion annually, is spent on the four biggest warfare and welfare programs, Medicaid, Medicare, Defense and Social Security. In contrast, the National Institutes of Health, which funds medical research, spends $31 billion annually, and the National Science Foundation spends just $7 billion.

The federal government does spend some money on innovation, but mostly for innovation in warfare. The Department of Defense, for example, spends $78 billion on R&D. Good for the DoD, at least they are thinking about the future. But most defense R&D is for weapons research that is unlikely to generate significant spillovers to other areas of the economy. The basic and applied non-weapons research that has the best chance of creating beneficial spillovers is a small minority of defense R&D. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for example, helped to develop the Internet but DARPA’s budget is only $3 billion. Even when we lump all federal R&D spending together regardless of quality it amounts to just $150 billion, a mere 4 percent of the budget.

Putting innovation at the center of our national vision is not simply about spending more money. An innovation nation would think about all problems differently. The long debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka: Obamacare) for example, was almost entirely about welfare and redistribution, about dividing the pie. During this debate how much did we hear about health innovation?

From an innovation perspective, two facts about health care are of importance. First, a huge amount of health care spending is wasted. A strong consensus exists on this point from health care researchers along the political spectrum. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on health care today with little or nothing to show for it in terms of improved health. Second, although spending more on health care today doesn’t get you much, spending more on health care research gets you a lot. The increases in life expectancy from fewer deaths brought on by cardiovascular disease over the 1970-1990 period, for example, were worth over $30 trillion. Yes, $30 trillion. In other words, the gains from better health over the period 1970-1990 were comparable to all the gains in material wealth over the same period.

Looking at the future, if medical research could reduce cancer mortality by just 10 percent, that would be worth $5 trillion to U.S. citizens (and even more taking into account the rest of the world). The net gain would be especially large if we could reduce cancer mortality with new drugs, which are typically cheap to make once discovered. A reduction in cancer mortality of this size does not seem beyond reach. Medical research spending is far more valuable on the margin than medical care spending yet because we lack an innovation vision, we endlessly debate how to divide the pie while we overlook potentially huge improvements in human welfare.

THE RED-TAPE MENACE

Regulation is another area in which we lack an innovation vision. There are good regulations and bad regulations and lots of debate over which is which. From an innovation perspective, however, this debate misses a key point. Let’s assume that all regulations are good. The problem is that even if each regulation is good, the net effect of all the regulations combined may be bad. A single pebble in a big stream doesn’t do much, but throw enough pebbles and the stream of innovation is dammed.

Building in the United States today, for example, requires navigating a thicket of environmental, zoning and aesthetic regulations that vary not only state by state but county by county. If building a house is difficult, try building an airport. Passenger travel has more than tripled since deregulation in 1978, but in that time only one major new airport has been built: Denver’s. That airport is now the fourth busiest in the world. Indeed the top seven busiest airports are all in the United States, not so much because we are big but because without new construction we are forced to overcrowd our existing infrastructure. The result is delays and inefficiency. Meanwhile, China is building 50 to 100 new airports over the next 10 years.

Regulatory thickets are also strangling energy innovation. The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, estimates that small and environmentally friendly hydro-electric projects could generate at least 30,000 MWs of power annually. That’s equivalent to the generating capacity of about 30 nuclear power plants. Moreover, since 97% of U.S. dams are generating zero power today, these projects would not require building any new dams. So what’s the problem? The problem is that building even a small hydro-electric project requires the approval of numerous agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, State Environmental Departments and State Historic Preservation Departments. It’s simply too expensive, time-consuming and risky to build these projects when any of these agencies could veto it at any time. The net result is that we generate more electricity than necessary by leveling mountains, burning coal, and filling our air with dangerous particulates and climate-changing CO2.

BUILDING THE NEXT HOOVER DAM

Our ancestors were bold and industrious. They built a significant portion of our energy and road infrastructure more than half a century ago. It would be almost impossible to build that system today. Could we build the Hoover Dam today? We have the technology. We seem to lack the will. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the infrastructure of our past to travel to our future. Airports, an electricity smart grid that doesn’t throw millions into the dark every few years, and ubiquitous Wi-Fi are among the important infrastructures of the 21st century, and they are caught in the regulatory thicket.

Our economy is stagnant and for the first time in a long time, and the national mood is deeply pessimistic. To restore our economy and our spirits we need to become an innovation nation. An innovative nation would improve the prospects for economic growth but could do much more. The warfare-welfare state divides the pie and also divides Americans. Americans, however, are an innovative, forward-thinking people and the prospects are good for uniting them on a pro-growth, pro-innovation agenda.

This essay is drawn from Launching the Innovation Renaissance Alex Tabarrok’s new book, published by TED books.

---

Alexander Tabarrok Send email Alexander Tabarrok is Research Director for The Independent Institute, Assistant Editor of The Independent Review, and Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University, and he has taught at the University of Virginia and Ball State University. Dr. Tabarrok is the editor of The Independent Institute books, Entrepreneurial Economics (Oxford University Press), The Voluntary City (with David Beito and Peter Gordon, University of Michigan Press), and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime.

"If someone were to take you out - today - would anyone see the book?"

by Todd Brendan Fahey

It was an absurd question. But we live in absurd times, and so I paused in reflection and took a quick mental inventory of just how many copies of the manuscript were floating around the U.S. and England. In the final analysis - including published excerpts from the book - there are far too many copies of Wisdom's Maw circulating "out there" to do anything about. For better or worse, the CIA will have to lie with its mistakes.

There was a time, though, many years ago, late Spring of 1990, when I found myself worrying about the little things: the car that had been in my rearview mirror for several miles and many odd street changes, or the sonar blip somewhere in the bowels of my phone line to which I could set my watch, or whether this turn of the ignition key would be the last move I would ever make.

Democratic Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, in a closed door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1978, deemed Project MK-ULTRA, "the most diabolical experiment imaginable in a democratic society." And from what I know now, from the four-plus years it took to research and complete Wisdom's Maw, I would have to agree.

For over twenty years, several branches of the federal government of the United States of America - most notably the Army Chemical Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation - sought as their ultimate objective nothing less than total control over human behavior. A little-known chemical compound procured from a Swiss pharmaceutical firm was to be The Key. Today, of course, we know the drug as LSD-25.

It was through my reading of the history of lysergic acid diethylamide in two works of nonfiction, Acid Dreams and Storming Heaven, that I decided this epoch in American history to be worthy of a novel - a work of fiction with space and time altered, as if in the powerful throes of an acid trip, and with the dimensions redrawn to benefit certain human agents who may have been neglected proportionally by state-approved historians. Such an art form was the only way to make sense of LSD.

Precisely, it was the coming across the figure of one Alfred M. Hubbard in Acid Dreams, in the chapter titled "The Original Captain Trips," that would throw me headlong into an obsession that would culminate in the completion of a 222pp. novel surrounding Project MK-ULTRA.

After the buzz settled from my readings, I immediately set for myself the goal of knowing more about the man whom Timothy Leary called, "the great, enigmatic triple-agent," than anyone alive. It was during this period of research, between March of 1990 and the summer of 1991, that the word "paranoia" became a meaningless abstraction.

I was, am, and will forever be convinced that Captain Al Hubbard was a conscious, dedicated agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and that his astonishing career as "the Johnny Appleseed of LSD" was but a pebble on the surface of MK-ULTRA.

After dozens of hours of taped conversations with the likes of Myron Stolaroff, Drs. Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer, Timothy Leary, and Laura Huxley, wife of the great psychedelic visionary Aldous Huxley, I was able to deliver to Steve Hager and John Holmstrom at High Times a long, investigative piece on Al Hubbard for its November 1991 issue. I was also so convinced of my being under surveillance, and that the phones at my home and place of employment (then a Big-Eight law firm) were tapped, that my wife and I moved abruptly one afternoon from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, Utah. ("They" would need to really want to go after me, I reasoned, to follow me to Utah.)

It was in the idyll of a huge, old flat with hardwood floors, just off Temple Square, in the heart of Salt Lake City, that Wisdom's Maw was completed. While in the throes of too many acid trips, drawing from Freedom of Information Act-sensitive documents, and supported by long breaks between quarters at Weber State University, where I had been hired to teach freshman English, I was able to finish off three-quarters of the novel in about eight weeks (the other one-quarter had taken four years...it must germinate, I kept telling myself...). The excerpting of the book in 1993 by Utah Holiday, a now-defunct glossy regional, allowed me to forget about the sound of footsteps (the phone-blips stopped after leaving L.A.), and since then, the only concern I have had is the nature of the baffling silence of virtually every major publisher in New York.

Author Ernest J. Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman), who spent time at Stanford in '59-60 with some of the principals in Wisdom's Maw, uttered this bottom-line conclusion after reading the manuscript, perhaps the raison d'etre of its unacknowledged status:

"You have written a very controversial book here, and if it is published and read, you might have to answer some questions to some pretty big boys. I hope you have the backbone for it."  - Ernest J. Gaines

Indeed, appearing front and center in Wisdom's Maw - toward the novel's premise that the CIA, using LSD, created "The Sixties" for the purpose of containing, then destroying, a burgeoning youth rebellion - are no less than Hunter S. Thompson, the Hells Angels, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Al Hubbard and other known and suspected MK-ULTRA spooks, as well as one former Oregon wrestler who shall here go nameless.

For a decade, readers, you have had access to as much of Wisdom's Maw as exists in a state of publication. The New York literary mafia, as Timothy Leary liked to call it, has sat on this Pandora's box long enough. Are you ready to open the lid?

Todd Brendan Fahey

Lawrence Patton McDonald Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Georgia's 7th district Preceded by Succeeded by Personal details Born Died Political party Spouse(s) Profession Religion

In office January 3, 1975 – September 1, 1983 (died in office)

John W. Davis

George Darden

April 1, 1935 Atlanta, Georgia

September 1, 1983 (aged 48) near Sakhalin, Soviet Union

Democratic

Anna McDonald (née Tryggvadottir) Kathryn McDonald (née Jackson)

Physician

Independent MethodistLawrence Patton McDonald, M.D. (April 1, 1935 – September 1, 1983) was an Americanpolitician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the seventh congressional district of Georgia as a Democrat. He was a passenger on board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shot down by Soviet interceptors and presumed dead.

A conservative Democrat, he was active in numerous civic organizations and maintained a veryconservative voting record in Congress. He was known for his staunch opposition to communismand believed in long standing covert efforts by powerful U.S. groups to bring about a socialist world government. He was the second president of the John Birch Society. and also a cousin of General George S. Patton.[1]

Larry McDonald was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically in the eastern part of the city that is in DeKalb County. As a child, he attended private and parochial schools before attending a non-denominational high school.[1] He spent two years at high school before graduating[1] in 1951.[2] He studied at Davidson College from 1951 until 1953,[2] spending time studying history.[1] He enrolled in the Emory University School of Medicine at the age of 17,[1]graduating in 1957.[2] He trained at Grady Memorial Hospital as a urologist.

From 1959 to 1961 he served as a Flight Surgeon in the United States Navy stationed at theKeflavík naval base in Iceland. McDonald married an Icelandic national, Anna Tryggvadottir, with whom he would eventually have three children: Tryggvi Paul, Callie Grace, and Mary Elizabeth.[1]It was in Iceland that McDonald first began to take note of communism. He felt the U.S. Embassy was doing things advantageous to the Communists. He went to the commanding officer, but was told he did not understand the big picture.[1]

After his tour of service he practiced medicine at the McDonald Urology Clinic in Atlanta. He took an increasing interest in politics, reading books on political history and foreign policy.[1] He joined the John Birch Society—a conservative, anti-communist organization—in 1966 or 1967.[3][4] McDonald's passionate preoccupation with politics led to a divorce from his first wife.[1] McDonald made one unsuccessful run for Congress in 1972 before being elected in 1974. In 1975, he married Kathryn Jackson, whom he met while giving a speech in California.[1]

McDonald served as a member on the Georgia State Medical Education Board (as chairman 1969–1974[2]), the National Historical Societyand the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce and received numerous civil honors.

In 1974, McDonald ran for Congress against incumbent John W. Davis in the Democratic primary as a conservative who was opposed to mandatory federal school integration programs. McDonald successfully criticized Davis for being one of only two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor of busing. He was also effective in attacking Davis for receiving thousands of dollars in political donations from out-of-state groups, principally from New York City and Los Angeles. These groups favored mandatory federal programs that used busing to achieve school integration.[5] McDonald won the primary in a surprise upset and was elected in November 1974 to the 94th United States Congress, serving for Georgia's 7th congressional district, which included most of Atlanta's northwestern suburbs (including Marietta), where opposition to school busing was especially high. However, in the general election, J. Quincy Collins, Jr., an Air Force prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, running as a Republican, nearly defeated him, despite the poor performance of Republicans nationally that year due to the aftereffects of the Watergate scandal. McDonald, though, was re-elected four times with wide margins (including a 1976 rematch with Collins) and served from January 3, 1975, until his death, on September 1, 1983. His seat represented a contrast in political geography, as Republicans were successfully competing against moderate Democrats using the Southern strategy. Unlike many national Democrats, McDonald hewed to a consistently conservative line on issues such as foreign policy, defense spending, fiscal restraint, States rights, Gun rights, and Pro-life, while mounting a campaigns that successfully combined modern elements with a more traditional grassroots strategy. It paid off in the fall; while many of his fellow Democrats succumbed to Republican opponents or switched parties, McDonald managed to retain his seat.

McDonald—who considered himself a traditional Democrat "cut from the cloth of Jefferson and Jackson"[6]—was known for his conservative views, even by Southern standards. Given his Old Right and Southern views he was more conservative than the Republican party. In fact, one scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science[7] named him the second most conservative member of either chamber of Congress between 1937 and 2002 (behind only Ron Paul).[8] The American Conservative Union gave him a perfect score of 100 every year he was in the House of Representatives, except in 1978, when he scored a 95.[9] He also scored "perfect or near perfect ratings" on the congressional scorecards of the National Right to Life Committee, Gun Owners of America, and the American Security Council.[10]Referred to by The New American as "the leading anti-Communist in Congress",[10] McDonald admired Senator Joseph McCarthy[11] and was a member of the Joseph McCarthy Foundation.[3] He took the communist threat seriously and considered it an international conspiracy. An admirer of Austrian economics and a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute,[3] he was an advocate of tight monetary policy in the late 1970s to get the economy out of stagflation, and advocated returning to the gold standard.[12] McDonald called the welfare state a "disaster"[13] and favored phasing control of the Great Society programs over to the states to operate and run.[14] He also favored cuts toforeign aid, saying "To me, foreign aid is an area that you not only can cut but you could take a chainsaw to in terms of reductions."[14]...