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Gary Edwards

REVEALING QUOTES ON THE GOALS OF PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY - 0 views

  • Psychiatry's Views on Conservatives "In August 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million taxpayer-funded study. It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed. Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives, in particular, suffer from ‘mental rigidity,’ ‘dogmatism,’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance,’ together with associated indicators for mental illness."
  • Psychiatry's Views on Education "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future"
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
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  • You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don’t feel like it. You don’t have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable."
  • The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influences of the home are 'obstructive' and verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective ..
  • When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
  • "…through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government – one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people."
  • "Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know – it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave." 
  • "This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes.
  • "I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion" Sigmund Freud
  • "Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?"
  • "Despite rapid progress in the right direction, the program of the average elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R’s, and closely related disciplines… Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness… Elimination of the unessential by scientific study, then, is one step in improving the curriculum."
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • "...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong"
  • "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher´s ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs.  …a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings."  
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • Psychiatry's Views on Religion "Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis." Sigmund Freud, defining spiritual belief
  • "The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection."
  • "The soul or consciousness, which played the leading part in the past, now is of very little importance; in any case both are deprived of their main functions and glory to such an extent that only the names remain. Behaviorism sang their funeral dirge while materialism – the smiling heir – arranges a suitable funeral for them.
  • "…humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith." "
  • "We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine."
  • We shall not solve the problems of alcoholism and juvenile delinquency by increasing a sense of responsibility. It is the environment which is 'responsible' for the objectionable behavior, and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed.
  • Psychiatry's Views on Creating a Slave Society "We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood."
  • Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
  • "It will of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common wheel." Edward Thorndike, Key Psychology Theorist, member of the "Eugenics Committee of the USA"
  • "We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
  • The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. . . Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. . . . We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electronic stimulation of the brain." 
  • "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • "Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society." A "utopia" could be found – providing "a sense of stability and certainty, whether realistic or not."
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas..."
  • Some packages even include instructions on how to deal with parents and others who object. Stripping away psychological defenses can be done through assignments to keep diaries to be discussed in group sessions, and through role-playing assignments, both techniques used in the original brainwashing programs in China under Mao. Thomas Sowell, writing in Forbes, 1991
  • "The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State." Hegel (who influenced Karl Marx)
  • Psychiatry's Views on America "America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless." Sigmund Freud America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. Sigmund Freud
  • "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas...
  • "One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order."
  • Freud on Marxism "The strength of Marxism obviously does not lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the future which it bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions." Sigmund Freud
  • Basically, all that is necessary to revoke all the constitutional rights of any citizen is to accuse him of being mentally-ill."
  • John A. Stormer, "None Dare Call it Treason"
  • "Old conventions, customs and values… to be challenged… The aim should be to control not only nature, but human nature." He recommended two slogans for "spreading world-wide the gospel of mental hygiene": "To learn to think internationally" and "The necessity to disarm the mind." Dr. J.R. Lord, psychiatrist
  • "Public life, politics and industry should all of them be within our sphere of influence…. If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity!  If better ideas on mental health are to progress and spread we, as the salesmen, must lose our identity… Let us all, therefore, very secretly be ‘fifth columnists.’"
  • The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on school children.
  • These include emotional shock and desensitization, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual’s underlying moral values by psychological rather than rational means. These techniques are not confined to separate courses or programs...they are not isolated idiosyncracies of particular teachers. They are products of numerous books and other educational materials in programs packaged by organizations that sell such curricula to administrators and teach the techniques to teachers.
  • "If all else fails, punishable behavior may be made less likely by changing physiological conditions. Hormones may be used to change sexual behavior, surgery (as in lobotomy) to control violence, tranquilizers to control aggression, and appetite depressants to control overeating." Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner in "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"
  • We must learn to recognize them for what they are - possessors of no special knowledge of the human psyche, who have, nonetheless, chosen to earn their living from the dissemination of the myth that they do indeed know how the mind works". Psychiatrist Garth Wood, M.D., in "The Myth of Neurosis", 1986
  • These terms indicate only approval or disapproval of some aspect of a person's mentality (thinking, emotions, or behavior). Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, in "The Death of Psychiatry", 1974
  • "The very term ['mental disease'] is nonsensical, a semantic mistake. The two words cannot go together except metaphorically; you can no more have a mental 'disease' than you can have a purple idea or a wise space". Similarly, there can no more be a "mental illness" than there can be a "moral illness." The words "mental" and "illness" do not go together logically. Mental "illness" does not exist, and neither does mental "health."
  • By calling the harmless 'insane', (who statistics prove to be no more violence-prone than the average citizen, unless hopelessly deranged by damaging psychiatric 'treatment'), dangerous and justifying their own existence by the 'need' to deal with that inflated 'danger', the mad-doctors themselves pose the greatest threat to liberty, property and democracy in our times."
  • Citizens for Higher Ethical Standards in Medicine
  • "Mental illness is often used as an ad homonym to discredit the individual. This has been a common use of psychiatric diagnosis in psychiatry in Russia. " ... there are two main groups [of schizophrenia patients] ... 1) people admitted to the mental hospital long before they had been political dissenters ... 2. others who ... have put forward complex social and economic theories as alternatives to orthodox Marxism..."  Wing, cited in "Pseudoscience in Psychology", by Dr. Szasz, p. 126
  • "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.." J. Krishnamurti
  • "...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology.... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise."   The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell
  • "A Trojan horse full of dangerous psycho-fantasies has been professionally prepared for us by Christian psychiatrists and psychologists...  At the base, such therapies stand upon dogma, not scientific observations, and the dogma is the odious one of Freud and his followers who were some of the century's most anti-Christ teachers.  No amount of well-intentioned refinement of deadly doctrines will make them clean for Christians." Dr. Hilton P. Terrell, M.D
  • "Contrary to the popular public conception, this happenstance is NOT a form of health care, but the result of a fraudulent system being granted police powers by the State.
  • "Psychotherapy may be known in the future as the greatest hoax of the twentieth century."
  • "Nearly half a century has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness." 
  • "Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true.  There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations.  Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them."
  • "In the 14-year period between 1950 and 1964, more American deaths occurred in state and county mental institutions than in all of the nation's armed conflicts beginning with the Revolutionary War and ending with the Persian Gulf War.  Between 1965 and 1990, the total number of mental-hospital inpatient deaths exceeded the number of battle deaths in the same wars by 70 percent.  Inpatient deaths topped out at 1,103,000 during this 25-year period, compared with 650,563 recorded deaths in battles."
  • Kelly Patricia O’Meara: "The Forgotten Dead of St. Elizabeth's", Insight Magazine, June 16, 2001
  • "The similarities between street drug abuse and psychotropic prescription drug use are disturbing. Both types are toxic. Both can cause psychosis, damage the brain and other organs, and even cause death. And neither type of mind-altering drugs, legal or illegal, treats disease. It's important to recognize that the only significant difference between many prescription psychotropic drugs and street drugs such as "speed" and "downers" is that prescription drugs are legal."
  • Neuro-psychiatrist Sydney Walker in "Dose of Sanity"
  • "Clearly this business of treating minds, particularly this big business of treating young minds, has not policed itself, and has no incentive to put a stop to the kinds of fraudulent and unethical practices that are going on."
Gary Edwards

Rand Paul's Tea Party Response: Full Text - 0 views

  • With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.
  • America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.
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    Outstanding statement about what made America great, an dhow are government is destroying that greatness.  This is the full Text of Sen. Rand Paul's Tea Party Response to Obama's State of the Union Address: I speak to you tonight from Washington, D.C. The state of our economy is tenuous but our people remain the greatest example of freedom and prosperity the world has ever known. People say America is exceptional. I agree, but it's not the complexion of our skin or the twists in our DNA that make us unique. America is exceptional because we were founded upon the notion that everyone should be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. For the first time in history, men and women were guaranteed a chance to succeed based NOT on who your parents were but on your own initiative and desire to work. We are in danger, though, of forgetting what made us great. The President seems to think the country can continue to borrow $50,000 per second. The President believes that we should just squeeze more money out of those who are working. The path we are on is not sustainable, but few in Congress or in this Administration seem to recognize that their actions are endangering the prosperity of this great nation. Ronald Reagan said, government is not the answer to the problem, government is the problem. Tonight, the President told the nation he disagrees. President Obama believes government is the solution: More government, more taxes, more debt. What the President fails to grasp is that the American system that rewards hard work is what made America so prosperous. What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith. In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations. He described a limited government that largely did not interfere with individuals and their pursuit of happiness. All that we are, all that we wish to be is now threatened by the notion that you can have something for nothing, that you can have your cake and ea
Paul Merrell

More Phantom Jobs Created-All In The Wrong Places - 0 views

  • Education is not the answer By Paul Craig Roberts June 07, 2014 "ICH" -  Last April I saw a report that 83% of May’s college graduates did not have a job. I remarked that in my day most of us had 2 or 3 job or graduate school offers before we graduated. The latest payroll jobs report issued on June 6 proves that the April report was true. My opinion, schooled in part by John Williams’ very precise reports on Shadowstats.com, is that on average about half of the new jobs each month are phantom jobs created by the birth-death model and inappropriate seasonal adjustments. So, I figured that the 217,000 jobs claimed for May are more like 108,000. Then I read John Williams’ report on the May jobs number: “Monthly payroll gains overstated by 200,000 plus jobs” In other words, there were zero new jobs in May.
  • Just as the US government can turn an inconsequential Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria into dangerous threats against “the world’s only superpower,” the US government can turn zero jobs growth into 217,000 jobs. It is easy when you have a prostitute media and a gullible public, both of which Washington most certainly has. But let’s take the government data at face value. First, consider the news report that finally as of May 2014 as many Americans had jobs as had jobs in January 2008. That might seem like good news until you take into account that since January 2008 the US has experienced 6.5 years of population growth. Economists seem to have settled on population growth adding 129,000 people to the work force each month. That comes to 10,000,000 people. Where are their jobs? The “jobs recovery” doesn’t provide for the 10 millions who have come of working age since January 2008. We can conclude from this that the official 6.3 percent unemployment rate is nonsense. The unemployment rate is in the neighborhood of 23 percent as John Williams has established.
  • Just as the US government claims, falsely, that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Assad used chemical weapons on Syrians, and so forth and so on, the 6.3 percent unemployment rate is just another government lie. Second, consider where the claimed 217,000 May jobs are. Hardly any of these claimed jobs are jobs in which university graduates begin their careers. The jobs are in wholesale trade, retail clerks, transportation and warehousing, employment services and temporary help, waitresses and bartenders, and health care and social assistance. In the later category, ambulatory health care services and social assistance account for the majority of jobs. If college graduates have jobs, they are not the jobs for which they studied. On March 31, CNN Money reported that 260,000 college graduates were employed at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
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  • For the many years that I have been reporting on the jobs statistics, there has been scant sign of any jobs for college graduates. Considering that there are at least 3,100 colleges and universities in the US, the May graduating class must number in the hundreds of thousands. Looking at the May jobs statistics, those graduating from law school face a dismal situation as employment of lawyers dropped by 700. There were jobs for only 4,100 accountants and bookkeepers. There were 4,500 jobs for architects and engineers, a number that includes secretaries and office managers. There were 1,800 management jobs. State government education jobs declined by 5,300 and local government education jobs declined by 6,600 jobs. So where did the education majors find employment? How is the second quarter going to come roaring back, as the financial media assures us it will, when the jobs report is so discouraging? How much longer will Washington be able to hide the fact that the US economy is sinking?
  • If you read all the bullshit that the American media and educational establishment puts out, “education is the answer.” Apparently not. Education is the way to become deeply in debt and work for $7.25 per hour, if you are lucky to escape unemployment. America is a Great Big Lie. There is no truth in what we are told. The entire country, along with that part of the world under Washington’s thumb, is run for about six private interest groups. The rest of us are being fleeced.
Gary Edwards

Limbaugh on Obama's 'Chip on His Shoulder,' the Phenomenon of the 'Not-Romney' and the ... - 0 views

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    Awesome!  Once again Rush takes us to school. excerpt: VAN SUSTEREN: I guess I mean a motive to -- an intentional motive to hurt the country, versus his (Obama) ideology is one that the way you achieve ideals is different values. LIMBAUGH: This is the question. We are living under a number of assumptions about Obama that have been presented to us by elites of both parties. One of the illusions is Obama's brilliant, that he's smarter than anybody else in the room, messianic. We have never had a politician like this in our midst, we were told in 2007, 2008. Nobody like Obama has ever trod our soil. He was going to unify us. The world was going to love us again. It's going to lower the sea levels. I mean, ridiculous stuff. So the question is, is he just dumb? Does he really believe this economic stuff? Does he really believe that taking capital, money out of the private sector and transferring it to government and unions is the way you grow the private sector? Is that the way (INAUDIBLE) Does he really believe that? Is he that ill educated? Is he the product of nothing other than the American education system and whoever influenced him at home when he was young? Or is he an ideologue? Is he a Marxist socialist who has an agenda that's oriented toward cutting the country down to size? I mean, that's the question. For me, the answer to the question is irrelevant. I think that whatever he's doing, why he's doing it, it's obvious he is doing it. He is taking steps, these 10 policies that are injurious to the country, injurious to individuals, targeting as the enemy the people who work in this country, targeting as the enemy that people that pay taxes. This business of this Occupy Wall Street crowd, which is his -- it was created I think on the basis that Romney was going to be the Republican nominee. Romney's Wall Street, so you get Obama's band out there, Occupy Wall Street, protesting. It was set up to oppose Romney -- Wall Street blamed for all these ills in the e
Gary Edwards

About Americans for Prosperity | Americans for Prosperity - 0 views

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    AFP is an excellent branch of the American Tea Party Movement.  The Grassroots tools are very good, and the group leadership effective, trustworthy and patriotic.  "The Great One", Mark Levin is a founder of AFP and remains very involved with the day to day operation.  Although i'm a contributing member, one of the things i most appreciate about AFP is that when they launch a contact/letter surge, unlike many other "grassroots" operations, there is no charge for the contact.  AFP is an easy and affordable way to contact those who took an oath to represent us and defend our Constitution.  Good group! excerpt: Americans for Prosperity™ (AFP) and Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation) are committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process. AFP is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state, and federal levels. The grassroots activists of AFP advocate for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint. AFP Foundation is committed to educating citizens about economic policy and a return of the federal government to its Constitutional limits. AFP Foundation's educational programs and analyses help policymakers, the media, and individual citizens understand why policies that promote the American enterprise system are the best way to ensure prosperity for all Americans. To that end, AFP and AFP Foundation support: Cutting taxes and government spending in order to halt the encroachment of government in the economic lives of citizens by fighting proposed tax increases and pointing out evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse. Tax and Expenditure Limitations to promote fiscal responsibility. Removing unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurship and opportunity by sparking citizen involvement in the regulatory process early on in order to reduce red tap
Paul Merrell

Governor Cuomo Proposes Free Tuition to New Yorkers Making Up to $125,000 Per Year - ns... - 0 views

  • Governor Andrew M. Cuomo unveiled his first signature proposal of his 2017 agenda, making college tuition-free for New York’s middle class families at all SUNY and CUNY two-and-four-year colleges.
  • Cuomo made his announcement accompanied by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders at LaGuardia Community College. The First-in-the-Nation-Program aims at providing free tuition to New Yorkers making up to  $125,000 Per Year at all SUNY and CUNY Two- and Four-Year Colleges. New York’s tuition-free college degree program, the Excelsior Scholarship, is the first of its kind in the nation and will help alleviate the burden of student debt while enabling thousands of students who otherwise would be unable to realize their aspirations. The first-in-the-nation plan would be phased in over three years, beginning for New Yorkers making up to $100,000 annually in the fall of 2017, increasing to $110,000 in 2018, and reaching $125,000 in 2019. Cuomo stressed that 75 years ago, when the economy still was manufacturing-based, one could work at a factory and be O.K. He added, what high school was 75 years ago, college is now. He added that higher education is a necessity to succeed in today’s global economy. The new Excelsior Scholarships Program aims at encouraging more students to graduate on time, helping to improve graduation rates at New York Public Colleges. Under this proposal, more than 940,000 middle-class families and individuals making up to $125,000 per year would qualify to attend college tuition-free at all public universities in New York State. Let’s make college a reality, not a dream for New York’s middle class, said Cuomo.
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    'Twould be nice to see this happen in all states and for all levels of education. Why only a bachelor's degree?
Joseph Skues

United Grand Lodge of England » Who's Who - 0 views

  • Grand Master Prince Edward George Nicholas Paul Patrick was born in 1935, and educated at Eton and Le Rosey, Switzerland. He is a cousin both of the Queen and of the Duke of Edinburgh.
  • His father,
  • was the fourth son of King George V, and his mother, Princess Marina, was the daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece.
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  • He has been the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England since he was first elected in 1967
  • Pro Grand Master Peter Lowndes was born in 1948 and educated at Eton. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
  • Jonathan Spence was born in 1960, and educated at the Mathematical School, Rochester and Trinity College, Oxford. After a career in banking, from which he retired in 2006 as Chief Executive of a London bank, he now holds a senior position in education.
  • He was appointed Grand Director of Ceremonies in 2003 and served in that office until his appointment as Deputy Grand Master on 11 March 2009.
  • Assistant Grand Master David Williamson was born in Bombay, India, in 1943 and educated at King Edward VI School, Lichfield, Queen Mary College, London and King’s College, Cambridge. He trained as a pilot, and was subsequently appointed as Training Captain and Assistant Flight Training Manager for British Airways until his retirement in 1998.
  • Appointed as Assistant Grand Director of Ceremonies in 1995,
  • Nigel Brown was born in 1948,
  • 12 years as a business consultant specialising in advising clients on winning competitive global tenders.
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    He is the Queen's nephew and in line to the throne of Greece,(which is being robbed by the Goldman Sachs in the recession). CONNECT THE DOTS
Gary Edwards

What Is or Should Be the Law? essay on Frederik Bastiat's "The Law" - 1 views

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    Jeffrey Tucker at The Daily Reckoning wonders about all those Presidential Executive Orders that make Law while by-passing the Congressional process and making mockery of the USA Constitution.  He ends up referencing the great libertarian, Frederick Bastiat's seminal work, The Law - written in 1849.    
    excerpt: One party gets annoyed when the other party's president enacts laws without regard to any constitutional conventions.
    But what is the law, and what should it be? These are the bigger questions that are not part of public consciousness.
    The same was true in the time of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-50). At the very end of his life, he wrote an impassioned plea on the topic. He tried to get people to think hard about what was happening and how law had become an instrument of plunder, rather than a protector of property.
    He writes:
    ...... "It is not true that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person." .......
    This is from Bastiat's The Law, one of the great political essays to emerge from the whole Continental world of the 19th century. It vanished into obscurity in France, was resurrected in late 19th century English, and then disappeared again, only to reappear in the United States in the 1950s, thanks to the efforts of the Foundation of Economic Education.
    This essay asks fundamental questions that most people go through life never having thought about.
    The problem is that most people accept the law as a given, a fundamental fact. As a member of society, you obey or face the consequences. It is not safe to question why. This is because the enforcement arm of the law is the state, that peculiar agency with a unique power in society to
Gary Edwards

The worst rise to the top - Mises Economic Blog - 0 views

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    Very interesting post from Douglas French concerning the repubican primaries and F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfom" comments on modern politics. Fascinating stuff. Hayek argues that, in politics, "the worst rise to the top", and he outlines three reasons why: .... Choosing is the problem. Informed people are more "nuanced" - they have many divergent opinions and views. Uniformity however drives the group dynamics behind a democratic process. Uniformity of opinion rules, and the less informed a person is, the more uniform and drawn to larger groups they will be. The "lowest common denominator" rule rules the democratic process. Mobocracy at work. .... Those on top, pursuing the political leadership positions, must appeal to the masses and weave together the groups driven by the "lowest common denominator" rule. The docile and gullible "are ready to accept whatever values and ideology drummed into them". Advantage to big media, the socialist assemblage ruling public education, and public workers unions. ..... Third, political leaders "don't promote a positive agenda, but a negative one of hating an enemy and envy of the wealthy. To appeal to the masses, leaders preach an "us" against "them" program." The great unwashed and uninformed being guided and driven "by emotion and passion rather than critical thinking." Not sure i agree with any of this, much as i admire and recognize the importance of Hayek and his seminal, game changing "Road to Serfdom". One reason is that some of the most informed people i know are goose stepping socialist hell bent on ending individual liberty - as in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", in exchange for Marxist social equality. Another reason i would disagree is that the salt of the earth "bitter clingers" Reagan Conservatives that rock the Tea Party movement are exactly what the establishment elites call the "uninformed masses". Not sure if that's what Hayek meant, but his viewpoint does look a
Gary Edwards

Have a T-P Pre-Primary to avoid sure defeat // Implement a drive to recruit and organiz... - 1 views

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    "This discussion needs your direct support or direct critique that I might respond.  Other idea's please start in a new discussion (note: this has been revised after 400+ comments, but if possible read all of them) thank you for your time: (revised July 20th,'13) I thought it would be helpful (stike that, it's absolutely imperative!!!!)  to have a T Party pre-primary prior to the RINO primary so we wouldn't split our vote.  That thread sort of grew to the following two steps: The following two step approach would require a temporary meeting of the minds from the various larger conservative Tea Party factions for the following purposes:: 1. Having a pre-primary to avoid the late RINO primary so we avoid splitting our vote and being able to get out there now to campaign because we have some serious hills to climb (our message, government news and funding etc.). But the main point here is that we always split our votes in the regular RINO primary, we need to avoid this.  We need some sort of (temporary or other) unified effort of all the un-unified groups for this purpose.  Make sure you don't miss a word utilized here and that the whole 'idea' is understood.  Along with this we also need to have the above bonded with the following item number 2, as follows: 2. Implement a plan to organize and recruit deep into every precinct of the T-Party. This would include the larger T-P groups to supply their associated local smaller groups with solid information to be distributed and used as a means to educate both door to door and if possible via ads in their local news papers when feasible. (with an increase in some recruiting, this can work - I've checked out the cost). We have great web sites on the internet but many republican's, democrats and independents don't go there.  We need a serious ground team for all of our upcoming elections.  Many of our small groups are getting smaller and many not associated would like to be contacted by us.  Our idea's
Gary Edwards

Restoring a Spirit of Liberty Will Solve America's Political Problems - 0 views

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    excerpt: "Personal Freedom or Political Paternalism? The real issue facing the United States concerns the soul of the American people. It is really about the kind of America that we will have in the 21st century. For decades the country has been moving away from it historical roots in a political philosophy of personal freedom and drifting further and further in the direction of political paternalism. The noose of government control has been tightening around the collective neck of the nation. More and more aspects of our lives have come under the supervision and manipulation of the government. The government educates our children; it provides us with retirement checks; it increasingly manages our health care and medical matters; it redistributes wealth from those deemed to have too much to those considered not to have enough; it regulates the food we eat, the places where we work and the way we produce, as well as signing off on the goods and services we buy. Government tries to ban what it decides is harmful for us to do or use, it oversees how and with whom we interact, and for what purposes, and it increasingly surveills every move we make and every phone call we take. Size of Government and Dependency In 1913, one hundred years ago, just before the beginning of the First World War, all levels of government - federal, state and local - taxed away and spent only about 8 percent of national income, leaving the remaining 92 percent in the pockets of the American people to spend as they considered best. Today, all levels of government siphon off and spend over 35 percent of national income. But what is important is not merely these numbers, however significant they are in understanding the drag of government on the productive private sector. More important is what they indicate about a psychology of dependency among the American people on the activities of the government. This is not simply those who may receive welfare checks, or who are directly emp
Joseph Skues

Yes, Islam condones wife beatings - 0 views

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    "Recently, Marvin Levant (Dec. 28), Steve Harris (Dec. 30), Syed Soharwardy (Jan. 2), and Riazuddin Ahmed (Jan. 5) debated Islam through the forum of the Herald's letters to the editor. The issue of wife beating and gender inequality in Islam has become convoluted and highly controversial as many Muslims try to sugar-coat the ugly truths and others try to shed some light on the issue. Soharwardy's statement that "Beating one's wife is not only wrong, it is criminal and completely un-Islamic" is incorrect. The Qur'an says that "men are in charge of women because Allah has made one of them (men) to excel the other (women), thus man's superiority over women . . . good women are the obedient ones . . . admonish the rebellious women and banish them, and scourge them (whip them severely to inflict pain) (4:34) . . . smote them (hit or strike with the hand or with a weapon causing pain, beat them . . . (4:62)". Islam does not recognize gender equality. For example, polygamy is accepted in Islam, but polyandry is not. A woman's testimony is considered half as worthy as a man's in court; a son inherits twice as much as a daughter does. Muslim men may marry Muslim, Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women can marry only Muslim men. In short, sharia law leads to the inhuman treatment of Muslim women by their husbands and others, especially in South Asia and the Middle East. Higher education is emphasized more for sons than for daughters; in cultural honour killings, almost always women are the target for murder. Under sharia, divorced Muslim women get custody of their sons under eight years of age and daughters until puberty, and then the fathers take the children away. Sharia enabled one of the worst fundamentalists, the vile and ruthless military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, to put more than 15,000 rape victims in jail because they could not comply with the absurd Islamic condition requiring them to have numerous male witnesses of their victimization. They were char
Paul Merrell

Debt Revisited: Obama Merges Low-Income Students & For-Profit Colleges | nsnbc internat... - 0 views

  • President Obama called on college presidents and “higher education advocate” to participate in the White House College Opportunity Day of Action (CODA) so that thought leaders in education would team up with the president’s list of “colleges and universities, business leaders and nonprofits to support students and to help the nation lead the world in college attainment.” With the secretary from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) alongside the secretary of the US Department of Education (DoE), Obama revealed “new steps” on how the current administration will “support college accessibility, including an additional $10 million to help promote college completion and a $30 million AmeriCorps program that will improve low-income students’ access to college.”
  • Several Congressmen are calling this move a sale for for-profit colleges to enslave students with debt. These representatives wrote a letter to Arne Duncan, secretary of the DoE, stating: “Serious consideration should be given before transitioning management of Corinthian’s campuses from one company that profited off deceptive lending practices to an umbrella company that also has a checkered history in student loans.” One such debt collection agency ECMC, “offered to buy 56 of the campuses currently run by Corinthian, which is under multiple state investigations for deceiving students and faking job records.” The Congressmen explained: “We are concerned that neither the ECMC Group nor the Zenith Education Group has any previous experience in operating an academic institution. Rather, the ECMC Group, as one of the largest student loan guaranty agencies in the United States, has benefited by collecting loan payments from students, sometimes using dubious tactics.”
Gary Edwards

Jobs Depend on Obamacare Defeat | Cato Institute - 0 views

  • The Affordable Care Act authorizes the disputed “employer mandate” penalties and the health insurance subsidies that trigger them, only through insurance exchanges that are “established by the State.” Due to public opposition to Obamacare, at least 34 states, including Virginia, Utah and Indiana, failed to establish exchanges. Those states are being served — if that’s the word — by HealthCare.Gov, an exchange established by the federal government, which is clearly not a “State.” Ignoring the clear and unambiguous language of the statute, the IRS somehow decided to deploy the disputed taxes and spending in HealthCare.Gov states. Two lower courts found that Obamacare itself “unambiguously forecloses” the IRS’ “invalid” misinterpretation of the law. The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell represent Kevin Pace and tens of millions of other Americans who are injured by this breathtaking power grab.
  • If the King plaintiffs prevail before the Supreme Court, it will mean more jobs, more hours and higher incomes for millions of Americans — particularly part-time and minimum-wage workers. Employers will have more flexibility to structure their health benefits. States will be able to attract new businesses by shielding employers from Obamacare’s employer mandate. Critics complain such a ruling would eliminate subsidies in HealthCare.gov states, making the cost of Obamacare coverage transparent to enrollees. But those enrollees will be able to switch to lower-cost “catastrophic” plans — if the Obama administration allows it. To date, the administration has adamantly refused to say whether it would take even this small step to help affected HealthCare.gov enrollees.
  • More important, transparency is a good thing. If enrollees don’t want to pay the full cost of Obamacare coverage, that tells us something very important about Obamacare. It means nobody likes the way Obamacare actually works. Forcing the IRS to implement the law as written will thus create an opportunity for real health care reforms that actually reduce the cost of care. Reining in the IRS would affirm the rule of law, and lead to real health care reform. We should all hope for such an outcome.
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    "By Michael F. Cannon This article appeared on USA Today on March 4, 2015. As if Obamacare weren't problematic enough, two federal courts have found that the IRS unlawfully expanded the health care law's individual and employer mandates, by imposing them on tens of millions of Americans whom Congress exempted. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear King v. Burwell, a case challenging that illegal and ongoing attempt to expand Obamacare outside the legislative process. The victims of this illegal Obamacare expansion include Kevin Pace, a jazz musician and adjunct professor of music in Northern Virginia. Anticipating the Obamacare mandate that employers cover all workers who put in at least 30 hours a week, Pace's employer was forced to cut hours for part-time professors like him in order to avoid massive penalties. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that Pace was left with "an $8,000 pay cut." "Thousands of other workers in Virginia" also had their hours cut. Even though the Obama administration has delayed the employer mandate, many employers have left the cuts in place for when the rules are enforced. " King v. Burwell is about more than IRS rules; it could kill the employer mandate, too." This unlawful expansion of Obamacare's employer mandate is causing workers across the country to lose more income with every passing day. It forced Utah's Granite School District to cut hours for 1,200 part-timers. According to the state of Indiana, which filed a similar legal challenge, this IRS power grab pushed "many Indiana public school corporations (to) reduc(e) the working hours of instructional aides, substitute teachers, non-certified employees, cafeteria staff, bus drivers, coaches and leaders of extracurricular activities." Employers and consumers are also suffering. Pace's employer, for example, has less flexibility to structure its health benefits and less ability to offer attractive educational options to its stude
Paul Merrell

Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals and Institutions of American I... - 0 views

  • Educating yourself about empire can be a challenging endeavor, especially since so much of the educational system is dedicated to avoiding the topic or justifying the actions of imperialism in the modern era. If one studies political science or economics, the subject might be discussed in a historical context, but rarely as a modern reality; media and government voices rarely speak on the subject, and even more rarely speak of it with direct and honest language. Instead, we exist in a society where institutions and individuals of power speak in coded language, using deceptive rhetoric with abstract meaning. We hear about 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'security,' but so rarely about imperialism, domination, and exploitation.
  • The objective of this report is to provide an introduction to the institutional and social structure of American imperialism. The material is detailed, but should not be considered complete or even comprehensive; its purpose is to function as a resource or reference for those seeking to educate themselves about the modern imperial system. It's not an analysis of state policies or the effects of those policies, but rather, it is an examination of the institutions and individuals who advocate and implement imperial policies. What is revealed is a highly integrated and interconnected network of institutions and individuals - the foreign policy establishment - consisting of academics (so-called "experts" and "policy-oriented intellectuals") and prominent think tanks.
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    A primer on the foreign policy wonks who actually set U.S. foreign policy: a small group of people whose power to set policy survives the ebb and flow of new Presidents. Names, affiliations, who they influence, and more. 
Gary Edwards

Arnold Ahlert: The Real American Divide - The Patriot Post - 0 views

  • Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton provided great examples of the Ruling Class' arrogant mindset. Pelosi believes, as she stated last week, that white, non-college-educated men who vote Republican have “voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God — the three G’s, God being the woman’s right to choose.” Clinton was worse. Regarding abortion on demand, she insisted last year that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” In other words, one embraces the progressive elitist viewpoint, or one is a religiously inspired bigot with a passé worldview that must be demolished. Thus it is no surprise these elitists conflate anything that dissents from their globalist agenda as a “world of wall-builders,” who have “already done great damage,” states The Economist. That damage includes the Brexit, the rise of nationalist (read: right-wing) parties, and “more electoral victories for closed-world types who pose the greatest threat since Communism.” In other words, elitists disdain national sovereignty and democratically determined destiny, logical responses to skyrocketing levels of elitist-enabled terrorism and uncontrolled immigration, and deeply felt concerns by non-elitists about a global economy that has devastated millions left behind in its wake.
  • The Ruling Class “solutions” for Country Class problems? “Let goods and investment flow freely, but strengthen the social safety-net to offer support and new opportunities for those whose jobs are destroyed,” The Economist states. “To manage immigration flows better, invest in public infrastructure, ensure that immigrants work and allow for rules that limit surges of people.” Codevilla explains what this really means, noting that “our Ruling Class' first priority in any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government — meaning those who run it, meaning themselves.” To achieve that end, new laws are longer than ever, “because length is needed to specify how people will be treated unequally.” Thus, these laws become “primarily grants of discretion,” because “all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower.” Codevilla adds, “This defines ‘crony capitalism.’”
  • If that sounds familiar, maybe it’s because WikiLeak emails reveal the DNC granted itself the sole discretion to empower Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination, right from the beginning. Thus, when Hillary spoke of “bringing people together” during her speech at the convention, it was really about doing so on her and her fellow insiders' terms. And when she promised to get money out of politics, it can be assumed the billions of dollars that have flowed into the Clinton Foundation — dollars that conspicuously align themselves with a number of dubious initiatives — will remain exempt, even as another sham investigation of Clinton behavior conducted by an equally corrupted IRS lends an imprimatur of genuine concern to the spectacle. “If Americans, or at least a majority of them, have not completely lost their own self-regard as a free people, then the November election should turn out to be a referendum on the ‘ruling class,’ and a massive repudiation of Hillary Clinton’s sense of entitlement to be the first woman elected President of the United States,” writes American Thinker’s Salim Mansur. Perhaps. But traditional thinking dies hard. And a corrupt mainstream media — epitomized by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger drinking wine and celebrating with Democrat delegates at the convention’s conclusion — isn’t about to jeopardize their own Ruling Class status to provide the Country Class with any potentially unifying political insight. Which brings us to Donald Trump. In exclusive communication with The Patriot Post, Codevilla maintained there were no circumstances under which he could support Hillary or any other Democrat, but his view of Trump “is more unfavorable than ever.” He does, however, grant that Trump “is the lesser of two evils.” He sees both candidates as “identical in their disregard for the U.S. Constitution and in the establishment of a post-republican regime — an empire of the will, by of and for favored sectors of the ruling class.”
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  • No doubt Codevilla’s take resonates with millions of Americans appalled by a broken, Ruling Class-dominated political system that produced both candidates. Yet realistically, we are faced with a binary choice, made by either commission or omission. And while Codevilla believes “there is no vehicle for opposition” as yet to a Ruling Class “represented by the establishment of both parties,” our own Mark Alexander warns that “the outcome of the November election will not only determine our president for at least the next four years, but also the composition of the Supreme Court for at least the next quarter-century.” That quarter century could be one in which a constitutionally contemptuous Supreme Court majority appointed by Hillary Clinton makes representative government obsolete, and eliminates any chance, short of armed revolution, for the Country Class to take America back from the Ruling Class. A nation where, as Ayn Rand put it, “The government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” A Trump presidency may be nothing more than a distasteful, bite-the-bullet
  • impediment to Ruling Class hegemony. But it is better than no impediment at all.
  • “While most Americans pray to the God who created us in His own image, our Ruling Class prays to themselves as saviors of the planet and as shapers of mankind in their own image.” —from The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It by Angelo Codevilla, 2010. While many still frame the 2016 election in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans, those divisions are losing their meaning. This election could be the first one in which Americans will either choose to continue abiding a globalist Ruling Class and their government-dominant, one-world agenda, or decide that national sovereignty, the Constitution and American exceptionalism and individualism are worth preserving. To be clear, nationalism does not equal protectionism, nativism or Islamophobia, nor is it solely embraced by know-nothing rubes unworthy of serious consideration — despite the ongoing efforts of the Ruling Class to paint it that way. Codevilla calls people who oppose the Ruling Class the Country Class, and he describes it as a diverse, often inharmonious group that “shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards as inept and haughty.”
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    ""While most Americans pray to the God who created us in His own image, our Ruling Class prays to themselves as saviors of the planet and as shapers of mankind in their own image." -from The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It by Angelo Codevilla, 2010. While many still frame the 2016 election in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans, those divisions are losing their meaning. This election could be the first one in which Americans will either choose to continue abiding a globalist Ruling Class and their government-dominant, one-world agenda, or decide that national sovereignty, the Constitution and American exceptionalism and individualism are worth preserving. To be clear, nationalism does not equal protectionism, nativism or Islamophobia, nor is it solely embraced by know-nothing rubes unworthy of serious consideration - despite the ongoing efforts of the Ruling Class to paint it that way. Codevilla calls people who oppose the Ruling Class the Country Class, and he describes it as a diverse, often inharmonious group that "shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards as inept and haughty." Ruling Class haughtiness, argues Codevilla, derives from "an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance," and engenders "a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins … and saints," all conveyed in an "in" language that serves as their "badge of identity." Irrespective of their professions, the Ruling Class is also united by the reality that "their road up included government channels and government money. … Hence, whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway in, America's Ruling Class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats." Just as critically, this "fraternity" can only be joined by one who Codevilla says "shares the manners, the tastes, and the i
Gary Edwards

Alleged US Army doc: Re-education camps and psy-op missions aimed at activists - RT - 0 views

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    Not sure if i had bookmarked this.  The Globalist Establishments assault on American liberty and the Constitution continues.  Now the USA Military is plotting against American liberty, and trampling the Constitution in the process!! excerpt: An American military document just uncovered appears to detail an US Army plan that calls for detaining "political activists" at re-education camps staffed by military-hired "PSYOP officers" in both America and abroad. The website Infowars.com has unearthed the smoking gun, a copy of a United States military manual entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations, which appears to offer Defense Department insiders instructions on dealing with the imprisonment of anyone considered an enemy to the American way of life and how to go about indoctrination them with an "appreciation of US policies and actions" through psychological warfare. The PDF made available is dated February 2010 but has only now been leaked online. A copy of the document has been uploaded to the website PublicIntelligence.net for viewing, and additionally a version appears to be hosted on the US Military's Doctrine and Training Publications page at armypubs.us.army.mil, although access to papers published there are unavailable to those without the Pentagon's authorization, therefore making it impossible to verify the authenticity of the manual at this time. The military site that appears to host a copy has also implemented security measures on its servers that it cautions visitors are "not for your personal benefit or privacy." Further, the title page of the manual warns that the material contained in its 326 pages is be distributed to US Defense Department and its contractors only, and that must be "destroy[ed] by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or construction of the document."
Joseph Skues

Prisoner Advocate Elaine Brown on Georgia Prison Strike: "Repression Breeds Resistance" - 0 views

  • four prisons in Georgia remain in lockdown five days after prisoners went on strike
  • Using cell phones purchased from guards, the prisoners coordinated the nonviolent protests to stage the largest prison strike in U.S. history.
  • reports of widespread violence and brutality by the guards against the prisoners on strike
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  • Elaine Brown, Longtime prison activist and former chair of the Black Panther Party. Her books include The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America and A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story.
  • Black Panthers, Then and Now (5/13/1996)
  • until they receive better medical care and nutrition, more educational opportunities, payment for the work they do in the prisons.
  • they’re demanding just parole decisions, an end to cruel and unusual punishments, and better access to their families.
  • the newly formed group Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners’ Rights
  • And t hey made a decision that that would be on December 9th.I have no idea why they picked that date and how they ended up getting perhaps ten prisons involved. But at that point, of course, the guards and the administration became aware of their intention. And so, when they locked down on the night of the 8th, their decision was to not get up.
  • they’re talking about four prisons, and there were probably ten in the initial one-day strike
  • Can you tell us a little bit about your life and how you came to be a prison activist today?
  • have known him for 15 years, and I have been with him for that long, since he was incarcerated and put into an adult facility at 14 years old.
  • there’s no real educational opportunities. There’s no exercise. There’s nothing else.
  • e food is bad. They have poor nutrition.
  • the constant violence being perpetrated against them by guards, who with their own idle time look to try and instigate an incident here or there, so there’s a lot of screaming, hollering, you know, aggressive behaviors that go on. And so, there’s always some incident jumping off,
  • But the prisoners in the state of Georgia are paid nothing at all.Now, that’s not to say that the prisoners in other states are being paid. They’re mostly being paid a dollar a day to 50 cents an hour
  • they are not paid one single dime, and they are required to clean the floors, clean the showers, do the yard work, do the dishes, cook the food—in other words, to maintain the prison itself.
  • I learned the other day that one guy said he paid $800 to a guard for a cell phone that was probably worth about 50 bucks. So, that’s the first point that has to be made, because people imagine that there’s all this smuggling going on—and there is, but it’s on the part of—in the main, on the part of guards that are inside these facilities.
  • all of them, for reasons that I cannot explain how they suddenly understood how to be unified, decided, “Yeah, we’re not working, and we’re down with this, and we’re not going to get up, and we’re going to stay united.” And across the prisons, in the various sets, they called each other, sent text messages
  • Not only is he on lockdown, but he’s in the hole right now, because from almost day one or so, I was informed that he was taken off to the hole, deemed some sort of leader.
  • In the Black Panther Party, there was a 10-point platform and program that articulated some of the manifestations of our general oppression, talking about lack of education, as a matter of fact, not having enough food and housing. In essence, what we called for was freedom and right of self-determination.
  • the Brown Berets, the Red Guard, the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, and so forth
  • So, we became internationalists.
  • when we consider that we black people make up approximately 12 to 13 percent of the overall population and yet almost 50 percent of the prison population, we have to ask the question, is this the result of some genetic flaw in black people? Are we obviously some sort of criminally minded? Or is there something wrong in the scheme of things? Obviously, the latter is what I would say. And so, I’ve committed myself to bringing people out of prison.
  • So I helped to organize the Committee to Free Chip Fitzgerald. These people have been buried in prison for their political beliefs, and they’ve been buried in prison for their poverty. There are no rich people languishing in the prisons of America.
  • which is what they are doing by prodding men with everything, turning off the heat, beating people, forcing them out of their cells, turning off the hot water, destroying and trashing people’s property, not feeding them, and so forth and so on, all kinds of tactics to instigate a violent response.
Paul Merrell

Libya: From Africa's Richest State Under Gaddafi, to Failed State After NATO Interventi... - 0 views

  • This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped. The militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO’s intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.
  • For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli. One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights. When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law. Nowadays, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.
  • Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens. Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital. Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank. In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.
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  • On one side, in the West of the country, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was elected over the summer. On the other side, in the East of the Country, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything. The fall of Gaddafi’s administration has created all of the country’s worst-case scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone. America is clearly fed up with the two inept governments in Libya and is now backing a third force: long-time CIA asset, General Khalifa Hifter, who aims to set himself up as Libya’s new dictator. Hifter, who broke with Gaddafi in the 1980s and lived for years in Langley, Virginia, close to the CIA’s headquarters, where he was trained by the CIA, has taken part in numerous American regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1996.
  • Three years ago, NATO declared that the mission in Libya had been “one of the most successful in NATO history.” Truth is, Western interventions have produced nothing but colossal failures in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Lest we forget, prior to western military involvement in these three nations, they were the most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa with the highest regional women’s rights and standards of living. A decade of failed military expeditions in the Middle East has left the American people in trillions of dollars of debt. However, one group has benefited immensely from the costly and deadly wars: America’s Military-Industrial-Complex. Building new military bases means billions of dollars for America’s military elite. As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the United States built new bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Following the bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now building military bases in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Following the recent bombing of Libya, the United States has built new military bases in the Seychelles, Kenya, South Sudan, Niger and Burkina Faso.
  • Given that Libya sits atop the strategic intersection of the African, Middle Eastern and European worlds, Western control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond. NATO’s military intervention may have been a resounding success for America’s military elite and oil companies but for the ordinary Libyan, the military campaign may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest failures of the 21st century.
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    Indeed, Muammar Gadafi was well on his way to becoming the Simón Bolívar of Africa when the U.S. snuffed out his government and his life to end his efforts to create a United States of Africa with its own gold-backed currency. Were there Justice in this world, Barack Obama would be in prison today for his war crimes against the Libyan people. 
Gary Edwards

911 - The New Pearl Harbor by Massimo Mazzucco - 0 views

  • "September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor" is a 5 hour documentary that summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9/11. While aimed primarily at a general, uninformed audience, the film also contains some new findings that may be of interest to advanced researchers. This film is intended as an educational, non-profit operation, and must remain so in order to fulfill all the requirements for the usage of copyrighted material. As such, the entire film is made available online for free from day one. Any purchase of the actual DVD will be considered as a form of donation to the author, in recognition of the time spent to put together this material. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs is encouraged. At the bottom of the page you will find more information related to this film, including the links to order the DVD, and the TRAILER.
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    The best 911 documentary i've ever seen. Period. ""September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor" is a 5 hour documentary that summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9/11. While aimed primarily at a general, uninformed audience, the film also contains some new findings that may be of interest to advanced researchers. This film is intended as an educational, non-profit operation, and must remain so in order to fulfill all the requirements for the usage of copyrighted material. As such, the entire film is made available online for free from day one. Any purchase of the actual DVD will be considered as a form of donation to the author, in recognition of the time spent to put together this material. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs is encouraged. At the bottom of the page you will find more information related to this film, including the links to order the DVD, and the TRAILER."
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    Best I've seen so far too. But it dives deep into a critical subset of the evidence that the official version of events is preposterous.There is far more evidence out there. E.g., the documentary doesn't deal with the evidence of Israeli involvement.
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