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Written in June of 2012, before the national elections, this commentary remains the ringing truth.  Maybe more Americans are ready to listen this fourth of July? ........................... "Is America Ready For Revolution? I have always strongly believed that it's not possible to be a good Christian without standing up against social injustice and government corruption in all its forms. As I take a look around me today I find a lot of things wrong with our country. In fact, I have been a proponent for radical change for several years now, and I have written and published 2 books on this very topic. Where shall I begin? In God-blessed America, the land of the free where everyone is an economic slave, our founding fathers' sacred idea of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become but a cruel joke. Former president George W. Bush has notoriously called our Constitution - our supreme law of the land - "that (expletive) piece of paper". The federal government is currently spending at least $60 billion per month on military excursions in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and northern and western Africa - including operating between 800 and 1,000 foreign military bases all over the world. Our country's over-used flying drone aircraft kills hundreds daily overseas, many of whom are only innocent bystanders. Meanwhile here on the home front, one in seven people are on food stamps, and at any given time one in four American children are going hungry today. Our country spends more money incarcerating people than it does on education. What's up with that? Our political system is openly rigged against the best interests of the American people. A massive market mechanism is securely entrenched in our political system where political influence is openly bought and sold. Tens of thousands of highly-paid middlemen called "lobbyists" facilitate the legal transfer of billions between moneyed special interests and our so-called "representatives" i

"Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. A civil war has begun. This civil war is very different than the last one. There are no cannons or cavalry charges. The left doesn't want to secede. It wants to rule. Political conflicts become civil wars when one side refuses to accept the existing authority. The left has rejected all forms of authority that it doesn't control. The left has rejected the outcome of the last two presidential elections won by Republicans. It has rejected the judicial authority of the Supreme Court when it decisions don't accord with its agenda. It rejects the legislative authority of Congress when it is not dominated by the left. It rejected the Constitution so long ago that it hardly bears mentioning.   It was for total unilateral executive authority under Obama. And now it's for states unilaterally deciding what laws they will follow. (As long as that involves defying immigration laws under Trump, not following them under Obama.) It was for the sacrosanct authority of the Senate when it held the majority. Then it decried the Senate as an outmoded institution when the Republicans took it over. It was for Obama defying the orders of Federal judges, no matter how well grounded in existing law, and it is for Federal judges overriding any order by Trump on any grounds whatsoever. It was for Obama penalizing whistleblowers, but now undermining the government from within has become "patriotic". There is no form of legal authority that the left accepts as a permanent institution. It only utilizes forms of authority selectively when it controls them. But when government officials refuse the orders of the duly elected government because their allegiance is to an ideology whose agenda is in conflict with the President and Congress, that's not activism, protest, politics or civil disobedience; it's treason. After losing Congress, the left consolidated

As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil

In related news, the Dept. of Justice announced that it would begin using its "collateral consequences" analysis to decisions whether to charge human beings with crimes, taking into account the hardships imposed on innocent family members and other dependents if a person were sentenced to prison.  No? Sounds like corporations have more rights than human beings, yes?

OUTRAGE - Microsoft Uses Loopholes To Pay Just 7% Corporate Tax Eric Cantor Is The Hedge Funder's Best Man In Congress - Washinton Post The Road To Hell Directly Before Us - MUST READ Karl Denninger Obamacare Individual Mandate Battle Reaches Supreme Court DETAILS - Geithner To Announce Backup Plans With No Debt Deal In Place Fed Governor Speaks: More QE Won't Help Growth But Would Spur Inflation How The Two-Party Oligarchy Uses Left-Right Charade To Loot The Country Debt Ceiling Fights Going Back To Eisenhower Florida Rep. Demands Records On Ousted Foreclosure Fraud Investigators Publisher That Owns S&P Kills Ritholtz's Bailout Book Critical Of Ratings Agencies Did S&P flip flop on US debt target? - Reuters The "Solution" to America's Debt Ceiling Crisis: Looting What has Already been Looted

A blow for the civil liberties of human beings, as opposed to corporations. 

Remarkable 5-3 Supreme Court decision in favor of the banksters, in effect overruling a line of prior decisions nearly 30 years old. At issue, whether a credit card monopolists' form contract with merchants containing a mandatory arbitration clause could lawfully bar judicial review under the antitrust laws when the arbitration clause barred class arbitration and the amount merchants could hope to recover was less than a tenth of the expense of litigating claims individually. (Antitrust cases are unusually expensive to prosecute.) For nearly three decades, the Court had implied an exception to the Federal Arbitration Act that allowed plaintiffs to litigate claims subject to arbitration clauses in court to vindicate rights under federal law when arbitration would not provide an effective remedy for the violation of federal law. No more. Upholding the "right" of American Express to insist on a 30 percent share of the price of each sale transacted with an American Express card. Read Justice Kagan's dissent, joined by two other justices, to learn what's wrong with the majority's decision. Her nushell version: "here is the nutshell version of today's opinion, admirably flaunted rather than camoflaged: Too darn bad." The majority did, however, leave it open for Congress to amend the Arbitration Act to resolve the issue. But with corporate and bankster influence in Congress, good luck with that. This decision, unfortunately, has major implications for software developers, as well as other merchants. For example, the current crop of "app store" restrictions on competition enforced by technical measures on app developers by monopolists such as Apple and Microsoft, insisting on a 30 per cent cut of each sale. One can rest assured that such contracts contain similar arbitration clauses

Economic havoc looks to be about to break Greece's two-party political system as a third party, Syriza rises to take control of government. Might a similar event happen in the U.S. if the economy gets much worse, as seems about to happen because of the collapse of the petro-dollar? If so, what might the new coalition look like in the U.S.? This article points out that in Greece, Syriza is uniting demographic elements viewed as leftist. But the what is regarded as the left in the U.S., progressives, liberals, socialists, and communists, historically has been incapable of organizing in a way to assert political power for decades because they invariably fall for the choice of two evils argument and vote Democratic in general elections. It seems to be much the same story on the right in the U.S. For example, the Tea Party was co-opted by the Republican Party in general elections from the Tea Party's inception. What has been particularly troubling to me is that the American left and right actually agree on very many issues, but the divide-and-conquer strategy of the corporate/globalist/war machine of the oligarchy has so instilled hatred between the right and the left that it's been impossible to form a third-party that pushes an agenda driven by majority public opinion. To me, a new party that focuses on areas of broad agreement and avoids areas of disagreement seems to be the most likely candidate to break the the rule of our present usurpers of democracy. But if we are to create a new Majority Party (I like that name) based on majority opinion, how do we get past the hatred, particularly given that the usurpers will do their level best to fan the fire of hatred even more as the Majority Party gains numbers? And what to do about majority opinions that are formed by false usurper propaganda, e.g., the current propaganda campaigns that drive the pro-war agenda? They've been able to create majorities, e.g., for renentry of the U.S. military into Iraq to fight ISIL,

Perhaps moving corporate HQ to a tax haven in the E.U. wasn't Mark Zuckerberg's brightest move. Digital privacy rights are much stronger there.

"If you lie to the public about the risks that fossil fuel use poses to life on earth, you are just exercising your right as a citizen," Levine wrote. Correction. Corporations are not citizens; only human beings can achieve that status.  

"The American Left's desire to crush Liberty and dissent in order to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" has reached metastatic levels. In the last three weeks alone, the following stories have surfaced. All of which indicate we are well on our way toward relinquishing our birthright. Even worse, millions of Americans are apparently more than willing to do so. First, this week the Supreme Court heard arguments in the United States v. Texas case that will determine whether a president can unilaterally rewrite immigration law. If SCOTUS rules in Barack Obama's favor, the separation of powers outlined in the first three articles of the Constitution will be rendered moot and, as political analyst Charles Krauthammer wryly observed, "you can send Congress home." And the Left is not content to stop there. A coalition of 118 cities and counties have filed a legal brief asserting they will lose up to $800 million in economic benefits if large numbers of illegal aliens remain subject to deportation. Second, the IRS has admitted it abides the use of fraudulent Social Security numbers used by illegal aliens to process tax payments - and refunds. Third, in New York and California, Democratic attorneys general Eric Schneiderman and Kamala Harris are pursuing fraud investigations against Exxon, based on the premise they can "prosecute persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming," writes National Review's Kevin Williams. "Prosecuting political institutions and businesses for political activism is brown-shirt business." Fourth, the Obama administration, already under fire for its determination to flood America with Syrian "refugees," announced it will reduce its vetting process to three months, instead of 18-24 months. They claim the reduced time is necessary to handle a sped-up "surge operation" whose population is 99% Sunni Muslim. Even more insulting, Gina Kassem, the regional refugee coordinator at t

I'll leave well enough alone on Mr. Ahert's positions regarding the U.S. v. Texas case and IRS reliance on fraudulent Social Security numbers; I have not studied those issues. But Mr. Ahert has not done his homework on the Exxon investigations and on the law governing the Syrian refugee situation. Re Exxon, the criminal investigations are to determine whether Exxon committed fraud against *investors* by concealing its knowledge of climate change the company was contributing to --- and knew of decades ago. We don't yet know the outcome of those investigations, but this is a far cry from prosecuting "persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming." If pursued, it will be a prosecution of a company -- and conceivably its managers -- who damned well knew through in-house scientific studies it sponsored that global warming was man-made and that their own company was a major causative agent. On the Syrian refugee situation, the right of war refugees to refuge in the U.S. and all other nations is, under the U.S. Constitution's Treaty Clause, "the law of this land." There is nothing in that body of international law created by treaty that permits the U.S. or any other nation to delay providing refuge for purposes of vetting refugees for possible terrorists among them. Vetting can, however, proceed lawfully after refugees are admitted while being held in refugee camps. One need only ask how one would feel were the tables turned and it was yourself fleeing from U.S. violence? Would you want to be forced to linger in the war zone while your anti-terrorism bona fides were established over a period of months? Refuge must be granted when it is needed, not months or years later, regardless of how much "terrorist" hysteria our mainstream media and the military-industrial complex drums up to fan the flames of war and industry profits. And this is all the more a moral case because it is the U.S. and its allies' illegal proxy war in Syria that is creating

Mixed feelings about this: It's a well-deserved slap in the face to Israel's apartheid government. But the two-state solution has not been viable for a long time because of the illegal Israeli settlements. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is aimed at a single-state solution with a secular government. That would still leave the Palestinian right of return to their stolen homes and lands, which cannot lawfully be abrogated by treaty or taking; it is an individual's human right under international law. When you read talk of Irael-Palestine land swaps as part of a negotiated peace, keep that in mind. Governments may lawfully swap boundaries but cannot swap land ownership and have it stand up in a court of international law. 

From a website with the same title as this Diigo group.