PEACEFUL DISSENT and GOVERNMENT WITCH HUNTS

[galtgulch]

Peaceful Dissent and Government Witch Hunts

By Anthony Gregory

(Here is the link to the article which appears on the www.campaignforliberty.com website:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=28

Anthony Gregory is Editor-in-Chief at Campaign for Liberty, a research analyst at the Independent Institute, a columnist at LewRockwell.com, a policy adviser for the Future of Freedom Foundation, a freedom activist, and a musician. See his webpage for more articles and personal information.)

As most readers of this are probably aware, the Campaign for Liberty has been singled out, along with a few other political groups, in a leaked Missouri state government report, "The Modern Militia Movement." The document tells state officials to be on the lookout for violent extremists while conflating them with pretty much anyone who criticizes the government. Perhaps most troubling, the information apparently comes from the Department of Homeland Security, meaning that similar documents could be circulating in states other than Missouri.

The brush with which this report paints critics of the federal government is so absurdly broad that it should not have to be taken seriously. The report lumps together violent white supremacists with the diverse and broad coalition behind Ron Paul, a man who has called racism "simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans only as members of groups and never as individuals." People who favor peace and cooperation among nations are thrown together with belligerent nationalists. Militants who saw George W. Bush as their savior and loved the war on terror are associated with those of us who saw Bush's reign as a long period of attacks on social peace, international harmony and freedom. We who criticize the Federal Reserve, fiat money, and inflation -- many of whom were inspired by great Jewish economists like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard -- are conflated with peddlers of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Promoters of social harmony and cooperation are branded as antisocial promoters of conflict. The wide net cast catches both domestic terrorists and anyone who happens to favor constitutional government, oppose international bureaucracies, question the IRS, CIA, FBI or United Nations, subscribe to libertarian politics or oppose the military draft.

This should all be too ridiculous to address, but police carrying out nationally directed profiling have not been known to be the most nuanced in their investigations. So there is some legitimate concern for freedom activists of all stripes.

The report's categorization of so many different types of people as potential threats to domestic peace takes on a distinct flavor in these Obama years, targeting tens of millions of conservative-leaning Americans who wish to peacefully live their lives in freedom -- people who take their Second Amendment rights seriously, people who oppose the staggering growth of government in modern times, people who do not fit into a politically correct mold of good citizenship. It is thus a dangerous report, but it is not anything qualitatively new in the history of the American Republic. Sometimes the fear-mongering was simply stupid and counterproductive; but many times it meant severe attacks on the civil liberties of peaceful Americans.

During the American Revolution, peaceful colonial skeptics of the war had their property confiscated. President John Adams targeted the Jeffersonians with the unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. During the War on 1812, Louis Louaillier, a Louisiana journalist, was jailed by General Andrew Jackson merely for protesting martial law -- and then the judge who issued him a habeas corpus writ was also jailed. Many critics during the Civil War were jailed without due process simply for expressing their opposition to Abraham Lincoln's power grabs. Critics of Reconstruction were also thrown in prison for their opinions.

With the advent of the national leviathan and technological modernity, oppression of peaceful dissenters hit new heights. Much of this was rooted in the Red Scare. Those thought to be socialist sympathizers were harassed. Labor agitators were brutalized, hundreds of thousands of Americans ended up on government lists, and hundreds of suspected communists were deported to Bolshevik Russia.

The whole time, government used fear of activist violence to chip away the freedom of all Americans. Labor organizers were hardly all angels. Many violently lashed out at scabs and their activism sometimes degenerated into riots and crimes against the innocent. Communist ideology is certainly one of the more dangerous belief systems. Yet the government lumped all these people together, effectively criminalizing free speech, opinions and associations, and persecuting people simply for disagreeing with the establishment view.

War hysteria brought on the worst abuses. During World War I, those who were German, spoke German, taught German or patronized German art and music were targeted by lynch mobs and government crackdowns. Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, critics of the war, conscription, the American flag, Constitution or U.S. military were thrown in prison. Woodrow Wilson put Eugene Debs, his socialist presidential opponent, in prison for giving a speech that correctly said the draft was a form of compulsory service illegal under the Constitution. Apparently, either being too pro-Constitution or too anti-Constitution was enough to find oneself in a cage.

Criticism of American allies, including Britain, could also land one in jail. Robert Goldstein was sentenced to prison for making a patriotic movie, The Spirit of '76, which was about the American Revolution and appropriately portrayed the British as the antagonists. After the war, abuses continued. In the late 1920s, the Bureau of Investigation, today called the FBI, spied on Albert Einstein.

Franklin Roosevelt spied on his political opponents, including Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, and had lists compiled of both rightwing opponents of his New Deal regime and leftwing radicals. The government was poised to round them all up. This did not end up happening, although FDR did force more than 100,000 peaceful Americans of Japanese descent into internment camps, depriving them of their liberty and property in the name of a war for freedom.

As the Cold War commenced, government monitoring and persecution of peaceful dissenters resumed. Many Americans mostly remember Senator Joe McCarthy, who focused on officials in power above him, but far worse abuses occurred against peaceful and powerless Americans. The Hollywood blacklist is the most well known example.

But the government witch hunts and agitation got worse than even this. The FBI infiltrated both rightwing critics of Civil Rights legislation and leftwing activists. In 1956 the agency launched COINTELPRO (Counter Intellgience Program). The purpose, according to one internal document, was to "track, expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities" of certain activist groups. In one San Diego operation, COINTELPRO used forged letters to incite violence between the Black Panthers and its rival, the United Slaves. The FBI celebrated the "shootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest," and gloated in a memo, "Although no specific counterintelligence action can be credited with contributing to this overall situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program." This was revealed in the famous U.S. Senate Church Committee reports in 1976. Far from making us safer, the government, looking for trouble, was proudly provoking civil unrest.

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the FBI spied on radicals, Civil Rights advocates, opponents of mandatory busing, and opponents of the Vietnam War. Victims of this surveillance included Martin Luther King and John Lennon -- not exactly serious threats to national security.

After the Cold War, the emphasis was shifted toward rightwing extremists. Under the first Bush administration, Randy Weaver, a white separatist, was goaded into breaking the law by informants. This entrapment resulted in federal raids that killed Weaver's son and wife. Early in the Clinton administration, from February to April 1993, federal hysteria directed at the separatist Branch Davidian group outside Waco, Texas -- this group distinctively not white separatist (nearly half of the Davidians were people of color) -- culminated in a military operation on American soil that cost the lives of about 80 American civilians, about a fourth of them children, and four federal officials. Much of what was said about the group was propaganda to save the face of the administration and exempt it from blame for this unspeakable and completely avoidable tragedy.

Many Americans, including conservatives jealous of their rights to live as free people, began criticizing the government for going way too far in its national police powers. Much of the dissent was chilled when the mass murder of innocents at Oklahoma City unfolded on April 19, 1995, precisely two years after the Waco siege ended.

Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh was implicated in the Oklahoma City atrocity, but the government and the liberal establishment pinned blame on an entire subculture, and even on mainstream conservatives. Rush Limbaugh was blamed for voicing anti-government opinions that supposedly contributed to domestic terrorism. For the rest of the 1990s, the rightwing was demonized, lumped together with the militia movement, and the threat of both were wildly exaggerated, even as the Clinton government used the IRS and other means to intimidate its peaceful critics. Prolife groups were harassed through RICO statutes. Gunowners were accused of being unpatriotic and un-American, and any talk of U.S. tyranny was seen as suspect.

With George W. Bush and the war on terror, the face of the targeted group changed, but the basic pattern continued. Muslims and Arabs were suspected as enemies of America, and hundreds were rounded up without due process. Bush thundered that "you are either with us or with the terrorists." In December, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft lashed out at Americans concerned about civil liberties:

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this. Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."

Thus were peaceful critics of the war on terror targeted. Iraq war protesters were spied on and assaulted by police. In October 2003, the FBI oversaw surveillance of protesters, infiltrated their groups, monitored their "training grounds" and kept an eye out for "protest activity and potentially illegal acts," as one formal memo put it. One FBI official was quoted in the New York Times saying, "it's obvious that there are individuals capable of violence at these events. We know that they are anarchists." It was a throwback to the Red Scare.

In the summer of 2005, the FBI admitted to collecting thousands of documents on non-violent activists, the ACLU, Greenpeace, and antiwar organizations. By using "National Security Letters," the government could force citizens to relinquish personal and financial information while forbidding them from informing anyone, including their lawyer. By 2005, about 30,000 such letters were issued annually. The FBI spied on the Catholic Worker Movement, noting its "semi-communistic ideology."

The same year, NBC News obtained a secret 400-page Pentagon document that tracked such "extremists" as anti-war Quakers in Florida, whose meeting was officially described as a "suspicious incident" and a "threat." All the while, peaceful activists were denied their right to travel by being inexplicably put on federal No-Fly lists.

Now the flavor of government has changed from the Republican leviathan of George W. Bush to the Democratic leviathan of Barack Hussein Obama. A different group is vulnerable to being marginalized -- in many ways a revitalization of the Clinton era atmosphere, although now with the post-9/11 concern about peace activists and all the surveillance powers inaugurated by Bush still in place.

But the general substance behind government fear-mongering and witch-hunts, and the attempts to chill dissent and silence peaceful political critics, have continued and have a long history. For the last century especially, we have seen the government lump together violent and in many cases unsavory agitators on both the left and right with Americans who simply question unlimited government, nationalist police powers and disastrous foreign wars. While there are indeed some violent and crazed elements on the fringes of the right and left -- while there are likewise some extremist characters and frightening viewpoints in the mainstream of American politics, too -- the result of such government persecution of dissenters is always to marginalize everyday citizens with unpopular views, conflate thoughtful and principled criticism of the government with agitation for social unrest and violence, and jeopardize the civil liberties of all Americans.

When the target is leftists, antiwar activists, or "un-American" radicals, statist conservatives have tended to look the other way. When the target is cultural conservatives, gunowners and American patriots who love the Constitution, it is statist liberals who tend to downplay the danger.

In truth, all such fear-mongering, when capitalized upon by unchecked national police powers in an atmosphere of hysteria, poses a severe threat to American liberty, and must be taken very seriously by any culture that respects freedom and the very foundations of civilization. The right to peacefully dissent and oppose government deprivations of life, liberty and property, is an inalienable right as fundamental as any other.

The right to question the government, even from a mistaken point of view, is at the heart of America's proud heritage. When America relinquishes this understanding, it comes to adopt the features of the supposed enemy. In the name of rooting out Communists, America became just a bit more communistic. In an effort to keep an eye on violent extremists, the government resorts to violence and extremism. All the labor agitators, Muslim sympathizers and militia groups put together can never threaten American freedom and security as much as an unleashed police state in a climate of fear.

So it is that much more important to speak up; to tell the truth; to defend the freedoms of all people to speak, live in peace, pursue happiness in a world of liberty, so long as they do not commit aggression against their fellow man. For defending this vision of a free and peaceful world, for sticking up for the rights of others no matter who they are or what they believe, we at the Campaign for Liberty and those of like mind have been wrongly targeted by an overbearing government. But we who love liberty have the right ideas and the passion to stand by our principles. In the end, the national police, state governments, Homeland Security and all the SWAT Teams and spying powers in the world cannot defeat a idea that is true and whose time has come. And it is this idea -- this idea at root of Ron Paul's Love Revolution -- the dream of peace and freedom for all Americans -- that truly frightens those who favor the total state, intimidation and fear directed abroad and toward peaceful dissent at home. It is the idea of liberty, not militias or terrorists, that most threatens the establishment, even as it offers nothing but hope and promise for the American people and the people of the world.

[www.campaignforliberty.com 18Mar 6AM 120934]

[syrakusos]

PAs most readers of this are probably aware, the Campaign for Liberty has been singled out, along with a few other political groups, in a leaked Missouri state government report, "The Modern Militia Movement." ... the information apparently comes from the Department of Homeland Security, meaning that similar documents could be circulating in states other than Missouri.

1. It is the Missouri Information Analysis Center.

2. It is the state of Missouri's own "Homeland Security" not the Federal department of the same name.

3. I found a similar document dated to 2005.

4. This is just something they do.

5. How was it "leaked"?

6. Of course, the Campaign for Liberty would take this an opportunity to launch a far-ranging and rambling monologue validating the fears of the authorities who fear anti-authority.

7. You can find a refernce to the Memorandum here:

http://www.dps.mo.gov/HomelandSecurity/Dropdowns.htm (Though, oddly enough, you cannot Print or Save the document. I hit "Screen Print.")

8. You can also find this brochure on the Homeland Security webpages homepage under Publications.

9. Sorry to say, I could not find the report itself in its original form

I did find it reproduced here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13232178/MIAC-St...ilitia-Movement

Edited March 18, 2009 by Michael E. Marotta

[Steve Gagne]

Not to mention the Federal Gardening Cops.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92002

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GROUND CONTROL

Lose your property for growing food?

Big Brother legislation could mean prosecution, fines up to $1 million

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Posted: March 16, 2009

8:56 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Some small farms and organic food growers could be placed under direct supervision of the federal government under new legislation making its way through Congress.

Food Safety Modernization Act

House Resolution 875, or the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in February. DeLauro's husband, Stanley Greenburg, works for Monsanto – the world's leading producer of herbicides and genetically engineered seed.

DeLauro's act has 39 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Agriculture Committee on Feb. 4. It calls for the creation of a Food Safety Administration to allow the government to regulate food production at all levels – and even mandates property seizure, fines of up to $1 million per offense and criminal prosecution for producers, manufacturers and distributors who fail to comply with regulations.

Michael Olson, host of the Food Chain radio show and author of "Metro Farm," told WND the government should focus on regulating food production in countries such as China and Mexico rather than burdening small and organic farmers in the U.S. with overreaching regulations.

"We need somebody to watch over us when we're eating food that comes from thousands and thousands of miles away. We need some help there," he said. "But when food comes from our neighbors or from farmers who we know, we don't need all of those rules. If your neighbor sells you something that is bad and you get sick, you are going to get your hands on that farmer, and that will be the end of it. It regulates itself."

The legislation would establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services "to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."

Federal regulators will be tasked with ensuring that food producers, processors and distributors – both large and small – prevent and minimize food safety hazards such as food-borne illnesses and contaminants such as bacteria, chemicals, natural toxins or manufactured toxicants, viruses, parasites, prions, physical hazards or other human pathogens.

Under the legislation's broad wording, slaughterhouses, seafood processing plants, establishments that process, store, hold or transport all categories of food products prior to delivery for retail sale, farms, ranches, orchards, vineyards, aquaculture facilities and confined animal-feeding operations would be subject to strict government regulation.

Government inspectors would be required to visit and examine food production facilities, including small farms, to ensure compliance. They would review food safety records and conduct surveillance of animals, plants, products or the environment.

"What the government will do is bring in industry experts to tell them how to manage all this stuff," Olson said. "It's industry that's telling government how to set these things up. What it always boils down to is who can afford to have the most influence over the government. It would be those companies that have sufficient economies of scale to be able to afford the influence – which is, of course, industrial agriculture."

Farms and food producers would be forced to submit copies of all records to federal inspectors upon request to determine whether food is contaminated, to ensure they are in compliance with food safety laws and to maintain government tracking records. Refusal to register, permit inspector access or testing of food or equipment would be prohibited.

"What is going to happen is that local agriculture will end up suffering through some onerous protocols designed for international agriculture that they simply don't need," Olson said. "Thus, it will be a way for industrial agriculture to manage local agriculture."

Under the act, every food producer must have a written food safety plan describing likely hazards and preventative controls they have implemented and must abide by "minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water."

"That opens a whole can of worms," Olson said. "I think that's where people are starting to freak out about losing organic agriculture. Who is going to decide what the minimum standards are for fertilization or anything else? The government is going to bring in big industry and say we are setting up these protocols, so what do you think we should do? Who is it going to bring in to ask? The government will bring in people who have economies of scale who have that kind of influence."

DeLauro's act calls for the Food Safety Administration to create a "national traceability system" to retrieve history, use and location of each food product through all stages of production, processing and distribution.

Olson believes the regulations could create unjustifiable financial hardships for small farmers and run them out of business.

"That is often the purpose of rules and regulations: to get rid of your competition," he said. "Only people who are very, very large can afford to comply. They can hire one person to do paperwork. There's a specialization of labor there, and when you are very small, you can't afford to do all of these things."

Olson said despite good intentions behind the legislation, this act could devastate small U.S. farms.

"Every time we pass a rule or a law or a regulation to make the world a better place, it seems like what we do is subsidize production offshore," he said. "We tell farmers they can no longer drive diesel tractors because they make bad smoke. Well, essentially what we're doing is giving China a subsidy to grow our crops for us, or Mexico or anyone else."

Section 304 of the Food Safety Modernization Act establishes a group of "experts and stakeholders from Federal, State, and local food safety and health agencies, the food industry, consumer organizations, and academia" to make recommendations for improving food-borne illness surveillance.

According to the act, "Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law … may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act."

Each violation and each separate day the producer is in defiance of the law would be considered a separate offense and an additional penalty. The act suggests federal administrators consider the gravity of the violation, the degree of responsibility and the size and type of business when determining penalties.

Criminal sanctions may be imposed if contaminated food causes serious illness or death, and offenders may face fines and imprisonment of up to 10 years.

"It's just frightening what can happen with good intentions," Olson said. "It's probably the most radical notions on the face of this Earth, but local agriculture doesn't need government because it takes care of itself."

Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act

Another "food safety" bill that has organic and small farmers worried is Senate Bill 425, or the Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act, sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Brown's bill is backed by lobbyists for Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson. It was introduced in September and has been referred to the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. Some say the legislation could also put small farmers out of business.

Like HR 875, the measure establishes a nationwide "traceability system" monitored by the Food and Drug Administration for all stages of manufacturing, processing, packaging and distribution of food. It would cost $40 million over three years.

"We must ensure that the federal government has the ability and authority to protect the public, given the global nature of the food supply," Brown said when he introduced the bill. He suggested the FDA and USDA have power to declare mandatory recalls.

The government would track food shipped in interstate commerce through a recordkeeping and audit system, a secure, online database or registered identification. Each farmer or producer would be required to maintain records regarding the purchase, sale and identification of their products.

A 13-member advisory committee of food safety and tracking technology experts, representatives of the food industry, consumer advocates and government officials would assist in implementing the traceability system.

The bill calls for the committee to establish a national database or registry operated by the Food and Drug Administration. It also proposes a electronic records database to identify sales of food and its ingredients "establishing that the food and its ingredients were grown, prepared, handled, manufactured, processed, distributed, shipped, warehoused, imported, and conveyed under conditions that ensure the safety of the food."

It states, "The records should include an electronic statement with the date of, and the names and addresses of all parties to, each prior sale, purchase, or trade, and any other information as appropriate."

If government inspectors find that a food item is not in compliance, they may force producers to cease distribution, recall the item or confiscate it.

"If the postal service can track a package from my office in Washington to my office in Cincinnati, we should be able to do the same for food products," Sen. Brown said in a Sept. 4, 2008, statement.

"Families that are struggling with the high cost of groceries should not also have to worry about the safety of their food. This legislation gives the government the resources it needs to protect the public."

Recalls of contaminated food are usually voluntary; however, in his weekly radio address on March 15, President Obama announced he's forming a Food Safety Working Group to propose new laws and stop corruption of the nation's food.

The group will review, update and enforce food safety laws, which Obama said "have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt."

The president said outbreaks from contaminated foods, such as a recent salmonella outbreak among consumers of peanut products, have occurred more frequently in recent years due to outdated regulations, fewer inspectors, scaled back inspections and a lack of information sharing between government agencies.

"In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president but as a parent,"

Obama said. "No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch just as no family should have to worry that the medicines they buy will cause them harm."

The blogosphere is buzzing with comments on the legislation, including the following:

Obama and his cronies or his puppetmasters are trying to take total control – nationalize everything,

disarm the populace, control food, etc. We are seeing the formation of a total police state.

Well ... that's not very " green " of Obama. What's his real agenda?

This is getting way out of hand! Isn't it enough the FDA already allows poisons in our foods?

If you're starving, no number of guns will enable you to stay free. That's the whole idea behind this legislation. He who controls the food really makes the rules.

The government is terrified of the tax loss. Imagine all the tax dollars lost if people actually grew their own vegetables! Imagine if people actually coordinated their efforts with family, friends and neighbors. People could be in no time eating for the price of their own effort. ... Oh the horror of it all! The last thing the government wants is for us to be self-sufficient.

They want to make you dependent upon government. I say no way! already the government is giving away taxes from my great great grandchildren and now they want to take away my food, my semi-auto rifles, my right to alternative holistic medicine? We need a revolution, sheeple! Wake up! They want fascism ... can you not see that?

The screening processes will make it very expensive for smaller farmers, where bigger agriculture corporations can foot the bill.

If anything it just increases accountability, which is arguably a good thing. It pretty much says they'll only confiscate your property if there are questions of contamination and you don't comply with their inspections. I think the severity of this has been blown out of proportion by a lot of conjecture. Don't waste your time calling the criminals in D.C. and begging them to act like humans. This will end with a bloody revolt.

The more I examine this (on the surface) seemingly innocuous bill the more I hate it. It is a coward's ploy to push out of business small farms and farmers markets without actually making them illegal because many will choose not to operate due to the compliance issue.

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Chelsea Schilling is a staff writer for WorldNetDaily.

[syrakusos]

Not to mention the Federal Gardening Cops.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92002

Thanks! I forwarded that to the Ann Arbor People's Food Co-op. We're members.

Mike M.

[BaalChatzaf]

Not to mention the Federal Gardening Cops.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92002

The more I examine this (on the surface) seemingly innocuous bill the more I hate it. It is a coward's ploy to push out of business small farms and farmers markets without actually making them illegal because many will choose not to operate due to the compliance issue.

This could very well bury small growers under tons of paper work. I wonder how this will affect farm stands that grow food and sell it locally. I hope this will not put them out of business. I live in New Jersey, The Garden State, and as nickname implies we have some of the best locally grown produce one could desire. Tomatoes and corn cannot be beat anywhere in the U.S.A.

This clearly will not affect gardeners who grow for their own consumption.

I think this bill is in response to the recent peanut bruhaha and it is a typical example of congressional overkill.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

Peaceful Dissent and Government Witch Hunts

By Anthony Gregory

(Here is the link to the article which appears on the www.campaignforliberty.com website:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=28

And yet, in Second American Revolution, you insist:

"If there were enough of us we could do something about this once and for all. Do you fear reprisals if you were to become one of us. There is no cost. Are you at all afraid of a knock on the door during the night? Good grief you are already out there with this great website you created. If they ever decide to come for me you will already have been picked up."

I point out that 100 years ago there was no more comfortable place to be a Jew than in Germany or the Hapsburg Empire. (France was still in the throws of the Dreyfuss Affair.) The von Mises family came from a town called then Lemberg and now Lvov. When the Nazis rolled in during World War II, the Ukrainians helped them purge the town so thoroughly -- and brutally -- that 50 years later there was no one who could remember there ever having been any Jews in the town ... ever...

Furthermore, I point out that as wary as we are of the fascists and crypto-nazis in the GOP and on the right with their God-Guns-and-Gold militias, the only US President to use concentration camps was a Democrat. The Roosevelt Administration empowered J. Edgar Hoover's FBI -- and had no problem accepting the votes delivered by those lynching Democrat sheriffs in the South.

Via her creation, John Galt, Ayn Rand did not recommend driving your cars to Washtington DC to blockade the government -- which the "Tom Paine" video did call for.

Political problems are, at root, philosophical problems.

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. This – the supremacy of reason – was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism. ('Brief Summary', The Objectivist Sept 1971)

Edited March 22, 2009 by Michael E. Marotta

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Via her creation, John Galt, Ayn Rand did not recommend driving your cars to Washtington DC to blockade the government -- which the "Tom Paine" video did call for.

Michael,

I believe the call in the Paine video was to make telephone calls to Congress and send tea bags by mail there. I do not recall him asking people to drive cars to Washington or blockade the government.

Rand herself supported writing articles, talking to people, etc. I need to look it up, but I doubt she would have objected to communicating with a member of Congress or trying to get others to do the same. I certainly can't see anything wrong with it.

btw - As given in the Glenn Beck interview, Basso said he was contacted by Homeland Security and they informed stated that because of concerns with powdery stuff in envelopes, they would simply throw out such mail unopened. So Basso suggested sending in the tag and string, but leaving out the tea bag.

Michael

[syrakusos]

Via her creation, John Galt, Ayn Rand did not recommend driving your cars to Washtington DC to blockade the government -- which the "Tom Paine" video did call for.

Michael ... I do not recall him asking people to drive cars to Washington or blockade the government.

View the second one, the Thomas Paine "Stimulus Package" Video, at about 2:14 into the running.

[Selene]

PAs most readers of this are probably aware, the Campaign for Liberty has been singled out, along with a few other political groups, in a leaked Missouri state government report, "The Modern Militia Movement." ... the information apparently comes from the Department of Homeland Security, meaning that similar documents could be circulating in states other than Missouri.

1. It is the Missouri Information Analysis Center.

2. It is the state of Missouri's own "Homeland Security" not the Federal department of the same name.

3. I found a similar document dated to 2005.

4. This is just something they do.

5. How was it "leaked"?

6. Of course, the Campaign for Liberty would take this an opportunity to launch a far-ranging and rambling monologue validating the fears of the authorities who fear anti-authority.

7. You can find a refernce to the Memorandum here:

http://www.dps.mo.gov/HomelandSecurity/Dropdowns.htm (Though, oddly enough, you cannot Print or Save the document. I hit "Screen Print.")

8. You can also find this brochure on the Homeland Security webpages homepage under Publications.

9. Sorry to say, I could not find the report itself in its original form

I did find it reproduced here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13232178/MIAC-St...ilitia-Movement

Folks:

A small victory for freedom, the "program" has been retracted.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/64917.html

I have a nest of clients and friends in Missouri and we peppered the Rep. Governor and State and Federal Reps. Hopefully, this type of "profiling" dies in Missouri.

Adam