Tuesday, May 12, 2009

TUESDAY LINKS & Quotes

"Either some Ceasar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions."Thomas Babington Macaulay, Letter to Henry S. Randall [1857]

From Bill St. Clair
"To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so…. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." -- Pierre-Joseph Prodhoun

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A New Way to Ban Guns:Brand Everyone as "Terrorists"
by Kurt Hoffman
The Examiner

I have talked before about the rather . . . expansive criteria by which one can now be marked as a "terrorist" threat by the government. We have, in fact, reached the point at which simply affirming one's devotion to the Constitution can be enough to be lableled a "terrorist" threat. Now, in fact, it has become apparent that such "threats" as followers of Norse mythology are among those who must be kept under close scrutiny. MORE HERE

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Continuity in American History: The Torture Issue and Punishing Civilians

By William Marina

Anthony Gregory is undoubtedly correct that it is important that Americans explore the history of our massive “Warfare State.” When did it all begin?

The torture issue, much now in the news with respect to the CIA, overlaps with that of the punishment and killing of civilians as is evident almost daily in the drone missile killings of whole families in Afghanistan.

One might begin with our treatment of Native Americans as they were dragged westward in the 1820s. In an article on that in the 2nd Ed. of News of the Nation: A Newspaper History of the US (1976), I described the shame of American soldiers, many of them veterans going back to our Revolution, of the way in which the Indian peoples were treated, the number who died, as a result of carrying out these orders of the American government. MORE HERE

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Government in Theory and Practice

Does it provide needed services, or just steal from us?

by James Leroy Wilson

In our world, government's only purpose is to take from some people to give to others. That's it. The theory that government is necessary is only the pretext to command the people's loyalty. For if we concede that government must provide what free exchange can not, we must concede also that:
  1. There is no need for government to have a monopoly on its services.
  2. Taxes would go to financing the government and absolutely no other purpose, because that would be theft.
MORE HERE

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Hulu.com May Be Target of Antitrust Attack

Verdict In Blagojevich Saga Likely 2 Years Away

Where U.S. Homeowners Are Most In Debt

Average Federal Government Worker to Make $75,419 with Salary and Benefits in 2009