Greece, Riots and Revolution to spread all over Europe ? | Gerald Celente Trends Blog

Greece, Riots and Revolution to spread all over Europe ? | Gerald Celente Trends Blog: Greece is at a standstill once again, with people venting their anger at more cuts, which the EU is demanding in return for vital funds. Greece appears to be just another failed state that fell for the lending schemes of the banksters. Best not to borrow another dime, declare independence from the EU, bankruptcy to eliminate all current debt and start over.The EU crisis is all a buying opportunity created for the international bankers . A lot of great European companies are now even more under valued than they were back in 2008 and the bankers are ready to buy Europe's assets for pennies to the dollar .The Police and Politician cannot possibly understand the anger of a "no future" generation, or the anger of those who have played the game by the rules and ended up with nothing.!! And it will get worse. Banks are not lending and reactivating the economy. Meanwhile, the 1% is in the process of violently assaulting the historical rights of working and middle classes - even at the risk of losing what's left of their political and social legitimacy (they don't care anyway)

Ron Paul is The Thomas Jefferson of Our Time! - YouTube

Ron Paul is The Thomas Jefferson of Our Time! - YouTube: Ron Paul is The Thomas Jefferson of Our Time!

The End Of Liberty (Full) - YouTube

The End Of Liberty (Full) - YouTube

Veterans for Ron Paul - YouTube

Veterans for Ron Paul - YouTube: Dr. Paul has spoken very directly on his intentions if he were to be elected president. He would call for an immediate cease fire in the illegal and unconstitutional wars that we are currently involved with in with at least five different countries and withdraw our soldiers from areas such as Korea where we have been guarding their border for 50 years. This would significantly decrease the amount of blowback we receive as a nation in the form of terrorist attacks, give us the manpower and logistics to defend our own borders, and strengthen our nation economically by eliminating unnecessary deficit spending.

Jim Rogers: Don't Pay Attention to Governments by Robert Wenzel

Jim Rogers: Don't Pay Attention to Governments by Robert Wenzel: Jim Rogers: Don't Pay Attention to Governments

Jim Rogers: Don't Pay Attention to Governments

by Robert Wenzel
Economic Policy Journal

Recently by Robert Wenzel: 85 Things That Might Get You on a DHS Terrorist Watch List

Jim Rogers, who received the Mises Institute's Schlarbaum Prize for the lifetime defense of liberty in 2010, proved today that he deserved the award.

“If you listen to governments, then you are not going to make a lot of money. Governments lie, distort and make mistakes,” he said this morning on CNBC.

And, he clearly recognizes the near-global money printing now being conducted by central banks.

“My way of playing this is to own real assets like commodities,” he said “You now have the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve printing money. The way to protect yourself at a time like this is to own assets.”

Rogers also added that he thinks silver looks more attractive than gold at the moment because of the sustained rise in the gold price. This is the same thing that Ron Paul told me when I met with him. The thinking is that as price inflation heats up and more people look to the precious metals for protection, the high price of gold in terms of dollars will make it prohibitive for many to buy gold and will result in their buying silver. So while, gold and silver will both continue to climb in price, the gains, percentagewise will be greater for silver.

Here's the video:

Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.

Down With the Presidency by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Down With the Presidency by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Down With the Presidency

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It's not an inspiration; it's a threat.

The presidency – by which I mean the executive State – is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community. I'll go further. The US presidency is the world's leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind Third-World debt, the bailer-out of corrupt governments, the hand in many dictatorial gloves, the sponsor and sustainer of the New World Order, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Iraq or Serbia, where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause disease, and where women, children, and the aged have been denied essential food and medicine because of a cruel embargo. Look at the human toll taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see a prime practitioner of murder by government.

Today, the president is called the leader of the world's only superpower, the "world's indispensable nation," which is reason enough to have him deposed. A world with any superpower at all is a world where no freedoms are safe. But by invoking this title, the presidency attempts to keep our attention focused on foreign affairs. It is a diversionary tactic designed to keep us from noticing the oppressive rule it imposes right here in the United States.

As the presidency assumes ever more power unto itself, it becomes less and less accountable and more and more tyrannical. These days, when we say the federal government, what we really mean is the presidency. When we say, national priorities, we really mean what the presidency wants. When we say national culture, we mean what the presidency funds and imposes.

The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau's general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in pre-modern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world's biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights.

And let me be clear: I'm not talking about any particular inhabitant of the White House. I'm talking about the institution itself, and the millions of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are its acolytes. Look through the US government manual, which breaks down the federal establishment into its three branches. What you actually see is the presidential trunk, its Supreme Court stick, and its Congressional twig. Practically everything we think of as federal – save the Library of Congress – operates under the aegis of the executive.

This is why the governing elites – and especially the foreign policy elites – are so intent on maintaining public respect for the office, and why they seek to give it the aura of holiness. For example, after Watergate, they briefly panicked and worried that they had gone too far. They might have discredited the democratic autocracy. And to some extent they did. But the elites were not stupid; they were careful to insist that the Watergate controversy was not about the presidency as such, but only about Nixon the man. That's why it became necessary to separate the two. How? By keeping the focus on Nixon, making a devil out of him, and reveling in the details of his personal life, his difficulties with his mother, his supposed pathologies, etc.

Of course, this didn't entirely work. Americans took from Watergate the lesson that presidents will lie to you. This should be the first lesson of any civics course, of course, and the first rule of thumb in understanding the affairs of government. But notice that after Nixon died, he too was elevated to godlike status. None other than Bill Clinton served as high priest of the cult of president-worship on that occasion. He did everything but sacrifice a white bull at the temple of the White House.

The presidency recovered most of its sacramental character during the Reagan years. How wonderful, for the sake of our liberties, that Clinton has revived the great American tradition of scorning tyrants. In some ways, he is the best president a freedom lover can hope for. Of course, someday, Clinton too will ascend to the clouds, and enter the pantheon of the great leaders of the free world.

The libraries are filled with shelf after shelf of treatises on the American presidency. Save yourself some time, and don't bother with them. Virtually all tell the same hagiographic story. Whether written by liberals or conservatives, they serve up the identical Whiggish pap: the history of the presidency is the story of a great and glorious institution. It was opposed early on, and viciously so, by the anti-federalists, and later, even more viciously, by Southern Confederates. But it has been heroically championed by every respectable person since the beginning of the republic.

The office of the presidency, the conventional wisdom continues, has changed not at all in substance, but has grown in stature, responsibility, and importance, to fulfill its unique mission on earth. As the duties of the office have grown, so has the greatness of the men who inhabit it. Each stands on the shoulders of his forerunners, and, inspired by their vision and decisiveness, goes on to make his own contribution to the ever-expanding magisterium of presidential laws, executive orders, and national security findings.

When there is a low ebb in the accumulation of power, it is seen as the fault of the individual and not the office. Thus the so-called postage-stamp presidents between Lincoln and Wilson are to be faulted for not following the glorious example set by Abe. They had a vast reservoir of power, but were mysteriously reluctant to use it. Fortunately that situation was resolved, by Wilson especially, and we moved onward and upward into the light of the present day. And every one of these books ends with the same conclusion: the US presidency has served us well.

The hagiographers do admit one failing of the American presidency. It is almost too big an office for one man, and too much a burden to bear. The American people have come to expect too much from the president. We are unrealistic to think that one man can do it all. But that's all the more reason to respect and worship the man who agrees to take it on, and why all enlightened people must cut him some slack.

The analogy that comes to mind is the official history of the popes. In its infancy, the papacy was less formal, but its power and position were never in question. As the years went on and doctrine developed, so too did the burdens of office. Each pope inherited the wisdom of his forbears, and led the Church into fulfilling its mission more effectively.

But let's be clear about this. The church has never claimed that the papacy was the product of human effort; its spiritual character is a consequence of a divine, not human, act. And even the official history admits the struggles with anti-popes and Borgia popes. Catholics believe the institution was founded by Christ, and is guided by the Holy Spirit, but the pope can only invoke that guidance in the most narrow and rare circumstances. Otherwise, he is all too fallible. And that is why, although allegedly an absolute monarch, he is actually bound by the rule of law.

The presidency is seemingly bound by law, but in practice it can do just about anything it pleases. It can order up troops anywhere in the world, just as Clinton bragged in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. It can plow up a religious community in Texas and bury its members because they got on somebody's nerves at the Justice Department. It can tap our phones, read our mail, watch our bank accounts, and tell us what we can and cannot eat, drink, and smoke.

The presidency can break up businesses, shut down airlines, void drilling leases, bribe foreign heads of state or arrest them and try them in kangaroo courts, nationalize land, engage in germ warfare, firebomb crops in Colombia, overthrow any government anywhere, erect tariffs, round up and discredit any public or private assembly it chooses, grab our guns, tax our incomes and our inheritances, steal our land, centrally plan the national and world economy, and impose embargoes on anything anytime. No prince or pope ever had this ability.

But leave all that aside and consider this nightmare. The presidency has the power to bring about a nuclear holocaust with the push of a button. On his own initiative, the president can destroy the human race. One man can wipe out life on earth. Talk about playing God. This is a grotesque evil. And the White House claims it is not a tyranny? If the power to destroy the entire world isn't tyrannical, I don't know what is. Why do we put up with this? Why do we allow it? Why isn't this power immediately stripped from him?

What prevents fundamental challenge to this monstrous power is precisely the quasi-religious trappings of the presidency, which we again had to suffer through last January. One man who saw the religious significance of the presidency, and denounced it in 1973, was – surprisingly enough – Michael Novak. His study, Choosing Our King: Powerful Symbols in Presidential Politics, is one of the few dissenting books on the subject. It was reissued last year as – not surprisingly – Choosing Our Presidents: Symbols of Political Leadership, with a new introduction repudiating the best parts of the book.

Of course, none of the conventional bilge accords with reality. The US president is the worst outgrowth of a badly flawed Constitution, imposed in a sort of coup against the Articles of Confederation. Even from the beginning, the presidency was accorded too much power. Indeed, an honest history would have to admit that the presidency has always been an instrument of oppression, from the Whisky Rebellion to the War on Tobacco.

The presidency has systematically stolen the liberty won through the secession from Britain. From Jackson and Lincoln to McKinley and Roosevelt Junior, from Wilson and FDR to Truman and Kennedy, from Nixon and Reagan to Bush and Clinton, it has been the means by which our rights to liberty, property, and self-government have been suppressed.

I can count on one hand the actions of presidents that actually favored the true American cause, meaning liberty. The overwhelming history of the presidency is a tale of overthrown rights and liberties, and the erection of despotism in their stead.

Each president has tended to be worse than the last, especially in this century. Lately, in terms of the powers they assumed and the dictates they imposed, Kennedy was worse than Eisenhower, Johnson was worse than Kennedy, Nixon was worse than Johnson, Carter was worse than Nixon, and Reagan – who doubled the national budget and permanently entrenched the warfare State – was worse than Carter. The same is true of Bush and Clinton. Every budget is bigger and the powers exercised more egregious. Each new brutal action breaks another taboo and establishes a new precedent that gives the next occupant of the White House more leeway.

Looking back through American history, we can see the few exceptions to this rule. Washington wrote an eloquent farewell address, laying out the proper American trade and foreign policy. Jefferson's revolution of 1800 was a great thing. But was it really a freer country after his term than before? That's a tough case to make. Andrew Jackson abolished the central bank, but his real legacy was democratic centralism and weakened states' rights.

Andrew Johnson loosened the military dictatorship fastened on the South after it was conquered. But it is not hard to make the country freer when it had become totalitarian under the previous president's rule. Of course, Lincoln's bloody autocracy survives as the model of presidential leadership.

James Buchanan made a great statement on behalf of the right of revolution. Grant restored the gold standard. Harding denounced US imperialism in Haiti. But overall, my favorite president is William Henry Harrison. He keeled over shortly after his inauguration.

There have been four huge surveys taken of historians' views on the presidents: in 1948, in 1962, in 1970, and in 1983. Historians were asked to rank presidents as Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average, and Failure. In every case, number one is Lincoln, the mass murderer and military dictator who is the real father of the present nation. His term was a model of every despot's dream: spending money without Congressional approval, declaring martial law, arbitrarily arresting thousands and holding them without trial, suppressing free speech and the free press, handing out lucrative war contracts to his cronies, raising taxes, inflating the currency, and killing hundreds of thousands for the crime of desiring self-government. These are just the sort of actions historians love.

The number-two winner in these competitions is FDR. Moreover, Wilson and Jackson are always in the top five. The bottom two in every case are Grant and Harding. None bothered to rate William Henry Harrison.

What does greatness in the presidency mean? It means waging war, crushing liberties, imposing socialism, issuing dictates, browbeating and ignoring Congress, appointing despotic judges, expanding the domestic and global empire, and generally trying his best to be an all-round enemy of freedom. It means saying with Lincoln, "I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy."

The key to winning the respect of historians is to do these things. All aspirants to this vile office know this. It's what they seek. They long for crisis and power, to be bullies in the pulpit, to be the dictators they are in their hearts. They want, at all costs, to avoid the fate of being another "postage-stamp president." Madison said no man with power deserves to be trusted. Neither should we trust any man who seeks the power that the presidency offers.

Accordingly, it is all well and good that conservatives have worked to discredit the current occupant of the White House. Call him a cheat and a double-dealer if you want. Call him a tyrant too. But we must go further. The answer to restoring republican freedom has nothing to do with replacing Clinton with Lott or Kemp or Forbes or Buchanan. The structure of the presidency, and the religious aura that surrounds it, must be destroyed. The man is merely a passing occupant of the Holy Chair of St. Abraham. It is the chair itself that must be reduced to kindling.

It was never the intention of the majority of framers to create the mess we have, of course. After the war for independence, the Articles of Confederation had no chief executive. Its decisions were made by a five-member Confederation. The Confederation had no power to tax. All its decisions required the agreement of 9 of the 13 states. That is the way it should be.

Most of the delegates to the unfortunate Philadelphia convention hated executive power. They had severely restricted the governors of their states after their bitter experience with the colonial governors. The new governors had no veto, and no power over the legislatures. Forrest McDonald reports that one-quarter of the delegates to the convention wanted a plural executive, based loosely on the Articles model. But those who planned the convention – including Morris, Washington, and Hamilton – wanted a single, strong executive, and they out-maneuvered the various strains of anti-federalists.

But listen to how they did it. The people of the several states and their representatives were suspicious that Hamilton wanted to create a monarchy. Now, there's much mythology surrounding this point. It's not that the anti-federalists and the popular will opposed some guy strutting around in a crown. It was not monarchy as such they opposed, but the power the king exercised.

When they said they didn't want a monarch, they meant they didn't want a King George, they didn't want a tyrant, a despot, an autocrat, an executive. It was the despotic end they feared, and not the royal means.

Indeed, formally, the Constitution gives few powers to the president, and few duties, most of them subject to approval by the legislature. The most important provision regarding the presidency is that the holder of the office can be impeached. It was to be a threat constantly hanging over his head. It was, most framers thought, to be threatened often and used against any president who dared gather more power unto himself than the Constitution prescribed.

In one famous outburst, Hamilton was forced to defend himself against the charge that the new office of the presidency was a monarchy in disguise. He explained the difference between a monarch and a president. But as you listen to this, think about the present executive. Ask yourself whether he resembles the thing Hamilton claimed to have created in the office of the presidency, or whether we have the tyrant he claimed to be repudiating.

Among other points, Hamilton said in "Federalist 69":

The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction . . . removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected. . . .

The President will have only the occasional command of such part of the militia of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual service of the Union. . . .

[The power] of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies – all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. . . .

The President is to have power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur. The king of Great Britain is the sole and absolute representative of the nation in all foreign transactions. He can of his own accord make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and of every other description. . . .

The President is to nominate and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers. . . . The king of Great Britain is emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoints to all offices, but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure . . . and . . . [even] make denizens of aliens. . . .

[The President] can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; [the king] is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money. . . .

What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other?

Well, we can debate all day whether Hamilton was naïve about the imperial office he was in fact creating, or whether he was a despicable liar. But the fact remains that in his writings, despite his reputation as a backer of the exalted presidency, he is by today's standards a Congressional supremacist.

For that matter, and in comparison with today's presidency, so was the British king.

Most historians agree that there would have been no presidency apart from George Washington, who was trusted by the people as a true gentleman, and was presumed to understand what the American revolution was all about. But he got off track by attempting to suppress the Whisky Rebellion, although he at least acknowledged that his actions went beyond the strict letter of the Constitution. But though the presidency quickly spun out of control, at its antebellum worst it had nothing in common with today's executive State.

In those days, you could live your life and never even notice that the presidency existed. You had no contact with it. Most people couldn't vote anyway, thank goodness, and you didn't have to, but certain rights and freedoms were guaranteed regardless of whoever took hold of this – by today's standards – largely ceremonial position. The presidency couldn't tax you, draft you, or regulate your trade. It couldn't inflate your money, steal your kids, or impose itself on your community. From the standpoint of the average American, the presidency was almost invisible.

Listen to what de Tocqueville observed in 1831:

The President is . . . the executor of the laws; but he does not really cooperate in making them, since the refusal of his assent does not prevent their passage. He is not, therefore, a part of the sovereign power, but only its agent. . . . The president is placed beside the legislature like an inferior and dependent power. . . .

The office of president of the United States is temporary, limited, and subordinate. . . . [W]hen he is at the head of government, he has but little power, little wealth, and little glory to share among his friends; and his influence in the state is too small for the success or the ruin of a faction to depend upon his elevation to power. . . . The influence which the President exercises on public business is no doubt feeble and indirect.

Thirty years later, all this would be destroyed by Lincoln, who fundamentally changed the nature of the government, as even his apologists admit. He became a Caesar, in complete contradiction to most of the framers' intentions. As Acton said, he abolished the primary contribution that America had made to the world, the principle of federalism. But that is an old story.

Less well known is how Wilson revived Lincoln's dictatorial predilections, and added to them an even more millennial cast. Moreover, this was his intention before he was elected. In 1908, while still president of Princeton, he wrote a small book entitled the President of the United States. It was a paean to the imperial presidency, and might as well have been the bible of every president who followed him. He went beyond Lincoln, who praised the exercise of power. Wilson longed for a Presidential Messiah to deliver the human race.

There can be no successful government, without leadership or without the intimate, almost instinctive, coordination of the organs of life and action. . . . We have grown more and more from generation to generation to look to the President as the unifying force in our complex system. . . . To do so is not inconsistent with the actual provisions of the Constitution; it is only inconsistent with a very mechanical theory of its meaning and intention.

The president must be a man who understands his own day and the needs of the country, and who has the personality and the initiative to enforce his views both upon the people and upon Congress.

. . . He is not so much part of its organization as its vital link of connection with the thinking nation . . . he is also the political leader of the nation. . . . The nation as a whole has chosen him. . . . Let him once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him. His position takes the imagination of the country. He is the representative of no constituency, but of the whole people . . . the country never feels the zest of action so much as when its President is of such insight and caliber. Its instinct is for unified action, and it craves a single leader. . . .

The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit . . . he is the only spokesman of the whole people. [Finally, Presidents should regard] themselves as less and less executive officers and more and more directors of affairs and leaders of the nation – men of counsel and of the sort of action that makes for enlightenment.

This is not a theory of the presidency. It is the hope for a new messiah. That indeed is what the presidency has come to. But any man who accepts this view is not a free man. He is not a man who understands what constitutes civilized life. The man who accepts what Wilson calls for is an apostle of the total State and a defender of collectivism and despotism.

Conservatives used to understand this. In the last century, all the great political philosophers – men like John Randolph and John Taylor and John C. Calhoun – did. In this century, the right was born in reaction to the imperial presidency. Men like Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn, and Felix Morley called the FDR presidency what it was: a US version of the dictatorships that arose in Russia and Germany, and a profound evil draining away the very life of the nation. They understood that FDR had brought both the Congress and the Supreme Court under his control, for purposes of power, national socialism, and war. He shredded what was left of the Constitution, and set the stage for all the consolidation that followed. Later presidents were free to nationalize the public schools, administer the economy according to the dictates of crackpot Keynesian economists, tell us who we must and who we must not associate with, nationalize the police function, and run an egalitarian regime that extols nondiscrimination as the sole moral tenet, when it is clearly not a moral tenet at all. Later conservatives like James Burnham, Wilmoore Kendall, and Robert Nisbet, understood this point too.

Yet who do modern conservatives extol? Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. Reagan spoke of them as gods and models, and so did Bush and Gingrich. In the 1980s, we were told that Congress was the imperial branch of government because Tip O'Neill had a few questions about Reagan's tax-and-spend military buildup, and his strategy for fostering global warfare while managing world affairs through the CIA. All this was bolstered by books by Harvey Mansfield, Terry Eastland, and dozens of other neoconservatives who pretended to provide some justification for presidential supremacy and its exercise of global rule. More recently even Pat Buchanan repeated the "Ask not . . . " admonition of John F. Kennedy, that we should live to serve the central government and its organizing principle, the presidency.

What the neocon logic comes down to is this: The US has a moral responsibility to run the world. But the citizens are too stupid to understand this. That's why we can't use democratic institutions like Congress in this ambition. We must use the executive power of the presidency. It must have total control over foreign affairs, and never bow to Congressional carping. Once this point is conceded, the game is over. The demands of a centralized and all-powerful presidency and its interventionist foreign policy are ideologically reinforcing. One needs the other. If the presidency is supreme in global affairs, it will be supreme in domestic affairs. If it is supreme at home, there will be no states' rights, no absolute property rights, no true liberty from government oppression. The continued centralization of government in the presidency represents the end of America and its civilization.

A key part of the theory of presidential supremacy in foreign affairs is the idea that politics stops at the water's edge. If you believe that, you have given up everything. It means that foreign affairs will continue to be the last refuge of an omnipotent scoundrel. If a president can count on the fact that he won't be criticized so long as he is running a war, he will run more of them. So long as he is running wars, government at home cannot be cut. As Felix Morley said, "Politics can stop at the water's edge only when policies stop at the water's edge."

Sadly, the Congress for the most part cares nothing about foreign policy. In that, it reflects the attitude of the American voter. The exception is the handful of Congressmen who do speak about foreign issues, usually at the behest of the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the increasingly global FBI. Such men are mere adjuncts of presidential power.

In fact, it is the obligation of every patriot not only to denounce a president's actions at home, but to question, harass, and seek to rein in the presidency when it has sent troops abroad. That is when the watchful eye of the citizenry is most important. If we hold our tongues under some mistaken notion of patriotism, we surrender what remains of our freedoms. Yet during the Gulf War, even those who had courageously opposed this intervention in advance mouthed the old clichés about politics and the water's edge and "supporting the troops" when the presidency started massacring Iraqis. Will the same happen when the troops are sent to China, a country without a single aircraft carrier, in retaliation for some trumped-up incident in the tradition of the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin?

If there is ever a time to get behind a president, it is when he withdraws from the world, stops wars, and brings the troops home. If there is ever a time to trip him up, question his leadership, and denounce his usurpations, it is when he does the opposite. A bipartisan foreign policy is a Napoleonic foreign policy, and the opposite of that prescribed by Washington in his farewell address.

In the midst of America's war against Britain in 1812, John Randolph wrote an open letter to his Virginia constituents, pleading with them not to support the war, and promising them he would not, for he knew where war led: to presidential dictatorship: "If you and your posterity are to become hewers of wood and drawers of water to the modern Pharaoh, it shall not be for the want of my best exertions to rescue you from cruel and abject bondage."

Sixty years ago all conservatives would have agreed with him. But the neoconservative onslaught has purged conservatives of their instinctive suspicions of presidential power.

By the time 1994 had come around, conservatives had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the theory that Congress was out of control, and that the executive branch needed more power. The leadership of the 104th Congress – dominated to a man by neocons and presidential supremacists – bamboozled the freshmen into pushing for three executive-enhancing measures.

In one of the Congress's first actions, it made itself subject to the oppressive civil rights and labor laws that the Executive enforced against the rest of the nation. This was incredibly stupid. The Congress was exempted from these for a reason. It prevented the Executive from using its own regulatory agencies to lord it over Congress. By making itself subject to these laws, Congress willingly submitted itself to implicit and explicit domination by the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, and the EEOC. It imposed quotas and political correctness on itself, while any dissenters from the presidential line suddenly faced the threat of investigation and prosecution by those they were attempting to rein in. The imposition of these laws against Congress is a clear violation of the separation of powers. But it would not be the last time that this Congress made this mistake. It also passed the line-item veto, another violation of the separation of powers. The theory was that the president would strike out pork, pork being defined as property taken by taxation and redistributed to special interests. But since pork is the entirety of the federal government's $1.7 trillion budget, this has given the president wide latitude over Congress. It takes away from Congress the right to control the purse strings.

Also part of the Contract with America was term limits for Congress. This would represent a severe diminution of Congressional power with respect to the presidency. After all, it would not mean term limits for the permanent bureaucracy or for federal judges, but only for the one branch the people can actually control. Thank goodness the self-interest of the politicians themselves prevented it from coming into being. After that initial burst of energy, this Congress surrendered everything to the Clinton White House: control of the budget, control of foreign affairs, and control of the Federal Reserve, and the FBI. The Justice Department operates practically without oversight, as does the Treasury, HUD, Transportation, Commerce, EPA, the SEC, the FTC, and the FDA.

Congress has given in on point after point, eventually even granting the presidency most of what it demanded in health-care reform, including mandated equal coverage of the mentally ill. Chalk it up to long-term planning. They came into office pledging to curb government, but are as infatuated with the presidency as Clinton himself. After all, they hope their party will regain the office.

Then the Republicans had the audacity to ask in bewilderment: why did the president beat Dole? What did we do wrong? The real question is what have they done right? James Burnham said that the legislature is useless unless it is curbing the presidency. By that measure, this Congress has been worthless. It deserves to lose its majority. And its party deserves to lose the presidency, whose powers they are so anxious to grab for themselves.

The best moments in the 104th Congress were when a few freshmen talked quietly of impeachment. Indeed it is their responsibility to talk loudly, openly, and constantly of impeachment. Today's presidency is by definition in violation of the Constitution. Talk of impeachment ought to become routine. So should ridicule and humiliation. For if we care about liberty, the plebiscitary dictatorship must be reined in or tossed out.

John Randolph had only been a Senator for a few days when he gave an extraordinary speech denouncing John Quincy Adams. "It is my duty," said Randolph, "to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration. . . . They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted . . . deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring." John Randolph said this in 1826. This was a time, writes de Tocqueville, when the presidency was almost invisible. If we cannot say this and more today, when the presidency is dictator to the world, we are not authentic conservatives and libertarians. Indeed, we are not free men.

This speech was delivered near the imperial capital on October 6, 1996, at the John Randolph Club.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. See his books.

Copyright © 2004 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Best of Lew Rockwell

» Irish social workers are horrified by their ruthless English counterparts Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

» Irish social workers are horrified by their ruthless English counterparts Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!: Families fleeing the interventions of social workers have been finding a far more humane approach across the water

Christopher Booker
London Telegraph
February 19, 2012

Such is the reign of terror now being imposed on innocent English families by social workers that scores of parents have been fleeing with their children to Ireland to escape their clutches. I have followed a dozen such stories over the past two years, and in all of them two things stand out. One is that the English social workers seem prepared to stop at nothing to get the children back. The other is the extraordinary contrast between them and the Irish social workers, who again and again have satisfied themselves that the children are at no risk from their loving parents and are astonished by the ruthless behaviour of their English counterparts.

» Why I’m Suing the FBI, the DoD and the CIA Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

» Why I’m Suing the FBI, the DoD and the CIA Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!: Over the past year, I’ve filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and other government agencies in hopes of prying loose documents I need to support my investigative reporting efforts on a wide-range of issues and policies.

Over the past year, I’ve filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and other government agencies in hopes of prying loose documents I need to support my investigative reporting efforts on a wide-range of issues and policies.

One of the frustrating realities about the FOIA process is the enormous backlog of requests government agencies have to contend with, which means many months or years could pass before my request is finally processed and I receive a response.

However, a little-known FOIA provision allows requesters to seek an estimated date of completion from government agencies on their FOIA requests. Specifically, the law, as it was amended in 2007, says:

Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(7)(B), “Each agency shall … establish a phone line or Internet service that provides information about the status of a request to the person making the request …, including … an estimated date on which the agency will complete action on the request.”

To demonstrate how effective the law can be when requesters utilize it, I sent an email to Eric Neuschafer, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) FOIA analyst, last week inquiring about the estimated date of completion on a FOIA request I filed last October for documents related to the role the agency played, if any, in the crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

Neuschafer promptly responded to my query stating, “At this time, it is my best estimate that we will have information ready for release on or around March 15.”

But unlike DHS, many other government agencies still refuse to follow the law and provide requesters with estimated dates of completion. Indeed, last December, I first queried David Sobonya, the FBI’s public information officer, via email about two separate FOIA requests I filed last year and requested he provide me with an estimated date of completion. [The FOIA requests I filed with the agency are for documents I am trying to obtain that will help flesh out an investigative story I have spent the past year working on.]

Sobonya responded to my email on December 29 by stating, “due to the voluminous requests that the FBI receives on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis a specific time frame for completion cannot be provided.”

I sent Sobonya another email, citing the section of the law requiring he provide me with an estimated date of completion for my two outstanding FOIA requests, which he said was still in the hands of a “disclosure analyst.”

Sobonya responded to that email by inadvertently sending me a note addressed to “Denny” that was clearly intended for Denny Argall, the FBI’s public liaison officer.

“I feel this will be the new trend,” Sobonya said of my request for an estimated date of completion, which he was required to provide me with under the law. “The assigned disclosure analyst advised that an estimated date for completion cannot be provided. How do you wish for me to respond?”

I advised Sobonya that he clearly sent me an email intended for someone else. He replied to my email by saying he would try and obtain answers to my request for estimated dates of completion for my two FOIA requests. But he never did. Sobonya said my FOIA requests were being “processed in the ‘First-in/First-out’ order and that we are not able to give an estimated date of completion.”

We went back and forth via email several times over the course of a few weeks. Again and again, I cited the law and demanded Sobonya provide me with an estimated date of completion. Eventually, he stopped responding to my queries altogether and his superiors in the Records Information/Dissemination Section (RIDS) did not return my calls or respond to my emails.

So, on Tuesday, I sued the FBI in US District Court for the District of Columbia. I hooked up with the Arlington, Virginia-based public interest law firm National Security Counselors, and we also sued the CIA, the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Energy, Department of Treasury, the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the National Archives and Records Administration, alleging the agencies had violated 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(7)(B) of the FOIA by failing to provide the National Security Counselors with estimated dates of completion for separate FOIA requests.

As our lawsuit states, the agencies’ “repeated refusal to provide estimated dates of completion represents an ongoing policy, practice, or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).”

“A policy, practice, or [Standard Operating Procedure] of refusing to provide estimated dates of completion to requesters is in violation of FOIA,” our complaint further states. “Such a practice constitutes outrageous conduct for purposes of the broad equitable powers provided by FOIA to the Court. Such a policy is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise contrary to law.”

We want the District Court to find the FBI and other government agencies named in the lawsuit in violation of its statutory responsibilities under FOIA and to issue an injunction compelling those agencies to provide requesters with estimated dates of completion when asked.

It’s worth noting that less than two weeks before we filed our lawsuit, the government’s own FOIA ombudsman published a blog post entitled, “How to Invite a FOIA Lawsuit,” which said, “failing to give a requester an estimated date of completion” can be “litigation invitations.”

The 2007 amendments to FOIA require agencies to provide requesters with an estimated date of completion, but many agencies still do not do so. When asked why, agencies report that they have not determined how best to accurately compute an estimated completion date or that they are reluctant to provide an estimated completion date: if the date is not met it would open up a whole set of other problems related to revising the estimated date of completion and to maintaining or re-building rapport with the requester and agency officials if the dates slip.

Aside from the fact that FOIA requires agencies to provide requesters with an estimated date of completion, providing estimated completion dates can be advantageous to agencies. First, an estimate is just that, an agency’s educated guess based on the information it has available at that point in time. Estimated completion dates can also keep an agency on track and in tune with its FOIA process. For example, if an agency figures out how much time it takes for each stage in the FOIA process, it makes it easier to manage its FOIA case load by recognizing bottlenecks in the process. When requesters are given an estimated date of completion, it helps to manage their expectations of when they will receive a response to a request.

This is not the first time Kel McClanahan, the executive director of National Security Counselors and the attorney handling our lawsuit, has sued government agencies for failing to provide FOIA requesters with estimated dates of completion.

In February 2010, his firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of British author Gregg Muttitt, who was writing a book about the role the US and UK governments played in the development of Iraq’s oil law. Among other claims, the lawsuit, Muttitt v. United States Central Command, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of the Treasury, argued that the State Department refused to provide Muttitt with an estimated date of completion on his FOIA requests.

Last September, the US District Court for the District of Columbia held in that case that a repeated failure of an agency to provide estimated dates of completion would constitute a viable claim in a FOIA lawsuit.

McClanahan, who had previously weighed in on a story I had published last month about a secretive process the FBI employs for certain FOIA requests known as “blackballing,” told me that one of the “primary concerns that Congress sought to address when it passed the OPEN Government Act in 2007 was the widespread inability of FOIA requesters to receive any feedback from agencies during the processing of their requests.”

“For this reason, Congress chose to include a requirement that all agencies must provide any requester who asked with an estimated date on which they would complete the processing of their requests,” McClanahan said. “However, many agencies were slow to implement the new mandate, and when challenged they fought back. So the purpose of our lawsuit is to attempt to close the door on all possible loopholes or alternative interpretations that agencies can develop to avoid complying with what is a very clear statutory requirement, as well as signaling to all agencies that the Muttitt case was not a fluke and that all agencies are required to provide this vital information to requesters,” McClanahan added.

Despite the new era of transparency and open government President Obama promised three years ago, “his administration has been just as secretive—if not more so—than his predecessors, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has become the prime example of his administration’s lack of progress,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) noted last month.

When Attorney General Eric Holder issued new FOIA guidelines in March 2009, he said the Justice Department would only defend government agencies in FOIA lawsuits if it concluded their FOIA denials were truly (not technically) prohibited by law. It will be interesting to see how the Justice Department responds to this lawsuit. Whether or not a Justice Department attorney mounts a spirited defense defending the government’s practices should prove an excellent indicator of how seriously the rank and file takes Holder’s guidelines.

» Drugstores Pushing Poison On Customers Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

» Drugstores Pushing Poison On Customers Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!: Every place you go the population reduction agenda is pushed. The fluoride they put in the water is the toxic byproduct of the fertilizer and aluminum smelting industries. It is also sprayed on crops as a pesticide and added to baby water,you can’t make this stuff up. The CVS was also plastered with hen pecking so- called environmental propaganda posters and flue shot ads!

» Escobar: Al-Qaeda agents worm into Syrian rebel army Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

» Escobar: Al-Qaeda agents worm into Syrian rebel army Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!: The EU states are calling for creating humanitarian corridors in Syria, which some fear could open the door to foreign intervention. But Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar says it’s already underway.

Mexico prison fight leaves 44 dead - wdbj7.com

Mexico prison fight leaves 44 dead - wdbj7.com: MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Violence at a prison on the outskirts of Mexico's northern manufacturing city Monterrey left at least 44 dead on Sunday, authorities said.

Victims were beaten, knifed and stoned when a fight broke out between rival gangs at the prison in the early hours of Sunday, authorities said.

Inmates at the prison in Monterrey, about 225 km (140 miles) from the border with Texas, include members of Mexico's Gulf Cartel as well as the feared Zetas cartel. Authorities could not confirm if the fight was between these two cartels.

The prison was secured by around 6 a.m. and an investigation began shortly afterward, a local government spokesman told Mexican news services.
Powerful drug cartels are fighting for control of smuggling routes along the U.S.-Mexico border and rivalries often spread into the prison system, where prisoners held on federal drug charges are mixed with common criminals.

A fight between rival gangs in another prison in the north of the country left 31 inmates dead in January and a further 13 wounded.

About 50,000 people have died in Mexico in the past five years since President Felipe Calderon launched a frontal attack on drug gangs. Packed and inefficient prisons are plagued with corruption and mass escapes.

(Reporting by Adriana; Barrera and Elinor Comlay; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Michael Scheuer - "Israel Is Spying On The U.S., Stealing Technology & Bribing Congress" - YouTube

Older Video: Another controversial interview.
Michael Scheuer - "Israel Is Spying On The U.S., Stealing Technology & Bribing Congress" - YouTube: Michael Scheuer - "Israel Is Spying On The U.S., Stealing Technology & Bribing Congress"

Bill Maher interviews Michael Scheuer on Israel.mp4 - YouTube

 Very controversial interview
Bill Maher interviews Michael Scheuer on Israel.mp4 - YouTube: Bill Maher interviews Michael Scheuer on Israel.mp4

Michael Scheuer Mentioned in Bin Laden Tape FOX News - YouTube

This is worth listening to today.
Michael Scheuer Mentioned in Bin Laden Tape FOX News - YouTube: Michael Scheuer Mentioned in Bin Laden Tape FOX News

Michael Scheuer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Scheuer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Michael F. Scheuer (born 1952[1]) is a former CIA intelligence officer, American blogger, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies and an Expert at Wikistrat.[2] In his 22-year career, he served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka "Alec Station"), from 1996 to 1999, the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004.

Artist's 'Transparency Grenade' Wants to Blow Apart Corporate Secrecy | Underwire | Wired.com

Artist's 'Transparency Grenade' Wants to Blow Apart Corporate Secrecy | Underwire | Wired.com: Artist’s ‘Transparency Grenade’ Wants to Blow Apart Corporate Secrecy


ulian Oliver's Transparency Grenade makes a not-so-subtle comment on secrecy.

Artist Julian Oliver has put together a “transparency grenade” that lets users leak information from closed meetings by just pulling a pin.