Internet Censorship on the Rise Worldwide – TECHNEWSWORLD

24 09 2011

At least 25 countries censor their citizens’ access to the Internet, according to new research from OpenNet, a nonprofit partnership of four top-tier universities. The countries with the most restrictive Internet policies regarding the free flow of political information include China, Iran and Vietnam. Some governments also apparently attempt to hide the fact that they are actively blocking sites. While the Internet is widely considered one of the most democratizing tools in history, there still remain countries where the free flow of information over the World Wide Web is restricted.

In fact, at least 25 countries block Web sites for political, social or other reasons, with governments controlling domestic networks, according to a new study.

Censorship Abounds

The OpenNet Initiative, a nonprofit collaborative partnership of four of the world’s leading academic institutions, said the number is likely even higher than 25 nations, but because of limited resources it only had the ability to investigate 40 countries and the Palestinian territories.

Still, the researchers ran into more censorship than they initially anticipated, a sign that the Internet has matured to the point that governments are taking notice, according to the study.

“Not surprisingly, as net penetration keeps increasing, you are going to see even higher rates of filtering,” Mukul Krishna, global manager of digital media practice with Frost & Sullivan, told TechNewsWorld, noting that as Internet penetration continues to grow tremendously in places like India and Africa, we are “going to see more of this Big Brother type of thing.

“There are always going to be certain places you can’t go,” Krishna said.

Web applications such as Google Maps and Skype as well as so-called subversive Web sites were often featured on content blocking lists. However, five years ago only a “couple” of states were exercising similar controls, according to the study.

The Biggest Culprits

The countries with the most restrictive Internet policies regarding the free flow of political information include China, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam.

Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen had the strictest social-filtering practices, blocking pornography, gambling and gay and lesbian sites, according to the study.

“Online censorship is growing in scale, scope and sophistication around the world, which is not surprising, given the importance of the medium,” John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said in the report.

The report was conducted by groups at four universities — Harvard University, Cambridge, the University of Oxford and the University of Toronto — and covered thousands of Web sites and 120 Internet service providers.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., the government has stepped up it its level of monitoring of the country’s netizens.

Hiding Censorship

It appears that not every country wants to advertise their filtering habits, as nine countries, including China, Pakistan and Vietnam, reportedly use technology to conceal their censorship, disguising it with techniques such as flashing network error messages.

Researchers found no filtering at all in Russia, Israel or the Palestinian territories despite political conflicts there.

In some countries, censorship was very limited. In South Korea, for example, the government tends to block only information about its neighboring rival, North Korea.

In fact, Krishna pointed out the United State is not immune to this type of Internet interference. Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., the government has stepped up it its level of monitoring of the country’s netizens.

“Right now there is a lot of monitoring going on,” he said.

Getting Around Filters

Once citizens discover they are being blocked from accessing certain sites, there really isn’t much they can do. Most governments had no mechanism for citizens to complain about erroneous blocking, according to the report.

However, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates do provide an official outlet for complaints.

The report also studied some technical approaches, noting that some are better than others in blocking sites, but all can be bypassed with enough technical expertise and the right software. 


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Categories : Constitution, Personal Liberty, Police State Control, Politics, Science/Tech

Message To Government: Get Off Of Our Backs! – THE AMERICAN DREAM

22 09 2011

Government in America has gotten completely and totally out of control.  Our founding fathers originally intended to set up a nation where the power of government would be greatly limited, but today government has become a horribly bloated monster that is relentlessly growing.  It is not just the federal government that I am talking about.  All over the country, there are state and local governments that have become monstrous as well.  No matter who we elect, they just want even more of our money, they demand even more of our time and our resources, they pile even more rules and regulations on to our backs, they seek even more control over us and our children and they take even more of our liberties and freedoms away.  They have invented hundreds of different ways to drain money out of us, and yet it is never enough.  They pile up nightmarish debts that they expect our children and our grandchildren to repay, and yet our cities and our infrastructure are crumbling all around us.  Government seems to have a relentless appetite for demanding even more from all of us, and yet they seem to badly mess up everything that they try to accomplish.  Well, I have a message for the government.  Get off our backs!

I was horrified recently when I learned that the state of Virginia plans to put toll booths on Interstate 95.

Talk about a stupid idea!

I used to spend many hours traveling up and down Interstate 95.  It is a traffic nightmare and the last thing anyone needs is for it to become even more congested.

But that is what is going to happen.

So why are they doing this?

Well, it is another way for them to make money.

This is happening all over the nation.  State governments are taking roads that have already been paid for and they are turning them into toll roads.

I am very highly offended by this.  But amazingly, most of the politicians that are doing this keep getting voted back into office.

Another example is the 520 bridge in the Seattle area.  The 520 bridge is the primary connection between Bellevue and Seattle and it has already been paid for.  A lot of hard working people use that bridge to get to work.  But now they are slapping toll booths on it.

Will we eventually live in an America where almost all of the major roads are toll roads?

Don’t laugh – we get a little bit closer to that every month.

It is just another way that government has found to suck us dry.

What is worse is when state governments sell roads that have already been paid for to foreign companies.  These foreign companies are allowed to put up toll booths and charge an outrageous amount of money.

These deals give state governments an immediate injection of cash, but they also subject their citizens to abusive tolling for decades to come.

Of course when it comes to taking our money, the biggest offender is the federal government.

Did you know that when the federal government implemented a personal income tax back in 1913, the vast majority of the population paid a rate of just 1 percent?  The highest marginal rate was just 7 percent.

I sure wouldn’t mind paying 1 percent today.

But we all know what has happened since that time.

Now Barack Obama wants to raise taxes once again.  Obama is portraying his plan as a tax on millionaires, but the reality is that there is a whole lot more to it than that.

The truth is that what he has proposed is so ridiculous that even Bill Clinton is against the Obama tax plan.

You see, the government has learned not to use the word “tax” so much.  Instead, words like “fees”, “fines”, “contributions” and “deductions” are used a lot more often these days.  A recent article posted on Yahoo News documented some of the “fees” that are peppered throughout the Obama tax plan….

Airline passengers would see their federal security fees double from $5 to $10 for a nonstop round-trip flight and triple to $15 by 2017, raising $25 billion over the coming decade. Federal workers would face an additional 1.2 percentage point deduction from their paychecks to contribute $21 billion more for their pensions over the same period. Military retirees would pay a $200 fee upon turning 65 to have the government pay their out-of-pocket Medicare expenses. They’d also pay more for non-generic prescription drugs.

But it is not just the federal government that is doing this kind of thing.

For example, CNN recently profiled Ray Garcia, the owner of Prestige Limousines in Boca Raton, Florida.  Garcia says that complying with government regulations takes up most of his time and he says that the fees are absolutely outrageous….

We will start with Miami, which is Dade County. You have to buy a permit, which costs anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000. Once you acquire that permit, you have to find a vehicle to put that permit on. And it has to be no older than five years old. Once that car is five years old, you have to go out and buy a new one, no matter what kind of condition you keep it in.

You have to get the car inspected every year. And you have to renew the luxury sedan permit every year. It would be better if you could buy just one permit for your entire fleet. But you have to buy one for each car and each car permit costs $675.

It is getting really, really hard to run a small business in the United States today.  Politicians love to give speeches about how much they love small businesses, but when they get into office they just soak them dry.

The number of small businesses in this country continues to shrink.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

Life is especially tough for small businesses that try to carry employees.  Things have gotten so bad at this point that it is really hard to justify the expense of hiring new workers.  There are so many rules, regulations and taxes that it is almost always more trouble than it is worth for small businesses.

In a recent column, Charles Hugh Smith shared what one small business owner told him about why he is so hesitant to hire new workers these days….

Once I hire someone, I am party to a relationship that is full of risk. What usually happens is the “check harvesting” situation where just enough work is done to extract a paycheck. I am on the hook for matching Social Security tax, medicare tax, city occupational tax, unemployment tax, federal unemployment tax, workers comp insurance and all the abuse that goes along with that system. I have to withhold State and Federal income taxes with ridiculous penalties for late payments. Often I will get served with a garnishment or child support levy for an employee, and I am on the hook for all this. If I fail to withhold on a garnishment I become liable to pay the debt.

After reading that, can you understand why so many small businesses are not eager to hire more people?

The government is sucking all of the life out of the economy.  Even the smallest businesses get cracked down on hard.

As I have written about previously, all over America lemonade stands that are run by little children are being shut down by police because they are not complying with government regulations.

We have become a nation that is run by bureaucrats.

You know, things ran pretty darn well back before we had an army of bureaucrats running everything.  We had the greatest economy on the face of the planet and things were rolling along pretty good.

But now federal bureaucrats even tell us what kind of light bulbs we are allowed to buy.  (Thank you George W. Bush for sticking it to us with that one.)

If you really stop and think about it, there are very few things that we are still free to do in America today without getting government permission first.

Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but if you will stop and really think about it you will see that is correct.

The government has taken all of the joy out of a lot of things that used to be so much fun.

When I was young, I loved to go to the airport.  Flying on a plane was very exciting and most people seemed to really enjoy the process.

But today, our airports have been turned into prison grids.

Did you know that now the TSA says that it has the right to check our hair for explosives?

Yes, you read that correctly.  The following is a brief excerpt from a local NBC News report about one lady that was deeply offended recently when the TSA searched her hair….

Two TSA agents told her she could not go any further until they checked her hair for explosives, Brantley said.

She said she reluctantly allowed them to do it. The agents patted her hair down right there instead of asking to return to a private area for screening.

“And so she started patting my hair, and I was in tears at that point,” Brantley said. “And she was digging in my scalp.”

How would you feel if some TSA goon was running his fingers through your hair?

But we are not seeing this type of security just at airports.  The federal government is even pressuring private businesses to crack down on “suspicious activity”.  For example, NPR recently did a story on the nightmarish security that has now been implemented at Mall of America….

Mall security reported one man because he was sitting on a bench in the corridor, “observing others while writing things down on a note pad.” They worried he might be a terrorist “conducting surveillance.” Turned out he was a musician waiting for a friend. Three security guards surrounded another man because they thought he was looking at them “oddly” and walking “nervously” through the amusement park; he turned out to be an insurance company manager, shopping for a watch for his son.

Do you want to be regarded as a “potential terrorist” every time you go to the mall?

That is what this nation is turning into.

In America today, we are all “potential enemies” and the government always knows better than we do.

Sadly, government keeps trying to even take away the freedom to raise our own children the way that we want to.

According to Natural News, a new law in the state of California will allow health officials to vaccinate children as young as 12 for sexually-transmitted diseases without having to get the approval of parents….

California’s Assembly Bill 499 has already quietly passed both the California House and Senate, and today sits on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown where it awaits his signature. The bill, which is only a single page in length, contains specific language that will allow children as young as 12 to opt for sexually-transmitted disease (STD) vaccines like HPV (Gardasil, Cervarix), Hepatitis B, and any future vaccines developed to treat STDs, without having to attain parental consent.

The ways that the government is intruding in our lives are endless.  They are putting “smart meters” into our homes, they are putting surveillance cameras in school cafeterias, and in some areas they are actually digging around in our trash to make sure that we are recycling properly.

If you want to live in a totalitarian police state, there are dozens of choices to pick from all over the globe.

This is supposed to be America.

This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

But right now, government is becoming a little bit more oppressive every single day.

We need millions of Americans to stand up and start talking about these issues, because you will notice that neither major political party is even talking about the horrible abuses of our freedoms that is going on.

Most of us just want to live our lives, and if the government would stop interfering with us so much that would make things a whole lot easier.

So do you think that the government should get off our backs?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….


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Categories : Constitution, Personal Liberty, Politics, States Rights

Charges Dropped Against Man Facing Life In Prison For Video Recording Police – PAUL JOSEPH WATSON – PRISONPLANET.COM

22 09 2011

Michael Allison, the 41-year old Illinois mechanic who faced life in jail for recording police officers, has had all charges against him dropped after a state judge ruled that his First Amendment rights had been violated, following a trend of similar rulings across the country that underscore the fact that it is not illegal to film cops.

Allison appeared as a guest on Infowars Nightly News yesterday.

Allison was the victim of a vendetta that was being pursued by the state despite the fact that every other case brought against citizens for filming cops had collapsed. A judge slapped Allison with five separate 15-year sentences for “eavesdropping,” four of which involved Allison filming police officers during a dispute over cars he was working on at his home in Bridgeport, and another related to Allison bringing a tape recorder to trial after he was told there would be no official transcript of proceedings.

“A statute intended to prevent unwarranted intrusions into a citizen’s privacy cannot be used as a shield for public officials who cannot assert a comparable right of privacy in their public duties,” wrote Circuit Court Judge David Frankland. “Such action impedes the free flow of information concerning public officials and violates the First Amendment right to gather such information.”

The “eavesdropping” charge was also dismissed by Frankland as completely inappropriate.

“Judge Frankland ruled that Allison had a First Amendment right to record the police officers and court employees. And while a ban on recording devices in the courtroom might be justified, he said, the eavesdropping charge was inappropriate,” reports Reason. “As applied in this case, Frankland said, the eavesdropping law “includes conduct that is unrelated to the statute’s purpose and is not rationally related to the evil the legislation sought to prohibit. For example, a defendant recording his case in a courtroom has nothing to do with an intrusion into a citizen’s privacy but with distraction.”

Frankland’s decision followed a First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling which found that, “The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity].”

Indeed, every similar case nationwide has concluded in all charges being dropped against the defendent. It is not illegal to film police officers in public. And yet cops up and down the country are still using intimidation tactics against citizens by threatening them with arrest for using a video camera.

Despite the clear legal precedent of such cases being thrown out, the state was determined to incarcerate Allison and throw away the key, even sending an assistant from the Attorney General’s Office to speak against him during a hearing.

Perhaps there needs to be a national activist day solely devoted to filming police officers in public to get the message across that documenting the performance of public servants is a completely natural and lawful expression of the First Amendment.

Let’s call it “Film a Cop Day” – a reminder that the First Amendment is more powerful than the threats and intimidation that victims of a law being enforced that isn’t even on the books have had to endure repeatedly for years on end.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.


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30 Signs That The U.S. Economy Is About To Go Down The Toilet

20 09 2011

If you think the U.S. economy is bad now, just wait for a few months.  Things are about to become absolutely nightmarish.  None of the long-term economic trends that are hollowing out our economy have been addressed and more bad economic news seems to come out virtually every single day.  Now there is constant talk of the “next recession” in the mainstream media.  But did the last recession ever truly end?  The number of good jobs continues to decline, more stores are closing, incomes continue to go down, credit card debt and student loan debt are soaring, the housing market resembles a corpse, the number of Americans living in poverty continues to rise and government debt is at unprecedented levels.  We are losing blood fast, and almost all of our leaders are either too corrupt or too incompetent to be able to do anything about it.  The U.S. economy really and truly is about to go into the toilet, and if something is not done very quickly we are going to experience a complete and total economic disaster in this nation.

Americans have been promised over and over that this economic downturn is just “temporary” and that things will return to normal soon.  During this upcoming election cycle, the Democrats will swear that they have all the answers and that if we just elect them everything will be okay.  The Republicans will also swear that they have all the answers and that if we just elect them everything will be okay.

Well, both sides are lying.  The economic plans of both major political parties are a joke.  Neither of them can restore economic prosperity to this nation.

Our politicians could delay the coming economic collapse by borrowing gigantic piles of money and pumping all of that cash into the economy.  But stealing from our children and our grandchildren is not exactly sound economic policy.

Yes, the U.S. economy is in bad shape right now, but things are about to get even worse.  The long-term problems that are destroying our economy have not been fixed, and the leaks in our ship are going to continue to grow.

The following are 30 signs that the U.S. economy is about to go into the toilet….

#1 An increasing number of unemployed Americans have become so desperate that they have started to look for work overseas.  For example, the number of Americans that are submitting applications for temporary work visas in Canadahas approximately doubled since 2008.  Other Americans are willing to learn foreign languages and travel to the other side of the world if that is what it takes to land a decent job.  Just consider the following quote from a recent USA Today report….

Job placement firms are reporting a surge in American worker interest in booming economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore, China and, increasingly, India. Hunt Partners, an executive search firm, estimates that it’s getting 50% to 100% more unsolicited résumés from Americans looking for Asia-based positions today than before the recession.

#2 When Barack Obama first took office, the official U.S. unemployment ratewas 7.6 percent.  Today it is 9.1 percent.

#3 The number of Americans that are concerned that they will lose their jobs continues to hover near record highs.  According to Gallup, 30 percent of all employed Americans are worried that they will soon be laid off.

#4 After three straight years of very high unemployment, you can feel frustration and desperation in the air almost everywhere that you go.  Many unemployed Americans are now at the end of their ropes.  The following is from a testimonial that was recently posted on The Atlantic….

The most difficult part of the job search is:

1. that I don’t live near a factory or outsource outlet in China, India, or Malaysia.

2. trying not to appear desperate for a job when I am, in fact, quite desperate for a job.

3. that I am subject to everyone’s advice on how to get a job, but no real job leads.

4. that I am reminded that having a good job is not an entitlement.

5. that when I become depressed from my job search, I’m told told to cheer up or else give a bad vibe to prospective employers … yet when I become happy through non-search related activities, I am reminded that I should be looking for work

7. that when I confide to friends and family that I have “given up” to pursue more fruitful interests,  it elicits a crushing look of disbelief, disappointment, and disgust

8. waiting for permission to give up.

#5 The percentage of American men that are employed continues to plummet.  In July, only 63.5 percent of all men in the United States had a job.  Since 1948, that number has only been lower one time (63.3 percent in December 2009).

#6 Back in the 1950s, manufacturing accounted for about 28 percent of U.S. GDP.  Last year, it accounted for just 11.7 percent.  Meanwhile, manufacturing now accounts for about 25 percent of GDP in China and they now actually have more factory production each year than we do.  Sadly, Barack Obama is pushing for even more trade agreements that will send millions more of our jobs overseas.

#7 The percentage of Americans that are working low paying jobs continues to relentlessly march upwards.  Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#8 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, after you add in all short-term discouraged workers, all long-term discouraged workers and all Americans that are working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, the real unemployment rate should be approximately 23 percent.

#9 We are starting to see another huge wave of store closings and layoffs.  For example, the parent company of Payless stores has announced that it will be permanently closing 475 stores.  Borders is in the process of closing every single one of its 399 stores.  Also, Bank of America has just announced that it will be closing about 600 branches, and that could result in the loss of about 30,000 good jobs.

#10 Median household income has fallen for three years in a row.

#11 Americans are really starting to rack up consumer debt once again.  According to Time Magazine, U.S. consumers are on pace to collectively add 54 billion dollars in credit card debt in 2011.

#12 Student loan defaults are rising very sharply. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Times article….

The share of federal student loan defaults rose sharply last year, especially at for-profit colleges and universities, where 15 percent of borrowers defaulted in the first two years of repayment, up from 11.6 percent the previous year.

#13 According to a chart in The Economist, whenever the number of newspaper articles in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal that mention the word “recession” goes over 1,500 in a particular quarter, the U.S. economy almost always goes into a recession.

#14 The U.S. housing crash just continues to get worse.  The index of home builder sentiment put out by the National Association of Home Builders fell once again during the month of September.  With such a glut of unsold foreclosed homes on the market, it is making things really hard of home builders.  Things have gotten so bad that even the U.S. government now owns nearly a quarter of a million foreclosed homes.  The impact of this housing nightmare on families has been absolutely devastating.  Just check out what a recent Time Magazine article had to say about what has been going on in California….

The impact on children has been brutal: since 2007, 7% of the state’s children have had a foreclosure process started on their homes, the fourth-highest level in the nation, according to a study released this month by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

#15 Many believe that due to much tighter lending standards, it is now harder to be approved for a mortgage than at any other time since World War II.  This is absolutely crushing the housing market.

#16 Most Americans don’t seem to expect housing prices to recover for an extended period of time.  One recent survey found that 54 percent of Americans believe that there will not be a housing recovery until “2014 or later“.

#17 The combined debt of the largest GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to a whopping 6.4 trillion in 2011.  If that debt goes bad, U.S. taxpayers will be left holding the bill.

#18 There are now nearly 50 million Americans that do not have health insurance, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.  Meanwhile, Americans now spendabout 3 times as much on health care as they did back in 1990.

#19 The Postal Service has publicly announced that it is “on the verge” of financial collapse.

#20 The number of small businesses continues to fall.  I recently noted this fact on The American Dream Blog….

The number of “self-employed” Americans continues to rapidly shrink.  According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.  Even though we have 14 million unemployed people in this country and jobs are incredibly difficult to come by, the number of people trying to work for themselves continues to decrease because the environment for small businesses in this country has become so incredibly toxic.

#21 American consumers have become tremendously pessimistic.  According to one recent survey, 61 percent of all Americans believe that they will not return to their “pre-recession” lifestyles until at least 2014.  According to a different recent survey, 39 percent of Americans actually believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.

#22 Many U.S. investors certainly seem to believe that trouble is coming. According to CNN, last month the number of bets against the S&P 500 was the highest that we have seen in about a year.

#23 The number of U.S. households that are “doubling up” continues to grow.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of combined households has increased by 10.7 percent since 2007.

#24 When Barack Obama moved into the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83.  Today it is $3.58.

#25 The number of Americans living in poverty grew by 2.6 million last year.  That was the largest increase since the U.S. government began calculating poverty figures back in 1959.

#26 Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty.  Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.

#27 On Barack Obama’s first day on the job, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are more than 45 million Americans on food stamps.

#28 If there is a financial collapse in Europe, that will definitely plunge us into another recession.  Right now, things do not look promising.  At this point, headlines all over the world are proclaiming that Greece is dangerously close to defaulting.

#29 At some point soon, investors all over the globe may decide that it is time to start dumping U.S. government debt.  For example, Chinese officials are now openly talking about the need to “liquidate” their holdings of U.S. Treasuries.

#30 The U.S. national debt continues to explode in size and spiral out of control.  According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. “fiscal gap” increased by about 6 trillion dollars last year.  In fact, Kotlikoff makes a compelling argument that Greece is actually in better shape financially than the United States is.

Do you now understand how much trouble we are in?

The long-term trends that are destroying us continue to get worse.

The United States is steamrolling directly toward an economic collapse.

When this economy hits bottom and splatters all over the place, it is not going to be easy to fix.

The America that we know today is going to be wiped out by a gigantic mountain of debt and by the consequences of decades of really bad decisions.

We were handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in the history of the world and we have wrecked it.

So prepare for really, really hard times ahead.

The era of endless prosperity is ending.

Next comes the pain.


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Ron Paul Cheated Out Of Sure Victory In Texas Straw Pole Cancelation; Due To Lack Of Interest By Other GOP Candidates

20 09 2011

Ron Paul is riding high again after his California Straw Poll victory yesterday, but some Paul supporters are questioning why the Texas Straw Poll was cancelled for “lack of interest,” and whether it was actually killed because the Congressman would have inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Governor Rick Perry in his own state.

According to a June 16 Washington Times report, the Texas GOP decided to cancel the straw poll, which was held on September 1 last year, because of a “lack of interest expressed by the candidates,” and due to fears that the event would not recoup the financial outlay needed to stage it.

The claim that the poll was cancelled due to “lack of interest” doesn’t correlate with the firestorm of media attention generated by Rick Perry’s announcement of his candidacy, as well as the building momentum of the Paul campaign, which went supernova after the media hoax of attempting to pretend the Congressman doesn’t exist spectacularly imploded last month.

There seems little doubt that Ron Paul would have defeated Rick Perry in the Texas Straw Poll, sending out the embarrassing message that those who know Perry’s record best, lone star state voters, have no trust in his leadership. This would have been a massive blow to the perception of Perry’s electability nationwide.

A presidential survey of voters in both candidate’s home state conducted by the Azimuth Research Group last month found that Texans would be more likely to vote for Congressman Ron Paul over Gov. Perry by a margin of 22% to 17%.

Indeed, Paul has made it a focus of his campaign, including an expensive TV commercial, to bring attention to what the Perry campaign fears the most, his outing as a globalist RINO (Republican In Name Only).

A Texas Straw Poll win for Paul would have thrown fresh spotlight on Perry’s history as a campaign manager for Al Gore, and his legacy of big government policies such as his support for the Trans Texas Corridor, toll roads owned by foreign companies, and his 1993 advocacy of Hillarycare.

It would not be the first time a straw poll was cancelled by establishment Republicans in order to neutralize a winning platform for Ron Paul’s campaign. The 2007 San Francisco straw poll was cancelled due to there being “too many Ron Paul supporters”. The Colorado straw poll was also cancelled that year, with the Adams County GOP citing the exact same reason.

The establishment media has openly attempted to unfairly marginalize Ron Paul’s campaign this year. Following a September 12 Republican debate in Cincinnati, a straw poll found Ron Paul to be the winner. However, CNN refused to release the results of the poll and instead published an online poll, omitting Ron Paul from the list of candidates.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.


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Categories : Constitution, Economics/Monetary Policy, Personal Liberty, Politics, Ron Paul 2012, States Rights

Operation Twist: FED Ready for QE3 – KURT NIMMO FOR PRISONPLANET.COM

20 09 2011

Daily Forex Fundamentals, written by Danske Bank, says the FOMC will probably get QE3 rolling by the end of the year or early in 2012.

“Following the continued deterioration in economic data, we expect the Fed to take action in the form of a twist in the central bank’s portfolio towards longer maturity government bonds,” the Danish bank writes.

Unless we see significant improvements in economic data over the next couple of months we deem it likely that the Fed will initiate QE3 (buying either more government bonds or mortgages). This could happen either by end 2011 or early next year. We will particularly be looking to employment data, where we need sustainable and significant improvement in the coming months, in order for QE3 to be taken off the table.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets on Wednesday and more information on QE3 is expected at that time.

The main scenario for the Wednesday meeting will be for the Fed to start shifting its portfolio of government bonds towards holding more long-term securities and fewer short-term securities. This extension of the portfolio’s maturity is designed to push down long-term interest rates. We see this as a highly likely outcome of the meeting.

The interest rate currently stands at 0.25% and the Fed may move it down to 0.10%, “in order to increase the banks’ incentive to lend.”

Big banks, however, are not in the business of lending money to Main Street. Since the fall of Glass-Steagall, banks have been in the business of buying and selling complex derivatives and writing credit default swaps. “Fees are good, bonuses come in, and the fed or government will always be there to bail them out if things get hairy,” notes UrbanDigs.com.

Interest rates at or near 0% guarantee capital destruction. “Capital destruction is the main byproduct of monetary inflation, a concept totally foreign to the inflation engineers at the USFed and its satellite central banks,” writes Jim Willie for Financial Sense.

They are agents of magnificent systemic devastation. In the wake of each QE round are discouraged creditors who turn away in disgust. The damage and inflation feeds upon itself in stages of intense wreckage. The motive, need, and desperation for QE3 is being formed here and now, to be announced by late summer probably. Prepare for QE to infinity, endless hyper-inflation, a process that cannot be stopped, as the urgent needs grows. Any attempt to halt the process results in almost immediate total annihilation. So continuation of QE rounds serves to manage the deterioration process and guide the financial structures gradually and orderly into oblivion.

Add to capital destruction mounting inflation. The Fed considers this a good thing. “So now we are beginning to hear murmurings about the possible invigorating effects of ‘just a little inflation.’ Perhaps 4 or 5 percent a year would be just the thing to deal with the overhang of debt and encourage the ‘animal spirits’ of business, or so the argument goes,” writes Paul Volcker, former Fed boss, for the New York Times.

Bernanke and the Fed are moving us toward an inflationary depression. The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 specifically for that reason, as Rep. Charles Lindbergh noted. “The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created,” he warned.

Bernanke admitted the Fed created the Great Depression with its monetary whipsaw weapon. It is now working on the Greatest Depression.

The Federal Reserve is not about saving business and creating jobs. It’s about a slow-motion destruction of the economy that will pave the way toward the bankster nirvana of a global economy that will present humanity with the most effective and insidious mechanism for slavery ever devised.


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Categories : Constitution, Economics/Monetary Policy, Globalism, Personal Liberty, Police State Control, Politics, Ron Paul 2012

Life After An EMP Attack: No Power, No Food, No Transportation, No Banking, And No Internet!: THE AMERICAN DREAM

19 09 2011

Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s.  If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast.  The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11.  Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone calls and virtually all commerce across the entire country is brought to a complete stop.  A nation that does not know how to live without technology would be almost entirely stripped of it at that point.  Yes, this could really happen.  An EMP attack is America’s “Achilles heel”, and everyone around the world knows it.  It is only a matter of time before someone uses an EMP weapon against us, and at this point we are pretty much completely unprepared.

The sad thing is that we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars hunting down “terrorists” in caves on the other side of the globe and we have been told that because of “national security” it is necessary for our private areas to be touched before we are allowed to get on an airplane, but our government is doing essentially nothing to address what is perhaps our biggest security vulnerability.

What would you and your neighbors do if the power went out and it did not ever come back on?

What would you do if an EMP attack happened in the middle of the winter and you suddenly were not able to heat your home any longer?

What would you do if all the electronics in your car got fried and you simply could not drive anywhere?

What would you do if all the supermarkets in your area shut down because food could not be transported across the country anymore?

What would you do if you were suddenly unable to call your family and friends for help?

What would you do if you were suddenly unable to get the medicine that you needed?

What would you do if your debit cards and credit cards simply did not work any longer and you could not get any of your money out of the bank?

What would you do if all of these things happened all at once?

A single EMP attack would be the worst disaster that the United States has ever seen by far.

An electromagnetic pulse could potentially fry the vast majority of all the microchips in the United States.  In an instant, nearly all of our electronic devices would be rendered useless.

Yes, the federal government knows all about this.  The following excerpt is froman April 2008 report by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack….

“The consequences of lack of food, heat (or air conditioning), water, waste disposal, medical, police, fire fighting support, and effective civil authority would threaten society itself.”

Most of us have become completely and totally dependent on electricity and technology.  Without it, most of us would be in huge trouble.

The following is how an article in the Wall Street Journal described the potential consequences of an EMP attack….

No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a “giant continental time machine” that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.

It wouldn’t be so bad if we had the knowledge and the infrastructure to live the way that they did back in the 1800s, but today that is simply not the case.

Dr. William Graham was Ronald Reagan’s science adviser and the chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.  Dr. Graham believes that in the event of a large scale EMP attack, the vast majority of Americans would either freeze, starve or die from disease.

According to Graham, in the aftermath of an EMP attack life in America “would probably be something that you might imagine life to be like around the late 1800s but with several times the population we had in those days, and without the ability of the country to support and sustain all those people.”

Would you be able to survive?

All of those big bank accounts may never be able to be recovered after an EMP attack.  Your money might be instantly fried out of existence.

The following is what Graham believes would happen to the financial system in the event of an EMP attack….

“Most financial records are stored electronically. ATMs, which depend upon both power and telecommunications, would not be available; banks, which try to back up records but in general aren’t strongly aware of the EMP problem, would face the problem of unprotected storage and computer systems”

This is the danger of having a financial system that is so dependent on technology.  We may wake up one day and find that all the money is gone.

But if an EMP attack actually happened, the biggest concern for most of us would be trying to figure out how to survive.

The president of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, is convinced that a single EMP attack could result in the deaths of the vast majority of the population of the United States….

“Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity”

Are you starting to get a feel for the scope of the problem?

The sad thing is that so much could be done to protect this country from an EMP attack.

Right now, most vital U.S. military infrastructure has at least some protection from an EMP attack.

But the general population has been left completely and totally vulnerable.

It has been estimated that the entire power grid could potentially be protected for about 20 billion dollars.  Considering the fact that we have spent over 400 billion dollars in Afghanistan, I think that we could afford it.

We have spent our national security dollars very, very badly and someday it is going to come back to bite us in the rear end.

Right now, other nations around the world are working feverishly to develop EMP weapons.  The following is from a statement by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on March 8th, 2005….

Russian and Chinese military scientists in open source writings describe the basic principles of nuclear weapons designed specifically to generate an enhanced-EMP effect, that they term “Super-EMP” weapons. “Super-EMP” weapons, according to these foreign open source writings, can destroy even the best protected U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.

But it is not just Russia and China that have been developing “Super-EMP” weapons.  According to Newsmax, it is believed that North Korea may have tested a “Super-EMP” weapon back in 2009….

North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states

Remember, all it would take is one strategically placed EMP attack to wipe out this nation.

But an EMP weapon is not the only danger that can produce this type of effect.  The truth is that a really bad geomagnetic storm could also potentially producealmost as much damage.

This is something that everyone knows is one of our biggest vulnerabilities and it is something that we can make preparations for.

Yet the Bush administration and the Obama administration have just stood there and have done nothing.

Our idiocy is astounding.

General Eugene Habiger, the former head of U. S. Strategic Command, has said the following about the possibility of an EMP attack in the future….

“It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.”

Remember, this is something that could cause millions times more damage than 9/11 did.

Instead of molesting old ladies at airports and chasing goat herders around the mountains of Afghanistan, perhaps we should be addressing our largest security vulnerabilities.

But that would require using some common sense.  Sadly, common sense seems to be in very short supply in Washington D.C. these days.

So if the government is not going to do anything about it, that means that it is up to you to prepare yourself and your family.  This world is becoming very unstable and disasters can strike at any time.

We all saw what happened after Hurricane Katrina.  The government response was a nightmare.  An EMP attack would be millions of times worse and the federal government probably would not even be able to get you and your family any assistance.

You would truly be on your own.

So are you ready?

This is yet another reason why the number of preppers in the United States is exploding.  A lot of people can see how the world is changing and they understand that the federal government is not going to come through for them when the chips are down.

An EMP attack could end life as we know it at any time.

It is a glaring security vulnerability and the entire world knows that it is there.

I hope that you are getting ready, because the government certainly is not.


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Categories : Economics/Monetary Policy, Health, Science/Tech

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