Get your Rapture hats ready, kiddies! The sky is falling, and our wise gift of nuclear winter will propel us all into the loving arms of the all-knowing and all-everywhere G-d.

2006-10-07

HERE is a story direct from "Behavioral Decision-Making"
type graduate courses... and its prevailing effect is "permitting"
the govt treachery here and overseas.
There is no result on their site or google-news regarding
deposit-boxes ... or any new rules.


The             Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter


Monday, April 3, 2006 - Vol. 8 No. 66
In Today's Letter:
Comment: Evidence vs. Beliefs
Offshore: Swiss EU Tax Directive Comes Up Short
Wealth: Bernanke Surprise
Privacy & Rights: Secret Panel Can't Keep Quiet
Evidence vs. Beliefs

Comment by John Pugsley, Chairman of The Sovereign Society and leading author on economics, investment, and libertarianism.

Dear A-Letter Reader,

A few months back in The Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter, I argued the case for value investing. I referenced scientific studies that didn't support technical analysis or market timing. Some readers strongly objected to my conclusion, but no readers addressed the question of my evidence.

Similarly, over the years I've written extensively about individual liberty, and found myself puzzled when I couldn't convert followers of socialism, communism, or any other forms of big government to the principles of individual sovereignty. Once again, this in spite of the historical evidence.

I've puzzled over this phenomenon throughout my life. Arguments for a free-market fail to sway those who believe in government intervention.  Evidence for Darwinian evolution fails to convince believers in religion. And studies showing the random nature of price movements fail to sway believers in technical analysis.

It seems that evolution has endowed us all with wiring that demands we support whatever beliefs that have been "stamped" into our brains. This has been demonstrated by a recent research study at Emory University in Atlanta, a study that has potentially wide implications, from politics to religion to investments.

The investigators used functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) to study a group of committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the last U.S. Presidential election. The Democrats and Republicans were asked to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate while undergoing fMRI to see which parts of their brains were activated.

As reported by Emory, "...the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry), followed by a second statement that documented a clear contradiction between the target's words and deeds, generally suggesting that the candidate was dishonest or pandering. Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person's words and deeds were contradictory."

Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study, said: "We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning, What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

In other words, in most cases no amount of logic interferes with our strongly-held beliefs. The brain automatically rationalizes discrepancies in facts to support beliefs. Evidence that contradicts our beliefs fails to reach the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion). The finding suggests that the emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments occur outside of conscious awareness.

Do you and I succumb to emotionally-biased judgments when we have a vested interest in supporting our beliefs? Only when we find ourselves resisting the evidence. Success in life tends to be proportional to our willingness to examine the evidence.

H. L. Mencken observed: "The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true." Beliefs, at least false beliefs, are an impediment to us all.

Or, as Mark Twain put it, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

JOHN PUGSLEY, Chairman,
on behalf of The Sovereign Society Ltd.

=====================
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=sovereign+society+&btnG=Search



02.14.06. Political Pygmies.
February 14, 2006




Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - Vol. 8 No. 32
In Today's Letter:
Comment: Washington's Political Pygmies.
Offshore: Luxembourg Under EU Tax Attack.
Wealth: Shanghai Index Way Up.
Privacy & Rights: A Muslim Minority.
Washington's Political Pygmies

Dear A-Letter Reader:

If George Bush and the politically spineless, weak-kneed US Congress continue on their present track of destroying civil liberties in the spurious name of preserving American freedoms many thousands more Americans will benefit from the offshore experience and services of The Sovereign Society.

From time to time we have reported on the continuing exodus of Americans, particularly the wealthy, who leave the US to make new homes in places where privacy, freedom and low taxes still exist -- unlike America. Yes, there are such places and we can tell you where and how you can find them.

As a long-time conservative, my most recent concern about the accelerating totalitarian drift of the US government and the Congress is caused by the abject capitulation of key members of both parties in the US Senate -- just when they had a chance to reassert the co-equal powers of the legislative branch and strike a blow for freedom.

I refer to the pending renewal of the PATRIOT Act, perhaps the single most unconstitutional "law" ever adopted by a bunch of a panicked politicians shortly after the terror attacks of 9-11, 2001. The Act is a grab bag of every jackbooted police state wish cloaked in a phony claim of "security" and secrecy. Under this monstrosity it's a crime for anyone to tell someone under investigation by the secret police, that your home or office has been secretly invaded, or that your bank account is about to be frozen. All this in the name of fighting terror. And since, under the Act, all this is done in secret, no one knows how many thousands of unconstitutional violations have occurred. (Add to this the President's tapping phone calls without a warrant as law and the Constitution requires).

When the PATRIOT Act was passed after Sept. 11, 2001, Congress made some of its most dangerous provisions temporary so it could reconsider them later on. They were set to expire last December, but Congress agreed to a short extension so greater civil liberties protections could be added. Last week, four key Republican senators, later backed by two Democrats, said that they had agreed to a deal with the White House. It is a rotten deal that does little to protect Americans from government invasions of their privacy. Indeed, that these previously resistant Senators went along probably is evidence of the success of the Bush smear that anyone who wants reasonable changes in the Act are somehow disloyal Americans.

The so-called "compromise" keeps in place the gag order that allows the FBI and police to operate in secret without telling those under investigation so they can contest such actions. It also continues Section 215 that lets the government go on fishing expeditions, spying on Americans with no connection to terrorism or foreign powers. The act should require the government to get a subpoena to show that there is a connection between the information it seeks and a terrorist or a spy. One of the worst parts of the Act allows the government to issue "national security letters", an extremely broad investigative tool, to libraries forcing them to turn over their patrons' Internet records.

Every one of the 535 members of the Senate and House swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Apparently the next election is more important to these political pygmies than the basic freedoms the Founding Fathers clearly stated in that sacred document and for which millions of Americans have fought and died.

That's the way that it looks from here.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor

P.S.  Click here to learn what the PATRIOT Act can do to you:  http://www.isecureonline.com/reports/190SPATY/E190G218/


COMMENT LINK:
* US Sen. Russ Feingold calls it a raw deal on the Patriot Act.
  LINK: http://www.counterpunch.org/feingold02102006.htm

[THAT  is the guy sending me so many letters @month from Wash.DC. // Perhaps the only 'honest' member of  the senate]


http://www.sovereignsociety.com/vmembers.php?nid=1573

3.21.06. Arrogance of Power.
Bob Bauman discusses why James Madison believed in limited government and how Mr. Madison would feel about today’s “arrogance of power” in Congress.

03.13.06. Terrorist in the Mirror.
Council of Experts Member, Mark Nestmann discusses why any American could be a potential terrorist according to the USA PATRIOT Act.

03.08.06. Remembering Harry Browne.
Chairman of The Sovereign Society, John Pugsley, remembers his close friend Harry Browne, who died this past week. Mr. Browne’s legacy includes a generation of Libertarian thinkers, his best-selling books, his family and the two most successful Libertarian Party Presidential campaigns ever.

=================================================

http://www.sovereignsociety.com/vmembers.php?nid=1541
02.14.06. Political Pygmies.
Bob Bauman discusses why President Bush’s attack on privacy could send many U.S. citizens packing. Bauman says wealthy citizens have already gone searching for a second passport and residency in countries where “privacy, freedom and low taxes still exist.”

================================================

01.05.05. Big Brother Is Watching You.
Bob Bauman examines how George Bush’s War on Terror and reduction of civil liberties echoes George Orwell’s theoretical 1984 existence.

01.06.06. Corruption: What Else Is New?
Bob Bauman discusses how Jack Abramoff’s current illegal dealings are just another episode in a long-standing tradition of Congressional corruption.

01.17.06. Less Costly Alternative.
Bob Bauman discusses why this age of lawsuits has made offshore asset protection so important and why a captive insurance company (especially located in an offshore tax haven) can shield professionals from spurious lawsuits.

01.26.06. Strange Bedfellows.
Bob Bauman reflects on how President Bush’s current polices have lead to “strange political bedfellows” in the U.S., joining liberals and conservatives in a fight to preserve civil liberties.

01.31.06. How to Avoid US Taxes - Legally.
Bob Bauman comments that unlike other nations’ residents, U.S. citizens must pay U.S. taxes even after moving to an offshore tax haven. Bauman also lists the legal ways to avoid taxes domestically and the benefits of “going offshore” including offshore asset protection and offshore investing.



Thursday, January 26, 2006 - Vol. 8 No. 18
In Today's Letter:
Comment: Strange Bedfellows.

Dear A-Letter Reader:

There's an old saying that "politics make strange bedfellows." So old that it's attributed to The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, wherein the Bard wrote: "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." That line is spoken by a shipwrecked man who finds himself nervously seeking shelter beside a sleeping monster.

These days the saying has come to mean that political interests can bring together people who otherwise have little in common. I would add that when fundamental freedoms and liberties are threatened, far more than just politics, diverse peoples who understand those threats must act together.

Thus it is that I find myself, an avowed conservative and registered Republican for over a half century, a man who has not changed his basic views very much, in bed with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a gaggle of liberal Democrats, some sincere, others who appear to see political gain in attacking President Bush on the issue of warrantless wiretapping.

But principled US conservative leaders, including former US Rep. Bob Barr, a Republican and chairman of a group called "Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, agree that President Bush has gone too far." He is joined by established conservatives such as Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform; David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. All of us, as conservatives and Americans, share a great concern about the President's glib claim that he somehow has inherent power to ignore the law when he decides to do so "in the national interest."

In recent days I have commented negatively about a President who thinks he defiantly can wiretap Americans without the court approval the law requires; who signs a law forbidding the use of torture, followed by a statement that he will authorize torture if he so chooses; who jails people in solitary confinement for years without due process or right to counsel, without charges and without contact with their families; who now has launched a national propaganda campaign to impugn the loyalty and patriotism of those who dare to disagree with his highhanded, illegal and unconstitutional actions. (And I say that as a member of the bar for almost 50 years).

We have received many e-mails lately about our expressed concern over America's slide into a police state. Not just the PATRIOT Act, but the spying on every aspect of our lives, financial, personal, now political, as even the military sends undercover agents into public meetings. Many who wrote agree with us, but one reader named Jon, having read my diatribes, apparently assumed I am some sort of raving left-winger. He writes: "If I might be so bold as to ask, where do you receive your talking points from that mirror the Left (moveon.org, Air America) that you use in your newsletter? Or, do you just get up in the morning and rewrite what you read on these web sights? (sic) Just curious..."
Allow me to explain, Jon, just how amusing your presumptuous question is.

I was a founder and national chairman of Young Americans Freedom (YAF), the college group that spearheaded the nomination of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964. (I was a Goldwater delegate from Maryland myself). I was a founder and national chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), formed with, among others, my friend William F. Buckley, Jr., whom I have known since 1955. I was the Reagan for President Maryland chairman in 1978. During my 8 years as a member of the US House of Representatives (1973-81) I was almost always rated by conservative, liberal and non-partisan groups as having the most conservative voting record of all 435 House members. And, yes, I voted twice for the incumbent in the White House, (although I would never do so again, had I the chance).

All of which raises the question of whether old political labels have become meaningless. I became a Republican because once upon a time the party of Lincoln championed individual civil rights and, in the US Congress, fought for smaller government, balanced budgets, reduced debt and keeping the peace. Now they are the party of Delay, Abramoff, billions in unneeded earmarked pork and abuse of power. In other words, they act like Democrats.

If we at the Sovereign Society are anything, call us libertarians. That means we advocate maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state. Now that you know that, Jon, maybe you can understand why we are deeply concerned about America's future.
Bedfellows of all persuasions, right, left and center, wake up! Unlike Shakespeare's The Tempest, the monster no longer sleeps.

That's the way that it looks from here.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor







sober & believable: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14965
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Union

LONG and hearty: http://www.augustreview.com/index.php?module=pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=4&pid=14

rabble: http://www.infowars.com/articles/nwo/north_american_union_superstate_docss.htm


sorry, NO credibility for home of jeff gannon:
and parent of GOP USA [Eagle]
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/15/132429.shtml

Corsi related to me that the most recent coup attempt against our nation, system and sovereignty is not being conducted by the U.S. military. Rather, it is being achieved through men who place commerce and commercial interests at the top of what mankind is about. It is very Hegelian and Marxist, at its center encompassing a belief that people are primarily motivated by economics and materialism, that trade and commerce and having material goods are the primary factors in creating a peaceful world. The policymakers who hold those attitudes have had immense influence on George W. Bush.

.../... Last year's report by a CFR task force entitled "Building a North American Community" is the outline for the North American Union, which they would like to have up and running by 2010.


Minutemen Insanity at Columbia

2006_10_minutemen.jpg

Protest is alive and well at Columbia, though it's still a far cry from 1968. Yesterday evening, Jim Gilchrist, head of the Minutemen, the "citizens' vigilance operation" that patrols the Mexican border in California, was invited to speak at Columbia University. But pretty much as soon as he got on stage, a group of student got on stage and protested - and then all hell broke loose. The Bwog liveblogged the event, and here's an excerpt:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/15/132429.shtml

This is simply a new brand of old feudalism being set into motion by none other than the hero of so many Republicans, George W. Bush.

Read Part II, North American Union: Coup d'état American Style.




The president of Columbia's College Republicans, junior Chris Kulawik, told the Daily News, "It was quite embarrassing as a Columbia student."

CTV News has video footage:

Photographs from the Bwog

Posted by Jen Chung in News: NYC | Recommend this!
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/16/141829.shtml

This is Part II of a three-part series. Read Part I, North American Union: Deconstructing the U.S.

By 2010, the integration of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. will be almost complete. Congress and the media will not know what happened. Americans will be as clueless as ever; thanks to the complicity of the brain-dead media, the triumph of a bloodless bureaucratic elitist coup will become a reality, or close to it.

.../... Regulations misusing NAFTA and the SPP agreement Bush signed last year in Waco, Texas, along with Fox and Martin will have a regional state in the works that none of us voted on.

As has happened in the past with so-called "trade agreements" or "security pacts," the on-track North American Union will create supranational bodies which will make decisions negating the will of the American people, thereby doing an end run around our sovereignty and the U.S. Constitution. Forget the Congress – they let this happen.

It won't matter whether or not we pass "guest worker" amnesty this year or next. What will happen is continued dithering about border security until the North American Union is in place. [ http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15233 ]

.../... Nevertheless, it wouldn't be the first time an illegal coup of sorts has taken place through a clandestine network of economic and political interests. There are always those who think they take power through a back door. It is very Hegelian and collectivist to believe the ends justify the means.

.../... As of June 15, 2006, only Rep. Tom Tancredo is demanding that the Bush administration let the American people know what is going on.
------
------
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/7/3/181336.shtml

As it is, the creation of the North American Union will depend on the misuse of the regulatory system and incremental implementation through regulations to create the NAU. U.S. bureaucrats and agencies caving to the will and dictum of institutions such as the World Trade Organization, World Bank, World Court, NAFTA tribunal, or "study groups" composed of "stakeholders" and "experts" is the process making the NAU a reality.

Rule by Regulation: How to Overthrow a Republic

The SPP sets as one of its goals: Regulatory Cooperation to Generate Growth. What that includes is "harmonization" of economies – rules and regulations created by a group of unknowns and "experts" that impact all aspects of life. The result will be an end to U.S. sovereignty, America as a nation-state.

.../... … U.S. laws can be effectively overturned and the NAFTA Chapter 11 tribunal can impose millions or billions of dollars in fines on the U.S. government, to be paid ultimately by the U.S. taxpayer."

Then, of course, there are terrible hemispheric agreements like CAFTA, passed last year by two votes. Full of hundreds of pages of bureaucratese, CAFTA gives an undetermined authority to foreign tribunals so as to make sure U.S. laws are "no more burdensome than necessary" on foreign trade.


sorry-- Newsmax was home to the ultimate in faked news...
so its impossible for me to believe thier 'rebuke' of boosh here /js

story, VIDEO CLIP, then the ten 'best' of 80 comments [skimmed, so maybe not fair and balanced; like FAUX News]

[ js --can't undestand this comment below; but seems important --js]
Given the predatory nature of our predatory species -- black participation in the anti illegal immigration problem is ... racially motivated.

So, why not hug a white guy who is promoting the ethnic interests of black people too?

How many stories can you read of blacks facing increased competition from Chicanos for working class jobs, being pushed out of formerly black neigborhoods, and engaging in ethnic conflict with Chicanos in public schools?

So, are there white Gentiles who want to end illegal immigration for ethnically motivated reasons? -- racists? While blacks -- as well as all Jews and nonwhites in America -- could openly say they oppose amnesty, or illegal immigration, because these things specifically harm their race, (in other words, for ethnically motivated reasons) -- white Gentiles can only promote or oppose something strictly for universal reasons.

Why?

Given that our species is predatory, by nature, discrimination is normal. Races that see themselves as a sovereign people, an alpha race, will be racially conscious and will openly promote the ethnic interests of their people.

In America, Jews and nonwhites are encouraged to be racially conscious, to organize along racial lines, appoint racially defined leaders, and to openly promote the ethnic interests of their people.

They are acting as alpha races, sovereign races.

White Gentiles, though, fear being seen as racially conscious and are terrified to be seen as racially aggressive. They are the typical beta race, or beta tribe. As such, when tribal aggression is shown by a white Gentile he must figuratively "roll over and expose his vitals" for Jews and nonwhites. This is the age old behavior between alpha races and beta races.

So, its very possible that some white Gentiles in the minutemen have the same motivation that any Jew or nonwhite would have -- ethnic motivation.

But I would imagine -- given the racially emasculated state of just about all whites -- that just about all whites involved are doing so for universal reasons.

Exactly, fishtale. Their behavior and intolerance is a direct result of the entitlement society they live in, and because of the unconscious guilt they carry around it comes out in the most twisted ways.

As for being a Republican student at Columbia, good for them... all the rest of those kids hear is the same baaaaa-ing, and that's one of the main reasons we don't even have a functional democracy anymore. Critical thinking is in a coma, points of views are replaced by "talking points".

As a graduate of Brown University, I am well aware of the intimidation tactics and Orwellian speech employed by many "activist" groups at liberal colleges. It is instances like this one at Columbia that actually made me far more conservative after my four years of college than before (I grew up in the South, mind you). Conservative groups on campus were actually far more open to dialogue than the supposed "liberal" groups, most of which relied on naive freshman to shout slogans and interrupt speakers of opposing viewpoints with the most outrageous accusations imaginable. Perhaps the Conservatives were forced to be more open to debate because of their minority status. In any case, yes, most of these kids won't give a rat's ass once they graduate and move on to ibanking, consulting, or law.


rushing a stage is a hell of a lot better than rushing a border armed to the teeth intent on shooting to kill!!!

free speech? at least gilchrist got 3 minutes. that is a lot more time that he and his band of thugs will allow any so-called "illegal" to live.....

by they way, from what i have read and heard direct from those who were there, the minutemen could barely sustain an intelligable presentation except rant and quote the bible. this is a major university not some freakin' bible or community college!


Like Matt, I went to Brown, too.. and I also feel like I became more conservative while there because of the zany leftist tactics and ideas of the politically active there.

When any conservative writer, scholar, politician, supreme court justice, pundit came to campus, their speeches were inevitably disrupted by noise, boos and publicity stunts. It made me feel, there must be something in what the conservatives were saying, if these "activists" feared the idea even expressed aloud.

Don't even get me started with the smarmy attitude of 19 y/o students who have taken 2 political science courses during Q/A talking down to people who have made lifetime careers in academia, politics or the law. Disagree with them, yes... but show some respect.

S.D.
I agree that the students were aggressive, or the aggressors or whatever...

That's a very positive thing.

Aggression is the only way to get anything done. Just ask Karl Rove, just ask the Minutemen. They are all heavily armed and patrolling the border down south - that seems pretty aggressive to me? And they made international headlines and now they are getting their precious 700 mile fence.

Be Aggressive. Scare them. Force their hands.

When are people going to learn that when you want something - you do not take NO for an answer. I ahve seen some protest in France that would make you shit your pants by the way.

If our government (and their corporate collaborators) doesn't fear us, then we are not doing our job. Don't you fear your boss? Isn't that how the work gets done around the office?

Now I only wish that this energy was directed toward people who drive cars and pollute all day long...then we will be getting somewhere.


i think the right wing loves the fact that a bunch of pacifists are their opposition - thats a guarantee that they will always be in power

to repsond to dhex -
i do not have any particular policy recommendation except that we cannot be scared to act out..in fact its the only thing that shakes things up.

and what is the sense in having priciples if you are going to let people walk all over them dhex?
what is your definition of fighting back? mine is changing all the time, but it is NOT playing nice...i think the students last night are onto something...lets debate how to take their baton and keep charging on.

dhex said
"attack a fringe group like the minutemen with violence and what is the result? the net change? nothing. are these guys in power? no. they're just schmoes, misguided and politically challenged"

they are not in power - but THEIR VIOLENCE got congress to agree to erect a 700 mile fence

so they carry guns, talk a big game - and they get results...
we make blogs, write to our stupid newspapers, play nice - and get nothing...

when will we figure out that we need to get much much more aggressive?

rebuttal anyone?

These guys are absolutely in charge of shaping public opinion, which, if you have not been paying attention for the last 6 years, is what decides elections. Clearly not logic.

Politicians are too busy raising cash.

The People are idiots on the average, and the concept of nuance does not exist in their concrete world. I'm fine with that and I still love em for it. But that changes my approach to hammering some of my thoughts through their thick little skulls.

Revenge is defense and for pussies who should have spoken up the first time and now regret that they didn't. This was not revenge. This was offense. Which is the side of ball the Dems need to get on if they think anybody who considers themselves liberal will vote for their candidate.

It seems to be assumed that liberals are, by default, pacifists at heart. When conservatives deploy their nasty tactics, we're expected to just sit back and "take the high road." Conservative commentators' bile is a given, yet when some liberals give them a taste of their own medicine they can't deal.

I'm amused at all the conservative whiners attending liberal colleges; now you know what it's like to grow up in a small flyover community. :) Deal with it, and eventually you'll be out of there.




*sigh*

somehow this got lost way at the top of all these comments so for everyone's enlightenment i am gonna repeat the observations made by several witnesses:

what happened is that......

1) minutement got plenty of rope with preacher talking nearly an hour going nowhere
2) gilchrist got on stage
3) he talks and it clearly appeared to be same nonsensical mumbo jumbo
4) stage rushed by banner holders (note, NO violence)
5) republicans/minutmen/conservatives physically attack banner holders causing fight (i.e. the banner holders did not start fight, just wanted to present their point of view)
6) columbia security ended event due to violence instigated by conservatives/republicans/minutemen NOT others

GOT IT?

over and out......

When I watched this video, I couldn't help but affirming the fact that this is why I came to Columbia. I'm so damn proud of the people who felt sufficiently moved by indignation to DO something about, rush the stage, and make it evident that our generation isn't emotionally dead yet. I can say that I'm proud of my fellow Columbians, and if just a few of them can act this way, then there's hope for all of us not to become these ridiculous investment bankers.




also http://tailrank.com/634863/Students-At-Columbia-University-Attack-Minuteman-Founder [skipped by me]

2006-10-05

Judge Alito This article appears in the January 13, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Judge Samuel Alito and
The `Führerprinzip'

by Jeffrey Steinberg

On Jan. 5, 2006, in a front-page story, the Wall Street Journal identified Judge Samuel Alito, President George W. Bush's nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, as a leading proponent of the savagely unconstitutional doctrine of the "unitary executive." The idea of the "unitary executive," which forms the core dogma of the ultra-right-wing Federalist Society, to which Judge Alito belongs, is more properly identified by its modern historical name—the Führerprinzip, authored by the Nazi regime's anointed "Crown Jurist" Carl Schmitt. Schmitt's doctrine, that the charismatic head of state is the law, and can assert absolute dictatorial authority during periods of emergency, has been used to legitimize every totalitarian regime in the West, from Hitler, through Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain, through Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile, to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the United States.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Judge Alito from a November 2000 speech, delivered, appropriately, before a Federalist Society convention in Washington, D.C. The Constitution, Alito declared, "makes the President the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The President has not just some executive powers, but the executive power—the whole thing."

Judge Alito elaborated, "I thought then"—referring to his 1980s tenure at the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel—"and I still think, that this theory best captures the meaning of the Constitution's text and structure," adding that, in his view, the Framers "saw the unitary executive as necessary to balance the huge power of the legislature and the factions that may gain control of it."

After reviewing the Wall Street Journal account, Lyndon LaRouche declared, "If Judge Alito does in fact adhere to the views reported in the Wall Street Journal, he should not be allowed near any court—certainly not the United States Supreme Court—except as a defendant." LaRouche insisted that Alito's nomination must be decisively defeated in the Senate, or the Supreme Court will fall fatally into the hands of a cabal of outright "Schmittlerian" Nazis, led by Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Alito—all members of the self-avowed "conservative revolutionary" Federalist Society.

LaRouche counterposed the outright Nazi doctrine of the Federalist Society proponents of the "unitary executive" (Führerprinzip) to the American System principles invoked by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he was confronted with the awesome responsibility of preparing the United States for world war. On Sept. 8, 1939, at a press conference following his Proclamation of Limited Emergency, as war was erupting in Europe, FDR assured the American people, "There is no intention and no need of doing all those things that could be done.... There is no thought in any shape, manner or form, of putting the Nation, in its defenses or in its internal economy, on a war basis. That is one thing we want to avoid. We are going to keep the nation on a peace basis, in accordance with peacetime authorizations."

Cheney and 9/11

FDR's respect for the U.S. constitutional system of checks and balances, and separation of power, stands in stark contrast to the assault on the Constitution, launched by Vice President Cheney even before Sept. 11, 2001.

As LaRouche prophetically warned, in testimony delivered on Jan. 16, 2001 to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, opposing the nomination of John Ashcroft as Attorney General, the Cheney-led Bush Administration came into office committed to government-by-crisis-management, modeled on the Hitler Nazi dictatorship in Germany. LaRouche warned that the Bush Administration would seek, at the first opportunity, a "Reichstag fire" justification for dictatorship, all based on the legal theories of Hitler's Carl Schmitt. It was Schmitt, who wrote the legal opinion, based on the "unitary executive" Führerprinzip, that justified Hitler's declaration of emergency dictatorial rule on Feb. 28, 1933—24 hours after the German parliament was set ablaze by agents of Hitler's own Herman Göring.

The aftermath of 9/11 proved that LaRouche was 100% right. On Dec. 19, 2005, in a press conference aboard Air Force Two, Vice President Cheney flaunted the fact that he came into office in January 2001, committed to rolling back the legislative safeguards, passed by Congress and signed into law by Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the revelations about illegal FBI and CIA spying on American citizens. In calling for a rollback of those post-Watergate "infringements" on Presidential power, Cheney was, in effect, declaring war on the most sacred principles written into the U.S. Constitution.

Cheney's stooge, President Bush, certified his own adherence to the same Führerprinzip when he recently signed the defense budget, and invoked the "unitary executive" right to ignore the bill's explicit ban on torture. The McCain Amendment, banning torture of American-held prisoners in the "Global War on Terrorism," was passed by an overwhelming, veto-proof bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate, yet the President asserted his "constitutional" authority as commander-in-chief, to ignore Congress.

Pinochet and Hitler

Despite the events of 9/11, the Synarchist bankers behind Cheney did not fully succeed in their scheme for dictatorship and the overthrow of the Constitution. Both the Congress and the American people put up sufficient resistance to partly stymie the efforts to impose crisis-management Executive branch rule-by-decree. The May 2005 bipartisan "Gang of 14" Senate revolt against Cheney's so-called "nuclear option" to strip the Senate of its Constitutional role of "advice and consent" represented a particularly significant setback for the Synarchist cabal.

But the Cheney gang's vision for America shows clearly in Chile, a South American nation targetted for "the Hitler treatment" by a cabal of American-based Synarchists, led by Felix Rohatyn, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz (see accompanying article). Chile under the 1970s and '80s dictatorship of General Pinochet offers the clearest picture of what Cheney et al. still intend to impose on the United States—if given the opportunity. The defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Alito offers the immediate opportunity to deliver a killer blow to Rohatyn, Shultz, and Cheney's scheme.

The Other Sept. 11

On Sept. 11, 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet led a military coup that ousted the legitimately elected government of President Salvador Allende. The Pinochet coup would unleash several decades of terror, which would spread to other parts of South and Central America, through a Henry Kissinger-approved regional death squad program called "Operation Condor."

Among the American bankers and government officials who ran the Pinochet coup, from the outset, were:

  • Felix Rohatyn, the Lazard Brothers banker and ITT director. Rohatyn, a protégé of leading World War II-era Synarchist banker André Meyer, orchestrated the 1971 ITT takeover of Hartford Insurance, and, along with ITT Chairman Harold Geneen, helped oversee the overthrow of Allende from his post on the ITT board. Two years after the Pinochet coup, Rohatyn would impose the same Hitlerian/Schachtian austerity policies on New York City, through his chairmanship of the Metropolitan Assistance Corporation ("Big MAC").

  • George Shultz, Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, who orchestrated the breakup of FDR's Bretton Woods System on behalf of the Synarchist bankers, traveled to Chile, following the Pinochet coup, and gave his personal imprimatur to the regime's radical free trade economic policies, including the looting-by-privatization of the country's pension system. The same privatization of Social Security was attempted by the Bush Administration last year—with Shultz's enthusiastic backing. Himself a product of the University of Chicago Economics Department of Milton Friedman and the "Chicago Boys" who ran the economic policy of the Pinochet dictatorship, Shultz has been the behind-the-scenes Svengali of the Bush-Cheney Administration, steering it in an explicitly "Pinochet" direction, promoting a bankers' dictatorship of radical free trade/globalization looting, utilizing unbridled police state power to achieve it.

  • Henry Kissinger, the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to President Nixon, who enthusiastically promoted the Pinochet coup, at the very moment that he was formulating National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM-200), which asserted Anglo-American Cold War ownership of the planet's strategic raw material wealth and an aggressive corollary doctrine of drastic population reduction, through wars, disease and famine—all targetted at the Third World. Kissinger was the principal American government official behind Operation Condor, a right-wing death squad apparatus that ran a "strategy of tension" terror war against the sovereign republics of South American, which spilled over into continental Europe, particularly Italy. One of Kissinger's primary assets in Operation Condor was the Propaganda Two Freemasonic Lodge of World War II-era fascist Licio Gelli.

The Chile of the Pinochet dictatorship, steered from Wall Street and the Nixon Administration by Rohatyn, Shultz, and Kissinger is the model for what these same individuals and the Synarchist bankers cabal they represent, have in mind for the U.S.A.—if they are not stopped.

Carl Schmitt

These are the issues before the U.S. Senate in the case of Judge Alito. The doctrine of the "unitary executive" promoted by Alito is a carbon copy of the doctrine of law devised by Carl Schmitt to justify the Hitler dictatorship of February 1933 and the Pinochet dictatorship of Sept. 11, 1973. In both the Hitler and Pinochet cases, Schmitt was "on the scene." As the leading German jurist of the 1920s and '30s, Schmitt wrote the legal opinion justifying Hitler's Reichstag fire coup. Schmitt argued that the "charismatic leader" derives unbridled power from "the people" in time of crisis, and that any form of government, based on a system of checks and balances, consensus, and separation of power, is illegitimate, because it stands in the way of the absolute ruler's responsibility to "protect the people."

In the case of the Pinochet coup in Chile, Schmitt's student-protégé Jaime Guzman, argued that the government had to use violence to impose order. Guzman was the sole source of legal justificaion for the Pinochet coup and dictatorship, and he insisted that violence was a precondition for success. In effect, Schmitt acolyte Guzman ran fascist Chile—in the name of the same doctrine of "unitary executive" power that Schmitt had earlier codified in the Führerprinzip. It is the same doctrine that Cheney et al. seek to impose today on the U.S.A.

This is fascism—pure and simple, and it must be crushed, now, if the United States is to survive as a constitutional republic.

Pharisee Watch Headlines www.whtt.org




Click For Our Viewpoint

All Saints Episcopal Church Meets IRS Challenge
Charles E. Carlson Oct 02, 2006

War is Public Policy – and Anti-War Churches Violate It

5th Anniversary of Day911 - Americans Pay the Price
Charles E. Carlson Sep 07, 2006

Exactly as written on September 13, 2001, five years ago, and true today:

"If Americans were involved in the bombings on Day911, there are legal means to deal with them, and this should be done. But continuing to kill and starve the mothers and children of Arabs in other countries, as our government has done in the past, will simply convince the world that they are correct about the great bully, and insure that Americans will again have to pay for the evil acts of our government."


Would Tom Paine join Hezbollah?
Charles E. Carlson Aug 18, 2006

“Americans were nearly evenly split on whether the U.S. would win the war in Iraq. “48 percent either said the United States could not win, or could win -- but will not win.”


Follow Christ, reject "Christianity"
Charles E. Carlson Aug 08, 2006

The answer to understanding this unholy alliance between Warmakers and certain churches is to ask every churchgoer a simple question; are you a follower of Christ or a “Christianity?” In America today “Christianity” has become associated with Christian-Zionism, and Jesus would challenge it, as he challenged the Pharisees of his day. Christ-followers do not hate or kill, “Christians” do.

Vigil at a church of 6000 misled souls
Vigil team Aug 02, 2006

The mass killing of children in Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq seems to be trickling down to the perceptive few. But the most hardened liars (like Pat Robertson) at the pulpits of the many celebrity churches continue to feed out their terrible Pharisaic message which goes something like this:

The Christian Right: Not Right, Not Following Christ
Charles E. Carlson Jul 24, 2006

Christian Right pastors and spokesmen in thousands of churches swear that Israel has a biblical right to bomb Gaza and Lebanon. They teach that to resist Israel is to interfere with God’s Plan. The normally Israeli-sympathetic network media is giving wings to the neo-theology of the Christian Right.


Restoring an Affordable Policy of Peace
Charles E. Carlson Jul 17, 2006

The State of Israel is acting out the part of the Warmaker’s Pit Bull, escalating toward a full-fledged world war on Islam. This is happening with the support of the "Christian Right" which actually welcomes a war on Islam regardless of the consequences. An even smaller minority, with truth on its side, can reverse the rush into serial wars.


Student, on the Federal Reserve: what we all need to know
Chuck Carlson Jr. Jul 06, 2006

The FED'S words: "Most of us tend to view money as an object that symbolized value, but the use of money is an economic force, which profoundly affects our society. We hope this tour gives you some insight into money, its role, and the institution responsible for its control."

May You Be Inspired to Preserve Life on the 4th of July!
Stan Jakubowski & Chuck Carlson Jul 04, 2006

"It’s something positive, and have fun doing it……it’s like starting your own little church of like-minded Christians!"

Two English Lords Gifted the Land of the Philistines to a Private Company and Funded a New Religion to Bless the Theft
Charles E. Carlson Jun 23, 2006


British Lord Balfour provided a forged deed for the State of Israel to enter Arab land. And at almost the same hour he wrote his famous letter, the new dispensational church movement in America was being hijacked for the specific purpose of blessing world Zionism.



National Cathedral: "The Great Warming" and "An Inconvenient Truth"
CNSNews Oct 03, 2006

Rev. Dean Lloyd gave a sermon revolving around the biblical edict to care for the earth and challenged the faith community to respond to climate change.

Guiding the Flock to the Polls
LA Times Oct 02, 2006

The focus is issues, but some leaders don't oppose endorsement.

Iran seen borrowing nuclear strategy from Israel
AP Sep 28, 2006

Beginning with Richard Nixon, a succession of U.S. presidents looked the other way as Israel built up its arsenal, historians say. Published estimates of the number of Israel nuclear devices range from 75 to 200.

Ahmadinejad Interview in US Media
NBC News Sep 20, 2006

“Just look at the 20th century, for example, and the wars waged in that century,” he said. “Over 100 million people were killed. Hundreds of millions more were displaced. Who created those wars?"

Shock and Awe in Lebanon
Washington Post Sep 19, 2006

What struck me about the bombing, in both countries, was that you could see the destruction and completely misread what it meant. In Beirut, the destruction in reality is efficient and impressive. The destruction in Israel, on the other hand, is random and scattered. When Hezbollah rockets were fired on Israel, landing meant success.

Induced poverty crushes Iraqi families
Aljazeera Sep 18, 2006

"Some two million Iraqi families live under the poverty line, as defined by international criteria, which is fixed at one dollar per day per person."


Human bombs increase in Afghanistan
Associated Press Sep 18, 2006

A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed four Canadian troops and wounded at least 27 civilians in southern Afghanistan on Monday, while two other blasts in the capital and in the western part of the country killed a total of 13 Afghans, officials said.

Information extracted from prisoner
Israeli Defence Forces Sep 17, 2006

Majad Kambaz, 29, of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, who was arrested on Aug. 4, "revealed precise information about a tunnel being dug for a deadly terror attack at the Karni crossing." You can only get this kind of inforation if you read official Israeli sources...what does it imply?


How much help does Israel need?
NATIONAL SOLIDARITY RALLY Sep 17, 2006

Rally to "Free the Kidnapped IDF Soldiers"

Pastor Responds to IRS from Pulpit of All Saints
Rev Ed Bacon Sep 17, 2006

If the IRS is successful in chilling the voices in American pulpits and houses of worship, religion in America will lose all relevance and moral authority

2006-10-04

'IRAQ FOR SALE: THE WAR PROFITEERS' NYT REVIEW + wake-up!

Deep Pockets in Iraq


By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Robert Greenwald’s documentaries are like sledgehammers of rage against everything he finds wrong with America, including Wal-Mart, Fox News and the Bush administration. He wants to rile us up, and he’s not subtle. But then, neither are his targets.

Readers’ Opinions


In “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers,” Mr. Greenwald compiles a horrifying catalog of greed, corruption and incompetence among private contractors in Iraq, focusing primarily on Halliburton, Blackwater Security Consulting and CACI International. Leading off with the infamous torture and murder of four Blackwater employees in Falluja in 2004 — men whose families contend were callously placed in harm’s way — the movie goes on to trace connections between the contractors and the Republican Party, assert the buying of influence and explore what it says are questionable accounting systems that encourage exorbitant waste of taxpayer money. And that’s just the first 30 minutes.

One after another, military personnel, journalists, former Abu Ghraib prisoners and former employees of the companies in question present a litany of shocking accusations, from private interrogators working without supervision or accountability to outsourced food services that allow Halliburton to charge soldiers $45 for a six-pack of soda. The movie also addresses the effect of private-sector soldiers on military retention and morale: Why work for $3,000 a month when you can earn six figures with a corporation?

A febrile blend of facts, liberal outrage and emotional manipulation (like his colleague Michael Moore, Mr. Greenwald knows the visual power of a grieving mother), “Iraq for Sale” has an us-versus-them sensibility that’s extremely effective. “Their greed goes against our grain,” says one disgusted interviewee. Indeed.

IRAQ FOR SALE

The War Profiteers

Opens today in Manhattan.

===================================

http://letters.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2006/09/28/btm/view/?show=all

How can dems not win

against the republicans we have in office now? They are not trying or they don't care. I don't get it. I read somewhere that the two parties are just franchises through which corporate interests achieve their goals. Watching this party of do-nothings, I'm pretty sure this is accurate.

So go the democrats

Mr. O'Hehir makes the usual mistake in asking when the Dems will put forward a candidate who will send a clear message and energize their base to victory. Such a question implies that the Democratic Party aparat would even consider such a thing. Fact is, most Beltway dems and their big-money supporters would rather loose than do that. They simply don't want to owe gays, blacks, opponents of globalization and Empire, or the poor a damn thing. The DLC and its ilk really are Republicans Lite, and calling out the base would mean sacrificing the prerogatives of powerful and wealthy interests that have no intention of giving up a thing. We see every day that the Washington Dems pray not for a better world, but for the Republicans to self-destruct so that they can win without making one promise to their base or standing up for one principle. Even a modest Liberal like Dean was immediately squashed by the Democratic Party insiders. I fear that the way forward will have to be over the grave of the Democratic Party.

Berkeley physicist jolted awake by news of Nobel

By Ian Hoffman and Betsy Mason
MediaNews

Astrophysicist George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and his NASA colleague John Mather won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for revealing measurements of early cosmic light that strongly suggested the universe and everything in it were born in a gargantuan explosion.

Smoot, 61, who has an unlisted cell phone number, suspected a hoax when a caller with a Swedish accent told him about 3 a.m. that he had won the most coveted award in science.

``I just said, `How did you get my phone number?' '' the physicist recounted giddily for colleagues Tuesday morning at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. ``But the guy sounded really serious, so I thought I'd better take him seriously.''

Smoot said he later discovered the Nobel Prize committee had awakened a neighbor (with a listed number) who then provided Smoot's number.

Just to be certain, he checked the Nobel Prize Web site. And there it was: Smoot and Mather were being honored ``for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.''

Put more simply, the radiation turned out to be the leftover heat from a blazing-hot infant universe, only 380,000 years old and just cool enough to begin to form its first atoms.

Smoot and Mather, leading teams of hundreds of researchers and using NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, had peered closer than ever before at cosmic microwaves. They also found the most palpable support yet for big-bang theory.

``It's like looking at an embryo that's a few hours old. That's how far back we're looking, in terms of, you know, putting the universe in human terms,'' Smoot said.

The scientists discovered a faint microwave glow consistent with birth of the universe as an incredibly hot, dense soup of energy and particles. It was a strong endorsement of the big-bang theory and effectively ended competing arguments for a so-called ``steady state'' universe that constantly manufactured matter.

Physicist Stephen Hawking called it ``the discovery of the century, if not of all time,'' when the findings were announced in the early 1992.

For years, physicists searched for small differences in the radiation and found none. All they found was noise, the empty, hissing static of a television channel with no transmission.

It was Smoot who found them. His instrument on the COBE satellite detected tiny variations in the residual heat of the universe, and it took extraordinarily careful calculation to reveal them against the warmth of Earth, the Milky Way and the sun. Nobel officials called his detection ``a masterly discovery and a very demanding one.''

Tuesday, Smoot demurred and credited other researchers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

``And all the taxpayers. You guys paid for this,'' he said. ``I figured it out once and it was like $3 for every person in the country.

Smoot and a graduate student performed those calculations in a late-night frenzy in the fall of 1991. Smoot was so obsessive about rooting out errors that he offered an airline ticket to anywhere on Earth to anyone who could find a mistake.

Their work suggested that these regions of slight variations of hot and cold are what remain of quantum fluctuations in the hot embryonic universe, a kind of roughness in the fabric of matter at the smallest scales, casting the shape of galactic superclusters.

Smoot likens study of the radiation to hearing the birthing noises of the cosmos and, through the sounds, discerning its makeup.

``If you listen to a bell or listen to enough bells, you can tell a brass bell or a steel bell or an iron bell,'' he said. ``What we're listening to are the early fluctuations of the early universe. We're seeing how the universe rings.''

Those fluctuations in quantum particles in the early universe are thought to have given rise to every feature of today's universe, 14 billion years later.

``If there were no fluctuations like that, the universe would be very uniform -- no stars, no galaxies, no us,'' said Per Carlson, head of the Nobel physics committee for the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.

``It is one of the greatest discoveries of the century. I would call it the greatest,'' Carlson said.

The COBE satellite and the two scientists' work opened what one Nobel official called a ``golden age of cosmology.'' Successive experiments on balloons and other satellites confirmed all of their findings and added more details.

``Before that, cosmology was sort of the butt of a lot of jokes; there was a lot of theory but little constraint on theory from data,'' said Andreas Albrecht, a cosmologist at the University of California-Davis. ``Now when people go out and give wild theories, they live under the burden of having to fit a lot of data. There's a lot we know about the universe now.''

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