Recently, as many of you know, an act was passed and signed into law that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. This is perhaps the final straw, the final nail in the coffin of American freedom, the end of habeas corpus and due process. “We will do as we please.”

We Indians said it for generations: If they can kill us indiscriminately, they will do it to anyone. If they can take our land, they will do it to anyone. If they can kidnap our children and take them to prison schools, they will do it to anyone. If they can starve us and lie to us, they will do it to anyone. If they can wrongfully imprison us, they will do it to anyone. Now, sadly, this is another Indian prophecy fulfilled. “We will do as we please.”

Our ancestors and tribal people all over the world prophesized a time of upheaval and great change. I believe that time is fast approaching. I believe a part of this is the government’s ongoing overreach of its authority—until the people rise up and tell Washington, “You will NOT do as you please! We are NOT your slaves! We will NOT be subjugated! We will NOT be ruled by an iron fist! We will NOT allow you to steal our liberty or our justice!”

My friends, my relatives, my supporters—Be a part of this latest, perhaps the last “Indian uprising”. Make your voice heard! Be a part of the brave Movement to come, the Movement that will change the course of human history. Make change and hope and peace and justice a part of your personal legacy. Be the change that you envision and know in your heart must take place.

Do this, and on the day you take your last breath and prepare to meet Creator, you will know your life on this Earth was well spent. Close your eyes knowing you used your breath and energy to Creator’s good purpose. Smile as you cross over knowing you changed the world so that the next seven generations can know a good life. Do these things and know that I am with you. I will embrace you as my relations—in this life or the next.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

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Keith Preston interviews Thomas N. Naylor of the Second Vermont Republic. Topics include:

• How support for secession grew out of opposition to the wars initiated by the Bush administration;
• The negative impact of the Obama presidency on the secessionist movement;
• How the military-industrial complex has taken over institutions of higher learning;
• Why the Left has been impotent at developing an effective antiwar movement;
• The stigma attached to secession due to the legacy of the Civil War and the Lincoln presidency;
• How Vermont secessionists have been attacked by the Southern Poverty Law Center in retaliation for the threat posed by secessionists to the alliance between the U.S. and Israel;
• The possibility of the break-up of the United States in the same manner as the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Thomas N. Naylor, is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University, the author of thirty books, and a founder of the Second Vermont Republic.

Here’s how I see the future scenario in the West: There will eventually be a split between the totalitarian humanists with their universalist outlook and the multiculturalists and their cultural relativist outlook.  The former will represent the prevailing ideology of the ruling class while the latter will be more representative of the rising underclass composed to a large degree though not entirely of recent immigrant populations.

In the long run, I regard multiculturalism as far less threatening than totalitarian humanism as the former implies cultural separatism and political decentralization while the latter implies centralized statism and compulsory ideologcial and cultural uniformity. This is more or less the position that Alain De Benoist has come to as well. Indeed, multiculturalism may actually be a contributing factor to the disintegration of the overarching state systems we have at present.  This is why I believe that anti-state radicals, the radical right, bioregionalists, and left ethno-nationalists should unite against the ruling class in favor of radical decentralization.

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Perhaps they’re not as salient to those of you who don’t spend your days on college campuses, but Students for Liberty is pretty freakin’ amazing. I’ve been watching small libertarian groups come and go on various college campuses for about the last 15 years now, and I have never seen (or read about?) a student libertarian organization that is this big, this passionate, this well-organized, and this knowledgeable. Their regional and international conferences, their webinar series, the symposia series they run with Liberty Fund, their books, everything they do is just terrific.

What’s really drawn my attention recently, however, is the way in which these students transcend so much of what has been objectionable about the libertarian movement in its past incarnations. Both in terms of its demographics and its substantive political and moral concerns, today’s movement seems broader, more inclusive, and more in keeping with the liberalism of classical liberalism than much of what we’ve seen before. For starters, there seem to be many more women and racial minorities involved than I’ve ever before seen. Not that the libertarian movement of the past set an exceptionally high hurdle. But progress is still good to see – even if it’s purely anecdotal or secondhand on my part. Anyone have any firm numbers?

I’ve been especially proud to see SFL pushing recently for libertarians to take issues associated with feminism and black studies more seriously. Such calls aren’t unprecedented in the libertarian intellectual tradition, of course. But that’s kind of the point. There are a few people like our own Roderick Long who have written about both issues in the past. There are groups like the Association of Libertarian Feminists who have been doing this kind of thing for quite a while.

But these aren’t the issues that jump to mind when you think about what libertarians stand for. And that’s a shame. It’s a shame because the issues are important, and central to the kind of liberalism that libertarians ought to be among the loudest in supporting. And it’s a shame because we still live in a world in which people like Stefan Molyneux dismiss feminism as “socialism with panties,” and people like Justin Raimondo write offattempts to reconcile libertarianism with concern for social justice as young professors sucking up to their “commie” colleagues. Fortunately, today’s libertarians aren’t putting up with such nonsense.

This makes me proud. And hopeful. It makes me think that we here at the Bleeding Heart Libertarian blog didn’t just make that idea up. We caught on to something in the zeitgeist, and the students are picking up on it to. The libertarian movement is evolving, and I for one am thrilled to see what happens.

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The supreme leader of Iran issued a blunt warning Friday that war would be detrimental to the United States — and that Iran is ready to help anyone who confronts “cancerous” Israel.

“You see every now and then in this way they say that all options are on the table. That means even the option of war,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during Friday prayers in Tehran. “This is how they make these threats against us.

“Well, these kinds of threats are detrimental to the U.S.,” he said. “The war itself will be 10 times as detrimental to the U.S.”

Khamenei’s rhetoric is hardly new. But the timing of his comments could prove critical with nuclear talks around the corner.

Tensions between Iran and world powers have been ratcheted up in the aftermath of an alarming nuclear watchdog agency report in November that said Tehran was likely developing nuclear weapons.

The standoff grew more serious this week with renewed fears of an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran to take out its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Khamenei said Iran will support any nation or group that stands up against Israel.

“The Zionist regime is really the cancerous tumor of this region and it needs to be removed and will be removed,” Khamenei said to a cheering crowd.

He said Iran doesn’t interfere in other nations but has aided militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah in conflicts with Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.

His comments came after stern comments Friday from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“Today, unlike in the past, there is a broad global understanding that it is crucial to stop Iran becoming nuclearized and that no options should be taken off the table,” he said.

Barak said allowing Iran to continue on its path will be far more complex and dangerous in blood and money than cutting it off now.

“Those who say in English, ‘later,’ may find later is too late,” he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he feared Israel could attack Iran sometime this spring in an effort to destroy its suspected nuclear weapons program, according to a senior administration official.

The official declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information.

The United States and its allies have warned that Iran is trying to make a nuclear weapon. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes.

A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center said the United States needs to put more teeth into its threat to use military power against Iran.

The Washington think tank recommended in its report that Washington should undertake visible, credible military preparations to go along with more intense sanctions and diplomatic efforts.

The military activities could include naval deployments, military exercises and positioning supplies in the region.

To stop Iran’s nuclear clock, the report said, the United States “needs to make clear that Iran faces a choice: it can either abandon its nuclear program through a negotiated arrangement or have its program destroyed militarily, by the United States.”

The report also said the United States should give credibility to the Israeli military threat against Iran by selling Israel two to three KC-135 aerial refueling tankers and 200 GRU-31 bunker-buster munitions.

Former Sen. Chuck Robb, who co-chaired the task force that wrote the report, said the group advocates neither war nor a military strike at the moment, but believes the United States will only be effective if it takes credible steps to let Iran know it is serious.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said Panetta “has made it clear that he is comfortable with the military capabilities we have and operate in the region.”

However, Kirby said, “the U.S. military must and will be ready to provide the president options should those options be desirable.”

Khamenei blamed Western powers for Iran’s troubles, starting with the brutal eight-year war Iran fought with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s and continuing with the latest round of punishing international sanctions.

“So far we have overcome all these challenges and none of them managed to bring (Iran) to its knees,” Khamenei said. “We have stood firm and strongly treaded our course.”

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Inmates working at a Vermont correctional unit’s print shop managed to sneak a prank image of a pig into a state police crest that is emblazoned on police cars, and 30 cruisers sported the design for the last year, officials said on Thursday.

The official crest depicts a spotted cow against a background of snowy mountains, but the inmates’ version featured one of the cow’s spots shaped like a pig in an apparent reference to the pejorative word for police, state police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro said.

“It dishonors the memory of those past and present members, especially for those who have lost their lives in the line of duty,” Dasaro said.

Vermont contracts with correctional facilities employing prisoners to make some print products, including the cruiser decals. Police said someone who works at the print shop changed the emblem from the officially sanctioned design.

A police employee noticed the prank on Wednesday and reported it. Police said the 60 16-inch door decals would be removed as soon as it was practical.

The “source and timing” of the change to the design is under investigation, Dasaro said.

“While some may find humor in the decal modifications, the joke unfortunately comes at the expense of the taxpayers,” Police Major Bill Sheets said in a statement.

(Editing By Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Johnston)

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(NewsCore)(New York Post) – A Transportation Security Administration screener was busted for allegedly stealing $5,000 from a passenger who was going through a security checkpoint at New York’s JFK airport, the latest in a string of snafus by the federal agency, authorities said Thursday.

Alexandra Schmid, 31, of Brooklyn, was arrested after she was seen on Terminal 4 surveillance cameras stealing the money from a Bangladeshi national, Port Authority police said.

The passenger had placed his jacket on the belt so it could be scanned. After it was scanned, the passenger complained that his money was missing.

Port Authority police spokesman Al Della Fave said Schmid was caught on camera placing the money in a latex glove and then going to the bathroom with it.

Schmid was later arrested by Officer Joseph Opramalla and taken into custody.

Schmid — who has worked for the TSA for four and a half years — has been charged with grand larceny and is awaiting arraignment in Queens Criminal Court.

The arrest is just the latest scandal to hit the TSA in the New York area.

On Monday, the New York Post reported that a federal probe into allegedly lax security at Newark Airport led to the suspension of eight workers for everything from stealing from passengers to sleeping on the job to failing to screen luggage for potential bombs

The Post reported that hidden surveillance cameras caught several TSA screeners sleeping while on duty.

Read more: TSA Screener Arrested In $5,000 Theft http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpps/news/tsa-screener-arrested-in-5%2C000-theft-dpgonc-20120202-sv_17599344#ixzz1lRrClowo

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While President Obama’s supporters hailed his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as the end of the war in the middle east, behind the scenes the Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran.

In addition to some 50,000 U.S. troops currently in the region waiting for orders (apparently they won’t be home by this past Christmas as was originally promised), Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama is deploying an additional 50,000 soldiers to be ready for ‘any contingency’ by March:

President Barack Obama is reported exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and Washington sources to have secretly ordered US air, naval and marine forces to build up heavy concentrations on two strategic islands –Socotra, which is part of a Yemeni archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and the Omani island of Masirah at the southern exit of the Strait of Hormuz.

Since 2010, the US has been quietly building giant air force and naval bases on Socotra with facilities for submarines, intelligence command centers and take-off pads for flying stealth drones, as part of a linked chain of strategic US military facilities in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.

The Socotra facilities are so secret that they are never mentioned in any catalogue listing US military facilities in this part of the world, which include Jebel Ali and Al Dahfra in the United Arab Emirates; Arifjan in Kuwait; and Al Udeid in Qatar – all within short flying distances from Iran.

Additional US forces are also being poured into Camp Justice on the barren, 70-kilometer long Omani island of Masirah, just south of the Hormuz entry point to the Gulf of Oman from the Arabian Sea.

…

Western military sources familiar with the American buildup on the two strategic islands tell DEBKA-Net-Weekly that, although they cannot cite precise figures, they are witnessing the heaviest American concentration of might in the region since the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

Then, 100,000 American troops were massed in Kuwait ahead of the invasion. Today, those sources estimate from the current pace of arrivals on the two island bases, that 50,000 US troops will have accumulated on Socotra and Masirah by mid-February. They will top up the 50,000 military already present in the Persian Gulf region, so that in less than a month, Washington will have some 100,000 military personnel on the spot and available for any contingency.

US air transports are described as making almost daily landings on Socotra and Masirah. They fly in from the US naval base of Diego Garcia, one of America’s biggest military facilities, just over 3,000 kilometers away. The US military presence in the region will further expand in the first week of March when three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups plus a French carrier arrive in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea: They are theUSS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, USS Enterprise and the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

A fourth US carrier will be standing by in the Pacific Ocean, a few days’ sailing time from the water off Iran’s coast.

Source: Debka

Still holding out hope that we won’t go to war with Iran?

There’s already reason enough for the powers-to-be to invade Iran based on the accusations that they are in the process of manufacturing nuclear weapons. Whether true or not makes no difference, as we saw with weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found in Iraq.

Similarly, like Saddam Hussein before them, Iran’s leadership is attempting to trade their oil without going through the proper channels – in essence attempting to bypass the United States and Europe by striking deals with China, India, and Russia that will not require the exchange of oil for US dollars, but rather, Yuan, Rupees and Gold.

It may very well be that nuclear weapons, like WMD in Iraq, are simply the pretext, rather than the real reason, that will be used to crush those who oppose the financiers, politicians and influencers behind the new world order paradigm.

Make no mistake: this is serious business. They will kill as many as is needed (on our side and theirs) in order to push the agenda forward.

This is what happens when you mess with the men behind the curtains:

*Warning Graphic Video*

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By Barbara Starr

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has come to the conclusion there is a growing likelihood Israel could attack Iran sometime this spring in an effort to destroy its suspected nuclear weapons program, according to a senior administration official.

The official declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information.

Panetta’s views were first reported by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who wrote Panetta “believes there is strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June – before Iran enters what Israelis described as a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb.”

Asked by reporters in Brussels, where Panetta is attending NATO meetings, the defense secretary refused to comment. But Panetta told reporters the U.S. has “indicated our concerns” to Israel, according to a transcript provided by the Defense Department.

But the official also noted that Israel goes through cycles of making aggressive statements about its intentions toward Iran in an effort to pressure the United States and the West to take more action.

Iran’s supreme leader issued a blunt warning Friday that war would be detrimental to the United States – and that Iran is ready to help anyone who confronts “cancerous” Israel.

“You see every now and then in this way they say that all options are on the table. That means even the option of war,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during Friday prayers in Tehran. “This is how they make these threats against us.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Thursday that Iran may be close to the point “which may render any physical strike as impractical,” according to Reuters.

But just a few weeks ago, Barak suggested things were not as urgent, saying an Israeli decision on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear program was “very far off.”

A “confluence’ of intelligence has led Panetta to this conclusion, the official told CNN, but declined to offer any specifics except noting that the United States conducts intelligence operations aimed at Israel as it does with many other allies.

The senior administration official also noted that there is a general understanding in the administration that Israel may have come to the firm conclusion Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.  Just last week, the recently retired chief of Israeli military intelligence told CNN’s David McKenzie that the “Iranians have already decided that they want nuclear weapons,” he said.  But he added they haven’t decided fully to go through with creating the weapons.

The official U.S. assessment is that Iran has not yet made that decision, the source said.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus, who said he has regular discussions with Israel’s leadership and intelligence head, noted that “Israel does see this possibility as an existential threat to their country, and I think that it is very important to keep that perspective in mind.”

At the same hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted the United States works closely with the Israelis and said the notion that Israel could strike is “a very sensitive issue right now.”

“This is an area that we are very, very concerned about,” Clapper said.

Panetta’s press secretary, George Little, declined to comment on the report. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said it would be premature for the United States to consider striking Iran.

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In Indianapolis, local cops and the FBI have set-up a massive surveillance grid ahead of the Super Bowl, slated for February 5th. The heightened security – including a smartphone photo and video surveillance network, the installation of 150 new manhole covers, and the virtual lockdown of a 44-block area – is not in response to a possible attack by al-Qaeda, but will be used to detect “signs of pickpocketing, prostitution or other trouble.”

During past Super Bowls, the threat posed by prostitutes and pickpockets was so great the state was obliged to respond with militarized police.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the Super Bowl rates as a “national security event” (or NSSE) that may be a target for potential terrorism and “other criminal activity,” possibly of the sort mentioned above.

An NSSE designation allows the feds to have a field day. It puts the Secret Service in charge of event security, the FBI in charge of intelligence, counter terrorism, hostage rescue and investigation of incidents of terrorism or other criminal activities, and FEMA in charge of recovery management in the aftermath of terrorist or other major criminal incidents, natural disasters or other catastrophic events.

Indianapolis Chief of Homeland Security Gary Coons told Fox News that the NSSE rating puts the Super Bowl just below national security events involving the president and the Secret Service. Ratings are based on factors including international attention, media coverage, the number of people the event attracts and visits by celebrities and foreign dignitaries, Coons said.

The Super Bowl NSSE is an ideal opportunity for the national security state. It allows government control freaks to parade the latest security gizmos and acclimate the masses to the prospect of a police state – not for protection against miscreant cave dwellers, but perpetrators of victimless and petty crimes.

–

In addition to locking down a square mile area around the stadium in Indianapolis during the Super Bowl and calling in the FBI, Secret Service, FEMA and a phalanx of local cops to be on the look-out for street walkers and pickpockets, the feds are moving to expand the presence of TSA at the Indianapolis airport.

“TSA will operate 24/7 with two extra screening lanes at each concourse entrance,”FareCompare.com reports.

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Two British tourists were arrested by the Department of Homeland Security and denied entry to the country after posting two tweets that were apparently considered terrorist threats by overzealous agents who did not posses even rudimentary knowledge of the difference between British and American English.

Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting were detained and kept in a cell, occupied with Mexican drug dealers, for over 12 hours.

The tweets that caused their detention as possible terrorists were so obviously non threatening that the fact that agents tasked with protecting our country would not see this shows just how far down the police state hole America has actually gone.

The Daily Mail and others recently reported on this insane series of events:

“Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.

“Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

“The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America’.

“After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport [LAX] last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.

“Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party,’ they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.

The pair was also questioned over another tweet that one of them posted which quoted, word for word,  a skit from the popular animated show, Family Guy.

The tweet above caused the DHS agents to search the pairs suitcases for spades and shovels.

That’s right, the agency tasked with protecting Americans spent hours searching a non threatening pair over tweets that quoted a popular TV show while any number of real terrorists could have easily slipped by. (Real terrorists most likely do not publicly tweet what they are about to do)

The agents, apparently happy over detaining innocent people, repeatedly ignored the fact that in Britain the use of the word destroy generally means to party.

‘I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me “you’ve really f***** up with that tweet boy”.

‘When I was in the van I was handcuffed and put in a cage. I had a panic attack but the worse was yet to come.

‘When we arrived at the prison I was shoved in a cell on my own but after an hour two huge Mexican men covered in tattoos came in and started asking me who I was.

Sadly, as the Department of Homeland Security continues their full scale takeover and destruction of the American spirit, ridiculous cases such as this will only increase.

Read a quote from the DHS memo on this ridiculous detention.

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A sign of uncertain times, or marketing of questionable taste? As Occupy Miami received its most certain eviction notice yet, possibly leading to a sunset showdown of sorts with police, a Miami security company issued a statement boasting their readiness to “intervene, should riots occur.”

Apparently, should Tuesday’s deadline send tents flying, police should look for help from Bryant Security — who recommend the community prepare for “data protection…community/group support, natural disasters/hurricanes, and a two-day continuous plan” “in case of riots or other emergencies.” Referring to Bryant’s president, listed as a former long-range reconnaissance unit commander for the Israeli Defense Force, the release claims:

Shay Ben-David trains his team of private security specialists to be ready to control riots and crowds, should Occupy Miami require police or other means of intervention. “We need to be prepared for all types of riots and high stress situations. In times of emergency, we are often the first line of defense for our clients.” Mr. Ben-David also adds, “The Los Angeles Times reports that police arrested hundreds of protesters in the last couple of days in Oakland, CA. This may be a starting trend for LE (law enforcement) across the country, and may not go as smooth in all locations.”

“We have a very tight affiliation with the police department,” a Bryan Security employee told HuffPost Miami, before deferring all other questions to his supervisor: “I don’t want to comment on something I don’t have all the details for.”

While we wait on a call back, there’s one thing we know for sure: no matter how able-bodied an outside security firm, Miami-area police departments are pretty good at over-doing it, all by themselves.

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Jerusalem (CNN) – An unmanned Israeli airplane capable of reaching parts of Iran crashed during an experimental flight Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The Eitan-type drone spun in the air, lost a wing and crashed in a ball of fire, an unnamed witness told IDF Radio.

There were no injuries reported, and the cause of the crash is being investigated, the IDF said.

Israel unveiled the Eitan drone nearly two years ago, announcing in an unusual public demonstration of the plane’s capabilities that it could fly 1,000 km (620 miles) — putting western Iran within range.

The plane was initially designed to gather intelligence, but can be modified to carry missiles, the company that makes it said at the unveiling in February 2010.

IDF Lt. Col. Shlomo Nissim declined to go into details about the plane’s abilities, but said: “The future capabilities of this vehicle will allow us to carry whatever is needed in this vehicle.”

Israel drone unveiled in 2010

Israel Aerospace Industries general manager Tommy Silbering said the drone could stay aloft 24 to 36 hours.

“It will be a major weapons system of future war,” he said.

The name Eitan is a Hebrew word meaning strong.

The drone has a 26m (85-foot) wingspan and 1200-horsepower engine, the manufacturer said at the launch.

Israel has at least three different types of unmanned aircraft, the IDF said in December.

CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Kevin Flower contributed to this report.

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The biggest problem for investors today in trying to forecast the future price of silver is the enormous amount of contradictory analysis on the Internet. There are bulls, bears, paper traders, physical buyers, technical analysts, hedge funds, commercial banks and silver manufacturers all trying to play a part in this highly volatile silver market. Trying to sift through the huge volumes of silver analysis on the internet can be extremely frustrating. In addition, some of this information is not meant to inform, but rather to confuse or mislead the investor.

There is a great deal of misinformation on the internet when it comes to silver. I find it ironic that one of the so-called “bullion specialists” seems to give bearish commentary whenever the price of gold or silver rises to new highs. This is akin to a CEO of a corporation telling the media and shareholders that the company’s stock price is too high and needs to drop down to more sustainable levels. What CEO on Earth would say something as stupid as this with the best interest of the company and shareholders in mind? Furthermore, how many CEOs would keep their job if they repeated this over and over for the past several years, and got it wrong time and time again?

Unless you have been in the precious metals markets for quite some time, it is easy to be misled by this type of information. This is the very reason behind the motivation that I had to write this article. In it, I will attempt to give the reader-investor a more detailed and fundamental comparative analysis of the future price of silver, rather than the typical fly-by-night technical charting or bull-bear rant. This should give a more commonsense methodology in forecasting the future path of silver and its eventual paradigm shift.

Paradigm Shift: —n, a radical change in underlying beliefs or theory

The coming paradigm shift in silver will not happen due to technical analysis, fundamentals, or supply & demand forces, but rather due to a change in mass psychology of investors. Even though fundamentals and supply-demand forces will play a part in this shift, they will not be the ultimate cause. I believe technical analysis as it is used today, only charts the amount of manipulation and mass psychology in the silver market.

Throughout history, a paradigm shift occurs in rigged markets when the manipulation of the financial system and economy is no longer sustainable. This occurred in the banking and housing markets in 2007-2008 when we had what I call a “Negative Paradigm Price Shift”- a trend where prices or values are declining.

Negative Paradigm Price Shift in Housing and Banking

Prior to 2007, the real estate market was kept alive by the work of clowns and magicians in the mortgage industry and banking system. For several years everyone was having a great time. As housing prices and sales continued towards the heavens, bank profits hit all-time records. Everything was going along just fine until the market realized one day that there was nothing left after “Liars Loans” were levied to keep the Ponzi going. Once the housing market collapsed, so too did the banking system. Like two twins attached at birth, one could not live without the other.

In true waterfall fashion, investment banks, commercial banks, government-sponsored entities and insurance companies went bankrupt, were either taken over or became a mere shadow of their former selves.

Here we can see several examples of a Negative Paradigm Shift:

As you can see from these 10-year charts, the prices of these stocks were range bound prior to 2007. All of a sudden, in the middle of 2007, the bottom fell out and the prices of these stocks suffered exponential losses. Other examples of companies that have experienced similar Negative Paradigm Shifts include Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual and Freddie Mac.

How could all of these institutions collapse in this fashion? It was due to policy deregulation as well as the manipulation of financial products, assets and information. Thus, the banking system and these institutions were functioning and supposedly solvent a great deal longer than a free market would have allowed. The act of misleading the market gave false values and elevated stock prices.

This is a perfect example of the mass psychology of the public investing in highly inflated assets based on superficial and bogus technical analysis. As the housing and financial markets were reaching their peak in the 2007, fundamentals played no part in their real market values— it was based entirely on mass psychology instead; the false belief projected by investors and the corporations themselves that these companies were actually of high value.

This disintegration of the housing market and banking system was not an isolated episode; rather it was part of the events that take place in STAGE 1 of what Dmitry Orlov calls the Five Stages of Collapse.

• Stage 1: Financial Collapse
• Stage 2: Commercial Collapse
• Stage 3: Political Collapse
• Stage 4: Social Collapse
• Stage 5: Cultural Collapse

According to Orlov:

STAGE 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Here we can see that the majority of these conditions in the Financial Collapse have already taken place. The only reason why the U.S. banking system is still functioning today is due to the ability of banks to mark to model their assets giving the impression that they are still solvent. Furthermore, the increased guarantee of FDIC deposit accounts to $250,000 as well as a temporary unlimited coverage for noninterest-bearing transaction accounts until Dec 31, 2012 have kept a major bank run on the banking system. These changes of policy have postponed the United States from entering into STAGE 2 or the Commercial Collapse. This will be discussed at the latter part of the article.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the current U.S. banking system is based on a fractional reserve requirement of 10% in fiat money; basically paper backing paper. This wasn’t always the case. To get a better idea of how disastrous the present banking system has become, we need to take a look at fractional reserve requirements of the past.

From an Historic Gold-Backed Fractional Reserve System to a Paper Farce Today

Eric Sprott made a recent comment posted in an article on Zerohedge.com, stating that “The financial system is a farce”. He couldn’t be more correct in his assumption.Not only is the present U.S. banking system based on a financial debt instrument called a Federal Reserve Note, but its fractional reserve ratio is virtually nonexistent.

In 1932, the United States had a fractional reserve banking system backed by gold. The member banks had different reserve requirements: central reserve city banks (13 percent), reserve banks (10 percent) and country banks (7 percent). All member banks had a 3 percent reserve requirement on time deposits. Even with these official reserve ratios, the total paper dollar claims to gold were much higher. For this analysis, we are going to compare the M2 money supply to the amount of U.S. Treasury-held gold.

In 1932, the U.S. Treasury held $2.95 billion in gold, there was $5.60 billion in currency in circulation, $36 billion in M2 money supply, and $19 billion in U.S. Treasury debt. The fractional reserve of gold to the M2 money supply was 8.3%.

Despite the terrible conditions during the “Great Depression”, at least the country had two positive factors going for it: 1) A banking system backed by gold and 2) vast resources of energy, metals and minerals to tap into to pull itself out of its current market ills.

Today, the banking system is on the verge of collapse and the country has consumed its best resources which peaked 40-50 years ago. After Nixon dropped the dollar peg to gold in 1971, the world has been on a floating exchange rate fiat monetary system. The present fractional reserve banking system we have today is based on a fiat paper reserve.

This graph shows that no gold whatsoever is backing up the banking system. As the U.S. banking system stands today, its currency— the Federal Reserve Note— is backed by $15.2 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury debt. The system is even weaker when we look into the makeup of the banks’ fractional reserve ratio.

For starters, the official 10% minimum reserve requirement set by the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve applies to mainly checking accounts. Effective December 27, 1990, CD’s, savings accounts, and timed deposits owned by entities other than households were not included in this 10% reserve requirement. Additionally, in 1994 the Federal Reserve Board passed a “Deposit Reclassification” for financial institutions to help lower reserve requirements even further. Eric DeCarbonnel explains this in his article “US Banks Operating without Reserve Requirements”:

Deposit reclassification is an accounting trick, used by virtually the entire financial sector, which allows banks to eliminate nearly all their reserve requirements. Deposit Reclassification splits a checking account into two separate subaccounts, a transaction (checking) subaccount and a non-transaction (savings) subaccount. This distinction only exists on the bank’s books: you will never see these subaccounts on your bank statements.

Deposit reclassification means that, at any point in time, most of the money in American checking accounts sits in invisible savings subaccounts. These savings subaccounts pay no interest, but allow banks to avoid reserve requirements. The public is completely unaware of this financial engineering.

It is now apparent that the so-called official 10% fractional reserve ratio of the U.S. banking system is just a mere figure to delude the public into believing it has a working cash reserve ratio, whereas in reality, the system is a complete farce.

The public has no clue just how weak and vulnerable the U.S. banking system has become. At one time, the United States had a fractional reserve banking system backed by physical gold money. Today, its financial system is entirely based on a fiat monetary regime with practically no fractional reserve ratio whatsoever.

Gold & Silver Money Contain Intrinsic Value; Federal Reserve Notes Have None

Not only is the majority of the public ignorant to the amount of dangerous leverage in the U.S. banking system, most have no understanding of real money. I have had several debates on various websites with highly educated individuals on the subject. Some have replied by stating, “The U.S. Dollar is backed by the GDP of the country”, while others have insisted that, “Gold & silver have no intrinsic value whatsoever.” It is no wonder this country is heading full speed over the cliff.

In historic times, the value of gold and silver was tied to their rarity as well as the amount of labor needed in extracting and producing the metals. As time went by, capital became a larger percentage of this value while human labor was replaced by energy-consuming machinery. Each gold and silver coin produced today contains a certain amount of this capital investment, energy and labor cost. Thus, these precious metal coins do hold a certain amount of intrinsic value.

On the other hand, a Federal Reserve Note today has no intrinsic value at all— except for its printing cost. It is only a promise to pay. The Federal Reserve Note is not redeemable by gold, but Uncle Sam will give you some of its $15.2 Trillion of U.S. Treasury debt in exchange. It is due to this very reason why we see an increasing amount of Americans buying Gold and Silver Eagles.

The U.S. Mint does not provide the public with annual records of exact dollar sales of their Gold and Silver Eagles. To get the figures below, the annual sales of silver and gold eagles were multiplied by their respective average yearly price reported by Kitco.com.

In times of worry in the financial system, the public regains confidence through buying gold and silver assets. During the Y2K scare, we can see that Americans were putting a great deal more money in Gold Eagles over Silver Eagles. In 1999 the public was buying 12 times the amount of money in gold than silver. Today, we see that investors are spending almost the same amount of money in both precious metals.

The graph above only reveals part of the story. According to kitco.com, the average price of silver in 2011 was $35.11 and the average price of gold was $1571.52. This gives us a gold-silver ratio in 2011 of 45 to 1. If we look at the next graph below we can see just how much more Silver Eagles over Gold Eagles the public is buying.

It is hard to tell from the graph above, but Gold Eagle sales have increased tremendously since 2007. Here are the exact figures for both:

During the Y2K scare in 1999, Americans bought a record 2 million ounces of Gold Eagles and only 9 million ounces of Silver Eagles. This was at ratio of 4.4 to 1. In 2011, the ratio increased nearly 10 times as investors bought almost 40 million Silver Eagles while only purchasing 1 million in Gold Eagle ounces.

Very few individuals have comprehended the amazing trend taking place in the Gold and Silver Eagle’s market. In 1999, Gold Eagle sales hit a record of 2 million ounces. Last year, investors only bought half that amount. However, Silver Eagle sales have increased more than fourfold from nine million oz in 1999 to nearly 40 million ounces in 2011.

Even though these two graphs give overwhelming evidence on how much more investors are buying Silver Eagles over Gold Eagles, it is only part of the story.

Comparing U.S. Domestic Gold-Silver Production vs. Gold-Silver Sales

In my previous article, First Time Ever, Silver Sales Surpass Domestic Production, I explain how Silver Eagle sales are forecasted to be higher than the total 2011 U.S. domestic silver production output (full data on U.S. silver mine production will not be out until April-May of 2012). This is a graph from the article that shows Silver Eagle sales will be approximately 5 million oz greater than U.S. domestic silver production:

While it is true that the U.S. imports silver to meet its industrial and investment demands, this amount was two and a half times its 2010 mine production. According to the USGS 2011 Silver Mineral Summary, the United States had a net import of 3,240 metric tons of silver in 2010. Compare that to its mine production of only 1,280 metric tonnes the very same year.

On the other hand, if we look at the USGS 2011 Gold Mineral Summary, the United States had a net import of 160 metric tonnes of gold in 2010 while its domestic mine production was 230 metric tonnes. Here we can see that the U.S. gold mines produce one and a half times more gold than it imports from foreign sources.

In 2011, the United States is estimated to produce roughly 7.5 million oz of gold (233 metric tonnes) along with one million oz of Gold Eagle Sales:

Looking at these two graphs the difference becomes extremely obvious. Silver Eagle sales consumed 114% of U.S. domestic silver production in 2011, whereas Gold Eagle sales accounted for only 13.5% of domestic gold production.

The public is beginning to understand that silver offers a much more affordable way to protect one’s wealth than gold. This realization has now taken a bigger bite out of the U.S. domestic silver production pie than is available. Even though the United States can import silver presently to supply its investment and industrial demand, this situation will change when the U.S. economy enters into STAGE 2 of the collapse.

When Will the Paradigm Shift in Silver Occur?

For the most part, Americans are completely oblivious of just how close the country is to a total disintegration of its fiat monetary system. As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the United States financial system died in 2008. It has been kept alive by policy deregulation, monetary printing, and market manipulation (including derivative manufacturing such as interest rate swaps). These collaborative short term machinations have a lifespan that is diminishing every passing day, while investors who have made the wise decision to exchange fiat money for gold and silver keep wondering how long this manipulation can continue.

I remember watching Peter Schiff on CNBC and Fox Business between the years of 2005-2007 debating about the upcoming collapse of the mortgage and housing markets. On several occasions, Schiff was the laughing stock on the set as anchors and other guests thought he was simply crazy in his forecasts. By 2008, the laughs had stopped while the country watched as the U.S. housing values began their rapid decline that would eventually surpass the disastrous records set during the 1930’s Great Depression.

The answer I give to individuals and investors who ask me the question “when will the manipulation end?” is that it will end when the U.S. enters into STAGE 2 or the Commercial Collapse.

Again, according to Orlov:

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Despite the forecasts of many analysts of what the U.S. Dollar index or government deficits will look like in the next decade, the U.S. economy will enter into STAGE 2 more likely than not in the next few years. The commercial collapse as described by Orlov is when the whole country will feel the impact of the ongoing economic disintegration.

This article is long enough and does not have time to go into the three other stages of collapse described by Orlov. It is recommended that the reader go to the link provided at the beginning of the article to get additional information on the five stages of collapse.

Briefly, Orlov witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and then wrote a book titled Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects describing these different stages. According to Orlov, a country does not have to systematically go through all five stages of collapse. But when the financial collapse occurs, the commercial collapse is sure to follow. With all things considered, Orlov believes the overall conditions are far worse in the United States today than they were for the U.S.S.R in 1989.

Currently, an overwhelming majority of the public has not learned its lesson since the collapse of the banking and housing markets in 2008, as they are still heavily invested in the U.S. Treasury and retirement markets. They still cling onto the belief that their paper investment wealth will be safe and provide for them well into the future. The graph below compares the amount of precious metal investment to the total amount of money held in U.S. retirement assets.

Since the American Eagle program started in 1986, there has been roughly $13.4 billion worth of these gold and silver coins purchased. Currently, the total market value of the GLD & SLV ETF is $76 billion. Furthermore, if we assume a 1% ownership of precious metals by the investment community in the United States, taken from information provided by the CPM Gold Yearbook 2011 (based on 0.7% gold as a percent of global financial assets and adding an estimated 0.3% for silver), we would get a figure of approximately $170 billion in these assets.

The total value assigned to the GLD & SLV is given as a form of reference and not as a recommendation for investment purposes. All paper claims on gold and silver are not a guarantee of owning the actual physical metal. Some vehicles such as the PSLV and PHYS enable the investor to trade in shares for actual metal (under certain guidelines).

According to the Investment Company Institute’s third quarter news release in 2011, the total value of U.S. retirement assets was $17 trillion. The breakdown was as follows: $4.6 trillion in IRA’s, $4.3 trillion in defined benefit plans, $4.2 trillion in govt. pension plans, $2.3 trillion in private sector defined-benefit plans, and $1.6 trillion in annuities.

All retirement plans are based on a continued income stream from the market. There is really nothing backing these assets except the faith that the market will continue to grow and function providing the returns to pay its investors when they retire. However, the financial system already experienced its Negative Paradigm Shift in 2007-2008, rendering growth at its necessary rate to perpetually sustain an income stream under a fiat monetary system now impossible.

The graph above indicates the degree of mass psychology in the different investments. Presently, the overwhelming majority is invested in the $17 trillion retirement market. Unfortunately, these retirement assets will go the same way that the housing and financial markets did in 2008-2009. It is only a matter of time.

Gold has been called the “Barbarous Relic”, time and time again on CNBC and Fox Business. There is a certain amount of hubris and ego attached to our present financial house of cards— a paradigm that is coming to an end. Those who believe that gold is a barbarous relic are still drinking that barbarous water, or breathing that barbarous air, or eating that barbarous bread or still cleaning with that barbarous object called a broom. All these so-called barbarous items listed above haven’t changed much since the Roman and Medieval times.

The constant negative rhetoric of gold in the main stream media keeps the mass psychology of the public away from investing in the precious metals and into increasing worthless paper retirement assets.

The Coming Positive Paradigm Shift in Silver

As mentioned before, the paradigm shift in gold and silver will occur when the United States enters into Stage 2, the commercial collapse. This article focuses on silver due to the fact that the majority of gold that has ever been mined is still stashed away nicely in vaults across the world. However, due to silver’s dual role as an investment and industrial commodity, a large percentage of silver that has been mined has been consumed in industrial fabrication and lost forever— continuously diminishing its supply and raising its value.

When silver performs its paradigm shift, it will behave in the opposite fashion as the first three charts in this article. While AIG, Fannie Mae and Citigroup suffered negative paradigm price shifts, silver will be awarded a positive one. The graph below gives a possible representation of this paradigm shift. Repeat… a representation of this paradigm shift:

The $150 Free Market Price of silver was calculated by inputting the Jan. 1980 high price of silver into the inflation calculator at Shadowstats.com. I realize there will be a great deal of backlash on this $150 figure… so here is the rationale behind it:

1. This figure was based on the “official CPI statistics”. John Williams at Shadowstats.com has an alternative SGS calculation using older inflation parameters which would make the price much higher.
2. The manufacturing of trillions of dollars of derivatives has siphoned investment money away from physical assets such as silver, keeping their prices artificially low.
3. The overwhelming number of paper claims (100+ to 1) on every physical ounce of silver has also sucked investment money away from the physical metal, also depressing its actual price.

Even though the last two reasons above can overlap in definition, they were separated due to the type of derivatives experienced in the market. The second reason focuses on the tremendous amount of financial derivatives such as interest rate swaps and retirement accounts. The third deals with the silver derivatives themselves— options, futures, pool accounts, silver certificates and silver ETF’s. The possible paradigm price shift of silver shown above represents a trend when the mass psychology of the market becomes increasingly aware of the true fundamentals of physical assets such as silver. The higher the price goes, the more fundamentally aware the market becomes.

The fact of the matter is that the stocks of AIG, Fannie Mae and Citigroup were garbage and worthless well before 2007. If we were to look at their charts above and draw a straight line from where their current stock prices are today and go back all away across the chart to the year 2002, we would see a fair indication of a free market value.

Yet, the majority of investors today are still suffering from the same mass psychology that kept the financial and housing markets elevated several years ago. Today, the investor’s confidence is placed firmly in the U.S. Treasury and Retirement markets. These are the two final greatest bubbles in history.

The U.S. banking system has no real fractional reserve to speak of and its monetary unit called the Federal Reserve Note is backed by $15.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt. The global oil supply is peaking and there will not be the available cheap energy in the future to fuel the U.S. economy to be able to pay back these debts or fulfill the obligations of the current $17 trillion retirement market.

While, the U.S. Govt. and Wall Street may be able to postpone the inevitable for a while longer by printing more dollar digits, issuing more paper treasuries and manufacturing more derivatives, these are temporary solutions. There are other alternatives that the U.S. could opt to take, such as backing the dollar with gold or erasing all the debt and starting over. Unfortunately, these are not the choices that are being considered by the leaders in government.

The paradigm shift in silver shown above is a representation of a possible trend in the future. Anything can change its outcome in time and price. That being said, when global markets cannot avoid heading into an unavoidable negative exponential trajectory as they presently are, (including the U.S. economic system) changes in price or value move up or down quickly and violently.

A change in mass psychology will play a big part in the market realization of the true fundamental price of silver. Silver will outperform gold in percentage terms as it will be more affordable to the masses. The majority of technical charting and a great deal of analysis on the internet are nothing more than white noise to confuse and frustrate.

Lastly, to all the silver investors who are purchasing physical bullion on the dips, remain patient— the silver paradigm shift is coming.

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The Pentagon is set to launch a floating naval base in the Middle East, a move which would make the military more flexible but could cause friction with America’s friends and foes alike.

The vessel, which has unofficially been called the ‘mothership’, is set to be converted from an out-of-date warship, and could be ready for deployment by this summer.

Its probable destination is the Persian Gulf, where tensions have been rising between the U.S. and Iran.

USS Ponce: The 40-year-old ship was due to be decommissioned but will instead by fitted into a permanent ‘mothership’ base for smaller vessels

The USS Ponce, a 40-year-old ship which was due to be decommissioned at the end of this year, will instead be turned in to a mobile base for smaller vessels.

These vessels will be used by Navy SEALs to help them on missions such as the rescue of an American woman and a Danish man from Somali pirates this week.

Ironically, the use of a floating base would mimic the practice of East African pirates, who often use ships they have hijacked as a base for their own skiffs.

The plan to use the Ponce as a ‘mothership’ was first reported by the Washington Post after the military published a document calling for private firms to bid to remodel the ship to turn it in to in a permanent presence.

As well as a base on the shore of Bahrain, the Persian Gulf currently hosts a U.S. aircraft carrier and several warships which are used to deploy smaller ships.

However, these ships must move around the waters regularly, while a ‘mothership’ can remain in the same place for weeks.

Base: The ‘mothership’ is most likely to be located in the Persian Gulf, pictured

Although the Pentagon has not confirmed where the ‘mothership’ would be based, another document has specified that the ship must be delivered to the Persian Gulf.

The Gulf has become a major flashpoint in recent weeks after Iran threatened to shut it off to U.S. vessels in response to the latest round of sanctions designed to target the country’s nuclear programme.

Top Iranian officials have warned that closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz would be ‘easier than drinking a glass of water’.

The establishment of a new permanent base in international waters would doubtless strain relations further – and could also intimidate American allies such as Saudi Arabia.

A Pentagon official told Fox News that the military was concerned about the possibility of mines being placed in the Strait of Hormuz or elsewhere in the Gulf, and a tender document specified that the ‘mothership’ should have anti-ballistic capabilities.

However, despite the dangers, there would be significant upsides for the U.S. having a base which is not located in any one country, as they would no longer be dependent on the hospitality of an autocratic Middle Eastern regime.

Work on converting the Ponce could begin within three weeks, according to military documents.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093035/Navy-launch-mothership-floating-base-Middle-East-summer.html#ixzz1lRms4eCZ

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(CNN) – Occupy activists tossed pipes, bottles, burning flares and other objects Saturday at Oakland police, who responded by using tear gas and smoke grenades and arresting more than 100 demonstrators, city and police officials said.

Oakland has been a flash point of the Occupy movement since October when police used tear gas to break up demonstrators who refused to leave downtown. One demonstrator, a Marine veteran of the war in Iraq, suffered a skull fracture after being hit with a police projectile, according to a veteran’s group. Police said they acted after the crowd threw paint and other objects at officers.

On Saturday, police made mass arrests following an afternoon clash with protesters near the Kaiser Convention Center and then later outside a downtown YMCA, according to a police statement.

The tension began Saturday around noon when about 250 activists gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza. They were joined later by another 200 people as they marched around the city.

Police said the protesters “began tearing down perimeter fences around” the Kaiser center around 2:30 p.m., with officers ordering the protesters to leave the area about 20 minutes later.

“The City of Oakland welcomes peaceful forms of assembly and freedom of speech, but acts of violence, property destruction and overnight lodging will not be tolerated,” the statement said.

On its Twitter feed, Oakland police wrote that people near the YMCA were being arrested for unlawful assembly. Police claimed, too, that parts of the Oakland Museum and Kaiser Center were “severely impacted,” with people cutting and tearing fences.

Occupy protesters also blocked traffic at major intersections and attacked a KTVU television truck, damaging the truck and breaking windows, the station said. No injuries were reported.

By nightfall, Occupy protesters moved toward Oakland City Hall, according to the group’s Twitter feed.

“Amazing day. We didnt get in the building, but fought like our future depended on it,” the group tweeted.

Posts on Occupy Oakland’s Twitter feed claim that police met the protesters “with munitions and violence.” One read: “#OccupyOakland being teargassed smoked bombed & shot at w rubber bullets.”

Oakland police said they used only smoke and tear gas. They did so after warning activists who had begun “destroying construction equipment and fencing” around the Kaiser center, authorities said. Officers were “pelted” with bottles, metal pipes, rocks and burning flares, according to another police statement released earlier in the day.

While there was no immediate word on injuries to protesters, Oakland police said that three of their officers were hurt in the earlier clash.

After that incident, roughly 500 activists returned to Ogawa Plaza, according to a police statement. Aerial video footage showed them later on the move and a post on Occupy Oakland’s Twitter feed indicated they were planning to march to a “second building” — an apparent reference to the YMCA.

While touting the action as “Move-In Day” on their website, occupyoaklandmoveinday.org, organizers did not state what “large, vacant” building they planned to occupy. They also acknowledged that “like the encampment at Oscar Grant Plaza, the building move-in is not legal.”

But the group said the move was necessary, in part because “since November, the city of Oakland and its police force have made it impossible for us to meet, to serve food, and to provide a place for people to stay.”

“Occupy Oakland is about people providing for themselves and for others, since it is clear that the system can no longer provide for them,” the group said on its website. “It is a place where people who are fed up can come together and develop new forms of struggle.”

In a letter to Mayor Jean Quan, the city council and the Oakland police department, protesters threatened several actions if authorities try to “evict us again.” They included “blockading the airport indefinitely, occupying City Hall indefinitely, shutting down the Oakland ports” and getting help from the activist hacking group known as Anonymous.

In mid-December, Occupy protesters shut down the Oakland port terminal.

Following October’s clashes with protesters, Police Chief Howard Jordan said “all allegations of misconduct and excessive uses of forces are being thoroughly investigated by internal and external investigative sources,” according to a letter posted on the department’s website.

The website also solicits “input … about police interactions with protesters during the Occupy Oakland protests.” People are asked to contact the independent investigator who is looking into authorities’ actions in October and November 2011.

CNN’s Greg Morrison contributed to this report.

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The Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams (VIPR) conducted 3,895 surface transportation operations in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Screenings occurred at some of the nation’s 500 Amtrak stations.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• More teams are approved for Transportation Security Administration rail, bus searches
• Civil liberties groups troubled by searches at passenger stations
• TSA “VIPR teams” created after 2004 Madrid railway terrorist bombings
• VIPR teams also monitor semi-trucks at highway weigh stations

(CNN) – Rick Vetter and his teen son got a pretty good look at the legal line between privacy and security last month, as they wrapped up a day trip to Charlotte, North Carolina.

After watching the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons beat the Carolina Panthers, they were looking forward to a three-hour train ride back home to Raleigh when they arrived at the train station.

Walking up a ramp toward the platform, they noticed what appeared to be a uniformed Transportation Security Administration officer holding a leashed police dog.

“He just loosened the leash on the dog, and the dog came over to check me out,” Vetter said. Standing on the platform above Vetter were three other officers who appeared to be wearing bullet-proof vests.

As the guard dog smelled him, Vetter — who has two dogs of his own — told the officer that it probably was reacting to the smell of Vetter’s pets.

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“The TSA officer said ‘OK’ or something like that. Then it was clear that the dog had done what he needed to do, and we went on up the ramp to get on the train.”

“I’m sure somebody who wasn’t comfortable with dogs would have found it a lot more disconcerting than I did, but I sort of didn’t worry about it,” said Vetter, an attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Vetters had encountered VIPR — special TSA Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams that are tasked with performing random, unpredictable baggage and security checks at passenger train, subway and bus stations as well as trucking weigh stations across the nation.

TSA officials like to point out that the acronym stands for Transportation Security Administration, not the Airport Security Administration. And that’s where VIPR comes in.

Born after 2004′s Madrid railway bombings, VIPR suffered some embarrassing coordination struggles, transit officials say.

The program has 15 teams and is expanding to get access to 12 new teams to spot-check thousands of transportation depots across the nation.

VIPR teams conducted 3,895 operations in “surface modes” nationwide in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security (PDF).

The expansion comes after intelligence from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound revealed al Qaeda plans to target U.S. rail systems on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

At a time when TSA airport searches are unpopular among many air travelers, civil liberties groups say VIPR’s joint participation with local police in “warrantless” searches have been “flying under the radar” in violation of constitutional protections. Transit police say it helps them better guard against attacks like those that have hit Madrid, London and Moscow since 2004.

VIPR teams join local authorities for many of their operations aimed at searching passenger bags. Authorities say officers include plainclothes and uniformed team members — some of them armed — who arrive without telling passengers in advance.

Officers in the joint operations then randomly ask travelers for permission to search their bags for explosives. To prevent accusations of profiling, searchers choose a random number — eight for example — and then search the bags of every eighth passenger before they board.

Also, VIPR observers may be in the vicinity, keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior, police say.

Local and federal authorities insist the searches are not mandatory.

… in a surprise situation like that, I would not have been pleased.
Rick Vetter, Amtrak passenger

But passengers who refuse are not allowed on the train, forcing some travelers to make a tough decision.

“If you’re going to make a choice between having somebody search you — even though you question whether they have the right to do that — or having to find another way home, I’d probably have let them search me,” Vetter said. Luckily, he said, it didn’t come to that. Officers did not ask to search his backpack.

As an attorney for the EPA, Vetter is pretty familiar with his Fourth Amendment constitutional right protecting him from “unreasonable searches.”

“At the airport, everybody now understands it’s part of the process,” he said. “You can either choose to deal with it or not. But in a surprise situation like that, I would not have been pleased.”

‘Security theater’

New Jersey Transit Police Chief Christopher Trucillo, who works regularly with VIPR teams, acknowledged that the search system isn’t perfect.

Potential attackers carrying explosives who refuse searches are free to simply drive to the next station on the line and board there.

“Because of the sheer number of passengers, there’s nothing that would prevent you from doing that,” Trucillo said. But there also are “things behind the scenes that are not visible to the traveling public that we employ to keep our system safe.”

The administrative search does not require probable cause.
Kimberley Thompson, Transportation Security Administration

This isn’t security, Christopher Calabrese of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union says. It’s “security theater.”

Such searches offer no protection to society at the cost of passengers’ civil liberties and convenience, he says. “We’re very troubled by the VIPR program.”

A high-profile example of VIPR’s growing pains, transit officials say, is a VIPR-assisted passenger screening a year ago at Amtrak’s station in Savannah, Georgia.

Instead of screening passengers as they boarded trains — which is standard security procedure — officers were screening passengers as they were getting off trains.

Security experts know that makes no sense, because potential terrorists probably would be interested in bringing explosives onto trains, not taking them off.

When Amtrak’s police chief, John O’Connor, got wind of it, he “was very clearly angry,” said Trains Magazine reporter Don Phillips, who spoke to O’Connor at the time.

O’Connor and TSA officials then hammered out an agreement on how future VIPR/Amtrak operations would be conducted.

The chief now says the Savannah operation simply “didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and VIPR has since realized their misunderstanding and have corrected what they do.”

The TSA needs to understand that train stations are not airports.
Sean Jeans-Gail, National Association of Railroad Passengers

“We were pleased with the way O’Connor responded,” said Sean Jeans-Gail of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, who fears that the searches might affect a more than century-old tradition in America’s train stations.

“The TSA needs to understand that train stations are not airports, they’re publicly open hubs for community activity, which often include shopping facilities. The TSA needs to be more mindful of that.”

VIPR-assisted transit and rail searches haven’t been challenged in court, but it’s likely, civil liberties groups say. “I think expanding the program will be problematic politically and legally,” said Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Any courtroom battle over VIPR searches will pick apart the Fourth Amendment, which bars police searches unless there’s “probable cause” to believe a crime has been committed.

But the TSA claims “administrative search authority” to conduct random checkpoint searches of passengers and baggage at “surface transportation venues” without probable cause, according to TSA spokeswoman Kimberley Thompson.

“… the administrative search does not require probable cause, but must further an important government need, such as preventing would-be terrorists from bringing an explosive device onto a crowded commuter train,” Thompson said.

In certain very limited circumstances, especially after the 9/11 attacks, courts have ruled that Fourth Amendment rights don’t apply because of the threat of terrorism.

In a 2006 case that didn’t involve VIPR, subway rider Brendan MacWade and three others sued the City of New York and its police commissioner, challenging passenger bag searches at subway entrances where people were chosen at random. MacWade lost on appeal because the court ruled the searches were legal under the Fourth Amendment’s “special needs doctrine.”

… subways are a harder call because so many people ride them and they don’t fly in the sky.
Jeffrey Toobin, CNN Senior Legal Analyst

“The courts have said that — because airplanes are so vulnerable to hijacking and bombs — certain privacy interests have to be sacrificed,” CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin said. “I think subways are a harder call because so many people ride them and they don’t fly in the sky. But because they’re underground and vulnerable, the court said the searches were OK. Would it be the same at a bus station or a busy city street? The line starts to get very tough.”

Few Amtrak passengers have ever refused to be searched, O’Connor said. “We’ve done thousands of them, and I would say less than a handful of people have chosen to seek other transportation.”

The TSA says VIPR is performing the searches often at the invitation of local or state authorities. “TSA is not arbitrarily going out there now and searching passengers and trying to violate their rights,” Thompson said. “We’re conducting searches in conjunction with the stakeholders.”

Is VIPR working? It’s hard to know.

When asked if VIPR has ever directly resulted in discovered explosives or the arrest of suspected attackers, Thompson said, “Specific operational results are considered security sensitive information. Although the value of deterrence is difficult to measure directly the presence of law enforcement transportation security personnel VIPR assets increases the difficulty with which potential terrorists plan and conduct terrorist activity.”

VIPR’s spot-checking role, rail security experts say, saves the high cost of deploying officers at every passenger transportation depot in the nation — which they point out would be virtually impossible.

The surprise element of a VIPR team accompanying local police at a train station or truck weigh station on the day of a planned attack might force a terrorist to cancel the attack. “This kind of unpredictability is another tool in the toolbox to manipulate and play with their minds and cause a level of tactical deterrence,” Rand security analyst Brian A. Jackson said.

As Amtrak’s O’Connor puts it: “You never know where those search scenes are going to show up.”

Watching the truckers

Truckers driving their rigs through Tennessee last October were surprised to be caught up in a VIPR joint exercise with local law enforcement targeting five freight truck weigh stations and two bus stations, CNN affiliate WTVF reported.

Unpredictability is another tool in the toolbox to manipulate and play with [terrorists'] minds.
Brian A. Jackson, Rand security analyst

“Transportation Security officers did not search the trucks,” the TSA’s Thompson told CNN. “Technically, if you think about a dog walking around a truck, sniffing for trace explosives, from my understanding is still technically a search. That’s the only search the VIPRs were actually involved in.” TSA officers, she said, were mostly handing out fliers. “They weren’t out there searching people, and they weren’t out there searching trucks.”

The action was described as a statewide VIPR operation, and officials told WTVF that it wasn’t a response to any particular threat, which troubles the American Trucking Associations.

“Adding security personnel at weigh stations in unfamiliar federal uniforms is not likely to raise the comfort level of commercial drivers entering weigh stations, unless there is a threat to the highway sector,” ATA spokesman Martin Rojas said. It “doesn’t seem like the best use of TSA resources unless there is information or intelligence that supports increased highway security.”

What other countries are doing

Spain and Russia significantly beefed up their rail security in the years after deadly terrorist bomb attacks killed 191 in Madrid in 2004 and 40 in Moscow in 2010.

Although there are no regular baggage checks for passengers on Spanish trains, subways and buses, the nation’s bullet trains do use electronic scanners. Far more undercover plainclothes agents and uniformed officers are believed to be stationed in or near major transit hubs. Madrid’s metro trains use a private security patrol force and closed-circuit video surveillance.

Moscow — with the world’s second-busiest subway system — has spent $1.6 billion over three years to strengthen its transit security, said security analyst Rick Nelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. transit officials look to VIPR to augment security during tough financial times for many communities.

“We’d prefer to see a greater investment directly with the transit agencies,” said Greg Hull of the American Public Transportation Association. “Failing that, having the ability to draw upon these resources that are under the control of the Department of Homeland Security certainly is a viable alternative.”

They could have provided some advance warning.
Rick Vetter, Amtrak passenger

For the Vetters, their father-and-son brush with train passenger searches offered a real-world life lesson.

Rick Vetter remembers that his wife recently gave him a refrigerator magnet featuring a quote from Ben Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

“The VIPR operation certainly didn’t amount to that,” Vetter said. “They could have handled it better in the sense that they could have provided some advance warning that they’re expanding this to train stations and bus stations.”

The Ben Franklin magnet sprang from his son’s government lessons in school, Vetter said, which led to a family discussion about tradeoffs in society.

“You’ve got to decide in society where you’re going to draw some of those lines,” Vetter said. “You, as an individual, may or may not agree where that line is drawn, but once it’s drawn, you’ve got some choices to make.”

CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman and CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin contributed to this report.

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Documentary Film Review: “The Greater Good”

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To paraphrase the assessment of libertarian socialist Rosa Luxemburg a century ago, we face an imminent choice between freedom and barbarism. There are only two possible outcomes in the present struggle between the authoritarian institutions of state and corporation, and the emergent society of self-organized networks and other voluntary associations of free people:

The state will fail, and be replaced by a society in which people are free to pool their cooperative labor and skills as they see fit, and to exchange the products of their labor with their equals.

Or, the state will succeed — and create a technofascist empire that reduces humanity to serfdom and takes the biosphere down in flames.  Now that the conflict is fairly begun, there is no going back to the status quo ante.

Vinay Gupta, whose many hats include specialist in security issues, argues that the passage of NDAA (with its provisions for indefinite detention without trial) and the shutdown of Megaupload without due process of law signal the emergence of the US as a full-blown fascist state.

And he suggests the possibility that, as governments implode in the face of networked resistance movements in countries like Spain and Greece, free information havens emerge in places like Iceland, and one domino after another in the global South begins to secede from the neoliberal order, the United States will become embroiled in a desperate World War of counterinsurgency, using air strikes, blockades, cyberwar, black ops, hunter-killer drones, and crowd-control technologies to suppress the emerging free order. The street fighting between riot cops and Occupy protesters was just a dress rehearsal, as Spain was for WWII.

Even if it comes to this, I believe the state — and the cluster of authoritarian institutions of which it is the core — will fail.

Because local nodes in self-organized networks are free to take action or innovate without waiting for permission from an administrative apparatus, and every other node in the network is similarly free to learn by example and adopt the innovations without permission, they fully exploit agility advantages of networked communications in ways that authoritarian hierarchies are unequipped to.

We saw this recently with the development of Firefox’s DeSopa circumvention utility before SOPA even came up for a vote, and Anonymous’s massive same-day DDOS attack in response to a federal takedown of MegaUpload that had been months in the planning. Last summer Tor developers released a workaround the very same day Iranian authorities thought they’d shut down the encrypted router network.

Other examples of this agility include the lightning spread of the Arab Spring across the Middle East and into Europe, and the mushroom global proliferation of Occupy camps to hundreds of cities in a matter of days. These networked movements react almost instantaneously to police repression in any one place. Local and national governments are typically so blindsided by the scale of resistance in their own domains, they’re able to offer little if anything in the way of support to other regimes falling victim to the same full-court press. The phrase “Two, three, many Vietnams” comes to mind.

The resistance is further aided by conflict between states, as the advantage shifts from hierarchies to networks. The hegemonic American state’s attempt to suppress networked uprisings comes up against a growing anti-American coalition of smaller states provoked by the Empire’s dominance. The technological advantage accruing to asymmetric warfare means even small states can develop effective hacks against American technologies of global domination, at comparatively little cost. Witness the American security state’s recent obsession with cheap “Assassin’s Mace” and “area denial” weapons that threaten its power projection capability.

As Gupta argues, the fundamentally evil nature of the American state’s counter-insurgency agenda results in cognitive dissonance among the rulers, as many soldiers and police become demoralized from an inability to face the truth of their missions, internal functionaries of the state (like Bradley Manning) become disaffected by the disjuncture between official propaganda and the testimony of their own eyes, and domestic populations’ access to unofficial news and streaming video undermines the official narrative. Because of this, the state leadership cannot trust the motives of its soldiers and other functionaries, or give them the full autonomy and the unfiltered knowledge of reality that effective networked warfare requires.

As Julian Assange points out, when authoritarian hierarchies are attacked from outside they respond by becoming more brittle and internally opaque to themselves.

The combination of networks’ quick adaptation to changing situations with hierarchies’ demoralization and internal opacity means networks generally stay inside what strategist John Boyd called the “OODA loop” of hierarchies: That is, they keep the enemy permanently off-balance, and repeatedly force them to react to situations instead of creating them.

In the long run, it’s no contest.

Citations to this article:

• Kevin Carson, Why the state will fail, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age, 02/01/12

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Auburn University philosophy professor Roderick Long coined the term “conflationism” for the tendency to confuse the free market — whether in accusatory or apologetic polemics — with actually existing capitalism. Left-conflationism is the practice of attacking the evils of actually existing corporate capitalism as if they were the result of “laissez-faire” or the “free market.” Right-conflationism is the mirror-image defense of the status quo, as if “the imagined virtues of the imaginary freed market constitute a justification for the reality of existing corporatist capitalism” — that is, cloaking the defense of corporatism in “free market rhetoric.”

The January 21 issue of The Economist, which is dedicated to the theme of “State Capitalism,” is a stellar example of right-conflationism. The writers equate “State Capitalism” to some degree of state ownership and/or control of business firms competing in the marketplace, or to what used to be called “industrial policy” (i.e. government directing investment funds to those it regards as economic “winners”).

State Capitalism includes the Chinese model, in which the state organizes the Chinese equivalent of vertically integrated zaibatsu and reserves a major share of seats in senior management for government officials; Russian-style kleptocratic or oligarchical capitalism; and the petrostate State Capitalism in which the state directs petrodollars into state-favored development projects.

Such forms of “state-directed capitalism,” of course, are contrasted with the wholesome Anglo-American model of “liberal capitalism.” You know — what Mitt Romney calls “Our Free Enterprise System.” The ’80s and ’90s, it seems, were an era of “free market triumphalism” under the Great Helmsmen Thatcher and Reagan.

Well, not quite. So-called “liberal capitalism” has its own “reserved chairs,” it seems — for former corporate management as political appointees in federal agencies, and for former regulatory officials in the senior management of large corporations. Anyone who’s seen the recent virally circulated Venn diagrams of the personnel overlap between Monsanto and USDA personnel, or Pfizer and FDA, will immediately know what I’m talking about. And US President Barack Obama — that “socialist” fan of Saul Alinsky we hear so much about — certainly seems to have reserved a lot of seats in his Cabinet for former Goldman-Sachs and Monsanto higher-ups.

I wonder what the writers at The Economist think of a model of “liberal capitalism” in which international “Intellectual Property” accords are drafted in secrecy by representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America, and only afterward offered for review to other “civil society organizations.” Or in which MPAA chief Chris Dodd proudly announces that the Stop Online Piracy Act was drafted in a “democratic process” in which “all the major stakeholders” had seats at the table (“all the major stakeholders” apparently consisting of the music, movie and software companies).

I wonder what they think of a transnational corporate economy in which the major “Western liberal capitalist” players are dependent on direct state subsidies, state-enforced “intellectual property” monopolies, or both for their profits.

Think about it. First, you have firms directly plugged in to the military-industrial and security-industrial complexes, with the DOD or TSA as their primary customers. You have the electronics industry, whose R&D was primarily government-funded throughout the Cold War, and which is protected from global competition by the drastic expansion of patent protections under the TRIPS accord. You have the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, at least half of whose research is taxpayer-funded and which are heavily dependent on government patent enforcement for their monopoly profits and market shares. And you have corporate agribusiness — ’nuff said.

Subtract all this, and what do you have left? A model of capitalism in which the commanding heights of the economy are an interlocking directorate of large corporations and government agencies, a major share of the total operating costs of the dominant firms are socialized (and profits privatized, of course), and “intellectual property” protectionism and other regulatory cartels allow bureaucratic corporate dinosaurs like something out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil to operate profitably without fear of competition.

Some “liberal capitalism.” Capitalist? Sure. Liberal? Not so much.

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The increasing secularization of American society has taken a particular toll on Protestant identity, presenting the prospect that after more than 200 years of history, the United States may soon no longer be a majority Protestant country, according to a new study by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

The percentage of the population that is Protestant has been falling and will likely fall below 50 percent by mid-decade and may be there already, the research reported.

From 1972 until 1993 the Protestant share of the population remained stable. But then a decline set in. In 1993, 63 percent of Americans were Protestant, but by 2002, the number was 52 percent, NORC research found. During the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion went up from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent. The survey listed people as Protestant if they said they were members of a particular Protestant denomination, such as Baptist, United Methodist or Episcopalian. Membership in many of the Protestant denominations has been declining.

The change is another example of how the country is moving toward becoming a nation of minorities, said Tom W. Smith, Director of NORC’s General Social Survey, a 32-year-old survey that is widely referenced by social scientists as one of the nation’s most scientifically reliable gauges of public trends. NORC researcher Seokho Kim was co-author of the study, “The Vanishing Protestant Majority”.

The survey shows a continual erosion on many measures for Protestants in the past generation, while the proportion of people who say they are Catholic has remained fairly steady at about 25 percent of the population. People who said they belonged to other religions, including Eastern faiths and Islam, Orthodox Christians, interdenominational Christians, and native-American faiths increased from 3 percent to 7 percent between 1993 and 2002, while the number of people who said they were Jewish remained stable at slightly under 2 percent.

“Many scholars have noted that the numbers of people who say they have ‘no religion’ is increasing, but they haven’t noted what faith group these people have been leaving. It is clear that many of these people are former Protestants,” Smith said. It is possible as well that a small number of the people who formerly identified themselves as members of a Protestant denomination have now decided to identify themselves simply as “Christian” in which case they would be in the “other” category on the survey, Smith said.

The number of people who said they were raised Protestant remained stable at about 65 percent from 1973 to 1993 and then dropped to 56 percent in 2002.

“The decline in proportion raised Protestant indicates that the shift observed after 1993 was actually underway earlier,” Smith said. Because the average age of the respondents is about 45, the people surveyed after 1993 would have been reporting on a their childhood experiences on average about 30 years earlier.

Among people born after 1980, 49 percent said they were raised Protestant, the survey found.

“The recent Protestant decline comes in large part from the loss of younger adherents and a related drop in the retention rate,” he said. Up until 1993, about 90 percent of people who were raised Protestants remained Protestants as adults, while by 2002, the number had fallen to 83 percent.

Immigration will probably further decrease Protestant numbers but will keep Catholic rates stable, Smith said.

The General Social Survey is an in-person survey of a representative sample of Americans 18 and older. It has been conducted every one to two years from 1972 through 2002 with support from the National Science Foundation. The 2002 survey included 2,765 people.

“Keith Preston is a known racist, though with a peculiar anarchist pedigree, and the fact that you are quoting him favorably confirms my suspicion that there is something rotten in Occupy Appleton. Preston’s fantasy that poor Blacks will “trade” civil rights protections and affirmative action for “reparations” resulting in mutual “sovereignty” (that is to say some David Duke-style scheme to partition the country on racial lines) should not require the dignity of refutation. Here, for the benefit of others is a link to the full piece of Preston’s lunacy that is being promoted by whoever has admin privileges for Occupy Appleton: http://attackthesystem.com/liberty-and-populism-building-an-effective-resistance-movement-for-north-america/ Similarly, the terrorist nature of an unashamed and undisguised neo-Nazi outfit that marches with swastika emblazoned flags through Black communities and that hunts Mexicans in the desert is also self-evident.”

Read the thread here.

Clearly, this individual has a very limited understanding of the ARV/ATS concepts of separation of race and state, liberty and populism, pan-tribalism, class theory, and just about everything else.

I first encountered this guy around 24 years ago when he was heading up an anarcho-leftoid group based in Minneapolis called the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League (RABL).  From what I recall, they got their name after one of them threw a bowling ball through the window of a military recruitment office. The first time I saw Gunderson in action was at an anarchist “gathering” in Toronto in the summer of 1988. An anarchist friend remarked at the time that he seemed like bad news and the kind of personality that would eventually head up some kind of commie cult like the Maoist RCP.  That’s more or less what eventually happened. Eventually, “RABL” merged with the Revolutionary Socialist League, a Trotskyite group that converted en masse to anarcho-communism,  and an equally idiotic group from Chicago called the “Heyday Anarchists” (I remember them mostly for the feminazis in their ranks). The outcome of this merger was the “Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation.”

I was at Love and Rage’s founding conference in Chicago in 1989. The name was actually suggested by a woman whom, I believe, was Gunderson’s girlfriend at the time. I remember saying that it sounded like a good name for one the heavy metal “hair bands” that were around at the time. The ideology of Love and Rage was a very Weatherman-like “white skin privilege” type of thing (although, predictably, nearly all of the founding members were white, except for maybe 2 or 3 out of 40 or 5o early members).  One of their former members, Wayne Price, tells the story of what happened afterwards. Here’s the most interesting part:

A continental anarchist paper was produced for nine years, on a more-or-less monthly basis. Some activities were done on a federation-wide basis, including participating in several national U.S. demonstrations.

However from the beginning there had been certain undemocratic aspects of what many members meant by ‘revolutionary anarchism’. One was a widespread sympathy for Leninist-Stalinist movements of the ’60s and ’70s. Many members admired the Weatherpeople, the German Red Army Faction, the Black Liberation Army, and other groups who wanted to create revolutionary dictatorships over the mass of people. The very last L&R issue included a very favorable article about imprisoned members of the Weatherpeople, titled, Enemies of the State. It would have been better titled, Enemies of This State, Friends of a New State.

The other undemocratic weakness was the lack of interest in, or orientation to, the North American working class. At most there was a patronizing acceptance that some of us were interested in workers as workers. As an influential member told me, workers did not identify as workers. When a major student strike broke out in New York City public colleges, our members did excellent work in organizing and leading it (‘leading’ in a non-authoritarian way). But they sneered at the idea of orienting the student struggle toward the workers (who, at the time were also struggling against the city government over comparable issues).

Later, our Detroit members got involved in support work for the striking newspaper workers. Our people put out a flyer raising the general strike. L&R people in New York did not want to cover this in the continental paper. One member asked if the ‘general strike’ was a ‘Trotskyist idea’, so little did they know anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist history.

Ultimately, contempt for the workers, their organizations (unions), and their struggles, must be undemocratic. It leads to a view that a little group of young radicals, mostly college students and ex-students from the middle classes, can transform society by themselves – without going deep into the working class and the oppressed sections of society. This is consistent with an identification with radical Stalinism.

A final conflict broke out during the last two years of L&R. Chris Day, a founder and influential member (that is, a ‘leader’) had concluded that it was time to abandon anarchism. He told people informally that we had reached the limits of the anarchist ‘milieu’ and it was time to move on. He wrote a paper on The Historical Failure of Anarchism, emphasizing the programmatic weaknesses of anarchism. He declared that no revolution could succeed without a centralized, regular army and a revolutionary state. A group formed around him, particularly of people who had never had to chose between anarchism and authoritarian Marxism. Although they suddenly discovered the value of the international working class, their new-found Marxism was not of any of the libertarian or humanistic varieties (autonomes, council communism, CLR James, Eric Fromm, Hal Draper, etc.). It was Maoism – one of the most Stalinist, authoritarian, versions.

A small number of us began to resist, at first by writing counter documents. We were mostly, but not entirely, former members of the RSL, and were mostly older than the average member. What was upsetting and confusing to us was that most L&R members did not react to the dispute. They stayed out of it. This nonreaction was helped by the neo-Maoists’ maneuver of rarely stating openly that they rejected anarchism. Instead the group talked around this. They made hints, and then denials, and then direct statements, and then withdraw the statements. If people wanted to ignore the issue, it was made easy for them. We, the group that said there was a crisis, were treated as troublemakers.

As we saw it, the issue was the rejection of anarchism for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We were accused of being dogmatic, not active enough, being troublemakers, wrong on any number of other issues, and so on. There is a myth in the present anarchists movement that L&R collapsed due to weakness over African-American liberation. This was never a major dispute inside the organization, although perhaps it should have been. It was raised at the last minute, the main supporter of Race Traitor politics blocing with the Maoist faction. But it was never the issue in the faction fight, that being anarchism versus Maoism.

When this group was first formed I circulated a critical analysis of them throughout the anarchist milieu that was published in most of the anarchist magazines that were around back then (this was before the internet, of course).  What I basically said was that Love and Rage were a bunch of crypto-commies trying to coopt anarchism for some kind of totalitarian leftism and promote a race war in the process.  Unfortunately, my critique seems to have been accurate. That was really the beginning of my longstanding feud with the anarcho-leftoids. It still comes up even today: http://www.onepeoplesproject.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=724:keith-preston&catid=16:p&Itemid=3

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To those wary of corporate power, Halliburton — a multinational oil field services provider — has become a sort of caricature, rivaled only by Monsanto in epitomizing shameless boardroom gluttony. Until 2007, Halliburton owned Kellogg Brown & Root, a company that specializes in a ridiculously cartoonish array of malicious enterprises, from contracting mercenaries to constructing oil fields.

Halliburton jettisoned the company in response to the impressively evil array of controversies that surround the company; KBR has been accused of bribing Nigerian officials, inflating gasoline prices, concealing the gang rape of a female employee, overseeing human trafficking operations in Jordan and exposing American soldiers to burning dioxin and asbestos.

In 2000, Halliburton’s CEO and chairman, Dick Cheney, left the company to become vice president of the nation. On Aug. 12, 2000, the New York Times reported that Cheney netted a $20 million retirement package in the process. After Vice President Cheney played an instrumental role in the government’s decision to invade Iraq, Halliburton — and, specifically, KBR — was awarded millions of dollars in exclusive military contracts, according to a Feb. 11, 2009, CBS article.

With this powerful anecdote in mind, it’s difficult to fathom why anyone who wishes to protect our planet’s natural beauty from corporate trampling would wish to concentrate power in the hands of the federal government.

KBR’s boom time Iraq War profits demonstrate that the most unjust of CEOs and politicians operate as a singular oligarchy. They are, in essence, the same group of people. Taking power from CEOs and giving it to their politician golf buddies doesn’t stand in the way of environmental destruction — it expedites it.

Political centralization is, for example, entirely responsible for the rise of CAFOs, or confined animal feeding operations. These operations often involve tens of thousands of cattle, pigs and chickens, crammed into compact indoor facilities; the State Environmental Resource Center states the average CAFO puts 10 family farms out of business.

These animal factories are associated with water contamination, poisonous fumes and an unparalleled stench that devalues surrounding property. They are so disgusting that, in one Iowan facility in 1997, thousands of hogs quickly suffocated on their own gases when a ventilation system failed, according to a report by Mark Lawrence for the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

It is understandable that Americans who are subjected to CAFOs would overwhelmingly wish to protect the quality of their immediate water and air — not to mention their way of life — by driving these abominations out of town. A community might even peaceably prevent a CAFO from ever appearing by, for example, making immigration conditional on a contract that disallows selling otherwise private property to a CAFO operator.

CAFO lobbyists, however, have been very successful in persuading large government entities to shove CAFOs down the throats of dissenting communities. According to the State Environmental Resource Center, the state legislatures of Minnesota and Wisconsin have both passed laws that block local municipalities from making any decisions regardingCAFOs. If one individual chooses to sell property to a CAFO operator, the entire community is therefore subjected to the range of horrors that CAFOs offer.

There’s a remarkably simple reason why CAFO lobbyists have found state legislators vastly more amiable than city halls. Unlike the mayors and city councilmen of CAFO towns, the central legislators of these states do not inhale the putrid stink of CAFOs when they step outside, do not drink water contaminated by the concentrated waste of 10,000 hogs and do not have friends and family members whose family businesses and traditions have been steamrolled by outsiders.

Political centralization never favors those who bear the brunt of environmental damage. Local governments are the most accountable because they share the experiences of their constituents. Any concentration of power over greater and greater numbers of people in fewer and fewer hands ultimately reduces accountability.

I’ve repeatedly been asked how, given my concern for the environment, I can wish to decentralize government power. Granted, when communities are allowed to manage their internal affairs, some will invariably make the wrong choices. However, when we centralize power over many communities, we run the risk that even responsible localities will be stuck with a choice no less harmful. Our planet, and the generations who will inherit it, deserve better.

Ian Huyett is a junior in political science and anthropology. Please send all comments to opinion@kstatecollegian.com.

Keith Preston interviews Richard Spencer. Topics include:

• The origins of the “alternative right” and how it differs from the mainstream “conservative movement”;
• The impact of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche as the principal intellectual influence on the alternative right;
• Why alternative rightists tend towards a more skeptical view of American power around the world than ordinary conservatives;
• The greater willingness alternative right thinkers to entertain a more critical view of Christianity and why Christians on the alternative right tend to lean more towards Catholic traditionalism or Orthodoxy as opposed to the Protestant fundamentalism of American conservatives;
• Why the United States is unsustainable as a nation-state entity.

Richard Spencer is the founder of AlternativeRight.com, executive director of the National Policy Institute, a former editor of Taki’s Magazine and the American Conservative, and host of the Vanguard Internet radio program.

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wired.com
Katie Drummond

The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: A bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target.

The breakthrough comes courtesy of engineers at Sandia National Laboratory, owned by Lockheed Martin. They’ve successfully tested a prototype of the bullet at distances up to 2,000 meters — more than a mile. The photo above is an actual image taken during one of those tests. A light-emitting diode was attached to the bullet, showing the amazing pathway that the munition made through the night sky.

Of course, Lockheed’s been a longtime partner in the military’s quest for the ultimate, self-guided munition. In 2008, they scored a $14.5 million contract as part of Darpa’s “Exacto” program, which sought to develop sniper rifles with guided bullets. They’ve also been involved in the agency’s “One Shot” initiative, which is trying to develop scope-mounted lasers that can help snipers compensate for weather conditions.

Each self-guided bullet is around four inches in length. At the tip is an optical sensor, that can detect a laser beam being shone on a far-off target. Actuators inside the bullet get intel from the bullet’s sensor, and then “steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.” The bullet can self-correct its navigational path 30 times a second, all while flying more than twice the speed of sound.

Read more.

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(WikiCommons)

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Over the last week, several people that worked in the Reagan administration have come forward and countered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s claim that he is a “Reagan Republican.” These people say Gingrich “wasn’t on board with a lot of what President Ronald Reagan tried to accomplish during his two terms.”

And although that claim has been disputed by other Reagan administration officials, former Reagan communications director Pat Buchanan told “The McLaughlin Group” this weekend that Gingrich wasn’t seen favorably by those in the administration.

“[I]n the Reagan White House, Newt Gingrich was considered quite frankly by a lot of folks to be something of a political opportunist and who was not trusted and who had played no role whatsoever,” Buchanan said. “He was a Rockefeller Republican in the great Goldwater-Rockefeller battle, where conservatism came of age.”

Buchanan also theorized that Gingrich stumbled in two debates this week because he was caught off guard by all these people who turned on him.

“I do think this, though. Newt has been pounded merciously,” Buchanan said. “He had people he worked with basically turn on him and dump on him down there in Florida, which somehow I think may have had some role in the fact that the great fighter and battler of South Carolina had no fight in him whatsoever in the Monday and Thursday debates in Florida.’

“He let Mitt Romney punch him silly. And he has lost all his momentum. And John, I’m not going to make any predictions because I thought the battler of South Carolina would win Florida, but Romney is surging and it looks like Romney may win Florida. And if he does, it’s all over.”

Later Buchanan reiterated his criticisms of Gingrich, recalling his opposition to Reagan’s 1986 veto of a South African anti-Apartheid sanctions bill and about how Gingrich used it to score points against Reagan.

“I don’t think he has a core,” Buchanan said. “I don’t think he has a fundamental, ideological and political core. I think, look he moved, he was a Rockefeller Republican, he comes up — I remember meeting him in ’78 when he came to town, you know he is knocking Reagan. … Reagan believed that sanctions on South Africa would cripple the economy that the Africans would inherit. So it was a tough decision. Reagan vetoed it. And he scored points off us by you know voting for the sanctions and doing that. I don’t think he has an ideological core. I think he moves from one issue to another to another.”

Follow Jeff on Twitter

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/28/pat-buchanan-reagan-white-house-saw-newt-as-something-of-a-political-opportunist/#ixzz1ko8Ghn9D