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Sunday, November 18, 2018

"Red Flag" gun laws in good old America


From the frying pan into the fire.

John Whitehead at Rutherford.Org
"> Red Flag Gun Laws: Yet Another Government Weapon for Compliance and Control


We never learn.
In the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.
Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
Mark my words: red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.
These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.
Thirteen states now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.
As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.
Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.
Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.
With these red flag gun laws, the intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.
“We need to stop dangerous people before they act”: that’s the rationale behind the NRA’s support of these red flag laws, and at first glance, it appears to be perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others.
Where the problem arises, of course, is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
We’ve been down this road before.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.
Let that sink in a moment.
Now consider what happened in Maryland after a police officer attempted to “enforce” the state’s new red flag law, which went into effect on Oct. 1.
At 5 am on a Monday, two police officers showed up at 61-year-old Gary Willis’ house to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns. Willis answered the door holding a gun.
Mind you, in some states, merely answering the door holding a gun is enough to get you killed by police who have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.......
Posted by MariaS at 15:57 0 comments
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Cartoons





Cartoon by Adam Zyglis - Matthew Whitaker


 Cartoon by Paul Berge -


 Cartoon by Paul Berge -

 




Cartoon by Adam Zyglis - Matthew Whitaker
Posted by MariaS at 15:41 0 comments
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Lessons in How to be a "Mainstream Journalist"


This is a good one.  Worth reading the whole thing.

 From MediaLens UK
How To Be A Reliable ‘Mainstream’ Journalist


There are certain rules you need to follow as a journalist if you are going to demonstrate to your editors, and the media owners who employ you, that you can be trusted.
For example, if you write about US-Iran relations, you need to ensure that your history book starts in 1979. That was the year Iranian students started a 444-day occupation of the US embassy in Tehran. This was the event that 'led to four decades of mutual hostility', according to BBC News. On no account should you dwell on the CIA-led coup in 1953 that overthrew the democratically-elected Iranian leader, Mohammad Mossadegh. Even better if you just omit any mention of this.
You should definitely not quote Noam Chomsky who said in 2013 that:
'the crucial fact about Iran, which we should begin with, is that for the past 60 years, not a day has passed in which the U.S. has not been torturing Iranians.' (Our emphasis)
As Chomsky notes, the US (with UK support) installed the Shah, a brutal dictator, described by Amnesty International as one of the worst, most extreme torturers in the world, year after year. That ordinary Iranians might harbour some kind of grievance towards Uncle Sam as a result should not be prominent in 'responsible' journalism. Nor should you note, as Chomsky does, that:
'When he [the Shah] was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. almost immediately turned to supporting Saddam Hussein in an assault against Iran, which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, used extensive use of chemical weapons. Of course, at the same time, Saddam attacked his Kurdish population with horrible chemical weapons attacks. The U.S. supported all of that.'
As a 'good' journalist, you should refrain from referring to the US as the world's most dangerous rogue state, or by making any Chomskyan comparison between the US and the Mafia:
'We're back to the Mafia principle. In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders. That conflicts with the Mafia doctrine, by which the world is pretty much ruled. Credibility must be maintained. The godfather cannot permit independence and successful defiances, in the case of Cuba. So, Iran has to be punished for that.'................
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Thursday, November 15, 2018

Some of my tweets Nov 7 - 15














































































































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Trudeau says the right thing and makes an apology for wrong done BUT immediately after he says a very, very wrong thing.


In  2018 the support for Palestinians has grown even stronger than depicted in the cartoon below.




See the source image


On November 7, 2018 Trudeau  made a sincere apology for the wrong done to Jews who were turned away during WW2.  He should have stopped at that and not gone any further.  But he ventured to that hypocritical arena and while apologizing to one set of people, he insulted another.  What a moronic idiot!!


From Haaretz
Trudeau's anti-BDS Message During Apology for Turning Away Jews During WWII Continues to Make Waves
 Justin Trudeau apologized last week for the Canadian government's failure in 1939 to admit a ship carrying 907 German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution - and took a swipe at BDS

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized last week for the Canadian government's failure in 1939 to admit a ship carrying 907 German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.
"Today I rise to issue a long-overdue apology to the Jewish refugees Canada turned away," Trudeau said in a speech to Parliament......

From GlobalResearch
The Moral Fiber of Justin Trudeau. Palestine and the BDS Movement
 A Willfully Blind Eye to the Racism and Oppression Suffered by Palestinians
For any appeal to ethics and morality to have any legitimacy, the principles so enounced must be applied rigorously, without favor or prejudice, to all human beings whatever grouping they may be slotted into. In other words, favoritism and morality are an antithetical mixture.
The principle that holds morals apply equally to all humans seemingly eludes Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau.
On 7 November, Trudeau stood in the House of Commons and railed against anti-Semitism and rightly so. Anti-Semitism, as with any form of racism or hatred expressed against any grouping, is anathema.
Yet Trudeau’s taking up the cause of anti-Semitism by attacking the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is transparently, logically, and morally flawed.
Trudeau correctly apologized for Canada’s turning away Jewish refugees in 1939. Trudeau followed up the apology bemusedly:
Anti-Semitism is far too present. Jewish students still feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable on some of our colleges and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation.
And out of our entire community of nations, it is Israel whose right to exist is most widely and wrongly questioned.
Any form of racism in any iota is an iota too much. This applies to all groupings of humans. No one should be despised, looked down upon, or discriminated against merely by virtue of being attached to a group through birth or circumstances beyond one’s control. [1]
Yes, anti-Semitism exists. Probably every form of racism exists. It is deplorable to despise someone for the mere fact of being Jewish.
However, Zionism is a different animal. Political Zionism is racist to its core and highly discriminatory. Hence, if one is opposed to racism, then one must also speak out against racism by Jews against others. Some try to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; however, this is palpably fallacious. Imagine if someone tried to argue that if a person is opposed to the KKK that that person must therefore be against all white people (which would include most Jews). It is patently ludicrous, and it speaks ill to the intellectual rigor of any individual who would make such a claim.....
 
Posted by MariaS at 18:18 0 comments
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Some of my tweets ... November 1 - 6






























































Posted by MariaS at 18:32 0 comments
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Scum vs Scum .... Yes, most people are voting for nothing but scum in the America of today.


Read through the entire article.  It's a must read.


Chris Hedges at Truthdig
Scum vs Scum

There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician’s private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung jury.
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats’. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel—a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections—and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.
His Republican rival in the Senate race that will be decided Tuesday is Bob Hugin, whose reported net worth is at least $84 million. With Hugin as its CEO, the pharmaceutical firm Celgene made $200 million by conspiring to keep generic cancer drugs off the market, according to its critics. Celgene, a model of everything that is wrong with our for-profit health care system, paid $280 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who accused the firm of improperly marketing two drugs to treat several forms of cancer without getting Federal Drug Administration approval, thereby defrauding Medicare. Celgene, over seven years, also doubled the price of the cancer drug Revlimid to some $20,000 for a supply of 28 pills.
The Senate campaign in New Jersey has seen no discussion of substantive issues. It is dominated by both candidates’ …...

Posted by MariaS at 17:18 0 comments
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Global Warming explained .....


in a way that might get some of us non-believers look at the issue with new eyes.  


Paul Craig Roberts at his blog
Is The Evidence of Global Warming Too Scary For Humans To Cope With?

I appreciate the numerous emails thanking me for providing an understandable explanation of the global warming scenario. The book, Unprecedented Crime, about which I reported, caused me to start thinking more seriously about man-made global warming. I already was thinking about it, because capitalism owes its profits to the costs that it imposes on the environment, costs that are external to the capitalist entity. I have been thinking about this since I addressed “external costs” in my 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism. I am thinking that if man-made global warming is indeed in the cards, as the current evidence supports, the external costs of capitalism will far exceed the total value of all the goods produced over the course of the industrial revolution. Past material comforts will be paid for by future curtailment of life on Earth. Greed, gluttony, envy, lust, and pride will have proven to be the five of the seven deadly sins that were deadly for planet Earth.
I hope I can find the time and energy to get around to a book on the subject. For now, like you, I am learning. It struck me, as it strikes many of you, how a one or two degree rise in temperature can cause ice caps, glaciers, and the Greenland ice shelf to melt. We don’t think of the Arctic or glaciers hovering on the temperature border of frozen and melting. It is not intuitive that small changes can make such large differences.
Like you, I also found it puzzling that as carbon dioxide is only a small part of the atmosphere, how its increase can have such dangerous effects.
While struggling to put what I learned into understandable language, I thankfully came across this explanation in Scientific American:
“Small changes in the Earth’s heat balance can lead to large climatic changes. For example, the ice ages during the last several million years–and the warmer periods in between–appear to have been triggered by no more than a different seasonal and latitudinal distribution of the solar energy absorbed by the Earth, not by a change in output from the sun. The geologic record shows that the differences in ice cover, sea level and precipitation as well as in plant and animal populations were quite dramatic between the ice ages and the warm interglacials. Yet the global average temperature differences corresponding to these radically different climates were only about 5 degrees C in the tropics and 8 degrees C in polar regions.”
In case you don’t understand what is being said, the message is that very small differences in temperature are the difference between ice ages and heat extinction ages.
Scientific American asks this question—“If carbon dioxide makes up only a minute portion of the atmosphere, how can global warming be traced to it? And how can such a tiny amount of change produce such large effects?”—and Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory, provides this answer: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-carbon-dioxide-makes-u/ Read it, and you will understand...….

Posted by MariaS at 17:04 0 comments
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