In this thread we post short things that don’t require a separate thread.
Previous low content threads:
The Roads
I heard this gem the other day:
What makes that a gem exactly?
I completely disagree that there has to be a consensus before we can reduce the size of government and have a reasonable society that does not require government. Everyone only has to agree that they have had enough of the current scenario. Once that occurs then we have to be weary of incorrect solutions, like more government spending. It is our job to create as much traction around reducing government as the best answer to our problems. But that will never happen not because people can not agree on a consensus. But due to there being so much interest in the government increasing in size, far too many people benefiting from the current scenario for the government to reduce in size voluntarily.
There really is a war on kids. (For more, see here.)
7-Year-Old Handcuffed Over $5, Says Suit
The family of a 7-year-old New York boy is suing police and the city for $250 million, saying cops handcuffed and interrogated the boy for ten hours after a scuffle over lunch money at school.
Wilson Reyes, a student at Public School 114 in the Bronx reportedly got into a fight with a fellow student in December after he was accused of taking $5 of lunch money that had fallen on the ground in front of him. Responding to a complaint of assault and robbery, the police were called and took the boy to the local police precinct where officers allegedly handcuffed and interrogated him for ten hours, according to the lawsuit.
@TheFinest: Nice… violence is not the way forward. He makes an excellent point that the moment for the use of defensive violence will be obvious. The thugs in government are preparing for popular unrest because they know they are creating the conditions for that unrest. So, they’re ready and waiting. Just look at the Pittsburgh police during the G20 protests. Armored vehicles, LRAD devices, ranks of gas-masked riot police outnumbering protestors at least 3-to-1… they’re prepared and itching for a fight.
I hope that they don’t “cut our time short” - this would be a cataclysmic event somewhere in the Middle East trigging full-scale East-West military engagement… such a WWIII-scale event would cut short any possibility of peaceful resistance to the government and would quash the growing dissent and dissatisfaction. Extraordinary measures such as summary execution of “traitors” could easily be deployed, basically making the territorial US an open killing field for soulless Federal agents, armed to the teeth. Dissent would become as impossible as it was for Germans under Nazi rule.
If this scenario happens - which I have predicted will occur before the end of this year - my advice is burrow and hibernate (survive). If you are of fighting age where you can be drafted, you should consider taking active measures to avoid front-lines combat deployment - do not join the guard or the reserves (these are first to deployed to the front lines). You might pay someone to help you get into Canada or Mexico but you’ll probably have to go further than that to avoid the long arm of the Feds. You can try to sign on to an MOS that is unlikely to see combat, such as a cook or some other kind of low-level logistical capacity. As an unusual measure, you might consider joining a religion which conscientiously objects to combat violence to help assure this - such as the Mennonites or Quakers. If all else fails, you might consider simply choosing prison over the draft but be warned they are going to deal out absurd punishments to dissuade other resisters from making this choice.
You’ll probably have a time-window to prepare your strategy - look for an outbreak of overt war between US/Israel and either Syria or Iran - either one of these events will be a sign that we are on the path to a draft. Then, keep your eye on the mainstream news outlets as they will begin constantly asking the question “Will we need a draft?” to soften up public opinion and get people ready for it. That’s the cue that the draft will be coming within a year or so… so it will then be time to prepare a strategy to deal with that. Put out of your mind all thoughts of resistance or revolution… keep spreading the word but understand that revolution is an impossibility at this point. The sitting political apparatus attains supreme power during time of war. This is why governments love war.
So, let’s hope I’m wrong and that war does not break out this year… let’s hope we get some more time because as StormCloudsGathering says… time is on our side. They’re the ones who are going bankrupt, not us. They’re taxing us to death but we’re producers, we work every day. They’re parasites and they’re living on trillions of dollars of borrowed money… borrowed time. Once collapse is inevitable, the rats are going to try to get on the life-raft of Global War… if for some reason that doesn’t happen… they will drown. And it will have been entirely their own doing.
All we have to do is wait and keep spreading the word. Once the first Social Security paycheck fails to go out in the mail… that is the death-knell of the reigning political establishment. Even war will not be able to save them at that point. All we have to do is sit back and watch as the whole miserable structure comes crashing down on them. And we’re going to need to be ready to rebuild our social system from the ground up… without them. All those old folks foolishly depending on Federal checks are going to need our help. All the masses held in suspended animation by welfare subsidy will be atrophied and unaccustomed to doing daily diligence to feed themselves. We’re going to need to work together to rebuild our communities on a sound footing of free trade, voluntary exchange and work-for-pay instead of the current paradigm of whine-for-pay. That will be what the revolution will really look like, if we do not have war first.
Clayton -
You can also fake bad eyesight and hearing. If they implement the draft, preemptively go to an eye doctor, do poorly on the eye exam, and get some glasses. Do the same for your hearing. So you buy some glasses you don’t need, at least your not in prison or murdering anyone!
https://twitter.com/RonPaul/status/298477312876355585
Have you guys seen the tweet that “Ron Paul” is in trouble for? A little insensitive, but people are missing the deeper point and are interpreting it as some sort of backhanded personal attack on veterans.
Yeah, it’s pretty insensitive.
RP has never been a master politician.
@ Willy Truth
Did you see the Facebook wall update that he put out about an hour ago? It’s of an entirely different tune.
I don’t think this was foot-in-mouth… I think Paul knew exactly what he was talking about and meant precisely what he said. Chris Kyle’s memoirs document his horrifically xenophobic and narrow-minded attitudes. Of course, that in itself doesn’t merit death but based on body-count alone there is not the slightest doubt that Kyle had quite a bit of innocent blood on his hands. And you don’t get where Kyle was in the military without a tremendous amount of heavily competitive vying. Jeremy Scahill - speaking on a different topic - puts the SEALs in proper perspective:
So, the quote is actually quite appropriate… those who are in the ranks of the SEALs are perpetrating atrocities under cover of thinly veiled euphemisms like “mission” “target” “assets” and so on. No doubt, these men are duped, especially in the beginning. But as they progress through the organization and move into positions where they have greater discretionary power to exercise judgment and to assess the naked facts of their missions, the fact that they are operating as a kind of Murder Incorporated must eventually start to sink in, even if they smother the thought in the recesses of their unconscious with the use of euphemisms and phony rationalizations.
And it’s crucial to keep this issue in proper perspective. There are dangerous people all around the world. There always have been and there always will be. And there is a genuine market demand to employ some dangerous people to keep you safe from other dangerous people. But how did these people get so dangerous? “Training” is the modern euphemism. But when you study the issue, you’ll find out it’s not the training that makes these men dangerous, it’s the acquired willingness to kill. Killing is really very easy… it is much easier to kill most any human than to kill even a small wild animal. Wild animals are extremely effective at hiding, they will run away extremely fast when pursued and, when cornered, they will fight back and most animals have superior natural weapons to the human being. And the fact is that killing soldiers is not much more difficult as the vast majority of soldiers are ill-trained and thus do not even present a serious threat… of those that are well-trained, most are young, green and unsure of themselves - easy prey for a steady-handed, seasoned veteran. And even of those that have gone through battle and survived, most of them have not killed and, thus, are not psychologically proven… they are not necessarily psychologically committed to kill. Finally, those that have seen live-fire combat, have killed and have proven themselves psychologically simply won’t have the weaponry - in terms of accuracy and range - and the highly cost-intensive training that the special ops guys have. The training is only the tie-breaker when they are going up against seasoned, veteran killers… the rest of the time, it’s basically shooting fish in a barrel for these guys.
The black ops folks such as these guys are real bad news in this regard. They are prolific killers. Among regular combat troops, many may not even see combat. And of those who do, many of them may never actually exchange fire with an enemy, let alone kill. The black ops poeple, by contrast, go out on a constant stream of live-fire missions… they vector straight to where there is going to be shooting and killing. They all have non-trivial body-counts. This was just as true before 2001 but the hunting has been especially abundant since then.
How did they get so dangerous? By killing. Lots of people. Nowadays, almost by definition, these people are innocent. A Taliban riding in Afghanistan is not “guilty” of any crime. We are not even at war with Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Congress merely passed resolutions - a resolution is not legally binding, it’s just a statement saying “Congress strongly feels that the President should send troops to…” So, even the so-called “bad guys” aren’t proper targets of US forces! The whole thing is a sham from top to bottom but the MSM and the Power Elites have the American sheeple duped… we are well-trained lap-dogs.
The fact is that USG claims some kind of moral high-ground. Al-Qaida, al-Shabaab, Gaddafi loyalists, al-Assad’s troops… we’re supposed to believe these are “bad, dangerous men” and the killers working for USG are “good, dangerous men.” This is nonsense. They’re all dangerous men but those that work for USG are the most well-armed and, by far, the most dangerous. And it is this moral high-ground that is the cherry on top of the shit-pie… it’s the grand insult to the intelligence of every rational being on the planet. If you’re employing dangerous men to fight other dangerous men… what you are doing is amoral, it is imperial behavior, no different than the Alexander’s Persian campaign or the many campaigns of Julius Caesar to solidify his grip on the empire. It is the pretense that something other than sheer imperial ambition behind USG policy, the pretense that the motives of modern spec ops fighters are something other than sheer mafioso will to dominance, to beat the shit out of the other guy and prove that you are the baddest motherfucker on the block. That pretense is what Ron Paul was confronting with his remark. There’s nothing politically unsophisticated about it at all.
Clayton -
thats a pretty good text, right now all I have for you is a minor factual note. Kyle was in seal team 3 which would fall under naval special warfare command not jsoc, which commands “tier one” units like delta and st6. end of message.
Yeah, he was definitely trying to cover his ass after the PR backlash. Which, as Clayton pointed out, was not merited. But he should have known that murdered soldiers have a sacred spot in our militaryist culture. I read dozens of comments on various sites shaming RP because “the only reason RP has the freedom to say such ignorant things is because of brave men like Kyle”… Apparently American freedom is somehow directly sustained by sacrifices of foreign blood to the poltergeists of Jefferson and Washington.
Of course, I really don’t see anything controversial about the content: Live by the sword, die by the sword is Biblical and is very fitting for this particular guy. Professional killer gets killed violently. Nothing too crazy there. Oh wait, unless you’re a blindly nationalistic neocon, and then there’s no such thing as a military man committing murder.
Anyways, I do think that RP could have phrased the tweet a little more…skillfully, knowing that this would be a touchy subject. No need to bring flak onto himself when the public is once again whipped into an emotional and patriotic frenzy.
“Of course, I really don’t see anything controversial about the content: Live by the sword, die by the sword is Biblical and is very fitting for this particular guy. Professional killer gets killed violently. Nothing too crazy there.”
You know, this is actually a very good point… Especially when talking to neo-conservatives who are primarily religious. I think that verse by Jesus is rather more important than a passing line in Leviticus…
Ron Paul on Twitter
It looks to me Ron Paul doesn’t even fully know what “Twitter” is.
This obsession with military individuals in the US is disgusting. Big deal he murdered 200 people at super long range. What a hero. Give me a break. I didn’t shed one tear for his death or the death of any military personnel. Why should i even care that he is dead?
His Facebook offers an intriguingly different tone…
As a veteran, I certainly recognize that this weekend’s violence and killing of Chris Kyle were a tragic and sad event. My condolences and prayers go out to Mr. Kyle’s family. Unconstitutional and unnecessary wars have endless unintended consequences. A policy of non-violence, as Christ preached, would have prevented this and similar tragedies. -REP
Could it be that Ron Paul doesn’t write his own tweets??? SHOCKING
I found the shoutout to the collective at the end to be comical.
Anonymous hacks the Fed?
http://www.examiner.com/article/anonymous-hacks-the-fed-leaks-bank-executives-personal-information