Thursday, January 10, 2013
NRA releases statement on White House meeting "Administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions "
Statement From the National Rifle Association of America Regarding Today's White House Task Force Meeting
Fairfax, Va. – The National Rifle Association of America is made up of over 4 million moms and dads, daughters and sons, who are involved in the national conversation about how to prevent a tragedy like Newtown from ever happening again.
We attended today's White House meeting to discuss how to keep our children safe and were prepared to have a meaningful conversation about school safety, mental health issues, the marketing of violence to our kids and the collapse of federal prosecutions of violent criminals. We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment.
While claiming that no policy proposals would be “prejudged,” this Task Force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners - honest, taxpaying, hardworking Americans.
It is unfortunate that this Administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation's most pressing problems.
We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen. Instead, we will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation about what works - and what does not. -NRA-Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America's oldest civil rights and sportsmen's group.
Four million members strong, NRA continues to uphold the Second Amendment and advocates enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation's leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the armed services.
Fairfax, Va. – The National Rifle Association of America is made up of over 4 million moms and dads, daughters and sons, who are involved in the national conversation about how to prevent a tragedy like Newtown from ever happening again.
We attended today's White House meeting to discuss how to keep our children safe and were prepared to have a meaningful conversation about school safety, mental health issues, the marketing of violence to our kids and the collapse of federal prosecutions of violent criminals. We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment.
While claiming that no policy proposals would be “prejudged,” this Task Force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners - honest, taxpaying, hardworking Americans.
It is unfortunate that this Administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation's most pressing problems.
We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen. Instead, we will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation about what works - and what does not. -NRA-Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America's oldest civil rights and sportsmen's group.
Four million members strong, NRA continues to uphold the Second Amendment and advocates enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation's leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the armed services.
Shooting at Taft High School in California injures one
A pupil at a high school in the Californian town of Taft has been shot and wounded, police say.
The victim was taken to hospital in an air ambulance, he said.
Early reports suggested that a second person had been wounded, but Mr Pruitt told CNN that this appeared not to be true.
Kern County Fire Department Eric Coughran told KBAK-TV that a second person had received some sort of injury but had refused treatment.
A city official said the incident at Taft Union High School, about 120 miles (190km) north of Los Angeles, occurred shortly after 09:00 local time (17:00 GMT).
Mr Pruitt said the gunman had used a shotgun in the attack in the small town outside Bakersfield, in California's central valley.
The shooting comes four weeks after a gunman killed 26 pupils and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
That incident has provoked a nationwide debate about gun laws in the US.
Vice-President Joe Biden has said his task force on gun control will make its recommendations to President Barack Obama as early as Tuesday.
Former pupils of Taft Union High School include the distinguished US Air Force pilot, General Gordon Graham, the American football player Russell Letlow and the television actress Jeanne Cooper.
Pentagon ordered to begin 'prudent' steps to prepare for defense cuts
Jan 10 (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday he had directed the U.S. military services to began taking "prudent" steps to offset the impact of huge budget cuts that could take effect on March 1, including curtailing some facilities maintenance and freezing civilian hiring.
"I'd like to believe that ultimately Congress will do the right thing," Panetta said. But "we simply cannot sit back now and not be prepared for the worst."
Panetta told a news conference he also directed the services to begin planning now in case the department has to put its nearly 800,000 civilian employees on unpaid leave for up to a month during the remaining months of the 2013 fiscal year.
This is an upstanding Christian family! Hobby Lobby CEO open letter: “Honoring God is more important than turning a profit”
Normally I’d be inclined to run something like this on a Sunday, when I like to explore more faith-based topics. However, today is Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day,
where consumers who support the Christian ownership’s stand against the
HHS mandate that attempts to impose a highly restrictive definition of
religious expression can put their money where their mouths are. Since I
don’t really have a hobby at the moment, I’ll instead offer a passage from the open letter
written by Hobby Lobby CEO David Green, who explains why he’s decided
to spend a lot of money and risk even more to fight the HHS regulation
that would force him to act against his religious principles.
The mandate for free birth control, which is already cheap and readily available for anyone who wants it (and has federal subsidies for Medicaid recipients already in place through Title X), is just a Trojan horse in an attack on religious liberty — and even more, for freedom of choice. If businesses want to offer “free” birth control (which will get funded by premium hikes), they can already do so; no one is stopping them. Same for schools, hospitals, and private citizens who want to donate money to family-planning clinics on their own. Barack Obama and Kathleen Sebelius want to strip that choice from Americans and force everyone to subsidize the procreative choices of everyone else, even those tens of millions whose religious beliefs have heretofore never had to be part of public policy. That’s the invasion of privacy, and it’s people like David Green who are being exploited.
Update: Added a bit to the second-to-last paragraph, and also wanted to include Hobby Lobby’s online shopping website link. You can support the company from the comfort of your own home.
We’re Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I’ve always said that the first two goals of our business are (1) to run our business in harmony with God’s laws, and (2) to focus on people more than money. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy, we’ve raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80% above minimum wage.It’s worth pointing out that the mandate doesn’t exempt actual religious organizations either, such as Catholic charities, Presbyterian hospitals, Lutheran schools, and so on. Why? That’s the crux of the issue: the Obama administration is attempting to redefine religious expression to only those activities which take place within the four walls of a place of worship, or those activities restricted only to those of a single faith. That means that Catholic hospitals would qualify only if they refused to treat and employ any non-Catholics, for instance. Can you imagine those lawsuits?
But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million PER DAY in government fines.
Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that’s raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It’s not right. I know people will say we ought to follow the rules; that it’s the same for everybody. But that’s not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won’t exempt them for reasons of religious belief.
So, Hobby Lobby – and my family – are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don’t like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.
The mandate for free birth control, which is already cheap and readily available for anyone who wants it (and has federal subsidies for Medicaid recipients already in place through Title X), is just a Trojan horse in an attack on religious liberty — and even more, for freedom of choice. If businesses want to offer “free” birth control (which will get funded by premium hikes), they can already do so; no one is stopping them. Same for schools, hospitals, and private citizens who want to donate money to family-planning clinics on their own. Barack Obama and Kathleen Sebelius want to strip that choice from Americans and force everyone to subsidize the procreative choices of everyone else, even those tens of millions whose religious beliefs have heretofore never had to be part of public policy. That’s the invasion of privacy, and it’s people like David Green who are being exploited.
Update: Added a bit to the second-to-last paragraph, and also wanted to include Hobby Lobby’s online shopping website link. You can support the company from the comfort of your own home.
America Is Setting A Dangerous Precedent For The Drone Age
The decisions America makes today regarding drone policy could come back to haunt it sooner than later.
A major risk is that of
proliferation. Over the next decade, the U.S. near-monopoly on drone
strikes will erode as more countries develop and hone this
capability. In this uncharted territory, U.S. policy provides a powerful
precedent for other states and nonstate actors that will increasingly
deploy drones with potentially dangerous ramifications.
The situation places the U.S. in a possibly very brief window of leadership — and transparency is the key first step to this leadership.
U.S. policy is to consider "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
America targets these individuals using a "disposition matrix" that serves to keep track of the ever-evolving procedures and legal justifications for placing suspects on the U.S. "kill list."
And the Obama administration refuses to reveal its methods or justifications for bombing a target, indicated by a recent ruling to deny a FOIA request regarding the targeted killing of the 16-year-old American-born son of former Al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki.
From Judge Colleen McMahon's opinion:
I find myself stuck in a
paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of
contradictory constraints and rules - a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that
effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as
perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible
with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.
That's a powerful precedent.
Imagine China conducting strikes inside Japan, or its own borders (e.g. Tibet) while using the current administration's same opaque, one-size fits all statement that each strike only happens after "rigorous standards and process of review" — essentially, "nevermind the evidence, trust us."
That wouldn't fly, but right now America is not in a very strong position to criticize such a situation. That's why, as Zenko argues, the U.S. must reform its policies or risk losing its moral and strategic advantage.
A few months ago, the election spurred Obama to codify its rules and regulations regarding drone strikes because "there was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands," one anonymous official told Scott Shane of the New York Times.
Well that time is approaching, and it won't be a Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio in control. It'll be North Korea's Kim Jung Un, China's Hu Jintao, or Iran's Ahmed Ahmadinejad.
Which means that it may be time to show the drone "playbook" so extrajudicial killings don't become a blindly accepted aspect of international foreign policy.
[UPDATE 10:19 p.m.] As Daphne Eviatar, Senior Counsel in Human Rights First's Law and Security Program, noted last week in Reuters, laying out U.S. policy "would be a brave and principled move on Obama’s part. It would also go a long way toward developing global confidence that, despite past mistakes, Washington is waging its fight against terrorism in accordance with the rule of law.
If Obama instead continues to take refuge in the courts, he may be able to claim a minor legal victory. But the president will have lost a far more important battle."
Judge orders student to wear ‘Mark of the Beast’ ID badge
US District Judge Orlando Garcia decided with a Tuesday ruling that John Jay High School student Andrea Hernandez has only two choices: be tracked from classroom-to-classroom or go somewhere else.
Hernandez, backed by the support of her parents and civil liberties groups alike, says she shouldn’t have to a wear an ID badge to school, particularly the kind that’s embedded with RFID chips to track the movements of students. San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District made those devices mandatory in the fall in order to more accurately track attendance figures, but Hernandez objects because she says it’s the equivalent to walking the halls with the “Mark of the Beast.”
“‘We must obey the word of God,” her father said in court documents obtained by Wired. “By asking my daughter and our family to participate and fall in line like the rest of them is asking us to disobey our Lord and Savior.”
Attorneys for Hernandez have hoped that the court would grant an injunction against the district to keep the girl badge-free, but this week Judge Garcia said the requirement of wearing a card "has an incidental effect, if any, on (Hernandez's) religious beliefs.”
Herndanez’ refusal to follow the rules, ruled the justice, "is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."
Under the district’s new “Smart ID” program, roughly 4,200 students between two area schools are required to wear the cards. Hernandez says that, for not using the badge, she has been unable to participate in certain school functions and told she can’t enter certain rooms, such as the cafeteria and library.
"I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID," Hernandez told WND last year. "I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote."
Northside has offered Hernandez an ID badge that is not outfitted with a microchip, but her parents and attorneys both say they will not accept that as a compromise.
“For Hernandez, a Christian, the badges pose a significant religious freedom concern in addition to the obvious privacy issues,” explains the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties and human rights group that has represented the student throughout her legal battle. “Andrea’s religious objection derives from biblical teachings that equate accepting a personalized code — as a sign of submission to government authority and as a means of obtaining certain privileges from a secular ruling authority — with a form of idolatry or submission to a false god.”
The court seemed less certain with that interpretation, however, insisting “The accommodation offered by the district is not only reasonable it removes plaintiff’s religious objection from legal scrutiny all together.”
The Northside School District hailed the judge’s decision by releasing a statement saying the ruling “affirms NISD’s position that we did make reasonable accommodation to the student by offering to remove the RFID chip from the student’s smart ID badge.”
Hernandez now has until January 18 to decide to either wear the badge or else go to a different school. Her legal counsel with the Rutherford Institute says they will file an appeal, though.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that government officials may not scrutinize or question the validity of an individual’s religious beliefs,” Rutherford Institute President John W. Whitehead says in a statement. “By declaring Andrea Hernandez’s objections to be a secular choice and not grounded in her religious beliefs, the district court is placing itself as an arbiter of what is and is not religious. This is simply not permissible under our constitutional scheme, and we plan to appeal this immediately.”
Chris Steinbach, the chief of staff for a Republican state lawmaker who wants to outlaw the technology in Texas schools, tells the AP it’s unusual to see the story attract the attention of such a diverse crowd.
"How often do you see an issue where the ACLU and Christian fundamentalists come together?” he asks the AP.
New York artist to debut 'drone-proof' anti-surveillance clothing line
Brooklyn-based artist Adam Harvey used to work primarily with photography, but he undertakes an entirely different medium with his newest project. He says that in the years since the United States post-9/11 PATRIOT Act has been in place, cameras have stopped becoming “art making tools” and have instead become “enablers of surveillance societies.”
That was Harvey’s explanation last year when he discussed his projects with the website Rhizome. At the time, Harvey was experimenting with how household make-up could render it harder for computers to use facial recognition programs to pluck people out of crowds. And while the practice of examining facial features using biometrics and sophisticated surveillance cameras has certainly intensified in the months since, Harvey has found another type of evasive practice that is a bit harder to avoid: the drone.
The United States currently has a modest arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles — UAVS, or drones – that it uses in surveillance missions on its border with Mexico and in war zones overseas. By the year 2020, however, the Federal Aviation Administration expects the number of domestic drones in American airspace to be as large as 30,000.
At the moment, law enforcement agencies across the country are trying to get their hands on their own surveillance drones, some of which “can zoom in and read a milk carton from 60,000 feet,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And while escaping a space-age robotic spy machine thousands of feet above the Earth might not be as easy as, say, putting on some blush or mascara to make it harder to be detected, Harvey has designed an entire clothing line that will help disguise people from the all-seeing eye of Big Brother.
On January 17, Harvey will unveil Stealth Wear at a studio in London. There he’ll debut his “new counter surveillance fashions” that he plans to also test before his private audience.
“Building off previous work with CV Dazzle, camouflage from face detection, Privacy Mode continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance,” the press release reads.
In collaboration with NYC fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield, Harvey has tried to tackle “some of the most pressing and sophisticated forms of surveillance today.”
Ultimately, it’s a fashion statement that says an earful to those enabling a growing spy state.
“I think building privacy into modern garments can make them feel more comfortable and, like armor, more protected,” Harvey told Rhizome last year.
“Data and privacy are increasingly valuable personal assets and it doesn’t make sense to not protect them. It’s also a great conversation starter.”
Harvey hopes to get those conversations starting next week in London, where he will unveil an anti-drone hoodie and matching scarf, a shirt that shields the wearer from X-rays and a pocket protector that he says blocks cell phones from sending and receiving signals.
For the hoodie and scarf set, Harvey and Bloomfield use materials designed to thwart thermal imaging, which the artist says most UAVs employ in order to zero-in on targets. The t-shirt allegedly protects a person’s internal organs from harmful X-rays and the “Off Pocket” pants accessory disconnects mobile devices from service providers with special materials.
“Smartphones infiltrate our senses. They cause anxiety, phantom vibrations, and keep us on alert,” he told Rhizome. “We expend energy maintaining an always-on connection. Smartphones should come with a switch to turn this off, but they don’t. Turning my iPhone off and back on takes 45 seconds. Using flight mode is also clumsy. I wanted a way to quickly and politely disconnect myself without relying on the phone’s software or hardware features. The Off Pocket circumvents this design flaw.”
“[W]hen I first modified my pants with signal attenuating fabric, it felt odd to be unplugged. It was as if I had blocked out part of the world, covered my ears, or closed my eyes. But then I adjusted and realized that I had just opened them again.”
The artist says accompanying each project will be either recorded and in-person demonstrations that reveal the process behind each specific technology and counter technology relevant to his work.
Speaking to the UK’s Register back in 2010, Harvey said even then that surveillance was becoming more prevalent.
"The number of sensors that are going into the public spaces has been increasing,” he said, adding that we very well might be “heading to the point where we as a society need to think about what we are comfortable with."
"Maybe you could go to a privacy hair stylist in the future,” he quipped.
Check Out This Drone-Proof Counter-Surveillance Clothing
Check Out This Drone-Proof Counter-Surveillance Clothing
"Counter-surveillance clothing" is the new brain child of New York based artist Adam Harvey.
Harvey, in conjunction with UK-based company Primitive London, plans to display the fashion accessories Jan. 17.
The idea is that the material blocks heat signatures, captured using infrared sensors, which give people away to surveillance helicopters or drones from the skies above.
From the Press Release on Stealth Wear website:
“Building off previous work with CV
Dazzle, camouflage from face detection, Privacy Mode continues to
explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to
challenge authoritarian surveillance."
As we covered recently at BI, drone use is not only a tactic on foreign soil. The FAA recently jumped through a bunch of flaming hoops to accommodate domestic drone use in America's skies.
As Naomi Wolfe diagrammed last month, a whopping 30,000 drones will be in the air above the U.S. come 2020 — so put those orders in now!
Here are some more photos of this fashion/counter surveillance gear:
US Drone Use Setting Off New Global Arms Race
US Drone Use Setting Off New Global Arms Race
The proliferation of drone technology is, justifiably but hypocritically, generating concern in Washington
“The number of countries that have acquired or developed drones expanded to more than 75, up from about 40 in 2005, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress,” USA Today reports.
Both China and Japan are working on sophisticated drone technology as their territorial disputes get more intense. Pakistan is also attempting to acquire armed drone systems, apparently with help from China. And Iran is known to have fielded their own drones.
Even the United Nations has expressed interest in acquiring their own drones, reportedly for use in peacekeeping missions.
The proliferation of drone technology is justifiably generating some concern in Washington. The prospect of other countries using drones in the same lawless, lethal, unaccountable way the US has is unnerving to Americans, who have long believed they should not be subject to the rules everybody else must follow.
“When we possess such weaponry, it turns out there is nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it,” Tom Engelhardt observes in Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.
But “when the first Iranian or Russian or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of ‘terrorists,’ we won’t like it one bit,” Engelhardt warns. “Then let’s see what we think about the right of any nation to summarily execute its enemies—and anyone else in the vicinity—by drone.”
Iran's Spy Chief Secretly Advised Muslim Brotherhood To Push Back Against The US
Providing more evidence of the warming ties between Iran and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Times of London reports that
the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, made a secret
two-day visit to Egypt just after Christmas to meet with officials close
to President Mohammed Morsi.
The Times of London reports:
Mr Suleimani, who oversees Iran’s proxy militias across the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas, travelled at the invitation of Mr Morsi’s Government and his powerful backers in the Muslim Brotherhood.
The spy chief met Essam al-Haddad, foreign affairs adviser to Mr Morsi, and officials from the Brotherhood to advise the government on building its security and intelligence apparatus independent of the national intelligence services, which are controlled by Egypt’s military.The paper says its report was confirmed by two members of Maktab al-Irshad, the Muslim Brotherhood’s guidance office. One unnamed official said, “The government requested a high-level meeting with Iranian officials. Iran sent Suleimani.”
“The meeting was intended to send a message to America, which is putting pressure on the Egyptian government, that we should be allowed to have other alliances with anyone we please,” the official added.
The Quds Force which Suleimani commands is an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which is tasked with exporting the Islamic revolution outside Iran. It is credited with helping set up Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s, targeting U.S. troops in Iraq and providing arms and training for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The U.S. also accused it in 2011 of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and planning to bomb Israel’s embassy in Washington.
The Times explains that sending such a senior official is a reflection of how seriously the Ayatollah regime takes this forging relationship.
President Morsi visited Iran in August, the first visit by an Egyptian president since the Iranian revolution more than thirty years ago. Another high-profile meeting is scheduled for this week.Iran’s Fars News reports that Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi will visit Cairo Thursday where he plans to discuss Egyptian-Iranian relations and the Syrian crisis. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman says Salehi will discuss avenues for expanding Egyptian-Iranian ties.
In September, Morsi met with the Iranian foreign minister in Cairo, at which time he emphasized the importance of strong ties between the two countries.
Fars News quoted Morsi as saying: “When the followers of unrighteousness are united in their unrighteous path, why should not we go united in our right position when dealing with global challenges.”
While in Cairo, Salehi also plans to meet with top Sunni cleric Ahmed al-Tayyeb who serves as the Grand Imam of al-Azhar and as president of Al-Azhar University.
Netanyahu chastises Abbas for meeting with Hamas leader
‘That’s not how someone striving for peace behaves,’ charges prime minister
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded
Thursday to news of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal meeting in Cairo for reconciliation talks by
reiterating his accusation that Abbas is not acting like a partner for
peace.
The PA president and the leader of Hamas held talks Wednesday in a bid to leverage some recent goodwill between their rival factions and reach a long-elusive reconciliation agreement, a senior Palestinian official said.
“Abbas embraced the head of a terrorist
organization that called, only a month ago, for wiping Israel off the
map,” Netanyahu said. “That’s not how someone striving for peace
behaves.”
The meetings between Abbas and Mashaal marked
the latest attempt by the rival Palestinian leaders to bridge the gap
between their groups. But many obstacles remain before the sides can
settle their differences, chief among them how to deal with Israel.
Several rounds of reconciliation talks over
recent years focused on finding ways to share power have failed to yield
results, and the official, speaking before the talks, said no immediate
breakthrough was expected in the meetings Wednesday in Cairo. Hamas
also is not ready since it will hold internal elections to replace
Mashaal, the official said.
The official said that Abbas will call upon
all Palestinian factions to hold a larger meeting in Cairo at a later
date to discuss reconciliation.
The two Palestinian groups have been at odds
since the Islamic militant Hamas overran Gaza in 2007, ousting forces
from Abbas’s Fatah. Since then, Abbas has ruled in the West Bank, and
Hamas has held sway in Gaza.
While past efforts to end the split have
failed, the two sides have tried to make a show of unity since Hamas’s
fierce battle with Israel in November and Fatah’s subsequent recognition
bid at the United Nations.
Earlier in the day, Abbas and Mashaal held
talks individually with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. Morsi hails
from the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist Islamist group that is
the parent organization of Hamas.
In 2011, Mashaal and Abbas signed a
reconciliation agreement, but it was not implemented. According to the
deal and subsequent round of talks held in Qatar, the two factions would
form a national coalition government of independents to oversee
legislative and presidential elections.
The new talks are taking place in a slightly different atmosphere, however, following recent gains by both factions.
Abbas has enjoyed a boost in his status since
he led the Palestinians’ successful bid to upgrade their status at the
United Nations to a nonmember observer state.
Hamas, meanwhile, has gained new support among
Palestinians following eight days of fighting with Israel in November,
during which Israel pounded tgerror targets in the seaside strip from
the air and sea, while Palestinian terrorists fired 1,500 rockets at
Israel and for the first time launched rockets toward Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv.
Following the fighting, Fatah allowed Hamas to
hold its first rally in the West Bank since the 2007 split. Hamas
returned the favor by allowing Fatah to stage its own rally in Gaza, its
first since the Hamas takeover.
Meanwhile, Hatnua party leader Tzipi Livni
responded to Netanyahu’s words with a suggestion that instead
of chastising Abbas, Israel should demand that any future agreement
between Fatah and Hamas include recognition of the State of Israel and
an end to terrorist activities.
PEOPLE HOW CLEAR CAN IT GET THAT THIS HAS BEEN PLANNED FOR YEARS! Breitbart.com has uncovered video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."
Holder was addressing the Woman's National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to "change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC" about guns.
"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes."
Holder added that he had asked advertising agencies in the nation's capital to assist by making anti-gun ads rather than commercials "that make me buy things that I don't really need." He had also approached local newspapers and television stations, he said, asking them to devote prime space and time, respectively, to his anti-gun campaign.
Local political leaders and celebrities, Holder said, including Mayor Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, had been asked to help. In addition, he reported, he had asked the local school board to make the anti-gun message a part of "every day, every school, and every level."
Despite strict gun control efforts, Washington, DC was and remains one of the nation's most dangerous cities for gun violence, though crime has abated somewhat since the 1990s.
Holder went on to become Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration, and currently serves as Attorney General in the Obama Administration.
The video of Holder's remarks was uncovered by Breitbart.com contributor Charles C. Johnson.
Dr. Keith Ablow is my HERO! I agree 100%...WE ARE RAISING A GENERATION OF DELUDED NARCISSISTS!
We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists
A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing.
Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30 percent in the last thirty-odd years.
This data is not unexpected. I have been writing a great deal over the past few years about the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.
On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments.
They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they “like.”
We must beware of the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.
Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for “being” something they are not.
On MTV and other networks, young people can see lives just like theirs portrayed on reality TV shows fueled by such incredible self-involvement and self-love that any of the “real-life” characters should really be in psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life.
These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed.
As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psychiatrists hand out Adderall like candy.
All the while, these adolescents, teens and young adults are watching a Congress that can’t control its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending, a president that can’t see his way through to applauding genuine and extraordinary achievements in business, a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the psychotic people who wield them, and—here no surprise—a stock market that keeps rising and falling like a roller coaster as bubbles inflate and then, inevitably, burst.
That’s really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting. That’s why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while. They’re doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy.
Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface. I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.
We had better get a plan together to combat this greatest epidemic as it takes shape. Because it will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we have ever known. And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the saying goes, that it is us.
Obama is talking about is raising tax revenue without actually raising tax rates.
Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, want lawmakers to consider a fresh set of tax increases in the next several weeks when they discuss whether to cut spending.
Republicans oppose raising tax rates, especially after they just raised some of them for the first time in two decades in the New Year’s deal that extended most – but not all – of the expiring Bush tax cuts.
But much of what Obama is talking about is raising tax revenue without actually raising tax rates. In Washington-speak, lawmakers will try to collect more tax money by closing tax loopholes, perhaps limiting popular tax deductions and to some degree changing the way citizens pay into the popular Medicare and Social Security programs.
The New Year’s deal raised income tax rates for individuals’ taxable income above $400,000 and family income above $450,000. That’s less than 1 percent of all U.S. taxpayers. The deal is projected to raise about $600 billion over 10 years, not enough to significantly chip away at deficits that still will total more than $6.8 trillion over the same period. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill will be looking to trim $2 trillion over 10 years from projected future deficits as part of any deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by the end of February and prevent $109 billion in deep spending cuts from occurring in March.
Democrats say Obama will continue to push for an equal split between revenues and cuts – $1 trillion in new tax revenues and $1 trillion in spending cuts.
“The president believes, as Republicans have said they believe, that we need to reform our tax code, and that there are loopholes that are crying out to be closed that no longer serve the country, if they ever did, and that there are ways of capping deductions and reforming our tax code that can produce more revenue in a fair way that, again, does not burden the middle class, but asks the wealthiest to pay more,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Carney declined to discuss specifics, but the New Year’s deal fell short of Obama’s campaign pledge to raise revenue on the top 2 percent of wage earners, though individuals earning more than $250,000 and couples earning more than $300,000 would still be taxed higher because some of the value of their exemptions and itemized deductions would be phased out.
“He’s always said it would require more than that, and that there would be this effort to curtail loopholes and deductions,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. “I don’t think we are through with the tax piece, although Republicans think we are. The next couple of months are going to be just horrendously acrimonious.”
Raising tax revenues without raising tax rates could take several forms.
One proposal popular with economists is treating some portion of employer-provided health insurance as taxable income on a filer’s tax return, an idea proposed by Hillary Clinton and accepted by many Democrats during the 2008 campaign. If a health plan is valued at more than $14,000, for example, the sum above that could be treated as taxable income.
Another idea would be to limit how much mortgage interest, state taxes or charitable giving can be deducted from taxes by high-income earners. The New Year’s deal started phasing out some of the tax exemptions claimed by high-income earners and limiting their tax deductions. This could gain in popularity because tax rates remain unchanged and middle-income Americans would not be affected.
A bipartisan presidential commission in 2010 favored scaling back mortgage-interest deductions, in part because they effectively subsidize the wealthy by offering them a bigger discount off a higher tax rate. The problem is that rolling this program back is fraught with risk in today’s impaired housing market.
“How do you phase it in? The more you cut back, the more effect it has on the housing market,” noted Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, jointly run by the center-left Brookings Institution and the centrist Urban Institute. “How do you deal with that transition period?”
Republicans insist that any new tax revenue be used not to reduce deficits but rather to lower tax rates and broaden the tax base. The GOP insists the focus should be on so-called entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this week that reining in spending – and not raising taxes – will be the crux of the upcoming fiscal debates.
“The tax issue is behind us,” McConnell told ABC News. “Now, the question is what are we going to do about the real problem. . . . Now it’s time to pivot and turn to the real issue, which is our spending addiction.”
Federal spending on health care – namely Medicare and Medicaid – threatens to swamp the entire budget over coming decades. Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are starting to retire and will strain federal coffers over the next several decades.
But tweaking these programs, along with Social Security, angers older Americans, who are more politically involved than younger generations. AARP, the lobby for seniors, helped beat back a GOP proposal in late December to change the way cost-of-living adjustments are made for Social Security benefits.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., plans to reintroduce the idea in a forthcoming bill.
The coming negotiations on the spending side won’t exactly amount to starting from scratch.
During a series of negotiations in the fall between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio – which eventually failed – the president proposed $1.2 trillion in spending reductions while Boehner offered $1 trillion. The two sides found common ground on spending.
20 Facts About The Collapse Of Europe That Everyone Should Know
The economic implosion of Europe is accelerating. Even while
the mainstream media continues to proclaim that the financial crisis in
Europe has been “averted”, the economic statistics that are coming out
of Europe just continue to get worse.
Manufacturing activity in Europe has been contracting month after month, the unemployment rate in the eurozone has hit yet another brand new record high, and the official unemployment rates in both Greece and Spain are now much higher than the peak unemployment rate in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic situation in Europe is far worse than it was a year ago, and it is going to continue to get worse as austerity continues to take a huge toll on the economies of the eurozone.
It would be hard to understate how bad things have gotten – particularly in southern Europe. The truth is that most of southern Europe is experiencing a full-blown economic depression right now. Sadly, most Americans are paying very little attention to what is going on across the Atlantic. But they should be watching, because this is what happens when nations accumulate too much debt. The United States has the biggest debt burden of all, and eventually what is happening over in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece is going to happen over here as well.
The following are 20 facts about the collapse of Europe that everyone should know...
#1 10 Months: Manufacturing activity in both France and Germany has contracted for 10 months in a row.
#2 11.8 Percent: The unemployment rate in the eurozone has now risen to 11.8 percent – a brand new all-time high.
#3 17 Months: In November, Italy experienced the sharpest decline in retail sales that it had experienced in 17 months.
#4 20 Months: Manufacturing activity in Spain has contracted for 20 months in a row.
#5 20 Percent: It is estimated that bad loans now make up approximately 20 percent of all domestic loans in the Greek banking system at this point.
#6 22 Percent: A whopping 22 percent of the entire population of Ireland lives in jobless households.
#7 26 Percent: The unemployment rate in Greece is now 26 percent. A year ago it was only 18.9 percent.
#8 26.6 Percent: The unemployment rate in Spain has risen to an astounding 26.6 percent.
#9 27.0 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Cyprus. Back in 2008, this number was well below 10 percent.
#10 28 Percent: Sales of French-made vehicles in November were down 28 percent compared to a year earlier.
#11 36 Percent: Today, the poverty rate in Greece is 36 percent. Back in 2009 it was only about 20 percent.
#12 37.1 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Italy – a brand new all-time high.
#13 44 Percent: An astounding 44 percent of the entire population of Bulgaria is facing “severe material deprivation”.
#14 56.5 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Spain – a brand new all-time high.
#15 57.6 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Greece – a brand new all-time high.
#16 60 Percent: Citigroup is projecting that there is a 60 percent probability that Greece will leave the eurozone within the next 12 to 18 months.
#17 70 Percent: It has been reported that some homes in Spain are being sold at a 70% discount from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble back in 2006. At this point there areapproximately 2 million unsold homes in Spain.
#18 200 Percent: The debt to GDP ratio in Greece is rapidly approaching 200 percent.
#19 1997: According to the Committee of French Automobile Producers, 2012 was the worst year for the French automobile industry since 1997.
#20 2 Million: Back in 2005, the French auto industry produced about 3.5 million vehicles. In 2012, that number dropped to about 2 million vehicles.
One thing that these shocking numbers cannot convey is the tremendous amount of pain that many average Europeans are living through on a daily basis at this point. To get a peek into what life is like in Greece these days, check out this short excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article…
Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece. After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes.
“I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”
For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unraveling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity.
Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.
All over Europe, people that have lost all hope are actually setting themselves on fire in a desperate attempt to draw attention. Millions of formerly middle class Europeans have lost everything and are becoming increasingly desperate. Suicide and crime are skyrocketing all over southern Europe and massive street riots are erupting on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. Things are going to get even worse for Europe.
Meanwhile, those of us living in the United States smugly look down our noses at Europe because we are still living in a false bubble of debt-fueled prosperity.
But eventually we will feel the sting of austerity as well. The recent fiscal cliff deal was an indication of that. Taxes are going up and government spending is at least going to slow down. It won’t be too long before the effects of that are felt in the economy.
And of course the reality of the situation is that the U.S. economy really did not perform very well at all during 2012 when you take a look at the numbers. The cold, hard truth is that the U.S. economy has been declining for a very long time, and there are a whole bunch of reasons to expect that our decline will accelerate even further in 2013.
So if you are an American, don’t laugh at what is happening over in Europe at the moment. We are headed down the exact same path that they have gone, and we are going to experience the same kind of suffering that they are going through right now.
Use these last few “bubble months” to prepare for what is ahead. At some point this “hope bubble” will disappear and then the time for preparation will be over.
Manufacturing activity in Europe has been contracting month after month, the unemployment rate in the eurozone has hit yet another brand new record high, and the official unemployment rates in both Greece and Spain are now much higher than the peak unemployment rate in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic situation in Europe is far worse than it was a year ago, and it is going to continue to get worse as austerity continues to take a huge toll on the economies of the eurozone.
It would be hard to understate how bad things have gotten – particularly in southern Europe. The truth is that most of southern Europe is experiencing a full-blown economic depression right now. Sadly, most Americans are paying very little attention to what is going on across the Atlantic. But they should be watching, because this is what happens when nations accumulate too much debt. The United States has the biggest debt burden of all, and eventually what is happening over in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece is going to happen over here as well.
The following are 20 facts about the collapse of Europe that everyone should know...
#1 10 Months: Manufacturing activity in both France and Germany has contracted for 10 months in a row.
#2 11.8 Percent: The unemployment rate in the eurozone has now risen to 11.8 percent – a brand new all-time high.
#3 17 Months: In November, Italy experienced the sharpest decline in retail sales that it had experienced in 17 months.
#4 20 Months: Manufacturing activity in Spain has contracted for 20 months in a row.
#5 20 Percent: It is estimated that bad loans now make up approximately 20 percent of all domestic loans in the Greek banking system at this point.
#6 22 Percent: A whopping 22 percent of the entire population of Ireland lives in jobless households.
#7 26 Percent: The unemployment rate in Greece is now 26 percent. A year ago it was only 18.9 percent.
#8 26.6 Percent: The unemployment rate in Spain has risen to an astounding 26.6 percent.
#9 27.0 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Cyprus. Back in 2008, this number was well below 10 percent.
#10 28 Percent: Sales of French-made vehicles in November were down 28 percent compared to a year earlier.
#11 36 Percent: Today, the poverty rate in Greece is 36 percent. Back in 2009 it was only about 20 percent.
#12 37.1 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Italy – a brand new all-time high.
#13 44 Percent: An astounding 44 percent of the entire population of Bulgaria is facing “severe material deprivation”.
#14 56.5 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Spain – a brand new all-time high.
#15 57.6 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Greece – a brand new all-time high.
#16 60 Percent: Citigroup is projecting that there is a 60 percent probability that Greece will leave the eurozone within the next 12 to 18 months.
#17 70 Percent: It has been reported that some homes in Spain are being sold at a 70% discount from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble back in 2006. At this point there areapproximately 2 million unsold homes in Spain.
#18 200 Percent: The debt to GDP ratio in Greece is rapidly approaching 200 percent.
#19 1997: According to the Committee of French Automobile Producers, 2012 was the worst year for the French automobile industry since 1997.
#20 2 Million: Back in 2005, the French auto industry produced about 3.5 million vehicles. In 2012, that number dropped to about 2 million vehicles.
One thing that these shocking numbers cannot convey is the tremendous amount of pain that many average Europeans are living through on a daily basis at this point. To get a peek into what life is like in Greece these days, check out this short excerpt from a recent Bloomberg article…
Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece. After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes.
“I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”
For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unraveling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity.
Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.
All over Europe, people that have lost all hope are actually setting themselves on fire in a desperate attempt to draw attention. Millions of formerly middle class Europeans have lost everything and are becoming increasingly desperate. Suicide and crime are skyrocketing all over southern Europe and massive street riots are erupting on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. Things are going to get even worse for Europe.
Meanwhile, those of us living in the United States smugly look down our noses at Europe because we are still living in a false bubble of debt-fueled prosperity.
But eventually we will feel the sting of austerity as well. The recent fiscal cliff deal was an indication of that. Taxes are going up and government spending is at least going to slow down. It won’t be too long before the effects of that are felt in the economy.
And of course the reality of the situation is that the U.S. economy really did not perform very well at all during 2012 when you take a look at the numbers. The cold, hard truth is that the U.S. economy has been declining for a very long time, and there are a whole bunch of reasons to expect that our decline will accelerate even further in 2013.
So if you are an American, don’t laugh at what is happening over in Europe at the moment. We are headed down the exact same path that they have gone, and we are going to experience the same kind of suffering that they are going through right now.
Use these last few “bubble months” to prepare for what is ahead. At some point this “hope bubble” will disappear and then the time for preparation will be over.
West fears Iran will try to seize Syria's uranium stockpile
Nuclear experts believe that the Syrian uranium is enough for the construction of at least five nuclear bombs; obtaining the uranium could help the Iranians begin a secret enrichment program without the international community's knowledge.
Amid the international community's concerns over Syria's possible use of its chemical weapon arsenal against its citizens and the possible transfer of those weapons to terror organizations, another worry has been added: a stockpile of some 50 tons of uranium that are still held by the Assad regime following the destruction of its planned nuclear reactor.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/west-fears-iran-will-try-to-seize-syria-s-uranium-stockpile.premium-1.492979
This is so unfortunate! Please, pray for this man's family! Cult YouTube gun channel boss found shot dead on rural Georgia road.!
- Keith Ratliff was found shot to the head but had cache of weapons near him
- He ran YouTube channel with three million subscribers and all videos combined have been viewed more than a HALF BILLION times
- 32-year-old man leaves behind a wife and two-year-old son
Prominent rifle manufacturer killed in mysterious car crash days after posting psych drug link to school shooters!
(NaturalNews) What you are about to read is astonishing. I'm not even
sure what's the right conclusion to draw from it. But here's what we
know so far:
John Noveske is one of the most celebrated battle rifle manufacturers in America. His rifles, found at www.NoveskeRifleworks.com are widely recognized as some of the finest pieces of American-made hardware ever created. (I own one of his rifles, and it's a masterpiece of a machine that just keeps on running.) Sadly, John Noveske was killed in a mysterious car crash just a few days ago, on January 4, 2013.
According to the Outdoor Wire, his car "traveled across the oncoming lane onto the dirt highway shoulder until it struck two large boulders. The vehicle rolled and Mr. Noveske was ejected."
But barely a week before this incident, John Noveske posted a lengthy, detailed post on Facebook that listed all the school shootings tied to psychiatric drugs. At the end of the post, he asked, "What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on?"
That was the last post he ever made. (Full text below.)
John Noveske is one of the most celebrated battle rifle manufacturers in America. His rifles, found at www.NoveskeRifleworks.com are widely recognized as some of the finest pieces of American-made hardware ever created. (I own one of his rifles, and it's a masterpiece of a machine that just keeps on running.) Sadly, John Noveske was killed in a mysterious car crash just a few days ago, on January 4, 2013.
According to the Outdoor Wire, his car "traveled across the oncoming lane onto the dirt highway shoulder until it struck two large boulders. The vehicle rolled and Mr. Noveske was ejected."
But barely a week before this incident, John Noveske posted a lengthy, detailed post on Facebook that listed all the school shootings tied to psychiatric drugs. At the end of the post, he asked, "What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on?"
That was the last post he ever made. (Full text below.)
Mysterious death during gun control debate raises questions
John Noveske wasn't the first prominent gun rights supporter to be killed in the last few days. Keith Ratliff, the creator of a super-popular YouTube channel featuring videos of exotic weapons, was also recently found dead.The Daily Mail reports that Ratliff was "discovered on a rural road in Carnesville, Georgia. Ratliff had a single gunshot wound the head and police are treating his death as a homicide."
Someone murdered Ratliff, in other words, and it had to be someone with the ability to get close enough to Ratliff to take him out without warning.
Beyond these two shootings, the widely-discredited CNN journalist Piers Morgan, wanted for questioning in Britain's Daily Mirror phone hacking scandal, invited guests onto his show who threatened Alex Jones' children and laughed about the idea of Piers Morgan shooting Alex Jones with an AR-15.
That astonishing video interview is available at:
www.infowars.com/veiled-threat-piers-morgan-guest-says-shoot-alex-jon...
Steve Quayle, creator of SteveQuayle.com, says "the red list is on!" This refers to the so-called "red list" -- a secret kill list of Americans authorized by Obama and designed to be invoked immediately before an attempted radical leftist takeover of the nation. In support of this theory, Obama himself actually signed into law the NDAA which authorizes secret assassinations of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
Instead of the red list being "conspiracy theory," it appears to be a key component of Obama's domestic policy.
Beyond coincidence: Pieces of the puzzle rapidly coming together
Sure, a car crash involving John Noveske could be a coincidence. It could also be a coincidence that no video footage has been released from Sandy Hook showing Adam Lanza carrying any rifle whatsoever.It might also be a coincidence that Dianne Feinstein just happened to have her detailed gun confiscation bill ready to release immediately following the Sandy Hook shooting.
It might also be a total coincidence that according to Google.com, the United Way Sandy Hook donation support page was created on December 11, 2012 -- a full three days before the shooting took place.
It could also be a total coincidence that NBC News reported Adam Lanza's AR-15 rifle was left in his car and was never used in the shooting at all.
I suppose it could be a coincidence that Bank of America slammed home an economic embargo against an online gun parts retailer in the days following the Sandy Hook shooting.
And it could be coincidence that Facebook suspended or shut down the accounts of hundreds of prominent people who advocated the Second Amendment, including our account here at Natural News.
And finally, it could be a total coincidence that police radio recordings seem to indicate there were multiple shooters involved in Sandy Hook.
But what are the odds of ALL of these coincidences existing simultaneously? Those odds are virtually zero.
Something's fishy with all this. It's becoming increasingly apparent that an order has come down from the very top to destroy, silence, threaten or execute true American patriots. Steve Quayle has long predicted this would be the very first step before foreign troops are unleashed on American soil to take over the country and deliver it, just as Obama has always planned, into the hands of the globalist crime syndicate.
It all sounds outrageous, I admit, and I'm not even sure what to believe myself. But it's becoming more difficult by the day to deny actual events happening right before our eyes. Believe what you will, but don't be surprised if people like Steve Quayle and Alex Jones were right all along. If we see any more mysterious deaths of prominent gun advocates, it going to raise huge red flags across the patriot community.
Read John Noveske's last Facebook post
This is the last post John Noveske made on his Facebook page before he was killed:Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public.
Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.
Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.
Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.
Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.
Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.
Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.
Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.
A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.
Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..
A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.
Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.
TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.
Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.
James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.
Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania
Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California
Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.
Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.
Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.
Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.
Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.
Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.
Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.
Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.
Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said ".... the damn doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil...")
Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,
(Gareth's father could not accept his son's death and killed himself.)
Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family's detached garage.
Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.
Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.
Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.
A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.
Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and "other drugs for the conditions."
Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.
Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.
Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.
Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.
Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his
New York high school.
Missing from list... 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds....
What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21...... killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az
What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24..... killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado
What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or
What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct
Roberts is the only one that I haven't heard about being on drugs of some kind.
Syrian army fires more short-range missiles
A NATO official
confirmed the launch of an unguided, short-range ballistic missile –
probably a Scud – Wednesday night against unspecified targets in
northern Syria. He condemned these and similar launches a week ago as
reckless.
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