I have loved the Olympics since the first of my lifetime in 1968. I was just two months past my 3rd birthday when the Mexico City games glowed most nights and of course the weekends on the black and white television set in our modest living room. I would roll around in the floor on the scratchy, uncomfortable gray carpeting watching every second while my father who despised all that is sports complained because shows like the Wild Wild West and Hawaii Five-O were preempted by the Olympic spectacle. Not only did I watch at home but I watched at both sets of my grandparents’ houses. The games were ubiquitous on American TVs for 15 days that Fall.

I know it’s difficult to fathom a three year old remembering much of anything but I remember many events from those games nor was their controversial moments lost upon me. The shinning moments which stand out for me were the gold medals of track athlete Kip Keino of Kenya in the 1500 meters, Bob Beamon’s “Leap of the Century” long jump, a record which would stand for almost 23 years and of course who alive then could forget the introduction of Dick Fosbury’s unorthodox jumping style known as the “Fosbury Flop”, revolutionizing the sport of the high jump.

For me though it was not just about the competition. Even at that age I understood the games represented a coming together of mankind. It was a stark contrast to the images of the Vietnam War, the police actions against youth war and civil rights protests in America on the news nightly which I had already been exposed to. To that three year old, those games were a vision of what could be and what should be, people coming together for a common interest from all cultures, languages and races in peace and cooperation. Yes I was already acutely aware things in the world were horribly out of kilter. Children absorb far more than most imagine even at that age. However even in the midst of the hopefulness which the games already represented to me I was jolted in the second week by the reaction of adults around me to the awards ceremony for the 200 meter race where gold medalist Tommy Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos displayed what was dubbed the Black Power Salute on the podium.  The serenity of those games was somehow forever marred as many Americans reviled the athlete’s use of the awards stand to make a political statement. It created such public furor that both runners were were expelled from the U.S. Olympic team. It was all quite confusing for a very small child at the time but that continued to reinforce within me that things in the grown up world were not as they should be. Regardless I would go on later to love that year’s Grenoble Winter games watching Frenchman Jean Claude Killy win three downhill medals and American figure skater Peggy Fleming win her gold.

My love of the games has waned dramatically over the years due to the shift from amateur athletes to almost 100% professionals who if not actually employed as pros full time are so heavily sponsored and subsidized that you you’d be struck down by God for even suggesting they remotely resemble any sort of amateur competitor of 40 years ago. That, the constant use of performance enhancing drugs and the over commercialization of the games has all left a very bad taste in my mouth. It no longer is what it was or what at least what in theory it was supposed to be. The games have now morphed into such a grotesque representation of everything which plagues our modern society that I can no longer condone my even watching any portion of it. There comes a time when you must draw a line in the sand and say NO MORE to things which you do not believe in nor can morally or ethically support. This feeling culminated a couple of months ago when I learned that rocket launchers would be installed at different locations throughout London for “security purposes” during the games. These are meant to thwart any arial attack which might be attempted on the Olympic venue. The escalating militarization of police all over the world over the last decade is frightening enough but when things have gone so far as to put rocket launchers on top of buildings for events such as the Olympics which are supposed to represent peaceful cultural exchange things have just gone too far. I won’t go to sports events in America where fans are patted down from ankles to shoulders as they are now for NFL Football Games. I honestly can not watch games where residential buildings have been commandeered by the U.K. government without the consent of owners to host military artillery for a sporting event.

London Olympic preperations: missile launchers in Blackheath – video

The defense of London is costing over  £1 billion ($1.54 billion). Stunningly insane! We have millions of people unemployed, homeless and starving both in Europe and the U.S. since the economic collapse (not that I am ignorant of the worse plight of the Third World by any stretch of the imagination) yet they are spending over a $$BILLION AND A HALF$$ USD on security for a sporting even which will be most likely as most of the Olympics over the past coupe of decades be a huge net loss business proposition? The world truly has gone mad.

“WAR GAMES are coming to London this week as the military wheels out RAF Typhoon jets, helicopters and land and sea forces to test the capital’s £1 billion defences against terrorist attacks during the Olympics.”

“The Olympic war games – almost definitely the biggest peace-time military exercise ever undertaken in London – are scheduled to take place over the Bank Holiday weekend, between Wednesday 2 and Thursday 10 May.”

Not that I am actually a fan of nor much of a believer in online polls but one sponsored by The Guardian newspaper in England posed the question whether people would feel safer with rockets on top of their buildings for the games and a shocking 57.2% of respondents voted yes!  At least 42.8% realized that having hardware like that on your house might actually prompt someone if nutty enough to try to make a political statement out of the games would now make your own house out as an alternate target even if the whole notion of it is pretty ridiculous.

As the deadline for the games approach though some Londoners have begun to stand up and against their city and their homes being turned into a police state for a sporting event.

Far-reaching Olympic security measures leave Londoners with bad taste in their mouths

Tue, Jul 10, 2012
“Less than three weeks before the Opening Ceremony on July 27, much of the pre-event chatter among Londoners revolves not around the competitions themselves, but the controversial measures being implemented to safeguard against terrorist activity.

On Monday, a high-profile court case began in which a group of London residents sued security forces because a surface-to-air missile – which could be used to shoot down a civilian airplane in case of a hijacking – is designated to be placed on the roof of their apartment building.

Residents of the Fred Wigg Tower in Leytonstone, less than a mile from where soccer icon David Beckham grew up, were seeking an injunction against the missile placement they claim increases their own danger of being under attack.” The high court dismissed the claims. “However on Tuesday (July 10) the High Court ruled in favour of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), agreeing that a tower block was a suitable site for the missiles.” 

Now a new black hole for money to pour into for the games has come to light. The private security firm G4S seems to have spent the last 2+ years mulling around and failed to hire about 10,000 people to provide security for the games. In all that time they only managed to hire about 4,000 of the 13,700 personnel ordered for their £284 million ($441 million) contract. The government only became aware of this fiasco last week. The company has a £284m contract with the Government to provide 13,700 security guards for the Olympic Games, but only 4,000 guards are trained and ready.

It has emerged that ministers were warned that there were problems with the firm that failed to recruit staff for the Olympics. (video)

“Mr Buckles also faces questions over how he only learned “eight or nine days ago” that his company was strugglingto find the 10,000 staff it was contracted to provide for the Olympic Games.The boss, who faces a grilling from MPs next week, insisted that both ministers and Locog had been kept fully informed of what was happening and said company had been “fully transparent” about the difficulties it encountered.He also said that some of the guards the firm has managed to supply may not be able to speak English. G4S stands to lose up to £50m as a result of the London Olympics security fiasco.”

So what are they going to do? Why they’re calling in more military to fill the gaps.

When did it become normal for human beings who are not at war to just accept living in a state where everything around them now resembles a state of perpetual war? It is as though the continual bombardment of terrorism propaganda from the previous decade, something which has personally touched so few people’s lives directly, something less likely to kill or maim them than their own police, the flu or being a passenger in a small aircraft has now produced a population which more than half would welcome heavy artillery mounted on their rooftops? If you don’t find that notion frightening then don’t bother reading the rest of this article because you have already been overtaken by Orwellian Doublethink and will not be able to remotely relate to what I am talking about. That philosophy makes it impossible to see reality any longer.

Now lets get to the comedy part of this whole completely ridiculous military show an obvious excuse for economic stimulus and more money printing to pay for it all. Here they are trying to convince the public that we have to be so incredibly careful because mad bombers lurk behind every corner and that hellfire could rain down from the skies at any moment. While telling us we must be on our absolute most guarded and careful alert ………………. all the while the British military running this farce just puts down their rocket launchers, ammo and equipment leaving it lay unguarded outside of a London apartment for anyone to walk through and take pictures of while the boys are away from the pile of goodies having a smoke break or a spontaneous game of hacky sack.

London 2012 Olympics: ‘missiles left unguarded’ outside East London Flats (video).

After that it all makes about as much sense as body scanning and patting down airline passengers for weapons but letting them board with belts, boot laces and 5 lb aluminum clad lap tops all of which could be used to both incapacitate and secure hostages. It’s not about safety it’s about control and feeding the military industrial complex of the entire world more money. War and control are big, big business with lots of fringe benefits for the people, corporations, governments and especially banks which run it.

As if this all of this were not enough to make you not want to participate in this year’s Olympics we also have the little known issue of over 7,000 TONS of radioactive waste most of which (the part they will admit to) was discovered under the site of the new Olympic stadium. The mix which includes radium, polonium, thorium and uranium could not possibly have been naturally occurring but the Olympic authorities tried their best to make it out to be just that. That’s a tough sell when the stadium is built on the site of a former dump. The next disgusting part of this being a cover up is the developers and the Olympic Committee tried to hide it from the authorities after it was discovered. The proper authorities were not advised nor consulted before removal of radioactive materials was already undertaken. By moved we mean 400 meters from the stadium where it supposedly will be safe for the next 1,000 years. Yes and I have a pineapple grove for sale in Antarctica I am willing to sell you for a very reasonable price.

This entire incident was literally swept under the rug before anyone in real authority could control it. Proper removal and decontamination of the site obviously were not handled according to the book.

The contractors had no authority nor did they have instruction as how to handle radioactive material being removed. Both the safety of not only the workers but of residents who were likely exposed to radioactive dust from the construction site were not given any thought. From what I can gather no nuclear regulatory authority was even consulted on the matter.

All regulation was thrown out the window for this project simply because it IS the Olympics and there are huge corporate interests at stake. Who cares if the digging up of all that radioactive waste up causes a few hundred workers cancer 20 years down the road or that a few hundred more local residents might also fall ill in later years? It’s the Olympics damn it and they must go on! Coca Cola and DuPont must get their advertising in.

The Olympics have now come to represent the global premise and practice of privatizing profits and socializing risk. Almost every Olympics now is a boondoggle for the host city and nation. While the tax payers foot tremendous tabs for unprofitable games, corporate sponsors still get what they paid for with hundreds of millions of people avidly watching the games in every country of the world. The people pay and pay and pay for these games and all we have to show for it are material souvenirs and retail products which will soon be obsolete, the consumption of more beverages laden with genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, beer and a lot of nutty people who collect Olympic pins having a few more pieces of flair for their hats and vests. The debt from the games however outlast the pins. Just ask Greece about how they’re doing with their debt these days. The Athens Games were a huge burden on the country costing $15 billion, most of it heaped upon the public and the venues were already covered in dust before their economic collapse. Talk about poor marketing research, all those now empty stadium seats, no one to fill them and nothing to watch. The Beijing games cost in excess of $40 billion and they claimed a profit of $16 million? That’s right I said $16 million and this figure is available from multiple sources. Read that again and do the math. Think about it. That’s not even a significant return on investment. That’s still a loss and I seriously doubt it’s even true they came out $16 million ahead. That’s the Chinese way of trying to save face when they just lost their ass on being an Olympic host.

The £486 million ($750 million) 80,000 seat stadium is going to be London’s post Olympic white elephant. No one seems to want it. First of all as soon as the games are over with it’s going to be downsized to at the most 60,000 seats and some older claims go as far as to say this disaster is going to warrant only 25,000 post game seats. London simply has too many stadiums as it is and who the heck wants to use a stadium with uranium in it? The World Cup 2018 long ago said they don’t want to use it. Later there was seemingly a small flurry of excitement as 4 football (soccer) teams had a brief bidding war for it a couple of years back. Ultimately it ended in no one wanting it after all. Most proposals I’ve read for the venue end up demolishing part or all of it.

“After the Games, the demolition of the Olympic stadium in Stratford to make way for housing is a possibility because government and sporting authorities so far have been unable to agree on its future use.”

Nice thought building housing on a site full of radioactive waste which wasn’t even properly handled and is actually still for all practical purposes on site.

So I am done with the Olympics. I will not support an institution which promotes the proliferation of the militarization of daily life. I will not support Games which indebt the people of almost every single nation  host to the games only to enrich corporate and banking interests. I no longer care to watch humans who now resemble high priced race horses rather than representing the finest in natural athletic ability at play during its physical youth.

The world is facing four monumental problems right now. Fukushima is probably the most horrific disaster to ever befall mankind since the Great Deluge and it’s being covered up just like the radiation at London’s Olympic Stadium. Just recently it was revealed that a third reactor, Fukushima Daiichi reactor #1 is also most likely in full meltdown. They don’t even have technology developed to address this as was discussed in a previous Cutting the Gordian Knot article.

Gundersen: Latest probe at Unit 1 indicates nuclear fuel has left containment (VIDEO)

Honestly the radiation story was my impetus for writing this story because the more I learn about the nuclear industry it becomes clear that nuclear waste and hazard are hidden nearly everywhere you look. This dump in London is not an uncommon thing. Nuclear power is about profit with no plan for accidents nor provisions for the decommissioning of the plants at their end of service. The war on humanity being waged by the banking and corporate sectors are destroying society for all but the absolute pinnacle of the uber wealthy. The debt which the Olympics now creates for the common man is really unconscionable. It is just another leverage debt fraud by the corporations and the banking industry, an amuse bouche to the grander schemes such as an aquaintance put it, “…. Lieborgate, Robosigning, Robosettlement, CDOs, rehypothecation, High Frequency Trading, toxic assets marked-to-unicorns, the end of Mark-to-Market, ZIRP, NIRP, expert networks, insider trading, MF Global, and countless other examples of what happens when financial fraud is let loose with no fear of consequence in a Bernanke Put world.” It’s just another debt scam for the nation and city unfortunate enough to be chosen to bear the burden of host. 

Another major problem we face is the attempt by major corporations to control the food supply with genetically modified seed, chemicals and kill genes by the likes of Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer and a few other choice corporations which may end up starving the world. DuPont is a major sponsor of the games. The stranglehold which the oil, coal and nuclear industries have on energy and their collective effort to prevent truly innovative clean energy keeps us tied to the banking debt and currency devaluation because through energy trade they control the world currencies. Unfortunately the Olympics now just looks like the poster child for all this. It has become their vehicle. The interconnectedness with banking, finance, corporate manipulation and them all being above the law make it impossible for me to enjoy any longer that human spectacle of “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat“.

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UPDATE July 26, 2012

Lockdown in London: Ex-U.S. Athlete Jules Boykoff on Olympic Censorship and Militarization

Brian Whelan who shot the video ‘missiles left unguarded’ outside of East London flats has been evicted from his apartment for speaking out against the commandeering of residential property for military use. Residents from one of these buildings which reporters tried to interview stated they would not talk on camera because others who had spoken with the media had been harassed by police. This is also the first time in British history that private property has been seized, residents removed and used for military purposes other than war time. The whole operation is completely unprecedented. Watch the video for report.

 
Nuked Radio with Christina Consolo,

“7000 tonnes of radioactive waste under Olympic site in London. Please share these articles and info at every opportunity where mainstream is reporting on the games over the next 2 weeks!”

Nuked Radio #52 Rads & Rockets at OLYMPICS

Toxic Sake, © Gulsah Bademci 2011

It was reported today that a U.S. firm named EnergySolutions, which has been involved in the decommissioning of 10 nuclear power plants now aims to garnering multiple contracts for aiding other companies in dismantling Fukushima. This is supposed to also include the spent fuel rods housed there. However we have a slight problem with this you will see as reported today in The Denki Shimbun (The Electric Daily News), from Japan.

“In connection with the decommissioning of Fukushima I units 1 – 4, EnergySolutions aims to handle the planning of the entire decommissioning process, including cost calculation, and win orders for multiple projects, including the treatment and volume reduction of radioactive waste and the extraction and storage of spent fuel and fuel debris (damaged fuel).

Concerning the extraction of fuel debris, which is considered the most challenging process, “There is no technology which may be directly applied,” said Morant. He added, however, that knowledge concerning the extraction of damaged fuel, which was obtained through the use of research reactors, and remote underwater cutting technology, as used for the Zion nuclear power station in the United States, may be applied to some extent.”

For almost 14 months now those of us who follow the Fukushima disaster closely via the alternative media  have waited for someone to make a definitive statement as to how the authorities plan to deal with the ongoing meltdown of three reactors and the spent fuel rods housed there. While the main stream media all but ignores the biggest disaster of all time, alternative media sources have been weeks to as much as ten months ahead of corporate news in accurate reporting of events there. This should be the top story in the news every single day because it is the most important thing happening in the world not only right now but in all of recorded history. This is bigger than the global financial crisis, this is bigger than any election, riot, protest and every single war since the dawn of man. It is the definitive event of all human history. If we screw this up we’re all toast. Every single one of us.

One thing that has been suspiciously missing in statements about Fukushima from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Japanse government, the U.S. government or even the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  is any mention of a planned response. All that is reported scant as it is, are occasional responses to one downplayed crisis after another and without any forward looking guidance or direction. No one has been willing to tell us what the plan is!

Today it has finally been admitted, a fact that many of us have known since the beginning of this nightmare, that there is no strategy and there is no real plan to deal with Fukushima. Here we sit over a year into this thing, radiation washing and raining across the globe and just now it’s being revealed to the greater public that there is no technology developed to handle the situation. They are flying by the seat of their pants and hope to basically figure it out as they go along. What may be horrifying to the majority of the public left unawares is the fact that in the past year there really has been no progress made at Fukushima. Most people probably assume that since it’s not in the news that everything has somehow turned out ok or that it’s been taken care of. Nothing has improved and things have only gotten worse as time has gone along. The place looks like the bombed out war zone it did just following the tsunami, the melt down of three reactors and the resultant massive hydrogen explosion which basically ripped the nuclear power plant apart. That event sent tremendous amounts of radioactive substances into the air and still does with each and every passing second. It rains down on Japan, the U.S., Canada, Europe, all the way back to Asia and now there are even reports of radioactive hot spots in the Southern Hemisphere. The mix includes cesium, iodine, strontium, plutonium and now this unforeseen event has probably produced something which never existed before, endofullerene buckey balls making it possible for uranium to be carried through the air as easily as pollen.

Open wide for some toxic sake, a stiff drink of nuclear hubris because not only is there plenty to go around but everyone on the planet is getting a big drink! You see it’s like this, some very arrogant members of our obscure little species have managed to create a disaster so big, so complex and so deadly that they may not be able to ever get it under control. Things are really so bad that this information is just now slowly being allowed to disseminate into the main stream media. They couldn’t have the sheep panic and start running amok a year ago. If they’d told the truth at the time of the event to the general public there would have been mass panic. Now though, since the radiation is being spread everywhere, those folks that run the world through their controlled media probably figure at this point there’s no where really left to run so the people even close to the source will stay put. When this event happened if things were right with the world there would have been an attempt to evacuate about 40 million people from Northern Japan. That is truly what should have been done but no one seemed to want to attempt something like that. Those closest to Fukushima have been forced to take whatever the Fates decide. It’s been long enough since the initial event now that radioactive substances have been distributed to just about every surface on the planet and the concentrations grow daily. Even as early as a month after the explosion every soil sample taken in the U.S. showed fallout from Fukushima and it was measured in the air as far away as Sweden. The NORSK institute quickly took measure to hide their data from the public by changing website names. The United States Geological Service is just now releasing some information from 12 months ago. That’s how forthcoming we can expect the U.S. government to be.

They’re finally hinting that this could possibly wipe us all off the planet if things don’t get figured out quickly or if something else goes wrong. Yes it really is that dire. There’s enough plutonium in the reactor #4 fuel cooling pool that if allowed to go dry or fall from it’s perch 30 meters above the ground will wipe out all life on this planet. Even if that doesn’t occur there will still be hundreds of millions die from all the radiation already released and with no foreseeable end to it in sight. This event dwarfs Chernobyl and makes Three Mile Island look like a birthday candle in comparison.

Let’s take a look at the reactor #4 building as it stands today and the position of the cooling pool there.

Get the picture? That is where the fate of humanity and all life on this plant lay, in the remnants of what was a building, one which could crumble with the next decent tremor in the world’s most unstable earthquake zone. That pool is cracked and it’s leaking. What do you think the chances are? We’ve honestly been living on borrowed time since March 11, 2011.

The day before the tsunami hit, TEPCO was getting ready to load up reactor #4 with about 1,500 fresh (not spent) fuel rods which were and still are being held in that now leaky pool. Since Fukushima had recently started using MOX fuel we can assume that’s what is being held there now and is just chock full of plutonium.  According to Christina Consolo, the host of  Nuked Radio,

“If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.”

That from the article, Fukushima is Falling Apart: are You Ready?

Speaking of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, he like many people or rather most people apparently was clueless as to what was going on in Japan. It’s not like it’s an issue in the news every day so he must have gotten one hell of a jolt on his trip to Japan when he got to see Fukushima for himself a couple of weeks ago. If you’ve heard anything recently in the news it might have been just a blurb about  the senator  issuing a press release shortly after his trip there and witnessing the awful truth about how bad the situation really is. Apparently the senator like the vast majority of the world population didn’t get the memo that the biggest catastrophe in the known history of mankind did not just happen last year but is an ongoing situation that is deteriorating. He freaked out so badly that 10 days ago he started writing to everyone and their brother trying to get someone to move on the situation as if these people aren’t already aware. I’m sorry but I have difficulty believing that the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Hilary Clinton don’t have a grasp of what has been going on over there or here for that matter. It’s like saying Alan Greenspan didn’t know that there was a housing bubble. These people at the top KNOW the score. How can they not when there is a very small slice of the world population which has known for the last year what is going on with a greater degree of depth and accuracy than the corporate news media. People outside the main stream have been way ahead of the curve regardless of the near blackout regular television until the last few weeks. Even with what coverage they do give it, the majority of people unfortunately either don’t listen or forget about it because most of humanity has been reduced to the attention span of gold fish.

Below are links to the letters which Senator Wyden sent to various departments and people last week regarding Fukushima.

• US Ambassador to Japan Fujisaki
• Secretary of Energy Chu
• Secretary of State Clinton
• NRC Chairman Jaczko

I find it to be insulting to the intelligence of the world population that according to what’s being reported in the main stream that just now pleas are being made by government representatives to do something about Fukushima. Take for example this news even more bizarre than Senator Wyden’s epiphany that things are horribly, horribly wrong. In March at an international Nuclear Security Summit Conference held in Seoul, South Korea the issue of Fukushima took a back seat to North Korean nukes. They spent their entire time basically worrying over North Korea, a country that can’t even successfully launch a model rocket with a satellite payload. That was considered to be a more pressing issue than the destruction of the entire planet. Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata attempted to have the issue of Fukushima and the fuel rods, especially those in reactor #4 heard but was unable to get anyone at the conference to introduce the topic. What kind of crazy screwed up world do we live in when the Nuclear Security Summit Conference is so wrapped up in diplomatic protocol, pomp and circumstance that it can just ignore the biggest issue on the planet? What kind of lunacy is going on here? I have difficulty believing the story line that’s going on to be honest. All these government officials suddenly crawling out of the woodwork, begging for help and being ignored. No one yet as far as I can determine has addressed the concerns of Murata or Wyden either. Not a whole lot of the story line makes sense or rings true. It’s almost as though no one of importance is in charge, knows anything or is doing anything. The whole thing is just strange. So as the offical story goes, in  lieu of being able to address the commission former ambassador Murata instead penned a letter to Ban Ki-moon, current Secretary General of the United Nations begging for help with the matter. Here is an excerpt from the letter,

“It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on NO.4 reactor. This is confirmed by most reliable experts like Dr. Arnie Gundersen or Dr. Fumiaki Koide.

Please allow me to inform you of an initiative being taken by a former UN official who is endeavoring to have the Nuclear Security Summit take up the crucial problem. of N0.4 reactor of Fukushima. He is pursuing the establishment of an independent assessment team. I think his efforts are very significant, because it is indispensable to draw the attention of world leaders to this vital issue.

I am cooperating with him, writing to some of my Korean acquaintances that this issue deserves the personal attention of President Lee Myung-bak. I have written today to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. I asked him to consider taking the initiative of mobilizing human wisdom on the widest scope to cope with the Fukushima reactor No.4 problem, fully taking into account the above-mentioned “independent assessment team”.

Can this seriously be real that we’ve had the world sitting on it’s hands for over a year so that now the Japanese must go begging for help? Is every nuclear regulatory body in the world just ignoring what has been going on and leaving it all up to TEPCO to take care of? This whole thing is like a theater of the absurd. Whatever is going on behind the scenes remains to be seen but we know regardless that things are decidedly very, very bad.

Keep up to date on information about Fukushima and related issues at these websites;

Fukushima Facts

Nuked Radio with Christina Consolo

Fukushima Diary by Iori Mochizuki

Alexander Higgins Blog (frequent articles related to Fukushima but not a dedicated Fukushima blog)

Addendum  May 15, 2012

best of the latest interviews:

Christina Consolo, Fukushima Update w/ the “RadChick” May 12, 2012

Flashpoints Daily Newsmag, May 9, 2012 interviews Dr. Micio Kaku

Jacket cover for Tom Woods Jr. PhD book Nullification, How To Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century

What the heck is going on in America? In less than a week’s time a second state has put a foot down making it clear that it will not cooperate with a Federal Law which is blatantly unconstitutional. Yesterday Arizona became the second state to pass a nullification of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  After months of political acrobatics the Arizona Senate passed SB 1182 known as the Liberty Preservation Act, by a vote of 20 – 8 with two senators not voting. More strongly worded than the Virginia law passed last week as reported in the previous article First State to Defy the Federal Government, Virginia Nullifies NDAA, the Arizona version also makes it a crime for  any public officer, state government agent or employee to assist in the “kidnapping” of an American citizen by the federal government under the NDAA. Read the whole  bill below because it’s really quite good in comparison to Virginia’s.

The Liberty Preservation Act as passed

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona: Section 1.  Title 41, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding chapter 51, to read: CHAPTER 51 GOVERNMENTAL COMPLIANCE WITH THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2012 ARTICLE 1.  GENERAL PROVISIONS 41-5050.  National defense authorization act of 2012; prohibited acts; violation; classification A.  THIS STATE AND ANY AGENCY OF THIS STATE SHALL NOT PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT OR PARTICIPATE IN ANY WAY WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SECTIONS 1021 AND 1022 OF THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2012, PUBLIC LAW 112‑81, AGAINST ANY CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES. B.  THE DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY OR A SHERIFF OF THE COUNTY SHALL REPORT TO THE GOVERNOR AND THE LEGISLATURE ANY ATTEMPT BY AGENCIES OR AGENTS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO SECURE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SECTIONS 1021 AND 1022 OF THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT, 2011 PUBLIC LAW 112-81 THROUGH THE OPERATIONS OF THAT OR ANY OTHER STATE DEPARTMENT. C.  ANY PUBLIC OFFICER, EMPLOYEE OR AGENT OF THIS STATE OR ANY EMPLOYEE OF A CORPORATION WHO PROVIDES SERVICES TO THIS STATE AND WHO ENFORCES OR ATTEMPTS TO ENFORCE AN ACT, ORDER, LAW, STATUTE, RULE OR REGULATION OF THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS GUILTY OF A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR. Sec. 2.  Findings A.  The Legislature finds that the enactment into law by the United States Congress of sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is inimical to the liberty, security and well-being of the people of Arizona and that those sections were adopted by Congress in violation of the limits of federal power in the United States Constitution. B.  The Legislature further finds that sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, as they purport to authorize the detainment of persons who are citizens of the United States and captured within the United States without charge or trial, military tribunals for persons captured within the United States who are citizens of the United States and the transfer of persons who are citizens of the United States and who are captured within the United States to foreign jurisdictions, violate the following rights enshrined in the Constitution of the United States: 1.  Article I, section 9, clause 2 relating to the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus. 2.  The First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. 3.  The Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. 4.  The Fifth Amendment right to be free from charge for an infamous or capitol crime until presentment or indictment by a grand jury. 5.  The Fifth Amendment right to be free from deprivation of life, liberty or property without due process of law. 6.  The Sixth Amendment right in criminal prosecutions to enjoy a speedy trial by an impartial jury in the state and district where the crime was allegedly committed. 7.  The Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation. 8.  The Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses. 9.  The Sixth Amendment right to counsel. 10.  The Eighth Amendment right to be free from excessive bail and fines, and cruel and unusual punishment. 11.  The Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from deprivation of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Sec. 3.  Short title This act may be cited as the “Liberty Preservation Act”.

That’s some pretty heady stuff! Much more dynamically written than the Virginia bill and laying out in very specific language the portions of NDAA which the state of Arizona finds to be unconstitutional. The question remaining is whether Governor Jan Brewer will actually sign it into law or not. As a politician she claims to support states sovereign rights but reality is a bit different measure of her convictions than political campaign promises. She recently vetoed HB2434  known as the Sheriff’s First bill, the premise of which was to codify the fact that county sheriffs are the chief constitutional law enforcement of the state and that all federal law enforcement officers must notify local sheriff authorities before they can take action within the state.  This is extremely important because it is specifically the sheriffs who hold the real power to protect a state’s population from unconstitutional federal acts like NDAA. Bear with me while we digress to this other important issue for a few moments.

Basically the office of sheriff, is the duly elected protector of individual constitutional rights in each county of a state. They have the authority to prevent illegal seizure of property, stop fraudulent bank foreclosures, protect farmers from illegal FDA raids, protect water rights, prevent illegal actions by the IRS and myriad other unlawful incursions which the alphabet soup of government and pseudo government agencies attempt to and often carry out against citizens. What would be the wrong in signing a bill which puts down on paper what is already understood about the duties of county sheriff’s departments? Should armed federal agents be allowed to just storm into every state unannounced like they own the place? Does it seem right that any agency can come in with agents dressed like Darth Vader’s storm troopers and drive armored personnel carriers down main street U.S.A. without prior warning let alone authorization by local authorities? How about raiding organic farmers and raw milk co-ops without charge? Don’t you think these folks have the right to protection from such things and that their local law enforcement should be there to ensure that these things don’t happen? These would be the same bunch of guys and gals who would be the only ones to stand in the way of you being hauled off under NDAA. Think about it, who else is there to stand up and intervene on your behalf if they come to haul you away but the keepers of the Constitution in your own state?

If you think Gov. Jan Brewer’s veto of the Sheriffs First bill is isolated think again. This usurping of sheriff powers is becoming a theme. Without them to stand in the way of Federal agencies you’ve lost your last defense against laws like NDAA even if your state nullifies it? Who’s going to stop them, you? In February Delaware effectively stripped its state sheriffs of their ability to be the defenders of the Constitution.

“… Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, sending out mandates to commissioners informing them that their sheriffs no longer have arrest powers. In an opinion released Feb. 24, State Solicitor L.W. Lewis said that neither the state nor the common law grants arrest powers to the county sheriffs.”

“Beau Biden’s questionable ruling against the longtime tradition of the sheriff being the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the county because of election by the people means the state’s usurpation of the office appears to be a forthcoming fact.”

Not that Joe Bidden’s son really has the power to do this unilaterally considering the fact that Delaware sheriffs first took office in 1669 but who is there to stand in the way of a state government which feels it can sweep away hundreds of years of both state and constitutional law with the penning of a mere “mandate”. Who is really running this insane asylum? In most cases it’s no longer us so we’d better take what little bit of leverage we have left and use it to the nth degree. Think about this, in 2000 the state of Connecticut actually eliminated the office of sheriff completely. Now there’s a frightening thought.

With all that going on I know it doesn’t look promising for Brewer to sign the bill but most didn’t believe it would happen in Virginia either.  Governor Bob McDonnell however did finally relent after his proposed amendments which substantially watered down the original were added by the Virginia Senate. It was a win even if it was a bit of a weak one. The key to getting this bill signed is for everyone in Arizona like the Virginians did,  put the Governor’s office on speed dial, barrage her with emails, faxes and have a few thousand people sign some petitions. Nothing is going to happen with her unless a whole lot of people MOVE! The powers that be certainly are going to pressure her to veto, only the people who actually vote in the state can persuade her otherwise.

Jan Brewer is of course in Senator John McCain’s state and the NDAA is his pet perversion. He and another neoconservative Carl Levin wrote the bill. Guys like them favor being able to drag U.S. citizens “suspected” of being terrorists, possibly aiding and abetting or just sort of knowing someone who might be a terrorist out of their beds in the middle of the night. They’d like to be able to take anyone away from their families without so much as an explanation. Under the NDAA U.S. citizens can be taken to foreign countries, imprisoned without a phone call to an attorney, their spouse, their children or even their mother and then possibly held for years until they are old, gray or just die in some nameless military prison camp thousands of miles from home. We all know that any law which allows for the imprisonment of a person without charge, without proof and without trial will be abused. You know and I know it’s a foregone conclusion, the greater the unchecked power the greater that abuse. The NDAA is a bellwether of the potential political imprisonment of anyone in the U.S. for any reason. Just the mere suggestion of terrorist ties and anyone can be scooped up and spirited away. We are not just talking about the stereotypical main stream media fueled ideal of some radical terrorist with bombs strapped to their chest. We are talking about people who might just be privy to knowledge of activities like Wikileaks or other whistle blowing type activities because they are journalists. Under NDAA, members of the press who have had contact with entities which could be considered terrorist in nature even down to computer hackers could be captured and held under NDAA. The wording of the law and its implications were so broad that former NY Times Middle East bureau chief and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and a number of other plaintiffs have brought suit against the government over NDAA. That case is now referred to as Hedges vs Obama. It has already been made clear in early testimony that the government could not guarantee that Mr. Hedges by virtue of his profession and contacts that he would not be detained under the new law,

(from the Naomi Wolf trial notes)
“Government lawyers in New York court tell Judge they can’t directly rule out detaining Chris Hedges for reporting, Occupy London for protesting, or the author of a hypothetical book on politics for expressing an opinion, under NDAA sections 1021 and 1022.”

Even prior to this, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir a co-plantiff in the case who along with a who’s who list of big name political pundits, writers and activists and a few more seeking to join them had been slated to give testimony. She however was advised by the Icelandic government not to travel to the U.S. for fear that her support of Wikileaks right to publish might have her detained under the NDAA. Regardless of assurances from the U.S. government that she would not be detained nor questioned she rather opted to have her affidavit read by by political consultant and author Naomi Wolf in court last month. It was probably a good move considering the fact that the U.S. government refused to put any guarantees about detention in writing and the fact that the government council later admitted that even Hedges just in his capacity as a reporter wasn’t exempt.

So where did this nullification thing come from out of the blue? Is it the new thing? A state just passes a law saying that it won’t recognize unconstitutional laws and viola you’re free! Well it’s not really that easy and it’s not a cure all but you’d be surprised to find out where it comes from. You probably never heard of it before last week if you even heard about it then but nullification is nothing new. For normal folks who can’t remember the maybe, if you were lucky, three seconds worth of 10th grade American history which might have mentioned something about the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. If they talked about it in school they might have also mentioned the Virginia Resolution that same year which nullified them both or the Kentucky Resolution nullifying them again the next year in 1799 but I doubt you’d remember it even if they did. I think I was head down asleep and drooling on my desk if it was talked about in my class at all. They sure make history some dull stuff in school.  No one is seems comes out of American high schools today knowing that prior to the Civil War nullification was one of the most powerful tools in the trick box we had at keeping the federal government in check. A quick explanation of the Sedition Act if you don’t click on the link is that it made it illegal for anyone to oppose any measure (law, act, etc) of the government of the United States and carried a fine of up to $5,000 (remember this was 1798) plus six months to five years in jail. The second part made it basically impossible to say or write anything against the government, meaning either house of Congress or the President with intent to bearing them contempt, disrepute or to make anyone hate them enough to stir up the people to organize against any or all of them. All if this was served up with a side salad of aiding the hostile advances of foreign nations thrown in for good measure which was the only part that wasn’t unconstitutional in the whole thing. For this menu you could be fined up to $2000 and imprisoned for up to two years. I think you can see where this was all a teensy bit unconstitutional. If this act alone had stood, today we’d have absolutely no free speech with regard to the national government. There would be no negative reporting on acts carried out by the government, no griping when things are unfair, unjust or even flat out criminal. There’d be no criticism of any President, Congress or Senate. They’d have cart blanch to do whatever they liked and we’d all be thrown under the jail for pointing it out. So you can see where nullification has been very, very important in the past.

The best and the brightest even over 200 years ago knew that we could never just count on the judicial branch to overturn any unconstitutional laws which the Federal government might pass. Let’s face it, the judiciary is a part of the federal government and is always going to be more likely to side with them than the people who oppose an unjust law. That was a given even two centuries ago, let alone today with the entire system almost completely corrupted. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Patrick Henry were all instrumental in the nullification of the Alien and Sedition acts. You might find it difficult to believe though that George Washington was vehemently against these acts of nullification, believing that it would dissolve the union. As a matter of fact his sentiment was carried by many all the way up to the time of the Civil war as many, many unconstitutional laws were nullified by various states. Each time it occurred there would be someone yelling in the gallery that “The end is near”. Today if you talk about nullification with folks who know just enough history to be dangerous you’ll get stories of how supposedly nullification was used to preserve the slavery movement when that is completely untrue. It was actually the Northern states more so than even Southern ones which used nullification most often. As a matter of fact the North used nullification against the Fugitive Slave Act . In 1854 the Wisconsin Supreme Court rendered a decision that the act allowing slave owners to cross state lines and just point some black person out in the crowd and claim them as his runaway property was unconstitutional, thus nullifying it in that state. Then there was the famous South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification of 1832.  It  was prompted by a tariff on foreign imports which basically was protecting the class of Northern state manufacturers (businessmen) at the expense of Southern agrarians and some non-manufacturing New England states, most of which opposed it. Eventually a compromise was agreed upon between South Carolina and the federal government which lowered the tariffs enough so that everyone was satisfied but regardless, without the nullification action the burden would have been very heavy on a post War of 1812 depressed economy.

So let’s be very clear on what would justify a state government nullifying a federal law. It could be used for any law which infringes upon an individual constitutional right, an instance where the federal government has usurped the rights and powers only held by state governments or it exceeds the powers granted to the federal government under Article I, section 8 of the Constitution.

Remember, the 10th Amendment states that,

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

It is the states that hold the extra power not the federal government. The problem is that the government truly hasn’t been held in check since the end of the Civil War. That war was a huge blow to the participation of many in active government. Things became very lopsided after that horrible period and this was honestly the point where infiltration of banking and corporate influence really started to make their greatest strides in political influence. Since that time the federal government has usurped many, many rights which belonged to the states. George Washington in his farewell address warned against this sort of thing and reminded people that if the government and the people so wished that parts of the Constitution be changed that it should be officially amended.

“If in the opinion of the People the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed”

If you can’t get a constitutional amendment then the federal government simply has no business in it. The problem is that not only have we experienced huge usurpation of states rights but the federal government has overstepped it’s bounds by gargantuan measure. There are no provisions for it to have any authority over health care, education, state marijuana laws, the formation of the TSA, unconstitutional measures like the NDAA, nosing around in intrastate commerce, the intrusiveness of the Real ID mandates, use of the National Guard in foreign wars, the Food Safety and Modernization Act and the list is too long to even go in to what all it now controls, is involved in yet has no authority to do so than by our own laziness and unwillingness to simply tell them “NO”!

The federal government is at it’s very basis incapable of self regulation. It, like any publicly run corporation is predicated on a continual growth model. The federal government will if left unchecked consume and control everything until the point it simply can no longer sustain itself having destroyed its own free commerce. Some of the founders of two centuries ago, even in their limited 18th century experience correctly envisioned what would happen if the government were left to its own devices, so they made sure that there was a system outside of the national government which would prevent it from becoming and irresistible power center. They knew that unbridled the federal government would morph into the same type of centralized power monopoly we had fought to free ourselves from, that of the European monarchies. Today’s government is really no different from them now other than the fact that we do still have state government which can yet be used to overturn unconstitutional law. It is the thorn in the side of a very bloated national government, one which is failing on almost every level.

We must Take this opportunity now to reclaim the most important of our lost rights. We must push back big corporate run government from the parts of our lives, states and businesses where they do the most harm. As I have said previously, the NDAA seems to be where we have collectively chosen to draw a line in the sand, therefore we all need to get behind our state governments which have proposed NDAA nullification legislation and hound our state representatives until both they and their governors capitulate!

Here is a list of the states which have currently active NDAA nullification legislation in process.

Arizona SCR 1011 and SB 1182 – 1182 passed and awaiting governor’s signature

Kansas HR  6021

Maine HP 1397  – passed both House and Senate

Maryland HJ 0012

Missouri SB819 and HB 2066

Oklahoma HCR 1025

Rhode Island H7916

Tennessee HB 2119 / SB 2669

Utah S.C.R. 11 -  passed both House and Senate

Virginia HB 1160 - passed and becomes law July 1, 2012

Washington HB resolution 2759

West Virginia HB 4627

Are you dialing your phone yet? If your state is not on this very short list you ought to be contacting your state representatives and telling them that you want them to support NDAA nullification in your legislature. If you don’t know what to say then the 10th Amendment Center   is providing a legislative pack that you can email right to your state representatives. It really couldn’t be easier than they’ve made it. It’s up to us what happens. Either we can sit in our living rooms eating bad take out pizza and watching people being hauled away to military detention camps on TV or we can make a few phone calls, write a few letters and get this taken care of. One thing I can guarantee is that if we choose to chew and watch rather than hitting key pads of our phones and computers that eventually it’s going to be us they are coming after and not just some guy on the television. When it happens if your local sheriff going to be there to protect you from those guys or is he going to be leading the way and showing them where you live? We are the ones who will ultimately decide which way that goes either by action or providing  inaction.

If you want to know more about nullification, how it can work to aid in restoring the nation, its history and mechanics I would suggest reading the book by Thomas E. Woods Jr. PhD, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century.

What next? Are you calling for pizza or that person in your state capital who supposedly represents you? It’s seriously your call.

Virginia’s HB1160 reads as follows,

“A BILL to prevent any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the armed forces of the United States in the detention of a citizen in violation of the United States Constitution, the Constitution of Virginia, or any Virginia law or regulation.”

It is a brief but impressive piece of state legislation. It doesn’t just call into question the unconstitutionality of NDAA it flat out says we know it is and we are having none of that!

The last stumbling block to the Virginia nullification of NDAA was Governor Bob McDonnell. For weeks speculation swirled that he would refuse to sign the bill into law. However the people continued to hound the Governor’s office, many petitions were signed and presented and he eventually capitulated with one caveat. He insisted on the addition of an amendment which added the word “knowingly” with respect to the participation of Virginia state, local law enforcement, Virginia National Guard or Virginia Defense Forces cooperating in any way with federal law enforcement for the sole purpose of carrying out the capture and detention of an American citizen under NDAA. This of course will invariably open up loopholes which did not exist without that language being inserted. Regardless this must be viewed as a very huge win for both constitutional and states rights. HB 1160 now becomes law on July 1st automatically. The bill having been passed with amendments recommended by the Governor no longer requires his signature.

Virginia is no isolated incident. This is the beginning of not only a collective awakening but actual movement. I hear so many people say that we could never nullify the Federal Reserve, the banking debt that tax payers are on the hook for or like Iceland did, wipe out part of it’s country’s mortgage debt and toss the leveraged debt fraud bankers in jail. People say that because this is America and we are too complacent, too stupid and too lazy to do anything but continue to accept the decisions of the government and corporations that nothing will change. Well I’m here to tell you that this is not true. There are some not so dull and listless folks around. There are many people who no longer sit day after day staring at their glowing flat screens while propaganda is piped into half the rooms in their homes. They have turned off the main stream media brain drain and decided they’re no longer going to allow the continued dismantling of the country nor the Constitution. They’ve grown tired of the stomp of Vibram soled boots on not only individual freedom but our personal property rights too. NDAA is where we have decided to draw the line in the sand. WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! WE ARE ALREADY!

This law however is NOT strong enough in my opinion. It should have included not allowing the Military or any Federal agencies within state borders to carry out such gross disregard for constitutional rights. It’s pretty weak on that point. The Virginia law practically lays down and says “Come on in boys but we ain’t a gonna help you while you’re dragging John Smith to Guantanamo”. We need to work a LOT HARDER than this! We will not be fooled by this and believe that we have somehow completely restored the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments of the Constitution with this Virginia state law. We need laws to be passed which cover ALL of the BASES not just a hand picked this or that to placate the masses. We’re not that stupid. We want all our rights back thank you very much!

I'm not just a bill, I can be a LAW!

These states have already made their moves.

Arizona  SCR 1011 and SB 1182

Kansas HR  6021

Maine HP 1397  – passed both House and Senate

Maryland HJ 0012

Missouri SB819 and HB 2066

Oklahoma HCR 1025

Rhode Island H7916

Tennessee HB 2119 / SB 2669

Utah S.C.R. 11 -  passed both House and Senate

Washington HB resolution 2759

West Virginia HB 4627

See your state listed? START CALLING YOUR REPRESENTATIVES!

Don’t see your state listed? START CALLING YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and give them the this legislative pack from the Tenth Amendment Center to get them started on NDAA nullification in your state. It’s only your life and your freedom at stake right? Make sure they cover everything and not just enough to make the people settle down, be quiet and go back to watching reality TV.

We can move mountains clearing away decades of useless, harmful, stifling and thieving Federal legislation through the nullification process.

Learn more about nullification.

Tom Woods, Ph.D. speaks to the members of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons at their 67th Annual Meeting on September 17, 2010 in Salt Lake City.

Don’t just sit there! DO SOMETHING!

This morning I woke to the story of a 77 year old retired Greek pharmacy owner whom had chosen to commit suicide near the Parliament building in Athens the day before. After devastating austerity measures, his pension decimated he had lost all hope of continuing. His suicide note read as follows,

“The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces for my survival. And since I cannot find justice, I cannot find another means to react besides putting a decent end [to my life], before I start searching the garbage for food and become a burden for my child.”

The reference to Tsolakoglou apparently was meant to indicate that he likened the current goverment to that of the one run by the Greek collaborationists under Georgios Tsolakoglou during the Nazi German occupation of Greece during WWII.

Why is this important? Because it is happening right here in the U.S. now every single day. They just aren’t doing it in front of state capital buildings or on the steps of the halls of Congress…. yet.

Within minutes of posting this article a cousin of mine who still lives in my home state of West Virginia related to me that in February and March there had been 4 domestic case murder-suicides in the area. Incidences of husbands killing their wives and themselves over debt and foreclosure related issues. One of these cases involved a couple whom had been previously served an eviction notice by the Sheriff. They received a visit from the Sheriff’s department on a Sunday to make sure they would vacate the property the following day. “The sheriff says Robert Nusser told deputies he didn’t know where to go or what to do.” Afterward this 68 year old man called his daughter to tell her where ”some money was, just in case anything ever happened to them”. Nusser then called 911 on Monday, reported that there had been a murder-suicide at his home address and added “I did it”, then hung up. By the time the police arrived both he and his 64 year old wife were dead from single gunshots. He too left a note saying he didn’t want to be a burden to his 39 year old daughter.

These and many, many more tragic deaths never should have occurred but let us not allow their deaths to be in vain. Many have already forgotten and far more never even knew that those tremendous uprisings in North Africa last year were sparked by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a poor 26 year old Tunisian street vendor who had been so harassed by local police authorities that he could no longer make a living. The police took his vegetables and then tried to take his scales leaving him no way to support his widowed mother and six siblings. After trying to complain to the local police authorities and being rebuffed  he eventually grabbed a gas can, ran into the middle of the street yelling “How do you expect me to make a living?”, doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. Ten days later the uprising which ensued had topple the Tunisian government. The unrest of the young underclass of downtrodden soon spread to neighboring Algeria, Egypt and Libya, included their middle classes resulting in regime changes across the region.

What we must realize is that the cause of all these deaths, the suicides are but attempts to be released from the clutches of something these people felt powerless to fight. Every death comes back to the very same root cause, the banking system. Tunisa with $45 billion in debt and a growing trade deficit was doomed to be forever poor. Greece, it’s $349 billion of debt and austerity measures that now have people dumping their children on the streets, the country now without even aspirin in it’s pharmacies is truly lapsing into dismal despair. The U.S., it’s real estate market crash, the loss of $16.4 trillion in U.S. household wealth,  $8 trillion in U.S. economic bailouts loaned to the banks and businesses by the Federal Reserve and now we have the Europeans announcing a $1 trillion “firewall” to prevent the collapse of their peripheral economies.  Most believe the European like the American escapade can’t possibly be nearly enough. All these interventions by the Central Banks has now effectively put every man, woman and child in economic shackles.

Who pays for it? Of course we all do and the folks mentioned in this article are the ones currently paying the highest of prices. Their deaths are both public cries of injustice and the canary in the coal mine for those who have yet to be touched by this global Depression. I could bore you with statistics here for hours to back up that claim of global Depression but really there’s no need to. Anyone who takes their gaze away from that glowing flat disinformation screen hanging on the wall of their living room, gets up, walks away from the talking heads and makes it outside can do a 360° to actually see it. They might not recognize it because they don’t know what they’re looking at but the evidence is there.

Unfortunately sometimes it requires acts like these suicides to jolt people awake, see what is before them and to take action against the oppression that the banks now impose on humanity world wide. This transcends mere oppression and has created a state of perpetual debt slavery for all concerned. Even people who have a little bit of money don’t get a pass anymore. All are being effected if you are not part of the very elite upper 0.001% of the world who are the true movers and shakers. Forget about the 1% because if you’re pointing at them, a goodly percentage of them are doctors, dentists and small business owners that actually still work for a living like the other 99%. We really need to single out who the enemy is and it’s a far smaller percentage than what has been popularized by the Occupy Movement. People are now tied to mortgages where they owe far more than the value of their homes. Credit ratings have become determining factors as to whether you are deemed employable or not. Lose a home, incur so many medical bills you can’t pay, late too many times on your credit card bill or be forced to file bankruptcy and you can easily find yourself completely unable to find work in any company of any size which uses credit scores as a criteria to judge you. Many of the factors that can create a bad credit score today have absolutely nothing to do with people’s level of responsibility or integrity. It is just the fact that most people were unfortunate enough to buy into the idea that buying things on credit was an ok idea (hard to avoid that when every single message in the mass media and social structure tells you to do it), then later to also find out the shocking fact that there really is no such thing as job security and that the stock market is nothing more than a rigged ponzi scheme. You really can’t win anymore. All most people do is hope that they aren’t one of the folks who gets completely squashed in this economic downturn with no definable end in sight. Are you starting to notice that it’s really the banks that rule your life maybe even more so than a government which enacted 40,000 new laws for 2012?

They’re beating the hope out of people with the constant fear mongering in the press. Of course in the main stream media it’s a game. One day the stock markets are falling and the next day the jobs reports boost everything back to the previous level. It’s a form of passive aggressive psy-op to keep the masses confused and questioning their own good senses.  It also has a tendency to make those who still have jobs just put their heads down and press their noses to the grindstone. I see folks on the edge, people living paycheck to pay check who now are scared to death that the whole ball of wax is going to unravel upon them. They’re just a pink slip away from complete and total loss of hope themselves. A few years back they were sure that everything would just work itself out as it always has seemed to during their lifetimes. After a few years of this economy though even the most dull have figured out that things are not only not getting any better but are decidedly getting worse.

I participate in an online political discussion group which predominately consists of people from my home town in WV, most still live there, some have moved away and there is a smattering of folks from other places around the state. I have found that some people of late are becoming increasingly agitated by and frantic over some of my economic posts such as this one from the other day. It’s an article from one of my favorite hedge fund managers and economists Dr. Marc Faber. He’s not particularly saying anything new in it. I’ve posted plenty of articles like this one on the forum over the last twenty months or so but apparently it’s finally hitting home with some folks. Now that the realization is sinking in it seems that to a lot of people the idea that the system is headed for an inevitable currency and market collapse globally is something that they just can’t emotionally handle. People who four years ago hadn’t a clue that anything was truly amiss are now suddenly finding their eyes being forced open to the light of day but it’s all gloomy and doomy as far as they can see over this new horizon. They are now either only seeing for the first time or are just finally willing to admit to themselves what has been apparent for quite some time, that they have been living in Mordoresque world for most if not all of their lives. What is being missed though is that as it is we are actually looking at a possible new beginning not necessarily THE END.  There is no way to the light of the next day until this system does implode. It’s broken beyond repair. We can’t fix it. We must replace it. This mass awakening is our chance to make massive social and economic change.

I do understand why so many people seem to be completely paralyzed once the realization that all is not well starts to sink in. These folks see nothing but death and destruction ahead for themselves and do you know why? It’s because for many people the erosion of the family as a unit and destruction of the community as a cohesive group has left these folks with ZERO safety net. Many out there have no one to rely upon if and when things really go to shit even if it is only for a little while. I do understand that there are still families out there who will do whatever would be necessary to help their extended family and friends but some people aren’t even in a position to do it. People who are middle aged to seniors now have adult children who are barely living above poverty level in many cases as it is. I would imagine this is why the Greek fellow and the couple from Southern Ohio were so adamant about not burdening their children.  Many people today are estranged from their own extended families for the most part and their relationships with their neighbors so superficial that they couldn’t ever ask them for assistance. Add to this the fact that hardly anyone is even a member of a church or civic organizations anymore which might have in earlier times lent a hand, today they’ve got nada and nowhere to go. If anything bad happens the best some can hope for is possibly a car if not it’s the possibility of a cardboard box. Those prospects aren’t so good considering that so many cities and townships in the U.S. have made it illegal to feed the homeless huh? When governments move to quell the most basic of human instincts like helping your fellow man you know you’re living in a bad, bad place.

My best friend has been out of work for 3 months since his last employer, a restaurant shut down after New Year’s. Oddly enough the same scenario occurred for him last year after New Year’s when the restaurant he was at prior also had to go out of business. At any rate, this guy who’s gone from a career restaurant manager for the better part of three decades has now been waiting tables for the past 3 years and understandably after three months without a paycheck is at the very end of his financial rope. With savings gone and a $167 a week in unemployment he could have been forced out of his home soon if it were not for the fact that by some miracle he managed to land another job this week. He has no family support and no children to rely upon. His only solace was knowing that if worse came to worse that he did have one person in the world who could and would be willing to help him if necessary. There are countless millions world wide who don’t even have that to fall back upon.  Many, many people out here have no safety net and as this demise of the the global economy accelerates we’re going to see a lot more bodies giving up and piling up. People need to form better relationships with those around them. We can no longer survive as tiny islands unto ourselves. We have to relearn how to be the social creatures that humans are so that we can ALL move forward together.

So what’s the solution? First we have to come to the realization that our priorities are screwed up and have been since the mass media first figured out how to mass market. We have since the beginning of the industrial revolution been literally programmed to consume and those folks who make all the stuff they sell to us have designed their products with a limited lifespan so that we have to keep buying and buying frequently. It’s called planned obsolescence. That along with the banking system in general and even more so after the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 have spurred on not one, not two but three major depressions and now promise to spark yet a Third World War in the span of time. It is after all how this economic system is set up and how it survives.

When did it become so important to protect the profits of private banks or even publicly held banks for that matter at the expense of humanity? How do most people not recognize that the priorities instilled in society today are completely dysfunctional? Yes we are a horribly neurotic population from one end of the globe to the other. We’ve been rendered half nuts by either the constant drone of commercial manipulation to consume more and more, pushed on by corporations which organize to ensure planned obsolescence is a part of almost every single product manufactured and then we’re all poked and prodded to believe that if we do not consume that we cannot possibly be happy. That’s our half of the world. The other half is made crazy by constant privation, war and the encroachment of the consumer economic/debt model being used on and against them.

We are led to believe it is all important to keep these banking institutions solvent even over the lives of people who more often than not had absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the banks which lead them to become insolvent (the publicly held banks like Chase, Bank of America, HSBC, ING, UBS, RBS etc) and then to not only bail them out but to create cash flow great enough to allow these institutions to pay multi-million dollar bonuses to their employees. The whole bailout scheme has allowed the privately held Federal Reserve to profit  $88 BILLION last year alone! Here’s the thing………. you take the Federal Reserve out of the pictures and all the sudden you’ve got an extra $88 BILLION the US isn’t shelling out in interest to these loan shark hucksters. You let the banks that are insolvent fail. Put the creation of money back in the hands of Congress and the Treasury Department. This is the only Constitutionally legal way for money to be made in the first place, not by 500  bean counters at the Federal Reserve sitting there pounding out 1′s and 0′s on computers using two fingers like monkeys 24/7.  Maybe the idea of a National Bank which makes loans directly to small businesses and consumers would make more sense? If we had that why would we possibly want to continue to shovel TRILLIONS of dollars into the pockets of the Central banksters, the middle men who add ZERO VALUE to the equation? The banks and especially the Federal Reserve have now become parasitic ticks that are bigger than the flea bitten dogs (us) they are continuing to suck dry!

We’ve got people killing themselves so that a few thousand people in the world can continue to grow fat, control more, and scoop up ever more real assets from the four corners of the Earth just to pay for debts that most people had nothing to do with. They now hold huge amounts of both private and commercial seized properties in the U.S. and are now especially in Europe squeezing sovereign nations for their payola by extracting things such as water rights, dam projects, forests, publicly held lands and landmarks and they aren’t going to stop taking it until the very last moment when the paper money scheme falls completely apart. That will be the point when all the dollars, Euros, Yen, Pesos and Lira world wide become virtually worthless. That’s why they’re grabbing those tangible assets now because they know the paper soon will hold no value. The way they plan it is that we all go broke and they hold the only stuff still of any value. The wealth now held by them in all that seized property AND THEN………… they get to start the whole game all over again.

We must abolish the Federal Reserve and quit feeding the illiquid banks world wide. If it can’t be done by putting someone in the White House who will take away the Fed’s power as President John F. Kennedy did with Executive Order 11110   in 1963 then it will have to be done by each individual state nullifying the debts owed . If you had never heard about E.O. 11110 before, you now know part of the reason why J.F.K. was killed. He took the power of money creation away from the Federal Reserve and put it back in the hands of the Treasury Department. The other way to end run the Fed would be for every state to nullify the personal income tax. You ask how can we do that and not have the entire government collapse? How would the government get it’s money to operate if we all stop paying taxes? Well the fact of the matter is that NONE of your tax money goes to the government to keep the light bill paid or the paychecks funded as it is. No, all of that money the IRS takes or you end up having to send goes to the Federal Reserve to pay the debts that we owe it. All money that is used to fund the government is newly created debt issued by the Federal Reserve.  Are you starting to see how the cycle could be broken with a few simple steps?  First we have to wipe the casino’s books clean. Tell the bad guys that the game is over, they’re not collecting any more money, take what they’ve made, go away quietly and they get to live.

It’s time to shut down the Federal Reserve, their global Central Banking System and the ponzi scheme that has become the stock markets world wide. We have to reset the clock otherwise the bailouts will not stop. The banks will continue to need more and more cash infused to keep them liquid going forward. That was evident even when they were telling us the $700 billion TARP program would do the trick. Here we are $8 TRILLION later and they still keep the presses going day and night. If they are not stopped we’re slated to go Zimbabwe style, inflate everything until there are so many zeros on a printed note you can’t count them without a calculator and like so many other countries in the past , eventually if they can hold it all together they end up just whack all the zeros off the bills and call it a $1 again even though the value has been decreased by multiple factors of 10 on the way down. This is why your gasoline, bread, milk, peanut butter and tuna fish now are costing you substantially more already. Don’t believe it’s gasoline supply problems or speculation alone that you are causing you to practically need financing just to fill up a tank. They’re lying to you, it’s the money supply. It’s the trillions of dollars sloshing around in the banks now leaking out into the real economy that is the problem.

Whether we choose to sit on our collective assess world wide, let the banks starve us out and steal every thing we own or we decide to take back our freedom, our liberty and our dignity it’s going to be a rough road. The former option will be far harder and confer no reward other than the perpetual opportunity to lick the boot pressing upon the throat of humanity. If we however choose to push that boot off and take back our natural rights we will have to seriously pull together as a species and help one another as the world goes through a period of tremendous change. If we don’t, they’ll have us at each other’s throats for what profit can be made of it. We live in exciting times, one guaranteed for the history books either way it goes.

Whether this resolution gains any legs or not remains to be seen. Come Monday Representative Jones will have to be finding some co-sponsors.

The language of the resolution reads as follows:

H. CON. RES. 107

Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Con- gress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MARCH 7, 2012

Mr. JONES submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an im- peachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.

Whereas the cornerstone of the Republic is honoring Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution: Now, therefore, be it

1 2 concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that, except 3 in response to an actual or imminent attack against the 4 territory of the United States, the use of offensive military

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate

VerDate Mar 15 2010

00:17 Mar 08, 2012 Jkt 019200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\HC107.IH HC107

rfrederick on DSK6VPTVN1PROD with BILLSVerDate Mar 15 2010

2 1 force by a President without prior and clear authorization

2 of an Act of Congress violates Congress’s exclusive power 3 to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the 4 Constitution and therefore constitutes an impeachable 5 high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 6 of the Constitution.

Now on to the spectacle of watching Al Gore’s electric car die on a Consumer Reports test lot!  Yes Fisker Automotive, a company headed by Danish born Henrik Fisker and backed by  Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers a venture capital firm in which Al Gore is a partner. The company was made possible by a Department of Energy’s Advanced Technologies Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program.  Yes we the people guaranteed another $528 million for a fancy hybrid car costing in excess of $100K a pop and get this!!! They’re being built in FINLAND! Yes that’s right folks. The cars they promised would be build in Delaware are being produced in  the land of the Lapps then shipped over here. Gore must be laughing his ass off at pulling this one off.

 
Anyhow, so Consumer Reports buys one of these wind up Aston Martin rip offs for $117K and bring it back to their testing facilities only to have the thing completely lock up on them and stuck in the neutral or park position. They can’t get it to go so the dealer had to send a flatbed to come pick it up. Consumer Reports representatives say they have never in their history had a car that became completely undriveable before testing was completed. Considering the amount of money the tax payers guaranteed for this thing, over a half billion dollars, the fact that the car isn’t being produced in the U.S., the production is more than 2 years behind schedule, only 200-300 vehicles have come off the assembly line and the fact that an end product model which was bought and paid for from an authorized U.S. dealer couldn’t even run for 70 miles without falling apart, my guess is we’re looking at another huge tax payer write off in the not too distant future.  Oh and I almost forgot! Forbes magazine calculated the Karma’s fuel efficiency including use of the electric motor to be only 19 MPGe!  Are you getting mad yet?

 
So I’ll leave you with this, the $50 light bulb. Yes I did say half a Benjamin to buy a 10 watt LED bulb that is about good enough to replace a 60 watt conventional bulb in your half bath. You know they’ll be taking those bulbs away from you in another couple of years. If you’ve not noticed the100 watt conventional bulbs are already gone. Next it will be your 75′s and then the 60′s. Get ready to feel ripped off again here. Last year the government gave a $10 million prize for a “green” LED bulb that would supposedly help to transition away from incandescent bulbs and give you an alternative to those biohazard mercury filled, radiation emitting compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) we’re being forced into buying from China. Well the grand L Prize Winner of that award was none other than Phillips corporation. Like they needed $10 million in tax payer money to develop a light bulb! It’s their business for crying out loud! Can’t we have a free market and not throw more public money at corporations which already make billions a year? Anyhow their bulb hits the market in a few weeks where it’s sure to sit on the shelves costing double what other LEDs already in stores do and even worse costing 50x that of 60 watt old faithfuls which we’ve had for 100 years and are still thankfully sitting on the shelves. Stock up now while you still can.

As a closing thought, I have to mention the electric car project which GM killed almost well over a decade  ago. It was a great car. The 3,000 or so people who got to test run them loved them. They were called the EV1.

GM EV1

Production years 1996 – 1999. It had an effective range of 70 – 100 miles per charge dependent on use of lights and air. If you think about it though, in an average day, how many of us rarely drive more than 10 miles let alone 70 or a 100. For a run around town car it would have worked and there were a heck of a lot of people who wanted them even with the limited range. Thousands wanted it. GM killed it though and sold off the battery technology to Texaco. There isn’t a working model of it or the battery left to even study. Every singe car was crushed like it was Cash for Clunkers. Cars hauled away as the folks who were lucky enough to test them cried and petitioned GM to let them buy their leased vehicles.

There’s a really great documentary about the whole thing which was made in 1999 when those folks were still pretty sore about their cars being taken away. It really makes you want to scratch your head. As a matter of fact this entire article makes one want to bang your head up against a wall.

UPDATE: March 14, 2012

I had to laugh when I saw this video today of a Senate hearing March 13, 2012 where Engergy Director Chu is being practically chewed up over Solyndra, Fisker and $50 light bulbs! Poetic justice!

Forbes even commented on it.

To placate those who openly and loudly opposed it, those folks who understand this legislation is completely counter to rights clearly secured under habeas corpus and the promise of due process, the President signed this bill into law with what he referred to as “reservations”.

“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” said the President. “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

It amazes me that in a world where a man’s word is no longer good for the smallest of transactions, where the expectation for even a simple purchase can involve a 12 page contract of rights and disclaimers for both buyer and seller, that anyone would just take the guy’s word for it?  We’re not talking about the purchase of cell phone contract here. We’re talking about The Count of Monte Cristo style prison with no hope for escape and we’re supposed to believe  ”Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to use this law to throw anyone in prison indefinitely. Really folks, even though I signed it, I’m just kidding”? That holds about as much water as a bucket full of holes.  What is wrong with people today? Two major pieces of the Constitution were signed away yet most are willing to  believe that it is not going to be used against the people? If that were the case what would be the point of the law in the first place? There would be none. The government already had the ability to arrest and prosecute any U.S. citizen who committed an act of treason or terror. It is part of our judicial code for goodness sakes! Why do you need a provision which allows those in power to pick someone up and throw them in a dungeon forever without having to give some justification for it? Doesn’t this make you wonder why they needed this new law, especially in light of the fact that for the last decade they’ve been openly doing this to foreign nationals all over the world anyhow? Many of the men detained at Guantanamo had been “sold” to the military for as little as $1,000. Informants fingered men as collaborators of terrorist groups. Once rounded up and the bounty paid these unfortunates found themselves sequestered for years in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay only later to be determined to have had nothing to do with terrorist organizations. Many were just poor unfortunates in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Desperate people, unscrupulous people will often sell their fellow man out for a few dollars. Imagine what will happen when the Department of Homeland Security comes up with a bounty program like the military where they pay for information on potential problems? We have a lot of people in this country now who could really use a few hundred dollars. It doesn’t even take a reward to get people to do things that are wrong. Want to get rid of a pesky neighbor? Woman down the street been eyeing your husband? Someone owe you money? Exact a little revenge and tell your local local Homeland Security representative that you think they may be involved in some sort of nefarious plot. It doesn’t take much imagination to turn a normal person into a virtual terrorist. All you need to do to see an example of this kind of mentality is to go to any large airport and watch a few 6 year olds being patted down by the TSA or 85 year olds being stripped searched to understand how ridiculous things can get even in what now has already become day to day life.

Just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any worse along comes  H.R. 347, or the “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011”. This one though is a law which makes it a felony to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time in the presence of someone who is for lack of better wording, vastly more important than yourself.  I know that sounds odd to say but this is the deal. If you are protesting or making a scene or just in a place where a person who is in the protection of the secret service happens to be, then you can be charged with a felony for making a disruption. You don’t even have to be aware that this person is in the vicinity. You can just be rounded up, carted off even if you had a permit to protest. This is the end of just being a nuisance protestor. Used to be you would get  hauled down to the police station in the paddy wagon only to be charged with a misdemeanor. No more. Now we’re talking about full frontal, career ending felony charges.

It is not as though it wasn’t already illegal for anyone not invited to enter and stay in a place where government officials or foreign dignitaries,  those privileged enough to be under the protection of the Secret Service would be visiting.  As it stood though, you had to be aware that it was illegal and what areas were restricted. Not only that but you would have to ignore those restrictions, knowingly and willfully breaking the law to be charged. That’s all well and good. If you are forewarned you would be in violation of a law it makes sense you risk arrest, the possible charge of misdemeanor trespassing and fine.  This new law though makes it illegal to be in the wrong place at that wrong time even if you are completely unaware of the presence of government royalty. It also covers the residences of both the President and the Vice President which too were previously covered by local D.C. law and carried misdemeanor charges for violations. Ignorance of the fact that you’re not supposed to be in a specific place just because someone more important than yourself happens to be in a certain area is ludicrous. This is the ultimate no excuse for ignorance ever devised. Also the areas this can cover, well that’s conspicuously vague and by design. I can imagine an entire city block and multiple city blocks deemed restricted. Not only that but any event of “national importance” can also fall under this same provision. So basically any sort of protest or gathering of people could be viewed as falling under this law. Basically this means that if you want to protest the Democratic National Convention, the Republican National Convention, a meeting of the G20, World Bank, the New York Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys you’re facing felony charges to speak your mind. Imagine being in a crowd at a parade where someone of government importance is riding in a convertible, you get in a argument with someone on the sidewalk or appear to be creating some sort of disturbance and find yourself being escorted away by 4 men in black with dark sunglasses and ear phones. Under the ambiguity of this law they can do it and your entire life ruined by a felony record.

What you are seeing here is basically the Patriot Act being codified one step at a time. The powers of the Patriot Act are now being broadened and defined. Are you surprised that 399 people voted “yea” for this? Oh yes, I almost forgot. Who are the 399? Well they’re almost the entirey of your U.S. Congress who just swept away a goodly portion of 235 year’s worth of your 1st Amendment rights last week. Only three Congressmen had the stones to vote no, Paul Broun (R-GA), Justin Amash (R- M) and Ron Paul (R-TX). Thirty didn’t bother to vote at all.  Even thought this was a Republican sponsored bill there wasn’t one Democrat who stood against it. Not surprisingly, two of the three no voters also voted no on NDAA which passed with 322 “ayes”, 96 “nays” and 13 not voting. On most issues the Congress is decidedly split along party lines except when it comes to trampling constitutional rights or bailing out banks. This is where the puppet show is seen for what it is. The division of parties is no more than two heads of the same hydra. They can’t agree on a national budget but by golly they’ll not hesitate to trample your freedom and do it resoundingly together.

A government so afraid of its people that it must make peaceful assembly and expression of free speech near or around its anointed politicians a felony crime is a government no longer of the people. Righteous and honest government does not fear its constituents.

Here’s the good news! Fortunately there are already movements within the state governments to nullify such laws. Nullification is part of states rights doctrine, meaning that sovereign states can refuse to recognize or enforce federal laws passed by the U.S. Congress. Virginia just passed Virginia House Bill 1160 (HB1160), the “NDAA Nullification Act” by a margin of 39 – 1. They don’t plan on playing this game and neither do many other state and local governments.  While this Virginia bill (still yet to be signed into law) doesn’t allow state government agencies to block Federal Authorities from carrying out the arrest and detention of American citizens suspected of terrorism, it does prohibit their own agencies including police, sheriffs, active military and reserves from assisting in the act. It’s not perfect but it surely is a step toward complete nullification of the law and potentially preventing it being carried out on Virginia soil.  In Rhode Island, state Representative Daniel P. Gordon Jr. has drafted a resolution to nullify NDAA. In Tennessee two bills have been introduced in the 2012 session, HB1629 and SB2669 . Not only would it for all practical purposes nullify the detention provisions of NDAA but would require any federal agents attempting to make arrests in the state obtain prior written permission from the county sheriff! It would also make  “.. it a Class E felony for any official, agent, or employee of the United States government to enforce or attempt to enforce any federal law, order, rule or regulation that is beyond the authority granted to the federal government pursuant to the United States Constitution,”  and tack on kidnapping charges if a federal agent were to detain a citizen in the state of Tennessee under NDAA. On January 30,  five representatives in Washington state introduced H.B. 2759 with similar language. All tolled now there are more than a dozen state and local governments with NDAA nullifications movements afoot according to the 10th Amendment Center,  “Currently 7 local governments have passed resolutions ranging from a denouncement of the federal act in three Colorado counties to requiring noncompliance with it in places like Fairfax, CA and Northampton, MA. And, 7 states are currently considering legislation like Virginia’s – all based off the model legislation provided by the Tenth Amendment Center, the Liberty Preservation Act.“.  Anyone can use the LIberty Preservation Act template and send to your state representatives requesting they introduce NDAA nullification legislation in your state. Please follow the link for information and then follow through by contacting your state congressional representatives and senators about nullification. Call and write your U.S. congressional and senatorial representatives and tell them you’re disgusted by their total disregard for the Constitution and their dereliction of duty to uphold it. It’s their JOB to protect the Constitution of the United States. Nothing happens until something moves and if your representatives haven’t already you’re going to have to be the one who initiates motion. I would imagine in those states where we are seeing legislation to nullify NDAA that we will very soon see more introduced to nullify the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 as well.  As it stands hardly anyone has done anything but a few who know what is at stake here and willing to so something about it. We need much more! Much more!

You, we must be the change. Until we collectively decide that it’s not going to be business as usual we will watch what America stood for continue to vaporize before our eyes. Americans can no longer afford to sit by as our country slides into full on 21st century style fascism where corporate interests rule and the citizens of the U.S. are less than an after thought. Our government seems to  consider us not only a  nuisance when exercising our 1st Amendment rights but now obviously a danger. Who are these elected officials to just wipe out whole sections of the Constitution in the name of control but wrapped in the cloak of safety? It is time to do your duty as a citizen and contact your representatives on these issues of constitutional rights or we truly will have none. We’re almost there now.

UPDATE 03/08/2012

After much political wrangling between the Virginia Senate and the House,  a second Senate vote today acceded to the original version of H.B. 1160.

Excerpt  from Delegate Bob Marshall’s website:

Senate Votes 37-1 – Marshall Hails Final Passage Of His Bill Against Illegal Detention

“After days of adverse legislative maneuvering triggered by unspecified reports that McDonnell “had concerns” about HB 1160, the Senate voted 37-1 to accept the bill as it was originally passed by the House on Feb. 14 by a 96-4 vote.

With today’s vote, the Senate turned away from its own version of the legislation, which contained a clarifying amendment accepted by Marshall and adopted Feb. 28 by a 38-1 vote. That amendment, however, marked the beginning of behind-the-scenes manipulation intended to the scuttle HB 1160.

Beyond doubt, the letters, telephone calls and e-mail messages in support of my bill are what carried the day,” Marshall said. “These good folks did not give up in the face of adversity, and they prevailed. Now I hope they will carry this fight further by entreating Gov. McDonnell to complete the process and sign the bill into law.””

The bill will now be presented to Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell to sign.