Saturday, May 19, 2012
Connecting the Dots: White House tightens noose on US citizens
By Bill Wilson – www.dailyjot.com
The man who occupies the Oval Office has a distinct strategy to quell opposition of any kind to his policies and the Republicans and Democrats in Congress are letting him do it. This strategy is found not in his words, but in his legislative and legal actions. The Defense Authorization Act set very general language in its Section 1021 that did not require (key word) the government to detain US citizens without due process, and it exempted US citizens from the requirement, but the way the language is written, the president can call for a waiver due to a national emergency and actually detain US citizens without due process. Since then, however, the president has issued Executive Orders (EOs) that leave no doubt.
Friday March 16, he issued the Defense Resource Preparedness EO which ordered the nationalization of all of America's natural resources, energy, private industry, property, transportation, food resources, health supplies, farm equipment, technology and potable water. All the president has to do is declare a national emergency. On April 23 and again on May 16, the president issued EOs declaring a national emergency that people materially opposing his policies in Syria, Iran and Yemen could have their property confiscated because they are considered threats to national security. These EOs specifically stated that US citizens were included.
The president was dealt at least a temporary blow on May 16 when US District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled that the National Defense Authorization Act violates the First and Fifth Amendments. Forrest issued a preliminary injunction preventing the Administration from enforcing section 1021 pending further court or congressional action. Notwithstanding, each of these EOs and laws that undermine the Bill of Rights must be challenged otherwise they will remain in effect. The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Act--passed overwhelmingly and immediately signed by the president--makes it a felony to protest or impede government business in a "restricted area" which could be arbitrarily determined.
What happens if Americans impede the business of government while protesting? Isn't the right to assemble and speak what the First Amendment was designed to protect? What prevents the president from declaring it a national emergency against criticizing Islam? Or same sex marriage? Where is the outrage from the salt and light? Has Christianity become so neutered by bad doctrine that it no longer will stand against evil? Nations are comprised of people. We are a Christian nation because Christians occupy it. Have we no longer the will to occupy that the thief has clear access to our liberty?
In Jeremiah 4 there is an account of the Lord calling for repentance and expressing sorrow for the doomed nation of Israel. I cannot help but think that in spite of warning after warning, so many Americans, so many Christians, nonchalantly go about their business with no concern about the encroaching evil that will squeeze the lifeblood from them and their children. Verse 18 says, "Your way and your doings have procured these things unto you." How many people in the nations around the world envy our freedom, yet we are complacent to allow an evil rebellion to take it from us without so much as a shout.
Sources & Resources:
EO Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen-- http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/16/executive-order-blocking-property-persons-threatening-peace-security-or -
EO Blocking Property of Persons regarding Syria and Iran--http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/23/executive-order-blocking-property-and-suspending-entry-united-states-cer
EO Nationalizing all US resources and property--http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness
Federal Court blocks citizen detention plan--http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/obama-citizen-detention-plan-in-trouble/
Thursday, May 17, 2012
The Most Dangerous Man in the World
By Jack Kinsella
George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930, meaning he will turn eighty-two this August. Soros likes to call himself a philosopher and a philanthropist, but his philosophy is the overspreading of Marxist-style Socialism and his philanthropy is limited to funding far-left partisan groups and causes.
Soros' main claim to fame (apart from his far-left partisanship) is as the "Man who broke the Bank of England." In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "If someone guaranteed it."
To that end, during the 2004 presidential contest, Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million to America Coming Together. On September 28, 2004, he dedicated even more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush."
Soros was defeated in his effort to prevent President Bush's re-election, an event that some suspect may have unhinged the guy even more than previously. Soros was not a large donor to U.S. political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to the various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush.
One of Soros' big philanthropic efforts is the legalization of drugs, starting with marijuana, but not stopping with any particular drug. On October 26, 2010, Soros donated $1 million -- the largest donation in the campaign -- to The Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19, that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed in the November 2, 2010 elections.
In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in Massachusetts known as "The Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative," which decriminalized possession of less than one ounce of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine.
Soros is also a big supporter of euthanasia and suicide legislation. Soros funded The Project on Death in America, which sought to "Understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement." In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of The Hemlock Society, commit suicide (his own mother!!). In the same speech, he also endorsed The Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the campaign which he helped fund.
Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a Who's Who of left-wing groups. This partial list of recipients of Soros' money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post, Southern Poverty Law Center, Sojourners, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and The National Organization for Women.
Soros is an entrenched globalist who wants more power for groups such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), even while saying the U.S. role in the IMF should be "downsized." In 1998, he wrote:
"Insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions."
Soros is a financial backer of Media Matters for America, a progressive (Marxist) media watchdog group that hyperventilates over any conservative view that makes it into the mainstream media. Media Matters has made disrupting and discrediting Fox News its main mission. This, despite being a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt "educational" organization that is barred by IRS rules from participating in partisan political activity.
Soros never heard of a left-wing cause he didn't like, and the more extreme, the better. Anybody that claims a green agenda and advocates overthrowing the existing financial order can count on hearing from George Soros.
Assessment:
Soros was the subject of a fawning Newsweek (actually, Newsweek sold for $1 and is now called The Daily Beast) interview conducted by John Alridge. After all the usual left-wing accolades, "He Broke the Bank of England!"; "He Bet Against the Bush White House," they got down to business.
Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. "At times like these, survival is the most important thing," he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn't just mean it's time to protect your assets. He means it's time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history -- a period of "evil."
One might almost agree with Soros, except that the "evil" of which Soros warns is Western prosperity.
Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America, he predicts riots in the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.
Alridge notes during his conversation with Soros that, "Riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable."
"Yes, yes, yes," he says, (almost gleefully, says Alridge). "It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States."
Soros denies any connection to the Occupy movement that he predicts will ultimately bring violence to America's streets, even as he funds the organization through his Tides Foundation, which directly funds the Canadian-based Adbusters who dreamed up and organized the Occupy movement through its Ruckus Society.
Ruckus, which helped spark the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle, was also listed as a, "friend and partner" of the Occupy Days of Action in October.
Where is all this leading? Precisely where the Bible predicted for the last days. The Bible predicts the rise of the Antichrist to global power via his control of the media and his influence over the economy.
Revelation 13 indicates his control over the media is such that he can invest the False Prophet with the ability to cause everyone on earth to witness the same events at the same time. (Rev. 13:4,13)
The Antichrist will reject all existing models of government and finance and offer his own vision, which Scripture indicates will be wildly popular with the masses.
Like Soros, he will oppose traditional values, like life, economic and political freedom, faith, peace, and especially, things that remind him of God, like the existence of Israel or the concept of America as the world's most Christian country.
Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find another person in history more perfectly suited to the role than George Soros, except that at 82, George Soros is too old. But George Soros is only the window dressing for today's report.
What I want you to see is how events of our generation exactly mirror the prophesied events of the last days. Everything that Soros predicts, the Bible predicts. Everything Soros stands for, the Bible predicts the Antichrist will embrace.
"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until He be taken out of the way,"
(II Thess. 2:7).
And everything Soros advocates, the Bible predicts the Antichrist will accomplish.
It isn't George Soros. But George Soros is the perfect model. It is as if the enemy is moving the chess pieces, trying to decide if this is his time, and making sure the world is ready for him if it is.
Everything is in place and almost ready to hand over. The only thing standing in his way -- right now -- is the Holy Spirit that indwells you. Until He (together with the vessels He indwells) is "taken out of the way."
And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming," (II Thess. 2:7-8).
Google's latest Gmail tweaks bring contact info to search results, enhanced Circle integration
By Edgar Alvarez
By any means, this is certainly far from being one of the biggest changes Gmail's ever seen -- still, it's one that's likely to make a few tasks a wee bit easier for you. Inside the recent tweaks, Google added a new quick access trait that makes contact details -- such as phone numbers -- show up automatically in search results within your cherished G inbox. Additionally, the Android-maker has improved the Google+ integration (again), now allowing folks to narrow down conversations from specific Circles in the search box (you know, something like Circle: Awesome Engadget editors). Google says the changes will be rolling out over the course of the day, but in the meantime, you could always check out what exactly happens behind Gmail's closed doors.
Facebook IPO: analysts warn investors away as more shares hit the market
As early investors decide to cash out, some consultants warn first-day bubble will burst once the cultural spectacle wears off
By Dominic Rushe in New York and Juliette Garside in London - guardian.co.uk,
Analysts have warned small investors to steer clear of the $100bn Facebook sale after some of the social network's biggest shareholders ramped up the number of shares they intend to offload.
The size of Facebook's stock exchange listing ballooned by a quarter after Goldman Sachs and other backers decided to cash in on the demand for the shares by increasing the amount of stock they plan to sell in the public offering on Friday.
Goldman announced it would sell 29m shares, more than double its previous 13m ceiling. Peter Thiel, legendary Silicon Valley investor who was one of the firm's first big backers, will sell 17m shares, up from 8m.
Hedge fund Tiger Global, run by 36-year-old New Yorker Chase Coleman, increased its selloff from 3m to 23m shares. DST Group, which represents Russian investors such as Yuri Milner, will now offload a quarter of its holding.
"People who invested early have done very, very well out of Facebook," said Sam Hamadeh, chief executive of PrivCo, a private company analyst in the US. But at $100bn, he thinks it is overvalued. "You can still believe in social media without buying into Facebook at this price. This company has been priced for perfection and then some. It's going to be very difficult for them to live up to that."
Warren Buffett may have declined to take an early punt on Facebook, and internet commentators may have dismissed its shares as "muppet bait" and "dotcom reloaded", but the sceptics have done nothing to deflate the hype surrounding the $104bn (£65bn) company.
Such is the clamour from individuals and institutions wanting shares ahead of Facebook's first public trading day on Nasdaq on Friday, its early backers have increased the number they plan to offload by 25% – meaning the float will now raise about $16bn.
Alan Patrick, co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight, said the frenzy for Facebook was evidence of a bubble mentality like the one that drove up internet share prices ahead of the millennial dotcom boom – which later turned to bust. "I imagine the shares will enjoy a huge rise on the first day of trading. There are always 'greater fools' prepared to buy at a higher price," he said.
Patrick said the real test for the share price would be in the coming months. "At this valuation, they have got to hit every performance target and then some," he said.
"This is much more a spectacle, a media event and a cultural moment than it is an IPO," GreenCrest Capital analyst Max Wolff told Reuters. "This is not a game of models and fundamentals at this point."
The estimated offer price range stands at $34 to $38, but analysts expect the value to spike significantly on Friday as investors who missed out on the pre-IPO round pile into the stock.
A first-day bubble would be in line with previous tech stock debuts. Business networking site LinkedIn floated at $45 per share but soared to $95.25 on its first day of trading, a rise of 109%, while voucher firm Groupon closed up 31%. Given the level of demand, Facebook is unlikely to suffer the fate of games group Zynga, which closed down 5%.
The company left nothing to chance when it signed up 33 underwriters – almost every investment bank on Wall Street – to sell its offering.
Analyst and MoneyWeek commentator, Phil Oakley, said: "There are 33 backers with an incentive to ramp this, and you won't hear much naysaying. There is very little impartial comment out there, and private investors are swimming in the dark."
From Friday, British investors will be able to buy shares. Leading UK broker Hargreaves Lansdown received hundreds of requests for information on Facebook when the float was first mooted in February.
Its customers tend to be smaller private investors, many of whom will remember the dotcom crash. "There is going to be a lot of people wanting to get involved because the sale was oversubscribed, so there could be some intense trading in the first couple of days," said Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves. His advice is to wait until the price falls back down to earth, as analysts fully expect it to do, before taking a long-term position.
Unbelievable horrors in North Korea coming to light
By Peter Worthington ,QMI Agency
TORONTO - Arguably, the most poignant interview ever broadcast on CBC Radio’s The Curent, was the story this week, of Shin Dong-hyuk — possibly the only person ever to escape from a North Korean slave-labour prison camp.
All stories about prisons are harsh, but prisons, or political labour camps run by totalitarian regimes can be beyond rational comprehension. And while the Soviet gulag with its millions confined, and China’s with even more millions in custody, are inhumane and brutal, they pale to horrors of North Korea’s slave camps. Especially in the year 2012.
As the only person ever to escape from a NK camp, Shin Dong-hyuk’s story is important as it is unique in giving the world a peek inside that regime, and how the ruling Kim family maintains absolute control through fear and cruelty.
Journalist Blaine Harden discovered Shin, and tells his story in a book — Escape from Camp 14. Harden, a translator and Shin were interviewed by Anna Maria Tremonti on the CBC, and provided a wealth of appalling reality that defies imagination.
Estimates are that roughly 200,000 are in NK slave-labour camps — three generations of inmates. Shine was born in Camp 14. The only food inmates ate was a mush of corn, cabbage and salt — supplemented by mice if they could catch them. And insects.
The electrified razor wire around the camp would kill any who touched it. Anyone caught talking about escaping was shot. Shin was conceived when guards allowed brief intimacy between a male and female inmate for obedient behaviour.
At age 14, he heard his mother and brother talking about escape, and was so fearful and indoctrinated that he asked a guard what he should do. The guard turned him in, and he was roasted over a charcoal fire to extract more information. Then he witnessed his mother and brother hanged.
Rather than feel guilt at their death, he was angry that their loose talk made life tougher for him. Normal, human instincts were channeled into self-preservation.
Shin and another inmate decided to escape, but the other guy was electrocuted trying to get past the fence. Shin crawled over his friend’s dead body, which grounded the current. He fled north, stole an army uniform, got into China and made his way to Shanghai, where he reached the South Korean embassy and was taken to Seoul.
Among his recollections is a schoolgirl in Camp 14 being beaten to death by a teacher because she had a few kernels of corn in her pocket.
When Shin accidentally dropped a sewing machine, half his middle finger was chopped off as punishment. Guards had inmates beat other inmates who broke rules.
Responding to Tremonti’s question how such inhumane treatment could go on when even Russia and China were easing restrictions, author Harden explained that three generations of Kims rule the world’s most tyrannical, oppressive state.
Kim Il-sung instigated the slave camps, followed by Kim Jong-il and now Kim Jong-un who maintain them. North Koreans know of these prisons and fear them to the point of absolute submissiveness and obedience.
Once convicted to a camp, relatives and children are confined to them.
Stalin used fear and intimidation as tools for control, North Korea even more so.
“Class enemies” destined for these horror camps include those who dare practice Christianity, or who don’t keep photographs of Kim dusted and prominent in their homes.
If caught, listening to a foreign radio broadcasts can be fatal. As Shin’s youthful experience indicated those with deviant thoughts, can be executed. Until he escaped at age 29, he had never tasted chicken or pork — only corn mush.
China is North Korea’s protector — more fearful of having affluent, dynamic South Korea as a neighbour without impoverished NK as a buffer, than it is concerned about such niggling nuisances as basic human rights.
In negotiations with North Korea, neither the U.S. nor Japan, and certainly not China, ever raise the question of human rights. What’s the use? Perhaps our politicians should read Escape from Camp 14.
TORONTO - Arguably, the most poignant interview ever broadcast on CBC Radio’s The Curent, was the story this week, of Shin Dong-hyuk — possibly the only person ever to escape from a North Korean slave-labour prison camp.
All stories about prisons are harsh, but prisons, or political labour camps run by totalitarian regimes can be beyond rational comprehension. And while the Soviet gulag with its millions confined, and China’s with even more millions in custody, are inhumane and brutal, they pale to horrors of North Korea’s slave camps. Especially in the year 2012.
As the only person ever to escape from a NK camp, Shin Dong-hyuk’s story is important as it is unique in giving the world a peek inside that regime, and how the ruling Kim family maintains absolute control through fear and cruelty.
Journalist Blaine Harden discovered Shin, and tells his story in a book — Escape from Camp 14. Harden, a translator and Shin were interviewed by Anna Maria Tremonti on the CBC, and provided a wealth of appalling reality that defies imagination.
Estimates are that roughly 200,000 are in NK slave-labour camps — three generations of inmates. Shine was born in Camp 14. The only food inmates ate was a mush of corn, cabbage and salt — supplemented by mice if they could catch them. And insects.
The electrified razor wire around the camp would kill any who touched it. Anyone caught talking about escaping was shot. Shin was conceived when guards allowed brief intimacy between a male and female inmate for obedient behaviour.
At age 14, he heard his mother and brother talking about escape, and was so fearful and indoctrinated that he asked a guard what he should do. The guard turned him in, and he was roasted over a charcoal fire to extract more information. Then he witnessed his mother and brother hanged.
Rather than feel guilt at their death, he was angry that their loose talk made life tougher for him. Normal, human instincts were channeled into self-preservation.
Shin and another inmate decided to escape, but the other guy was electrocuted trying to get past the fence. Shin crawled over his friend’s dead body, which grounded the current. He fled north, stole an army uniform, got into China and made his way to Shanghai, where he reached the South Korean embassy and was taken to Seoul.
Among his recollections is a schoolgirl in Camp 14 being beaten to death by a teacher because she had a few kernels of corn in her pocket.
When Shin accidentally dropped a sewing machine, half his middle finger was chopped off as punishment. Guards had inmates beat other inmates who broke rules.
Responding to Tremonti’s question how such inhumane treatment could go on when even Russia and China were easing restrictions, author Harden explained that three generations of Kims rule the world’s most tyrannical, oppressive state.
Kim Il-sung instigated the slave camps, followed by Kim Jong-il and now Kim Jong-un who maintain them. North Koreans know of these prisons and fear them to the point of absolute submissiveness and obedience.
Once convicted to a camp, relatives and children are confined to them.
Stalin used fear and intimidation as tools for control, North Korea even more so.
“Class enemies” destined for these horror camps include those who dare practice Christianity, or who don’t keep photographs of Kim dusted and prominent in their homes.
If caught, listening to a foreign radio broadcasts can be fatal. As Shin’s youthful experience indicated those with deviant thoughts, can be executed. Until he escaped at age 29, he had never tasted chicken or pork — only corn mush.
China is North Korea’s protector — more fearful of having affluent, dynamic South Korea as a neighbour without impoverished NK as a buffer, than it is concerned about such niggling nuisances as basic human rights.
In negotiations with North Korea, neither the U.S. nor Japan, and certainly not China, ever raise the question of human rights. What’s the use? Perhaps our politicians should read Escape from Camp 14.
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