Vaccine Expert Reveals What You Should Know Before You Roll Up Your Sleeve

Posted by sakerfa on July 2, 2009



(NaturalNews) – A study by the Harvard Medical School of Public Health confirmed that public health officials could convince most people in the U.S. to alter their daily lives, follow government mandates and do as they are told after only a small amount of hyping that a deadly global pandemic was eminent. It documented that people tend to look to the government as a sort of Big Daddy who has their best interests at heart. People think Big Daddy will take care of them and they don’t have to bother taking care of themselves. This mentality has led to an open season of government and government backed corporate abuse resulting in a decline in the standard of life and health in America. It suggests that people will willingly take vaccines they believe have been sponsored by the government without investigating these vaccines on their own. However, a new paper from leading vaccine authority Dr. Sherri Tenpenny shows this may be unwise. She reveals that flu shots merit close examination by those wanting to retain their health.
On June 11th, the decision was made by Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization to declare a Level 6 Pandemic. This is a pandemic alert of the highest order possible. Under Level 6 conditions, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HSS) is able to declare mandatory vaccination under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP). There is no criteria listed stating what constitutes a threat.
The HHS web site says the Secretary may “issue a declaration…that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of (vaccine or other pharmaceutical) countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary to constitute a present, or credible risk of a future public health emergency…” This means that if you or your child is harmed by a vaccine during these conditions, there is nothing you can do about it.
With this declaration, Big Daddy has made it clear that it would rather protect corporate interests than your interests. This means it is time to stop giving the government your blind faith. It is time to become educated about flu vaccines.
Here are Dr. Tenpenny’s well documented findings in the form of questions everyone should be asking.
What is in the regular flu shot?
What we have come to know as the seasonal flu shot is made from:
Egg proteins: including avian contaminated viruses
Gelatin: known to cause allergic reactions and anaphylaxis usually associated with sensitivity to egg or gelatin (anaphylaxis is a rapidly progressing, life-threatening allergic reaction)
Polysorbate 80, (trademarked at Tween 80): a preservative that can cause severe allergic reactions including anaphylaxis.
Formaldehyde: a known carcinogen.
The shot also contains Triton X100 (a strong detergent), table sugar, resin that is known to cause allergic reactions, and an antibiotic (Gentamycin). Multi-dose vials also contain thimerosal, a preservative made with mercury, a known neurotoxin. Infants and children are most at risk for neurological damage from mercury because their nervous systems are still developing. Neurological dysfunctions are also common in adults who have ingested mercury.
Do flu shots work?
The flu shot does not work for babies. In a review of 51 studies involving more than 294,000 children, it was found there was “no evidence that injecting children 6 to 24 months of age with a flu shot was any more effective than a placebo. In children over the age of 2 years, it was effective only 33% of the time in preventing the flu. (”Vaccines for preventing influenza in health children”, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2008)
The flu shot does not work in children with asthma. In a study of 800 children with asthma in which one half were vaccinated and the other half were not, the two groups were compared with respect to clinic visits, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations for asthma. The researchers concluded that no evidence was provided that the influenza vaccine prevented pediatric asthma exacerbations (Christly, C. et al, “Effectiveness of influenza vaccine for the prevention of asthma exacerbations.” Arch Dis Child, August, 2004, 734-5)
“The inactivated flu vaccine, Flumist, does not prevent influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma…In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than children who do not get the vaccine.” (The American Thoracic Society’s International Conference, May 15-20, 2009, San Diego)
Adults are also not protected by flu vaccine. In a review of 48 reports including more than 66,000 adults, “Vaccination of healthy adults only reduced risk of influenza by 6%, and reduced the number of missed work days by less than one day (0.16). It did not change the number of people needing to go to a hospital or take time off work.” (”Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults,” The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2006)
Although the hype is that the elderly must be protected, in a review of 64 studies in 98 flu seasons, for elderly living in nursing homes, flu shots were non-significant for preventing the flu. For elderly living in the community, vaccines were not significantly effective against influenza, ILI or pneumonia. (”Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly,” The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2006)
What about the new “Swine Flu” shot?
A new report from a World Health Organization advisory group predicts that global production of vaccine for the novel H1N1 influenza virus could be as much as 4.9 billion doses a year, far higher than previous estimates. The new H1N1 (”swine flu“) vaccine is being made by the pharmaceutical company Novartis. It will contain MF59, a potentially debilitating adjuvant.
MF-59 is oil-based and composed of squalene, Tween 80 and Span85. All oil adjuvants injected into rats were found to be toxic. All rats injected developed a disease similar to multiple sclerosis which left them crippled and dragging their paralyzed hindquarters across their cages. (Kenney, RT. Edleman, R. “Survey of human-use adjuvants,” Expert Review of Vaccines, 2003 p171)
Squalene causes severe arthritis (3 on a scale of 4). Squalene in humans at 10-20 parts per billion leads to severe immune responses, such as autoimmune arthritis and lupus. (Matsumoto, Gary. Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That’s Killing Our Soldiers and Why GI’s Are Only the First Victims of this Vaccine, New York: Basic Books. P54)
Federal health officials will probably recommend that most Americans get three flu shots this fall: one regular flu shot and two doses of any vaccine made against the new swine flu strain. (Washington Post, Wednesday, May 6)
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is talking to school superintendents around the country, urging them to spend the summer planning what to do if the government decides it needs their buildings for mass vaccinations and the vaccinations of children first. (CBS News, June 12)
Is mandatory vaccination possible?
In 1946, the U.S. Public Health Service was established and Executive Order 9708 was signed, listing the communicable diseases where quarantines could be used. Between 1946 and 2003, cholera, diphtheria, TB, typhoid, small pox, yellow fever, and viral hemorrhagic fevers were added to the list. In April, 2003, SARS was also added through Executive Order 13295.
In January, 2003, Project BioShield was introduced during Bush’s State of the Union Address. This created permanent and indefinite funding authority to develop “medical countermeasures”. The National Institute of Health was authorized to speed approval of drugs and vaccines. Emergency approval of a “fast tracked” drug and vaccine can be given without the regular course of safety testing.
In April, 2005, Executive Order 13295 added “Influenza caused by novel or re-emergent influenza viruses that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic.” Under this order, the president gave the secretary of HHS the power to quarantine, at his or her discretion.
The secretary of HHS has the power to arrange for the “apprehension and examination of persons reasonably thought to be infected.” A cough or a fever could put a person at risk for being quarantined for an extended period of time without recourse.
December 17, 2006, Division E: The Public readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act was added as an addendum to Defense Appropriations Bill HR 2863 at 11:20 on Saturday night, long after House Committee members had signed off on the bill and gone home for the holidays. Section (b)(1) states that the secretary of HHS can make a determination that a “disease, health condition or threat” constitutes a public health emergency. He or she may then recommend “the manufacture, testing, development, administration, or use of one or more covered counter measures…” A covered countermeasure is defined as a “pandemic product, vaccine or drug.”
Division E also provides complete liability protection for all drugs, vaccines or biological products deemed a “covered counter measure” and used for an outbreak of any kind. Complete liability protection has been given to drug companies for any product used for any public health emergency declared by the secretary of HHS. This means that pharmaceutical companies are now protected from all accountability, unless “criminal intent to do harm” can be proven by the injured party. They are protected from liability even if they know the drug will be harmful.
What can I do about all this?
Here are a few of Dr. Tenpenny’s suggestions. You can add your own ideas to this list once you let your mind wrap itself around this issue.
Give this information to everyone you know and love. Contact local first responders (EMTs, paramedics, fireman, etc). Tell them what will be in the flu shots and that they will be the first ones to get them. Tell local police and discuss your concerns about mandatory vaccination. Contact local city council members about your desire to preserve your liberties. You will need their support to maintain your right to refuse vaccination.
Write an article for your local community newspapers. Samples will be posted soon on www.DrTenpenny.com. Go to www.oath-keepers.org. A PDF of their oath for easy printing will be posted on Dr. Tenpenny’s site. Connect with other activist organizations, such as those supporting 2nd amendment issues, the environment and animal rights. Help spread the word about their passion and get them involved with yours.
Sign the Universal Declaration of Resistance to Mandatory Vaccination at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/a-…
To learn more about Dr. Tenpenny and her stance on vaccines see http://www.naturalnews.com/025941_v…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d…
http://www.newswithviews.com/Tenpen…
Review the “Pandemic Influenza Survey” at
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/panflu/…

Source: Natural News

RED ALERT: The Total Takeover Of America Enters Its Final Phase

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, June 29, 2009



The wholesale looting of America and the transfer of wealth and power over to a private banking elite who are setting up a world government, along with the complete obliteration of any remaining freedom to protest, resist, or even speak out against this agenda, is now entering its final phase as numerous different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place and portray a clear picture of tyranny.

We are about to sound the death knell for the United States if every one of the following attacks on our liberty, free speech, sovereignty, and right to not be ruled over by an unelected banking dictatorship is not fiercely opposed and crushed.

RED ALERT 1

The passage of the “Climate Bill” by the House and its likely approval by the Senate represents the entrée for the complete and total subjugation of any freedoms we had left and the beginning of nightmare regulation and suffocating control over every aspect of our personal lives by millions of green stasi tasked with enforcing impossible to attain goals of 80% carbon dioxide reduction - all based on the manufactured threat of global warming.

This bill will also sink the economy and create a new great depression, effectively obliterating America’s first world status. It represents a transfer of power and wealth from both the U.S. government and the American taxpayer over to the system of world government and global regulation now being erected by means of the climate change hoax.

This is far worse than just a “new tax” as Republicans are complaining - this is the total takeover of the American economy by private banking interests through the carbon trading system.

As we have attempted to warn, the major beneficiaries of the climate bill will be the elitists who own the carbon trading systems that will be used to handle the ‘cap and trade’ program, namely Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering.

We must rally now to lobby members of Congress who voted for the legislation and demand they change their vote before July 2nd. Failing that, we must demand that the Senate does not rubber stamp this nightmare legislation. Failing that, we must support and organize to craft more legislation based on the example of Arizona, who recently passed state Senate legislation refusing to comply with insane climate laws coming from the federal level.

RED ALERT 2

The seemingly endless economic “bailouts” represent the wholesale looting of the American taxpayer and the grand theft of trillions of dollars by private banking interests who refuse to even disclose where the money went.

Not satisfied with stealing tens of trillions, under the Obama administration’s new regulatory reform plan, the Federal Reserve is now trying to enrich itself with dictator powers that will give it complete control over the U.S. economy, handing them the authority to “regulate” and shut down any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.

We must rally now and lobby more members of Congress to support Ron Paul’s H.R. 1207 bill to audit the Federal Reserve and highlight the fact that Bernanke is spewing financial terrorism when he threatens an economic collapse should the Fed be opened up to scrutiny.

RED ALERT 3

Federal hate crimes legislation, which in reality would criminalize “thought crimes,” has cleared the House and now faces the Senate as S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act).

S.909 is a direct violation of the First Amendment. It allows the federal government to prosecute people involved in “hate speech” transmitted over television, radio, and the internet. The House version of the bill states:

“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce [radio, TV, internet] any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (HR 1966, SEC 3, Sec. 881a)”

In other words, if a talk show host engages in “hostile” speech against a person or persons of the above mentioned federally protected group that talk show host will face federal prosecution and the prospect of a two year prison term.
The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would similarly criminalize free speech on the Internet if it can be deemed in any way to have been “harmful” to an individual. This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.
If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.

RED ALERT 4
The Senate bill S.787, otherwise known as the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA), would replace language in the regulatory act currently using “navigable waters” with “waters of the United States.”
What this means is that “the government would essentially be able to regulate everything from standing water in floodplains to creeks that run behind business and residences,” according to an Environmental Leader report.
This represents a complete takeover of private land and waterways by the federal government, a total assault on private property rights and a complete federalization of America’s land and water.
“In a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer and ranking member James Inhofe, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that the proposed law would “extend to all water — anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater,” stated the letter. “For the first time in the 36-year history of the act, activities that have no impact on actual rivers and lakes would be subject to full federal regulation.”
If this bill becomes law, it will empower the federal government to seize private property on a whim, using similar powers that Communist China employed during Chairman Mao’s “great leap forward,” where landowners had their property violently confiscated and stolen by the government.
If this bill passes the Senate, private property rights in the United States are effectively null and void and the federal government would legally have the power to bulldoze families from their homes as routinely happens in Communist China.
RED ALERT 5
Amongst the myriad of assaults on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens undertaken by the Obama administration during the course of its first year in office, the one that stands out as the most alarming is the attempt to ban people who appear on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.
But isn’t stopping terrorists from buying guns surely a sensible measure to take? The problem is that the terrorist watch list, sometimes called the no fly list, is not a list of likely terrorists, it is a sprawling database of of innocent people that contains the names of over one million Americans. This is a rise of 32% since 2007 alone.
Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes, reverends, the former assistant attorney general, toddlers and children, the ACLU administrator, people with difficult names and all American names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become caught in the vast tentacle of this list, documents the ACLU.
Moreover, once a person is included on the terrorist watch list it is virtually impossible to get off it.
The terrorist watch list is an ever-expanding tool with which to deny Americans basic rights as well as to strip them completely of the Fourth Amendment.
Now it is being used to prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms. Legislation sponsored by the The Government Accountability Office seeks to “close the gap” and prevent victims of the terrorist watch list from being able to purchase firearms.
This represents a new end run around the Second Amendment and a concerted effort on behalf of the federal government to classify millions of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, thus stripping them of their Constitutional right to own firearms.
RED ALERT 6
Our right to protest against any of the egregious assaults on the Constitution that are listed above is itself being removed by new law enforcement and Pentagon training manuals and guidelines that define protesting as domestic terrorism.
Current Department of Defense anti-terrorism training course material states that the exercise of First Amendment rights in the U.S. constitutes terrorist activity.
Over the last few years we have documented countless examples of security assessment reports from the likes of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as police training manuals, which state that anti-war protesters, gun owners, veterans, Ron Paul supporters and those who merely cite the Constitution should be equated with extremists and domestic terrorists.
The fact that the government is now treating people who merely criticize its conduct as domestic terrorists is the clearest signal possible that the United States has entered a period in history similar to Germany in the early 1930’s and that it can only be a matter of time before the right “emergency” provides the justification for dissidents to be targeted for round-ups and mass imprisonment.
No one can claim now that this is merely a paranoid delusion - the government itself is training its law enforcement and military arms that protesters and people who use their First Amendment rights are domestic terrorists. The last time this happened was under King George shortly before the American Revolution.
ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
If we don’t stand up in unison and exercise our right to protest and free speech now more than ever before, while pointing out that the real terrorists are those who would seek to destroy the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, then we may find ourselves doing our protesting behind the barbed wires and the concrete blocks of an internment camp.
The hour is late, the clock stands at one minute to midnight, and the federal government, through all the examples documented above, is on the verge of implementing nothing less than a total environmental, financial and societal dictatorship and killing what once was the United States of America.
Almost identical programs of total enslavement are also being pushed through in almost every other major western country at the same time.
If we don’t stop obsessing about the minutia of life and actually concentrate on the imminent destruction of the very principles of our livelihoods, the bedrock freedoms that allow us to operate in relative comfort on a daily basis and be reasonably secure in our own homes, being able to pay our bills, put food on the table, earn money, and air our grievances when government threatens to impinge on those basic freedoms, then there will be nothing left but a rotten hollow carcass and a memory of what America once strived to be - land of the free, home of the brave - not land of the thief, home of the slave.

Source: PrisonPlanet.com

WHY DOESN'T OBAMA CARE ABOUT FREEDOM?

By Cliff Kincaid
June 27, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

If you recognize that Obama failed to vigorously and immediately support the pro-freedom demonstrators in Iran, take a look at his attitude toward those suffering under the Castro dictatorship.

An extraordinary editorial ran in the liberal Washington Post on Thursday, June 25, about the indifference of the Obama White House to the plight of those who believe in freedom just 90 miles from our shores. The editorial, “A Dissident Deflected,” told the story of how the Obama Administration wouldn’t issue a statement recognizing the plight of five human rights activists in Cuba until the Post itself inquired about the matter.

The five leaders of Cuba’s pro-democracy movement were recipients of the National Endowment for Democracy’s 2009 Democracy Award. It was expected that they would not be allowed by the Castro regime to travel from Cuba to the U.S. to accept their award. But it wasn’t expected, at least by the Post, that the Obama White House would seem unconcerned about their struggle for freedom.

The Post explained, “None were able to travel to Washington. They have been represented here by Bertha Antúnez, sister of Jorge Luis García Pérez. And Ms. Antúnez, an Afro-Cuban who was active in the Rosa Parks movement before she was forced into exile a year ago, has been snubbed by President Obama. Requests that he meet with her went unanswered. Only as the ceremony began did the White House issue a brief statement.”

The paper said that “Mr. Obama’s hastily drafted statement—issued after The Post inquired about his silence—said he wished ‘to acknowledge and commend’ the five dissidents ‘and all the brave men and women who are standing up for the right of the Cuban people to freely determine their country’s future.’”

The belated “Statement of President Obama on NED 2009 Democracy Award Recipients” consisted of one paragraph:

“I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and commend the National Endowment for Democracy's 2009 Democracy Award recipients Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, Librado Linares, Ivan Hernandez Carrillo, and Iris Tamara Perez Aguilera and all the brave men and women who are standing up for the right of the Cuban people to freely determine their country’s future. Like too many of their fellow citizens, four of these individuals have been unjustly jailed for defending the basic freedoms we all hold dear in the Americas. It is my sincere hope that all political prisoners who remain jailed, including three of today’s award recipients, will be unconditionally released and allowed to fully participate in a democratic future in Cuba.”

As important as the Post editorial was, Jack Otero of the Committee for Free Trade Unionism wrote a letter to the paper noting that the Post failed to highlight a leader of the Cuban independent labor movement by the name of Iván Hernández Carrillo, who is serving a 25-year prison term since his arrest in 2003. Otero said that Hernández Carrillo is imprisoned for the “crime” of organizing unions not beholden to the communist-controlled Cuban Labor Confederation. “The Post should have acknowledged that labor activists in Cuba also risk their lives for freedom,” he said.

This takes on more interest because we recently discovered that a top official of the AFL-CIO, Karen Nussbaum, who spoke at a major “progressive” conference in Washington, D.C., is stonewalling questions about how she traveled to Cuba as a young radical and came away gushing about the Castro dictatorship. She went to Cuba on the Venceremos Brigades organized by Obama’s political associate Bernardine Dohrn, then a member of the communist terrorist Weather Underground.

But the Post editorial raised questions about Obama’s indifference toward Cuban freedom fighters in the context of his treatment of other Latin American Marxists.

The paper commented, “It’s not that the president is too busy to concern himself with Latin American politics. The White House arranged for a Spanish journalist to ask a question at Tuesday’s news conference; reporter Macarena Vidal pressed Mr. Obama on whether U.S. allies such as Chile and Colombia were doing enough to help with ‘less democratic countries.’ The president replied by heaping praise on visiting Chilean President Michele Bachelet, a socialist who has been promoting Cuba’s readmission into the Organization of American States and who has gone out of her way to avoid offending Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. ‘Chile is leading by example,’ Mr. Obama said, adding that its good relationship with Washington despite political differences ‘points the way for other countries…where the democratic tradition is not as deeply embedded as we’d like it to be.’”

The Post said that the message from Obama to Chávez and the Castro brothers was that “We can work with you” while the message to Cuba’s democratic opposition was “We don’t have time for you.”

This is an extraordinary indictment of Obama from the viewpoint of a liberal newspaper that now recognizes the far-left nature of the President’s policies toward Latin America.

The paper then wondered if the brief Obama statement about the Cuban dissidents would be enough to satisfy the democratic forces opposed to the Communist dictatorship. “We suspect not,” said the paper. “They, like the beleaguered pro-democracy movements of Venezuela and Nicaragua, are hoping that the American president will focus his policy on supporting them. Yet for now, Mr. Obama’s diplomacy is clearly centered on their oppressors.”

The sub-headline for the Post editorial was, “Why doesn’t President Obama have time for Cuba’s pro-democracy opposition?” Considering his failure to immediately and actively express support for the brave freedom fighters in Iran, the answer should be obvious by now. He doesn’t believe in the freedom agenda.

Some of us knew this was coming and predicted it. Unlike most of the media, we had examined the influences behind Obama, such as Communist Frank Marshall Davis, his mentor and father-figure, and understood before the election that this was a candidate who viewed America and the American way of life as the main problems in the world. Obama is truly a revolutionary Marxist who sympathizes not with those being oppressed by anti-American governments but with the governments themselves.

Another example of this attitude can be seen in the U.N. conference that has been underway in New York, where the Obama Administration is facilitating the work of anti-American crackpot Miguel D’Escoto, the U.N. General Assembly President whose most notable distinctions include being suspended from his priestly duties because of his communist political activities and receiving the Lenin Peace Prize from the old Soviet Union.

Source: New With Veiws.com

HOMELAND SECURITY AND US ARMY PLAN INVASION OF STATES

Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
by NWV News, Jim Kouri
June 26, 2009
© 2008 NewsWithViews.com

The Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security recently hosted a teleconference for law enforcement agencies and associations such as the National Association of Chiefs of Police to discuss the Obama Administration's interest in using the military during "emergencies."

Fortunately, NewsWithViews.com had exclusive access to the discussion and the explanations by Homeland Security and Defense Departments officials.
Officials announced during the teleconference that the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator W. Craig Fugate met with the Commander, US Northern Command, General Gene Renuart, to discuss "pre-disaster planning, response and recovery in support of the federal response to the 2009 hurricane season as well as wild fires, floods and other potential disasters."
The meeting reinforced the important relationship between the two organizations and focused on the operational role of US Northern Command and what resources and skills they bring to any major Federal effort related to all-hazards preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. It was also an opportunity to meet operational leaders who would fill key positions in those support efforts.
"NORTHCOM plays a vital role in disaster response in support of state and local officials," Fugate said. "I am impressed by their commitment to teamwork and interoperability. They are leaning forward and are solutions-oriented partners among the nation's emergency response team."
"We are committed to teaming with and supporting our civilian partners," added Renuart. "If our federal partners, state and local officials are successful in responding to contingency operations, then ultimately we are successful. We look forward to our continued collaboration and cooperation."
However, many law enforcement executives and organizations went on the record saying they did not appreciate the prospect of federal troops usurping the authority of local and state law enforcement agencies or the role of the National Guard unit currently under the control of governors.
"My initial reaction is: why are we allowing federal troops to basically invade the sovereignty of individual states when each state has its own law enforcement agencies and each state possesses an armed and trained National Guard and, in the case of some states such as New York, a trained militia?" according to New York police officer Edna Aquino.
"We have not used armed federal troops in New York since the Civil War when Union troops and Navy battleships attacked dissenters who opposed conscription by the Union Army," she added.
According to officials from the Homeland Security Department, FEMA and Northern Command share a common interest and a unified approach to disaster response and recovery.



"Both organizations also understand that the most effective plans to save lives and protect property begins with preparedness. This meeting was an important stepping stone to ensure mutual preparedness and effective planning in support of state and local officials," said one official.
Homeland Security Department officials offered these two rationales for their joint ventures with the Department of Defense:
"Emergency preparedness is everyone's responsibility. Everyone should have a personal response plan for a disaster, everyone should know who their first responders are at the local and state level, and everyone should be prepared to be self-sufficient for at least the first 72 hours.
"FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards."
Political strategist Mike Baker is disturbed over this latest "emergency plan" designed to allow federal troops to operate freely within US borders.
"This is a constitutionally unsound development for our nation. While President Barack Obama and his ilk worry about how America's military is perceived by other nations and are concerned with how we treat enemies, they seem to be willing to use extreme measures against their own citizens.
Will we witness another Branch Davidian massacre in the name of 'emergency response' or other rationale? It's not a positive development for this nation," said Baker.
Northcom was established about a year after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and is responsible for an area of operations that includes the United States, Canada and Mexico. It serves as a "one-stop-shopping" point for military support in case of an attack on American soil. However, according to officials speaking during the teleconference, the Obama Administration is expanding that role to include natural disasters or emergencies that were once the domain of state and local authorities.
Over the years, according to Baker, the federal government has expanded its role and even included other nations in operational plans within the US. For example NORAD is a joint US-Canadian command established 51 years ago to defend against nuclear-armed Soviet aircraft entering North American airspace. Decades later, the command's mission has expanded to include early detection of threats via air, space, land and sea.



The sheer number of participants speaks to NORAD's level of preparation and coordination to operate within US borders. Teaming up to deal with emergencies are American and Canadian NORAD agents, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Transportation Security Administration, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, NAV Canada, the White House, U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Source: News with Views.com

Gun Control: What Is the Agenda?

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars
June 26, 2009
Some years or decades ago I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America’s first gun control laws.
New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.
The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.



As the first successful gun control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the US today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.
Consider the propagandistic term, “gun violence,” popularized by gun control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate objects are imbued with the ability to act and to commit violence. Guns, of course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from people who use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists, to commit violence.
Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term, “gun violence.”

Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other causes of child deaths. Yet, gun control advocates have created the false impression that there is a national epidemic in accidental firearm deaths of children. In fact, the National MCH Center for Child Death Review, an organization that monitors causes of child deaths, reports that seven times more children die from drowning and five times more from suffocation than from firearm accidents. Yet we don’t hear of “drowning violence,” “swimming pool violence,” “bathtub violence,” or “suffocation violence.”
The National MCH Center for Child Death Review reports that 174 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2000. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that 125 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2006. In 2006 there were 77,845,285 youths in that age bracket.
In 2006 violence-related firearm deaths of eighteen year olds and under totaled 2,191. A large percentage of these deaths appear to be teenagers fighting over drug turf.
According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, drugs are “one of the main factors leading to the total number of all homicides. . . . murders related to narcotics still rank as the fourth most documented murder circumstance out of 24 possible categories.”
According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the following reasons: “competition for drug markets and customers, disputes and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug market, [and] the tendency toward violence of individuals who participate in drug trafficking.” Another dimension of drug-related crime is “committing an offense to obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use.”
Obviously, decriminalizing drugs would be the greatest single factor in reducing incarceration rates, the crime rate, and the homicide rate. Yet, gun control advocates do not support this obvious solution to “gun violence.”
Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape, and murder. All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal, and they keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed.
So what is the real agenda? Why do gun control advocates want to override the Second Amendment. Why do they not acknowledge that if the Second Amendment can be over-ridden, so can every other protection of civil liberty?
There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent one to two million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home robberies, rapes, and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions that suffer from gun control ordinances. Other studies show that most states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes against persons.
Why do gun control advocates want to increase the crime rate in the US?
Why is the gun control agenda a propagandistic one draped in lies?
The NRA is the largest and best-known organization among the defenders of the Second Amendment. Yet, a case might be made that manufacturers’ gun advertisements in the NRA’s magazines stoke the hysteria of gun control advocates.
Full page ads offering civilian versions of weapons used by “America’s elite warriors” in US Special Operations Command, SWAT, and by covert agents “who work in a dark world most of us can’t even understand,” are likely to scare the pants off people who are afraid of guns.
Many of the modern weapons are ugly as sin. Their appearance is threatening, unlike the beautiful lines of a Winchester lever action or single shot rifle, or a Colt single action revolver, or the WW II 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, guns that do not have menacing appearances. Everyone knows that they are guns, but they are also works of art.



A little advertising discretion might go a long way in quieting fears that are manipulated by gun control advocates.
The same goes for hunters. Recent news reports of “hunters” slaughtering wolves from airplanes in Alaska and of a hunter, indeed, a poacher, who shot a protected rare wolf in the US Southwest and left the dead animal in the road, enrage people who have empathy with animals and wildlife. Many Americans have had such bad experiences with their fellow citizens that they regard their dogs and cats, and wildlife, as more intelligent and noble life forms than humans. Wild animals can be dangerous, but they are not evil.
Americans with empathy for animals are horrified by the television program that depicts hunters killing beautiful animals and the joy hunters experience in “harvesting” their prey. Many believe that a person who enjoys killing a deer because he has a marvelous rack of antlers might enjoy killing a person.
This is not a screed against hunters. There are many families with the tradition of bringing in the venison once or twice a year. With the near extermination by man of deer predators, deer are so abundant in many localities as to have become a nuisance and a danger to motorists. Nevertheless, the defense of gun rights has little to gain from TV programs depicting the fun of killing Bambi’s mother.
In the US, shooting is a hand-eye coordination sport. It is likely that 99% of all ammunition is fired at paper targets, metal silhouettes, or clay and plastic discs. It is a sport for amateur physicists who are interested in ballistics and who experiment with different combinations of powder and bullet seeking the most accurate for their rifle or pistol. Few of these shooters hunt as their interest in shooting is unrelated to killing.
Shooting is a sport that offers comradeship and competition in which even old people can participate, people who do not or cannot play golf or tennis or bowl. There is a vast variety of events from black powder muskets to antique military and frontier weapons to distance shooting.
Sports shooters punching holes in paper targets comprise the vast majority of active gun owners. They are a threat to no one. Accidents are extremely rare at gun clubs. A large network of small businesses provide the parts and supplies necessary for shooting. There is no reason to strip gun owners of their hobby and possessions and family businesses of their livelihood, as has been done in Great Britain and as the gun control lobby intends to do in the US.
The NRA is correct to insist that “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” We have known this since the Sullivan Act.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

Are You A Terrorist?

Emily Spence
Smirking Chimp
June 26, 2009
Despite that DoD officials removed the offensive section from their educational resources at the urging of ACLU members, the DoD stance is still troubling since a longstanding practice to designate peaceful, law abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still exists in many government departments and agencies. Indeed the participants of the first antiwar protest against the Vietnam incursion, put together in the mid-1960’s by peaceable Quakers and FOR members after having discussed Gandhi’s Salt March as a model for a nonviolent demonstration, faced government operatives filming them face by face from rooftops as they moved en masse down Broadway to the UN Plaza. (My mother, a pacifist married to a World War II Conscientious Objector, and I, a child at the time of the march, both were in attendance. When the film crew focused on us, she stood tall, faced the agents with their telephoto lens, glared in disdainful defiance and, simultaneously, throw the corner of her coat over my face. Afterwards, she muttered, “How dare they try to intimidate us!”)
This sort of happening in mind, the treatment of Nobel Peace Award winner Aung San Sui Kyi in Myanmar is not necessarily all that different than the response that she’d receive in the USA and, while it’s commendable that American spokespersons publicly object to her most recent arrest, they, certainly, might seem to be a bunch of hypocrites. This is due to the fact that a number of Nobel Peace Award recipients, such as American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), have had difficulties of their own on American soil.
For example, “AFSC’s work, always open and resolutely nonviolent, has been under government surveillance for decades. The Service Committee secured nearly 1,700 pages of files from the FBI under a Freedom of Information request in 1976. These files show that the FBI kept files on AFSC that dated back to 1921. Ten other federal agencies kept files on AFSC, including the CIA, Air Force, Navy, Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service, and the State Department. The CIA has intercepted overseas mail and cables in the 1950s, and some AFSC offices (and even its staff’s homes) have been infiltrated and burglarized in the late 1960s into the 1970s.” [2]
In relation, AFSC associate general secretary for justice and human rights, Joyce Miller, asked, “How can we speak of spreading democracy in Iraq while dismantling it here at home?” She further remarked, “Political dissent is fundamental to a free and democratic society. It should not be equated with crime.”
Add to the AFSC problems, those pertaining to Nobel Peace Award recipient Nelson Mandela, who only a year ago had the designation “terrorist” removed from his name, under protest by the State Department, so that he no longer suffered travel restrictions from the US government. Yet his travel curtailment was not nearly as awful as was Ramzy Baroud’s blockage. He, the editor of Palestine Chronicle, had his US passport seized by a consular officer at an overseas American Embassy [3]. Similarly, Senator Edward Kennedy was, also, flagged by the U.S. no-fly list.
Then again, Ted Kennedy received much less harassment than did Nobel Peace Award winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire after her flight from Guatemala had been directed to Ireland through Houston:
“She was probably tired and ready to get back to Belfast, where her attempts to bring about an end to The Troubles in 1976 made her at 32 the youngest Nobel Peace Prize-winner ever. Since then, she’s been given the Pacem in Terris Award by Pope John Paul II, and the United Nations selected her (along with the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Jordan’s Queen Noor and a dozen or so other fellow Nobel Laureates) as an honorary board member of the International Coalition for the Decade.
“Unfortunately for Maguire, her flight back home to Northern Ireland was routed through Houston, where none of that meant diddly. Federal Customs officials were far less interested in any of that than they were in a box on the back of the transit form she filled out on her flight.
“‘They questioned me about my nonviolent protests in USA against the Afghanistan invasion and Iraqi war,’ Maguire said later in a statement. ‘They insisted I must tick the box in the Immigration form admitting to criminal activities.’
“Maguire was detained for two hours — grilled once, fingerprinted, photographed, and grilled again. She missed her flight home. She was only released after an organization she helped found — the Nobel Women’s Initiative — started kicking up a fuss.” [4]
On can add to her troubles countless other ones wherein human rights and environmental supporters have been repeatedly hassled for no other reason than that they’re holding views that don’t jive with positions at any number of U.S. government institutions. One needn’t return in time to the McCarthy Era to find many individuals who have been investigated and persecuted for holding vilified opinions. For example, Stephen Lendman, a peace advocate and writer in his seventies with a permanent knee injury that delimits travel, has been repeatedly investigated by the FBI.
At the same time, he is joined by myriad others such as assorted activists in Maryland whose names were put on federal terrorist lists by state police who infiltrated their groups. [5] As such, their perfectly legal activities, freedom of speech and right to unhindered assembly have been criminalized.
Simultaneously, there’s a certain inescapable irony and disingenuous quality presented by the Western government heads who are harshly critical of the Iran crackdown on dissenting citizens while they, themselves, condone similar ironfisted policies in their own lands. Their two-faced position is barely hidden beneath the surface of their mock concern for the well-being of Iranian protesters as they urge their own and allied troops into battle, show little (if any) sincere remorse over the slaughter of masses of civilians that happen in the process and make sure that demonstrators at home are disregarded, denigrated or preemptively rounded up as happened at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Then again, one might find himself in pretty good company if he were singled out as unpatriotic and treacherous for holding viewpoints or undertaking actions that go contrary to the perspectives that a certain hawkish and totalitarian segment of society holds. All the same, every method conceivable might be used to hunt down the offenders and, when taken to the extreme, render their seemingly provocative positions ineffectual by any means possible, including imprisonment and murder.
Anyone who doubts this to be the case needs only to remember about what happened to people like Howard Fast; the slain Freedom Riders Andy Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner; the thirteen shot students at Kent State University at which Ohio National Guardsman fired sixty-seven rounds over a thirteen second period, and scores of others who have stood against mainstream policies.
Meanwhile, stigmatizing dissidents is a fairly common practice. As such, “There are 1.1 million people on the [U.S.] Terrorist Watch List and there is a 35 per cent error rate, minimum, for that list,” according to ACLU’s Michael German. [6] Furthermore, the overzealous and aggressive surveillance tactics used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to check the public’s e-mails, telephone calls and other communications are the same ones as were in use during George W. Bush’s administration. Likewise, the amount of spying on personal exchanges is as high as it ever was.
In relation to recent claims by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was unintentional, House representative, Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey and Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, commented “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental.” Additionally, the act of tracking e-mailed transmissions and other interactions has seemed in violation of federal law according to lawyers at the Justice Department. Regardless, the practice continues.
At the same time, the decision to designate social activists as troublemakers, while singling them out for intimidation, threats and investigations, carries serious legal and political implications in democratic societies.The further measure of subjecting them to the sorts of difficulties that Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ramzy Baroud, AFSC members and innumerable others have endured is clearly based in xenophobic, paranoid and despotic thinking. It embodies the kind of authoritarian mentality and oppressive activities that one finds in the worst types of tyrannical regimes.
As Harry S. Truman suggested, “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” Due to this fear, are we, then, to all conform with lock-step in perverse obedience to the State’s dictates, outlooks and agendas in an increasingly Orwellian milieu? If not, then we must constantly remind ourselves and each other of US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’s vision: “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”
References
[1] Pentagon Rebrands Protest as “Low-Level Terrorism” (http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/pentagon-rebrands-protest-as-low-level-terrorism/).
[2] American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) (http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0201-03.htm).
[3] “Punishing activists or pursuing terrorists?” by Maggie Mitchell Salem in Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GL10Aa01.html).
[4] Nobel Prize Winner Gets Hassled At Bush Intercontinental … (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/29-8).
[5] Police Spied on Activists In Md. - washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071701287.html) and Md. Police Put Activists’ Names On Terror Lists - … (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100703245.html).
[6] One third of FBI Terror Watch List are innocent people | Top … (http://www.russiatoday.ru/Top_News/2009-06-17/One_third_of_FBI_Terror_Watch_List_are_innocent_people.html).

Source: Smirking Chimp

Know Your Rights or You Will Lose Them

Posted by sakerfa on June 26, 2009

“Most citizens,” writes columnist Nat Hentoff, “are largely uneducated about their own constitutional rights and liberties.”“It astonishes me to find… [that so many] of our countrymen… should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty… which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries.”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1788



The following true incident is a case in point for Hentoff’s claim. A young attorney, preparing to address a small gathering about the need to protect freedom, especially in the schools, wrote the text of the First Amendment on a blackboard. After carefully reading the text, a woman in the audience approached the attorney, pointed to the First Amendment on the board and remarked, “My, the law is really changing. Is this new?” The woman was a retired schoolteacher.
For more than 200 years, Americans have enjoyed the freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, among others, without ever really studying the source of those liberties, found in the Bill of Rights–the first ten amendments to our U. S. Constitution.
Yet never has there been a time when knowing our rights has been more critical and safeguarding them more necessary. Particularly telling is the fact that even under the Obama presidency, most of the Bush administration policies and laws that curtailed our freedoms have remained intact–all of which have drastically altered the landscape of our liberties.
Thus, it is vital that we gain a better understanding of what Thomas Jefferson described as “fetters against doing evil.” If not, I fear that with each passing day, what Jefferson called the “degeneracy” of “the principles of liberty” will grow worse until, half asleep, Americans will lose what our forefathers fought and died for.
A short summary of the first ten amendments shows how vital these freedoms are.
The First Amendment protects the freedom to speak your mind and protest in peace without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans cannot be silenced by the government.
The Second Amendment guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” This is one of the most controversial provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, there are those who claim that gun ownership in America should be restricted solely to the police and other government officials.
In many countries, owning a firearm is a mere privilege, reserved for the rich and powerful. Self-protection, however, is not a privilege in America. It is an individual citizen right which the U.S. Supreme Court has now recognized.
America was born during a time of martial law. British troops stationed themselves in homes and entered property without regard to the rights of the owners. That is why the Third Amendment prohibits the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” Even though today’s military does not threaten private property, this amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military. But increasingly, even under the Obama presidency, the threat of martial law being imposed is a clear and present danger.
There’s a knock at the door. The police charge in and begin searching your home. They invade your privacy, rummaging through your belongings. You may think you’re powerless to stop them, but you’re not. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from searching your home without a warrant approved by a judge. But what about other kinds of invasions? Your telephone, mail, computer and medical records are now subject to governmental search.
Even though they’re all personal and private, they are increasingly at risk for unwarranted intrusion by government agents. The ominous rise of the surveillance state threatens the protections given us by this amendment.
You cannot be tried again after having been found innocent. The government cannot try you repeatedly for the same crime, hoping to get the result they want. It’s one of the legal protections of the Fifth Amendment. Moreover, you cannot be forced to testify against yourself. You can “plead the Fifth.”
This means that if you are accused of committing a crime, it is up to the state to prove its case against you. You are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without following strict legal codes of conduct.
The Sixth Amendment spells out the right to a “speedy and public trial.” An accused person can confront the witnesses against him and demand to know the nature of the charge. The government cannot legally keep someone in jail for unspecified offenses.
Moreover, unlike many other countries, Americans also have the right to be tried by a jury of ordinary citizens and to be represented by an attorney. Our fates in criminal proceedings are not decided by panels of judges or unaccountable politicians.
Property ownership is a fundamental right of free people. In a legal dispute over property, the Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial.
Like any other American citizen, those accused of being criminals have rights under the Constitution as well. In some countries, the government abuses what they see as disloyal or troublesome citizens by keeping them in jail indefinitely on trumped-up charges. If they cannot pay their bail, then they’re not released. The Eighth Amendment is, thus, similar to the Sixth–it protects the rights of the accused. These are often the people most susceptible to abuse and who have the least resources to defend themselves. This amendment also forbids the use of cruel and unusual punishment.
The framers of our Constitution were so concerned about civil liberties that they wished to do everything conceivable to protect our future freedom. Some of the framers opposed a bill of rights because it might appear that these were the only rights the people possessed. The Ninth Amendment remedied that by providing that other rights not listed were nonetheless retained by the people.
Our rights are inherently ours, and our government was created to protect them. The government does not, nor did it ever, have the power to grant us our rights. Popular sovereignty–the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers–is clearly evident in this amendment and is a landmark of American freedom.
Ours is a federal system of government. This means that power is divided among local, state and national entities. The Tenth Amendment reminds the national government that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution.
Congress and the President have increasingly assumed more power than the Constitution grants them. However, it’s up to the people and the state governments to make sure that they obey the law of the land.
Having stood the test of time, there is little doubt that the Bill of Rights is the greatest statement for freedom ever drafted and put into effect. In the end, however, it is the vigilance of “we the people” that will keep the freedoms we hold so dear alive. Therefore, know your rights, exercise them freely or you’re going to lose them.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest book The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks) is now available.

Source: Tenth Amendment Center