Wednesday 30 November 2016

In praise of risk

I was watching Hostage, a typical Bruce Willis action movie, the other night with my wife.

At one point I got up to get a glass of water and she grabbed my hand. When I looked at her she was holding her breath, the suspense was so great.

You need to bear in mind that my wife and I have four daughters, so we don’t watch many macho action movies together. I usually watch them in my man cave, generally, with kids floating in and out as things blow up and people are thrown through glass windows.

After we finished watching the movie, she told me she had watched a Die Hard movie a couple nights before and enjoyed it as well.

This is kind of a shock coming from my wife.

So I got to thinking about all the generalized excitement that has greeted the new Donald Trump presidency. And I started to realize that something new and different is about to happen in U.S. politics — and no one knows what will come of it.

Some believe that it will be awesome. Others believe just as strongly that it will be a nightmare. But the ‘meh’ middle has dried up. Everyone is running with strong feelings one way or the other.

In my younger days I was a playwright on occasion and sometimes someone would ask me if anyone ever told me they hated a show. And I would tell them that I thought the show was successful if people loved it or hated it. As long as they weren’t indifferent about it, I did my job.

What I am seeing collectively, even beyond U.S. borders, is a sense of suspense and anticipation. No one knows what’s coming next.

It’s refreshing in a way. But we’re also seeing this play out in the markets.

We’ve had bank excesses for decades, starting with President Bill Clinton repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in the early 1990s and ending in the financial Armageddon in 2008.

But it hasn’t stopped there. The quantitative easing the Federal Reserve began has kept these ungainly, unhealthy organizations at the top of the food chain by artificial means — central bank policy.

In a “state of nature” these banks would have collapsed and we would have new financial institutions to take their place that were built by modern people, for modern times.

The markets have reflected this era with record low volatility. Basically, what I’m saying is, the markets have been living in a romantic comedy for a very long time.

It’s an artificial reality and it too may be coming to an end.

I expect Fed’s rate rise in December will be the beginning of sure and steady increase in volatility, or in more plain language, risk.

Risk is on the rise. And that’s a good thing. It’s a healthy thing. It’s a necessary thing for capitalism and democracies.

My prediction is that next year at this time, things will be very different in the markets and the economy. And I’m fine with that, for good or ill.

When risk rises back to healthy levels of creative destruction, you need to be well positioned in smart investments. For now, gold and silver are your best bets because they will thrive when market risk is high.

Other than precious metals (and bitcoin) there is nothing worth buying until after the inauguration.

— GS Early

The post In praise of risk appeared first on Personal Liberty®.


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/in-praise-of-risk/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/in-praise-of-risk/

The teeth of the beast

I began publishing my monthly newsletter The Bob Livingston Letter™ (subscription required) in 1969. The following appeared in the December 1997 issue. Way back then I was alerting readers to growing militarization of federal agencies. This activity expanded rapidly under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. As I reported to you readers of Personal Liberty, now even NOAA and the Federal Reserve have armed troopers. The EPA and FDA have both deployed their own SWAT teams to shut down activities as benign as collecting rainwater and selling raw milk. Even the Department of Education and National Institutes of Health have SWAT teams.  In 1996 there were 60,000 armed federal agents. Today there are more than 200,000. Is this not evidence the U.S. is a police state at war with its own people?

 

The U.S. Government has been quietly deploying unregulated agency armies against its own citizens. It is part of the ongoing invasion of our nation from within, by mass deceit and mass, uninformed consent. According to Joseph Farah of the Western Journalism Center:

In 1996 alone, at least 2,349 new federal cops were authorized to carry firearms… As a result of that record one-year surge, there are nearly 60,000 armed federal agents representing departments as diverse as the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Postal Service.

Among the others packing heat against you and me are the agents of the seemingly innocuous U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers. In fact, there is no such thing as a harmless federal agent nor agency. Just ask the surviving members of the Randy Weaver family.

Farah adds that the reason these feds are armed is that they are “in the business of seizing people’s personal property” on any pretense. It is not exactly benign behavior for a group supposedly sworn to preserve the blessings of liberty and our posterity. In this way, the federal armies among us are unregulated, doing what is unlawful under the color of law by the authority of bureaucratic agency rules. They are eating out our substance, precisely what the colonists complained of in their Declaration of Independence submitted to King George III.

Other agencies, if not actually using their guns, use the implied power of the gun to turn entire institutions and states to the federal or globalist will. These include the IRS and the Department of Justice. How bad is it? Benjamin Stein is the actor who does the “Clear Eyes” commercial on TV. He says:

Why was life so bad in Russia? I guess because people were not free. Life was fixed by quotas and government orders. You were who the government said you were, not who you could be… I wonder if some smart fellow… has ever studied the similarities between the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division recently and… the KGB. A very different approach to conflict resolution, to be sure, but certain similarities in the world view.

To be sure, there is indeed a similarity in world view because it is the religio-political world view of global collectivism. Yet there is more. The “conflicts” supposedly resolved by the federal government are not genuine but are set-ups in order to consolidate federal and globalist power over  individuals.

The State grand jury in Oklahoma City is now considering evidence in this regard. According to the testimony of former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) informant Carol Howe of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the government was aware of the pending attack on the Murrah Federal Building. Additional evidence points to deeper federal awareness and possibly even involvement in the bombing of its own.

Such a scenario is reminiscent of the maneuverings of Josef Stalin. He consolidated Soviet, communist, and personal tyranny by manufacturing conflicts and then brutally resolving them. There is a “velvet glove” covering similar abuses by the globalists, their U.N., and the U.S. government. After all, the feds are not communist, in name at least, but democrats. They are nevertheless revealed to be tyrants because of their official policy of bearing arms in every imaginable capacity against people who are ostensibly, again in name only, their fellow citizens.

The post The teeth of the beast appeared first on Personal Liberty®.


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/the-teeth-of-the-beast/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/the-teeth-of-the-beast/

Websites said to be Putin-linked ‘fake news’ consider suit

(U.S. News & World Report) Several American news outlets are considering legal action against the anonymous person or group that last week published a widely distributed list of alleged Russian propaganda outlets and “bona-fide ‘useful idiots’” of the Kremlin.

Online publications including the influential news-aggregating Drudge Report, the primary-source publisher WikiLeaks and news outlets of various leanings made “the list” hosted on the website PropOrNot.com.

The Washington Post leaned heavily on the anonymous group’s claims last week in an article reporting that “two teams of independent researchers” – including the Foreign Policy Research Institute and PropOrNot – had found a “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’” ahead of the recent presidential election.


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/websites-said-to-be-putin-linked-fake-news-consider-suit/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/websites-said-to-be-putin-linked-fake-news-consider-suit/

How Trump sealed deal to keep Carrier jobs in U.S.

(Fortune) He went straight to the top.

Even before becoming Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump has become negotiator-in-chief, as illustrated by the deal he struck with air conditioning manufacturer Carrier.

A source close to the company said President-elect Trump called Greg Hayes, CEO of Carrier’s parent company United Technologies, two weeks ago and asked him to rethink the decision to close the Carrier plant in Indiana.

Hayes explained that the jobs were lower-wage and had high turnover, and the move was necessary to keep the plant competitive, according to the source. He said the plan would save the company $65 million a year.


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/how-trump-sealed-deal-to-keep-carrier-jobs-in-u-s/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/how-trump-sealed-deal-to-keep-carrier-jobs-in-u-s/

FEC complaint: Stein fronting for Clinton in recount effort

(LawNewz) The Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission on Wednesday that alleges Jill Stein is allowing her campaign to be used as a front for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the recount effort. Stein has denied those allegations.

This was all set in motion over the weekend beginning with Clinton campaign’s attorney, Mark Elias, writing a lengthy blog post that explained how the Clinton campaign received hundreds of calls to “investigate claims that the election results were hacked and altered in a way to disadvantage Secretary Clinton.” He detailed the exhaustive measures the campaign undertook to investigate these allegations and said they ultimately concluded they “had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.”


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/fec-complaint-stein-fronting-for-clinton-in-recount-effort/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/fec-complaint-stein-fronting-for-clinton-in-recount-effort/

A movie about ‘safe spaces’ on college campuses

Dennis Prager and Adam Corolla

Dennis Prager and Adam Corolla

Podcaster comedian Adam Carolla and author-talk host Dennis Prager are exploring the new idea of creating “safe spaces” on college campuses across the country – “safe spaces” meaning safe from ideas you might find repugnant.

The film will be produced by Mark Joseph, whose recent projects include “The Vessel” with Martin Sheen and “Max Rose” with Jerry Lewis, and will be directed by Justin Folk for Madison McQueen Films. Folk has worked in visual effects on “The Incredible Hulk” and “The Matrix” franchise and is making his debut as a film director.

“College campuses are supposed to be where diversity of opinion is celebrated, not silenced,” said Carolla, who will star with Prager in a film called “No Safe Spaces.”

Prepare to be triggered … “No Campus for White Men” shines the light on the transformation og higher education into hateful indoctrination.

The phenomenon on university campuses is relatively new, but has taken root since the election of Donald Trump Nov. 8. Some of the “safe spaces” are places where students can share their revulsion over the president-elect without fear of confrontation. One dorm even set up a “breathing space” with coloring books, snacks and a comfort dog for petting.

“When did everyone become such a colossal pussy? Having your beliefs challenged is as American as apple pie?” asks Carolla, who will tour the country’s college campuses with Prager, a WND columnist, in the making of the documentary.

Carolla, whose podcast was once recognized as the most popular one in the world, has often teamed with Prager, whose show on KRLA AM 870 in Los Angeles is syndicated nationally. The two have little in common – Prager is an observant Jew, Carolla is an atheist. Prager attended graduate school at Columbia University, Carolla never attended college.

“He’s Ivy League and I’m bush league, but it works,” Carolla quipped.

The movie will also explore the phenomenon whereby conservatives who are invited to speak at universities are routinely shouted down or, in some cases, disinvited due to liberal opposition, say the filmmakers.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.

Madison McQueen is best known as a creator of lighthearted commercials for Doritos, Mattel and the like, and also for its ads promoting conservative causes and candidates. The company is making its first foray into feature-length films and is seeking a theatrical release for “No Safe Spaces,” but there are no deals in place yet.

“Universities have become a laughingstock,” Prager said. “When prestigious institutions of rigorous academic instruction give out coloring books and Play-Doh to 20-year-old students in designated safe-space areas on campus, we are failing them.”

Prager and Carolla are no strangers to documentaries. Carolla wrote, co-produced and directed “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman,” and directed and co-produced “The 24 Hour War,” about Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II at Le Mans. Prager starred in “Baseball, Dennis & the French” and co-wrote and co-produced “For Goodness Sake,” directed by David Zucker, and two sequels directed by Trey Parker.


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/a-movie-about-safe-spaces-on-college-campuses/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/a-movie-about-safe-spaces-on-college-campuses/

Only 4 states can stop vote fraud

 

738592F3-8E97-465E-90F8-192719E2AA97

Only seven states have strict photo ID requirements for voting, but even that won’t stop the most common form of voter fraud.

The raging debate about voter fraud has been hijacked by the left, says a leading expert on the issue, and the left is driving the narrative in a false direction using slick deception.

The question is: What will President-elect Donald Trump do about it?

When people think about “voter fraud,” they tend to think about the dead voting, people voting in multiple precincts or party machines paying homeless people to cast ballots.

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky

While those are all legitimate concerns, the mass fraud happens long before the vote is cast – at the point of registration – says Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of the book, “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.”

By centering the debate on “voter ID” laws, the left has been able to divert attention away from the real source of the problem – lax voter-registration laws.

Only seven states have strict photo ID voter laws. But even these are not enough to stop non-citizen green-card holders from illegally registering to vote and providing their driver’s licenses when they show up to cast a fraudulent vote.

What do YOU think? Did noncitizens help Hillary win the popular vote? Sound off in today’s WND poll 

Only 4 states require proof of citizenship to register

The heart of the matter comes down voter registration, which is based on an “honor system,” Spakovsky said. “Nobody is checking to make sure those registering to vote are citizens.”

Right now, there are only four states that require residents to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when they register to vote. Those states are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Kansas – all of which backed Trump in November.

Related story: Trump may be right about winning popular legal vote

Here are some immigration numbers that have a direct impact on the integrity of the voting system:

The United States is currently bringing in a record 1.3 million legal immigrants per year, most of them on green cards and increasingly from hostile nations like Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. A green card allows a foreign national to reside legally and permanently in the United States, as well as providing the right to work, obtain a driver’s license, purchase a gun and even serve in the U.S. military. But one of the few privileges not afforded to the green-card holder is the right to vote.

Problem is, once you’ve afford all these other rights to the foreign national who’s here on a green card, what’s to stop him from registering to vote? There is no system in place to do that.

Even the strictest voter ID law would not catch that green-card holder who checks off the “U.S. citizen” box on the voter registration application. He has his driver’s license or military ID to show at the polls, so he’s good to go.

Contrast that number, 1.3 million per year getting green cards, with the estimated number of illegal aliens who sneak across the southern border or overstay their visas – an estimated 450,000 to 500,000 per year. And illegals are also more likely to come in and out of the country than those with green cards, and they are less likely, unless they reside in California, to have a valid driver’s license.

So by now, you should start to see, purely on a mathematical basis, where the greatest potential for fraud exists. It’s with the green-card holders.

Trump issued a tweet Sunday saying he would have “won the popular vote” over Hillary Clinton “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” That prompted headlines at CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico and many other media outlet that all said, “No proof exists of widespread voter fraud.”

Technically, that’s true.

The question none of these outlets is asking, however, is why is it that no proof exists?

If you ask the wrong questions, you will get the wrong answers, says Spakovsky.

“All these newspapers are going to a lot of trouble to deny the obvious, and that is the United States has a long history of voter fraud,” he said.

The Supreme Court recognized the problem in 2008 when it ruled on a case upholding a voter ID law in Louisiana.

“We have a whole file at the Heritage Foundation of convictions in courts of law, over 700 defendants convicted of voter fraud,” he added.

What do YOU think? Did noncitizens help Hillary win the popular vote? Sound off in today’s WND poll 

System designed to fail?

But let’s assume that, for the sake of argument, cases like this wouldn’t qualify as “widespread” fraud.

To crack that nut, you have to look at the bigger picture. How do you find proof in a system that is designed to hide the proof?

“I don’t know if what Donald Trump says is correct or not because our system is so bad, and it’s so easy for so many people to fraudulently vote that we will never find out about it,” Spakovsky told WND “The problem is non-citizens who are clearly registering and voting all over the country. In the convictions we’ve had, in each case it was just discovered by accident. There is no systematic oversight of the voter registration process. It’s all done on the honor system.”

And, in fact, any effort at oversight by the states has been strongly discouraged by the Obama Justice Department.

For example, Florida election officials wanted access to the Department of Homeland Security’s alien database a couple of years ago, citing major problems with non-citizens registering to vote.

The DHS database includes names of millions of non-citizens, legal and illegal, and Florida wanted access to this data so it could verify the citizenship of those on its voting rolls.

“The Obama administration did everything it could to prevent access to that database,” Spakovsky said.

A real and growing problem

In 2014, a study was conducted by two professors from Old Dominion University and one from George Mason, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. This study estimated 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election and 2.2 percent voted in the 2010 midterm congressional elections.

Another poll by John McLaughlin, based on a sample survey of 800 Hispanics in 2013, found that of foreign-born respondents who were registered voters, 13 percent admitted they were not U.S. citizens.

“If even just half of that 13 percent voted, that’s tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots,” Spakovsky said.

Since 80 percent of non-citizens vote for Democrats, according to the ODU/George Mason study, non-citizen participation could have “been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes [in North Carolina in 2008], and Congressional elections” such as the 2008 race in Minnesota in which Al Franken was elected to the U.S. Senate, giving “Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote” to pass Obamacare, Spakovsky concludes.

“So the point Trump is making is valid in that we have this honor system that is being taken advantage of, and we need to focus on how to fix the problem. For that, I think it’s great that Trump is bringing attention to the problem,” he said.

Related story: “Trump may be right about winning popular legal vote”

Sessions to the rescue?

Trump has picked immigration hawk Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to be his attorney general.

Trump has picked immigration hawk Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to be his attorney general, a key position for cracking down on voter fraud.

With Sen. Jeff Sessions taking over as attorney general in the incoming Trump administration, all bets are off for the continuation of the status quo. That’s why progressives in the media, leftist political-science professors and an army of community-organizing groups are mobilizing against Trump before he even gets in office.

They’re terrified he will reform the system and demand proof of citizenship at the point of voter registration.

Spakovsky expects Sessions, a former federal prosecutor who has championed border security and admitting fewer refugees from hostile nations, to be a bird dog on restoring the integrity of the election system.

“I think very much so,” Spakovsky said. “There are two things Trump could do to reform the system.”

One is to give states access to the non-citizen database, and second is to start prosecuting non-citizens who are caught not only voting but registering to vote.

The current administration has basically ignored cases of non-citizens who have been discovered to have lied on their registration form by checking the box that says they are U.S. citizens.

Caught red-handed

In 2011, Spakovsky was serving on the Fairfax County Electoral Board and personally witnessed mass voter-registration fraud.

“We discovered 278 registered in just that one county, and we took them off the rolls and sent the names to the Obama Justice Department [at the time headed by Eric Holder], and they did nothing about it,” Spakovsky said. “Here was 278 cases of potential voter fraud, and they did nothing to investigate it.

“I predict Sessions will take this seriously. I think he understands what an issue this is.”

There’s much work to be done at the state level, too, if the system is to be cleaned up.

Since it’s entirely legal for non-citizens, living in the U.S. legally with green cards, to have drivers’ licenses, the voter ID laws alone are not sufficient to wipe out fraudulent voting.

A green-card holder simply has to lie on his voter registration application, check the box claiming to be a citizen, and he’s a registered voter. There is no system in place to validate that he checked the citizenship box in good faith.

“Every state needs to pass a law similar to those four states – Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Kansas – that says you have to provide proof of citizenship when you register to vote,” Spakovsky said.

“They need to be pushed to do it, and they need to have the U.S. Justice Department supporting them when they get sued by progressive groups trying to stop them from enacting these laws.”

That’s also something that hasn’t happened under Obama, he said.

“The Kansas law has been stopped in federal court. The DOJ has done everything it can to assist the leftist groups in stopping these laws at the state level,” Spakovsky said. “They don’t want the non-citizen voting stopped.”


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/only-4-states-can-stop-vote-fraud/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/only-4-states-can-stop-vote-fraud/

Secret Service officer debunks feds’ alibi for shooting ‘murdered mom’

Miriam Carey

Miriam Carey

(This is Part 2 of a three-part series on revelations in the Carey case made by a Secret Service officer. Read part 1, “Secret Service officer drops bombshell in ‘murdered mom’ case.”)

WASHINGTON – It is the most basic and simple question in the entire Miriam Carey saga.

Why?

Why would federal officers chase an unarmed, suburban mother with her infant strapped into the back seat of her car?

Why would they shoot her in the back?

Why would they kill her?

The mystery is why, on Oct. 3, 2013, Secret Service and Capitol Police officers pursued and killed Carey after all she did was enter a White House guard post apparently by mistake, then make a U-turn and immediately try to leave.

U.S. Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents surround Miriam Carey's car at Garfield Circle on Oct. 3, 2013

U.S. Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents surround Miriam Carey’s car at Garfield Circle on Oct. 3, 2013

An 11-year veteran of the Secret Service has come forward with an explanation that may finally answer that most basic question: Why did federal officers kill Carey?

The most common explanation that has been given since Day 1 is that officers had no way of knowing if she posed a threat to national security and whether she was a terrorist, so they killed her.

At the time of the shooting, NBC reported:

“The U.S. Capitol was placed on lockdown for about an hour, and police officials said they will review their response to security breaches.”

The New York Times reported:

“At the Capitol, there was panic as it became clear that the police were mobilizing for a security threat. The loud buzzers were a jarring sound in a city still on edge from the shootings last month. Police officers, their semiautomatic rifles drawn, quickly sealed off the entrances to hallways and instructed people to remain where they were.”

CBS reported:

“The officers who shot and killed the woman who led police on a high-speed chase through Washington, D.C. on Thursday may have thought her motive was terroristic, says a police shooting expert.

“‘Our nation’s capital has been and continues to be a target, and people who work for the Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police and the Secret Service understand that and have certain protocols in place’ to deal with such a perceived threat, explains Prof. David Klinger of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.”

And:

“[S]ays Klinger, at the time a reasonable officer may well have thought that Carey was attempting to carry out a terrorist plot, given the fact that she appeared to be targeting two major centers of power: the White House and the Capitol building.”

Not so, a Secret Service officer told WND.

Muhammad Abdul Raheem, an officer in the Uniformed Division of the U.S. Secret Service for 11 years, has decided to go public and reveal his identity because he felt the killing of Carey by federal officers was unjust.

Raheem recently sat down with WND and a reporter from the Washington Post and discussed the Carey case for three-and-a-half-hours in a Washington, D.C., office building just a few blocks from the site of another infamous capital cover-up, the Watergate Hotel.

WND has investigated the Carey case in depth since the beginning. The stunning facts and details of the investigation and the Justice Department cover-up are revealed in WND Books’ “Capitol Crime: Washington’s Cover-Up of the Killing of Miriam Carey.”

Long before WND uncovered many of the details indicating an official cover-up, famed civil libertarian Nat Hentoff said from all of the evidence he had seen in WND’s reports, which he called very thorough and easily corroborated, “[T]his is a classic case of police out of control and, therefore, guilty of plain murder.”

Capitol-Crime

In the first part of this WND series on Raheem’s interview, the Trenton, New Jersey, native explained how the Secret Service covered up what he said was the unjustifiable shooting.

In this second part, the Secret Service officer revealed how officers who shot Carey knew that national security was never at risk. He analyzed their actions for WND to come to that conclusion.

Raheem explained how federal officers knew that national security was never at risk during the Carey incident because officers did not act like they suspected she had a bomb.

And, he added, since they knew there was no risk to national security, they had no reason to shoot the unarmed, 34-year-old woman.

The 11-year Secret Service veteran described how officers violated all protocol for encountering a person suspected of having a bomb, or IED (improvised explosive device).

He said, according to that protocol, responding officers are instructed to:

  • Stay off their radios.
  • Do not approach the car.
  • Do not shoot.

Instead, officers confronting Carey did all three.

“First, stay off your radio. Stay off your phone,” said Raheem. “That’s because those radio waves could trigger an explosive device.

“Stay away from the vehicle,” he added. “If you think somebody has an IED, the last thing you would do would be to approach the vehicle.”

Find out what the feds are covering up, Read WND Books’ “Capitol Crime: Washington’s Cover-Up of the Killing of Miriam Carey”

Would he ever shoot at a car that might have a bomb in it?

“No. No. And you definitely would not go up to a car that you think has a bomb in it,” Raheem said, referring to video shot by a news crew that showed officers with their guns drawn rushing up to Carey’s car at Garfield Circle, then peering inside the windows.

http://ift.tt/1UyqoPZ

if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)};
jwplayer(‘jwplayer_gunNeLPa_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/2dCuDb1″}
);

From everything he had seen and heard, was there any reason for officers chasing Carey to believe national security was at risk in any way?

“No. And if they did think that, why would you run up to a car that has a bomb in it?” he asked. “What are you gonna do, yell at the bomb? They were yelling. … Am I going to make a bomb not go off by yelling?”

Raheem said officers actually acted as though they knew there really was no bomb, because, “They approached the car like they weren’t scared at all.”

So, were they using the supposed bomb threat as an excuse to justify their actions, after the fact?

“It looked to me like a training scenario where people knew they were not going to die.”

Miriam Carey's car after she was shot to death (Photo provided by the Justice Department)

Miriam Carey’s car after she was shot to death
(Photo provided by the Justice Department)

So what did he think was going through their minds?

“Those guys did not think they were dying that day,” Raheem insisted. “I know that for a fact. They were thinking that they were going up to a car and were going to do their regular macho thing. It looked like a training scenario, with guys tripping over each other and shooting everywhere.”

In training, do officers shoot at cars as they are driving away, as they did with Carey?

“No,” the officer said with a rueful laugh. “In training, no one uses precaution as they would if they thought they were going to die. If they say they do, they are lying.”

So, what should officers have done in the real-life scenario?

“They definitely should not have approached the vehicle, number one,” he explained. “For their own safety. Don’t approach the vehicle like that. If you really had reason to fear this vehicle, wouldn’t you be afraid that somebody might jump out of the back and spray you with an AK-47? That’s why it struck me like a training scenario, because nobody thought their life was in jeopardy that day.

“If you go in hot pursuit of a vehicle, when you pull that vehicle over, and you don’t know what’s in the car, you don’t just run up to the car,” he added.

“Now, I understand getting behind cover and pulling out your weapon. But to run up to the car and constantly knock on the window? If you are really scared, by that time, why didn’t you shoot right there?” he wondered.

Raheem described a schism within the uniformed division of the Secret Service. He said he and his fellow colleagues stationed at the guard posts generally have good relations with the public.

But, he said the officers in the patrol units, in cars and on bikes, have a different mentality. They are under orders to “generate activity” and to be proactive. He described them as actually looking for trouble.

Miriam, Valarie and Amy Carey

Miriam, Valarie and Amy Carey

“Those guys respond to a lot of things that never get real, that never hits the fan. So, they do a lot of things that look good, like they are in a movie, doing all that stuff. But they know none of that stuff is real.”

He said that was the mentality they brought to the Carey chase, because, “They are not even thinking, ‘If I get near this, something might happen.’ Because nobody was scared. A scared person would never act like that.”

“A lot of those units at the White House, they just jump out and do their little macho thing. It looks good. They like to give off that impression. Like tough guys. But they’re not tough guys,” he concluded.

Read WND’s full coverage of the Miriam Carey scandal. Learn everything there is to know about the mom shot in the back by Capitol cops.

Even if the federal officers responded poorly, as Raheem suggested, they do have a huge responsibility that no other police departments have, to help protect national security.

WND asked, could that added responsibility have, in any way, justified the killing of Carey?

“Not at all. Because it’s still the same thing. Out on the streets, you are still a police officer,” and, he explained, the rules are different only when you are protecting someone, not chasing someone.

“Protection is different,” Raheem explained. “If you are in protection, you cover the protectee. You get that person out of there; you don’t go after what’s coming at him.

“In the Secret Service, that’s how it is: minimum (attention) to the threat, maximum (attention) to the protectee. So, if somebody came in here trying to shoot you, I’m not going to chase them. I’ve got to cover you.”

Carey was shot and killed in her black Nissan on Oct. 3, 2013, by Secret Service and Capitol Police officers

Carey was shot and killed in her black Nissan on Oct. 3, 2013, by Secret Service and Capitol Police officers

From what he knew of what happened at the final scene on Constitution Avenue, where Carey was shot to death, were officers protecting anyone? Or anything?

“No. Not at all. I don’t know what they could have been protecting,” was his simple but powerful analysis.

What about the officers’ claim they shot and killed Carey in self-defense?

“Well, in self-defense of what?” was Raheem rhetorical response.

He wondered: Just who were officers defending?

“When they went up to the vehicle, if they looked in and, as close as they were, she pulled out any kind of weapon that could cause a danger to them, if she pulled out a gun, that would be self-defense.”

“If I’m in fear for my life, I’m getting behind cover,” he added. “If I go up to a vehicle and I see a gun, I’m firing. I’m not waiting. There’s a weapon. But that didn’t happen.”

Read WND’s full coverage of the Miriam Carey scandal. Learn everything there is to know about the mom shot in the back by Capitol cops.

What about the fear that she might hit them with her car? Is it Secret Service policy that a car can be considered a deadly weapon?

“No. No.”

WND noted that Carey was already driving away from officers at Garfield Circle before they opened fire.

“So, to wait for the car to pull away before firing rounds, that’s kinda like … What made you fear for your life? Now the car is not driving at you.”

He continued, “If she went at that guy and he did fear for his life, and then she pulled off and went the other way, what are you shooting for? Who fears for their life now, you know? You have to know how to de-escalate.”

Officers fired eight shots at Garfield Circle at Carey in the direction of a major street, Independence Avenue, and a congressional office building. Did he consider that reckless?

“Yes. Definitely. With the totality of circumstances, it’s definitely reckless because you are taking a chance with other people’s lives trying to stop someone who didn’t even commit a felony,” Raheem observed.

Miriam Carey

Miriam Carey

Was anybody disciplined, or was anything said about any of those actions?

“I have no idea. I just know the guys disappeared. We didn’t see the people who were involved in that shooting, at least one of them, for over a year. They just didn’t come back.”

Why didn’t this black life matter to the Obama administration? Read WND Books’ “Capitol Crime: Washington’s Cover-Up of the Killing of Miriam Carey.”

So, if he saw no justifiable reason for officers to fire their weapons, why did Raheem think they shot and killed Carey?

“Man,” he said, and exhaled deeply, as if at a loss.

“In my opinion? I believe that the guys did not know how to de-escalate. In the heat of the moment, one person shoots, everybody shoots.”

If they didn’t know how to de-escalate, would that have been a training lapse?

“Definitely a training lapse.”

Raheem identified other factors he believed were at play.

“Personal feelings. Bad decision-making. Decision-making is a part of training.”

Did he think he would have acted similarly and shot at Carey?

“Definitely not. Definitely not. Definitely not. If I were in that position, I would’ve gotten behind cover, and I would have gotten out of the way because I don’t know what’s in the car. Because, first of all, I have to think of my own safety.”

Raheem also saw a lost opportunity to resolve the situation peacefully when officers failed to prevent Carey from leaving Garfield Circle.

“From what I have seen in that situation, it was easy to box that car in. It was so easy to box the car in. I would’ve thought about doing that. Shooting at somebody moving? No. Definitely not.”


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/secret-service-officer-debunks-feds-alibi-for-shooting-murdered-mom/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/secret-service-officer-debunks-feds-alibi-for-shooting-murdered-mom/

Terror expert: Ohio jihadist ‘should have raised red flags’

Ohio State University jihadist Abdul Razak Ali Artan (Photo: Twitter)

Ohio State University jihadist Abdul Razak Ali Artan (Photo: Twitter)

The apparent terrorist attack on pedestrians at Ohio State University Monday is triggering a wide range of political and cultural reaction, but a leading terrorism expert says the most important responses need to be much tougher screening for refugees and helping people spot radical threats before they strike.

On Monday morning, Somali refugee Abdul Azak Ali Artan allegedly drove a car into a crowd of people before getting out and trying to stab as many people as possible. Artan was quickly shot and killed by campus police officer Alan Horuljko.

In the aftermath, the Obama administration has been careful not to describe the attack as radical Islamic terrorism, despite ISIS claiming credit for the attack and officials suggesting Artan’s social media postings indicate he was inspired by ISIS. At least one of the victims says he is withholding judgment on Artan’s motives.

President-elect Donald Trump was much less diplomatic, saying Artan never should have been in the country in the first place.

Terrorism expert Harvey Kushner told WND and Radio America Artan should have raised red flags as he tried to enter the U.S.

“This individual should have raised some red flags, given when he came here – at the time when he came here and the time when ISIS was beginning to be in full bloom and was recruiting heavily on the Internet,” he said. “And the area of the world which he came from should have raised some questions of more extreme vetting.”

Get “See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad,” by former DHS officer Philip Haney and WND Editor Art Moore, at the WND Superstore!

Kushner, who is also head of the Terrorism and Homeland Security Institute at Long Island University, said Artan’s actions were a textbook ISIS attack, given the terrorists’ public push for stabbing attacks. He said America must do a better job of screening who comes into the country.

“Our authorities need to be able to get data on individuals who want to come in here,” Kushner said. “There has to be a very deep interviewing process and there has to be some kind of follow-up while they’re here. I’m not saying to pause completely from all areas of the world, but some areas are certainly more problematic.

“People from certain regions of the world that we know are problematic, which we know bring political baggage with them, could cause a problem in the future. This attack represents such an incident,” he said.

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Harvey Kushner: 

http://ift.tt/1UyqoPZ

if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)};
jwplayer(‘jwplayer_NyAvOFUz_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/2gzSEkd”}
);

He said trying to limit refugees from terror-prone nations is made far more difficult now that so many are dispersed throughout Europe and could attempt to come to the U.S. from nations that don’t raise red flags.

“What’s happened throughout Europe and the European Union and movement between countries there?” Kushner asked. “We really need to step back and take a look at the process that we have currently in terms of gathering data about individuals and making sure these individuals don’t pose a serious threat.”

While students who claim to know Artan say they never suspected he was radicalized, Kushner said it is far more likely that this rage was building for some time rather than Artan suddenly snapping.

“I don’t think this necessarily happens overnight, that there’s some sort of epiphany that the person should go out and do this,” he said. “I think this was building up. Most likely, it was disguised in his behavior prior to this. I don’t think there was a straw that broke the camel’s back. There was a buildup here, and I think we need to be more astute about recognizing these signs.”

DHS agent Philip Haney’s blockbuster revelations of the federal government’s appeasement of supremacist Islam are told in his book, “See Something Say Nothing.”

Kushner admitted spotting a threat is not easy.

“It’s not recognizable to the general public or the people close by, because they’re not trained as psychologists or psychiatrists or people involved in looking at looking at individuals from certain regions of the world,” Kushner explained.

He said one of the possible triggers for radicalization is the intense clash of cultures for some people who come to the U.S.

“I’ll get in trouble for saying this, but I will say it: You’re bringing people from certain regions of the world who have cultures and backgrounds that are somewhat different than what you have here in the states,” Kushner said. “This, unfortunately, lays the groundwork for something like this to spring up.”


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/terror-expert-ohio-jihadist-should-have-raised-red-flags/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/terror-expert-ohio-jihadist-should-have-raised-red-flags/

Communists burn U.S. flag in NYC to protest Trump

http://ift.tt/1UyqoPZ

if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)};
jwplayer(‘jwplayer_eyAotbPW_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/2fSVa6I”}
);

In response to Donald Trump’s tweet calling for the criminalization of flag burning, members of the Revolutionary Communist Party burned the American flag outside the Trump International Hotel in New York City on Tuesday.

flag-burning

Revolutionary Communist Party protesters outside the Trump International Hotel in New York City Nov. 29, 2016.

Wearing their trademark “Revolution – Nothing Less!” T-shirts, the seven communists repeatedly compared Trump to Adolf Hitler. However, the group also condemned the United States as a whole.

“The U.S. American flag deserves to be burned!” screamed one protester into a megaphone as the small group poured flammable liquid on several small flags.

The protester, who appeared to be pro-abortion and RCP activist Sunsara Taylor, claimed America is inherently oppressive and its flag is a symbol of shame.

“It is a symbol of slavery, of genocide, of oppression, of despots in Honduras and Guatemala!” she shouted. “It is a symbol of the desecration of Standing Rock! We burn this American flag on behalf of the 7 billion people of this planet! We refuse to accept a fascist America!”

The group then launched into its trademark chant: “One, two, three, four, slavery, genocide and war! Five, six, seven, eight, America was never great!”

Go behind the scenes of the radical left. See who is funding the groups dedicated to destroying our way of life. You won’t look at politics the same again after you read “Subversion, Inc.” by investigative reporter Matthew Vadum. Available now at the WND Superstore.

The group also burned the American flag during protests outside the Republican National Convention in July. That protest featured Gregory Lee “Joey” Johnson, a longtime far-left activist who also burned the flag outside the RNC in 1984. The act of flag desecration led to the Supreme Court case Texas v. Johnson, which ruled the First Amendment protects burning the American flag as an act of political protest.

if(typeof(jQuery)==”function”){(function($){$.fn.fitVids=function(){}})(jQuery)};
jwplayer(‘jwplayer_ce3wfuqK_pszPfxYQ_div’).setup(
{“playlist”:”http://ift.tt/2fSPOIX”}
);

The Revolutionary Communist Party is distinct from the Communist Party USA. The CPUSA endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Unlike Trump, who was pressured by the corporate media to disavow support from “white supremacists,” Clinton never faced similar pressure to disavow her communist backers.

However, even the Revolutionary Communist Party, which calls President-elect Trump an “outright fascist” and demands people “resist,” is also striking a curiously defensive tone when it comes to Hillary Clinton. In a recent statement about its supposed refusal “to accept a fascist America,” the RCP said, “As for the rule of law, Trump went so far as to openly threaten his opponent, Hillary Clinton, not only with jail, but even assassination.”

The Revolutionary Communist Party is a staple of Black Lives Matter protests and is one of several far-left groups looking to exploit racial tensions to further the cause of a communist revolution. The RCP frequently organizes mass demonstrations that play host to other groups and individuals, including current CNN pundit Van Jones on one occasion.

The group is also noted for the cult of personality it has built around its leader, Bob Avakian. The protesters who burned the flag were wearing shifts that read “BA Speaks” above the call for revolution. Party propaganda often urges recipients to buy Avakian’s books and listen to his speeches. Avakian is also noted for his debates with prominent left-wing figures such as Cornel West.

Matthew Vadum, author of “Subversion, Inc.” and a senior editor at the Capital Research Center, is an expert in far-left movements who has studied the RCP for years. Vadum expressed frustration at how Democrats and figures connected to supposedly mainstream politicians are never pressured because of their ties to openly communist groups.

“When Democrats can be demonstrated to have ties to radical subversive groups like the RCP then, yes, decent Americans should demand they disavow them,” he told WND.

Vadum blasted the group as extreme and hateful but also effective at stirring up street protests.

“The Revolutionary Communist Party has never really caught on as an electoral force, but that hasn’t stopped it from generating violent social unrest,” he said. “It is a virulently anti-American cabal of cop-haters and capitalism-haters that grew out of the nihilism of the 1960s. It would be nice to be able to laugh at these people with their goofy Maoist ideas but they have, unfortunately, had some success at in-your-face radical activism in the streets, so they have to be taken seriously.”

Yet Vadum says the spectacular antics of the RCP are only the surface of the problem. He said the real key to understanding the left is understanding how they are supported.

“Far-left groups manage to stay alive because they are supported financially and otherwise by a hard-core group of supporters,” he explained. “Some, like ACORN and its active successor groups – New York Communities for Change, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Organize Now in Florida, for example – because they get grants from radical philanthropies.”

He noted that ACORN’s Missouri spinoff, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, or MORE, is funded by George Soros.

“The national media generally ignores these groups, but local media tend to take them more seriously,” Vadum said.

However, Vadum cautions that, as with the RCP, local media often treat even the most extreme groups as simply dissidents, rather than organized revolutionaries with a radical agenda.

“The problem is, local media outlets tend to report what these groups are doing through non-critical eyes,” Vadum said. “They simply accept at face value what the groups tell them.”

And while the RCP is posing as friends of freedom of speech, their website contains its true agenda. It features a “Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America,” which abolishes even the name of the United States.

Go behind the scenes of the radical left. See who is funding the groups dedicated to destroying our way of life. You won’t look at politics the same again after you read “Subversion, Inc.” from investigative reporter Matthew Vadum. Available now at the WND Superstore.


from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/communists-burn-u-s-flag-in-nyc-to-protest-trump/




from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/communists-burn-u-s-flag-in-nyc-to-protest-trump/