90 Miles From Tyranny : 2015-06-07

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Loneliness Is More Deadly Than Obesity..

Special thanks: Martha W

Ten Principles For Escaping The Matrix And Standing Up to Tyranny

“Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” - George Orwell

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It’s a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted by all of the politically expedient things that are being said - about militarized police, surveillance, and government corruption - while the government continues to frogmarch us down the road toward outright tyranny.

Unarmed citizens are still getting shot by militarized police trained to view them as the enemy and treated as if we have no rights. Despite President Obama’s warning that the nation needs to do some “soul searching” about issues such as race, poverty and the strained relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve, police killings and racial tensions are at an all-time high. Just recently, in Texas, a white police officer was suspended after video footage showed him “manhandling, arresting and drawing his gun on a group of black children outside a pool party.”

Americans’ private communications and data are still being sucked up by government spy agencies. The USA Freedom Act was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better without bringing about any real change. As Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity researcher and surveillance critic, points out, “The theater we’ve just witnessed allows decision makers to boast to their constituents about reforming mass surveillance while spies understand that what’s actually transpired is hardly major change.”

Taxpayer dollars are still being squandered on roads to nowhere, endless wars that do not make us safer, and bloated government agencies that should have been shut down long ago. A good example is the Transportation Security Administration, which, despite its $7 billion annual budget, has shown itself to be bumbling and ineffective.

And military drills are still being carried out on American soil under the pretext of training soldiers for urban warfare overseas. Southeastern Michigan, the site of one of the many military training drills taking place across the country this summer, has had Black Hawk helicopters buzzing its skies and soldiers dressed for combat doing night combat drills in abandoned buildings around the state.

In other words, freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine. That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance. As we have seen with the erection of the electronic concentration camp, there is...

Girls With Guns

The Center for Immigration Studies recently released a report stating that arrests of non-citizens who have been convicted of a crime decreased by 32 percent since this time last year.

However, the Center for Immigration Studies says this does not indicate there are fewer criminally convicted illegal immigrants in the United States, but rather, the government is arresting fewer of such people overall.

In fact, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) identified 168,000 at-large convicted criminal aliens, but only arrested 11,983 according to April 2015 statistics compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Additionally, the report shows that approximately 904,000 illegal immigrants have not left the country, despite orders to be removed. Of these immigrants, 167,527 are convicted...

Alberto Carvahlo with Vice-President Joe Biden

North Miami High School Principal Fired For Supporting McKinney Police Officer – Same School District That Told Police To Hide Thug Behavior…

~ Irony So Thick It Is Almost Unbelievable ~

The same school district, Miami-Dade, and the same School Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, that forced Miami-Dade School Police to hide the criminal conduct of Trayvon Martin (and all young black male students), has now fired a School Principal for stating support for a McKinney Police Officer on his Facebook page.

According to the Miami Herald:

[…] The Miami-Dade County school district announced Wednesday that Alberto Iber had been removed as principal after going online to defend a white Texas police officer who waved a gun at black teens while responding to a call about an unruly pool party.

[…] “He did nothing wrong,” Iber wrote in a comment that showed his Facebook picture, name, school and title. “He was afraid for his life. I commend him for his actions.”

Iber’s stance quickly prompted a passionate online response from Ambrose Sims, a black, retired Miami Beach Police veteran who joined the force at a time of racial strife in Miami in the 1980s. He also came out as gay and led a campaign for equal rights. Sims wrote, in part: “Such a comment reveals to me that you’re a serious part of the problem.”

[…] In a brief statement, the district said employees are required to conduct themselves, both personally and professionally, in a manner that represents the school district’s core values. The district said a replacement would be named shortly and that Iber would be reassigned to administrative duties.

“Judgment is the currency of honesty,” said Superintendent of Schools Alberto Carvalho. “Insensitivity — intentional or perceived — is both unacceptable and inconsistent with our policies, but more importantly with our expectation of common sense behavior that elevates the dignity and humanity of all, beginning with children.” (link)

Obviously School Superintendent Carvalho believes that supporting law enforcement does not “represent the school district’s core values“, and is “inconsistent with our policies“.

Of course he does. Considering THIS VERY SAME School Superintendent was previously exposed for giving specific instructions to Miami-Dade School Police (M-DSPD) to ignore criminal conduct of young black males – and instead created a secret diversionary program to hide the criminal actions of school students.

“Judgement is the currency of honesty”?

Nine Miami-Dade School Police officers swore affidavits in 2012 testifying to facts and circumstances where they were instructed to hide...

Read More HERE

Morning Mistress

Girls With Guns

When you think of religious discrimination, you think of Saudi Arabia, a country that bans churches dating back to Mohammed’s ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians under the mandate that two religions may not exist.

Except these days, Muslims are the perpetual victims. So Saudi Arabia hosted a conference on religious discrimination. And by religious discrimination, Muslims just mean Islamophobia expressed in bans on terrorism and forcing women to veil or have acid thrown in their faces.

You know, discrimination.

Saudi Arabia hosted a two-day conference in Jeddah last week, which was attended by the president of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where members convened to discuss measures to thwart religiously-motivated violence and discrimination.

And the perfect place to discuss religiously motivated violence is in the home of a state sponsor of Islamic terror.

Country representatives convened at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation headquarters in Jeddah, discussing how the “Istanbul Process” would be most effective in achieving a result that would “encourage religious leaders and civil society members in addressing the root causes of discrimination based on religion.”

The Koran?

It is the Koran and the Hadiths that...

There was a lot to celebrate in the Magic Kingdom this year. The Disney Corporation had its most profitable year ever, with profits of $7.5 billion—up 22 percent from the previous year. Disney’s stock price is up approximately 150 percent over the past three years. These kinds of results have paid off handsomely for its CEO Bob Iger, who took home $46 million in compensation last year.

Disney prides itself on its recipe for “delighting customers,” a recipe it says includes putting employees first. They tout this as a key to their success in creating “a culture where going the extra mile for customers comes naturally” for employees. One method of creating this culture is referring to its employees as “cast members.” In fact, Disney is so proud of its organizational culture that it’s even created an institute to share its magic with other businesses (for a consulting fee, of course).

So, you would expect a firm that puts its employees first to share the vast prosperity that’s been created with the very employees who went above and beyond to help generate those record profits.

Well, how did Mr. Iger repay his workers—sorry, I mean cast members—for creating all this profit? Not with bonuses and a big raises. Instead, as the New York Times just detailed in a major report, he forced hundreds of them to train their own replacements—temporary foreign workers here on H-1B guestworker visas—before he laid them off.

What motivates a company to replace its American workers with H-1B guestworkers? One word: Profit. H-1B guestworkers are cheaper than American workers and don’t have much bargaining power, and any company would be foolish not to take advantage of this highly lucrative business model that has been inadvertently created by Congress and multiple presidential administrations. Of course, this business model is paid for by destroying the livelihoods and dignity of tens of thousands of American workers. The costs are also borne by American taxpayers, through foregone tax revenue and the additional social services that need to be provided for those newly unemployed American workers.

When it comes to using the H-1B to cut costs, Disney is far from...

Girls With Guns

Joseph Rivers put his life savings on the line. With help from his mother, Rivers had saved $16,000 to pursue a career as a music video producer.

In April, Rivers, 22, boarded a train bound for Los Angeles, never expecting his dream to be literally taken away from him.

At a train stop in Albuquerque, N.M., an officer from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized the $16,000 from Rivers.

After Rivers answered multiple questions about his travel plans, the officer then asked to search Rivers’ bag.

“Upon him asking me to search my luggage, I told him, ‘Yes,’” Rivers told The Daily Signal. “He found the bank envelope with my money.”

The officer then...

How Law Enforcement Can Take Your Stuff, Explained in 2 Minutes

Through a procedure called civil asset forfeiture, local, state and federal law enforcement officials have the power to seize property and money if it’s suspected of being related to a crime. In many cases, though, the property owner is never charged with a crime, and a trend has emerged of local and state law enforcement using civil asset forfeiture to raise additional money.

The issue is gaining traction at the state level, as state legislatures have begun to tackle reforms. Additionally, following policy changes at the Department of Justice and the introduction of legislation called the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR), Congress is turning to address civil asset forfeiture.

Here’s what you need to know about civil asset forfeiture and what experts are saying Congress needs to do to protect the rights of innocent property owners.

Girls With Guns

With the papal encyclical on climate change scheduled for a June 18 release, the liberal media can be expected to portray the Vatican document as a major step forward for the United Nations agenda of controlling and taxing the use of natural resources by governments and people. But a group of retired NASA scientists is taking on the pope directly, armed with the expertise that has come through decades of planning U.S. space missions and dealing with the most complex and difficult issues of climate science.

Their verdict: the pope is risking his moral status and his credibility.

In fact, this group is directly warning Pope Francis that if he embraces the climate agenda of the United Nations, he will be violating both scientific principles and the religious values he embodies that are supposed to be reflected in direct aid for the poor people of the earth.

But the pope is apparently counting on his status as “the most popular person on the Earth,” in the words of Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant organization, to make the “moral” case that we live on “an abundant yet finite planet,” and that global limits to industrial growth have to be imposed on a worldwide basis.

The battle, now taking shape, will likely help determine whether U.S. sovereignty will be sacrificed in order to...

Every day there seems to be another article focused on how many individuals might lose their subsidies if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case.

Yet, an even bigger group of individuals harmed by Obamacare has an equally good claim for relief that hasn’t gotten as much attention—the people who, thanks to Obamacare, must pay more for health insurance but who never got subsidies.
The Obamacare subsidies were intended, in part, to hide the law’s unpopular effects. At their root, Obamacare’s costly regulations, dictating what insurers can sell and what individuals and employer can buy, have resulted in premium costs going up, not down. In the 34 states potentially affected by the Court’s ruling, those regulations have driven up costs not only for...

Read More HERE

Morning Mistress

Girls With Guns

A couple of steaks shoplifted at a Gardendale Walmart three months ago led to the biggest food stamp fraud investigation in Jefferson County's history, and launched 11 simultaneous raids this morning at convenience stores countywide.

Led by the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office, teams of law enforcement officers met at 5 a.m. for a briefing and then fanned out across the county beginning at 6:50 a.m. The officers and agents were armed with 242 arrest warrants and plans to arrest 17 suspects.

All 17 suspects were in custody by mid-morning, and investigators already today have filed for forfeiture and condemnation of those 11 stores, which totals more than $1 million in assets.

"This is huge for us,'' said Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls.

The massive probe, dubbed Operation T-bone, targeted those they say have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits via wire transfer to Yemen.

District Attorney Brandon Falls announces that 257 arrest warrants have been issued for 20 people accused of fraud and theft of property in Birmingham, Ala., Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
The District Attorney's Office, the FBI, the ...

Dennis Hastert has not been indicted on a charge of sexual abuse, nor has he been indicted on a charge of paying money he was not legally allowed to pay. The indictment of Mr. Hastert, a former House speaker, released last week, lays out two counts: taking money out of the bank the wrong way, and then lying to the F.B.I. about what he did with the money.

Does that make sense? Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic, for example, is worried that the indictment constitutes government overreach, punishing Mr. Hastert for concealing payments whose disclosure he may have thought would be damaging to his reputation, but which were not illegal.

Federal prosecutors allege Mr. Hastert was paying hush money in exchange for wrongdoing that happened long ago. But Mr. Hastert is charged with structuring: making repeated four-figure cash withdrawals from his bank in order to avoid the generation of cash transaction reports, which banks are required to send the government about every transaction over $10,000. These reports have been required since 1970, with the intention of helping the federal government identify organized criminals and tax evaders.

To be clear: It’s not illegal simply to take $8,000 out of the bank repeatedly.

“The criminal provisions there do have strong mens rea (criminal intent) requirements: The government has the burden to prove that...