The Militant Libertarian

I'm pissed off and I'm a libertarian. What else you wanna know?

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Press Ignores Ron Paul For President

Now Yahoo! Censor Popular Support For Ron Paul
ABC forced to address Texas Congressman's campaign, but remain silent on why
they scrubbed him from online poll

by Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet

Yahoo! News have become the latest establishment media outlet to ignore and
censor Ron Paul's presidential campaign, despite the fact that he won
Thursday night's GOP debate hands down, according to an overwhelming
majority that voted for him in online polls.

Yahoo! News' 2008 Presidential election coverage page features a list of
candidates from both Democrat and Republican parties, but fails to list Ron
Paul, despite the fact that he easily trounced the likes of Sam Brownback,
Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter - who are featured, in every online poll
since Thursday's debate.

MySpace users are also claiming that bulletins expressing support for Ron
Paul are being blocked and that prominent supporters of Paul's campaign are
having their accounts suspended.

ABC News were swamped with furious e mails and calls over the weekend after
they deliberately scrubbed Ron Paul from their online poll, ensuring no one
could vote for him. After he was reinstated, the Congressman received
thousands of votes and won the poll at a canter.

In a simpering puff piece released last night, ABC News correspondent Rick
Klein claims that Paul's popularity is not reflected nationwide and is
merely the result of "viral marketing" on behalf of the Congressman's online
supporters.

Apologists for the establishment press have tried to argue that popular
support for Ron Paul is skewed by activist voting, but the fact remains that
Paul had topped the MSNBC online vote before it had even been widely
publicized, as Keith Olbermann stated during live coverage of the debate.

If we accept this to be the case are we to then assume that Giuliani, Romney
and the other gaggle of shill candidates don't have any online support? If
so, who is going to vote for them? Do Giuliani and McCain supporters not
have access to the Internet?

Klein also erroneously claims that Paul's online votes in the MSNBC poll
were artificially inflated because users were voting multiple times. This
isn't possible, since the website only affords one vote to one IP address -
there is no option to vote again if you have already voted. Klein obviously
didn't even bother to check whether his statement was correct before
including it in the article.

The fact that ABC deliberately tried to censor Paul by not including him in
the original poll is not addressed in the article.

What we are witnessing is a deliberate effort to poo-poo Ron Paul's chances
to ensure that he has no chance - this is a chicken and egg scenario. If Ron
Paul was afforded as much coverage as Giuliani and Romney he would have a
real shot of becoming President - but the military-industrial complex that
owns the media are loathe to allow that because Paul is a true anti-war
Jeffersonian paleoconservative and he represents the people.

We couldn't possibly have a President that represented the people now could
we! Only a compromised slimeball shill pre-approved and selected by the
anointed ones and their mouthpiece hacks in the corporate media.

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Fight REAL ID

CASPIAN Joins with Other Leading Organizations to Fight REAL ID

CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering)
has joined a coalition of over 50 leading organizations to oppose REAL
ID, a U.S. government program that would turn state driver's licenses
into national identification cards. The coalition is encouraging
citizens to demonstrate overwhelming opposition to proposed rules for
this program so the government will rethink its dangerously flawed plan.

Congress approved the REAL ID Act in 2005, giving the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security the power to set federal driver's license standards.
The Act also paves the way for a vast shared national database that
could include sensitive personal documents like birth certificates,
medical records, and a multitude of other details about licensees.

"REAL ID conjures up images of jack-booted authorities demanding 'Your
papers, please,'" said Dr. Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of
CASPIAN. "Americans instinctively understand the importance of limiting
federal authority over their lives and are resisting this plan in record
numbers."

In addition to privacy and civil liberties issues raised by the Act,
groups are also denouncing the plan's inherent insecurity. Unifying vast
amounts of personal data in a single interlinked database with multiple
points of access will increase the risk of counterfeiting and identity
theft.

Albrecht points out that the plan also raises serious privacy issues. "A
database filled with sensitive personal information on virtually every
adult in the U.S. will be a tempting target for private industry and
marketers -- if the identity thieves don't get to it first," she said.

The numerous problems associated with REAL ID have united a broad
spectrum of trans-partisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil
liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations. Coalition members
include the American Library Association, the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, and the Consumer Federation of California.

The coalition is urging citizens to submit comments opposing the the
national identification scheme. The draft regulations to implement the
REAL ID Act are open for comment until 5:00 PM EST on May 8, 2007. The
comments can be submitted in one of three ways:

1. Online through the Federal Rulemaking Portal:
http://www.regulations.gov (search for "DHS-2006-0030-0001" and follow
the instructions for submitting comments);
2. Fax to 1-866-466-5370. Your fax must state that you are submitting
comments in response to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking DHS-2006-0030.
3. Postal Mail sent to Department of Homeland Security; Attn: NAC
1-12037; Washington, D.C. 20538. Your letter must state that you are
submitting comments in response to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
DHS-2006-0030.

For more information, visit http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/

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Monday, May 07, 2007

Surging Into Slaughter: The Bipartisan Death Grip on Iraq

General Sir Michael Rose:

When he was asked if he thought the Iraqi insurgents were right to try to
force the US-led coalition out, he replied: "Yes I do. As Lord Chatham [the
politician William Pitt, the Elder, who, in the second half of the 18th
century called for a cessation of hostilities in the colonies and favoured
American resistance to the British Stamp Act] said, 'if I was an American -
as I am an Englishman - as long as one Englishman remained on American
native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms'. The Iraqi
insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don't excuse them for some of the
terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the
Americans."


Surging Into Slaughter: The Bipartisan Death Grip on Iraq
Written by Chris Floyd

Intro: It is becoming increasingly clear that regardless of who wins the
election in 2008, the United States government is not going to withdraw from
Iraq. It is just not going to happen. This is the awful, gut-wrenching,
frightening truth we must face. The only way that American forces will ever
leave Iraq is the same way they left Vietnam: at gunpoint, forced into a
precipitous and catastrophic retreat. And how many thousands upon thousands
of needless deaths we will see before that terrible denouement?

While Congressional leaders and George W. Bush start "negotiations" on ways
to prolong the war crime in Iraq for another year or two (at least), on the
ground in Baghdad, the situation is worsening by the day, as Patrick
Cockburn reports in The Independent:

"Be careful," warned a senior Iraqi government official living in the Green
Zone in Baghdad, "be very careful and above all do not trust the police or
the army." He added that the level of insecurity in the Iraqi capital is as
bad now as it was before the US drive to make the city safe came into
operation in February.

The so-called "surge", the dispatch of 20,000 extra American troops to Iraq
with the prime mission of getting control of Baghdad, is visibly failing.
There are army and police checkpoints everywhere but Iraqis are terrified
because they do not know if the men in uniform they see there are, in
reality, death squad members.

Omar, the 15-year-old brother-in-law of a friend, was driving with two other
boys through al-Mansur in west Baghdad a fortnight ago. Their car was
stopped at a police checkpoint. Most of the police in Baghdad are Shia. They
took him away saying they suspected that his ID card was a fake. The real
reason was probably that only Sunnis use the name Omar. Three days later he
was found dead...

The problem about the US security plan is that it does not provide security.
It had some impact to begin with and the number of bodies found in the
street went down. This was mainly because the Shia Mehdi Army was stood down
by its leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. But the Sunni insurgent groups increased the
number of sectarian suicide bombings against Shia markets. The US was unable
to stop this and now the sectarian body count is on the rise again. Some 30
bodies, each shot in the head, were found on Wednesday alone.

The main new American tactic is proving counter-productive. This is the
sealing-off of entire neighbourhoods, either by concrete walls or barriers
of rubbish, so there is only a single entrance and exit. Speaking of Sunni
districts such as al-Adhamiyah, a government official said: "We are creating
mini-Islamic republics."

Speaking of concrete walls, remember the wall that was being constructed
around the Adhamiya neighborhood? Remember how Imperial Viceroy -- sorry,
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said he would "obviously..respect the wishes of
the [Iraqi] government and the prime minister" after the Iraqi government
and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vociferously protested against the
American construction of the ghetto in Adhamiya? Well, guess what? Crocker
lied. As the Telegraph reports:

American forces have completed construction of a concrete wall around the
Baghdad district of Adhamiya despite protests from the Iraqi prime minister
and local residents who claim that they are now at the mercy of militants.
The wall was intended to help control the activities of militants in the
predominantly Sunni Muslim district. But it remains a bastion of extremist
al-Qa'eda linked groups. Parts of the district are so thick with armed
militants that they are no-go zones to coalition forces.

Capt Mohammad Jasim, an Iraqi soldier manning a checkpoint on the Adhamiya
bridge, said: "The Americans did not listen to us. We think this wall has
made the area inside the wall more dangerous for people."

Um Doraid, a middle-aged housewife, said: "We here inside the wall are still
as vulnerable as ever."

And so the transformation of Baghdad -- one of the great cities of the world
for more than a thousand years -- into a squalid open-air prison continues
apace. This, we are told, is "liberation." And the American Establishment,
despite a good deal of thus far non-signifying sound and fury from the
Democrats, seem content to let this murderous horror run on. They tinker on
the margins -- should we demand that a certain portion of troops begin to be
withdrawn at a certain, ever-receding date? -- when it is plain that the
only thing the United States can do at this point to mitigate the suffering
of the Iraqis is leave -- and pay reparations for the criminal ruin and
death we have caused.

The American elites seem paralyzed by this notion, frozen in place as the
bloody quagmire rises around them. But one pillar of the British elite --
the knighted general Michael Rose -- is speaking plainly. In addition to the
book excerpt we quoted earlier, he has also been talking to the press,
uttering truths that no "serious" figure in American politics and media
would dare utter. From the Guardian:

General Sir Michael Rose told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "It is the
soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have
been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the
sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they
will come home and their lives will be preserved."

Asked if that meant admitting defeat, the general replied: "Of course we
have to admit defeat. The British admitted defeat in North America and the
catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened.The catastrophes
that were predicted after Vietnam never happened. The same thing will occur
after we leave Iraq."

Bill Blum -- who is decidedly not a pillar of any Establishment -- has more
on this theme in his latest Anti-Empire report:

"If the United States leaves Iraq things will really get bad." This appears
to be the last remaining, barely-breathing argument of that vanishing
species who still support the god-awful war. The argument implies a
deeply-felt concern about the welfare and safety of the Iraqi people. What
else could it mean? That the US military can't leave because it's needed to
protect the oil bonanza awaiting American oil companies as soon as the Iraqi
parliament approves the new written-in-Washington oil law? No, the Bush
administration loves the people of Iraq. How much more destruction, killing
and torturing do you need to be convinced of that? We can't leave because of
the violence. We can't leave until we have assured that peace returns to our
dear comrades in Iraq.

To better understand this argument, it helps to keep in mind the following
about the daily horror that is life in Iraq: It did not exist before the US
occupation. The insurgency violence began as, and remains, a reaction to the
occupation; like almost all insurgencies in occupied countries -- from the
American Revolution to the Vietcong -- it's a fight directed toward getting
foreign forces to leave.

By way, General Rose agrees with Blum on this point, as the Guardian notes:

When he was asked if he thought the Iraqi insurgents were right to try to
force the US-led coalition out, he replied: "Yes I do. As Lord Chatham [the
politician William Pitt, the Elder, who, in the second half of the 18th
century called for a cessation of hostilities in the colonies and favoured
American resistance to the British Stamp Act] said, 'if I was an American -
as I am an Englishman - as long as one Englishman remained on American
native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms'. The Iraqi
insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don't excuse them for some of the
terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the
Americans."

Back to Blum:

Before the occupation, many Sunnis and Shiites married each other; since the
occupation they have been caught up in a spiral of hating and killing each
other. And for these acts there of course has to be retaliation.

The occupation's abolishment of most jobs in the military and in Saddam
Hussein's government, and the chaos that is Iraqi society under the
occupation, have left many destitute; kidnapings for ransom and other acts
of criminal violence have become popular ways to make a living, or at least
survive.

US-trained, financed, and armed Iraqi forces have killed large numbers of
people designated as "terrorists" by someone official, or perhaps someone
unofficial, or by someone unknown, or by chance. The US military itself has
been a main perpetrator of violence, killing individually and en masse,
killing any number, any day, for any reason, anyone, any place, often in
mindless retaliation against anyone nearby for an insurgent attack...

And here is James Baker, establishment eminence, co-chair of the Iraq Study
Group, on CNN with Anderson Cooper:
Cooper: And is it possible that getting the U.S. troops out will actually
lessen that violence, that it will at least take away the motivation of
nationalist insurgents?
Baker: Many people have argued that to us. Many people in Iraq made that
case.
Cooper: Do you buy it?
Baker: Yes, I think there is some validity to it, absolutely. Then we are no
longer seen to be the occupiers.

In spite of all of the above we are told that the presence of the United
States military has been and will continue to be a buffer against violence.
Iraqis themselves do not believe this. A poll published in September found
that Iraqis believe, by a margin of 78 to 21 percent, that the US military
presence is "provoking more conflict that it is preventing"....

If the United States leaves -- meaning all its troops and bases -- it will
remove the very foundation, origin, and inspiration of most of the hate and
violence. Iraqis will have a chance to reclaim their land and their life.
They have a right to be given that opportunity. Let America's deadly "love"
embrace of the Iraqi people come to an end. Let the healing begin.

But as wise man Blum doubtless knows, the healing will not begin. Not even
if the Republicans are ousted from office. Witness the "bold" new plan by
leading Democratic contender Hillary Clinton: her proposal to "withdraw
authorization" for the war in Iraq -- the same authorization she "boldly"
supported back in 2002. Clinton told reporters that her bill "would mean
that troops would be out as of October [2007]," the NYT reports. "'They have
no authority to continue,' she said. 'That is the point.'"

Ah, but it was not really the point, as her aides hastened to assure the
press:

Later, however, her aides said Mrs. Clinton was not seeking a total
withdrawal of troops from Iraq, or a quick pullout that could put troops at
risk. They said she had called for a phased pullout that would leave a
reduced American force to pursue terrorist cells in Iraq, support the Kurds
and conduct other missions - a position she continued to support, her aides
said.

In other words, Clinton proposes to enshrine a permanent military presence
in Iraq, reduced in size by some unspecified measure from the current
levels. This is, of course, precisely the goal that the Bush Administration
has sought all along: a permanent military presence in Iraq. And all the
Democrat plans on withdrawing a portion of American troops hinge on Iraqi
compliance with "benchmarks" that also dovetail exactly with the Bush war
aims: the creation of American-trained, American-armed army and security
forces (a bonanza for U.S. arms peddlers), a government that will do what
the United States wants, and, of course, the approval of that
written-in-Washington "Oil Law," as Blum notes.

In what way is any of this significantly different from Bush has been
pursuing ruthlessly over the past four years?

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Addendum to Diversity Post...

HOSTILE’ GEORGE WASHINGTON
The New York Post

Walter Kehowski, a math professor at Glendale Community College in
Arizona’s Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), wishes
he’d never e-mailed his fellow employees Thanksgiving greetings last
November.

While reading a Web log, Kehowski found George Washington’s
“Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789″ and decided to send it along to
the Maricopa community the day before Thanksgiving, 2006. Using an
e-mail address commonly used to send out announcements, Kehowski
e-mailed the text of the proclamation - and a link to the Web page on
which he’d found it . . . on Pat Buchanan’s site.

Within weeks, five employees filed harassment charges against Kehowski,
claiming his message was “hostile” and “derogatory” because the link
he’d included also led to Buchanan’s comments about immigration.

A holiday greeting containing a link to a blog, which readers can either
visit or simply ignore, doesn’t fit any definition of harassment. Yet,
instead of dismissing the bogus allegations, the MCCCD administration
ruled that Kehowski had violated the district’s Equal Employment
Opportunity policy and technology policies that ban e-mails that are
unsolicited or not work-related.

Yet in a single month (March 2007) individuals used the same listserv to
send e-mails ads on how to purchase goats for Ugandan orphans and
reminders on the health benefits of bananas - hardly work-related info.
MCCCD Chancellor Rufus Glasper put Kehowski on paid administrative leave
and asked the district’s Governing Board that he be dismissed. Kehowski
has since appealed the decision, with a hearing set for June 5.

Until then, a professor teeters on the edge of being fired, all because
he sent out a Thanksgiving greeting written by the first U.S. president.

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Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Dark Side of Diversity

by Patrick Buchanan

Since the massacre of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, the
mainstream media have obsessed over the fact the crazed gunman was able to
buy a Glock in the state of Virginia.

Little attention has been paid to the Richmond legislators who voted to make
"Hokie Nation," a Middle American campus of 26,000 kids, a gun-free zone
where only the madman had a semi-automatic.

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an
American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who
secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would be heading home from
Blacksburg for summer vacation.

What was Cho doing here? How did he get in?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of
1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in
history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six
million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully
assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.Cho was one of
them.

In stories about him, we learn he had no friends, rarely spoke and was a
loner, isolated from classmates and roommates. Cho was the alien in Hokie
Nation. And to vent his rage at those with whom he could not communicate, he
decided to kill in cold blood dozens of us.

What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to
America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to
these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to
disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s.

To intellectuals, what makes America a nation is ideas - ideas in the
Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address and Dr.
King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

But documents no matter how eloquent and words no matter how lovely do not a
nation make. Before 1970, we were a people, a community, a country. Students
would have said aloud of Cho: "Who is this guy? What's the matter with him?"

Teachers would have taken action to get him help - or get him out.

Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions
of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old
ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth
or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?

Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community
in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial,
multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation. And in numbers higher
than our native born, some are going berserk here.

The 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the killers of 9-11 were all
immigrants or illegals. Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican who massacred six and
wounded 19 in an anti-white shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad, was
an illegal. John Lee Malvo, the Beltway Sniper, was flotsam from the
Caribbean.

Angel Resendez, the border-jumping rapist who killed at least nine women,
was an illegal alien. Julio Gonzalez, who burned down the Happy Land social
club in New York, killing 87, arrived in the Mariel boatlift.

Ali Hassan Abu Kama, who wounded seven, killing one, in a rampage on the
observation deck of the Empire State Building, was a Palestinian. As was
Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy.

The rifleman who murdered two CIA employees at the McLean, Va., headquarters
was a Pakistani. When Chai Vang, a Hmong, was told by a party of Wisconsin
hunters to vacate their deer stand, he shot six to death. Peter Odighizuwa,
the gunman who killed the dean, a teacher and a student at the Appalachian
School of Law, was a Nigerian.

Hesham Hadayet, who shot up the El Al counter at LAX, killing two and
wounding four, was an Egyptian immigrant. Gamil al-Batouti, the copilot who
yelled, "I put my faith in Allah's hands," as he crashed his plane into the
Atlantic after departing JFK Airport, killing 217, was an Egyptian.

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the UNC graduate who ran his SUV over nine people
on Chapel Hill campus and said he was "thankful for the opportunity to
spread the will of Allah," was an Iranian.

Juan Corona, who murdered 25 people in California to be ranked with the
likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, was a Mexican.

Where does one find such facts? On VDARE.com, a website that covers the dark
side of diversity covered up by a politically correct media, which seem to
believe it is socially unhealthy for us Americans to see any correlation at
all between mass migrations and mass murder.

"In our diversity is our strength!" So we are endlessly lectured.

But are we really a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring
country than we were before, against our will, we became what Theodore
Roosevelt called "a polyglot boarding house for the world"?

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