Tuesday 28 May 2013

Spy on your neighbors they say



Source: London Telegraph

Dame Stella Rimington invoked the wartime spirit as she said the public had a duty to act as the “eyes and ears” of the security services in combating terrorists.

 
She made the plea as she warned that MI5 could not be expected to spot every danger and that further attacks were likely unless Britain wanted a “Stasi” state where everyone was monitored.

However, Dame Stella, who was Director General of MI5 from 1992 to 1996, said she supported the Conservatives’ plans to give the police and spy agencies the power to monitor every phone call, email and web visit.

She also warned against using drones to gather intelligence saying they should only be “weapons of war”.

Monday 27 May 2013

Same-sex marriage law protest in Paris (PHOTOS, VIDEO)





French police have used tear as violent clashes broke out in central Paris following another day of anti-LGBT protests attended by tens of thousands. A group of 200 young men and women bombarded riot police with bottles, stones, fireworks and flares.
They also attacked TV camera crews and press photographers working at the scene an hour after the demonstration officially ended.
About a dozen far-right activists climbed on to the roof of the Socialist party headquarters with a banner reading “Hollande resign!”
Clashes between riot police and hardline protesters erupted after the rally had officially ended and majority of protester gone home. The confrontation was less violent than earlier this week as only about 200 people engaged in the unrest.
The police said they arrested 96 hardline opponents to the gay marriage law following the end of the demonstration.  The detained protesters refused to disperse and engaged in a fight with the security forces, or occupied private property.
Protesters gather and sit on the ground as riot police surround them on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Eric Feferberg)
Protesters gather and sit on the ground as riot police surround them on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Eric Feferberg)

Protesters stand in the street as they face riot police on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Eric Feferberg)
Protesters stand in the street as they face riot police on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Eric Feferberg)

Far-right protesters face riot policemen on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)
Far-right protesters face riot policemen on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)

Far-right protesters face riot policemen on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)
Far-right protesters face riot policemen on May 26, 2013 in Paris.(AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)

Policemen wearing civilian clothes arrest a far-right protester on May 26, 2013 in Paris on the sidelines of the demonstrations against a gay marriage law.(AFP Photo / Fred Dufour)
Policemen wearing civilian clothes arrest a far-right protester on May 26, 2013 in Paris on the sidelines of the demonstrations against a gay marriage law.(AFP Photo / Fred Dufour)

Nearly 5,000 police took up positions across Paris on Sunday as the city braced for possible violence at the major protest in the capital that drew from 200,000 people, according to police, to over a million people, according to  organizers.
Three rallies were headed by the anti-same-sex-marriage movement, while the fourth was led by the traditionalist Catholic lobby group, Civitas. By late afternoon, the protesters were beginning to fill the Invalides esplanade just across the Seine River from the Champs Elysees.
The area around Les Invalides monument was full of opponents of same-sex marriages waving pink and blue flags, while far-right activists hung a banner on the ruling Socialist Party’s headquarters urging President Francois Hollande to quit.

The protesters have been heading from the three points around the city, and the march has reportedly been largely peaceful. Prior to Sunday’s protest, 50 demonstrators were arrested Saturday evening after chaining themselves to metal barriers in the middle of the Champs Elysées and firing smoke canisters. Police also seized a van carrying masks, banners and smoke bombs.

Among those among those who have taken part in the demonstration were members of a radical new movement called French Spring, which French Interior Ministry may ban over its “call for violence.”

A general view taken on May 26, 2013 partially shows thousands of anti-gay marriage demonstrators gathering at the Invalides square in Paris during a mass protest against a gay marriage law (AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)
A general view taken on May 26, 2013 partially shows thousands of anti-gay marriage demonstrators gathering at the Invalides square in Paris during a mass protest against a gay marriage law (AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)

This comes after the group released a statement threatening to target "the government and all its appendices, the collaborating political parties and lobbies where the ideological programmers are developed and the organs which spread it."
This is the first such rally in Paris since France officially became the 14th country in the world and the ninth in EU to legalize same-sex marriage after President Francois Hollande signed a law on May 18. The rally was planned long before the government voted on the law earlier than expected.
It also comes just three days before the first same-sex marriage is held in Montpellier in southern France on May 29, Reuters reported.
France has seen months of street protests, bitter political debates, clashes between police and demonstrators, and even a rise in homophobic attacks, prompting President Hollande's government to call for an end to the violence and issue threats of severe punishment for such crimes.
The situation escalated Tuesday when far-right writer Dominique Venner, who is linked to a far-right French nationalist party, shot and killed himself inside Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral. He had called for“spectacular” action to protect France’s identity, and was denouncing same-sex marriage law.
Supporters of the anti-gay marriage movement "La Manif Pour Tous" (Demonstration for all) gather during a mass protest at the Invalides square in Paris on May 26, 2013 against a gay marriage law (AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)
Supporters of the anti-gay marriage movement "La Manif Pour Tous" (Demonstration for all) gather during a mass protest at the Invalides square in Paris on May 26, 2013 against a gay marriage law (AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)




A general view taken on May 26, 2013 shows thousands of anti-gay marriage demonstrators gathering at the Invalides square in Paris during a mass protest against a gay marriage law (AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)
A general view taken on May 26, 2013 shows thousands of anti-gay marriage demonstrators gathering at the Invalides square in Paris during a mass protest against a gay marriage law (AFP Photo / Thomas Samson)

UK moves to gag ‘poisonous’ radical #preachers, clamp down on #Internet extremism



The UK Prime Minister has announced an anti-terror task force to clamp down on the "poisonous narratives" of radical preachers who target recruits in schools, jails and mosques. However, some fear the government’s efforts could actually worsen extremism.
According to the Daily Mail, the unit was launched by Prime Minister David Cameron in the wake of the brutal murder of Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old drummer in the British Army. Rigby was beheaded in southeast London’s Woolwich neighborhood by two men who said the murder was motivated by the UK’s involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The Tackling Extremism and Radicalization Task Force (TERFOR) will be composed of key Cabinet ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Home Secretary Theresa May and Chancellor George Osborne, as well as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and Director General of the Security Service Andrew Parker.

“We are looking at the range of powers and current methods of dealing with extremism at its root, as opposed to just tackling criminal violent extremism. And we will look at ways of disrupting individuals who may be influential in fostering extremism. We cannot allow a situation to continue where extremist clerics go around this country inciting young people to commit terrorist acts. We will do everything we can to stop it,” an unidentified source told the Daily Mail.

TERFOR will study a number of young people who have become radicalized, like Rigby’s murderers, the newspaper reported. The source stressed that “there is no question of restricting freedom of speech – this is about preventing people spreading the message of extremism and radicalization in a totally irresponsible and reckless way.”

Last week, three men were taken into custody for anti-Muslim speech on Twitter and Facebook, and one was charged with "malicious communications" on Facebook. Two others were arrested under the Public Order Act “on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred.”

Demonstrators protest against the killing of British soldier Lee Rigby, outside the Woolwich barracks in southeast London May 26, 2013 (Reuters / Olivia Harris)
Demonstrators protest against the killing of British soldier Lee Rigby, outside the Woolwich barracks in southeast London May 26, 2013 (Reuters / Olivia Harris)

Terror videos a hit on the Internet


While Cameron asks UK Muslims to be more proactive in condemning Islamist terrorism, there are hundreds of videos promoting terror and telling British Muslims to wage jihad available on the Internet, including Al-Qaeda training videos and sermons.

Google chief Eric Schmidt, whose company owns YouTube, believes some of the videos could help intelligence services and police track down potential terrorists. “We have taken the decision that information, if it’s legal, even if it’s despicable, will be indexed,” Schmidt said during the Hay literary festival.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May said on Sunday that it is “essential” to grant intelligence agencies the capacity to access communications data, despite overwhelming opposition to the Draft Communications Data Bill revealed last year.

The bill – widely known as the ‘snooper’s charter’ – would have given agencies, including police and intelligence services, access to information and data collection by Internet service providers, including web browsing histories, social media messages and online gaming, storing them all for 12 months.

Shortly after the killing last week, UK authorities slammed the media for giving airtime to radical cleric Anjem Choudary, who refused to condemn the attack. "A mistake of the BBC to invite Anjem Choudary onto the telly tonight," shadow Defense Secretary Jim Murphy wrote on Twitter.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has decried Rigby’s murder in a statement on its website, saying that “after Woolwich, we understand the Prime Minister needs an effective strategy in the face of such a horrific instance of extremism.”

“The killers of Drummer Lee Rigby attempted to sow division amongst Britons through the propaganda of their deed. Yet in large numbers, British Muslims stood up and declared loudly and clearly that this murder was not in our name,” the MCB said.

However, the group went on to stress that it still hoped “wisdom prevails” in how the government handles the issue:  "We must be vigilant and ensure we do not inadvertently give into the demands of all extremists: Making our society less free, divided and suspicious of each other. Lessons from the past indicate that policies and measures taken in haste can exacerbate extremism."

Sunday 26 May 2013

Welcome back to the dumb season. It's debt-ceiling time again.




We've been at this two years now. It was back in 2011 when the Republican Party, seized by anti-government furor, first locked on the lifting of the federal debt ceiling – an utterly routine governmental mechanism that allows the Treasury to borrow to pay for spending already approved by the entire Congress, Republicans included – as a place to hold a showdown over . . . government spending. That first battle resulted in a "Mutually Assured Destruction"-type stalemate, in which both parties agreed that if they couldn't reach a deal by New Year's Day 2013, a series of brutal, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would take effect. At the time, it seemed unthinkable Congress would let that happen. By the time we passed that date, the thing that seemed unthinkable was the idea that Congress would ever make a deal. The cuts took effect in March and we were headed for a full-on fiscal crash on May 19th, when fate intervened to stop this stupidest-in-history blue-red catfight in its tracks, if only temporarily.
In early May, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that the federal government suddenly had enough cash on hand to stay afloat until "at least Labor Day." We were saved by, of all things, a record quarterly profit from the notorious state-seized mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae, which is paying the state $59 billion, enough to keep us in the black through the summer.
But this reprieve is only for four months, and if anything, the latest stay of execution only underscores the utter randomness and imbecility of our political situation. If the one thing preventing Washington from seizing up in fatal gridlock for even a brief spell is a surprise burst of good fortune from a bailed-out financial zombie like Fannie Mae, we're screwed. The only thing that will rescue us from having to go through this over and over again from now until the end of time is for our increasingly polarized Congress to come to some broad agreement on tax hikes and spending cuts – the kind of routine deal that now seems politically impossible.
That leaves us in a state of permanent paralysis that is at once more dangerous and even more stupid than the time the business of our entire nation ground to a halt over a blow job. Americans at least know what a blow job is, and they understood how the white stuff got on the dress.
But the national debt? Nobody understands it, and anyone who tells you he or she does is almost certainly lying. In fact the supreme irony of this endless controversy over spending and austerity is that it has pushed the Federal Reserve as well as major European and Asian central banks, especially recently, to bypass the ignorant arguing public and take dramatic interventionist action on their own, tinkering with the world money supply in ways that are highly experimental and have no parallel in modern times. By all rights, this should be stimulating a profound debate around the industrialized world about who controls the process of money creation and about the role of government/central banks in the economy, but here in the U.S., that is exactly the debate we're mostly not having.
The debate we are having is childish, irrelevant and self-destructive, as has been proved by all the recent developments on the debt front, including:
THE MORONIC NEW HOUSE BILL
H
ere's a quick and easy rule: any time any politician, pundit, TV talking head or self-proclaimed financial expert starts comparing the U.S. federal budget to anything other than the U.S. federal budget, that person is automatically full of shit and should be instantly voted off the conversational island, if not outright beheaded.

This whole debt debate really began devolving in earnest into total mindlessness once people like Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn started likening the government spending deficits to family budgets, pushing to "make Congress live under the same rules as families across the country and treat the federal budget like the family budget. Families have to live in their means and so should Congress." Not paying our government obligations, Coburn said recently – remember, this is a U.S. senator talking – might be a "wonderful experiment."
Comments like these led to Tea Party protesters descending upon Washington screaming about how not raising the debt ceiling is like giving your kids the bad news that they can't afford to go to the movies – difficult but necessary, a kind of homespun tough love, except that a global superpower intentionally defaulting on its sovereign debt is actually way closer to an act of apocalyptic suicidal madness than it is to good parenting. ("It would be the financial-market equivalent of that Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell," said JPMorgan Chase chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli.)
Still, the mere fact that the Republicans made such hay with the household analogy forced politicians and economists on the other side of the aisle to respond with similar oversimplifications, in what amounted to a desperate attempt to plant their own flags in the growing mountain of popular anti-knowledge. Even Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has reached for household analogies in his efforts to explain what a default would mean. "This is sort of like a family saying, 'Well, we're spending too much – let's stop paying our credit card bill,'" Bernanke said.
The next agonizing step was the Republican constituency's slow realization that "not paying our bills" is bad. This should have actually been a good thing. But it only led to this month's latest harebrained idea: the so-called Full Faith and Credit Act, a Republican bill passed in the House that would direct the U.S. Treasury, in the event that we hit the debt ceiling, to pay interest to bondholders before making any other payments. In other words, we'd pay people who loaned us money by buying treasuries – China's, for instance – before we'd pay, say, veteran benefits or Medicare.


10 REASONS WHY #FLUSHOTS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN A #FLU!




The verdict is out on flu shots. Many medical experts now agree it is more important to protect yourself and your family from the flu vaccine than the flu itself. Let’s take a look at the reasons behind this verdict:
1.) There is a total lack of real evidence that young children even benefit from flu shots.  A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any moreeffective than a placebo. Also the shots are only able to protect against certain strains of the virus, which means that if you come into contact with a different strain of virus you will still get the flu.
2.) Medical journals have published thousands of articles revealing that injecting vaccines can actually lead to serious health problems including harmful immunological responses and a host of other infections. This further increases the body’s susceptibility to the diseases that the vaccine was supposed to protect against.
3.) Ever noticed how vaccinated children within days or few weeks develop runny noses, pneumonia, ear infections and bronchiolitis? The reason is the flu virus introduced in their bodies which creates these symptoms. It also indicates immuno-suppression i.e. lowering of the immunity.The flu vaccines actually do not immunize but sensitize the body against the virus.
4.) Its a known fact that Flu vaccines contain strains of the flu virus along with other ingredients. Now think about the impact such a vaccine can have over someone with a suppressed immune system? If you have a disease that is already lowering your body’s ability to fight a virus, taking the flu shot will put your body in danger of getting the full effects of the flu and make you more susceptible to pneumonia and other contagious diseases.
5.) The Flu vaccines contain mercury, a heavy metal known to be hazardous for human health. The amount of mercury contained in a multi-dose flu shot is much higher than the maximum allowable daily exposure limit. Mercury toxicity can cause memory loss,depression, ADD, oral health problems, digestive imbalances, respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases and many more such serious health ailments.
And what about the elderly? Can the flu vaccine help them?
6.) There is mounting evidence that flu shots can cause Alzheimer’s disease.  One report shows that people who received the flu vaccine each year for 3 to 5 years had a 10-fold greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than people who did not have any flu shots.  Also with age the immune system weakens, thus lowering your ability to fight off infections. Introducing the flu virus in the bodies of elderly could have dangerous consequences.
Can we trust the authorities who are promoting the wide-spread use of flu vaccines?
7.) The Center for Disease Control appoints a 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).  This committee is responsible for deciding who should be vaccinated each year.  Almost all the ACIP have a financial interest in immunizations.It’s all about the money and may have very little to do with your health and well being.  The very people pushing these vaccines stand to make billions of dollars.  This itself creates a doubt on how effective these flu vaccines really are?
8.) Research shows that over-use of the flu-vaccine and drugs like Tamiflu and Relenzacan actually alter flu viruses and cause them to mutate into a more deadly strain.  Couple this with drug resistant strains and you have virtually no benefits with much risk.
9.) There is enough evidence that shows that the ingredients present in the flu vaccinations can actually cause serious neurological disorders. In the 1976 swine flu outbreak, many who got the flu shots developed permanent nerve damage. Flu vaccines can contain many harmful materials including detergent, mercury, formaldehyde, and strains of live flu virus. Is this what you want to put in YOUR body?
10.) Trying to guess what strain to vaccinate against each season has proved to be no more effective than a guessing game.  This has been very true in recent years with the H1N1 strain. Moreover getting multi-shots will only prove more dangerous as different strains of viruses and harmful ingredients are introduced into your body.
Flu shots are indeed more dangerous than you could think, and it is best to rely on natural ways to protect against the flu rather than getting yourself vaccinated.
Isn’t it interesting that the main stream public health officials never promote the various proven ways to avoid the flu other than through vaccination?  How about spending some of the billions of advertising dollars teaching us natural ways to boost our immune systems and avoid the flu without harmful and sometimes deadly vaccinations.
References:

#Monsanto is the metaphor for #GeneticManipulation, #GMO food chain control


What's wrong with GM food? 
The fundamental problem with GM food that it’s genetically and biologically unstable. There’s no genetic modification known to science and this I have from some of top scientists in the world on this question that’s stable – it’s always mutating. And No.2, all the GM products that are in the human and animal food chain over the last 20 years are modified primarily to do one thing – 80 per cent of all the GM is modified to accept chemicals, the pesticides. 
Monsanto Roundup being the most prominent of them, which are highly, highly toxic and they’re modified to be resistant to that deadly chemical so that it kills everything inside, except the Monsanto corn or the Monsanto soy beans or what will you.
 All those chemicals are equally as dangerous to the human food chain as the #GMO seeds themselves.

Challenging #Monsanto: Over two million march the streets of 436 cities, 52 countries





Saturday 25 May 2013

#NewYork police defends itself on #Muslim surveillance


The New York Police Department is defending itself in a federal civil rights lawsuit over its surveillance of Muslims.
It says in a new court filing that nothing it has done violated surveillance guidelines imposed by a federal judge in a previous case.
In the legal papers, a detective told the judge that he never asked an informant to get Muslims to make incriminating comments. But text messages obtained by The Associated Press show that the detective never told the informant to stop, either.

Friday 24 May 2013

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Ev
erything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix


C
onspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschild s and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2UDL1ONkS 

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Two Oklahoma schools destroyed by the devastating May 20 tornado


Two elementary schools were destroyed in the EF-5 twister that killed at least 24 people on Mondayand injured hundreds of others. Seven children were found dead in the debris of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla.
Authorities believe that everyone who was at Briarwood Elementary School survived the deadly tornado, which ravaged the building with 200 mph winds.
“You could just feel the pressure just building like you were in an airplane, just the pressurization of the cabin and your ears popping and the debris starts flying and the roof falling in,” Briarwood’s first-grade teacher Sheri Bittle told ABC. “And everything in your classroom falling in on you.”
Both of the destroyed schools lacked tornado shelters, which would have potentially prevented many of the casualties and fatalities that occurred on May 20. More than 100 Oklahoma schools currently have metal safe rooms, which can be built above ground or underground and sustain winds up to 250 mph.
These rooms may be the difference between life and death in states where the tornado risk is high, but lack of funding to build them has prevented elementary schools like Plaza Towers and Briarwood from constructing shelters of their own.
Retrofitting a school with a safe room shelter costs an estimated $600,000 to $1 million per building, Bloomberg News reports. Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency, told the news agency that his department can’t afford to provide every school with a shelter, but that he is looking into whether the two schools had ever even applied for federal funding to build safe rooms.
A U.S. flag from the Plaza Towers elementary school is erected on poles in front of the school in Moore, Oklahoma May 22, 2013.(Reuters / Rick Wilking)
A U.S. flag from the Plaza Towers elementary school is erected on poles in front of the school in Moore, Oklahoma May 22, 2013.(Reuters / Rick Wilking)

“You have a limited amount of funds,” he said. “You set priorities. It’s not a matter of they were being left out.”
But Oklahoma residents refer to Moore as “Tornado Alley”, since the area has been struck by devastating twisters more than any other region in the US. In May 1999, a tornado took a similar path, ravaging Moore, killing 41 people, and costing the US $1 billion in damages.
Some residents believe that safe rooms should be a priority in Oklahoma – particularly in Moore, since it has a history of falling victim to tornadoes.
“If they can afford a $5 million football stadium, they can afford a safe room,” 67-year-old John Lemmon, a Moore resident who lives near Plaza Towers Elementary School, told Bloomberg. “They should have done it right after they had the last big one.”
While both elementary schools were reduced to rubble, students at Plaza Towers Elementary School were worse off. This traditional school building was constructed with a long line of classrooms that were all under a single roof. When the tornado caused the building to crumble, students were trapped in the wreckage of the structure, and at least seven of them died. 
Briarwood Elementary School was divided into four sections, with several classrooms in each pod. Between these pods were openings that led students outside, which allowed students to escape the collapsing walls and ceilings.
No children died at Briarwood as they escaped the falling debris with backpacks over their heads. But both schools could have ensured the safety of their students if they had metal safe rooms to retreat into during natural disasters.
Now that children have died in the May 20 twister that ravaged Moore, Okla., the Federal Emergency Management Agency may reconsider providing the funding for safe rooms. The city of Moore has long been trying to acquire funds to buy them, and the city in February wrote on its website that FEMA requirements have held them back.
“If you don’t have disasters, you don’t have additional money for mitigation for safe rooms, but without disasters there’s not a set funding source just for safe rooms,” FEMA director Craig Fugate told ABC, indicating that changes may only occur when it’s too late to reverse the damage.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Shocking True Story of Catherine Engelbrecht vs. The Obama Government



(Photo)
Most Americans are now familiar with the news that the IRS has been targeting conservative groups and individuals based solely on their political beliefs. In Cuba or North Korea the government would imprison you. 

In the United States, we now have a progressive liberal establishment using the power of government agencies to harass, intimidate, and silence those who speak out against the policies of President Obama.

In a recent national television interview, Catherine Engelbrecht, of Houston, Texas, shared her individual story. She came forward because, as she said, "citizens should not fear their government."

Catherine is just an average citizen who was inspired to get involved in the political process. She founded "King Street Patriots" and "True the Vote", nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations.

She officially applied with the IRS for a tax-exempt, nonprofit status in 2010, and like thousands of other groups, that status would allow her to apply for grants and work with other foundations.

It's normal procedure to provide the IRS with background information on the group's founder, its membership, its purpose, and its goals, but Catherine said the IRS's continued requests for personal information finally crossed the line.

"They (IRS) wanted to see every Face Book posting we've ever posted, every Tweet we've ever twitted, everywhere I've ever spoken since the inception of my organization and what I said, and where I intend to speak through 2013."

In addition to the hundreds of forms and questionnaires that Catherine filled out, she and her husband were also harassed by other government entities.

For twenty years they ran a small manufacturing business and also had a gun dealer license. They had never been audited. It was only after applying for the tax exempt status, Catherine and her husband were suddenly hit by an IRS audit.

Agents from the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms showed up unexpectedly twice at their business and not only conducted audits, but had the company safe opened and proceeded to inspect the serial numbers of the family's personal guns.

OSHA, Occupational Safety Hazards Administration, also did a surprise audit of the family business.
The TCEQ, Texas Commission on Environment Quality, showed up at their door one day stating they had received a complaint concerning their business, and proceeded to do an audit.
Catherine has been questioned by the FBI six times, even inquiring as to who was coming to her programs.
In all, Catherine said she had a total of 17 interactions with the IRS and all of the above federal agencies, costing her and her husband thousands of dollars in legal fees and accounting services.

As she said in her interview, "The best way I can protect my family is to come forward and bring my story to the American people. I submit there are thousands more with stories just like mine to tell and I hope they will tell them. We're at an important time in the life of our country and we need to get the truth."

"If in fact the federal government is making a coordinated effort to single out individual citizens, then that is a problem that transcends politics and speaks right to the heart of what we are as a representative Republic."

To this date, Catherine's group, "True to Vote" is still awaiting approval from the federal government, even after more than two years.

In a May 15th article in the USA Today, it was noted that since March of 2010, not a single Tea Party application has been approved in the past twenty-seven months.

"Organizing for Action", a group promoting the Obama agenda and run by former campaign operatives, was approved by the IRS in just 30 days.

American citizens should not have a target on their back based on their political views.

Congressional oversight hearings and investigations are underway but it's critical that partisan government intrusion be stopped and those found guilty be punished.

The First Amendment must be protected and defended.

Sunday 19 May 2013

Mom, the #TSA did bad things to me



While the IRS is getting a lot of bad publicity these days in light of their overt abuses of power and tyrannical behavior, another government agency just as loathed among many Americans is the blue-shirted TSA.
Officially known as the Transportation Safety Administration, this intrusive, abusive and infuriating agency, which, to date, has not caught one terrorist, is better at angering Americans more than protecting them.
According to a 2012 report in Human Events, the TSA costs the American economy billions in lost business, both here and abroad. Foreigners don’t like coming here because they find American airports unfriendly and, The Wall Street Journal, in 2011, called the last decade “America’s Lost Decade of Tourism,” no thanks to the bullying thugs at the TSA. Think about this: the US Travel Association reports that two-out-of-five travelers are boycotting airports in favor of trains, cars and other forms of transportation. These people refuse to endure the indignity of being groped, manhandled, felt-up, robbed or even raped, as we have seen in recent years.
And if you think the TSA is going to remain solely at America’s airports, think again. They are covertly setting their sights on our highways and railways as well. And Congress? They look the other way as they award TSA more and more money, currently costing taxpayers $1.2 billion annually.
We say all this to remind (and who really needs reminding?) that the TSA is not cleaning up their act, despite all the happy talk and promises to “do better.” They don’t do better. The same class of sociopathic imbeciles who can barely fit into their polyester uniforms are still on the same power trips that they were on when the devilish TSA was first created.
Bringing things closer to home, Red Dirt Report (which has had a number of bizarre encounters with these “agents” of Uncle Sam) recently spoke to a whistleblower who used to work at Will Rogers World Airport here in Oklahoma City.
This former airport insider, who we will identify as “Stacy,” told Red Dirt Report that for the time they worked at the airport, they “had a real hate-hate relationship with TSA.”
  • I would watch them search people. The way they treated people. I found it very offensive,” Stacy said.
Stacy relayed a shocking incident that occurred approximately during the Thanksgiving 2012 holiday travel period.
“A woman in her late 30’s or early 40’s approached me and asked if I could help her,” Stacy recalls. “She told me that ‘those people in the blue uniforms took my daughter in that back room and she’s been gone for a long time.’”
Stacy confirmed to the worried mother that that “room” was where “special handling” and “interrogations” and “strip searches” take place.
Stacy said the mother was getting frantic. They were going to miss their flight. She said they were traveling out of state from southeastern Oklahoma and that her daughter was in a beauty pageant.
“I’d say she was about 14, maybe even 16,” Stacy said. “She eventually came out of the interrogation room and was shaking and appeared as if she had been crying. She was very attractive and looked young. She came up to her mother and said, ‘Mom, they did bad things to me.’ The mother, shocked, held her hand over her mouth and said, ‘Oh, my God!’”
Asked what the mother and daughter did next, Stacy, aware that a crime had taken place in the name of “security,” said that she was not supposed to really even be in that area of the airport at that time and so simply told them to file a complaint with TSA. There was nothing more Stacy could do.
The mother, Stacy noted, was clearly in a state of shock over what had taken place with her daughter.
Does Stacy know if the mother and daughter ever filed a report or followed up?
“She’s like a lot of people who say it won’t do any good. That’s why this stuff still goes on. The mother was afraid of the TSA and in shock. Some people are more aggressive and file reports and get in their face. Some are passive. Some think that if I mess with these people, I’ll end up in jail.”
Asked by Red Dirt Report if Stacy knew who the alleged child molesters were, Stacy indicated that they could be positively identified. Those names were shared with Red Dirt Report and have been noted.
Stacy’s insider view gave the former airport employee a chance to see what really goes on. The “playing of favorites.” The infighting. The aggressive and rude behavior towards travelers. The fact that the local police hate the TSA.
“I filed plenty of complaints against the TSA for things they did,” Stacy said. “They would yell at children. They would tell parents in front of their children that they were bad parents. They would harass people who were afraid of the (security) dogs. They would yell and belittle them.”
Children are routinely traumatized after an encounter with a TSA agent. Stacy said that children will often say they don’t want to go on that trip to Disney World because they are now scared of the “bad man” in blue.
Stacy recounted the case of a notorious “behavior-detection officer” whom we will call “Jerry.”
“Oh boy. Behavioral detection officers are the worst,” said Stacy. “They take a week-long training course and practice session and then they think that qualifies them to detect anomalies in people’s behavior.”
Curiously, this “behavior” includes: people who blend in (they are flagged); people who cheerfully say they support the TSA’s efforts (they are flagged); and people who say they hate the TSA (they are definitely flagged).
Repeatedly calling Jerry a “really bad person” and “very unfriendly,” Stacy said that Jerry’s treatment of airport patrons was not that much different from the way a prison guard treats prisoners.
“(Jerry) would belittle people and say, ‘Didn’t you learn nothin’ in grade school?’ He’d put fingers in people’s face …” noted Stacy. And if you were on Jerry’s bad list he’d follow you around with a pen and notepad “taking notes.”
“It was just psychological warfare,” Stacy said.
All the while, Jerry would be walking around and chewing and spitting tobacco in trash cans around the airport. Stacy called Jerry out on this and he would just get angry.
One woman, who was from the Middle East, was going through security and indicated she was scared of the dogs, an animal viewed differently in that part of the world. Jerry marched up to the poor woman, stuck his finger in her face and said she would allow the dog to sniff her or she could just march right back out of the airport.
Another TSA agent, whom we will call Gloria, used to harass Stacy and other folks working for the same agency Stacy worked for. When Stacy would ask Gloria why she could get away with what she was doing (or not doing, as the case may be), Gloria would cryptically respond, “That’s classified.”
Stacy also said that the invasive, even sexual assaults that men, women and children often endure are simply seen as a necessary way to keep America safe.
Talking to a creepy TSA agent whom we will call Charlie, he told Stacy that “It’s okay to search children sexually because they’re potential terrorists” and that he got into this racket to “fight the terrorists.”
Stacy was appalled by these admissions, particularly when most children are told not to allow adults to touch them inappropriately.
Stacy added that Charlie fancied himself as “a ladies man” and would regularly flirt with airline ticket agents while on the clock.
Alarmingly, Stacy was told in confidence by a police officer that the TSA is currently trying to deputize Oklahoma City Police Department officers to be under their control, so that when TSA -which does not have arrest powers-  tells them to arrest someone they will have a “legal obligation to arrest someone.”*
At one point, Stacy was informed by a TSA representative that the lower-level TSA employees hated upper-echelon TSA folks like Charlie, Jerry and Gloria.
This same deranged TSA agent also told Stacy that he felt women who had had an abortion deserved to be executed.
There were a lot of accusations of racism, Stacy noted. African-American TSA agents complained about the way they were treated but would generally back down out of fear of losing their job.
While they might be aggressive in a “pack,” Stacy said they are really cowards when addressed one-on-one.
“It’s as if they never grew up emotionally,” Stacy said. “They are nothing more than thugs and bullies in the way they deal with people.”
Stacy’s observations have been shared with others and those people also can’t believe the outrageous stories they are told involving the TSA.
“I can’t begin to express the level of immaturity I witnessed while working there,” Stacy said. “It was like back in high school, that level of immaturity. They are given too much power and they destroy people’s lives.”
UPDATE*: (5:15 p.m. May 16, 2013) We heard back from Sgt. Jennifer Wardlow at the Oklahoma City Police Department this afternoon and she said that after researching it, there are no plans for the OCPD to coordinate with TSA in such a manner.
And as for a representative for the TSA, we contacted regional media relations coordinator Luis Casanova, but had not heard back from him by the time this story was published. If we do hear back, we will be certain to post his response.