From Foreign Policy in Focus:

“The civil war in Yemen, compounded by the Saudi invasion, has so far displaced 2.3 million people. It has left 5,700 dead, among them 2,500 civilians. Two thirds of the deaths have resulted from airstrikes. And 82% of the population requires assistance and medical supplies. The United States fears that 14.4 million Yemenis are at risk of “severe hunger.”

To add to the misery of the Yemeni people, the United States just approved the sale of weapons to the Saudis worth $1.3 billion. Among the weaponry are air-to-ground ordinances that included 22,000 bombs. From 2010 to 2014, the United States sold $90 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Initially, among the U.S. weapons sold to the Saudis were the internationally banned cluster bombs.”

How many US civilians have been condemned to death by terrorists who will undoubtedly emerge from Yemen’s rubble?  Blowback is a lesson never learned.

From Antiwar.com:

“Here’s the final proof that our foreign policy of global meddling has gone off the deep end: the two Syrian factions we are subsidizing are now battling one another. The latest iteration of the “moderate” Islamist jihadists we’ve been backing recently engaged in a pitched battle with the Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” (YPG). Both are recipients of US tax dollars and the Kurds have the luxury of US “advisors” embedded in their ranks.

In effect, one branch of our gargantuan national security bureaucracy is conducting a proxy war against another branch – and if that doesn’t underscore how irrational and out of control our foreign policy mandarins are, then I don’t know what will.

The civil war in Syria, which was started by Islamists, and actively encouraged by longstanding US efforts to overthrow strongman Bashar al-Assad, has no “good guys.” The Islamists — gathered together in a bewildering and ever-shifting array of alliances and “united fronts” — are head-chopping totalitarians who want to create an Islamic state: their only difference with the ISIS-inspired “Islamic State” is over tactics, and which gang of thugs gets to be kings-of-the-mountain. They are supposedly fighting ISIS, but most of their efforts seem to be directed at toppling Assad and destroying the last secular outposts in Syria.”

The chaos has been encouraged by the US because Third World chaos is highly profitable for the Warfare State.

From Forbes: “…one of the lesser-known provisions of the ACA calls for the federal government to pay physicians and hospitals bonuses if they deny health care to seniors and the disabled – and even encourages them to form local monopolies to make it harder for them to find alternative sources of care. And most patients won’t even know that’s the reason they are being denied care.”

Developed countries will be expected to contribute $450 billion per year by 2020.  Zimbabwe is already very interested.

If Apple gives in, the consequences will be severe for liberty and privacy.

Coercion is the essence of the State.

That’s why he’ll lose.

Watching the minions of a government not used to being told “no” is pretty great.  The kicking, screaming, threatening, fearmongering, it’s wonderful, because only by saying “no” and sticking by it will traces of liberty ever return to this country.  Tim Cook, who, yes, is most certainly a hero, is bearing the brunt of this despotic paroxysm, but should remain firm in his decision to deny the preposterous “request” to build a backdoor to all iPhones to fight “terrorism”.

More on this episode in American tyranny at The Federalist.

…than Obama.  That’s 399,000 Federal civilian workers on the taxpayer dime, a dime which equals about $120,000 per year, per worker.  Or $48 billion per year.

Apple unlocked iPhones for federal spymasters 70 times before.