Sold like hotcakes. Plenty of Hillary yarmulkes left over apparently. *Posted as pure entertainment only. The thought of a future leader of this country pandering to a coven of agitators for a foreign power is repulsive in the extreme.
Open Democracy. “Prohibition addicts” as in the state and federal agencies that have grown rich fighting the drug war. The DEA alone, which has an annual budget of $2 billion and a workforce of over 11,000, would immediately be stripped of its reason for existing if the targeted drugs were to be legalized. So this is an agency that has a vested interest in the drug war continuing. Local cops, drunk off the money and power of civil asset forfeiture, would feel their power and discretion greatly diminished by an end to the drug war. No more war goodies handed out by the Pentagon for them. No more spy gadgets. Oh yes, and no more SWAT teams, which do nothing but fight the drug war and get people killed. Just imagine how many law enforcement jobs would vanish without the drug war excuse. The mind reels.
Reason. Sounds like he’s trying to catch the eye of the elusive-yet-ubiquitous Trump voter by being the first demagogue out of the gate in the wake of the Brussels attack. Theories of how to prevent terrorism are futile, however. There is no way to prevent terrorist/guerrilla attacks from the top-down. How do you stop a lone wolf terrorist before he strikes? He doesn’t use encryption, because he doesn’t talk to anyone. When a small group of men (and women!) sincerely plot to take the lives of sitting ducks, and are willing to sacrifice themselves in the process, they have the odds stacked in their favor. Short of transforming society into a massive prison, there’s no way to prevent all attacks. Soft targets are everywhere, ripe for the picking for someone bent on a massacre. All this War-on-Terror baloney is nothing more than security theater, it’s government heeding Rahm Immanuel’s dictum that one should never let a crisis go to waste.
Terrorism is scary, unpredictable, and the people want to be kept safe. So a vast Surveillance State is erected on top of this fear, and, while being extremely expensive and ineffective, somewhat alleviates the fear of the masses. So the Warfare State gets everything it wants: endless war overseas, massive Surveillance State at home.
Of course, ending overseas intervention would halt the creation of terrorists that become the excuse for the Surveillance State in the first place. But that would lead to a diminishment of government power. No, the Warfare State needs the terrorism to justify its existence. Brussels, Paris, etc., provide the fuel for the paranoia that will keep the War on Terror gravy train rolling for another decade.
How nice of him, to apologize, six months later, for an attack on a hospital that lasted hours despite calls to the military to stop, and ended up killing 42 people.
None. Not when the terrorism is directed at “soft targets”, meaning us non-members of the vaunted Political Class. No, they’re safe. We civilians going about our daily lives, we are the targets of their rage. Rage that has been inflamed by endless military interventionism by the West. Endless war has consequences, but terrorism is actually of only marginal concern to our rules, who will never be touched by a terrorist’s bomb.
See also: Brussels Terror Attacks Bring Guerrilla War to the Heart of Europe
“I, the State, am the People.”
From Thus Spake Zarathustra
In full:
“Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren; here there are states….A state is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: `I the state, am the people.’…Destroyers are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state….”
Lifted from Will Grigg’s blog, Pro Libertate
Spiegel International. Anti-flood-of-migrants party, ‘Alternative for Germany’, is surging in popularity among Germans sick unto death of Merkel’s Welfare State internationalism.
The Guardian. Relevant chunks: A cashless society “…hand yet more power to the financial sector in that banks and related fintech companies will oversee all transactions. The crash of 2008 showed that, when push comes to shove, banks have already been exempted from the very effective regulation that is bankruptcy – one by which the rest of us must all operate. Do we want this sector to have yet more power and influence?
In a world without cash, every payment you make will be traceable. Do you want governments (which are not always benevolent), banks or payment processors to have potential access to that information? The power this would hand them is enormous and the potential scope for Orwellian levels of surveillance is terrifying.
Cash, on the other hand, empowers its users. It enables them to buy and sell, and store their wealth, without being dependent on anyone else. They can stay outside the financial system, if so desired.”
Time. Too funny.
Developed by Batman vs. Superman director, Zack Snyder.