United Kingdom and Norway no skin off the back of China

The followwing commentary should give you some insight on the way China thinks about the rest of the world. 

"The UK and Norway are developed countries with relatively small populations. China is aware of their political advantages. However, governing a country of 1.3 billion people is beyond their imagination. It is naïve and arrogant to try and teach China what to do.  ...They must pay the due price for their arrogance."

As to whether or not the UK and Norway feel intimidated by China's rhetoric remains to be seen. ~ Norman E. Hooben

UK, Norway are paying price for arrogance

Source: Global Times

China has recently canceled several ministerial-level talks with the UK and denied a visa to former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. Chinese authorities did not give a specific explanation but it is thought that the decisions are retaliatory actions against UK Prime Minister David Cameron's meeting with the Dalai Lama last month and the Norway Nobel Committee awarding Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

The speculation is probably correct. In both cases China's core interests have been offended. Proper countermeasures are necessary for a big country. If China takes no action, it would be tantamount to tolerating a vicious provocation. This indifference would be despised at home and in the world.

The West's political pressure over China has followed certain routines. Hosting the Dalai Lama and honoring Chinese dissidents are the regular choices. As such incidents happen more frequently, their impact on Chinese society has been decreasing.

Granted, the provocations have prompted China to reflect, generating some positive results. But China has to resist the West's attempt to interfere in its domestic political affairs. It is a requirement of our political sovereignty, and the necessary feedback to show our determination to design the nation's future path.

Since its reform, China has accepted some political concepts of the West, but that is not the same as unconditionally following orders from the West. Studying the West has to take place under the condition of resisting its pressure, otherwise, it is to accept being conquered by the West.

The UK and Norway are developed countries with relatively small populations. China is aware of their political advantages. However, governing a country of 1.3 billion people is beyond their imagination. It is naïve and arrogant to try and teach China what to do.

They must pay the due price for their arrogance. This is also how China can build its authority in the international arena. China doesn't need to make a big fuss because of the Dalai or a dissident, but it has many options to make the UK and Norway regret their decision.

China-UK cooperation will have to be slowed down. Free trade agreement talks between China and Norway have also been upset. The ensuing loss is a small one for China.

It's not easy to have Chinese society's sympathy on China's sovereignty issues. The West has presented various honors to Chinese dissidents, and Chinese people won't be fooled into believing it is a simple coincidence.

Chinese 'fans' leaves no emissions at speeds up to 86.99196691322675 Miles per Hour

Source(s): Global Times  and
Homemade electric car manufactured by farmer in Beijing

Tang Zhenping, a farmer living in Beijing, cleans an electric car he developed and manufactured in Beijing, capital of China, May 20, 2012. The electric car is powered by a built-in battery or a wind turbine at speeds up to 140 kilometers per hour. Photo: Xinhua

Anthropogenic Global Warming Continues To Be Exactly What We Thought....just a lot of B-S

cross-post from Cap'n Bob and the Damsel

Asian Aerosols and US Climate Change

Posted by Cap'n Bob

I learned through World Climate Report that a group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, wrote a paper outlining “Potential Impacts of Asian carbon aerosols on future US warming.”

The paper postulates that Asian emissions have a greater effect on climate change in the US than US emissions do. It would seem that the EPA’s efforts to regulate carbon in the country would be rendered moot by the NCAR report.
Image: atmospheric circulation in the north Pacific Ocean
The climate along the Pacific coast of the US is affected by air and ocean current circulation way more than Asian carbon. That’s why temperatures along the coasts of western states remain relatively stable - cooler in summer and warmer in winter than most places in the contiguous US.
Now, after doing all the numbers in terms of atmospheric volume versus greenhouse gasses, the actual impact of Asian, as well as US emissions, do very little to affect the climate. Urban Heat Islands and solar activity have far more effect on the environment.
It seems to us that the efforts by the paper’s authors, even though it short-circuits the measures taken in the US by the EPA, is just another attempt at “proving” Anthropogenic Global Warming is reality. We’re still saying that AGW is bullsh*t.

Can you shoot a cop? Some places you can...

Source: Newsroom America
Indiana Law Allows Citizens to Shoot at Police

By Newsroom America Staff

(Newsroom America) -- Indiana has become the first state to legally permit residents to shoot at police if they feel their property is being illegally breached by an officer.
Proponents of the law, including its author, state Sen. Michael Young and the National Rifle Association, say it was necessary following a state Supreme Court ruling last year which said "there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers," Young told Bloomberg News.
The measure amends the 2006 so-called Castle Doctrine bill that allows deadly force to stop illegal entry into a home or car. The term "public servant" was added following the court's ruling.
Opponents of the measure, especially police organizations, say it is a recipe for disaster.
"If I pull over a car and I walk up to it and the guy shoots me, he's going to say, 'Well, he was trying to illegally enter my property,'" 17-year veteran police Sgt. Joseph Hubbard, of the Jeffersonville, Ind., police department, said. "Somebody is going get away with killing a cop because of this law."
© 2012 Newsroom America.

I didn't know you needed a law to defend yourself against the illegal actions of the police. I appreciate the police but there are a few who take their badge as some kind of super authoritative 'I-am-the-law-boss' and give a bad name to the rest.  Certain police must and should be restrained...they should have been weeded out during their police academy training but a few slip by... As for Sgt Hubbard...do your job right and you shouldn't have anything to worry about...the 2nd Amendment is for all citizens not just cops.  ~ Storm'n Norm'n

Beating the odds...

State Worker Rips Off Taxpayers Gets Light Sentence ...friends and family cohorts still free!

From the Daily Herald
Former state worker gets jail, probation for food stamp scam
By Josh Stockinger

A former caseworker for the Illinois Department of Human Services was sentenced to probation and jail Monday for stealing nearly $22,000 in food stamps, some of which she sold to friends and relatives at a discount.

← Ebony Martin, 34, of Maywood, pleaded guilty to felony theft in April. She was sentenced to three years of probation, a month in jail and full restitution by DuPage County Judge Robert Kleeman.

Prosecutors said Martin was working at the IDHS office in Villa Park when she set up a public-assistance plan for a Lisle man who turned out to be her boyfriend and his four fictitious children.

In less than a year, authorities said, the couple collected $21,866 in food benefits. Martin sold some of the proceeds to friends and family members at half price, Prosecutor Diane Michalak said in court.

“She was making a profit on top of defrauding the government,” Michalak said.

Illinois State Police Sgt. Daphne Bankston testified that the scheme was uncovered after the Illinois Inspector General’s Office received a tip last year. She said an investigation showed Martin inflated the benefits by using bogus social security numbers to make it look like her boyfriend had four children when he didn’t.

“She admitted she created the file and kept it at her desk because she knew it was fraudulent,” Bankston testified.

Martin offered a brief apology in court, saying she was “embarrassed by the decision I made.”

Kleeman said he was “puzzled” at why Martin would steal, given her education, employment and lack of a prior criminal history.

But it was aggravating, he said, that she held public office and essentially stole from taxpayers.

“It’s more than just a bad decision,” he said. “The public placed its trust in this defendant. She abused it. There’s no other way to put it. She knowingly and intentionally gave away public funds.”

Martin must report to jail June 18 and pay restitution within three years. With credit for time served, she will be jailed for 13 days, authorities said.

Police are still searching for her former boyfriend, 39-year-old Keith B. Jones, who was charged in March with felony theft and state benefits fraud, according to court records. He last lived on the 500 block of Maple Avenue in Lisle.

America: You just spent $38,000.00 to watch this video. (So come see if you got your money's worth...UN Me)

"...in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece." ~ from America and the United Nations by Mark Steyn

"...the UN is a shamefully squalid organization whose corruption is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you think—as the media and the left do in this country—that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it’s not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem’s been left to the United Nations. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits—in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece."  Read more here America and the United Nations by Mark Steyn

Your UN in Action

Obama told Mubarak "...it was time to go."

The following from Yahoo News

Political Punch

One of the biggest books to come out yet about the Obama administration has been "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." Beyond the myriad scoops, the book has prompted a debate in Washington about leaks, specifically, the one about President Obama approving and accelerating the use of cyber war against Iran to stop its nuclear program.
"It is so Washington that the argument is not about the American use of a new weapon, whose utility is as broad as the drone or the intercontinental missile," said David Sanger, author and the New York Times' chief White House correspondent. "Washington spent most of the last week debating the question of who leaked the fact America uses this weapon."
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told ABC's This Week that cyber attacks, cyber spying, are "acts of war," begging the question -- has the United States declared war on Iran with this cyber code - this cyber attack on their nuclear program?

"I don't know," said Sanger. "That was one of the reasons it was very important to get out and begin to discuss the fact that the United States uses cyber weapons as well, because we need a big debate within the U.S. on how you use this weapon."
Sanger's book also details how the Obama administration handled a bomb scare from a Taliban faction in Pakistan, and what they learned from the experience. Around the same time, the president fielded one last phone call from the former President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.
"President Mubarak says to president Obama, 'Give me 10 days. President Nasser, 40 years before, put down an uprising like this, I can too.' It was code word for give me a few days, I can kill everyone in the streets and drive them out of the streets and I'll be back in control then," said Sanger.
Check out this week's Political Punch to hear how Obama responded to Mubarak, and for more on the "remarkable effort" to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

______________________________

The following from Crown Publishing

Acclaimed New York Times journalist David Sanger writes news breaking account
of President Barack Obama’s national security decisions.

Exclusive new book reveals never-before-told details about a sophisticated
cyber-war program against Iran, a secret committee on Afghanistan called “Afghan Good Enough,” the chaos of the Arab spring, and how an effort to
re-establish American power in the Pacific set the stage for a new era of
tensions with the world’s great rising power, China

CONFRONT AND CONCEAL:

Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power

by David E. Sanger

An eye-opening, news-packed account of how Obama has dealt with foreign policy and national security challenges, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (Crown, June 5^th) by David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times and twice a member of Times teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, is the first thorough analysis of the Obama Doctrine in action. Relying on original and in-depth reporting in Washington and around the globe, Sanger deftly recounts how a President with little previous experience in national security embraced new thinking, new technologies and new covert programs to extend American power in an age of austerity. Sanger describes how Obama’s early idealism about fighting “a war of necessity” in Afghanistan quickly turned to fatigue and frustration, how the early hopes that the Arab Spring would bring about a democratic awakening slipped away, and how an effort to re-establish American power in the Pacific set the stage for a new era of tensions with the world’s great rising power, China. “The bin Laden raid was his best-known gamble…but it was likely not the biggest, or even the most important bet of his presidency,” writes Sanger. “Obama’s gamble that a rising generation of Chinese leaders doesn’t want to go head-to-head with the United States may represent his biggest roll of the dice.”
It is, in short, the story of a new president trying to manage a world on fire, in an era when many question America’s leadership and staying power. The book includes exclusive never-before-revealed details on:
Secret cyber-warfare in Iran: For four years, the United States has repeatedly struck Iran with some of the most sophisticated cyber weapons ever developed. The program, called “Olympic Games’’ is the most extensive, sustained use of cyber weapons in American history, and it opens a new chapter in how the United States conducts covert action. President Obama was updated every few weeks and authorized a series of new strikes.
“Stuxnet” was a mistake: A version of a worm developed for Olympic Games was slipped into the computer control system into the Natanz facility in Iran before it had been fully tested by the United States and Israel, which was a full partner in the development of the software. It hopped aboard the laptop of an unwitting Iranian engineer and when he left the plant and connected to the internet the program replicated itself around the world.
Loose Nuke in Pakistan: For four days or so in 2009, the Obama White House feared the Pakistani Taliban might have a nuclear weapon and dispatched a nuclear search team to the region. It turned out to be a false alarm, but dramatically affected how a new team viewed the dangers lurking in Pakistan.A tense secret meeting in Abu Dhabi: In the fall of 2011 national security adviser Tom Donilon met with General Ashfaq Kayani, the head of the Pakistani military, and told him that unless Pakistan dealt with the Haqqani network, which engineered attacks on the American embassy in Kabul and other acts of violence, that President Obama might be forced to violate Pakistani sovereignty yet again to deal with the group – just as he did when he decided to go after Osama bin Laden. General Kayani warned that if the US ever entered Pakistan again without permission, the consequences would be severe.
The last telephone conversation between Mubarak and Obama: Based on a transcript made by the White House of the last telephone conversation between President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and President Obama, the Egyptian leader expressed confidence that he could put down the uprising. Obama pushed back, against advice from his advisors, telling him it was time to go.
Detailed account of efforts to deal with China: The strategy President Obama attempted with China in his first year in office – treating the country as an economic equal and rising military power – backfired, as the Chinese determined America was weak, and still reeling from the financial crisis. When Beijing started pushing around American allies in the resource-rich South China Sea in 2010, Obama’s Asia team had to quickly re-vamp the accommodation approach. They used the momentum of anti-Beijing sentiment in the region to build a kind of electric fence around China with regional allies. Hillary Clinton described the Administration’s painstaking effort to send a clear message while avoiding “big-footing it” in China’s backyard.
In Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power Sanger describes a president at once cautious and lawyerly and, at times, willing to take some extraordinary risks. It takes readers into the situation room debate over how to undermine Iran’s nuclear program while simultaneously trying to prevent Israel from taking military action that could plunge the region into another war. And it explains what happens when Obama runs up against the limits of American power – limits placed by the rise of competitors, by a public exhausted by a decade of war, and by Obama’s own insistence that in many cases, when American interests are not directly imperiled, others must take the lead and bear the financial burden.
As the world seeks to understand the contours of the Obama Doctrine, especially as the 2012 presidential election battle begins, Confront and Conceal is a fascinating, unflinching account of these complex years, in which the president and his administration have found themselves struggling to stay ahead in a world where power is diffuse and America’s ability to exert control grows ever more elusive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: DAVID E. SANGER is the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times and bestselling author of The Inheritance. He has been a member of two teams that won the Pulitzer Prize and has received numerous awards for coverage of the presidency and national security policy. He also teaches national security policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Action At Our Southern Border...An unlucky day for the drug mules

New frontier for DPS is stopping smuggling

Jason Buc, Express-NewsCopyright 2012 Express-News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

By Jason Buch  ~ MySanAntonio.com

HIDALGO COUNTY — It was an unlucky day for the drug mules scrambling to reach a stash house near Mission.
Their black Ford F-250 pickup, its bed and cab loaded with 1,200 pounds of pot, was spotted by law enforcement officers on a recent afternoon, and within minutes a Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter swooped overhead.
The driver turned his truck around and headed for the river.
The chopper shadowed the pickup as it sped over unpaved roads, weaving through the network of irrigation channels and farmland gently sloping toward the Rio Grande. Below the Anzalduas International Bridge, the truck hit the water.
The driver and his passenger swam across to the Mexican side of the river, while Border Patrol agents swarmed the truck and confiscated the load.
“I think he took a wrong turn there, because normally there would have been two or three rafts and about three or four people to take (the drugs) across,” said Capt. Stacy Holland, one of two helicopter pilots flying patrols out of Edinburg on the day of the chase.
The smugglers escaped in a so-called “splashdown,” the term used when traffickers on the run from U.S. officers high-tail it back to the river. Such escape attempts have become more frequent, DPS said, since the department bolstered its presence on the border with more troopers, technology, equipment and weapons.
The Legislature has provided more than $600 million for border security since 2007, with most of the money given to DPS to target drug and human smugglers. The border operation today represents a small army, with specialized Ranger Reconnaissance Teams, new intelligence centers, patrol boats, helicopters and surveillance cameras watching for traffickers.
Even a high-altitude spy plane soon will be deployed.
It's a departure from DPS' traditional roles as highway patrolmen and a support service to local law enforcement agencies.
The new strategy is based on “the idea of unifying the efforts and recognizing that there's insufficient resources for Border Patrol to secure the border,” said DPS Director Steve McCraw. “How do we work together to amplify border security?”
Border security was a keystone of Gov. Rick Perry's 2010 re-election campaign and his aborted bid for the GOP presidential nomination, and the issue has received bipartisan support in the Legislature.
But civil-rights advocates and others question the need for DPS' involvement in border security when the Border Patrol is at an all-time high in personnel and funding. Meanwhile, they say, there is no indication that beefing up border security has hurt Mexico's drug cartels.
“That money could perhaps be used for other purposes, as we already have Texas Parks and Wildlife” patrolling the river in boats, said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez. “Ranger Recon Teams? I don't really know what they've done as we're not privy to that information. DPS is doing the best job they can, but I do, however, feel that their way of working is totally different from local law enforcement.”

Swift response

Cable viewers are now privy to the militarylike missions. Last year, Discovery Channel aired “Texas Drug Wars,” a one-hour special that followed troopers, Rangers and pilots as they chase border smugglers.
In one segment, a trafficker fleeing in a pickup started throwing caltrops — nails welded together to puncture tires. A DPS chopper raced in with a marksman, hanging from its open door, who shot out the truck's tires.
But the dangerous maneuver was unsuccessful, and the smuggler managed to splash down near the ferry crossing at Los Ebanos.
“There's been an increasingly confrontational nature in the criminals and the cartel operatives we're dealing with right now,” McCraw said. “Some of these pursuits, they don't care, they're desperate.”

But while DPS and some border residents said traffickers are becoming more brazen, the department couldn't provide statistics to show an increase in confrontations between smugglers and troopers. But the department did provide data showing that troopers in Hidalgo County are involved in far more pursuits than any other county in the state, and that of the top 10 counties for DPS chases, five are on the border and three of the top four are in the Rio Grande Valley.
It's still a far cry from the actual war zone across the river in Mexico. Cities along the Rio Grande are among the safest in Texas, but that's not much consolation for those who live in remote, highly trafficked areas on the border, particularly in a 20-mile stretch from Los Ebanos downstream to Mission.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/New-frontier-for-DPS-is-stopping-smuggling-3622092.php#ixzz1xRb7j0S0

Bookmarking Doom

The problem is we are all dying of loss, a loss of self, a loss of responsibility, a loss of personal dignity...

Death is Yours … If You Want it ~ from before it's news

I am an ex-patriot in reverse. I left America to find America. When I returned, I found America a writhing, swollen, tumor infested beast, wriggling in the throws of death.
That was nearly 20 years ago. It takes a long time for a bloated bureaucracy to die.
Now I sit on my front porch and monitor the decay from an iPhone, like some detached scientist, keeping data, talking notes, bookmarking doom, plotting charts that prove my hypothesis: We’re all going to die.
I am a prognosticator, a Nostradamus, ready to flip to the last page of the Mayan calendar. A false profit.
Of course we’re all going to die; humans weren’t meant to be immortal. Thank God for that. The problem is we are all dying of loss, a loss of self, a loss of responsibility, a loss of personal dignity. Premature rigor mortis. We still live and breathe and pump cholesterol clogged blood through our veins. But outside we die a nanosecond at a time as the world passes by, microscopic oblivion ex utero.
When nearly 50 percent of the taxpayers pay no tax at all and demand that the 10% of the highest earners who already suffer 70% of the tax burden pay more, when we give up basic freedoms for the “comfort” and “security” of government “protection,” when we eschew freedom for “safety,” only death is inevitable. The death of individuality. The death of rational thought. The death of a way of live we couldn’t possibly have had anywhere else. The death of a country.
So I sit here on my porch, watching it all, trapping the images in these words, photographing in hi definition the end.
It’s a God-damned comedy of horrors.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The news is filled with cannibalism. A man takes synthetic bath salts and chews off the face of another man in broad daylight on a Miami causeway. Both are naked. No one knows why. A gay porn star mails pieces of human flesh to political offices. He sends videos to fans. He blames Hollywood.
The paranoid fear the zombie apocalypse is nigh. It’s been here for decades, if not a century. We just never noticed.
Zombie politicians began devouring our lives, our freedoms, our human-ness long before the images of freaked out psychopaths scrolled across our 50-inch TV screens, the very ones on which we watched Jeopardy and American Idol and Jersey Shore, while zombie cannibals in our local municipalities and state capitols and the District of Criminals gutted us from within. And it wasn’t even surreptitiousness. The gutting occurred before our very eyes. We were just too blind to see. Now we live on life support: HDTV, Xbox, takeout Chinese. We get fat from Big Gulps and digital over-stimulation, as we bleed our insides out into government coffers, knowingly.
We are not sheep: we are slaves.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
When I lived in Germany in the early 90s, a soldier “fighting for my country” in a guard shack, I’d walk around the villages and cities of my adopted country and meet people who were in denial. When you start two world wars and eviscerate the population of a continent, you no longer have a sense of self. Socialism was rampant. Kids graduated from high school expecting the government to cradle them. Government assistance checks were a badge of honor. If you were a young woman and uncomfortable with your bra size, a government boob job magically transformed your confidence. A good day was drinking your way through breakfast and lunch and dinner and collapsing on a bench at a bus stop. Four years in the pit of a cradle to grave society taught me there was no better place on earth than America.
But what I came back to wasn’t what I had left. I’ve seen federal government agents kill American citizens for no reason at all. I’ve seen young people no longer embrace the values my parents taught me: work hard, be your own man, expect nothing but what you earn by the sweat of your own brow. It’s as if I came back only to find I was still living in the apathetic society I’d left behind in Germany. I returned to participation trophies for being born and people spending $100,000 to earn sociology degrees so they can never earn more than $50,000 a year.
I came back to madness.
It’s accelerated beyond belief these past four years. My iPhone wants to replace “people” with “proletariat” as i type. Free has now replaced freedom as the fundamental purpose of life in America. Satire is now reality; we’re living a Ray Bradbury novel, an Ayn Rand prophecy, a George Orwell realization.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Aphorisms for our times race through my head. Weird scenes inside the dumb mind. Something wicked has already come. What rough beast slouches toward Washington to make you bow down.
We’ve been living in strange times for as long as I can remember. I was born during Vietnam; I now write during Americanam. The yoke of government is so locked around our necks I fear we may never break free.
The days ahead are dangerous. When a sitting president who has accomplished nothing but corruption and anguish and doled out more than your fair share of abuse has a chance to win re-election, we may already be over the cliff.
In these spend times we are nearing end times. The center cannot hold. It’s already beyond being off axis.
In the coming 5 months we have a decision to make. Do we let our country die? Do we let our way of life die? Do we let ourselves die?
Choosing Mitt Romney over Barack Obama is infinitely more palatable than continuing on this path of destruction we follow. We have great sacrifices to make. We will have to retire later than we planned. We will have to expect less government entitlements than we were “promised” when we were forced to give the government our money to fund them. Then more money. And still more money. (Hell, every year we vote to tax ourselves locally for infrastructure projects many of us never see come to life, because often that money is diverted to other expenditures, just like the entitlement taxes we pay.) We will have to make the biggest gut check of our lives. We will have to hold the limbs of the people we elect to take over this monstrosity to more than just a fire; we will have to tie them to a rack and torture them, if necessary, to right this sinking ship.
I don’t know if we have the stomach for it. I don’t know if we are brave enough. I don’t know if we can disconnect from the shroud of unreality we create for ourselves to get through every second and minute and hour of every day.
But we must. If we don’t, it’s all over. And the death throes our country has been experiencing for longer than I’ve been alive will accelerate.
And it will entirely be our own fault.
We’ll have to live with that, until we don’t. Live, that is.

The following provided by Storm'n Norm'n



Disaster on the Delaware

We know a little about religious persecution....

From an email:
A clear thinking Colorado priest was asked to lead thousands of delegates in prayer at the state Republican convention.  What he said next caused quite a stir in the convention hall.  See for yourself...

___________________________

Related... (Added by Storm'n Norm'n)

The following excerpted from:

Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor

Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.

"...The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.

3. In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. 

4. To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. 

5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life. 

6. What is of far greater moment, however, is the fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation, for the brute has no power of self direction, but is governed by two main instincts, which keep his powers on the alert, impel him to develop them in a fitting manner, and stimulate and determine him to action without any power of choice. One of these instincts is self preservation, the other the propagation of the species. Both can attain their purpose by means of things which lie within range; beyond their verge the brute creation cannot go, for they are moved to action by their senses only, and in the special direction which these suggest. But with man it is wholly different. He possesses, on the one hand, the full perfection of the animal being, and hence enjoys at least as much as the rest of the animal kind, the fruition of things material. But animal nature, however perfect, is far from representing the human being in its completeness, and is in truth but humanity's humble handmaid, made to serve and to obey. It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially from the brute. And on this very account - that man alone among the animal creation is endowed with reason - it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things do, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession; he must have not only things that perish in the use, but those also which, though they have been reduced into use, continue for further use in after time. 

7. This becomes still more clearly evident if man's nature be considered a little more deeply. For man, fathoming by his faculty of reason matters without number, linking the future with the present, and being master of his own acts, guides his ways under the eternal law and the power of God, whose providence governs all things. Wherefore, it is in his power to exercise his choice not only as to matters that regard his present welfare, but also about those which he deems may be for his advantage in time yet to come. Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth he has to lay by provision for the future. Man's needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body. 

8. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry, and by the laws of individual races."