Native Hawaiians blockade historic palace

Another subjugated people is starting to pull away from the DC empire:

A native Hawaiian group that advocates sovereignty locked the gates of a historic palace Wednesday in downtown Honolulu, saying it would carry out the business of what it considers the legitimate government of the islands.

State deputy sheriffs weren't allowing anyone else to enter Iolani Palace grounds as unarmed security guards from the Hawaiian Kingdom Government group blocked all gates to the palace, which is adjacent to the Hawaii Capitol.

To paraphrase Delmar from "O, Brother, where art thou?", "Uncle Sam, some of your conquered province is coming unstole."

The scientific empire

In his review of Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Chalmers Johnson notes that RAND sells interventionism as the extension of social engineering by other means:

Much of RAND's work was always ideological, designed to support the American values of individualism and personal gratification as well as to counter Marxism, but its ideological bent was disguised in statistics and equations, which allegedly made its analyses "rational" and "scientific." Abella writes:

"If a subject could not be measured, ranged, or classified, it was of little consequence in systems analysis, for it was not rational. Numbers were all – the human factor was a mere adjunct to the empirical."

In my opinion, Abella here confuses numerical with empirical. Most RAND analyses were formal, deductive, and mathematical but rarely based on concrete research into actually functioning societies.

In other words, RAND makes its bucks by packaging the dominant American ideology of triumphalism, materialism, and the mastery of nature for the military-industrial complex. That ideology was what the Twelve Southerners referred to in "I'll Take My Stand," as the "gospel of Progress." In his contribution to that ever-useful work, John Crowe Ransom denounced this cult as an endless war against nature, against human nature itself:

Progress never defines its ultimate objective, but thrusts its victims at once into an infinite series. Our vast industrial machine, with its laboratory centers of experimentation, and its far-flung organs of mass production, is like a Prussianized state which is organized strictly for war and can never consent to peace. Or, returning to the original figure, our progressivists are the latest version of those pioneers who conquered the wilderness, except that they are pioneering on principle, or from force of habit, and without any recollection of what pioneering was for. p. 8

How fitting then, that an ideology based on eternal war as an ideal should guide the war machine -- even if it guides it toward inevitable ruin.

After all, that's exactly what happened in the Empire's most disastrous war (to date), Vietnam. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was an expert in statistical control, which he relied on to predict the outcome of American operations. He'd served with distinction as a systems analyst for the Air Force during World War II. As Barbara Tuchman described him in his capacity as the architect of the Vietnam War, "his genius for statistics left little respect for human variables and no room for unpredictables." [The March of Folly, p. 252] His statistical analysis PROVED that American firepower was killing more insurgents than Vietnam could long sustain, making eventual American success "assured."

And we all know how that went. DC puzzled over Vietnamese stubbornness. "We anticipated that they would respond like reasonable people," said one Defense Department official. Instead of responding reasonably, the Vietnamese responded like people, like human beings driven by deep-seated loyalties and emotions, and won despite the odds.

But Iraq will be different. Just ask General Odom.

War supporters fight it out -- among themselves?

The other-worldly war bloggers keep proclaiming victory is at hand ...

Meanwhile, Bush regime has-beens keep blaming each other for Iraq:

- Wolfowitz Admits 'Clueless' on Counterinsurgency

- The “Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth” Points Fingers (by Ken Silverstein, the greatest of the investigative reporters)

- Ex-Overseer of Iraq Says U.S. Effort Was Hampered Early On

- Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq?

- White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner

Gee -- who's to blame for this magnificent victory?

Vermont Commons Editor Rob Williams talks to the SPLC

Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center tossed a question at the editor of Vermont Commons in her famously impartial, objective manner: "Do you still beat the slaves that the racist League of the South sold to you?"

Ok, it wasn't quite that blatant, but it was the usual guilty-if-we-say-so attitude all too typical of the SPLC. However, Mr. Williams calmly responded with the facts, and real class:

You state in your question above, Heidi, that the League of the South is “clearly racist,” and would “like to create a racist society in their seceded state.”

Yet, the League of the South issued a public statement in 2004 specifically denouncing racism, a statement explicitly explaining that they do not want a racist state in a secessionist nation.

The “racism” charge, by the way, has become a convenient way for a few outspoken Vermonters who may not agree with our goals to throw stones at us.

Wow. Then he hit her with this:

While some Vermont journalists have taken the time to check in with us about our work, many bloggers – who love to flap their electronic jowls in cyberspace - have attacked us repeatedly without ever once bothering to contact us to find out what we really think.

This must have been mind-altering to Heidi, since demonizing people and grass-roots organizations without giving them a chance to present their side is the SPLC's standard operating procedure. And when she or any SPLC inquisitor utters the word "racism," most victims run for cover.

Rob, here's a well-deserved shot of Jack Daniels in your honor:



Thanks to Conservative Heritage Times!

The Philosophy of Secession

This won't make it into anyone's "light reading" list, but it's worth noting as yet another signpost of the new world we're in. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn't add new categories unless the need is overwhelming, and, as this introduction makes clear, the topic of secession as a philosophical theory has attained its own sense of urgency. We couldn't agree more.

Until quite recently secession has been a neglected topic among philosophers. Two factors may explain why philosophers have now begun to turn their attention to secession. First, in the past decade there has been a great increase not only in the number of attempted secessions, but also in successful secessions, and philosophers may simply be reacting to this new reality, attempting to make normative sense of it. Second, in the same decade the idea that there is a strong case for some form of self-government for groups presently contained within states has gained ground. Once one begins to take seriously the case for special group rights for minorities — especially if these include rights of self-government — it is difficult to avoid the question of whether some such groups may be entitled to full independence.

Neocon admits error!

American Neocon Francis Fukuyama at the end of the Cold War:

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

But in his latest book, American Neocon Robert Kagan says -- not so fast, Francis:

"The world was not witnessing a transformation, however, merely a pause in the endless competition of nations and peoples. Nationalism, far from being weakened by globalisation has now returned with a vengeance."

The French Jacobins, the Russian, Soviet, and Cuban Communists, and now the American Neocons have been proven wrong -- the universalism they imagined had triumphed was eventually upended by nationalism, which will endure as long as there are men and women who love their own people more than abstractions.

Does Wright want Obama to lose?

Gee -- it's fun to listen to Rush again. I found him very therapeutic during the Clinton years, but pretty much kept the dial off his station during most of the seemingly endless Iraq War pep rally. But now that there's opposition to John McCain to re-unite us, he's worth listening to again.

And then there's this:

I watched some of Reverend Wright this morning at the National Press Club. It seems obvious to me that he's doing everything he can to wipe out Obama's candidacy, and I'll tell you why I think it is. I think that people like Reverend Wright -- and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this -- really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they're going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.

Makes sense. Wright's in the same boat as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is so invested in keeping racial conflict alive that it has to champion illegal immigrants and brand anyone who opposes Open Borders as having Nazi sympathies. If they didn't have the Latino invasion going for them, they'd have to get real jobs.

Why Southern pride must die

If you've ever wondered what stokes anti-Southern hatred, here's a short but powerful explanation. It's from The Big Box Swindle, a book I've previously mentioned. Here, this eye-opening expose of the hidden costs of the megachains analyzes how local small businesses and citizens successfully prevent the big boxes from sucking the life out of their downtowns:

Today, who prevails in a big-box fight often hinges on how local residents conceive of themselves. Opponents of these projects appeal to people's broad sense of being citizens and stewards of their community, which is why they often choose names like "Our Town." Chain retailers, on the other hand, win by getting people to assume the narrow role of consumer and to see the issue as simply a matter of shopping options. Although dominant today, this consumer identity is a relatively recent invention; it only became a powerful force in American politics in the years after World War II. p. 205

Isn't that exactly why Southerners are targeted by the multicult/globalists?

Leftist ideologues despise our devotion to the Southern tradition, whose resistance to big government stands in the way of their dreams of reconstructing the world into a socialist paradise. And the globalist corporations see local traditions and cultures as speed bumps on the road that leads to the maximization of profit. As Daniel Larison has noted:

Finally, vital differences among individuals are effaced. For the economist, all human beings are alike, not of course because they have some higher calling in common but because they all rationally pursued objectives that are equally irrational. Homo economicus is cold, rational, and utilitarian; he is gifted in calculating but empty of substance. Human beings are indistinguishable in their way of being; they can only be distinguished by their incomes, their levels of consumption or productivity. Here, everything that Peguy loves, all that he celebrates–good manners and morals, fine workmanship, beautiful language, simple joys, bonds of the flesh, the honor of the poor, the genius of Homer–none of this has any meaning. We are indeed in the world of equality by default.

That's the kind of equality both leftist and corporate levellers yearn for, and that's why both praise and feed from multiculturalism. It's no wonder, then, that both target Southerners.

Despite this undeclared war against them, most Southerners remain loyal to a political system controlled by those who are determined to eradicate them as a people. Pat Buchanan has pointed out the absurdity of a relationship characterized by one-sided loyalty on one side, and enmity on the other. Globalist Neocons, says Buchanan, openly despise the very people who supply the muscle and faith they exploit for their own purposes:

Why the Hollywood Left hates Dixie is easy to understand. It is conservative, Christian, traditionalist, hostile to the cultural revolution. But why do the neocons? After all, the folks Krauthammer calls “white trash” are the most reliable conservative voters in America, God-and-country people. They enlist in disproportionate numbers in the military, and die in disproportionate numbers in America’s wars.

The answer is simple: both globalists and the multicult Left share the same goals. Both see the centralization of economic and political power as essential in achieving them. The eradication of historic identity paves the way toward the reconstruction of society and the maximization of profits. While the multicult left propagandizes about universalism and the glorious cause of freeing people from the constraints of history and tradition, big business chimes in with seductive advertising that redefines citizens as interchangeable consumers. Government bureaucracies grow in order to enforce egalitarian ideals, employing and empowering the multicult left. And an ever-expanding big government provides subsidies and favorable legislation to big business.

Understanding this is vital to fighting the most important struggle of our generation. The attack on our identity is an attack on our liberty and prosperity. Instead of preserving our civilization, and striving to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” we are supposed to reconstruct ourselves into a multicultural empire, a supposedly benevolent empire with a big heart and bigger fist, which enables it to serve the world as the militant vanguard of global democracy. But in fact, all empires, from Napoleonic France to the Soviet Union, also saw themselves as benevolent liberators, yet actually tyrannized their native and subject populations. It’s no coincidence that the more “multicultural” the US becomes, the less we defend our traditional freedoms, evidenced by such measures as the PATRIOT Act.

As the most stubbornly distinctive ethnic group in America, Southerners remain the biggest impediment to the multicult/globalist agenda.

Re-defining conservatism to death

Today's Humpty Dumpty award goes to Andrew Sullivan:

It seems to me to be fair to call those who would ratchet up the debt "left-wing." If you still believe, as I do, that conservatism is about balancing the budget, then McCain is the least conservative of all three candidates. He is fiscally the furthest left out there.

Well, of course. If there's nothing to "conservatism" but watching the bottom line, then promoting same-sex marriage and howling at those horrible "Christianists" can be part of the new 'n improved "conservative" agenda.

Hope for Corporate America

If you really think Barack Hussein Obama represents something new in American politics, then the only thing that's new is you to this blog.

Presidential elections are hyped as job interviews in which the sovereign American people decide who's best qualified in taking us toward the direction they want to take the country. Instead, elections are choreographed acts whose sole function is to laminate the ruling elite's unchallenged dominion over us with a shiny coating of legitimacy. Whatever they do to us, we asked for it.

Or so they'd have you believe.

Obama's part of the problem, not the solution. His resume, shallow as it is, tells us everything we need to know about him:

Obama, as you will see if you examine his voting record, has repeatedly rewarded those who reward him. As a senator he has promoted nuclear energy as “green.” He has been lauded by the nuclear power industry, which is determined to resume building nuclear power plants across the country. He has voted to continue to fund the Iraq war. He opposed Rep. John Murtha’s call for immediate withdrawal. He refused to join the 13 senators who voted against confirming Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. He voted in July 2005 to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

That's why corporate America is so on-board with this leftist -- his public persona will pretty up the military industrial agenda:

The same Beltway lobbyists, corporate donors and public relations firms, the same weapons manufacturers, defense contractors, nuclear power companies and Wall Street interests that give Clinton and John McCain money, give Obama money. They happen, in fact, to give Obama more. And the corporate state, which is carrying out a coup d’état in slow motion, believes it will prosper in Obama’s hands. If not, he would not be a viable candidate. We have come full circle, back to the age of the robber barons and railroad magnates of the late 19th century who selected members of corrupt state assemblies to be their pliable senators and congressmen and sent them off to Washington to do their bidding.

Once again, Corporate America can't lose. There will be an Open Borders interventionist in the White House. Ain't democracy grand?

How the South Won (This) Civil War

This may be just another anti-Southern rant, but with a subtitle like "Maybe it's time for the North to secede from the Union," it's at least worth reading. The other noteworthy feature of this odd mix of history and personal hostility is that he at least understands our actual origins:

This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants--the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics. After succeeding at that, they then settled the American Frontier, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. And the Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson.

The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores.

The problem, according to the author, is that those terrible Southerners have managed to escape the restraints imposed on them by their enlightened Yankee conquerors, and have transformed America into a -- brace yourselves -- less "tolerant" nation:

Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers--and cultural weight.

The coarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and frontierism has brought to our national dialogue is unmistakable.

But if all this fuss enables us to free ourselves of Chablis-sipping social engineers, we'll gladly endure a little name-calling. We've been through worse.

Silencing dissidents

This is the age of branding.

If you put a label on a bottle of water that says Bling H20, then people will pay $45.00 for it. It's really worth it -- othewise, it wouldn't say "Bling H20," would it?

Sadly, that same mentality infects political discourse. You can parry any argument merely by labeling it as racist. Of course, liberals started this insanity, and Neocons do it, too. But now it's gotten so bad, even the liberals are starting to weary of it. Here's Glenn Greenwald on the risk of criticizing Israel:

All sorts of neoconservatives and their various organs have spent the last year insinuating to American Jews in key voting locales (such as South Florida) that they cannot possibly vote for Barack Obama because he doesn't "support Israel" (by which they mean militaristic Likudnik policies that are actually quite damaging to Israel and which huge numbers of American Jews and even Israelis themselves reject). At the same, in order to prevent this tactic from being challenged or even discussed, they scream "anti-semite!" at anyone who points out a benevolent and painfully obvious fact: that many Americans Jews have loyalties to Israel that influence their voting behavior and political positions -- the very premise on which these smear campaigns are predicated.

Though I am a member of a decidedly non-liberal organization, the League of the South, I can sympathize. Our main goal is to restore the right of self-government for the people of the South, and argue that the policies of the over-centralized, unaccountable regime in DC harms those it claims to protect, both black and white. But by questioning the welfare/warfare state, we are condemned for everything from "racial insensitivity" (?) to outright racism. The facts we bolster our arguments with are simply irrelevant because the doberman pinschers of political correctness at the Southern Poverty Law Center have branded us as a hate group. We're bad people, so crazed with blind hatred for blacks that our denunciations of the harm done by social reengineering are nothing but a cover for our real motives. When we point out that anything resembling actual hate speech never appears in our publications or web site, then that simply shows how devious we are.

You just can't win that kind of game.

When Michael Hill points out the disproportionate number of crimes committed by a "compliant and deadly underclass," that's pounced upon as an expression of "raw anger." But how different was Hill's observation from what liberal Senator Pat Moynihan wrote about black crime? Here are a couple of excerpts from Moynihan's famous report:

In a word, most Negro youth are in danger of being caught up in the tangle of pathology that affects their world, and probably a majority are so entrapped. ...

There is no one Negro problem. There is no one solution. Nonetheless, at the center of the tangle of pathology is the weakness of the family structure. Once or twice removed, it will be found to be the principal source of most of the aberrant, inadequate, or antisocial behavior that did not establish, but now serves to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and deprivation.

But Moynihan's unflinching examination at the "pathology" of urban blacks took place in a time before name-calling replaced fact-based argument in public discourse. We all know what would be howled at him if he were alive today making the same observations.

Palestinians Block Fuel, Create Humanitarian Crisis In Gaza

That's what they say:

It should be noted that Israel is not involved or responsible for occurrences in the Gaza Strip, for vehicular traffic on the highways, or for entrance to the organization’s depot.

In other news: old woman sued for bruising the knuckles of a mugger with her jaw.

How the West Was Changed

How was it the portrayal of Anglo-Celts in the movies changed around 1950? Here's a fascinating answer:

Before the Second World War, American Westerns presented what later came to be seen as a "naive" view of what might be called white borderer culture and conflicts. The "good" of the Scots-Irish based and European immigrant and settler population was not just an underlying assumption but a central and explicit thesis in the Westerns, most of which were made by “poverty row” studios and distributed to rural and small-town theaters—and seen by the grandchildren of the very people portrayed.

As James Webb wrote in Born Fighting, the Scots-Irish are "family-oriented, take morality seriously, go to church, join the US military, support America’s wars, and listen to country music." In other words, we're the heart and body of America. But around 1950, Hollywood decided it didn't like those qualities and started presenting us differently. One notable example:

Why, for example, was a cultural split added to The Magnificent Seven (John Sturgis, 1960), the Hollywood remake of Shichinin no samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)? In the original, the townspeople are simply poor and oppressed; they share a cultural background with the samurai they hire to protect them as well as with the people who are expected to see the film. In the remake the townspeople are alien—to their protectors and to most of their intended audience. Why? Why make it a Mexican town in need of protection by Americans?

Simple, says the author -- the Hollywood elite, angered by Middle America's rallying around Joe McCarthy -- had declared war on the white middle class:

... small-town Americans had fallen out of favor by 1960, out of favor with the “New York and Hollywood elite” (whose negative attitude continues today, with some calling the rest of the country the “flyover”). Filmmakers could no longer see a way of making the white townsfolk seem worthy of protection without being accused of a naïve and, eventually, racist viewpoint.

Then came other portrayals of Anglo-Celts as evil, such as "Easy Rider," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Monster Ball." Today, even immigrants from India notice that Southern accents are reserved for the bad guys in American movies. That's how the Left Coast views us.

Iraq's gift to Latin America

Here's an interesting observation. All those anti-US, leftist, and pro-indigenous political movements taking root in Latin America would never have been allowed to grow if the US wasn't bogged down in the Neocon Wars. As the author points out, the US has a bloody history of repeated intervention there, starting with Teddy Roosevelt's "taking" of Panama:

In the decades that followed, the United States sponsored dictatorships from Cuba to Brazil, deposed governments from Chile to Guatemala, landed Marines on shores from Panama to Haiti, and thwarted the election of independent-minded leaders from Guyana to the Dominican Republic. Generations of Latin Americans grew up understanding that any challenge to US hegemony in the hemisphere would be crushed swiftly and with all necessary violence.

That has now changed so decisively that this week, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador felt moved to predict the emergence of a "socialist Latin America".

Makes sense. US intervention in the Middle East produced Bin Laden, as US intervention in Latin America has given us Hugo Chavez. Now we get to see what happens when angry Latinos grab at a chance for a little payback.

Oh to be in England ...

... now that devolution's there ...

But here's one commentator who isn't happy that old empires are being replaced by human-scaled political formations. As the super-sized nation-state totters and reels, historical cultural affinities are spontaneously reviving themselves:

In its place comes a vast phalanx of somewhat ill-defined racial types, clamouring for recognition — from Catalonia, the Basque region, Flanders and the two Galicias, from Transylvania, from Friesland, Brittany, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, ad infinitum.

The author, Rod Liddle, tries to delegitimize the revival of historical identities as "tribal stuff" which he dismisses as "the most atavistic and baseless of principles." But why, if identification with one's extended family is baseless, has it defined human history so profoundly, and, more important, why does it continue to shape current events (including today's never-ending presidential campaign)?

Mr. Liddle indulges in the nihilism and extreme sceptisicm that multicult/globalists often resort to in claiming that races don't exist because, so they claim, it's impossible to put anything into a category -- especially people:

Which brings us to what is meant by ‘English’, that race represented by a patron saint from Cappadocia or maybe Palestine, which converses in a modern derivative of low German, was created by an invasion from France and whose gene pool is hopelessly mingled with that of our Celtic neighbours and that of any number of influxes from France, from the Jewish diaspora, from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

This kind of thinking can be shot down with but a whiff o' logic. Aristotle's categories are just as appropriate for human categories as they are for anything else. Folks like Mr. Biddle assume that an other-worldly ideal must be the starting point for any system of knowledge; since all attempts to pack reality into those ideals fail, then knowledge is impossible.

Pshaw! Let's instead work with what's real and build our ideas around that. A nation, just like an individual, arises from a whirlwind of apparently disparate and accidental causes. What's more, both nation and individual never stop adapting. That's the real world philosophical idealists can't explain, and therefore dismiss as not quite real. However, Aristotle's categories of substance, relation, place, and time correpond well with our understanding of genetic history, family ties, nationality, and history. Richard Weaver provided one of the best explanations of how categories are essential to human knowledge. In his essay, Status and Function, he wrote:

... we see things maintaining their identity while changing. Things both are and are becoming. They are because the idea or general configuration of them persists; and they are becoming because with the flowing of time, they inevitably slough off old substance and take on new. The paradox of both being and becoming is thus continuously enacted. We say that there is a "nature of things," but this nature ever appears in a changing embodiment, so that if we attended only to the latter, we should no sooner say of a thing that "it is" than we should be obliged to say "it was" or "it is now something else." It is an ancient observation that "no man steps in the same river twice," yet we continue to conceive it as a river and to call it by one name. At one and the same moment permanence holds us enchanted and change urges us on. Visions of Order, p. 23.

Existence, argues Weaver, is identified by both status and function, that is, by what a person or thing is and what he or it does. There is something essential that lives on despite the changes a thing, person, or culture experiences. The same applies to nations, says Weaver:

The same process is visible even when we look at the political state. It persists under one name, and it may even affirm in its organic law that it is indestructible. But its old leaders pass on or are removed, and new ones appear. But while these individual particles are being shuffled and replaced, "the state" goes on, maintaining some character and identity through all these changes. The most conservative state must yield something to the pressure of historical increment, and the most "progressive" one conserves something that it considers its special form and spirit." Visions of Order, p. 24

With that in mind, notice that Mr. Liddle eventually stumbles upon the answer to his own objections:

But when I examine precisely what it is to which I feel allegiance, I find that it is that bleak and discredited notion, the nation state: Great Britain. It is Britain, not England, with which I feel a shared identity and, try as I might, I cannot separate the southern province from the rest simply because we say ‘now’ instead of ‘noo’ or ‘noy’ ...

And isn't that the whole point? We're in an age of redefining who we are. When I was younger, it was the Free World vs. the Soviet Bloc. "We" included Americans, Danes, and others, such as Vietnamese south of the 17th parallel, while "they" were Russians, Chinese, and Vietnamese north of the 17th parallel. Despite the "universalism" of their Marxist-Leninist ideology, ancient loyalties split the Russians and Chinese and united the Vietnamese.

The massive influx of legal and illegal immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean that Liddle tries to list as just one more component of British identity is actually corrosive to it. That's why floodtide immigration is simultaneously dissolving the idea of "Britishness" while focusing attention on the actual and historical meaning of "Englishness."

Meanwhile, in the last days of the republic once known as "America" ...

An entire village turns against supermarkets

And finds something much better ...

This article shows what happens when a village decides to revive its local economy, eat locally, and work together to re-build a local economy and community.

Surprise! They also find that they feel like they belong to something.

Why can't WE do the same thing? Franklin Sanders

With gas and food skyrocketing beyond reach, this is looking more and more like the future. And no more plastic food!

Neocons and Hillary sittin' in a tree

Gee, just one little speech promising to commit genocide against Muslims, and the Neocons fall head-over-heels in love with you:

Hillary Clinton's got the momentum.

She's already put up big campaign fundraising numbers in the follow-up to her victory, and we should expect to see a Clinton bump in public opinion in states holding upcoming primaries, especially Indiana, the next crucial test for Obama's working-class appeal.

This Bud's for you, Hillraiser!

She had him at "obliterate."

Clinton vs. Obama

Wait for Bill Clinton at 2:30 into the video: "Get up, Sweetie!"



Sadly, she cannot. When Umaga storms in to dispose of the unchivalrous Obama, Hillary appears to have found her champion. But just like Robert Reich and Bill Richardson, a supposed ally turns against her.

And they say wrestling is fake.

Gen. David Petraeus to be next commander of U.S. Central Command

It pays to tell your boss what he wants to hear.

Some peasants are more equal than others

Rep. Peter King of New York on Southern congressmen:

"... they are typical of the South - a union-hating, ignorant, hillbilly, revival-meeting attending bunch that represents everything un-American."

Rep. Douglas Bruce, on legislation to allow more illegal alien invaders into Colorado:

"I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado."

One of these elected officials was booted from the podium for his remarks. The other was met by laughter. Can you guess which is which?

The International Symbol of Political Independence

Certainly not the DC flag. From Tom DiLorenzo, via LewRockwell.com

I'm in Prague this week lecturing at the Prague University of Economics and attending (last weekend) the Prague Conference on Political Economy. My host (Professor Josef Sima) picked me up at the airport and as soon as we got into the city one of the first sights that caught my eye was a large black pickup truck with a Confederate battle flag covering the entire back window. It is most likely a remnant of the successful, peaceful secession of Slovakia from Czechoslovakia in 1993, creating the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Having looked up the history of this peaceful secession on the internet I learned that the old Czechoslovakian government did not have sufficient coercive force --and the will to mass murder its own people -- in order to stop it. Not that there weren't Czecho-Lincolnites in the government who wanted to.

Thank God for the Czechs and Slovaks that they did not have a Lincoln who would have slaughtered them all by the thousands while wrapping his war crimes in religious rhetoric.

Closing the 'Collapse Gap'

Prepare to have your illusions of security shattered. This is the most jarring, as well as the most important, article I've seen in years, and readers of this blog will know I don't toss such claims lightly.

Here's the thesis: All empires fail. The Soviet Union was better positioned to fail than the United States, which has almost zero resources to rely on when systemic failure hits.

Why? The Soviet Union's economic system didn't work that well even in the best of times. As a result, the people had to build close relations within their communities to assist each other and barter for food and services. On the other hand, our money-based system depends absolutely on the Federal Reserve. Most Soviets kept "kitchen gardens" to supplement their food supply during lean times, which saved millions after the teetering Soviet economy finally collapsed. We, however, are totally dependent on a centralized food distribution system. The Soviet people knew how to fix things, something this disposable society not only lacks, but scoffs at. People were fitter, both mentally and physically, and thus, better able to adapt.

The Soviet Union was organized in ethnically based republics, and the Soviet Constitution recognized the right of secession -- something our people believe was "settled" by Lincoln's brutal invasion. Therefore, an orderly method of re-organizing already existed in the Soviet Union.

This quote on the difference between how each regime handled dissent is priceless:

It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.

The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart's content?

Ouch.

My favorite quote, in a section recommending what individuals can do to free themselves from the harmful control of national politicians:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature) developed a handy saying that helped him survive the Gulag. It may help you too: "Don't believe them, don't fear them, don't ask anything of them."

Read this article. And get to work. Now.

Food Or Immigrants? That’s America’s Choice On Earth Day 2008

The mortgage crisis, the assault on our traditional liberties, the floodtide of illegal alien invaders, rising gas prices, an international food shortage -- all of these problems are either caused or worsened by DC's self-serving agenda -- and completely against the will of the people. Brenda Walker of VDare explores how DC's de facto Open Borders policies are wrecking our environment:

In fact, although the environmentalist establishment ducks the immigration issue, responsible environmentalists who are honest about the overpopulation crisis are among the toughest critics of open borders. The word "zero" rolls from their lips far more often than among other groups. Conservationists who look at the numbers grasp that a hundred thousand newcomers today rapidly expand to a million because of children and America's family-based immigration policies are a Ponzi scheme from Hell.

Skyrocketing food prices and looming shortages are a symptom that America is full up.

Central banking is the enemy

Michael S. Rozeff explains why, and provides a good introduction to how the Fed is set up. Here's his summary of the problems it causes and how those problems result directly from the Fed itself:

Our current banking system has, from the viewpoint of the general public, three main ills. The first of these is that it produces economic instability, that is, a boom-bust cycle or expansion and recession (or depression). The second, which is related to the first, is that it produces a continuing loss in purchasing power of the dollar. Third is that the banking system provides support to ill-conceived and destructive spending policies of the State. These three ills retard a normal course of economic expansion and impoverish many persons in our country in a most unjust way.

Four separate elements are responsible for these failings of the banking system. One is that banks promise that demand deposits will be paid out on demand, but they cannot possibly meet this requirement for all depositors because they lend out the deposits. Furthermore, their lending results in a multiplied total of further deposits and further loans. Second is that the money used in these deposits is fiat money, that is, money declared to be money that has no sound backing or perceived intrinsic worth. Third is that the money in the banking system has been made legal tender by State law. This means that it must be accepted as a payment medium. Fourth is that deposits are insured by a State agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Consider why Andrew Jackson fought the central bank:

- It concentrated an excessive amount of the nation's financial strength in a single institution.
- It exposed the government to control by foreign interests.
- It served mainly to make the rich richer.
- It exercised too much control over members of Congress.
- It favored northeastern states over southern and western states.

Was he right? Today, Communist China holds over a half-trillion in Treasury bills. Big business has gobbled up family farms. As Rozeff explains, the New York banks run the system.

Where's Old Hickory when we need him?

Why Wall Street Socialism will fail

As the Bear Stearns bailout proves once again, we have socialism for the rich and laissez-faire for the poor. But, as Kevin Phillips reminds us, socialism is just as self-destructive here as it was elsewhere. It eroded the Soviet Union from within until it collapsed like an old house hollowed by termites. Wall Street socialism is heading down the same road:

Socialism, we are told, is the naiveté of youth, and a fallacious economics the United States has luckily spurned.

Alas, nobody ever told the leaders of American finance. Whereas the old style of socialism elected no more than a handful of mayors and congressmen, Washington has now embraced a new variety that could not be more different in its class consciousness and privileged sponsorship.

To keep the people quiet and subservient, this new flavor of socialism was sold to them as the essense of American free enterprise:

Ex-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is often singled out as a culprit, but most of what he did was what most of the financial sector wanted. They, too, loved making 4th of July speeches about the glories of free enterprise and free -- market profits while counting on the government to collectivize the perils of risk. Big, fat and dumb financial institutions could count on being big, fat and bailed-out.

Phillips' argument is that by subsidizing and insulating the big and the fat, we're interfering with the market's organic system of identifying and eliminating unwise actions -- that is, we've hobbled the system by making it failure-proof for selected players. Look again at the Bear Stearns example. These people risk our pension and money-market funds, and when they make a killing, they enjoy all the rewards. But when they screw up, as they have spectacularly done lately, our tax dollars are pumped into their accounts to save them from their own mistakes.

It's not just bail-outs like this that subsidize big business. Both Hillary and Obama support socialized medicine, which will eliminate corporations from having to provide health benefits. The effect, of course, would be to shift these corporate costs to taxpayers.

Clinton on an Iran Attack: 'Obliterate Them'

Who says Hillary is just another DC insider who's going to prop up the military/industrial regime? Hillary:

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

It's a good thing the United States won the Cold War. Otherwise, the Soviet Union would've imposed totalitarianism on us, and every election would offer nothing but fake choices between pro-government candidates.

By the way, this makes the second presidential candidate to endorse the Krauthammer Doctrine. And we can count on McCain to nuke Iran no matter what they do.

War is a racket

If you can't convince your children not to join the Empire's legions, then insist they read General Smedley Butler's book:

In my opinion, no young person who cannot intelligently discuss General Butler’s book, "War Is A Racket," should be permitted to join any of the armed forces. I would further insist that all military personnel be schooled in "War Crimes Avoidance." This would primarily be centered on teaching the difference between lawful and unlawful orders and lawful and unlawful wars. Most military personnel do not consciously think about this until perhaps after their service – or never – according to Smedley Butler. They just follow orders. That is why Michael New is such an anomaly.

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World

Food shortages -- they're not just for Third World countries anymore. Now, angry customers scrounge through stores in places like New York and California:

Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

Makes the idea of supporting local farmers seem a little less silly, doesn't it?

U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda

As this article proves, old soldiers never die -- they just go on TV to sell the next war.

Forget Bin Laden -- what will Hillary do about the UDC?

We've got a home mortgage crisis, the price of oil is going through the roof, the war in Iraq is bankrupting and bleeding us dry -- but what is candidate Hillary Clinton going to do about the United Daughters of the Confederacy? BlackCommentator demands an answer in an "investigative report" entitled -- hold on to your hats -- "Senator Hillary Clinton Must Explain The Praising of a Group of KKK Supporters."

In a year of political absurdities, where one candidate--Senator Obama--is being held accountable for his friends and acquaintances and everything that they have said and done during their life times, we have stumbled across a problem.

Right -- there's only one thing to do when you're stuck in a year of political absurdities, and that's to go even further over the top:

BlackCommentator.com has learned that Bill Clinton, while president, repeatedly praised the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). This is an organization that many, including some whites and a former U.S. senator from Illinois, have called racist.

Uh-huh. BlackCommentator was just sitting in his headquarters, minding his own business, when he suddenly stumbled over the sinister truth about the UDC. Maybe the cat brought it in.

And did you catch that perfect use of weasel words? Of course, the SPLC has mastered the art of using deliberately deceptive terms that appear to offer something of substance when there's actually nothing there, but BlackCommentator has clearly been taking good notes. For those of you not familiar with the term, here's where it came from:

The expression "weasel word" is aptly named after the egg-eating habits of weasels. A weasel will suck out the inside of an egg, leaving it appear intact to the casual observer. Upon examination, the egg is discovered to be hollow. Words or claims that appear substantial upon first look but disintegrate into hollow meaninglessness on analysis are weasels.

So what is it that "many, including some whites" think about this shadowy organization? Take a deep breath before you read this:

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, the UDC is a neo-Confederate organization which is affiliated with such white supremacist groups as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South. Formed in 1894, the UDC limits its membership to women who are related to Confederate veterans of the “War Between the States.”

Oh, the horror. This country actually allows ladies to keep alive the memory of their ancestors? They're allowed to run loose despite a Southern Poverty Law Center fatwa against them and their eeeeevil friends?

The weird thing here is that BlackCommentator is demanding that Hillary come clean on her relationship to the UDC, and announce if she will "continue the tradition of support and praise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy." But it turns out Hillary has apparently had no contact with the UDC, nor has she even uttered a single word about them, pro or con. The only proof offered is this harmless note Bill Clinton sent to the UDC on its 100th anniversary:

The White House

Washington

June 21, 1994

I am delighted to honor the United Daughters of the Confederacy as you celebrate your 100th anniversary.

One of the most rewarding of human experiences is the coming together of people to share common experiences and interests. For 100 years, the United Daughters of the Confederacy has maintained and built upon the wonderful legacy of your founders. The strength of your organization today is a testament of the vision of your founders and to your commitment to your shared goals.

I congratulate you on your achievement, and I extend best wishes for many years of continuing success.

Bill Clinton

That's it? That note was hardly the foundation for a "tradition of support and praise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy." It's not like Bill gave them the keys to the US treasury or called out the Green Berets to run covert ops for them. The note was merely a social nicety, an empty gesture.

And since when did recycling unfounded assertions from the SPLC's web site qualify as "investigative reporting"?

But that's just the kind of thing that happens when you're in a year of political absurdities.

Free the Jefferson 1!

Looks like celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday in Imperial America is as risky as celebrating the Dalai Lama's birthday in Communist China.

Condi's conundrum

There's no political humor quite like unintentional political humor. And America's First Spinster has provided plenty. Her latest:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Baghdad's Green Zone on Sunday on a surprise visit to Iraq where she said she saw improved security and political grouping in the centre which should attract Arab support and blunt Iran's influence.

If security is so much better, why was it a surprise visit? Why didn't she strut around Baghdad like the president of Iran did in early March? And just where was evidence of all that so-called improved security? Nicholas Kristof suggests why Condi saw what she thinks she saw -- it's all a matter of keeping those blinders on, blinders we're all guilty of using while denying it. They filter out impressions that clash with our biases, and allow in whatever seems to confirm them:

...consider the Dartmouth-Princeton football game in 1951. That bitterly fought contest was the subject of a landmark study about how our biases shape our understanding of reality.

Psychologists showed a film clip of the football game to groups of students at each college and asked them to act as unbiased referees and note every instance of cheating. The results were striking. Each group, watching the same clip, was convinced that the other side had cheated worse - and this was not deliberate bias or just for show.

"Their eyes were taking in the same game, but their brains seemed to be processing the events in two distinct ways," Farhad Manjoo writes in his terrific new book, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. It's the best political book so far this year.

So what's the reality? Are there undeniable facts Condi and other war supporters fail to acknowledge? For example, maybe it was noises she didn't want to hear:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, assured visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he will not back down in his confrontation with Shiite militias, even as mortar shells fired from Shiite areas struck the U.S.-protected Green Zone.

Maybe she thought the noise was construction work on the "Grand Square of the Liberator George W. Bush" that grateful Iraqis were working on, as predicted by the ever-prescient Richard Perle:

And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.
Richard Perle, September 22, 2003

Or maybe not.

But what a hoot to see Condi take a jab at al-Sadr, even to the point of goading him to make good on his threat to break his truce. It reminds me of Bush's reckless taunt to the then-incipient insurgency to "bring it on" if they wanted to attack US troops. They brought it, all right. But Condi's dig at this dangerous and unpredictable man simply hits a new level of official stupidity:

"I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go too their deaths and he's in Iran."

Yeah, Condi. Whatever. Unlike our Great Liberator, who's up at the front daily with the men he sends into a no-win war:

Fun fact of the day

On North Carolina voter registration forms (and maybe on your state's forms, too) there's a section for the citizen's race and ethnic group. Under race, you can choose any of the standard choices, including bi-racial. But there are only two valid ethnic selections, "Hispanic/Latino" and "non-Hispanic/Latino."

The Anti-Hijacking Safety Bracelet

Here's another reason not to fly:

A Canadian company called Lamperd Less Lethal is promoting the EMD Safety Bracelet. It's equipped with electro muscular disruption technology, which effectively short-circuits the central nervous system. Zap someone and they'll be completely immobile for several minutes.

The technology isn't new -- cops and security guards have been using it for years in tasers. What's new is the marketing approach. Lamperd is hawking the EMD bracelet as the ideal tool for fighting terrorists intent on taking over an airplane.

So -- how long until these bracelets become mandatory for all US citizens? After all, if you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to fear from your government.

Three States Subjected To "Martial Law Sweeps"

All in the name of keeping us safe:

Federal law enforcement agencies co-opted sheriffs offices as well state and local police forces in three states last weekend for a vast round up operation that one sheriff's deputy has described as "martial law training".

Law-enforcement agencies in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas took part in what was described by local media as "an anti-crime and anti-terrorism initiative" involving officers from more than 50 federal, state and local agencies.

For those shivering under their beds where the Islamomeanies can't hurt them, take a moment to consider what's the real threat here, terrorism or uncontrolled government power? As we wrote earlier, the terror threat is wildly exaggerated:

"...the total number of people killed worldwide by genuine al-Qaeda types and assorted wannabes outside of war zones since 9/11 averages about 300 per year. That is certainly 300 a year too many, but that number is smaller than the yearly number of bathtub drownings in the United States.

Here's what scares me: the very real threat of "pre-emptive" arrests and mass round-ups -- which this latest Federal exercise seems to be rehearsing for:

While some business owners feel they are being targeted, law-enforcement officers said they are just trying to track down possible terrorists before something big happens.

"What we have found traditionally is that terrorists are involved in a number of lesser known type crimes," said Mark Luttrell, Shelby County sheriff.

Oh, as long as these militarized law-enforcement officers are "just trying to track down" bad guys, I guess it's all ok.

Meanwhile, the number of immigrants from the Middle East, legal and illegal, is expected to double by 2010. Remember, with government, solutions are not the answer. More power for our rulers is the answer to every problem.

Confederate Pope

Actually, the Vatican was the only country to officially recognize the Confederacy, although the British built us some great commerce raiders like the CSS Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah.

Just in case anyone hasn't seen this:



It is the Mississippi State Flag. Thanks to Mike Scruggs for forwarding!

Pope Pius IX was well known for his connections to the Confederacy. From Wikipedia:

During Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ imprisonment following the defeat of the Confederacy, Pope Pius IX sent a picture of himself to Davis with the hand-written inscription: “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Along with this picture, the pope sent a miniature crown of thorns which he had woven with his own hands. Such a gift, said a great niece, was “never before conferred on any but crowned heads.” Robert E. Lee, pointing to his own portrait of Pius IX whistling Dixie, told a visitor that he was “the only sovereign…in Europe who recognized our poor Confederacy.”

Also worth noting is Judah Benjamin's and Jefferson Davis' correspondence to Pope Pius IX during the War for Southern Independence. This letter from President Davis of September 23, 1863, is especially moving:

Most Venerable Chief of the Holy See and Sovereign Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church,

The letters which your Holiness addressed to the venerable chiefs of the Catholic clergy in New Orleans and New York have been brought to my attention, and I have read with emotion the terms in which you are pleased to express the deep sorrow with which you regard the slaughter, ruin, and devastation consequent on the war now waged by the Government of the United States against the States and people over which I have been chosen to preside, and in which you direct them, and the clergy under their authority, to exhort the people and the rulers to the exercise of mutual charity and the love of peace. I as deeply sensible of the Christian charity and sympathy with which your Holiness has twice appealed to the venerable clergy of your church, urging them to use and apply all study and exertion for the restoration of peace and tranquillity.

Amid blasts, Baghdad embassy declared ready

The Imperial Battle Station is now operational. And if it cost a tad more than planned, well, as Madeleine Albright would say, "It was worth it." Behold:

Originally expected to be completed by last July 1 at a cost of $592 million, the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world has been plagued by disputes over workmanship and design changes that have increased costs by at least $144 million.

One of the problems getting everything completed on time were the cultural conflicts between the State Department and the Iraqi construction company in charge of building the fortress within a fortress. But lately, the workers have responded well to an innovative form of motivation I never thought of when I was a project manager:

One State Department official said the rocket attacks helped focus attention. "People were very motivated to hurry up and get out of there," he said.

When employee motivation pioneer Abraham Maslow urged managers to factor in the security needs of employees, I don't think he considered the motivational effect of 107mm rockets.

Actually, the Death Star imagery perfectly illustrates the mindset of DC's ruling elite. An enlightened vanguard, attempting to uplift and reform a backward people, is besieged by retrograde forces resisting progress. The mirror image of that is how the occupied people see the giant embassy, and that is as a hostile, alien force determined to subjugate them.

Kinda like the way DC is increasingly regarded over here.

Iraq war 'a debacle'

Who wrote that? Code Pink? One of those unpatriotic conservatives? No -- this was the conclusion of some new defeatist, pro-Islamomeanie organization that calls itself, "The Pentagon."

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush 's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report goes on to say that the harm done to our soldiers, their families, our economy, and our long-term security is undeniable, and likely greater than we can measure:

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion .

"No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq ) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East ," the report continued.

So what's more important here -- the good of our people, our legal traditions, and our reputation, or the egos of a few swaggering would-be chicken hawks?

Slavery: Paper Tiger of the Politically Correct

Here's a great anti-venom for those who've been bitten by the PC viper. Victims ignore the notorious sweat shops of the North and imagine that the slaves of the Old South endured Roots-style whippings every day. This introduction to the real story by Al Benson, Jr. should help.

Italy's Northern League resurgent

One of the political movements that inspired the formation of the present-day League of the South has barreled back onto the Italian political scene:

Italy's centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi won a return to power this week with a majority that - by Italian standards - looks very comfortable.

But he did so with the help of a formerly troublesome and often controversial right-wing ally, the Northern League.

The populist party almost doubled its vote, winning more than 8% nationally, and is expected to have several ministers in the new government.

Its appeal has only intensified since the outgoing Socialist coalition came to power -- and no wonder:

The League's campaign focused on what it sees as the waste, inefficiency and corruption of the political class in Rome.

That has always been a rallying call for the party, which became a significant force in the wake of the corruption scandals of the early 1990s as it attacked "robber Rome".

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I suppose all political classes are alike.

Obama would do 'everything' to help Israel defend itself

Looks like Charles Krauthammer has at least one presidential candidate willing to sign on to the "Israel First" doctrine. And Obama is touted as the peace candidate? Surprisingly, yes -- by people who should know better.

Obama's promise to get the US mired down in even more unnecessary, open-ended conflict in the Middle East could've been made by Bush, Cheney, or any other Neocon:

"As president, I will do everything that I can to help (Israel) protect itself ... We will make sure that it can defend itself from any attack, whether it comes from as close as Gaza or as far as Tehran," Obama told a synagogue in Philadelphia, according to his campaign aides.

He said US-Israeli cooperation, although successful, "can be deepened and strengthened."

Whatever glorious "change" Obama intends to bring us apparently doesn't extend into DC's belligerent foreign policy. But here's what really gets me:

Robert Wexler, Florida Democrat in the House of Representatives, told reporters after the meeting that Obama "unequivocally rejects the Palestinian right of return" -- a perennial sticking point in Palestinian-Israeli peace talks -- because he understands that Israel must remain a Jewish state.

And they have every right to protect and preserve the ethnic makeup of their country -- but why is it considered perfectly natural for them to reject colonization, and not us? When we express similar goals, we're branded as "xenophobes."

The Last Days of Cheap Chinese

Don't look now, but that miraculous global economy is about to bite you:

The era of cheap Chinese consumer goods may finally be ending, thanks to irrepressible inflation. Now when the Chinese present their lists, some American importers are conceding higher prices, meaning that American shoppers, for the first time in years, are starting to pick up the tab for rising costs in China. Some Chinese factories are now asking their American customers for price increases of as much as 20 percent to 30 percent.

Think of it as receiving the bill for some of those hidden costs of saving money at Wal-Mar. And yes, more is on the way.

No country for old warmongers

And he should know:

Democratic Rep. John Murtha said Wednesday that Republican Sen. John McCain is too old to be president.

Murtha is 75, four years older than McCain. He says they are nearly the same age, and the rigors and stress of running the country is too much for guys their age.

"I've served with seven presidents," Murtha told a union audience. "When they come in, they all make mistakes. They all get older."

"This one guy running is about as old as me," he said, drawing laughter and applause. "Let me tell you something, it's no old man's job."

The unsinkable Obama

Everyone who's been wondering what political damage would result from Obama's slip about the "bitter" white working class may be in for a shock:

With three crucial Democratic primaries looming, Hillary Rodham Clinton may not be headed toward the blockbuster victories she needs to jump-start her presidential bid -- even in Pennsylvania, the state that was supposed to be her ace in the hole, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The survey found the New York senator leading Barack Obama by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, which votes next Tuesday. Such a margin would not give her much of a boost in the battle for the party's nomination.

This shrink explains why.

If he manages to win despite "Bittergate," then Obama's way beyond Ronald Reagan's Teflon. He must have Captain Kirk's long-range shields to protect him.

The Martial Law Act of 2006

Here's something for all you heel-clickers out there to chew on:

Martial law is perhaps the ultimate stomping of freedom. And yet, on September 30, 2006, Congress passed a provision in a 591-page bill that will make it easy for President Bush to impose martial law in response to a terrorist “incident.” It also empowers him to effectively declare martial law in response to what he or other federal officials label a shortfall of “public order” – whatever that means.

As the author, James Bovard, points out, martial law means military dictatorship. And as he reminds us, the abuses suffered under military dictatorship here in the South, which is sugar-coated as "Reconstruction," should keep us alert to the dangers of repeating such a tragedy.

And as we've pointed out before, the Beltway is completely behind this, illustrating once again that the only separation of powers left in this country is between DC, which has all the power, and the people:

Section 1076 had bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, including support from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Since the law would give the feds more power, it was very popular inside the Beltway.

How long have you been a Nazi?

Welcome to the Anti-Nuance Age.

We've shed the need or desire to see things in context. Whatever the topic, whether we're considering an individual or a policy, the background of the subject does not matter. So Obama's claims that he'll accomplish wondrous things for America do not require we ask what experience he's had in actually doing such things. (As a matter of fact, demanding proof would be regarded as bad taste, and maybe even racist.) The ultimate response to such doubt is: "Don't you want to heal the divisions in this country?" Unless you answer "Why,yes!", then you've branded yourself as a hater of tolerance and all other sacred things.

President Bush both illustrated and legitimized this current method of reasoning when he announced, "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists."

This way of thinking and debating has been used most effectively by our very own Tolerance Terrorists (who are good terrorists, like Menachem Begin and Nelson Mandela), who make their fortune by bullying the easily intimidated into silence with accusations they're really Nazis. Such mercenary idealists as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton come to mind, but the grandmasters of this technique are, of course, those dedicated souls at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Jesse and Al only bully their victims out of their lunch money; the SPLC keeps its eyes on bigger prizes, including political power to go along with its wealth. Observe how the SPLC handles those who agree with Pat Buchanan about stopping the flow of illegal immigration in a hit piece cleverly entitled, Selling Racism:

To put it plainly, State of Emergency is a white nationalist tract. The thesis is that America must retain a white majority to survive as a nation. It is rooted in a blood-and-soil nationalism more blood than soil. The echoes of Nazi ideology are clear and chilling.

Didn't I tell you they were good? If you support enforcing existing Federal border laws, you're a Nazi. No middle ground will be recognized. No debate is allowed. To suggest either instantly and permanently brands you.

And here's Charles Krauthammer demonstrating (and clearly aggravating) the black/white mindset that dictates political discourse today:

President Bush should issue the following declaration, adopting Kennedy's language while changing the names of the miscreants:

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.

This should be followed with a simple explanation: "As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people."

This policy -- the Holocaust Declaration -- would establish a firm benchmark that would outlive this administration. Every future president -- and every serious presidential candidate -- would have to publicly state whether or not he supports the Holocaust Declaration.

What a great idea. All future presidential candidates will have to announce whether or not they oppose the Holocaust. I wonder how they'll answer?

As political intimidation goes, we must acknowledge that we are in the presence of greatness here. The policy he's pushing is that the US should dedicate its entire treasury and life-blood to the nation of Israel. Notice that Israel isn't even committed to sending so much as a thank-you note in return, much less assist the US if it's attacked. If you do not agree with this policy, then you're a -- well, you know what you are. And so will everyone else.

Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years

Why does the League of the South advocate buying local food, raising your own (as much as you can), and promoting local farmers? Because the global food system can't match the loyalties, community connections, and vitality of self-sustaining communities -- as this unsettling development shows:

The U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it's getting worse. That's putting the squeeze on poor families and forcing bakeries, bagel shops and delis to explain price increases to their customers.

U.S. food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 percent annual rise for the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the agency says 2008 could be worse, with a rise of as much as 4.5 percent.

Higher prices for food and energy are again expected to play a leading role in pushing the government's consumer price index higher for March.

Increases in fuel costs and soaring demand have led to disruptions in the global food supply, stoking riots in Haiti, leading to the fall of the government when it was unable to restore oder. And unrest is breaking out elsewhere, including Egypt, Bangladesh, and Mozambique. And officials see even worse problems for even developed nations:

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also speaking at the joint IMF-World Bank spring meeting, said, "If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries ... will be terrible."

He added that "disruptions may occur in the economic environment ... so that at the end of the day most governments, having done well during the last five or 10 years, will see what they have done totally destroyed, and their legitimacy facing the population destroyed also."

With the concentration of food production and distribution in this country, bottlenecks will become the rule rather than the exception. Oversized, centralized bureaucracies and corporations, because they must do things "by the book," lack the resilience and adaptability of smaller, more nimble operations, which respond faster to changing local conditions.

Smaller is not only beautiful, it's also better at adapting and surviving. Ask any dinosaur.

Support your local militia

What a crystal-clear example of spontaneous order. Iraq is overflowing with lessons, from the imperial overstretch that may finally wreck the DC empire, to shining examples of how people resist disaster and foreign domination to forge a political association of their own choosing. We should be paying closer attention.

Iraq, an artificial nation cobbled together by Britain after World War I, could only be held together by force. That was provided by a succession of ruthless leaders, the last being Saddam. Once his dictatorship was overthrown, the various ethnic and sectarian groups naturally began asserting their own vision of self-determination. But this was unacceptable to the Neocons, who were determined to make Iraq into their ideal of a harmonious, multi-ethnic democracy. Things didn't work out that way, as this article relates:

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has provided little financial assistance to the more than 2 million Iraqis who have fled the country's sectarian violence, has also failed to support millions more internally displaced persons who are instead being aided by militias, according to a report by Refugees International due for release today.

The vacuum was quickly and naturally filled by local militias, which enjoyed the support of the local population:

"Militias of all denominations are improving their local base of support by providing social services in neighborhoods and towns they control," the report says. It also finds that the Iraqi government, "although it has access to large sums of money," lacks the capacity and political will "to address humanitarian needs."

The US government condemns the Iraqi militias as "criminal gangs." Problem is, the central Iraqi government would not even exist if the US wasn't propping it up and sheltering it inside the US fortress called the Green Zone. The US-backed Iraqi government lacks "political will" because there is no shared vision among the different groups constituting this artificial, multi-ethnic mishmash to unite them and coordinate their efforts.

That's why a shared, historical culture is essential to creating and sustaining free government and individual liberty. And as an alien, contemptuous ruling elite in DC steers a gullible people toward a similar future of squabbling ethnic groups elbowing each other for control here in the US, this is a lesson we'd better pay close attention to.

Selling McCain

Well, it's started. Our handlers and their drummers have started prodding and sweet-talking conservatives into supporting John McCain as the best deal they can expect. This piece is typical:

The independent label sticks to John McCain because he antagonizes fellow Republicans and likes to work with Democrats.

No, we aren't angry at McCain for being "independent." We're angry at him him for supporting the globalist/multicult agenda in defiance of conservative values.

But this is the age of brand names, when slapping on a tag determines the value and meaning of something. So now we're being told that the real political tag that applies to John McCain is: conservative.

No, really:

But a different label applies to his actual record: conservative.

The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party's social conservatives.

Spare me. If support for the Iraq War defines one as a conservative, then the leftist atheist Christopher Hitchens, Joe Lieberman, and Labour leader Tony Blair are conservatives.

We're caught in an age where words have lost their meaning. The debate over who is and is not a conservative reminds me of the decades-long claim that true affection for the Constitution requires Americans to regard it as a "living document," which in practice argues it has no intrinsic meaning.

And the label "conservative" has been losing real meaning ever since the rise of the Neocons, who should all be found guilty of identity theft. They use conservative language to dress up a Trotskyite philosophy supporting the agenda of the globalist ruling elite. Bush illustrated the screaming contradiction of the Neocon worldview when he defended illegal immigrants by claiming they were motivated by "family values," and that granting them amnesty and citizenship was the "conservative" thing to do. Luckily, that was too absurd even for the war-crazy Bushbots.

Then there are out-and-out frauds like Andrew Sullivan, who asserts today's enlightened conservatives should support same-sex "marriage" and oppose "Christianism." He tried to rally Log Cabin Republicans to support Bush's wars as a crusade for homosexual liberation, and is all for Open Borders as long as "immigration equality" is granted to homosexuals and HIV-infected immigrants.

Are those conservative positions? I suppose so -- if Humpty Dumpty has re-defined conservatism to include John McCain, anything's possible.

Thank You, Dick Cheney, For Approving Torture

I've complained before about how increasingly difficult it is to satirize pundits and politicians in post-9/11 America. When I saw the title to this piece, my first instinct was that it was satirical. Wrong -- it's supposed to be "patriotic."

Cheney, like Bush, has not forgotten the devastation visited upon this country on September 11, 2001. He has not forgotten that efforts before that date to deal with terrorism resulted in complete and utter failure. He has not forgotten the lessons that we cannot stop people who are bent on our destruction, and have no regard for their own lives or limbs

We cannot stop them? Then why try? And has anyone thought of not welcoming them into the country in the first place?

Sadly, this piece is all too representative of an age where argument consists of screaming platitudes at anyone who disagrees. To be patriotic these days is to demand more power for the Federal government while repudiating the restraints on government power in the Bill of Rights as "protection for terrorists." Because, as this writer claims, the threat of terrorism trumps all concerns about domestic tyranny:

...if anything the Bush Administration has been too muted in explaining to America how serious the threat really is. Far from “fear-mongering,” they seem content to work behind the scenes saving our lives daily while everyone else worries about whether Europe will ever like us again.

Time for a reality check. The documented fact is that terrorism grabs headlines all out of proportion to its actual threat. Consider this from John Mueller:

...the total number of people killed worldwide by genuine al-Qaeda types and assorted wannabes outside of war zones since 9/11 averages about 300 per year. That is certainly 300 a year too many, but that number is smaller than the yearly number of bathtub drownings in the United States. Moreover, unless the terrorists are able somehow massively to increase their capacities, the likelihood that a person living outside a war zone will perish at the hands of an international terrorist over an eighty-year period is about one in 80,000. By comparison, an American’s chance of dying in an auto accident over the same time interval is one in eighty.

So if you want our Lord Protector Dick Cheney to be more effective in watching over us, he should begin monitoring our bathrooms.

Mexico cracks down on illegal Central American immigrants

Apparently, these Latinos don't live under the same moon as Mexicans:

For thousands of illegal immigrants from Central America, the long journey to the U.S. starts here, on the groaning back of a freight train they call The Beast.

But these days many don't get too far.

Central Americans without documents now face increased security within Mexico, including checks on the train for stowaways. It's also harder for them to head north once they cross into Mexico because of hurricane damage to the train tracks.

The result: The number of non-Mexican migrants stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol has dropped almost 60 percent from 2005, despite increased detention efforts. About 68,000 non-Mexican migrants — mostly Central Americans — were detained last year, compared to 165,000 in 2005. Non-Mexicans make up about 10 percent of all migrants caught by Border Patrol officers.

In the US, those who point out that illegals often work under the table for less than Americans, thereby taking American jobs, are called "extremist nativists." In Mexico, they're called "concerned Mexicans":

Many Mexicans also are sympathetic to illegal immigrants from Central America, but the issue still causes some tensions that echo the U.S. debate. Isaac Castillo, owner of the Hotel La Posada in Arriaga, argues that Central American immigrants often end up working in Mexico, where wages can be double the few dollars a day they might earn at home.

"The problem isn't just in the U.S., but in Mexico, because a lot of Central Americans want to stay here and compete with Mexicans for jobs," he said.

After all, by halting Central Americans before they can reach the US, the Mexican authorities can preserve US jobs for those who rightfully deserve them: poor Mexicans. If they didn't, they'd have to reform their corrupt kleptocracy, and that ain't happening.

Happy birthday, Thomas Jefferson!

Here's what the third president had to say about the right of secession and the threat of Hamiltonian mercantilism:

"The alternatives between which we are to choose [are fairly stated]: 1, licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2, restricted commerce, peace and steady occupations for all. If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate.' I would rather the States should withdraw which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture."

Sounds like Mr. Jefferson was right about option 1, which gave us global outsourcing, corporate welfare, the military-industrial complex, and a war whose supporters admit has no end in sight.

Which is why we want to try option 2.

Hicks Nix Slick's Tricks

Here's a video of Obama making the now-infamous talk at "Billionaire's Row" in San Francisco. This clip immediately precedes his statement about how bitter working-class whites cling to religion, guns, and xenophobia "as a way to explain their frustrations." Do note the posh surroundings, his natty outfit, and the opulence of the setting, including the audience of rich donors.

Here's the transcript, via Politico:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism.

Yeah, when these small-town folk hear something from a black man, they're less likely to believe him. I'd say Obama's paid close attention to Jeremiah Wright's sermons about whites.

Compare that to the TV commercial Obama's running here in North Carolina. Keep in mind that at the exclusive fund-raiser in San Francisco, he had put down the working class for their "anti-trade sentiment." But in this ad, the sleeves of his white shirt are rolled up, he's surrounded by admiring working-class whites, and he's railing against the globalist corporations that move their operations to China:



This "anti-spin" candidate is the best spinner I've ever seen. He's goooood!

Liberals and Neocons agree on domestic spying

Nothing but the best for DC when it comes to watching over us:

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority. ...

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

And we trust our government, don't we?

So what do liberals in Congress have to say about this? Quoting from the same article, they say it's just fine with them for the Federal government use the most sophisticated spy technology on Americans:

"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans," Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

Why would liberal Democrats support Big Brother actions like this? Because it gives them the ability to spy on right-wing "extemists." Here's Bennie Thompson again, this time, pounding on the panic button:

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, says the DHS must focus more intently on right-wing groups. "The department's responsibility includes protecting the homeland from domestic terrorists," Thompson says. "And that should mean all domestic terrorists, not just some of them."

And the article backs up Thompsons's concerns with this terrifying claim:

The Southern Poverty Law Center's estimates that 762 extremist right-wing hate groups were active in the United States last year, up slightly from the 751 groups tallied the year before.

Of course, the SPLC considers anyone who doesn't welcome 20 million illegal alien invaders as extremist. And Rep. Bennie Thompson seems to share the SPLC's definition of what constitutes extremism:

The Leading Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), tonight condemned the border security legislation passed by the House of Representatives, calling it an "extremist" proposal that does nothing to fulfill the 9/11 Commission's recommendations...

Here are the "extremist" provisions of the 2005 border security legislation:

It would require the Homeland Security Department to detain, until they can be removed from the country, all who try to enter illegally, and would set new mandatory minimum sentences on smugglers and people convicted of re-entry after removal. Illegal presence in the country, now a civil offense, would become a federal crime, and three drunken driving convictions would become a deportable offense for legal immigrants.

Bottom line: dissent from the globalist agenda is extremism.

The Real Obama

This is from the silver-tongued rock star/messiah who's going to bring us all together?

At the fundraiser in San Francisco on Sunday, Obama outlined challenges facing his presidential candidacy in the coming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana, particularly winning over white working-class voters who, he contended, fell through the cracks during the Bush and Clinton administrations.

"So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama said, according to a transcript on the Huffington Post Web site.

Yep, the Smoothie-King let the cat out of the bag this time.

Of course, one could try to explain that it's just Obama's irritation at a state that's still leaning toward Hillary. But, examined in the context of his minister's and wife's attitudes, I suspect that the real bitterness on display is Obama's actual feelings toward America's white majority.

And there's more. He's also exhibiting the sneering disdain America's ruling elite feels toward the working class. Let's not forget that Obama's a graduate of Columbia University and, like his wife, a graduate of Hah-vahd Law School. To the ruling class, the values and attitudes we see as normal and healthy are clear indicators of backwardness. To the ruling elite, our faith is mere superstition. Our loyalty toward our traditional culture is xenophobia. Our fight to preserve our jobs only reveals our blind resistance to the glories of globalism. And our determination to defend ourselves confirms their view of us as primitive brutes.

Obama sees himself as more than simply the first African-American Hawaiian president. He's going to be the first angry blue-blood president.

New options for fighting N.C. gangs?

At least they're admitting there's a gang problem here:

Law enforcement and civic leaders who gathered in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center said they faced similar problems: gangs that have been ignored for too long, that terrorize neighborhoods and recruit in public schools.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have identified more than 150 gangs operating in the city with more than 1,800 total members, said Charlotte City Council member Warren Turner, who chairs the council's community safety committee. The governor's task force on gangs has identified 14,500 gang members across the state.

Darrel Stephens, the oh-so-politically-correct Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief, has just the answer, and glory be, it's a pretty tough stance, at least for him. That is, part of his approach sounds sensible, which includes supporting legislation allowing seizure of property used in gang activities, and to add additional penalties for gang-related crimes.

But Stephens, being the political animal he is, knows how to play to the liberals, too:

Stephens said the state needed to make more of an investment, particularly to prevent children from joining gangs and to fix a juvenile justice system he said was "in need of a serious overhaul."

"We need to have an opportunity to intervene to help those who are involved in gangs to help them move away from that," he said.

Notice there's no mention that we're talking about Latino gangs. Also notice that all suggestions about what to do with these increasingly violent gangs involve an after-the-fact agenda. So there's nothing in the suggested proposals for stopping the flow of potential gang members by halting illegal immigration. As I've said before, with government, solutions are not the answer.

You can imagine my reaction when I read the final paragraph:

Civic leaders also discussed best practices -- things cities across the state and nation have done to fight gang problems. But one gang expert cautioned against programs that don't do enough to prevent gang membership among at-risk youth.

"It takes intensive work," said James "Buddy" Howell, a senior research assistant with the national gang center. "You can't fund a piecemeal program here and there and expect to heal the problem."

Yeah -- don't want a piecemeal approach. Heaven help us.

Neo-Confederacy: Another SPLC joke

Oh, look! Someone's written a book about us.

The University of Texas has published Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction. Here's the book's web site. If there's any question about the book's point of view and objectivity, just take a look at the editors: Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, and Edward H. Sebesta. Ok. Sounds like an impartial, fair-minded trio to me. I'm sure they're going to present a balanced discussion about the Southern Movement, completely free of bias or conflict of interest. It's not like they'd distort the facts to promote the SPLC's fundraising efforts or anything.

Do you think Sebesta's announcement of the book might give us a glimpse of the quality of writing we can expect? Let's take a look:

The book, of which, I am one of three editors, has been announced by the University of Texas Press.

Hmm. After witnessing such flagrant abuse of English punctuation, I have to ask: Who's editing the editors?

As for just how objective this opus will be, we get an idea from Sebesta's blog item preceding his book announcement, in which he scolds Bill Clinton for his past efforts as President of the United States to "legitimatize neo-Confederate organizations and to normalize the Confederacy."

Yep. The Southern Movement lost a fine Confederate booster when Bill Clinton left office. That's why we're so excited about Hillary's prospects. Lincoln Bedroom, here we come!

Of course, Sebesta's accusation against Bill Clinton is nothing compared to some of his other revelations. For example, as a result of his masterful research, Sebesta discovered that Tommy Hilfiger secretly incorporated Confederate insignia into his clothing designs. See for yourself:



No doubt in my mind. That's clearly the Confederate First National flag -- same colors, same shape, and even the same font for the Confederate motto, "Tommy Hilfiger." No doubt about it.

You can be just as sure about that as the fairness and even-handedness of Neo-Confederacy.

I can't wait for the movie.

Questions for war supporters

You tell us we have to fight in Iraq to preserve American liberty. This reminds me of crazy old Mrs. Leonard, who lived at the end of the road where I grew up. She wouldn't allow her dog in the house during a thunderstorm because he'd draw in lightning. So I wonder -- what's the cause and effect relationship between preserving our liberty and Iraqis resisting foreign occupation? Just how would they convert us to Islam and force our women to wear burqas if we quit occupying their country?

So ... you really believe that Bush & friends made an honest mistake about WMD and Saddam's ties to 9/11? With spy satellites, space-age communications, and massive data-gathering abilities, the Bush administration just made a boo-boo? And that they launched the first war in history on the wrong country? And if you do believe Bush Co. only made a mistake about WMD and 9/11, why should we continue to fight a war based on false premises?

Do you really believe that the only way the US can be safe in the world is to conquer it? US forces can't even pacify Iraq -- there's no way they can whup everyone into submission.

How is it that this country held true to its traditional liberties even when faced with the Nazis and and Soviets, all commanding modern, well-funded armed forces and dynamic ideologies, yet we're supposed to surrender the Bill of Rights when challenged by madmen hiding in caves?

And make no mistake about it -- the constraints on government power represented by the Bill of Rights are clearly under assault. The Bush regime has violated FISA, conducting warrantless surveillance, claims the right to declare any American outside legal protection (just like in the Soviet Union), and further claims the power to declare martial law.

There's a reason for such constraints: Government power is always abused. Always. That's what the Founders understood, and why they established tight controls over the government.

We need those controls now more than ever. Bush and Cheney frighten me more than Padilla.

One more question: Why should the Islamomeanies try to destroy our freedom when the Trotskyite Neocons are doing it for them?

Sean Connery: A new day for independence

Sir Sean makes the case for a free and independent Scotland -- and why Americans should care:

There are few more-cherished American ideals than independence. With the recent celebration of Tartan Day, established as April 6 by a U.S. Senate resolution in 1998to commemorate one of the inspirations for the Declaration of Independence -- Scotland's Declaration of Arbroath -- it is as good a time as any to tell the uniquely Scottish story of independence.

This part is especially inspiring:

In 1997, Scots spoke loudly when they voted to reinstate their Parliament. When Scottish National Party President Winifred Ewing was able to say, "The Scots Parliament, adjourned on 25th March 1707, is hereby reconvened," she touched hearts across the country.

The duly-elected Confederate Congress adjourned on 18 March 1865. Maybe our quest to reclaim self-government won't take quite as long.

Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast of US to protest war

The war has begun. Or rather, it's finally reached the home shores:

While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week's New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction - key concerns being the war and the economy - the war machine inexorably grinds on.

Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.

The Neocon Wars will no longer be something that darkens the TV screen for a few embarrassing moments as we look away. People are finally realizing that the squandered billions borrowed for a war that even Bush admits was based on false premises are starting to be felt at home. Combined with the Iraqi army's poor recent showing against the Shiite militias, Petreus' gloomy testimony before Congress, the suspension of planned troop withdrawals -- and let's not forget to throw in Bush's new record low approval rating -- and we could have an interesting summer.

A Hegelian at Gettysburg: Woodrow Wilson and the Perfect Union

Richard Wall has a great piece today on LewRockwell.com. It's a well-documented analysis of Woodrow Wilson's (tragically) successful effort to complete Abraham Lincoln's goal of forging a consolidated and centralized megastate out of the Republic of republics the Founding Fathers created. To accomplish this, Wilson had to make Southerners quit thinking of themselves as Southerners. He raised up the mythology of Lincoln as a unifying cult-figure:

On July 4, 1913 President Woodrow Wilson, who had been inaugurated exactly four months previously, went to Gettysburg to address Civil War veterans gathered to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of that decisive battle of July 1863. He was following in the footsteps of one whom he admired intensely: he had once described Lincoln as "the supreme American... a common man with genius, a genius for things American, for insight into the common thought, for mastering the fundamental things of affairs. The whole country is summed up in him" (Arthur S. Link et al. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 8, p. 378).

By completing the work Lincoln began, Wilson transformed a Federal republic into a unitary nation-state, one whose power was to be used to reconstruct the world:

Preceded by a half-dozen lesser, more local, armed interventions in foreign countries during Wilson’s presidency, United States participation in the Great War in 1917–1918 was the original act of Wilsonian global interventionism: it left an undying legacy. At home, it was accompanied by war collectivism and vicious suppression of domestic dissent, setting ominous precedents for future witch-hunts, domestic surveillance, jingoistic propaganda, and curtailments of civil liberties. In the ghastly trenches of northern France, 126,000 Americans died.

It's that legacy that Bush and the Neocons are consummating today. And of course, to accomplish this, the old restraints on government must be eliminated. That's why we now have a Federal government that claims the power to bypass such vestiges of the past as search warrants and habeas corpus. All that Constitutional stuff only gets in the way of projecting American power at home and abroad, and power is what empire is all about.

Just as Woodrow Wilson sought to erase all distinctions of region and religion, today's globalist Neocons seek to erase all individual identity and loyalty that distract from the unitary "American" identity. So not only do they attack those persistent regional loyalties, but enduring ethnic, linguistic, and religious affinities. The end result would be the unitarian ideal Southerners have consistently resisted.

The Big Box Swindle

There's a new force lighting up the political horizon, and we Southerners started it.

Localism, localvores, local food (or food patriotism), subsidiarity, regional government -- all of these powerful new trends are the offspring of Southern agrarianism. Agrarianism argued that small freeholders enjoyed greater prosperity, financial and economic independence, and, most important, as owner-operators of their own family businesses, a richer, deeper sense of belonging to one's family and the greater community. Sadly, families have been dispossessed by the giant corporations that arose with the giant nation-state. The good news is that the tide is turning.

Here's a book that exposes the waste, cronyism, and massive harm to our social and political fabric caused by the government-supported megastores. It's "The Big Box Swindle," written by Stacy Mitchell. She's with The Hometown Advantage, which promotes locally owned small business, and the Institute for Self-Reliance, which seeks to strengthen communities. I've just started the book, and intended to do a review after reading it, but am so excited about what I've seen so far, I couldn't wait to mention it.

This is from the book's web site:

Drawing on examples from virtually every state in the country, she unearths the extraordinary impact of these stores and the big-box mentality on everything from soaring gasoline consumption to rising poverty rates, failing family farms, and declining voting levels. Along the way, Mitchell exposes the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small, locally owned businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by a few large chains.

The Big Boxes, whether Wal-Mart, Lowe's, or Home Depot, may advertise themselves as community boosters and entrepreneurs, but are anything but. They enjoy political connections which they use to artificially boost profits. Taxpayers all over the country have been saddled with subsidies to these seemingly unstoppable corporation.

And of course these incentives come from taxpayers, including the local, family-owned businesses who are forced to finance their own demise. With Wal-Mart’s cheap foreign suppliers and government subsidies, no wonder local businesses cannot compete. Many small-town Main Streets have been transformed into ghost towns thanks to the nearby Wal-Mart. Not only do these “superstores” suck the life out of small towns, they also erase their unique character, too. A chain-store, “standard-operating-procedure” mentality replaces the neighbor-to-neighbor contact of small, family-owned businesses. This destroys community, which Southern traditionalists recognize as an essential foundation for the freedoms and principles that make free-market capitalism possible.

Expect to see much more on the resurgence of community, tradition, and place as a corrective to the giantism that dominated the past century.

Athens School 'Attack' Proven To Be False, Girl To Be Charged

Our earlier report of a Texas girl being attacked for her anti-illegal immigration poster was based on a lie.

As another writer has observed, "It's the "American Idol" syndrome: Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, and faking a hate crime against yourself is a quick shortcut to the limelight."

One big difference between this young lady's case and, oh, Tawana Brawley's or Crystal Mangum's is the lack of hysterical outrage from her supporters.

2008 Log Cabin Republicans National Convention

Yoo-hoo, war supporters! You don't want to miss this, so you'd better make plans now:

The Honorable John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, talks about American foreign policy and the threats we face. Immediately following his speech, Ambassador Bolton will sign copies of his new book, "Surrender Is Not an Option."

Let’s not forget how homosexual advocate Andrew Sullivan rallied the boys to support George W. Bush’s wars as a liberation movement for fellow homosexuals in the Middle East:

Can you imagine the untold stories, the unheard screams of torture, the web of fear and terror that envelopes gay people under the auspices of Islamist dictatorships where there's no escape, no hope, no refuge?

Now imagine it's you. And imagine that there's another country, miles away, with the military power to stop this in some instances. A country that allows gay freedom to an extent you and your friends cannot even dream of. How would you feel if you heard that many gay people in that country described the attempt to liberate you from this terror as "state terrorism"? How would you feel if those gay people sided not with your bid for freedom but with the dictators who oppress you? How would you feel if these gay people preferred instead to march and protest against any war to liberate their imprisoned and persecuted brothers and sisters?

One more question to war supporters: How would you feel if you found out your president played you for a fool?

The War to make the world safe for multiculturalism

Well, the emperor-worshipers lost the argument about Saddam being the mastermind of 9/11. Even Bush has admitted it. And the claim that Saddam was "assembling the world's most dangerous weapons" has not only been disproven, but the US has even agreed they never existed.

So why are American troops still being marched into the Iraq grinder?

Here's one reason: to prop up the feasibility of the multicultural state. As Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq stated in testimony today on Capitol Hill:

"Iraq has the potential to develop into a stable, secure, multiethnic, multisectarian democracy under the rule of law."

I have the potential to be Reese Witherspoon's secret lover. But the odds ain't too good.

We need more white people

That sounds familiar ...



Actually, this is about another search-and-acquire mission, this time for voters. Seems Michelle Obama's roadies had to mix 'n match the attendees at her speaking engagement in Pittsburgh so Michelle would have a multicultural backdrop when the cameras started rolling. Problem is, showing off your diversity is a hard job sometimes:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

Don't you hate it when event coordinators have to be so darned "outright"? You'd think people would have learned by now, but instead, they still tend to self-organize, requiring their handlers to keep reshuffling them. What a pain. But constant supervision and intervention are what you have to do to prop up the multicult model. As they say at the Southern Poverty Law Center, you gotta "Mix it up."

Maybe what this country needs is a Diversity Czar ... we might lose privacy, the right to associate with whom we choose, etc .. but it would look so pretty ...

The Confederate Problem

It's interesting that a distinguished journal like The Atlantic would dedicate so much space and energy on the topic of the South and its most famous symbol. The main article by Megan McArdle features some good thoughts and bad. For example:

Owning/supporting a Confederate flag is generally understood to be no more intrinsically racist than, e.g., supporting, or owning the logo of, the Washington Redskins. The understood symbolism simply isn't racial.

On the other hand, there is no getting around the history of the Confederate flag, and no excuse for that history. Whatever people may intend by it now, it was, as Matt Yglesias writes, "a banner of violent white supremacist ideology."

And the 130 and counting reader responses, as you might guess, reflect the same muddled view of Southern history and culture. Definitely worth a look.

Local vs. Leviathan

Forget the old left vs. right split. These days, it's the Empire vs. the people. Or, if you will, the Establishment vs. the Rebellion. The Establishment is in the Reconstruction business. Both at home and abroad, it lusts for change, for creative destruction, for remaking the world in its image. Is it any wonder,then, that Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, two of the most prominent sponsors of the amnesty bill for illegal alien invaders, one supposedly a conservative, and the other a progressive, are cheerleading the Empire's faltering invasion of Iraq? Here they are in the War Street Journal trying to re-fan the flames of a dying war:

Unable to make the case that the surge has failed, antiwar forces have adopted a new set of talking points, emphasizing the "costs" of our involvement in Iraq, hoping to exploit Americans' current economic anxieties.

Today's antiwar politicians have effectively turned John F. Kennedy's inaugural address on its head, urging Americans to refuse to pay any price, or bear any burden, to assure the survival of liberty. This is wrong. The fact is that America's prosperity at home and security abroad are bound together. We will not fare well in a world in which al Qaeda and Iran can claim that they have defeated us in Iraq and are ascendant.

Wonder why they put the word costs in scare quotes? Are a trillion dollars (so far) and over 4,000 dead Americans not actual costs? And you have to love their euphemism for an aggressive war and occupation as an "involvement." Iraqis resisting an alien invader have other words for their relationship with Americans.

Of course, this is par for the course for Lindsey Graham. This alleged Southern senator denounced opponents of his amnesty bill as "bigots." He also said of the Confederate flag at a McCain rally in Spartanburg that he was "... glad that DAMN flag is gone."

After all, Reconstruction isn't possible until deconstruction is finished.

US 'must suspend' Iraq withdrawal

Who says the US is still stuck in Iraq with no end in sight? This man:

The top US military leader in Iraq Gen David Petraeus has recommended a suspension of troop withdrawals after July to protect gains in Iraq.

Gen Petraeus praised "significant" but "uneven" improvements in security and said troop levels would need a period of evaluation in the summer.

Petraeus even admitted that two insurgent groups the war-bloggers claim have been defeated, the Shiite militias, and al-Qaeda in Iraq, still have the capability of resisting both the US and the feeble Iraqi puppet government. And who was the winner, and who was the loser in the recent show-down between the Iraq government and the Shiite militias? Petraeus didn't even hesitate:

Mr Levin also asked Gen Petraeus whether the recent Iraqi-led operation against militias in Basra was adequately prepared.

Gen Petraeus admitted that this was not the case.

Iraq sent thousands of troops to Basra in a failed attempt to force the Shia Mehdi Army militia into submission. Hundreds died in heavy fighting.

Nevermind, responded Insane McCain. The deaths of an additional 500 Americans in Bush's surge means "there was now a genuine chance of success in Iraq."

A chance?

Then McCain added:

"Our allies, Arab countries, the UN and the Iraqis themselves will not step up to their responsibilities if we recklessly retreat," he said.

And what will the cost be if we recklessly remain?

East Texas Teenager Attacked Over History Project

Obviously, this young lady doesn't know that in our free, diverse society, there's only one acceptable view on immigration. And apparently, only one definition of a hate crime:

It was an assignment for history class--to make a protest sign for or against an issue, and Melanie said she chose illegal immigration. Her sign read, "If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration." Somehow, Melanie said the sign got passed around lunch and angered a group of Latino students.

"I didn't know any of these people," she said. One young[ster], she claimed, jumped on her back and he put her in a choke hold. "We have brick walls in the middle school and he slammed my face on the bricks."

Melanie said a group of boys also threatened to rape and kill her. Eventually, the boys let her go and when she went for help, she was ordered back to class, and told she could not call her parents, she said.

The SPLC is on its way to Texas right now to denounce these young men for their intolerance and sexual intimidation. They'll get there any minute now ... almost there ...

Grieving Texas

Southerners' disproportional representation in the armed forces reflects their culture of loyalty and honor. As James Webb proudly proclaimed in his book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, we've always been there to take up arms, and the country couldn't have fought its wars without us. It's a proud tradition. But these days, as the unending war in Iraq grinds on, Southerners are feeling more than their share of the sacrifice, too.

Fort Hood, named after Confederate General John Bell Hood, is going through some wrenching times as the casualties mount in an alien land 7,000 miles from home. Those left behind are bravely trying to pick up the pieces and move on, but it's getting harder as the crushing toll continues with no end in sight:

The war is five years old, but in the town of Killeen, Texas, Iraq is not being forgotten.

While much of America has switched its focus to an election campaign, here there are constant reminders of the sacrifice made.

Killeen is home to America's largest military base, Fort Hood, and most of those who live here have ties with the US military. ...

Killeen has already lost more than 400 of its soldiers, leaving behind about 200 widows.

These brave dead are all Southern heroes, men who fulfilled General Hood's final orders at the Battle of Franklin: "Now, go down to the work to be done and go at it."

The Democratic Tribes at War

Interesting, though somewhat muddled observation on Anglo-Celtics today from, of all sources, Michael Barone. For one thing, he refers to us as "Jacksonians," supposedly because Andrew Jackson is one of our heroes. And he overlooks huge swaths of Dixie -- namely, North and South Carolina -- that are heavily Anglo-Celtic. I mean, if he actually read Albion's Seed, he'd know that North Carolina's Scot-Irish constitute the majority.

But I quibble. At least this political analysis provides yet another recognition of Anglo-Celtics as an ethnic group, the group that made the South the distinctive region that it is:

These are lands that were settled by the colonial-era immigrants from northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland and their descendants, who thronged down the Appalachian chain and then, like their heroes Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston, kept going southwest.

Clinton’s strong performance among Jacksonians may reflect her positive appeal (it certainly does in Arkansas), but it also seems to reflect a distaste for Obama. Buchanan County, Va., which borders the yet-to-vote states of West Virginia and Kentucky, voted 90 percent for Clinton and 9 percent for Obama.

What’s behind these sharp divisions? You could sum it up by saying that Jacksonians are fighters and academics (and public employees) are not. Jacksonians fought fierce battles against Indians as they moved southwest; they have always made up a disproportionate share of the American military (and were on both sides in the Civil War).

As historian David Hackett Fischer writes in Albion’s Seed, they believe in natural liberty — I’ll leave you alone if you’ll leave me alone, but if you attack my family or my country, I’ll kill you. Academics are, to say the least, lightly represented in the American military, and in economic terms they tend to compete with the military for public dollars. They seek honor for the work of peace as fiercely as Jacksonians seek honor for the feats of war.

Not so sure about that last line, but he's right about our belief in natural liberty, which is why we do not believe in big government. Sadly, the present system does not allow us to select policies or candidates reflecting those cultural values.

Gang-member violence climbing in courts

Here’s a disturbing new trend, one that nobody could’ve foreseen when DC made Open Borders our de facto policy. Our legal system is reeling under the threat of Latino gang violence. What could explain incidents like these?

Even as Los Angeles County's sprawling court system seeks to mete out justice, security is becoming a growing concern as the number of threats against its 600 judges, commissioners and referees has more than doubled in the past two years.
Threats against court personnel surged from 99 in 2006 to 267 last year, according to court records. And as violence and threats have risen, security costs have soared from $132 million three years ago to $169 million.

In recent years, a court commissioner and his wife were gunned down at their home, a judge's child was threatened at school, an attorney was shot repeatedly outside the Van Nuys Courthouse, and a judge's wife was kidnapped and killed.
"It's rare when a week goes by and I don't get some kind of call from the sheriff about a threat or something else involving our courts," Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge J. Stephen Czuleger said. …

At the San Fernando Courthouse, Judge Ronald S. Coen said he supports more court security, particularly after a March 2005 incident in which a member of the Mara Salvatrucca gang - on trial for a double murder - used a concealed razor blade to slash the arm of his public defender.

Hold on – I do recall a story about a similar culture of mistrust and lawlessness – and it might just explain what’s happening in Los Angeles. See what you think:

The northern Mexican city of Monterrey is reeling from last week's execution of a state judge who had handled cases against several dangerous drug traffickers, and death threats against at least three fellow judges. Three days earlier, a municipal judge in the state of Sinaloa was found tortured and executed.

The violence has sparked worry that Mexico's already weak judicial system could be coming under a Colombia-like onslaught.

"Narco-traffickers are working to destroy the rule of law and it's obvious that judges, like police before them, are targets," said Michael Nuñez Torres, a legal expert at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon.

In response, Mexican lawmakers have proposed hiding the identity of judges, similar to what Colombia did during the height of that country's drug violence in the 1980s and '90s, when scores of judges were assassinated.

Oh, yes, secret judges – the perfect symbol of authoritarian government. So could the rise of similar behavior in Los Angeles possibly be a warning that the same authoritarianism could take root here?

Why, of course not!

However, there are those who predict it will. Yes, certain unenlightened dissidents actually claim that when there are enough people living here who don’t trust American institutions and do not share our reverence for the rule of law, only an absolute Leviathan can maintain order.

So let's clear this up and review facts that EVERYONE knows to be true:

1 – Latinos express our deepest values when they illegally enter our country because they’re motivated by family values to improve their way of life.

2 – A nation’s culture, including the rule of law, comes from the noble ideals proclaimed by university professors and politicians, so the country’s ethnic make-up doesn’t matter.

3 – Diversity strengthens and enriches us all.

4 – The tragic murders of judges, attorneys, and their families in Los Angeles are either random incidents, or -- more likely -- the result of white racism in Alabama.

Got that? Don’t make me repeat myself.

The real cost of immigration

As the economy continues to constrict, this long-overlooked and vehemently denied drain is finally getting some of the attention it requires. Noting that the actual cost of immigration has not interested the Federal government, it provides well-documented figures the Open Borders lobby would prefer you not see:

The 70-page study was conducted by Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Edwin S. Rubenstein. As senior economist at W.R. Grace & Co. in the 1980s, he directed in-depth studies of government waste for the Grace Commission that sparked much popular outrage against Washington's spendthrift habits.

Rubenstein found that each immigrant costs taxpayers more than $9,000, while every immigrant household of four costs $36,000 in taxes. That's far more than the $3,408 in 2007 dollars the National Research Council's 1997 "New Americans" study of federal, state and local government expenditures found immigrants to cost.

Why hasn't DC bothered to document this earlier? Here's a hint, provided toward the end of the report:

Washington has been paralyzed for many years on immigration policies because advocates of restricted immigration are routinely accused of nativism and racism.

Hmmm ... now who would be spreading ideas like that? It's enough to make you think someone wants to prevent actual debate on immigration.

Aircraft bombings in "revenge for Iraq"

From the "Whodathunkit" department: Muslims are actually mad at the US and Britain for killing innocent Iraqis:

Six Britons accused of plotting to blow up at least seven transatlantic airliners recorded martyrdom videos saying the attacks were revenge for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a London court heard on Friday. ...

"If you think you can go into our lands and do what you are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and keep on supporting those who are fighting against Muslims and think it will not come back on your own doorstep may you have another think coming," Umar Islam, one of the eight defendants said.

Luckily, they were bozos who were caught in the planning stage. But it's obvious that sooner or later, some non-bozos will try something similar. It's just a matter of time. Maybe that's why 98.2 percent of recently polled historians assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure. Yeah -- launching a disastrous war based on lies that wrecked our reputation and economy could very well be classed a failure.

In an Absolute Dixie World

With all the fuss over a little reconquista in advertising, we thought we'd respond in kind:

US lawmakers hold $196 million in defense companies

In business, that would be referred to as conflict of interest. In Congress, it's interest in conflict.

Why Neocons love MLK

Now why would a Neoconservative war booster like Cal Thomas pay such homage to a leftist icon like Martin Luther King? Here he is, on this anniversary of King's assassination:

Much has been written and spoken of that horrible day 40 years ago. Much more will be written and spoken in decades to come. King is as much a part of American history as is Abraham Lincoln. Why do evil men so often take from us those who seek to do good? ...

King sent out more than a ripple of hope, he sent out a flood. Without him there might not have been a civil rights movement, at least not one as effective in breaking the chains of injustice. That's a legacy that should make all Americans proud. That's why King deserves more than a national holiday. In what he said about race and brotherhood, he deserves to be followed.

The oh-so-politically-correct Charlotte Observer chimes in harmoniously with this hymn to King in the same op-ed section -- and notice the little hint it drops as to what it is about MLK that both liberals and Neocons like:

Four decades later, some observers still lament that. They also lament that since Dr. King's death the quest for civil rights and equal justice remains unfulfilled and in many ways stalled. A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies shows wide disparities in health, education and income of whites, with whites much better off than blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. The per capita income of blacks is 57 cents for every dollar whites make, just three cents more than it was 40 years ago.

That quote tells us why liberals revere King's legacy. They're the first to scream that it's "racist" to guard our border with Mexico. But now that we've imported all these poor people here, suddenly, it's our obligation to do something about all that poverty. And that means more social programs, more bureaucracy, more taxes to pay for them -- all the things liberal social engineers love.

But the same editorial also tells us what makes Neocons want to jump on the MLK bandwagon:

No voice is speaking out against such failings with the power that Martin Luther King's brought in 1968. That's shameful. It's also detrimental to the continued prosperity of this country. Dr. King said it best: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

This justifies intervention everywhere, whether at home or abroad. If you’ve ever wondered why the media, government, and the education system hype the King myth, it's about the projection of US power. King’s renovated persona and myth (since his actual character isn't quite as admirable) are the key to perpetuating and spreading the power of the DC ruling elite domestically and internationally. King now personifies the Civil Rights revolution that DC launched in the late 1950’s and early 60’s to counter what was then DC’s greatest rival on the world stage, the Soviet Union.

Like its old rival, the Soviet Union, the US projects itself as a “proposition nation” uniquely committed to equality, human rights, and diversity. The Soviets had likewise asserted that their forces represented the triumph of the Enlightenment virtues of liberation and equality.

Khrushchev launched a campaign to bring communism to the African nations emerging out of the 19th century’s colonial empires, hoping to utilize resentment against the West to set up client states throughout the continent.

Interestingly, the more immediate result of Khrushchev’s focus on communist revolution in the former colonies in Africa was felt in the US. The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations, despite the private prejudices of many top leaders, committed the US to a Civil Rights agenda at home to diminish the appeal of “African Socialism” at home and abroad. When President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to enforce integration, he was elbowing the Soviets aside with the US brand of universalism and equality. The US eventually turned its commitment to civil Rights into a sweeping domestic policy of coerced equality that enabled the Federal government to expand its power into all facets of private life, not too different from the Soviet example. It was at the same time that DC radically altered its immigration policy with the 1965 Immigration Act which, despite assurances it would not change America’s ethnic makeup, was obviously designed to do just that. This was done to make the US appear to be even more of a “universal” nation than its Soviet rival.

So not only has DC’s crusade for equality paid off with more power at home—the dream of every ruling class—but it has also provided the perfect cover for an aggressive foreign policy that keeps the military-industrial complex funded. In Iraq, as we’ve been lectured repeatedly, US military forces are there to spread democracy.

As King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." And the Neocons' Trotskyite roots assume their universalist revolution must expand or die.

Ronald Reagan, who signed the legislation making MLK day a national holiday, knew what he was doing. It was Reagan who pulled America's military to its feet after the debacle of Vietnam and got it fighting and winning again with play wars in Panama and Grenada to boost its confidence. By adopting King's legacy as official US policy, Reagan legitimized and sanitized the projection of American power.

Bush's Secretary of State even made this explicit:

Condoleezza Rice, the most senior black woman in the Bush administration, has levelled a charge of racism against critics of the US drive to bring Western freedoms to the Middle East.

In an unusually personal speech, Miss Rice, the national security adviser to President George W Bush, said the push to bring democracy and free markets to the Middle East was "the moral mission of our time", to be compared with the civil rights movement that ended racial segregation in America. ...

Black Americans should stand by others seeking freedom today, she went on, and shun the "condescending" argument that some races or nations were not interested in or ready for Western freedoms.

"We've heard that argument before. And we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it," she said. "That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."

You don't support the war? You don't want the Federal government to have even more power to do good? Then you've failed to follow the example of Dr. King. Shame.

The Truth about 9/11!

Occasionally, I'll get an email from someone demanding that I learn the truth about 9/11. "It was an inside job." Uh-huh.

It's those kind of emails that the "Delete" key was made for. As a matter of fact, I tend not to believe conspiracy theories in general. It's not that I don't believe our rulers aren't evil -- they are. But in my experience, people, especially people in big organizations, cannot coordinate and keep tight-lipped enough to pull off any secret plot bigger than a surprise birthday party. I've worked as a project manager in big corporations. The astonishing thing is that they get anything done at all without wounding themselves. I've seen too many big ideas crash and burn to believe a massive, intricate operation can be pulled off so effectively in utter secrecy.

I think this Onion video says it all, in which an "Al-Qaeda" spokesman assails a "truther" author for saying the US government was really behind 9/11. My favorite quotes: "Yes, the Bush administration is a den of jackals, so we have some common ground there." "How would you like it if you spent two months in a cave, sleeping on rocks, planning something really special, only to have someone take the credit away from you?"


9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Quote of the day

"Bush hijacked 9/11 and flew it into Iraq."

Seen on the Intertubes

Most Americans say U.S. on wrong track, poll says

Looks like it's not just the crazy people in the League of the South who realize something's fundamentally wrong with this country:

The CBS News-New York Times poll released Thursday showed 81 percent of respondents said they believed "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track." That was up from 69 percent a year ago, and 35 percent in early 2002.

The survey comes as housing turmoil has rocked Wall Street amid an economic downturn. The economy has surpassed the war in Iraq as the dominating issue of the U.S. presidential race, and there is now nearly a national consensus that the United States faces significant problems, the poll found.

Look at the bright side -- other than being caught in the grip of a self-serving, exploitive, destructive oligarchy, we're just fine.

The Republican Police State

Thomas DiLorenzo sees more parallels between the Lincoln and Bush regimes. No surprise there -- after all, Bush did say Lincoln was his favorite president.

General Odom on Mr. Lincoln's War

Remember when the red-white-and-bloodthirsty crowd screamed for Ron Paul's head because he said Lincoln did not fight the Civil War to free slaves, but to consolidate power in DC?

Well, testifying before the US Senate yesterday, Lt. General William Odom said pretty much the same thing:

Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.

The Kagans are Krazy

While real military men are stunned by the Iraqi army's poor performance against the Mahdi militia, my favorite armchair generals see it as yet another glorious victory. This latest rah-rah for Bush's invasion is their most psychedelic pronouncement yet. (Warning: the following sentence may induce vertigo.)

The legitimate Government of Iraq and its legally-constituted security forces launched a security operation against illegal, foreign-backed, insurgent and criminal militias serving leaders who openly call for the defeat and humiliation of the United States and its allies in Iraq and throughout the region.

Ok. Take a deep breath. Remember, this is Freddy and Li'l Kim Kagan.

I warned you, didn't I? In the world of Kagan, the US puppet government in Iraq is the legitimate government, and any group or individual opposed to an alien occupation army is illegal and the tools of foreigners. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Maliki government has almost no authority outside its American fortress. The militias, on the other hand, enjoy the support of the people, who look to them for protection -- otherwise, they couldn't survive.

And these two keyboard commandos realy imagine the Iraqi forces did well? When Maliki vowed to destroy the militias, and ended up backing off, leaving them in place? And why has the US changed its mind about troop withdrawal plans? Finally, let’s not forget that a thousand Iraqi troops refused to fight. Sounds like Vietnam to me.

One Neocon article of faith we see in this bizarre screed is the idea of the US as the legitimate power everywhere it goes. I'm convinced they believe this because they see the US as a universal melting pot. So whenever the US decides to invade a country, it really isn’t an “invasion,” you see, because we’re all the same—anyone from anywhere can be seen in a US uniform, so it’s not like aliens are coming into your country to take over. No matter what country is receiving its well-armed guests, it’s likely some of the troops are from that country. So instead of a home invasion, it’s more like a homecoming.

This married pair selling the Neocon agenda reminds me of husband and wife realtor ads with the cutey-pie motto, "Spouses selling houses." Only with the Kagans, it's "Newlyweds selling bloodshed."

Chinese Spy 'Slept' In U.S. for 2 Decades

Now that's patience:

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the "perfect sleeper agent," though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night.

Eventually, Mak's job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China -- fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say he had been planning since the 1970s.

Mak was sentenced last week to 24 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge who described the lengthy term as a warning to China not to "send agents here to steal America's military secrets." But it may already be too late: According to U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials, the Mak case represents only a small facet of an intelligence-gathering operation that has long been in place and is growing in size and sophistication.

And Mak appeared to be the kind of immigrant the Open Borders crowd would point to as the model new American. A hard worker who took paperwork home -- yeah, to make copies of it. When will we ever learn?

The larger problem is that the quickly vanishing American identity no longer instills loyalty. Who wants to identify with a culture that proudly proclaims it does not exist? That's what multiculturalism says: this chunk of land has no soul, no heritage, no character. It will assume the personality of whoever cares to occupy it. People who reside here do so just to turn a quick buck. They have no more loyalty or affection for this country than do residents of an extended-stay motel.

So look for more stories like this.

Tibet unrest spreads to Muslim separatists in China who demand home rule

See what one heroic example can do? It can inspire others:

Muslim separatists demanding independence for China’s westernmost region have massed in a southern Silk Road oasis to protest against Beijing rule, stirred up by recent riots in Tibet.

Officials in Khotan said that about 100 people had been detained after several hundred members of the Uighur Muslim minority staged a demonstration in a marketplace in the city on March 23.

Taiwan, Tibet, the Uighurs -- China is just another oversized monstrosity feeling the centrifugal forces. Don't you just know American leftists are rooting for the central government against the people, just as they did for the old Soviet Union?

Salmond to Virginians: Scotland should be free

Addressing a packed room at the University of Virginia, Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland and the leader of the Scottish National Party, called for a referendum on independence for the people of Scotland. This passage was particularly striking:

Salmond’s visit marked the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. Senate’s passage of its Tartan Day Resolution that acknowledged that Scotland’s Declaration of Arbroath may have helped inspire the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Arbroath, sealed in 1320, stated that Scotland was independent from England and that Robert the Bruce was the true king of Scotland. The document is believed to be Europe’s statement of a contractual relationship between the government and the governed. If the Scottish king failed to protect the rights of his citizens, the document says, the people have the right to remove the monarch.

The Declaration of Arbroath presaged the Declaration of Independence by 450 years. It is fitting, Salmond said, that American ideals were inspired by Scotland, just as Scotland is now inspired by American principles in its drive for independence.

“It is to America that we can look to see the power of independence and the importance of democratic principles,” he said. “It is therefore to Thomas Jefferson that we can legitimately look for guidance on the principles and conduct of our national debate. And it is the words of Thomas Jefferson that will inspire today and in the years ahead: ‘We are capable of self-government, and worthy of it.’”

If you've ever wondered about the level of vehemence the mainstream media has toward Southerners, Salmond's quotation of Jefferson should clear the air. The leftists, the multi-cults, and the worshippers of state power realize their rule is getting shakier every day. They must constantly make us ashamed of who we are so we believe our ancestors deserved to be conquered and that we do not deserve self-determination.

It would have been interesting if Salmond had referred to Virginia's own efforts to achieve independence. Here's a quote from Jefferson that's even more pertinent to what Mr. Salmond was talking about:

"If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate.' I would rather the States should withdraw which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture." --Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816

Can't quit smoking? Blame your genes

Forget looking for the smoking gun. They've found the smoking gene.

Obama scoffs at deportations

He's not just scoffing at deportations, he's scoffing at us:

Sen. Barack Obama told voters worried about illegal immigration yesterday that deporting 12 million people is not "realistic," calling it an "honest conversation" during one of his final stops while trying to make inroads with Pennsylvania's blue-collar workers.

A man asked the presidential hopeful what he would do about border security. In his response, Mr. Obama posed the question about what to do with the people here illegally, prompting someone in the audience of his town hall forum to shout "Send them home!"

"We are not going to send them home," the Illinois Democrat argued. "I want us to have an honest conversation about this."

Bottom line: We will not be permitted to question DC's demographic reconstruction of America. No one who supports border security and preserving our traditional demogaphics will be a candidate for Coyote-in-chief.

If Hillary manages to "steal" the Democratic nomination from Obama, McCain might just have the perfect choice for running mate.

Secret service orders photographer to delete pictures

Bush, the conquering hero, enters the arena to receive the adulation of the mobs, but is instead booed. It was like a flashback to Gladiator:



And it seems one of the scribes, I mean, reporters covering the event incurred the displeasure of one of the boy-emperor's Praetorian Guards:

9NEWS NOW photographer Greg Guise was rolling when an officer approached Mark Butler. Butler said the officer demanded he delete any pictures that showed the security checkpoints set up to screen fans for the visit by President George Bush.

"It's kind of like not being in America," Butler said. Butler said he was not interested in the security but in the part of the stadium you could see beyond the gate.

Yeah -- kind of like. But then, "America" no longer refers to the people, culture, and heritage of freedom and self-government that made America what it once was. In the multicultural Empire, loyalty to "America" is supposed to mean obedience to the central government, and absolute reverence for the Commodus-in-Chief.

Toward An Independent Republic of California

Self-described "centrist" Ben Samuel asks, "Should a vibrant California allow itself to be dragged down by a declining United States?" Among the reasons he lists for an independent California Republic, this one caught my eye:

Except for its relationship to the United States, it would not likely be a target to terrorist interests. Given the mismanagement of the United States, California's interests will not be served, and it ought not to allow itself to be marched off the cliff with the other lemmings.

DC's legal thuggery isn't about to end anytime soon. International mayhem disguised as liberation and anti-terrorism is DC's only export. And since the three leading "mainstream" candidates all promise to keep the military-industrial machinery well-oiled and running, it's obvious this system has blocked up any and all paths toward reform. The ONLY way to escape the hideous costs and consequences of DC's self-serving but ruinous policies is to achieve escape velocity.

The Whole Enchilada

UN Issues Apology To Neanderthals

This fits in nicely with today's blog:

NEW YORK, NY - The United Nations today passed a resolution apologizing on behalf of the human race to Neanderthal man, for "egregious and shameful" treatment in the past. Anthropologists have known for years that modern man disenfranchised Neanderthals from ancient society to the extent that they caused their extinction. New evidence suggests that Neanderthals resorted to cannibalism in an effort to survive, a horrific revelation that prompted the U.N. to take action.

The Vidalia

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Lincoln Memorial closes, staff and Abe get pink slips

Abraham Lincoln, pictured above, now spends his days watching TV at home. He’s been collecting unemployment since he lost his job at the memorial that bears his name. Photo courtesy AP (Absurdist Press)

Washington, DC - Once the most popular destination in Washington, DC, the Lincoln Memorial has permanently closed, and the once-proud structure is already undergoing demolition. “The number of visitors has been declining for years,” said Wilbur Ogilsbie, the director for tourism in the nation’s capital. “But after the publication of The Real Lincoln and The South Was Right, people started to realize the kind of man they were honoring.”

Ogilsbie admitted the entire District has been losing its appeal to tourists for some time. “Actually, it’s not just the Lincoln Memorial, but everything about DC that people don’t want to have anything to do with.” He grins sheepishly and shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, face it, we’re the source of the worst sex scandals, disastrous wars, crooked politicians, and high taxes. Washington is more and more viewed as something to avoid, not visit.” He glances over his shoulder as a bulldozer trundles over the marble columns. “And Lincoln was responsible for everything DC came to symbolize. I guess you could call this poetic justice.”

The site’s owner, the Chinese National Bank, plans to convert the memorial into a noodle shop.

Ed Sebesta forms Confederate Reenactment Unit

Photo courtesy AP (Authentic Photoshop)

Dallas, Texas – Talk about a change of heart.

When nationally known anti-Neo-Confederate researcher and author Ed Sebesta discovered he was related to a famous Confederate general, he couldn’t believe it. “At first I tried to deny it. But the more I learned about my great-great-great-uncle, the more I came to admire him,” admits Sebesta. “He was just an antique dealer in New Orleans when the war broke out. He joined as a private, but he had such a way with the men that he quickly rose to the rank of general.” The pride on Sebesta’s face is unmistakable.

The smile vanishes, and he turns serious. “Finally, I had to make a choice. When I did, my old acquaintances at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the media were stunned.”

Sebesta’s Confederate ancestor was the famous General Beauregard Q. Highbottom, the master strategist who won the Battle of Brokeback Mountain. His famed Lavender Legion was noted for its unique camaraderie and strict discipline. The legion’s performance in countless battles validated its motto, “We always hold up our end.”

Dressed in the stylish uniform of his ancestor, Sebesta leans back in his wooden rocker, takes a long, thoughtful draw from his cigar, and scans the grassy field where his reenactment unit has bivouacked.

I ask him about his past comments about the Confederacy, and the South in general. He looks me in the eyes before he answers.

“It was all envy," he finally admits. "Here was something glamorous and heroic, and I felt left out.” He stands and grasps a nearby flagpole topped by the Confederate Battleflag. “Just expressions of envy on my part. But no more. Now I’m part of the team.”

“General” Sebesta excuses himself to prepare his men for the day’s activities. “I’m part of a proud legacy,” he says. “And I intend to keep it going.”

World’s largest Confederate flag appears in peanut field

Photo courtesy AP (Alcoholic Photographer)

Vexilla, Georgia - Officials in this small Georgia community cannot explain the appearance this morning of a gigantic Confederate Battleflag image in a peanut field near town. Mayor Joe Quimby confesses he’s stumped. “We’ve had some hippies and Shirley MacLaine types cutting crop circles around here before, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

A number of possibilities are being looked into, including the nearby Innskeep Air Force Base, which hangars up to nine Harrier hover jets capable of such a feat. The duty roster reveals that all the pilots are from the South, and that two of these jets were in flight late last evening. And earlier, there was an officer’s cookout where copious quantities of Mint Juleps were served. However, none of the pilots admits to creating the Battleflag with his jet.

The investigation is continuing.