Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“It's amazing that people demand more accountability from their favorite sports team. Any head coach who notoriously overspends a team's budget and has no strategy for success other than eloquent speeches about ‘victory’ and ‘sportsmanship’ would quickly be shown the door... .. and yet, a political system in which malignant forces steal resources from the productive, waste the vast majority on folly, and redistribute the breadcrumbs in order to buy votes and maintain the status quo, is hailed as 'rule of the people.’”
Simon Black

“When we say ’John is a patriot,’ we mean ‘John is a reliable member of our dog pack,’ nothing more. The pack instinct seems more ancient, and certainly stronger, than morality or any form of human decency. Thus, once the pack – citizenry, I meant to say – have been properly roused to a pitch of patriotism, they will, under cover of the most diaphanous pretexts, rape Nanking, bomb Hiroshima, kill the Jews or, if they are Jews, Palestinians. We are animals of the pack. We don’t admire patriotism. We admire loyalty to ourselves.”
Fred Reed

“Government is a blunt instrument that works in top-down fashion. Freedom is something that must bubble up from the grassroots if it is to be genuine and enduring. Oppressed populations will not have decent nations built by outsiders. They will have to make their own nations decent.”
Sheldon Richman

“The state serves only itself — and demands that you serve it too. Like any parasite, it will happily kill its host to further engorge itself. Your only possible escape from that fate is to pry its teeth out of your skin, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it, hard.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“So what is all this talk about democracy that they are feeding us? Why is Obama promising billions of American dollars to support these emerging Middle Eastern democracies and “human rights”? What’s the real agenda, for it sure isn’t what he says it is. I think we all feel the real agenda intuitively or in our bones: the power to control events and keep people in their place. If the dictators no longer can control the people in these countries in accord with U.S. aims, then switch over to ‘democracy‘, in which the control rests in the hands of representatives and parliaments. America is a prime example of how that works out.”
Michael S. Rozeff

“Though the ‘United States of America’ is in a terminal condition, ‘America’ – as a social system – may yet survive. America preceded the nation-state and, if we can revisit the basic assumptions that underlay the ‘founding fathers’ efforts, we may discover why conditions in which peace, liberty, and respect for life must take precedence over edicts offered by rulers who smirk and strut as they demand obedience to their every whim.”
Butler Shaffer

“Government, we are told from earliest childhood, after all, is the very repository of peace, order, justice, and the one enabling factor that allows human progress to continue. Yet, the most cursory examination, in ways far too numerous to cover in a single essay, demonstrates conclusively that this is anything but true; that in fact government – both as an idea and manifest institution – is the polar opposite of all of these things, and further, affords the individual no choice but to comply or be harmed.”
Alex R. Knight III

“There is always some great excuse for the trashing of the human freedom that built civilization as we know it. If the state cannot find one, it is glad to invent one. A population that is ideologically gullible or afraid for its security can permit government to run roughshod over people’s rights and liberties, and a government that gains such power never gives it back on its own. Rights and liberties must be reclaimed by the people themselves, and the spark that makes this happen is reversing the conditions that permitted the rise of statism. The people must lose their gullibility through ideological enlightenment, and they must lose their sense of fear that the world will fall apart if the tyrant is not in control.”
Lew Rockwell

“Terrorists have no ships, planes or tanks. They don’t even have uniforms. Terrorism is a tactic, not a form of government. Our liberty was never threatened by ‘radical Islam‘, but rather by the establishment that has ruled this country for close to a century.
The greatest threat of all comes from the millions of Americans who have allowed this establishment so much power with no regard to the consequences.”
Doug Newman

“A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.”
Anonymous

“We kill people, that kill people, to show people, that killing is wrong.”
A comment on You Tube

******************************************************************

From the Darkness:

"While a policy of non-intervention is sometimes appropriate, the doctrine of non-interventionism leads to isolationist policies that limit the options available to America, weakening its ability to defend freedom. It is a limitation the Founders did not adopt, and neither should today’s lawmakers."

Marion Smith, The Heritage Foundation

"The base budget of the United States military, in my view, shouldn't shrink. The rate of growth can be slowed down, but it shouldn't shrink in absolute terms."
Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty

“He’s fighting for an amendment to protect the right – not of average citizens, but of terrorists – to cover up their gun purchases."
Sen. Harry Reid, after Rand Paul helped introduce an amendment to the PATRIOT Act on Monday that attempts to safeguard American’s civil liberties by increasing oversight of government surveillance powers

"You know, I'm 70 years old. And I can tell you, people don't like to deal with it, but the fact of the matter is, the president's problems are in large measure because of the color of his skin."
House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn

“Do I like foreign aid? Sometimes, but not every time. Don’t like giving money to our enemies, but I love giving money to Israel. And so there’s a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God’s hand and we’re in big time trouble.”
Rep. Dan Webster

“This is where I start having problems with you Libertarians: Everything is just black or white when it comes to money and what’s worth it and how is it worth, is it being spent and so forth. Calling Israel a `welfare queen’ compared to what the kind of money we waste domestically in this country, there has to be a value attached here. There has to be …. I think they’re a great ally. We, as the superpower of the world, have to do these kind of things to maintain our own position as a superpower.”

Rush Limbaugh [I quit listening to Rush in 1998 as I outgrew him intellectually.  It looks like his head remains in the same intellectual (though profitable) rut I left him.]

“I worship the ground that [US House Budget chairman] Paul Ryan walks on.. I hope he doesn’t run for president because that would ruin a good man who has a lot of work to do.”
Dick Cheney

“We look to Pakistan, to the Government of Pakistan, to take decisive steps in the days ahead.”
Queen Hillary, per her style, dictating orders to others

“Osama bin Laden is dead but al-Qaeda and his syndicate of terror remain a serious threat to us both.”
Queen Hillary, keeping the fear and myth alive

"I want the American people to understand we've got to leave room [in the federal budget] for us to continue our tradition of providing leadership when it comes to freedom, democracy, human rights."
B. Obama, wanting to continue spending money he doesn’t have
 
“If [Texas] HB 1937 [a bill that would make invasive pat downs by TSA agents a felony] were enacted, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute. Unless or until such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew. We urge that you consider the ramifications of this bill before casting your vote.”
U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy, threatening to cripple the airline industry in Texas if legislators did not back down on the legislation

Remember

Back in 2004 I wrote an essay entitled, “Remember.” It’s an alternative view of Memorial Day. I just completed a slideshow based around that essay:

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
"We go there, and they come here. That’s the root excuse for a U.S. police state. That cause is going unaddressed by the U.S. government. Its ambitions are just the opposite, which means it doesn’t care about a peaceful and carefree America. It’s short-sighted to think that they come here out of the blue or for no reason or because they suddenly hate us or because they hate freedom or because they are Muslims. They come here because we have gone there. This is the blowback, that and a self-imposed police state. Childish joy over the death of one man murdered in Pakistan doesn’t cut it. It’s not a solution. It doesn’t address the root, which is we go there, they come here."
Michael S. Rozeff

“The essence of human civilization comes not from arbitrary, mob-created democratic law, but rather from voluntary contract, voluntary exchange, peaceful coexistence, and private property rights. The defense of the values and the creation of law to support them does not require ballot boxes or of mob decision making of any kind. It only requires that individual men come to believe in peace, prosperity and property, and that they reject individuals and organizations that destroy these values. This includes, first and foremost, the taxing, war-making, regulating and suffocating democratic state.”
Mark Crovelli

“Our wars and their impact are kept in remarkable isolation from what passes for public affairs in this country, leaving most Americans with little knowledge and even less say about whether they should be, and how they are, waged.
In this sense, our wars are eerily like those pursued by European monarchs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: conflicts carried out by professional militaries and bands of mercenaries, largely at the whim of what we might now call a unitary executive, funded by deficit spending, for the purposes of protecting or extending the interests of a ruling elite.”
William J. Astore

“It’s amazing how scared people are of Freedom but quite comfy with soft tyranny and incremental socialism.”
Brian Wilson

"When a person administers justice by his own hand, they call him a
murderer. When the State does it, they call it a heroic act.
The promise of the State to guarantee our security was a lie. It was an excuse for robbery, deceit, murder, unlimited power and crime on a grand scale. The greater criminals are called Politicians and they live off our money."
Jorge Valin

“The crime of ‘illegal immigration,’ like all victimless crimes that outlaw peaceful, noninvasive acts, ultimately translates to: ‘You don’t own yourself—the state does.’
Contrary to shrieks that a sovereign state has the right to protect its borders, a state can have no rights at all, at least not in any legitimate, moral sense. Only human beings have rights, and those are violated by dictates that determine where you can and can’t live.”
David D'Amato

“When it comes to politics, the mass of people never learn, because the mass of people cannot think, only feel; they don’t follow principles, only leaders. And they are always convinced their guy is Good and his opponent is Evil.
After splitting everything into pure good and pure evil, the next step is to see yourself (meaning your political party) as the Good Guys, meaning you have to project all badness onto the other party.”
Bob Wallace

“Government, specifically that particularly malignant form known as The State, has had several thousand years to do what its supporters claim as the reasons we must put up with it. And every single form it has taken over those countless generations, and every time it has been tried, it has failed to fulfill the justifications. Every time without exception. Remind me again why 'we' put up with this heavy and filthy baggage we keep dragging around?"
Kent McManigal

“The number of murders, massacres, and whole wars fought in the name of a peaceful carpenter who taught people to turn the other cheek and forgive just shows you how capable of willful ignorance and self-serving myopia people are.”
Doug Casey

*********************************************************************

From the Darkness:

"So far there have been hardly any civilian casualties [in Libya] as a result of the extreme care Nato has taken in the selection of bombing targets. If any risk is posed to Libya's civilian population then we do not hit the target. No one wants to kill innocent civilians."

General Sir David Richards, the head of the British Armed Forces [Yea, right, we believe you.]

"I told President Bush once that I wanted to be the one to execute him [bin Laden]. Revenge is not a noble sentiment, but it is a human one. ... When it [news of bin Laden's death] first happened, I wondered, 'Well, did he just die of natural causes?' That would have been somewhat unsatisfying. The fact that the American military caught him and brought him to justice I think will make a lot of people feel better in a way that's almost hard to describe.”
Rudy Giuliani, getting a revenge hard on

“What’s our take on the Texas House of Representatives voting to ban the current TSA pat-down? Well, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article. VI. Clause 2) prevents states from regulating the federal government.”
From the TSA Blog [They’ve conveniently ignored the fourth and tenth amendments of that same document.]

"As I have said before, Congress must meet its responsibility to protect the nation's full faith and credit by increasing the debt limit."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner [If it’s a “limit” than how can you increase it?]

“Well the way I look to out it is, from the standpoint of the United States, we’re involved in a limited, kinetic action."
Robert Gates, when asked if the US is at war with Libya

"In the last decade, our focus in the region was largely on Iraq, which was a military effort, and on the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the fight against al -Qaida. That fight against al-Qaida continues, but there is an opportunity in that region to focus on advancing our values and enhancing our security, and that's what the president looks forward to discussing in his speech."
Jay Carney, White House spokes-idiot, previewing The Emperor’s upcoming speech promoting billions of new aid for the (new) Middle East dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries

“This story [about Schwarzenegger’s love child] and the John Edwards story before it illustrate that the internet can tear human beings apart because there are no boundaries. Thousands of websites spew horrendous stories about all kinds of people especially those seeking political power.”
Bill O’Reilly

“There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”
Newt Gingrich, blaming his cheating on wives on love of country. [What a creative, new way to spin adultery.]

"We have every reason to be proud of the bin Laden operation. Let's live up to our secrecy oath in protecting it so that our agency can look forward to even greater accomplishments in the future."
CIA Director Leon Panetta, warning CIA employees to keep the myth alive

"This fight isn't over, first of all. Secondly, when you now extend that to concern with individuals in the military and their families, from my perspective it is time to stop talking.... [about the bin laden mission] And we have talked far too much about this. We need to move on. It's a story that, if we don't stop talking it will never end. And it needs to.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, warning any potential whistle blowers

“Well, actually, very, very few people get a pat down. it’s only under very limited circumstances.”
Janet Napolitano, when asked if their were any new security measures on the horizon that would keep tha would keep people from the present invasive searches. [I wouldn’t call 1.8 million passengers per month “very few.”]

“We've made it clear to people around the world that if we locate someone who has been part of the al Qaeda leadership, then you get him or we will get him."
Queen Hillary [“We’ll get them even if we already killed them or they died ten years ago…..”]

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“……If Americans want to regain their dignity and radiate the beams of liberty once again, they have to start thinking in several new directions. They have to realize that the pursuit of good by evil means creates more evil. They have to realize that they cannot eliminate all the world's evils and shouldn’t attempt to do so by force or force-related means. They have to realize that their motives have not been pure, but mixed in with interests pursuing gains for themselves, no matter what the consequences for others. Falsity has to be bared.”
Michael S. Rozeff

“The United States murders on a scale that is impossible for an Osama bin Laden, but, because its actions bear the imprimatur of the state, we immunize it from our moral opprobrium. Wrong as it may be, the blowback of retaliatory gestures will continue until the imperialism of the American corporate state comes to an end. Osama bin Laden’s defeat has done nothing to diminish the staggering destructive capabilities of the single greatest enemy of humanity on earth, the United States armed forces; indeed, the propaganda potential of his death may serve to fortify the psychological bedrock on which the Empire is built, but it doesn’t have to.”
David D’Amoto

“The U.S. Government really does not have to crush the speech or destroy the lives of heretics and apostates who doubt its goodness. Its zealous disciples stand ready to perform this task with the celerity of true believers.”
Brutus

“Seeking the truth is not an act of sedition, but one of patriotism. When a society slanders independent thinkers and dismisses those who do not fall in line like chanting Zombies, they’re simply borrowing from the same playbook that the Soviet Union used.”
Simon Black

“If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the 'terror mastermind,' who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America's European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the 'terror mastermind' doing for a decade after 9/11?”
Paul Craig Roberts

“The true purpose of every government everywhere on earth and throughout history is to guarantee that its rulers live the most opulent lifestyles possible at the expense of everyone else.
No matter how structured or defined or constrained, the true purpose of government is just that.”
Garry Reed

“Democratic government, even representative democratic government, is merely a means for the majority to impress its will on minorities. It is mob rule dressed up in fancy legal livery. Genocidal bloodbaths committed by majorities around the world may lack the legal finery and the fancy ballot boxes, but they are thoroughly democratic nonetheless. In fact, genocide approaches the ideal of 'participatory democracy' even more closely than the effeminate, representative form of democracy practiced in the West, since the majority of people in a genocidal bloodbath actually participate in the action.”
Mark Crovelli

“Agreement about a common purpose between a group of known people is clearly an idea that cannot be applied to a large society which includes people who do not know one another. The modern society and the modern economy have grown up through the recognition that this idea – which was fundamental to life in a small group – a face-to-face society, is simply inapplicable to large groups. The essential basis of the development of modern civilization is to allow people to pursue their own ends on the basis of their own knowledge and not be bound by the aims of other people.”
Friedrich Hayek

“I oppose torture not because I am libertarian, but because I am a human being. Torture destroys everyone and everything decent it touches, including the torturer’s humanity.”
Wendy McElroy

“No country on earth has a less responsible government and a less accountable government than the Americans. However, Americans will defend their own oppression, and that of the world, to the bitter end.”
Paul Craig Roberts

“The destroyers have always been funded by the creators; the thieves have always been funded by the producers; through the belief in 'authority,' the agendas of the evil have always been funded by the efforts of the good. And this will continue, unless and until the most dangerous superstition is dismantled. When the producers no longer feel a moral obligation to fund the parasites and usurpers, the destroyers and controllers, tyranny will wither away, having been starved out of existence. Until then, good people will keep supplying the resources which the bad people need in order to carry out their destructive schemes.”
Larken Rose

“Sharia law is already all around you, but one cannot recognize a prison if it is in the shape of one’s choices. You have been placed in a Judeo-Christian-Enviromento-Feminized cage, and then taught in school, at church and at work to make decisions which keep you safely within it. The political conflict which you think exists between major factions is merely a play to keep you blind to the reality of your imprisonment.”
Tom Baugh

“When the perverts who populate legislatures, enforce ‘laws’ and sit in judgment in courthouses try to use the justice system to teach people a lesson justice is thrown out the window. Those idiots in government try to pervert the justice system to teach drug abusers that they shouldn't use (not just abuse) ‘drugs‘. Those parasites in government try to wield the justice system as a club to teach people that they must comply with, and assist, The State in its theft of their property. The justice system has been stolen to be used as a way to impose the twisted desires of government psychopaths on you and me. Justice isn't even a goal any longer; punishment is. And the excuse used is that 'we must teach these people a lesson'. Balderdash."
Kent McManigal

“Osama bin Laden doesn’t matter. It is the people that call themselves 'The United States' that are your real enemy.”
Mike P

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From the Darkness:

“Well, I certainly would advocate it. I’d be a strong supporter of it.”

Dick Cheney, when asked if the president should reinstate enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding

“Anyone, even a member of al-Qaida could purchase a train ticket and board an Amtrak train without so much as a question asked. So that’s why I’m calling for the creation of an Amtrak no ride list. That would take the secure flight program and apply it to Amtrak trains.”
Lil’ Chuckie Schumer, proposing more TSA tyranny

“Amtrak is committed to the safety and security of our passengers and remains a safe way to travel. All countermeasures add value in creating an overall security posture in protecting a rail system that operates in an open environment. The creation of a ‘do not ride’ list is no exception. It would, however, have to be developed in close coordination with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and implemented in a way that respects civil rights and allows for the rapid flow of persons and trains, necessary for effective mass transit.”
Amtrak Spokesperson Cliff Cole, agreeing with Lil’ Chuckie Schumer

“Government has a limited but important role in reinforcing social norms and expectations — including laws against drugs and against the exploitation of men and women in the sex trade.”
Michael Gerson, former GW Bush hack

"Economic crises and bank panics predated the creation of the central bank in the United States; indeed, to many observers, they seem to be endemic to capitalism and unregulated markets. And when markets run completely amok, the public expects its leaders to do something."
Andrew Leonard, Salon's resident economic ignoramus

“It’s the parents’ responsibility that have obese kids. Take the tax deduction away for parents that have obese kids.”
Illinois state Sen. Shane Cultra, introduced legislation to deny parents of obese children the $2,000 standard tax deduction

"Since the financial Panic of 2008, the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy has been widely blamed for a global run-up in commodity prices — especially oil. Now that oil prices appear to have peaked and are coming back down, it’s time to give the Fed some credit."
John W. Schoen, MSNBC.com's resident economic ignoramus

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”
Justice Steven David, after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that Indiana residents have no right to obstruct unlawful police incursions into their homes

DVD Reviews

127 Hours:
This is the dramatization of the ordeal of Aaron Ralston (James Franco), a rock climber who had to amputate his own arm in order to free himself from a boulder which had pinned his right arm. Thankfully, the amputation is only about two minutes of the movie. To the film maker’s credit, time is spent developing Ralston’s character, giving insight into what kind of person he is before facing his dilemma as well as giving a detailed account of Ralston’s thoughts and hallucinations during a terrible ordeal. The film gives nice insight to what drives and motivates people to overcome and survive a seemingly hopeless predicament.
Recommended

Partisans of Vilna:
This documentary interviews Jews who survived the Jewish ghetto in Vilna, Lithuania during its Nazi occupation and their patiently organized, and ultimately successful, resistance.
Recommended

Please Give:
This light comedy examines the lives of several neighbors in a Manhattan apartment building and their battles with personal guilt and envy. Well acted, particularly by one of my favorites, Anne Guilbert, who was also the “Marble Rye” lady on Seinfeld.
Recommended

The Day of the Jackal:
This entertaining thriller was released in 1973 based on Frederick Forsyth's novel. An assassin, sponsored by a French paramilitary group, carefully executes an assassination attempt against President Charles de Gaulle while the police work feverishly to identify and stop him.
Recommended

Glorious 39:
This drama takes place in the summer of 1939, just weeks before England went to war against Hitler’s Germany. An English aristocratic family must restrain the eldest daughter from revealing a subversive truth after discovering secret recordings involving family members. To say any more would spoil the mystery.
Recommended

Classic Albums: John Lennon- Plastic Ono Band:
I’ve enjoyed several of these “Classic Album” documentaries that examine the creation of historical rock and roll recordings. This one looks at the writing and recording of John Lennon’s first solo effort after the Beatle’s breakup. Lennon bares his soul with personally revealing songs performed with the utmost honesty. A lot of archival concert and studio footage as well as interviews with Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr and other musicians, as well as journalists and participating recording engineers.
Recommended

Powaqqatsi:
This is the second installment of the trilogy, (the first being Koyaanisqatsi) created by the collaboration of director Godfrey Reggio and the musical soundtrack genius of Phillip Glass. This feature focuses on the diversity of culture (this time in the southern hemisphere) that is threatened by the technological order that prescribes globalizing homogenization.
Recommended

Howl:
James Franco stars as beat poet Allen Ginsburg. The movie revolves around Ginsburg’s best known work, Howl. The film is a bit of a hybrid of historical reenactment (of the 1957 obscenity trial of Howl‘s publisher), documentary, and animation. Everyone should hear Howl at least once and wonder at its rich imagery. I especially enjoy his use of such great descriptive phrases as “angel headed hipsters” and smile at his description of his friend, Jack Cassady who “sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset.”
Recommended

Hereafter:
Clint Eastwood directs this interesting drama starring Matt Damon as a man who has the ability to act as a medium between the living and the dead in the afterlife. He constantly wrestles with this ability which most see as a blessing but he sees as a curse. His life eventually connects with a woman who recently had a harrowing near death experience and a young boy who lost his identical twin.
Recommended

A Film Unfinished:
This documentary looks at lost film reels of unedited Nazi propaganda film created about the Warsaw Jewish ghetto in May, 1942- just a couple months before its residents began being shipped off to concentration camps. The film also includes some narration read from a diary kept by a resident of the ghetto working with the film makers. The disc includes a film (with a bit of a propaganda feel, itself) created by the US War Department called, Death Mills, which contains some of the more explicit recording of the atrocities, caught soon after the death camp’s liberation.
Recommended

Best Boy:
A budding film maker records his 52 year old, retarded cousin in the late 1970’s. The film gives us an intimate look at his life while he is finally learning to live independently of his parents. A very heartwarming experience which won Documentarian, Ira Wohl the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1980.
Recommended

Blow Out:
Only watch this 1981 feature if you’re interested in watching John Travolta early in his movie career. He plays a sound engineer who, by chance, records an apparent automobile accident that he determines is really a political hit job. The movie never quite clicks and completely lost me with a ridiculous ending.
Not recommended

The Kings’ Speech:
A well executed biographical drama of the working and personal relationship between Britain’s King George VI (who reigned during WWII) and his speech therapist. George suffered from a life long speech stammer that hindered his self-confidence in performing his royal duties.
Recommended

Wings for Wheels- The Making of Born to Run:
This documentary, created in 2005, chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s pivotal album, Born to Run, thirty years after its release. Includes interviews with all musicians, producers and technicians involved and archival film footage taken in the studio during the recording process. The work was painstakingly long and laborious (the Born to Run track, itself, took six months, in intervals, to complete) but the artistic result was great, timeless music.
Recommended

Naqoyqatsi:
This is the final installment of “Qatsi” trilogy (translated as “war on life”) and the Reggio/Glass collaboration. This film differs some from the other two in that 80% of the film footage and images is stock, digitally manipulated and processed.
Recommended

Shanghai Ghetto:
This enlightening Docudrama covers the period in the 1930’s when Jews, sensing the inevitable, began fleeing from Germany while it was still possible. One such location, unknown to many, was Shanghai, China, where a large number of migrant Jews created their own community even as the city was occupied by the Japanese. A very interesting piece of history.
Recommended

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The state, its proselytizers argue, is necessary as an external, neutral means of disincentivizing what we might call ‘bad behavior,’ for ensuring that human nature’s dark side (greed, wrath, etc.) isn’t left unchecked. And if the state really could be thought of as something apart from the actual human beings that comprise it, then that argument would be persuasive enough. By ‘the state,’ we’re meant to imagine something that can be abstracted away from the fact that it is, in fact, a human institution, subject to all of the same characteristic flaws that it is purportedly established to counteract. Do we imagine that Ron Paul could change any of this?
We are supposed to imagine that the best results are achieved from an organization that has absolutely no incentive to serve the citizenry, that itself is subject to no outside check on its power, but why? If human nature really is as gloomy as Hobbes was convinced that it was, with the brutish war of all against all sitting just below the surface of all human affairs, then indeed the state seems to be the very worst and most ill-conceived of our possible options for the good society.”
David D'Amato

“…..Killing is never great, and those who carry out the killings are not great, either. No matter how much one may believe that people must sometimes commit homicide in defense of themselves and the defenseless, the killing itself is always to be deeply regretted. To take delight in killings, as so many Americans seem to have done in the past day or so, marks a person as a savage at heart. Human beings have the capacity to be better than savages. Oh that more of them would employ that capacity.”
Robert Higgs

“Good citizens, whether in Ancient Greece or today, are expected to fall in line with what they're told, and any measure of dissent or intellectual discourse is met with derision and public ridicule. Anyone who questions the nation's hallowed truths is labeled as an enemy... or at least, accused of supporting the enemy.”
Simon Black

“How many Americans will have the wits to wonder why the ‘terror mastermind’ – who defeated not merely the CIA and the FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with Israel’s Mossad and the intelligence services of NATO, who defeated NORAD, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Air Force, and Air Traffic Control, who caused security procedures to fail four times in US airports in one hour on the same day, who caused the state-of-the-art Pentagon air defenses to fail, and who managed to fly three airliners into three buildings with pilots who did not know how to fly – has not pulled off any other attack in almost ten years? Do Americans really believe that a government’s security system that can so totally fail when confronted with a few Saudi Arabians with box cutters can renew itself to perfection overnight?”
Paul Craig Roberts

“Our government claims that it killed bin Laden and then gets rid of the body before any independent entity can verify its claim? And the reason the government did so was to respect Islamic law? The U.S. Government does not respect its own laws nor does it respect the lives of Muslims, but all of a sudden the U.S. Government respects Islamic law regarding the burial of a dead Muslim terrorist suspect while said government routinely kills innocent Muslims in violation of Islamic law. Or any law for that matter.”
Brutus

“The monster of the east [bin Laden] is gone, but the beast that is the U.S. government is alive and well, and planning chaos. Our eyes should be open and our minds clear, for what is coming is vile. War is criminal and it is unholy, and our government is planning even more aggression. This bin Laden farce is evidence enough. Those who purposely cause and wage war, and do so to gain money and power, are savage, depraved, and evil. But those who applaud the murdering of others in the name of false defense are the enablers. Without the consent of the people, the government would be forced to stand down.”
Gary Barnett

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people, and the West in general, into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
Osama bin Laden, shortly after 911

“Every action taken by the government ruling us that abridged individual liberties and enlarged the public debt was a small victory for bin Laden's vision. The same is true of every CIA-conducted Predator drone strike that wiped out a helpless Muslim family, thereby sowing seeds of rancor that will blossom into anti-American terrorism.”
Will Grigg

“If, as American presidents have never tired of claiming, Al Qaeda attacked us because ‘hey hate us for our freedoms,”\’ they must like us a whole lot more now. If Al Qaeda is really fighting us because they hate our freedoms, the war is already over.”
Kevin Carson

“Like all social structures, the American empire makes heavy use of falsity, lies, illusions, deceptions, and myths that come to be taken as truths by those who are immersed in a structure. There is no social structure, be it family, society, state, business, association, church or religious establishment, that does not hide truths about itself and whose members do not act according to various falsehoods that pass for truths. The state and empire are not exceptions.”
Michael S. Rozeff

“Institutions based on coercion are inherently self-destructive – whether they are the openly dictatorial kind or the polite, dishonest kind that hide behind hypnotic words like ‘democracy’ and ‘republic.’”
Lawrence Ludlow

"Look carefully and you’ll see that the only difference between Obama and Osama is BS.”
Robert Katz

************************************************************************

From the Darkness:

"Let us not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida and its affiliates does not end with one death."

Queen Hillary, preparing us for still more killing

"All over the world we will press forward, bolstering our partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people."
Queen Hillary, spreading hypocrisy

“This is bigger than the moon landing, this is huge."
Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera on the death of Osama bin Laden

“I would assume that the enhanced interrogation program that we put in place produced some of the results that led to bin Laden’s ultimate capture.”
Dick Cheney [...and when you "assume" you make an "ass" of "u" and "me."]

“Well I don’t know if everyone knows this or not, but you mentioned the fact that we obtained information several years ago, vital information about the courier for Osama. We obtained that information through waterboarding. So for those who say that waterboarding doesn’t work, who say it should be stopped and never used again, we got vital information which directly led us to bin Laden.”
Rep. Peter King

"It is not in our national security interests to allow those images [of a dead bin Laden], as has been in the past been the case, to become icons to rally opinion against the United States."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney [Apparently, drone bombing innocent people doesn’t motivate people to “rally.”]

"We can't fight every war. We can't undo every injustice in the world. We don't go looking for dragons to slay. We are not a nation in decline. . We will remain the world's abiding beacon of freedom."
Sarah Palin

“This is not an administration proposal. This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”
White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki, commenting on the Obama administration floating a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.
[Yea, right. The Emperor doesn‘t support the idea. That’s why the proposed bill includes $300 million for “field trials.”]

“Based on information released by the administration, the covert military operation that brought down the most wanted terrorist in the world appears to have been gutsy and well executed. It was also lawful.”
Washington Post editorial

“The reason they’re called ‘soft’ [terrorist targets] is because it’s so easily accessible to anyone. There has to be security checks for the safety of all people.”
Security consultant David Boehm, keeping the fear alive

“Welcome to hell, bin Laden.”
Mike Huckabee, self-professed “Christian”

Who Will Be Our Next Bogeyman……….?

……….now that Osama bin Laden is dead (again)? MSNBC.com has dutifully and expeditiously offered new candidates for the title.

Our state masters require the existence of an enemy or someone to fear in order to justify their protection racket. If none genuinely exist they won’t hesitate to create one or many, an exercise they have accomplished with expert proficiency since the end of the Cold War. A continual and all pervading fear helps inspire obedience and submission to state dictates defended as necessary for the masses’ protection.

Look over this display of candidates. Which would you pick to be someone whose mere headshot will cause dread and anxiety among soccer moms and the voting slaves. I always considered OBL to be a bad candidate for such a designation. His friendly smile and warm eyes belied his proven history of violence. Maybe this time an enemy will be chosen with the proper, terrifying mug shot.

Creating non-state actors and independently acting “terrorists” to be feared is a stroke of genius. Who better to create angst among the populace than an individual or small group moving from place to place, their whereabouts or plan of attack never certain to our protectors? Who better to fear than an individual who has no allegiance to a specific state? States are certainly easier to designate as an enemy. The propagandists won’t hesitate collectively smearing an entire foreign population held captive by its rulers, who defy or object to “our” ruler’s assumed hegemony.
 
They (meaning individuals) are all to be considered a threat. Iran and China are examples of such abuse. It’s much easier for boobus to comprehend such simplistic characterizations. However, people with any knowledge or familiarity with a maligned population may be harder to convince as to the severity of this supposed, collective threat. But a lone gunmen can be concocted to meet whatever specifications its creator desires. These specifications will also be harder to contradict because nearly no one will be familiar with this lone actor or small group. Just how deranged, blood thirsty, or despicable a character do you need? Just list the desired attributes, create a menacing resume, and draw up the perfect bad guy of your dreams. Let your imagination go wild.

So view the contestants carefully. Let’s all do our part to help out Homeland Security and their benevolent fear mongering. Choose who best encompasses the US state’s description of “evil doer.”

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Coercion is neither necessary nor useful in genuine provision of services, no matter what real service is involved. If you want real protection from crime, court and mediation systems that actually provide justice, and efficient national defense that won't let a bunch of hijacked airliners roam the country for nearly an hour before slamming into skyscrapers, then you want an end to the ancient evil of the coercive vampire State.”
Glen Allport

“The worship of Christ, victim of a lynch mob and a crooked judge, is dangerously radical.”
Peter Hitchens

“U.S. soldiers aren’t heroes by virtue of wearing a uniform. They’re basically just government employees, a heavily armed version of the post office. Soldiering for a government is basically a job for thoughtless kids who have too much testosterone and not enough other options.”
Doug Casey

“Poverty isn't caused by a lack of money... it's caused by the lack of ability or opportunity to create value.”
Simon Black

“As much as I don’t like to write it and as much as Americans don’t want to read it, U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq died in vain. This means that their deaths were ineffectual, unsuccessful, and futile. Their deaths were without real significance, value, or importance. Their deaths were without effect, to no avail, and to no purpose.”
Laurence Vance

“When a private religious separatist allegedly molests children, it is an excuse for gassing children to death. But when the federal government molests children it is merely airport security. When a foreign dictator is allegedly about to kill tens of thousands of innocents, it is an excuse for another non-defensive U.S. presidential war. But when the U.S. government kills millions though sanctions, chemical warfare, conventional bombings and depleted uranium, it is simply the mainstream foreign policy consensus at work.”
Anthony Gregory

"Extremists rise in civilized nations when the madness of things makes their outbursts sound reasonable."
Alvaro Vargas Llosa

"I ask again: does your contingent to Congress have any good instincts, any grasp of its job, or even the ability to notice when an otherwise good idea turns out wrong? Almost certainly not. If Bernanke were a horse he wouldn’t be allowed in my remuda. Pelosi and Maxine Waters would have been sold for dog food while it was still legal."
Linda Brady Traynham

“The real democracy of market anarchism, functioning on societal institutions without exception, would open to real choice — to ‘social power’ — all of those areas of human interaction that are now yoked to the coercive practices of the state. Market anarchism, as an ethical system, maintains that free individuals should not be indentured to the institutions that dominate their lives, but that those institutions ought to serve their members; it is the ‘extremist’ position that sovereignty and authority begin equally in each person, and thus that organizations cannot claim any prerogatives that a lone individual couldn’t, in some instance, claim.
The democracy of the state, on the contrary, is premised on the idea that some people ought to rule, to make the important decisions about our lives, and that we ought to be satisfied with a periodically-presented false choice.”
David D'Amato

“Your mind is a battleground of ideas. It’s your own thinking versus the propagandists of the State who are filling it up with their ideas. Their weapons are words, slogans, memes, themes, ideas, concepts, visions, sounds, and pictures.”
Michael S. Rozeff

“War is immorality objectified. Any who partake cannot remain clean. It just is not possible.”
The Arctic Patriot

“Our military must be demobilized overseas, it must not be allowed to re-enter US territory as an armed body. Honed by years of waging (and losing) colonial guerilla wars, having extensive experience in the minute regulation of and heavy handed operations against civilians, the US military would be primed for any outrage, and for those who believe that it would not turn its weapons against US citizens I suggest a library visit to dissuade you of such delusion. How can we believe they would uphold their sworn oath to defend liberty when for decades now they have blithely, and with not so much as a blush of shame, launched war after war without any declaration from Congress allowing them to do so?”
C.J. Maloney

“All politics is based on force and fraud. As such, the elites will always use those two weapons against the people to maintain their position – force is violence and fraud is lies and propaganda. All States are founded on, and run on, lies and violence.”
Bob Wallace

“Many people scoff at the criticism of the income tax as a form of ‘involuntary servitude.’ But that would have to be because they just haven’t given it much thought, or it’s because they work for the government.”
Scott Lazarowitz

“It seems that everywhere one turns there’s somebody with plans to improve the world – or improve you. Anyone with any sense should want to get off this ball of dirt populated by so many busybody lunatics, and find some place with better vibes.”
Doug Casey

“Progressivism, without reason, is chaos. Conservatism, without imagination, is tedium.”
Garry Reed

********************************************************************************

From the Darkness:

“The people around Gaddafi need to wake up every day wondering, ‘Will this be my last?’”

Senator Lindsey Graham, inciting murder

“He [Bradley Manning] broke the law.”
B.Obama [Gosh, Mista President, ain’t that what a trial’s for?]

“No individual who is on the terrorist watch list maintained by the Department of Homeland Security shall qualify as an eligible WTC responder. Before enrolling any individual as a WTC responder in the WTC program under paragraph (3), the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall determine whether the individual is on such list.”
Wording of an amendment, proposed by Florida GOP Congressman Cliff Stearns, to a bill offering benefits and relief to p11 first responders. [Please see John Stewart.]

“This amendment imposes no burden on our first responders or others seeking health benefits. It imposes a burden on the U.S. government to ensure that no one on a terrorist watchlist receives these benefits."
Cliff Stearns, defending his amendment

“It makes a lot of sense.”
Rep. Henry Waxman, defending the Stearns amendment

“The Federal Reserve has been looking for ways to increase transparency for many years.”
Ben Bernanke [Lying bastard. The only “transparency” seen is due to FOIA lawsuits.]

“My Daddy Fights for Our Freedom.”
Text from a Marine Corps bumper sticker

"The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists. Really."
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill

“Despite its prevalence, ‘pets’ is surely a derogatory term both of the animals concerned and their human carers. Again the word ‘owners’, whilst technically correct in law, harks back to a previous age when animals were regarded as just that: property, machines or things to use without moral constraint. We invite authors to use the words ‘free-living’, ‘free-ranging’ or ‘free-roaming’ rather than ‘wild animals.’ For most, ‘wildness’ is synonymous with uncivilized, unrestrained, barbarous existence. There is an obvious prejudgment here that should be avoided.”
From the Journal of Animal Ethics

“By following the path of [Qadhafi] and deploying military forces to crush peaceful demonstrations, al-Assad and those loyal to him have lost the legitimacy to remain in power in Syria. We urge President Obama to state unequivocally — as he did in the case of Qadhafi and [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak — that it is time for Assad to go.”
Sens. John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, in a joint statement urging the Emperor to make war on Syria

"The New Testament does have an answer to Rush [Limbaugh’s] question, 'What would Jesus take?' and it's not one Rush is going to like. And since he obviously has no working command of the Bible, it will surely shock him because he will be hearing it now for the first time. The answer is everything, not 35 percent, not 39.6 percent. One hundred percent."
Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC [I've read the Bible from cover to cover. Apparently, I missed the part about Jesus being a tax collector.]