Imagine for a moment a world in which individuals who do not believe that the Holocaust occurred are jailed for publicly stating that belief. Well, that doesn’t take much imagination; this can actually happen in Europe, where laws in some EU nations prohibit individuals from denying the historical basis for the claims of systematic mass-murder against the Jews.
So, imagine now a world in which it is forbidden to deny that global warming is caused by human activity, and could be penalized—even jailed—for daring to speak out against the anthropogenic theory of climate change. That could never happen, right? I mean, that’s the kind of thing that happened to heretics during the inquisition, but surely that would never be done by open-minded, secular governments.
Well, think again.
We have all been witness to the recent, systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement of scientists who have begun to rethink the current global-warming dogma. Former Vice-President Al Gore has repeatedly denigrated these scientists as “Flat-Earthers”, as described in an article by James Murray:
“In an interview with Lesley Stahl to air on "60 Minutes"…, Gore piously declares those who don't buy his climate change theories are akin to crackpots who believe the earth is flat and don't believe man landed on the moon in 1969.”
At subsequent events, Gore maneuvered to deny access to these heretics, in order to avoid embarrassing disagreements over the accepted liberal environmental canon.
The Global-Warming hysteria is reaching the point at which proponents believe that their cause will “save the world”, and therefore, anyone who opposes them must threaten the world, and should therefore be treated like criminals, almost as terrorists. James Nash, writing for Environment, said:
“The British foreign secretary ‘has said that skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and denied access to the media,’ Doctors for Disaster Preparedness report in their January newsletter. George Monbiot wrote in England’s “Guardian” that ‘Every time someone drowns as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.’”
Read that again, and consider very carefully the wording: skeptics should be treated like terrorists and their access to the media should be blocked! In Britain, Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the government, went on record as saying that, "Global warming is worse than terrorism."
How ironic that global warming skeptics are to be treated “as terrorists”, since the liberals are perfectly willing to invest time trying to sympathize with the real terrorists, in order to understand what we did wrong to make the terrorists hate us, but won’t think for one moment why some scientists are skeptical about the anthropogenic causes of global warming!
But the excesses do not stop there. Brendan O’Neill, in his article “Global warming: the chilling effect on free speech”, writes:
“The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.”
According to O’Neill, one Australian columnist proposed outlawing the public expression of “climate change denial”.
Ian Murray, in his analysis of the behavior of the environmental inquisitors, quotes the Times' economics editor having described the fervor of the environmentalists pushing these policies as being similar to "the medieval monks who favored self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse." He continues: “In equally medieval fashion, adherents of the environmentalist religion have launched an inquisition against scientific views that they consider heretical.”
The trend for secular governments to adopt a popularly held belief and penalize opponents appears to be growing. Muslim nations have managed to convince the United Nations that the world is suffering from Islamophobia, and are pushing for the criminalization of any speech they believe “offends Islam.” A simple cartoon by Jyllands-Posten of Prophet Muhammad triggered violent reactions by Muslims around the world. So what is the natural reaction among “freedom loving” nations in the UN? Ban any criticism of Islam. No such support for Catholicism will be forthcoming, allowing artists like Andres Serrano to continue display more “Piss Christ” creations. Perhaps, if Catholics burnt a few art museums and murdered the artists, they would get the same sympathy the Muslims do.
And now the UN “torture envoy” has declared that the United States must prosecute the Bush administration lawyers whose only “crime” was to offer legal advice that certain “enhanced interrogation” techniques were legal.
“Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was legal. …‘That's exactly what I call complicity or participation’ to torture as defined by the convention, Nowak said at a news conference. ‘At that time, every reasonable person would know that waterboarding, for instance, is torture.’”
The most recent example of the chilling effect these attitudes have on open and reasonable debate can be found in Andrew C. McCarthy’s letter to Attorney General Holder, in which he rejects the invitation to participate in the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy. “The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls ‘individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.’ “
Why?
“Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people.”
More importantly, McCarthy explains that the current administration’s openness to prosecution of Bush-era lawyers who advised the President about the legality of using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on the al Qaida detainees in Guantanamo Bay prison:
“Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.”
Western values are at risk of being subverted by ecstatic fervor of liberals who are so convinced of their own moral certitude, they are willing to silence any discussion on the topics, punish lawyers who provide legal opinions that differ from their own (which is not a crime, by the way), and treat the skeptics worse than terrorists.
***UPDATE***
As if to prove my point, the English Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said "she decided to publicize the list of 16 people banned since October to show the type of behavior Britain will not tolerate..."
Number three on that list is conservative talk-show host Michael Savage.
Savage responded reasonably: "She's linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?...It's interesting to me that here I am a talk show host, who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values – borders, language, culture – who is now on a list banned in England," Savage said. "What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me."
Why did Smith do this? In an interview with the BBC, Smith said Savage, the No. 3-rated radio host in the U.S., is "someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country."
We again see that the "progressives" are willing to ban free speech if it might make certain "communities" uncomfortable. And YET they don't ban the "free speech" of Muslims who call for the destruction of Western civilization and repeatedly call for Jihad!
We need to update the dictionary, and add "cowards" as a synonim for "progressives".
Showing posts with label tyranny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tyranny. Show all posts
Monday, May 4, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
The tyrants fear our weapons
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This right, enshrined in the constitution to prevent the government from infringing upon it, had its clear intention to maintain an armed populace to be able to maintain a free state, both from outside interlopers, and from the natural process that all governments display toward tyrannical usurpation of rights and powers. In other words, the framers of the constitution did not write the second amendment to allow people to keep guns for hunting: they intended the people to be able to defend themselves from criminals, or their own government, when it has become despotic.
Modern liberals think it totally barbaric that average citizens keep and bear arms, and consider the second amendment an inconvenient anachronism that must be eliminated. Unfortunately for them, the Supreme Court recently upheld the interpretation of the second amendment to mean that individual citizens shall be given the right to keep and bear arms, and not just “militias” (interpreted by some as National Guard and other state-run organizations).
But it is clear that liberals, also known as socialists, have every hope of finding a way of restricting citizens’ rights to their weapons, and President Obama is no exception. A liberal friend of mine naively stated that the guns are safe; the liberals cannot take them away. But this silly argument overlooks the historical fact that in the 1990’s, under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, the government did in fact place a temporary ban on what they called “assault weapons” (AW). They believed that this was a “reasonable” restriction, and that “reasonable” people would see that there was no real need for the people to keep and bear “assault weapons”. So if they did it before, why could they not do it again?
If there were NO comments by Obama administration leaders, then I’d agree that it’s just hype. But when the Attorney General E. Holder says he would like to reinstate the AW Ban, but make it permanent, and then Sec. of State Clinton blatantly distorts the statistics on weapons decommissioned in Mexico to make it sound like the weapons being used come from the USA, it sure sounds to me as if there is a clear intention of infringing on the rights of citizens to possess this class of weapons.
In order for this discussion to be more instructive, I’d like to clarify some terms.
“Assault Weapons”: Defined in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to include “certain semi-automatic so called "assault weapons" including military-style semiautomatic rifles, derived from assault rifles but with lesser capabilities. There was no legal definition of "assault weapons" prior to its enactment, but assault rifle is a technical term referring to rifles capable of semi-automatic and full-automatic fire…”
The first problem I have is with the term "military-style" weapons. Think about it: every rifle and pistol in use today had its origins in military designs. From the lever-action rifle, designed by Henry Firearms during the Civil war or the bolt-action hunting rifles that originated as infantry rifles and later became preferred as "sniper rifles", to revolvers and the semi-auto Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistols, from which the ubiquitous 9 mm semi autos evolved. The only difference between the lever-action or bolt-action rifles and the "assault rifles" is the self-loading nature of the newer designs, allowing more shots to be fired more quickly.
These are precisely the types of weapons that an armed populace would need in order to defend itself from the heavily armed gangs, such as the drug trafficking organizations that have spread around the country, or to combat a despotic government intent on oppressing the citizenry. In other words: these are just the latest evolution in firearms that the Founding Fathers wanted to defend, in order to keep a free people free!
The recent Supreme Court decision makes it much more difficult to ban the weapons outright. But there are other ways of making it difficult or impossible for citizens to acquire these weapons. One sneaky way is to tax them so heavily that the average citizen cannot afford to possess or fire them.
Some liberals claim that it is a myth that Obama is trying to tax guns and ammo. A Washington Post article supports that idea, and tries to debunk the “myth”. But there are some interesting misstatements. Obama was accused by the NRA of voting
…"to ban virtually all deer-hunting ammunition" and supporting "a ban on shotguns and rifles most of us use for hunting." The deer-hunting claim is based on Obama's support for an unsuccessful Senate amendment by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would have expanded the definition of "armor-piercing" ammunition. The other claim refers to semiautomatic rifles and pistols covered by the assault weapons ban, which expired in March 2004.
Contrary to Rusch's claim, the Kennedy proposal of July 2005, SA 1615, was not aimed at "virtually all deer-hunting ammunition." Instead, it would have authorized the attorney general to define types of illegal ammunition capable of penetrating body armor commonly used by law enforcement officials. During the Senate debate, Kennedy said that his amendment would "not apply to ammunition that is now routinely used in hunting rifles," a point contested by the NRA.
However, what’s wrong about this article is that any common “assault rifle” ammunition defeats the most common law enforcement body armor because it does NOT contain metal plates (see info on the North Hollywood shootout). The 7.62x39 (AK round), as well as the common US military round (.223) both defeat their armor. The police armor is only rated to stop handgun rounds, such as the 9mm, .32, .38, and I think the .40 Colt and .45 ACP. “Deer hunting” rounds start at .243, .270, and up to the .308 (which just also happens to be the NATO military round). My 1944 Mosin Nagant bolt action 7.62x54 (equivalent to .308 round) would easily defeat their armor, especially in full metal jacket (FMJ).
There are many semi-auto big-game and varmint hunting guns that are used in the legal and sporting taking of game, but which could be banned if they reinstate the previous “assault weapon” ban. AR-15s, SKS, and AK-47 are used nowadays to hunt varmints (such as coyotes) and deer in some states. They are not full-auto, just semi-auto. Ballistically, they are less powerful than other semi-auto rifles used regularly for hunting such as the Remington 760. Even the US M-1 Garand, which uses a 30-06 round and was the standard issue battle rifle of the military in WWII, would be legal and can be found for about $900. There are 9 mm carbines that would bypass the ban but would be just as deadly in a killing spree. So banning AKs and SKS or AR rifles makes NO sense!
Further study shows that FactCheck also tries to contradict the “myth”:
FactCheck appears not to have studied Obama’s words carefully. For example, one NRA claim is that Obama wants to “Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns.” FactCheck accurately reports that Obama did endorse such a position in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race. (FactCheck also supplies the details of Obama’s 2008 claim that the questionnaire was filled out by an aide without Obama’s knowledge, even though Obama’s handwriting is on the cover of the questionnaire.) But FactCheck asserts that the NRA is lying because of Obama’s response to the same question in 2003: “While a complete ban on handguns is not politically practicable, I believe reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of handguns are necessary to protect the public safety.”
However, note that Obama DID try to support a handgun ban before the Supreme Court knocked those kinds of laws down. That shows his intentions. His 2003 statement suggests that he still supports “reasonable restrictions” on handguns, such as the Washington DC ban on guns. Gun owners can’t trust the “reasonable restrictions” suggested by a dude that had suggested their complete ban only 4 years before.
· 1994 to 2001 - Obama was on the board of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. This foundation is the largest funding source for radical anti-gun groups in the country.
· 1996 - Obama supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.
· 1999 - Obama proposed a 500 percent increase in the excise taxes on firearms and ammunition. This tax would effectively punish gun owners for buying guns and ammunition.
· 2003 - Obama voted in support of legislation that would have banned privately owned hunting shotguns, target rifles and black powder rifles in Illinois.
· 2004 - Obama voted against legislation intended to protect homeowners from prosecution in cases where they used a firearm to halt a home invasion.
As was stated by Rights Pundits:
It’s hard to trust a man will uphold the Constitution {who} stated that the Constitution is fundamentally flawed.
In 2009, his AG and Sec. of State renewed their talks about reinstating the gun bans.
According to statistical reports, “assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.20%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes.” If this is true, then what is the logical explanation for all this talk of banning “assault weapons”? It surely cannot be to keep America safe from guns.
So, could it be intended to keep the tyrants safe from us?
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This right, enshrined in the constitution to prevent the government from infringing upon it, had its clear intention to maintain an armed populace to be able to maintain a free state, both from outside interlopers, and from the natural process that all governments display toward tyrannical usurpation of rights and powers. In other words, the framers of the constitution did not write the second amendment to allow people to keep guns for hunting: they intended the people to be able to defend themselves from criminals, or their own government, when it has become despotic.
Modern liberals think it totally barbaric that average citizens keep and bear arms, and consider the second amendment an inconvenient anachronism that must be eliminated. Unfortunately for them, the Supreme Court recently upheld the interpretation of the second amendment to mean that individual citizens shall be given the right to keep and bear arms, and not just “militias” (interpreted by some as National Guard and other state-run organizations).
But it is clear that liberals, also known as socialists, have every hope of finding a way of restricting citizens’ rights to their weapons, and President Obama is no exception. A liberal friend of mine naively stated that the guns are safe; the liberals cannot take them away. But this silly argument overlooks the historical fact that in the 1990’s, under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, the government did in fact place a temporary ban on what they called “assault weapons” (AW). They believed that this was a “reasonable” restriction, and that “reasonable” people would see that there was no real need for the people to keep and bear “assault weapons”. So if they did it before, why could they not do it again?
If there were NO comments by Obama administration leaders, then I’d agree that it’s just hype. But when the Attorney General E. Holder says he would like to reinstate the AW Ban, but make it permanent, and then Sec. of State Clinton blatantly distorts the statistics on weapons decommissioned in Mexico to make it sound like the weapons being used come from the USA, it sure sounds to me as if there is a clear intention of infringing on the rights of citizens to possess this class of weapons.
In order for this discussion to be more instructive, I’d like to clarify some terms.
“Assault Weapons”: Defined in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to include “certain semi-automatic so called "assault weapons" including military-style semiautomatic rifles, derived from assault rifles but with lesser capabilities. There was no legal definition of "assault weapons" prior to its enactment, but assault rifle is a technical term referring to rifles capable of semi-automatic and full-automatic fire…”
The first problem I have is with the term "military-style" weapons. Think about it: every rifle and pistol in use today had its origins in military designs. From the lever-action rifle, designed by Henry Firearms during the Civil war or the bolt-action hunting rifles that originated as infantry rifles and later became preferred as "sniper rifles", to revolvers and the semi-auto Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistols, from which the ubiquitous 9 mm semi autos evolved. The only difference between the lever-action or bolt-action rifles and the "assault rifles" is the self-loading nature of the newer designs, allowing more shots to be fired more quickly.
These are precisely the types of weapons that an armed populace would need in order to defend itself from the heavily armed gangs, such as the drug trafficking organizations that have spread around the country, or to combat a despotic government intent on oppressing the citizenry. In other words: these are just the latest evolution in firearms that the Founding Fathers wanted to defend, in order to keep a free people free!
The recent Supreme Court decision makes it much more difficult to ban the weapons outright. But there are other ways of making it difficult or impossible for citizens to acquire these weapons. One sneaky way is to tax them so heavily that the average citizen cannot afford to possess or fire them.
Some liberals claim that it is a myth that Obama is trying to tax guns and ammo. A Washington Post article supports that idea, and tries to debunk the “myth”. But there are some interesting misstatements. Obama was accused by the NRA of voting
…"to ban virtually all deer-hunting ammunition" and supporting "a ban on shotguns and rifles most of us use for hunting." The deer-hunting claim is based on Obama's support for an unsuccessful Senate amendment by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would have expanded the definition of "armor-piercing" ammunition. The other claim refers to semiautomatic rifles and pistols covered by the assault weapons ban, which expired in March 2004.
Contrary to Rusch's claim, the Kennedy proposal of July 2005, SA 1615, was not aimed at "virtually all deer-hunting ammunition." Instead, it would have authorized the attorney general to define types of illegal ammunition capable of penetrating body armor commonly used by law enforcement officials. During the Senate debate, Kennedy said that his amendment would "not apply to ammunition that is now routinely used in hunting rifles," a point contested by the NRA.
However, what’s wrong about this article is that any common “assault rifle” ammunition defeats the most common law enforcement body armor because it does NOT contain metal plates (see info on the North Hollywood shootout). The 7.62x39 (AK round), as well as the common US military round (.223) both defeat their armor. The police armor is only rated to stop handgun rounds, such as the 9mm, .32, .38, and I think the .40 Colt and .45 ACP. “Deer hunting” rounds start at .243, .270, and up to the .308 (which just also happens to be the NATO military round). My 1944 Mosin Nagant bolt action 7.62x54 (equivalent to .308 round) would easily defeat their armor, especially in full metal jacket (FMJ).
There are many semi-auto big-game and varmint hunting guns that are used in the legal and sporting taking of game, but which could be banned if they reinstate the previous “assault weapon” ban. AR-15s, SKS, and AK-47 are used nowadays to hunt varmints (such as coyotes) and deer in some states. They are not full-auto, just semi-auto. Ballistically, they are less powerful than other semi-auto rifles used regularly for hunting such as the Remington 760. Even the US M-1 Garand, which uses a 30-06 round and was the standard issue battle rifle of the military in WWII, would be legal and can be found for about $900. There are 9 mm carbines that would bypass the ban but would be just as deadly in a killing spree. So banning AKs and SKS or AR rifles makes NO sense!
Further study shows that FactCheck also tries to contradict the “myth”:
FactCheck appears not to have studied Obama’s words carefully. For example, one NRA claim is that Obama wants to “Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns.” FactCheck accurately reports that Obama did endorse such a position in his 1996 Illinois State Senate race. (FactCheck also supplies the details of Obama’s 2008 claim that the questionnaire was filled out by an aide without Obama’s knowledge, even though Obama’s handwriting is on the cover of the questionnaire.) But FactCheck asserts that the NRA is lying because of Obama’s response to the same question in 2003: “While a complete ban on handguns is not politically practicable, I believe reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of handguns are necessary to protect the public safety.”
However, note that Obama DID try to support a handgun ban before the Supreme Court knocked those kinds of laws down. That shows his intentions. His 2003 statement suggests that he still supports “reasonable restrictions” on handguns, such as the Washington DC ban on guns. Gun owners can’t trust the “reasonable restrictions” suggested by a dude that had suggested their complete ban only 4 years before.
· 1994 to 2001 - Obama was on the board of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. This foundation is the largest funding source for radical anti-gun groups in the country.
· 1996 - Obama supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.
· 1999 - Obama proposed a 500 percent increase in the excise taxes on firearms and ammunition. This tax would effectively punish gun owners for buying guns and ammunition.
· 2003 - Obama voted in support of legislation that would have banned privately owned hunting shotguns, target rifles and black powder rifles in Illinois.
· 2004 - Obama voted against legislation intended to protect homeowners from prosecution in cases where they used a firearm to halt a home invasion.
As was stated by Rights Pundits:
It’s hard to trust a man will uphold the Constitution {who} stated that the Constitution is fundamentally flawed.
In 2009, his AG and Sec. of State renewed their talks about reinstating the gun bans.
According to statistical reports, “assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.20%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes.” If this is true, then what is the logical explanation for all this talk of banning “assault weapons”? It surely cannot be to keep America safe from guns.
So, could it be intended to keep the tyrants safe from us?
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