*Written by M. Hines.

Rob has been after me for some time to write something reasonable to post on The Swash.  I’ve never really had anything to say, but prompted by the primary in my home state today and recent conversations with good friends, I thought I would share a couple short thoughts. (Not necessarily reasonable, and in no particular order.)

Part A.

It’s hard to decide where to start when the premise of a later subject may be defining what it means to be pro-life by illustrating the severity of our military action in order to set the stage for redefining what it means to be pro-life.

But what the hell, here we go.

“Why are we fighting terrorism? What are the motives here? Who struck first?”

Lately, in the back room, this very argument has been growing. It is growing amongst those who do not know the history of the Middle East region and are not being taught the inconvenient facts by our leadership.

It is understandable as to why this subject wouldn’t be discussed. A brief glance through the pages of history reveal mass involvement from the West in the establishment of what we know of the Middle East today. For example, most are not aware that the modern state of Israel is less then a century old. Even less known is that the roots of the country lie in a backhanded treaty made between the British and French to provision a space for the Jewish people in their process of “re-arranging” the Middle East colonies. This act set the stage for the later violent overthrow of the Arab population living in the area and the creation of what we now know as Israel and Palestine both in border and conflict.

In 1977, the first Islamic Terrorist attack against the US occurred in what was called the Hanafi Siege, a curious event that ironically seemed to consist of Islamic Extremists targeting ultimately other Islamic Extremists. The interesting element here is that popular cause for the Siege is attributed to the their leaders secondary request, which was to have a film titled Mohammad, Messenger of God destroyed as they perceived it to be sacrilegious.

One of the next most notable attacks occurred in 1993 when a small group managed to detonate a truck bomb at the base of the World Trade Center. This attack, which was largely unsuccessful, was planned by Ramzi Yousef. The following can be read in the Wikipedia article regarding Yousef’s motivations:

According to the journalist Steve Coll, Yousef mailed letters to various New York newspapers just before the attack, in which he claimed he belonged to ‘Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion’.[8] These letters made three demands: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a demand for a pledge by the United States to end interference “with any of the Middle East countries’ interior affairs.” He stated that the attack on the World Trade Center would be merely the first of such attacks if his demands were not met. In his letters Yousef admitted that the World Trade Center bombing was an act of terrorism, but this was justified because “the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one.”

Interesting. So, perhaps there is a shred of logical motivation that extremist groups would have for attacking Western Groups. So, what is our motivation?

“They hit us first.” Did they?

Who has been putting their hands in the Middle East and stirring the pot for decades now? Is it possible that the western action of creating and promoting the state of Israel could be likened to China invading Alaska, giving it to the Canadians sending our people to Idaho and saying, “Hey, us and our friends got your back… Forever”. Is it really that unreasonable to say that an action like that might be cause to promote irritation with our way of doing business? Is this not what we’ve been doing for the last sixty years?

I’m not trying to make any definitive statements here, just some things to think about.

It is estimated that our war in Iraq has caused the deaths of some 150,000 Iraqi Civilians since it started…

It is estimated the Nazi’s killed between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews during the Holocaust.

Part B.

Pro-Life – the term that has become defined-as and synonymous with “advocating full legal protection of embryos and fetuses (especially opposing the legalization of induced abortions).”

I once heard a pastor respond when asked if a politicians stance on abortion was reason enough to vote for them, his response was this, “being pro-life does not simply mean that we protect the unborn, it must also must mean that we protect the living”.

Choosing who should live and who should die on any grounds passes a judgment that only a higher being has the right to make, and effectively assigns a value to a person’s life no different than if they were slaves.

I hope that when put this simply to others; it is as profound as it was to me.

Currently there is a majority percentage of the GOP field that is running on both pro-life and pro-war agendas.

I do not see a way for these to co-exist.

References

Almost everything here is referenced from Wikipedia. If you have a problem, comment with the conflicting facts, and we’ll chat about it. If you don’t have conflicting facts, Fuck Off.

White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight.

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymousattacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, amethod questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

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

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

My Two Cents: Hey GOP! Remember when I said I was going to call you out on your bullshit, especially AFTER winning the midterms with all your cotton candy promises? Yeah, well you had better get your fucking shit together. The public, and especially me, are paying attention. End Two Cents.

*Taken from the Heritage Foundation.

One month ago today, millions of Americans voted to reject big-government and the backroom deals that defined the Obama presidency.  Now, some of the same Senate Republicans who rode that momentum to electoral victory appear to be on the verge of ignoring that message by striking a deal to trade passage of the dangerous New START treaty for an extension of the current tax rates.

To be crystal clear, we will view any deal on the extension of the current tax rates followed by Senate consideration of the New START Treaty, during this Lame Duck session of Congress, as the worst kind of quid pro quo.

Recent backroom deals like the Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase and Gator-Aid were met with ridicule and disgust on November 2^nd.  But this shady deal is far, far worse.  It is unthinkable that any Senator, let alone any who claim to be conservative, would use our national security as a bargaining chit.

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is acting as the key negotiator for Senate Republicans on both the nuclear treaty and the Obama tax hikes.  To borrow a metaphor from the President, Senator Kyl is driving this car and he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) should convince their fellow members to throw it in reverse.

For months, The Heritage Foundation has articulated serious and substantive policy concerns surrounding this treaty.  We have explained, in detail, how the treaty limits our missile defense capability, why the verification provisions are inadequate and what restrictions are placed on our non-nuclear weapons – all to the great detriment to our ability to defend ourselves in an increasingly dangerous world.

During the past couple weeks, news reports suggest our concerns were well founded.  America has learned the Russians were moving tactical nuclear weapons closer to our NATO allies.  Senators learned that Secretaries Gates and Clinton were less than forthcoming when it came to a side deal on missile defense.  And further press reports suggest more damaging information may be forthcoming.

Yet, despite all these new questions and many unanswered questions, Senate Republicans appear headed toward a deal.  We at The Heritage Foundation obviously do not support raising taxes, and we do hope the Senate reaches an agreement to keep the current rates in place, but that debate should in no way be tied to ratification of the New START Treaty.

The case against the New START Treaty is built on principle, not politics. If Senate Republicans continue down this path, they will lose the goodwill of conservatives around the country and justify the skepticism of the American people.

*Taken from the Wall Street Journal.

The Senate’s No. 2 Republican said Tuesday that he opposed a vote this year on President Barack Obama’s signature arms control treaty, dealing a blow to a top White House foreign policy priority and possibly to U.S.-Russian relations.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona said there wasn’t time to deal with his concerns over a treaty that would cut U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons deployments by about one third and restore weapons inspections that were halted nearly a year ago. Treaty ratification requires 67 votes in the Senate. Mr. Kyl’s decision likely pushes a vote to next year, when the Senate Democratic majority shrinks to 53 from 58.

Mr. Kyl’s announcement took the White House by surprise. A White House official said that just last Friday, officials from the Defense Department, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.S. Strategic Command briefed the senator and offered an additional $4.1 billion over the next five years that he had demanded to modernize the remaining nuclear arsenal.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has been leading the ratification effort, said in a statement that the administration would continue to press for a vote in the lame-duck Congress. “Failure to pass the New START Treaty this year would endanger our national security,” he said, calling the treaty “a fundamental part of our relationship with Russia, which has been critical to our ability to supply our troops in Afghanistan and to impose and enforce strong sanctions on the Iranian government.”

On Sunday, Mr. Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a private meeting in Yokohama, Japan, that a ratification vote would be his top priority for the lame-duck session of the Senate, which began this week. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a treaty supporter, said Tuesday he still wanted the vote. Weapons inspectors have been barred from each other’s nuclear sites since the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, negotiated by President George H. W. Bush, expired last December.

Mr. Lugar “believes it is imperative we keep the verification process going, and he’s fearful if we don’t do it this session, it would throw a major road block in U.S.-Russian nonproliferation arrangements,” said Mark Helmke, a Lugar spokesman.

Mr. Lugar, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are to meet for breakfast on Wednesday to discuss their options. But without Mr. Kyl’s support, 67 votes looks doubtful. Conservative Republicans are looking to Mr. Kyl, a longtime conservative voice on nuclear arms control, for direction.

Administration officials documented 29 consultations with and phone calls to Mr. Kyl on the START treaty since August 2009. Mr. Kyl is holding out for more assurances that the administration and Congress will spend tens of billions of dollars to modernize the remaining nuclear stockpile and maintain its nuclear weapons laboratories and production facilities.

“When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame-duck session, I replied I did not think so, given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization,” Mr. Kyl said in a statement.

The treaty, signed with fanfare last year in Prague, would cap deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 a side, compared with 2,200 set in a nonbinding 2002 treaty, and launchers at 700 each, compared with 1,600 set by the expired START. Ratification was supposed to launch a more ambitious round of negotiations aimed at nondeployed, or mothballed, strategic warheads and smaller, battlefield nuclear weapons untouched by the treaty.

Russian lawmakers formally pulled the treaty from consideration in the Duma after the mid-term elections, citing political doubts, although they can resubmit it at any time.

Arms control advocates on both sides worry that tension over the treaty could jeopardize cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an arms control advocacy group, accused Mr. Kyl of engineering a “pay to play” scheme and demanding “nuclear earmarks.” The administration has already pledged $80 billion over the next decade for nuclear weapons modernization programs, and Mr. Kyl has demanded more.

Ryan Patmintra, a Kyl spokesman, said such concerns are far-fetched. Mr. Kyl needs assurances that those pledges will survive the upheavals on Capitol Hill, and he doesn’t even know which Republican will lead the House Appropriations Committee next year, Mr. Patmintra said. If he receives those assurances and can back the treaty, aides to Mr. Kyl said, he will bring conservative Republicans along, and passage will be assured, whether there are 42 Republicans, as there are now, or 47 as of next year.

*Taken from PrisonPlanet. Written by Steve Watson.

The mainstream media is running a 24 hour news cycle focusing purely on the BP oil spill, a disaster, as we have shown, that is being intentionally hyped in order to sell cap and trade legislation and moves to nationalize big business.

In the wake of this, big important news stories are being overlooked. Here are just some of the stories, in no particular order, that you should be hearing on the nightly news, but of course, are not.

1. Israeli nuclear submarines positioned close to Iran:

Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.

The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

**

2. Iran war propaganda:

US intelligence has shown Iran could launch an attack against Europe with “scores or hundreds” of missiles, prompting major changes to US missile defenses, Pentagon chief Robert Gates said on Thursday.

The anti-Iran rhetoric has amplified following the revelation that many Bilderberg members, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, are now in favor of U.S. air strikes on Iran and are “leaning towards war,”.

“Some of them in Europe are saying no we shouldn’t do it but most of them are in favor of American air strikes on Iran,” Bilderberg sluth Jim Tucker relayed from the recent meeting in Spain. “They’re tilting heavily towards green lighting a U.S. attack on Iran.”

**

3. The continuing economic slide:

The greatest bankster heist in history and the looming greatest depression rumbles on.

Gold has hit record highs as the dollar slumps and the Euro continues to face complete collapse. Unemployment figures in the U.S. are through the roof and U.S. consumer pricesposted their largest fall in nearly 1-1/2 years in May.

Rumours in Europe persist regarding an impending bailout for spain, while Russia says it is ready to found a “new economic world order“.

**

4. FCC ready to restrict the Internet:

The federal government would have “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under the terms of a new US Senate bill being pushed by Joe Lieberman, legislation which would hand President Obama a figurative “kill switch” to seize control of the world wide web in response to a Homeland Security directive.

Lieberman has been pushing for government regulation of the Internet for years under the guise of cybersecurity, but this new bill goes even further in handing emergency powers over to the feds which could be used to silence free speech under the pretext of a national emergency.

5. Obama/Blagojevich story

As the Blagojevich trial continues and important details emerge, linking Obama to possible political corruption, Federal prosecutors are seeking a gag order to keep the ex-Governor and his lawyers from making public comments.

**

6. UN small arms treaty

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced that the Obama Administration would be working hand in glove with the U.N. to pass a new “Small Arms Treaty.”

Congressman Paul Broun warns that, “With willing one-world accomplices in Washington, D.C., gun-grabbers around the globe believe they have it made.” Broun characterizes the U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty as “nothing more than a massive, GLOBAL gun control scheme.”

The treaty would force national governments to acquiesce to a global gun registry, while strengthening licensing procedures so as to make it almost impossible for a citizen to legally purchase a gun. It would also ban the private sale of semi-automatic weapons and ultimately lead to the confiscation and destruction of all “unauthorized” firearms owned by citizens.

By encapsulating the gun grab within a treaty, the Obama administration could claim that no Senate approval is needed to authorize any such move against the right to bear arms – although whether a treaty trumps the Constitution is a very murky area of debate.

**

7. Mexicans riot in LA/Land given over to Mexico

Violent scenes following the LA Lakers’ championship-clinching win over the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals saw angry mobs smashing their way through the streets waving Mexican flags as they went.

Meanwhile, a massive stretch of Arizona has become effectively off limits to Americans, Prompting questions over whether the Obama administration is giving a major strip of the south-west back to Mexico.

**

8. Obama Plans To Sneak Through Carbon Tax By Stealth

President Obama is planning to sneak through his job-killing, economy wrecking carbon tax by stealth according to the Washington Post, by passing a weakened bill and then adding in cap and trade provisions after the heat is off following the November elections.

Described as the “lame duck climate strategy,” Obama is planning to secure enough votes in the Senate to pass a weakened energy bill and then drag out the conference long enough to ensure the stronger provisions contained in the original House version are added “after lawmakers have faced voters in November, thereby cushioning the vote’s political impact.”

**

9. Afghanistan Mineral Riches Story Is War Propaganda

News that the U.S. has suddenly discovered $1 trillion-worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan, and descriptions of the bounty as a “game changer” by the corporate media, represent nothing more than crude war propaganda designed to reinvigorate public support for a failing and ever more pointless occupation.

The “newly discovered” riches have been known about since the 1970s and further revelations indicate that the Pentagon report cited by the New York Times as their source for the story did not even mention the untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan.

**

10. Free Speech Gag Bill Moving in House

H.R. 5175, The so-called DISCLOSE Act would severely limit the ability of political groups to communicate to their members and the general public.

Politico reports that , the NRA bargained for an exemption for itself and other large, established groups while trampling the rights of private citizens, new political groups, like Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, and other small organizations.

As John Bresnahan reports, “The proposal would exempt organizations that have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations… The NRA, with 4 million members, will not actively oppose the DISCLOSE Act, according to Democratic sources.”