Breitbart.com
July 3, 2014

Instead these individuals are to be referred to as “unaccompanied children” in official correspondence, according to an internal ICE email obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies and shared with Breitbart News.

“This was briefed earlier today during he (sic) command and staff meeting,” an email sent to ICE personnel reads. “It has been requested that in correspondence regarding unaccompanied children, They (sic) not be referred to as UACs. The term UAC should not be used in official correspondence.”

The email, with the subject line “UACs,” continues, “The appropriate messaging on documents should be using the term : unaccompanied children all lower case. (Unless capitalizing would be grammatically correct).”

ICE did not respond to requests for comment...

Updated: Friday, July 25 2014, 05:21 PM CDT

The problem of illegal immigration has many layers. Some people believe the U.S. needs to assist the immigrants no matter the cost. Others point to the quickly escalating bill that taxpayers face with every illegal immigrant who crosses the border.

By KRISTINE FRAZAO
News 4 San Antonio

It is a long running story with a new chapter. The cost to U.S. taxpayers remains in the billions, but here’s a little perspective. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates initial costs to be 2,500 per immigrant, just for the enforcement aspect. The Department of Homeland Security numbers are ten times that much.

Taking into account the costs of infrastructure and manpower to work the border, it’s more than $18,000 per person. Add to that another $3300 for a single detention, more than $800 in legal fees and another $1000 to transport an immigrant out of the country. In total that’s more than $23,000 per immigrant.

Roy Beck with Numbers USA says the actual number is likely much higher since many of the immigrants, especially the younger ones, remain in the country. “They are moving them into communities where they will become widely dependent on the taxpayers of that local community a good share of the rest of their lives,” explained Beck.

If they’re enrolled in public schools, it’s about $10,000 to $12,000 per year per student, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Read More at: http://www.news4sanantonio.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/understanding-cost-illegal-immigration-13908.shtml

The controversial prose of author Todd Brendan Fahey has garnered attention of VICE magazine, High Times, Mondo 2000, TokeSignals and other hot publications of today and yesterday.

(WireNews+Co)

Vancouver, Canada

Far Gone Books published, in 1996, Wisdom's Maw, considered to be the most-controversial American novel since William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959); the novel "factionalizes" the CIA's psychedelic mind control experiments of the 1950s to early-70s known as Project MK-Ultra.  Toward this end, author Todd Brendan Fahey performed a successful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request of the Central Intelligence Agency of its dark, Cold War-era project, as well as gaining access to the group surrounding "Captain" Alfred M. Hubbard--a US citizen and OSS operative who relocated to British Columbia, Canada and began dispensing LSD to psychiatrists and psychologists in both B.C. and Hollywood.

Fahey's research on Al Hubbard and his cadre was published as an investigative article for High Times magazine in 1991.  During this era, Fahey's work was discovered by agent William Stankey, who "handled" Hunter S. Thompson; Wisdom's Maw was given 5-star reviews in the Village Voice, High Times and Mondo 2000 magazines.  And then, as Mondo 2000 co-founder and editor-in-chief R. U. Sirius (Ken Goffman) puts it, in a recent interview of Todd Brendan Fahey for VICE magazine: "...suddenly it seems as if a switch were flipped downward. Fahey was championed by Hunter S. Thompson’s agent throughout the 90s, but he was unable to catch a @*&#ing break. He remains unjustly obscure, which may be a function of his whacked-out literary style."

Contact: fargone@fargonebooks.com

Far Gone Books is publisher of the legendary Wisdom's Maw, a tour-de-force that takes the reader helter-skelter into the psychedelic world of the Sixties, where Intelligence agents attempt to create a human superman via use of LSD; most-recently, Far Gone Books has released Dogshit Park & other atrocities--a collection of ink-black satirical short stories and interviews by Todd Brendan Fahey.

Read more at http://www.wirenews.co/usa/publishing/20585/far-gone-books-receives-flurry-of-media-20-years-after-publication-of-wisdom-s-maw-the-acid-novel#xlbeC203QQvXc6hs.99

R.U. Sirius
[Photo by Bart Nagel]

May 26, 2014

An outdoor deck overhanging the Pacific blue, Santa Barbara, California, must have been September 1988, was when I first heard of an entity known as R. U. Sirius. Whatever it was, I was told by a university-era pal who I trusted, I should pay attention.

And I said, “Are you serious?”

This hep buddy slid a half-dozen thin-paper tabloids across the table of the Sea Cove — at which we were dining on calamari and strong iced tea; the LSD was just coming on — and having flipped through the indices and a couple of interviews, I knew that he was. Very.

I don’t believe in accidents; following having pulled the rip-cord the year prior, of “life as an attorney,” I moved from Arizona and back to my birthplace of Santa Barbara, committing mineself to prose and consuming unusually large doses of acid whilst simultaneously working a 50-hr/weekly job as technical writer at a Pentagon subcontractor and engaging in my first semester as a graduate student in Professional Writing at USC, commuting in rush-hour traffic down Highway 101 and into Watts — and always with a headful. I was doing things a bit differently.

I was and had also been “an early adopter” in tech, taking a loan from my folks in 1985 and purchasing a $2,400 computer with no hard drive — just the standard 5 1/4″ dual floppies that required boot-up each time I turned the goddamn thing on, and treated always in line-command DOS. A black and green screen; no mouse; no built-in data storage.

I thought I was cutting edge.  After landing in the same November 1991 issue of High Times with none other than Ken Goffman/R. U. Sirius and hanging out with him in 1997 at a Berkeley house party with John Perry Barlow holding court; at the millenium Disinfo Con(ference) in central Manhattan, with Robert Anton Wilson in “the green room” and Marilyn Manson in address via satellite connection…and of one probably-not-legal evening at the O’Farrell Theater, it was like unto following in the paw prints of Sasquatch — and watch those droppings!

MONDO 2000 and its lesser-budget wood-pulp predecessors High Frontiers and Reality Hackers merged counterculture and tech culture.  How did you develop those influences?

I think I probably became a countercultural person when I was shuttled off to Kindergarten and the teacher immediately had to assert her authority in a firm sort of voice and tell us what the rules were.  And I had been a little fellow who was comfortable socially with all the other little kids in the neighborhood — a bit of a leader of activities, in fact —  but this freaked me out.  My parents were very liberal and easy going, so I guess I was unaccustomed to stern authority.  So I had a bad imprint regarding institutions right from the start.  I withdrew whenever I was in one...

Friends of Liberty Access Statistics

We received 37508946 page views since July 2002
Today is: 07/06/2014

Busiest Month: May 2014 (3947859 Hits)
Busiest Day: 6 June 2014 (156740 Hits)
Busiest Hour: 13:00 - 13:59 on May 3, 2014 (9356 Hits)

[ Return to Basic Statistics ]

Yearly Stats

Year	Page Views
2002	(453292)
2003	(1003129)
2004	(726644)
2005	(1154861)
2006	(1642946)
2007	(1838064)
2008	(2245975)
2009	(2267005)
2010	(1430268)
2011	(1937337)
2012	(1831080)
2013	(7798749)
2014	(13179522)

Monthly Stats for 2014

Month	Page Views
January	(1749968)
February	(1379595)
March	(2211193)
April	(2961689)
May	(3947859)

By Aidan Foster-Carter
Asia Times
May 22, 2014

Who is Yoo Byung-eun? More to the point, where is Yoo Byung-eun? South Korea's most wanted man, known locally as the billionaire without a face, is nothing if not elusive. On May 20, South Korean prosecutors set up a 40-strong team to track him down after he had ignored a second summons to present himself at their offices in Incheon, the port city west of Seoul.

The same day, soon-to-be-ex prime minister Chung Hong-won told the National Assembly that "the government should try and confiscate all his fortune" - and for good measure his family's as well. Yoo's two sons and a daughter have ignored summonses, just like daddy.

Strong words, considering that Yoo has yet to be formally charged with any offense - much less found guilty. But that's South Korean justice for you. The concept of innocent till proven guilty, or even sub judice - that's Latin for STFU, mass media, lest you prejudice any chance of a fair trial - is widely ignored. Day after day in real time, prosecutors shamelessly leak tasty morsels of what is so far only suspicion, to a press which then prints them as if they were fact.

Which indeed they may well turn out to be, once the mills of justice have done their work. It's not that I'm defending the guy or anything. But this is surely no way to run a judicial system.

Yonhap, the semi-official news agency, said on May 20 that Yoo faces "a host of corruption charges, including embezzlement, dereliction of duty, tax evasion and bribery, according to the prosecutors". One more reminder: he hasn't actually been indicted for any of this, yet.

But the net is closing in. So, who is Yoo Byung-eun? A man of many disguises and carefully honed identities, some currently being shed in hopes to thwart those trying to track him down.

First and foremost this means the South Korean government, which has swung into action big-time. A phalanx of authorities - police, prosecutors, tax authorities, financial regulators, customs, you name it - are hard on the trail of the man they believe to be ultimately behind Chonghaejin Marine. That's the company which owned and operated the 6,825 ton Sewol, Korea's largest ferry until it suddenly listed and sank on April 16. As you doubtless know all too well by now, more than 300 people drowned. Most were teenagers from a single year-group in a single school near Seoul, who were heading for an Easter break on the holiday island of Jeju.

More than a month later, this awful tragedy continues to grip the country. On May 19, a tearful President Park Geun-hye apologized, not for the first time. Many questions arise, but these are not directly our subject here. Mine is a simpler quest, or should be. Who is Yoo Byung-eun?

Covering his tracks

I too have been trying to track him down, online. This was easier a month ago than now. Even then, Yoo dissembled. Lately, someone has been trying very hard to hide or erase his tracks.

But they reckoned without Archive.org. In case you don't know it, this amazing site trawls the Web continuously, caching everything it can. You can't guarantee to find every web page that has ever existed, but there's a good chance. This has been a vital resource for Sherlock AFC...

by Todd Brendan Fahey
June 6, 2014

“You, dear reader, might as well have been abducted by an alien with a time machine to a place in history where the world was in the process of being altered by the marriage of mind and machine, plus some plants.  It was an evolution of consciousness by the attempted understanding of all thoughts, all deeds, all projections, all of everything that could be digitized. And for the first time in human history, there was a grouping together of millions of people bonded by more than geopolitical or ethnic boundarisation” - Michael “Schwann” Kawitzky, Journey to Everywhere

Now, that’s some fine writing, Stan.

Michael Kawitzky (aka Schwann) has written a testament to both "the early adopter" and "the explorer." Of which he is--both. I knew "Schwann" long ago--long before most of us knew what was going on; in the pre-teething stage of what would become unveiled to the non-military citizenry as "the Internet," before there was a "World Wide Web" and a Netscape Navigator to traverse it.

Journey to Everywhere takes us back to those days of connection with like minds and souls, wherein each day opened with a new technology, time travel seeming to many of us as being just a few weeks away.

Kawitzky and I met, virtually, in around 1993, on the periphery of the nascent Web, in a USENET group of psychedelics users (and dealers) called the Visionary Plants List (VPL, for those "in the know"). And herein lies the dirty little secret of the rapid development and popularization of the Internet-turned-Web: "It was the [psychedelic] drugs that done it!" (Though The [government-shepherded, corporate] Media can and will never admit it.)

Timothy Leary remarked to this reviewer, back in 1992, that "Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were barefoot, long-haired acid freaks" pre-Apple boom, and that Bill Gates was known for having used LSD while at Harvard. Furthur (spelling intentional), Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow opined in 1997, again to this writer, "I'll go so far as to say, if the government succeeds in its War On (some) Drugs--if everyone who used marjiuana and LSD were to really be put in jails--America would not have an operational computer left."

"Schwann"/Kawitzky spells it out, in prose more eloquent than Leary did in his Neuropolitique--a tome I hold very highly, but which is surpassed herein.

A college dropout, apartheid-era South Africa, “Demoted to worker, lowest class, I entered commercial life in 1970, somewhat ignominiously, working in a large clothing factory as a lowly runner. I was unlearned scum; a disgrace to a family of mathematicians, scribes and artists.”  He works his way u the spinning wheel, as a “designer of polyester women’s wear,” then, Carnegie-like, churns the bile into becoming owner of a moderately-successful clothing boutique. Kawitzky sells his shop on a chance bid for $20,000 and, with a lot of time on his hands and three children to feed, hunkers down and gets jiggy with the New Tech.  He meets, by chance or of God’s design, a Portuguese cat named Azmazz, who is making a lot of noise on a flight/war simulator in the office of a gas station at which the author has come to fill his tank.  And he surely does.  The author has just recently purchased a computer, of which he knows zero in-toto, and Azmazz likes to turn folk on to the newest floppy disks, which they soon begin swapping like unto so many drug transactions.

As USENET turns WWW, Kawitzky adopts the nom de plume “Schwann,” and just basically starts getting noisy--in a provocative and hyper-intelligent way.  He makes some friends--the Brothers McKenna, cyperpunk proto-pioneer John Shirley and this writer among them.

You, the Reader, will discover every next ripple in a heavy tide--from the Cold War inception of a year-1950 US government department which will become the Pentagon's decentralized, nuclear safe "Internet," to vastly entertaining timelines of cyber-geekdom, wild rides in a Pontiac GTO with a carbon monoxide problem through fields of mushrooms with Terence McKenna and the Maluti tribe, en passe to the sacred rock

Kawitzky’s memoir and its synthesis of Mind-Drugs = New & Interesting Things echoes that curiosity, albeit black/covert, which paved the way for Gordon Wasson's CIA-funded trips to South America and which were to turn on then-Harvard Professor Timothy Leary and open up The Sixties...and who, post-”rehabilitation,” championed cyberspace and Digital Everything! with nearly the same fervor.

"The Government" opened a Pandora's Box by unleashing psychedelic drugs on unsuspecting student volunteers, prison inmates and its own military personnel and Intelligence agents.

Those with two curious neurons occurring within his/her skull will get off on this work and benefit from the history and insight held within. Journey to Everywhere isn't "the kind of book that should be a bestseller"; this particular creation by Mike Kawitzky should be a bestseller.

Reviewed by Todd Brendan Fahey; author: Wisdom's Maw: The Acid Novel [Far Gone Books, 1996]

By R. U. Sirius
Apr 22, 2014
VICE magazine

It’s a peculiarity of these apocalyptic times that we don’t have any writers who can evoke the hyperreal grotesquery of 21st-century humanity with the sort of razor-blade satire practiced by our 20th-century Jonathan Swifts (Terry Southern, William S. Burroughs, Michael O’Donoghue, and Hunter S. Thompson, among others). Could it be that today’s writers just aren’t taking enough drugs, or, at least, enough psychedelic drugs?

In 1996, Todd Brendan Fahey came close with the “acid novel” Wisdom’s Maw, which he wrote while under the influence of 500-microgram doses of LSD-25. The novelist would drop as soon as his wife went to work and be back inside corporeality by the time she got home. I spent 36 years as an acid head, and it never occurred to me—that is, until I read Fahey's latest book, Dogshit Park—that the eight-hour work day is just the right amount of time to get up and come down.

I first heard of Todd when we both found ourselves in the November 1991 issue of High Times—me as a study of my odd self, Fahey for a truly jaw-dropping investigation of Captain Al Hubbard, the so-called “Johnny Appleseed of LSD” and confirmed OSS agent (and suspected CIA agent). Wisdom’s Maw swirled the story of 60s revolution with the CIA’s investigations into psychedelics as agents of warfare and mind control. And after umpty-some rejections from mainstream and alternative publishers, it was finally published, in 1996, through Fahey’s own small-press imprint, Far Gone Books. It got rave reviews in the Village Voice, High Times, and a bunch of underground magazines, but suddenly it seems as if a switch were flipped downward. Fahey was championed by Hunter S. Thompson’s agent throughout the 90s, but he was unable to catch a fucking break. He remains unjustly obscure, which may be a function of his whacked-out literary style.

I thought it high time to catch up with him.

VICE: Hi, Todd. First off, how did you get this way? In other words, what weird combinations of influences sculpted your writing style?...

englishnews@chosun.com / Apr. 21, 2014 10:26 KST

A total of 24 crew were aboard the ill-fated ferry that sank off the southeast coast last week, and all 15 able sailors among them escaped with their lives. But only three of the nine crewmembers who were not sailors, such as clerks and cooks, were rescued, with two killed and four missing.

A comparison between the crew roster and a list of survivors on Sunday shows that all able sailors including captain Lee Joon-seok (69) were rescued. The sailors consisted of eight deck staff that steer the ferry and seven engineering crew that operate the engine room.

Lee Joon-seok, the captain of the Sewol, is being arrested on Saturday.

A transcript of a conversation between the Sewol and the Jindo maritime traffic service published on Sunday shows that the sailors started bailing out at 9:37 a.m., less than 50 minutes after the ferry began rolling over, as did the engineers.

During questioning by the Korea Coast Guard, three engineers, who had been working in the engine room on the first floor testified that they escaped after receiving a phone call from the chief engineer, identified as Park, who was resting in a cabin on the fifth floor, telling them to abandon ship.

A Coast Guard officer said, "They took advantage of their knowledge of the ferry's layout and easier communication to ensure their own survival rather than saving the passengers."

But the service crew were not so lucky. They were helping passengers or still cooking meals on the third or fourth floor. Most of them lost the chance to escape in time because they were helping passengers until the last moment.

BY: Joel Gehrke April 15, 2014 | 2:15 pm
Washington Examiner

by Ron Paul
April 21, 2014

The nation’s attention has for the past few weeks been riveted by a standoff in Nevada between armed federal agents and the Bundys, a ranching family who believe the federal government is exceeding its authority by accessing “fees” against ranchers who graze cattle on government lands. Outrage over the government’s use of armed agents to forcibly remove the Bundys’ cattle led many Americans to travel to Nevada to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in support of the family.

The protests seem to have worked, at least for now, as the government appears to have backed off from direct confrontation. Sadly, some elected officials have inflamed the situation by labeling the Bundys and their supporters “domestic terrorists,” thus justifying any future use of force by the government. That means there is always the possibility of another deadly Waco-style raid on the Bundys or a similar group in the future.

In a state like Nevada, where 84 percent of the land is owned by the federal government, these types of conflicts are inevitable. Government ownership of land means that land is in theory owned by everyone, but in practice owned by no one. Thus, those who use the land lack the incentives to preserve it for the long term. As a result, land-use rules are set by politicians and bureaucrats. Oftentimes, the so-called “public” land is used in ways that benefit politically-powerful special interests.

Politicians and bureaucrats can, and will, arbitrarily change the rules governing the land. In the 19th currently, some Americans moved to Nevada because the government promised them that they, and their descendants, would always be able to use the federally-owned land.  The Nevada ranchers believed they had an implied contract with the government allowing them to use the land for grazing. When government bureaucrats decided they needed to restrict grazing to protect the desert tortoise, they used force to drive most ranchers away.

By contrast, if the Nevada land in question was privately owned, the dispute over whether to allow the ranchers to continue to use the land would have likely been resolved without sending in federal armed agents to remove the Bundys’ cattle from the land. This is one more reason why the federal government should rid itself of all federal land holdings. Selling federal lands would also help reduce the federal deficit.

It is unlikely that Congress will divest the federal government’s land holdings, as most in government are more interested in increasing government power then in protecting and restoring private property rights.

A government that continually violates our rights of property and contract can fairly be descried as authoritarian. Of course, the politicians and bureaucrats take offense at this term, but how else do you describe a government that forbids Americans from grazing cattle on land they have used for over a century, from buying health insurance that does not met Obamacare’s standards, from trading with Cuba, or even from drinking raw milk! That so many in DC support the NSA spying and the TSA assaults on our privacy shows the low regard that too many in government have for our rights.

History shows us that authoritarian systems, whether fascist, communist, or Keynesian, will inevitably fail. I believe incidents such as that in Nevada show we may be witnessing the failure of the American authoritarian warfare-welfare state — and that of course would be good. This is why it so important that those of us who understand the freedom philosophy spread the truth about how statism caused our problems and why liberty is the only solution.

Former Congressman Paul’s article first appeared at ronpaulinstitute.org.

By Doug Gross, CNN

April 16, 2014 -- Updated 2126 GMT (0526 HKT)

(CNN) -- The "kill switch," a system for remotely disabling smartphones and wiping their data, will become standard in 2015, according to a pledge backed by most of the mobile world's major players.

Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft, along with the five biggest cellular carriers in the United States, are among those that have signed on to a voluntary program announced Tuesday by the industry's largest trade group.

All smartphones manufactured for sale in the United States after July 2015 must have the technology, according to the program from CTIA-The Wireless Association.

Advocates say the feature would deter thieves from taking mobile devices by rendering phones useless while allowing people to protect personal information if their phone is lost or stolen. Its proponents include law enforcement officials concerned about the rising problem of smartphone theft.

"We appreciate the commitment made by these companies to protect wireless users in the event their smartphones are lost or stolen," said Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA. "This flexibility provides consumers with access to the best features and apps that fit their unique needs while protecting their smartphones and the valuable information they contain."

HTC, Motorola, Nokia are among the other smartphone makers who have signed up, along with carriers AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular.

The feature would let a phone's owner erase contacts, photos, e-mail and other information, and lock the phone so it can't be used without a password.

The feature, which will be offered at no cost to consumers, also will prevent the phone from being reactivated without an authorized user's consent. The data would be retrievable if the owner recovers the phone.

Some phone makers already include the ability to remotely wipe phones. In Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 7, a feature called Activation Lock lets users prevent their phones from being reactivated even if they're reset...

Publication Date: March 31, 2014

A Collection of eight stories; interviews with Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary; an evening with Hunter S. Thompson, and "killed" magazine articles over the course of the 1990s, from the pen of America's most controversial writer

Planes hijacked since 2000: 

Turkish Airlines Flight 1754, hijacked by a muslim in January 2011.
Alitalia Flight 329, hijacked by a muslim in April 2011.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702, hijacked by a muslim in Feb 2014. 
Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554, hijacked by a muslim in June 2012.
AeroMéxico Flight 576, hijacked by a non-muslim in 2009.
CanJet Flight 918, hijacked by a non-muslim in 2009.
Sun Air Boeing 737 hijacked by a muslim in 2008. 
Eagle Airways Flight 2279, hijacked by a muslim in 2008.
Atlasjet MD-80, hijacked by muslims in 2007.
Air Mauritanie Boeing 737, hijacked by muslims in 2007.
Air West Boeing 737, hijacked by muslims in 2007. 
Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, hijacked by muslims in 2006. 
American Airlines Flight 11, hijacked by muslims in 2001.
United Airlines Flight 175, hijacked by muslims in 2001.
American Airlines Flight 77, hijacked by muslims in 2001.
United Airlines Flight 93, hijacked by muslims in 2001.
Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154, hijacked by muslims in 2001.
Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154, hijacked by muslims in 2000.
Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 115, hijacked by muslims in 2000.
VASP Boeing 737-2A1, hijacked by non-muslims in 2000. 
Philippine Airlines Flight 812, hijacked by a non-muslim in 2000. 
Ariana Afghan Airlines Boeing 727, hijacked by muslims in 2000.

By Alexander Bolton - 02/15/14 06:00 AM EST
TheHill.com

Conservatives in Iowa and New Hampshire are preparing a hero’s welcome for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) after he showed up Senate Republican leaders during a crucial vote on the debt limit. 

Cruz infuriated his Senate Republican colleagues this week when he filibustered a clean bill to raise the debt limit. His objection forced Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and 11 other Republicans to vote with Democrats to advance the legislation.

But in Iowa and New Hampshire, two important presidential primary states, conservative activists are cheering Cruz’s stand and buzzing about a possible presidential run in 2016.

Activists in the two states said they plan to show Cruz their appreciation when he visits in March and April.

“A tickertape parade,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host based in Iowa when asked what kind of reception Cruz will receive from activists next month.

“At this point with grassroots conservatives around the country it’s a close vote between who they distrust the most, the president, [Speaker] John Boehner [R-Ohio] or Mitch McConnell,” he said.

Ann Ray Trimble, a conservative activist in Iowa, said she and her allies are thrilled that Cruz took on his colleagues.

“It plays very well because the rank-and-file conservative in Iowa is a law-and-order person who believes, as Sen. Cruz stated in his objection, that the rules are the rules, the laws are the laws, and we need to follow them and not break them for political expediency.”

Cruz will speak on March 18 at a homeschooling rally hosted by the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators in Des Moines.

On April 12, he will attend the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, an event sponsored by Americans For Prosperity, a Tea Party-allied group, along with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, two other potential candidates for president in 2016.

Greg Moore, the state director of Americans for Prosperity-New Hampshire, said conservative activists who will gather at the rally applauded Cruz’s action and want to see more transparency in Washington.

“They want to see people take a stand one way or the other. ‘Where do you stand on spending? How serious are you about spending?’ Fiscal issues are huge in New Hampshire,” said Moore.

“Our activists want to see a great deal of accountability,” he added. “They would look at any opportunity bringing accountability as positive for Sen. Cruz.”

Cruz’s Republican colleagues, however, did not appreciate his filibuster. They held a tense and angry meeting Wednesday afternoon at which McConnell proposed waiving the 60-vote threshold normally required to advance legislation, according to sources familiar with the session.

Cruz stood up and declared he would not let his fellow Republicans to escape responsibility for advancing the debt-limit bill. He said he would force at least five Republicans to vote with Democrats to overcome the procedural hurdle.

A Senate Republican aide described the meeting as “very contentious.”

Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday announced what he described as one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history, taking President Obama and top intelligence officials to court over National Security Agency surveillance. 

"This, we believe, will be a historic lawsuit," the Kentucky Republican said. The suit, joined by conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. 

It alleges that the NSA program that sweeps up and stores massive amounts of telephone "metadata" -- which includes where and when calls are made, but not the contents of the calls -- violates the Fourth Amendment. The suit asks the court to rule the program unconstitutional and forbid the government from continuing it. 

"There's a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records would be taken without suspicion, without a judge's warrant and without individualization," Paul said, at a press conference in Washington. 

He said hundreds of thousands of people have joined, and predicted the suit could "conceivably represent hundreds of millions of people who have phone lines in this country."...

by Simon Black

February 10, 2014

Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile

631 people renounced their US citizenship in the 4th quarter of 2013.

This is an entire order of magnitude higher than the 45 people who renounced in 4Q/2012. And in total, 3,000 Americans renounced their citizenship in 2013-- another record high.

The previous record (1,777) was set in 2011, which shattered the previous record before that (1,534) which was set in 2010, which was more than twice the number (742) that renounced in 2009.

You can see the trend here. And it's not hard to figure out why it's happening.

As the United States Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen recently told Congress in her scathing report about US tax policy: 

"[T]ax requirements have become so confusing and the compliance burden so great that taxpayers are giving up their U.S. citizenship in record numbers."

In her report, Ms. Olsen specifically points to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was passed by Congress four years ago. She states that FATCA "has the potential to be burdensome, overly broad, and detrimental to taxpayer rights."

That's putting it politely.

I have written several times before that FATCA is one of the most destructive, insidious pieces of legislation ever passed. And the worst effects are only now -starting- to be felt.

Among other things, the law requires new disclosures for US citizens with foreign accounts. And just to make sure it's absolutely clear how the US government views its tax serfs, they put this little ditty in the instructions:

"The fact that a foreign jurisdiction would impose a civil or criminal penalty on you if you disclose the required information is not reasonable cause [to NOT file this form]."

Basically they're saying, 'Even if disclosing this information would cause you to go to jail in a foreign country due to their confidentiality laws, we don't give a damn. We still expect you to file this form. Otherwise we will throw you in jail in the US.' 

(yes, there are potential criminal penalties for not filing this form...)

This isn't exactly how a free society treats its citizens. It's a constant threat of force with these people. Even the most mundane, bureaucratic tasks are cause for intimidation.

As I have pointed out so many times before, you can't even apply for a passport (i.e. permission to leave the country) in the Land of the Free without being threatened with fines and imprisonment.

All of this has come at tremendous cost. Aside from permanent damaging the US government's reputation and its role in the global banking system, the human cost is nearly incalculable. 

Think about it-- it's not the Obamaphone recipients who are renouncing their citizenship and leaving the country. These are smart, talented, energetic people who could have actually contributed something.

And as this productive class gets out of dodge, they leave behind more people who want something for nothing... and fewer people to pay the bill. 

It's the same situation the Romans were in back in the 5th century.

Undoubtedly there are folks out there who would call the thousands of people who have renounced 'cowards' and 'traitors' (though they are in respected company given that the British considered George Washington a traitor).

But lest we judge 'renunciants' poorly, we should first ask-- is it more honorable to lay down and let yourself be plundered by a bunch of blundering, bungling, deceitful politicians...?

Doubtful. Besides, divorcing yourself from your bankrupt, insolvent government is not the same as divorcing yourself from your culture or values.

You are who you are no matter what color your passport is.

 by James Hall – January 29, 2014

Any analysis of domestic fossil fuel production and use must acknowledge that independence for U.S. energy has not been the national goal. Contrary to utopian dreamers and radical environmentalists, oil, natural gas and coal are the backbone of power in any modern economy. This power extends both to the fuels themselves and to the political security that is required for any economy to prosper. Therefore, it seems counterproductive to encourage corporatist to export our own precious resources for the mere motive of higher profits. Unfortunately, their ill-conceived greed is at the core of much of our countries instability.

Often ignored, coal was once the dominate resource in the generation of electricity. The utterly destructive and suicidal EPA regulations and Obama’s determination to bankrupt the coal industry has put into motion an export strategy that threatens the entire utility sector. 

The Motley Fool writes in the article, Can Exports Save U.S. Coal?      

“Although it remains the country’s largest private sector provider of jobs, the U.S. coal industry is hurting. Domestic utilities are turning to lower-priced natural gas. Environmental opponents are working hard to keep the mineral in the ground.

The idea of expanding exports to the world’s biggest customers — currently China, the Netherlands (a large transshipment point), the U.K., South Korea and Brazil — sounds good. And the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports shipments of 6.3 million short tons of steam coal and 7.4 million short tons of metallurgical coal in March set a monthly record. Increased Asian demand contributed to the standout month.”

The absurd notion at clean coal is impossible; drive this train directly to ports that ship our own most prolific natural resource overseas. So much for national security considerations and who in their right mind thinks that advance scrubbers will be used in all the Chinese plants being built.

Natural gas is the new boom fuel, especially because of the questionable hydrofrackingprocess. Leaving aside the risks to our finite water aquifer, extraction from deep field using this fracking method is the primary argument to drill. In the essay, Hydrofracking Boom or Bust, cites Deborah Rogers, points out the most significant economic consequence from hydrofracking.

"Exporting is a last ditch effort to shore up a failing balance sheet. Exportation will drive the price higher in the U.S. There’s no doubt about it. The question is how high will it go. When you are producing a commodity and have produced it to such a high extent, you want to find someone who will buy it, and in this case, it will be the Asians."

The Wall Street Journal reports how this economic model will take place in, U.S. Approves Expanded Gas Exports.

"The decision reflects a turnaround in the U.S. energy trade. Five years ago, many companies built natural-gas import terminals, anticipating greater U.S. demand for imported fuel.

Proponents of greater exports, including the oil and gas industry, say that exporting inexpensive natural gas will help the U.S. trade balance, help advance the adoption of clean-burning fuels around the world and shore up energy-poor U.S. allies."

Let’s be real. The corporatist only care about the margins they can squeeze out of any resource extracted from mother earth. Importing when the price is right or exporting when the world price goes the other way, but never any concern about energy INDEPENDENCE for our own people and country.

Now look at the grand daddy of all, petroleum. The Oil Roustabout Economyexplains the way the oil policy actually plays out. Virtually no real apprehension for domestic oil autonomy is factored into the economic schemes, that drive the economic, political and foreign policies, which keep the global a permanent tinderbox. "Remember that drilling in Anwar is prohibited, while waging war for oil is celebrated."

However, the scale of refining raw crude into a range of utilitarian end user products, lends merit to the resale for export, especially if the original crude comes from an imported source. A valid benefit is achieved by enhancing a natural resource, with value added functionality for exporting. Nonetheless, draining your own oil fields for an immediate infusion of short-term profit, only hastens the day when domestic oilfields run dry.

The Washington Post illustrates the latest insanity coming out of the political class servants of the oil barons. The article, U.S. oil exports have been banned for 40 years. Is it time for that to change?, has a chilling message.

"Some people think so — especially now that the United States is producing more oil than it has in decades. Overturning the ban, in theory, would allow companies to sell even more oil and keep expanding.

On Tuesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)gave a speech at the Brookings Institution calling on the Obama administration and Congress to loosen restrictions on crude-oil exports in order to boost domestic production. "We need to act," she said, "before the crude export ban raises problems and hurts American jobs." Jack Gerard, the head of the American Petroleum Institute,expressed similar sentiments later in the day."

Ah, that long journey to save jobs cry is most flexible depending where the campaign contributions come from. When was the last time you heard a national debate on the necessity to conserve and the prudent use of our own energy resources, strictly for domestic usage?

Not in this lifetime, instead of exporting our natural gas overseas, what happened to How to Convert the Country to Natural Gas, by T. Boone Pickens. Read the Pickens Plan and ask where are all those converted from diesel to LNG trucks?

Folks, the selling of our coal, gas and oil resources for export are more important to the internationalists that own the corporate businesses, which control the global resources, than true national energy independence. It is that simple. The establishment plutocrats are the designers, perpetuators and exploiters of an American economy that is held hostage to energy extortion. Not until this pattern is broken, will genuine prosperity return.

December 24, 2013
Singapore Straits Times