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Putin on a Nostalgia Bender

(March 30, 2013 ) News

Putin on a nostalgia bender, misses those good-old KGB days:

Governments and rights organizations are decrying raids by Russian authorities on more than 2,000 international and domestic advocacy groups, what observers say is an unprecedented campaign to silence critics of the Kremlin.

[...]

“This is an unprecedented crackdown on civil society in Russia that started in June with the adoption of a number of restrictive laws, which curtailed freedom of association, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. “There is a lot of poisonous anti-foreigner rhetoric and proposals for new laws; it is a very bad atmosphere.”

The raids are being conducted under Russia’s “foreign agent” law, which requires Russian nongovernmental organizations that engage in public advocacy and receive money from foreign donors to register as foreign agents. In most cases, the raids are carried out by prosecutorial, Justice Ministry and tax officials.

[...]

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said Thursday that the raids are aimed at combating money laundering and corruption. [Link]

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Aurora Massacre Sparks More Calls for Gun Controls

(July 23, 2012 ) News

I left this comment on a Sultan Knish article on the Aurora killings and calls for gun-controls.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/07/so-that-this-never-happens-again.html

It is a forensic fact of life that if a killer or robber suspects that his victims have the capacity to fight back, he is not likely to enter a home, business, shop or theater and start shooting. It is also a forensic fact – and there are dozens of stories that demonstrate it, which video footage – that a killer or robber who enters a venue with a gun gets the short end of a hail of bullets from victims who were as armed was well as he was. I recently watched a video of a pair of hooded thugs entering a Starbucks kind of café with a gun and baseball bat and proceeded to round up the patrons. Then some 83 year old patron with a pistol got behind them and began firing. The thugs tripped over each other trying to escape.

But laws that ban guns are pointless, as Daniel suggests here. Law-abiding citizens will refrain from buying guns, or are prohibited from buying them, regardless of their spotless records. Law-breakers will not obey such laws and will always find ways to get guns. Breaking laws is what they do. Then they prey on the defenseless law-abiding citizens. And in a society in which the health and safety of law-abiding citizens are not a government’s first priority, but control of all actions, if they fight back, they are liable to be made criminals themselves, for having had the capacity to fight back to preserve their health and safety. And if they happen to injure a criminal in the act of defending their values, in that same society they’re liable to be sued for the injuries they have inflicted on the criminal. Such citizens don’t even need to have possessed a gun. They could just as well kick the criminal in the groin or judo-chop his larynx or break his jaw, and they could be charged with using “excessive force” to subdue a criminal.

It’s the criminal who initiates force, and when he does, he is risking death or injury at the hands of his victim, who can retaliate only to the best of his ability. That’s the only thing criminal law should consider, and not whether or not a “sporting chance” is granted to the criminal. A criminal forfeits all rights once he initiates force. He introduces the element of force into his victim’s life, and he is just as likely to be a subject of force if his victim fights back as he is willing to subject his victim to. For horror stories of people jailed, fined, or sued for defending their lives or property, see Britain, a comprehensive police-state envied by gun-control advocates here in the U.S.

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Hillary Clinton’s Muslim Brotherhood connection

(July 20, 2012 ) News

I left this comment on a Jihad Watch column on Bachmann and Clinton’s “aid”:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/07/hamas-linked-cair-michelle-bachmann-is-giving-us-a-six-degrees-of-separation-drinking-game-on-muslim.html

A reader provided a link to Bachmann’s site. To post a comment, use Zip code 55003

Dear Representative Bachmann:

I must congratulate you on your firm stand calling for an investigation of the Islamic infiltration of our government, in particular of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin’s family, as well as other prominent Muslim-Americans working within the U.S. government, who have ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Such an investigation would likely reveal that the Brotherhood especially has been acting against this country for over a decade.

Frankly, I think you should ratchet up the charge to include Hillary Clinton herself. After all, how could she retain Abedin since 1996 without eventually learning of her connections to an organization dedicated to “conquering” the United States and bringing down its “miserable house”? And how could she then retain this person without being sympathetic to that “cause”? Even more, I would include President Obama in your call for an investigation; his foreign policy is obviously pro-Islam. His preferred “allies” are dictators and tyrants, e.g., Hugo Chavez and Saudi royalty, and he seems to have a yearning to be buddies with Vladimir Putin, who despises Obama and uses him as Kleenex.

The behavior and charges of John McCain and the House Speaker among other Republicans are disgusting. Is this a sample of Republican spine and backbone in the face of Islamic jihad? To cover for the enemy? And where is Mitt Romney in all this hullabaloo? Can we count on him to side with you, or is he, like House Speaker John Boehner, going to wuss out and join the lynching mob?

Islam is just another form of “gangster government,” and the Brotherhood is just like the Corleone family from “The Godfather.” Don’t give in to it. “Never give in,” said Winston Churchill, whose bust Obama returned to Britain.

Edward Cline

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Private Industry Building Infrastructure

(July 18, 2012 ) News

Writes Richard Salsman on The Bullet Train Fiasco Reminds Us That California Is Our Greece – Forbes:

When America was a freer, more capitalist nation, it achieved great things in infrastructure, largely by private means. The Panama Canal was built by U.S. firms in just 10 years (1904-1914), after the French had failed over the prior two decades. The Erie Canal was dug and made navigable in only 8 years (1817-1825). The U.S. Transcontinental Railroad was built in just 6 years (1863-1869). The Hoover Dam took a mere 5 years to complete (1931-1936). The Golden Gate Bridge was erected in under 5 years (January 1933 – May 1937). Most amazing of all perhaps, the Empire State Building was built in 13 months (March 1930 – April 1931).

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Fascist Partnerships

(July 12, 2012 ) News

An eye-opener. The issue is not “American jobs” but state-to-state or government-to-government deals. In this case, government-run-and-owned companies are benefiting from crony fascism. China is run by card-carrying communists who also control “private” Chinese companies, so they can also be called fascists. The symbiosis is startling but not surprising. General Motors, for example, has billions invested in China to produce luxury cars with the GM signature, but those companies are controlled by the Chinese government. Fundamentally, there is no difference here between the Chinese government undertaking mammoth building projects and the Saudis and Dubai building skyscrapers in the desert with petro dollars extorted from Americans with the connivance of our own government.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/us-bridges-roads-built-chinese-firms-14594513?tab=9482930?ion=1206853&playlist=14594944

Diane Sawyer, of course, would never ask why American jobs are going overseas, that is, why federal tax policies drive American capital to flee to offshore bank accounts and so never keep all those American welders and other construction pros employed. (Or maybe she’s too dumb to suspect the reason.) She’s pro-Obama but this little report doesn’t do Obama any favors. There are doctrinaire leftists in the news media, and then there are the clueless ones who adopt a party line without knowing it’s a party line, but which answers their own cruddy education and hatered of freedom.

We have had a “mixed economy” of freedom and controls for over a century, but such an unchallenged “mix” leads inevitably to across-the-board total controls. What one should object to in this ABC story is not that “jobs” are going overseas, but rather government interventionist policies that forbid capitalists from acting freely and without penalty and which give “crony capitalists” and government “capitalists” a free hand.
Factor into this story the fact that the Chinese government is one of the biggest holders of U.S. treasuries. Was the awarding of this Chinese company the Hamilton and Bay Bridge contracts a means of the U.S. paying off some of its debt to the Chinese government? I’d like to see that story run somewhere.

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