Friday, October 29, 2010

Review of Marshall's "Crisis is an Opportunity"

“Crisis is an Opportunity”: Engineering a Global Depression to Create a Global Government By Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research, October 26, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21632

This article may be the easiest explanation of the debt crisis I've ever read. It's so well written and informative I almost missed the author's most important omission. But to be sure I did not, the author assures me in his closing paragraph, that the people of the world must: ".. work together to promote true progressive and humane change.."

Throughout the article Marshall provides quotes that show global financial leaders expressing their "concern" about the instability and chaos the state austerity programs already caused in the EU and around the world. He quotes economic thinkers who say they are worried what these drastic measures (higher taxes on the poor and middle class, cuts in public services, etc) will cause in North America. Almost to a man the experts foresee a time when Americans choose Marxist street chaos and protests as a way of redress. Prediction or prophecy, all the soothsayers agree, social unrest leading to riots and street protests is going to happen here next.

What I find interesting is that no matter how many writers tell us this breakdown of our sovereignty is inevitable, whether they are for the fall or against it, their arguments on both sides are based in Hegelian thinking. The writer's parting words are a call to "fight" for our freedoms (in the revolutionary tradition) , and his last line is an either-or, false dilemma. Go
read it right now. He sounds almost just like Bush saying, "you're either with us or against us," doesn't he?

The communitarian's economic and social solution to the financial dialectic is truly progressive and humane, and the use of these terms raise a giant flag with me, almost as much as the progressive UN term Human Rights.

And yes, I've heard more than once about my "obsession" with my "little pet peeve" (called communitarianism) and that it's egotistical of me to judge others based on my pet theory. Maybe that's all true. But isn't is strange that Marshall opens with a description of the banker's Hegelian dialectical method yet he never mentions Hegel or explains false dialectics at all? (He did quote List, as if List were an advocate of universal unions aka globalization?).

Marshall's purpose for warning us of the dangers to our financial freedom does not include how they are being curtailed by the established supra-national model for global governance.

I don't know Marshall and I'm fairly certain he could care less what I think of his work. Being anti communitarian doesn't make me many friends or associates, and probably loses more for me than any gains I might have, that's for sure. As much as I want to champion the writers at global research, I can't trust anyone who so openly asks me to embrace a Hegelian solution.

Maybe to Marshall and so many other great writers of our time, the word communitarian is just not important. The fact that it's a key word in rebuilding a true progressive, humane society may be part of their avoidance. Why bother to mention that the trade union/EU/WTO laws that successfully destroyed the European and global economy are called, in the EU court records, communitarian laws? Is it only a coincidence that violent street riots are considered to be the best avenue for effecting radical social changes? Or did Hegel really teach that violent conflict is the ultimate human evolutionary tool?

The engineering of a social system that has a name and a philosophy is never very important.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act

gertee's new living area

everything connected to the outside goes by the door

Got this expose of Lisa Murkowski in an email tonight, thought I'd pass it on. Interesting how the group opposing the "socialists" Murkowski teamed up with failed to notice the Third Way makeup of the Senators. Evan Bayh is the chairman of the Third Way in the Senate. The old ACL website used to have a page called "Bayhwatch." Murkowski didn't jump party lines; she's a communitarian. http://www.kreig.net/ProBono/IssuesLaborPublicSafetyAct.htm

Also got a message from Alaskan Alan Dick's state campaign in the mail today. I met him and his wife at the Kenny Lake Fair. He's a goodhearted right wing conservative who has no idea what role the term "conservative" plays in the dialectic. I liked him and his forthrightness and the rationale for his convictions. I couldn't help myself, after we talked I ran home and grabbed 2 copies of our books and gifted them to him. He emailed soon after but I lost internet for a while and forgot to respond. I'm almost tempted to sign up to vote... must be having a weak moment.


Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Gertee gets dressed for winter

winter shower works just fine

1o above zero F at 12pm Alaska time

Nor sure how long I'll be staying here this winter but couldn't leave it uninsulated or untied down in case I'm here when it hits 50 below and the big northern winds rip the place apart. Now that it has a separate bedroom and a compost toilet and a "bidet" along with hardwood floors in the kitchen and vinyl walls and flooring under burlap "rugs," it's looking very uptown. The wood storage area and the water jugs and sink are all exactly where they should have been all along. I can finally draw floor plans that I know make sense and will work comfortably.

Thought about maybe renting it out to adventurers who want to see if they can survive living in a gertee during an Alaskan winter. Hate to leave it sit empty all winter. It's very well organized now, finally, and I can see a certain type of person getting a real healthy experience out of it. Then I thought about the dangers, the brutal reality, and how some people are just too wimpy to do what needs to be done. I'd need to ask a lot of very invasive questions in order to determine the capacity level of the applicants... sounds too communitarian to me.

Our apologies go out to all the people who are finding 404 errors on every page at the ACL. We will be reformatting the site over the winter but it's going to take time and there are only two of us working on this project, since the beginning of it over TEN years ago. We cannot afford to work on it every second of every day like we used to... and almost every article and research paper was written by me. The only way I was able to produce so much was I went camping full time and lived on practically nothing. Along the way I built the best tents I could possibly afford and learned to cook all my food on a wood stove. I'm just not willing to die for the ACL anymore.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Niki Raapana talks to herself about communitarianism

George's show had technical difficulties and they never called back after they lost me twice. I hope they're able to fix things by the time Michael Shaw speaks. I'm sure we'll reschedule.

Last night I started thinking about all the questions people ask me about communitarianism. I then decided to stimulate my archived brain storage with a mock interview with myself. We're gong to post this at the newly revised and empty ACL too, but here it is for now:

notes for interview with george 10/24/10

Q. What is communitarianism?

A. Communitarianism is a Dictatorship of the Community. Unlike communism, which established a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, communitarianism is the more advanced stage of human social evolution.

Q. Is this just a harder to pronounce version of communism?

A. No. The emerging communitarian global system has many similarities to both capitalism and communism. Most of its homeland judicial structure, land and resource use policies and social welfare programs were tested and perfected by totalitarian communists in Russia, South America, Europe and Israel. The communitarian's financial and economic system was tested in the western imperialist and capitalist nations as well as in many of the former colonial states and developing nations classified as Third World.

Communism branched far out from its 19th century roots. Committed members evolved into Fabian Socialists, National Socialists, National Communists, Democrats, Christians, Republicans, Catholics, Fusionists, Evangelicals, Zionists, Pagans, Masons, LaRouchies and Libertarians, who all eventually adopted the common ideology of free market socialism. Imperial British American capitalists and Global Free Traders merged with mercenaries, academics, mobsters, environmental scientists and natural resource experts who all just happen to also promote free market socialism, known in academia and the higher courts as communitarianism.

The basic 1848 communist theory was that capitalism and communism were two necessary, conflicting, temporary stages in human social development. The final happy stage would arrive when the whole world descended into chaos and all sides to every conflict finally synthesized under one perfect ideology. Although Marx called the communism stage a dictatorship of the proletariat, he never said what the final stage would be called. It's our thesis that the final stage in the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic is called communitarianism.

Q. Can you break this down into more bite size pieces?

A. We can try. Communitarianism can be broken down into four main sub sections.

1. philosophy
2. religion
3. political ideology
4. law

1. Philosophically, communitarianism is the final synthesis in the Hegelian dialectic. Communitarians insist that humanity cannot advance to its final evolutionary stage of perfection without the help of their expert planning, guidance and administrators, who are obviously much more enlightened than the rest of us common born sinners.

2. The religious basis for communitarianism rests in the oldest dialectic still in existence, the Talmud. Dr. Amitai Etzioni of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University in DC is the American guru. He's a former Israeli commando who studied the Talmud and the Kaballa, and according to him, this makes him the international "expert" on how to build more livable communities.

In his 30 plus published books and hundreds of articles, Etzioni laid out standard Hegelian justifications for military and community development interventions. His solution to staged Hegelian clashes between nations is to end all nations. Etzioni assures us that individual rights and liberties can only continue to exist if they are balanced against the common good. The least discussed fact about the new legal system is that all former laws must be made agreeable to the superior unwritten Talmud. Zionist led Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise of Islamic law in formerly Christian nations are part of a perfectly crafted Hegelian ploy to ensure a brutal, endless conflict continues to grow between the two primary religious barriers to communitarian global governance.

3.. Politically, it's the Third Way, Radical Middle theory that allows its followers to justify fascist warmongering on the corporate right and encourage peace actions of the antiwar left, at the same time. Hegel taught his followers to play both sides if necessary, to flip-flop back and forth, because long drawn out staged wars and senseless bloody conflicts are essential to human advancement.

Both Bushes and both Clintons were described many times in the American press as communitarians; Senator Barack Obama was hailed by the Democrats as the Third Way Wonder Boy in 2004.

4. Communitarian Law is the legal foundation for the emerging world justice system. It's the global standard of norms for rebuilding the world under a new model of governance with jurisdiction over all national state citizens. Internal structural changes necessary to adopting a global bureaucracy were outlined by the United Nations in Local Agenda 21. LA21 supports every UN Resolution of Rights adopted since its inception. This document expands the authority of global institutions and their global decrees into every private home and private business on the planet.

The foundation for America's conditioning to submit to communitarian law was slipped into the U.S. under the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946, at about the same time the United Nations was formed. Many of the 21st century UN LA21 land and resource use regulations are enforced by local American agencies operating under the authority of this sixty four year old act.

Q. What would you define as a communitarian crime?

A. Communitarian crimes are violations of community regulations. When Americans are charged with communitarian crimes, the procedure for due process is not the same as what happens when Americans are charged with actually hurting someone or damaging someone's property. Communitarian crimes do not require measurable property damages.

Communitarian criminals are people who took a risk, traded home farm products, sold or donated used children's clothing, harvested natural herbal remedies, made too much noise, had an argument, smoked or farted in public, got fat, made somebody feel bad, had a dirty kitchen or dirty kids, looked scary, talked to themselves, sat down on the sidewalk, didn't care enough about keeping the neighborhood clean, nice or safe, or refused to donate their private land to help save the trees, birds, fishes or animals.

The system is designed so that the agency that writes and adopts the communitarian law is also the agency that sits in judgment of the accused. The burden of proof is not on the state. There is no appeals process for communitarian crimes; only guilty people are charged with committing communitarian infractions of revised and updated ordinances.

Q. What is Local Agenda 21?

A. LA21 itself is a lengthy, boring document (that few will ever take the time to read). It describes the goals and ultimate purpose of equitably micromanaging all global land, people and natural resources. LA21 suggests structural changes and specific legislation to be introduced in every nation. LA21 defined a vaguely benevolent system of Community Law that overrules all contrary national and state constitutional law. The UN's official 1987 definition of Sustainable Development is the communitarianized, spiritual version of Marx's atheistic "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

It's a real disadvantage to our nation that very few Americans know (or care) that every federal agency in the United States changed their mission statements to promote sustainability immediately after LA21 was adopted. Our leaders never once bothered to tell us that LA21 is based in communitarian law or that UN Sustainable Development principles violates our precise legal contracts that say our government has to defend our private property, private business, private farms, private medicine, private worship, and private lives from all invaders, foreign or domestic.

Q. Communitarian experts say a global government would be impossible to build. Do the communitarians really have the capacity to do what they swear they can never do?

A. Almost. The communitarian global governance model shifts public duties formerly performed by answerable public servants to unaccountable private-public partnerships and community oriented development police, and it adds new duties to their job descriptions every day. The terms for Communitarian global governance have been quietly adopted for over a century in legislation, private meetings and agreements between national leaders and international community developers. All the regions and regional trade unions have already been established. Every member state in the European Union has already adapted their national legal systems and formally adopted communitarian supremacy of law. In the United States and the United Kingdom, communitarian supremacy has been introduced quietly into the national systems under the guise of Free Trade Agreements (like the early EU), environmental and consumer protections, volunteerism, service training, healthy neighborhoods, neighborhood watch, neighborhood planning, Transit Oriented and ABCD Development, 2020 Visions, Rebuilding Community, The Wars on Terror, Drugs, Smoking and Obesity, and many more ways... all designed with one Common Purpose in mind.

Q. How do we learn to recognize communitarianism in our own community?

A. At the local level, Communitarian governance bypasses the normal municipal and county government apparatus. Every agency is merged with the others. it's called Interdepartmental Cross Training. There are no more separations of powers. Elected officials often hire city administrators and employ outside advisers and groups like ICLEI to draft communitarian plans and revised ordinances and regulations. New citizen responsibilities and requirements are swiftly adopted without debate by elected council members who all gain financially from the development games. (The list of Seattle Community Developers who earned high level posts in the Obama administration is long.) The day-to-day redevelopment of each individual community is administered by lower-level, un-elected and self-appointed councils, boards, committees, international partners, advisers and community development teams, many of whom don't have the first clue what they're working to implement.

Even where we live, Kenny Lake,  a tiny rural Alaskan community of 400 residents, our local Community League is communitarian now. For years the league had two small jobs. They took care of the community well and hosted our tiny, once yearly, one day fair. Under the patient guidance of retired teachers, mental health providers and federal parks employee,s they've spiritually evolved into a Board of Directors with seven standing committees. Now they're asking everyone here to tell them their skills so we can all volunteer to help them with all the new grant funded community economic development.

Q. How far has it penetrated in the U.S.?

A. The core foundation for the U.S. communitarian system is already established. Community Development is a standard agency in every state. The term Sustainable Development expanded from the UN into the mainstream private business sector in less than a decade. Every inch of the USA has an adopted plan and vision for the future, and the goal of every single one of them is to ensure sustainability.

In the cities, Communitarians have already conditioned Americans into accepting aspects of life in controlled collectives. Borrowing from the most successful collectives in recent history, Communitarians utilize and expand on programs, policies and ideas perfected by the British Fabians, Imperialists, Russian Soviets, Chinese Communists, Nazis, Fascists, and Israeli commandos. This is why you hear so many Americans saying "it's socialism!" or "it's communism!" or "it's fascism!" or "it's capitalism!"; many people recognize these ideologies when they see them manifesting. But it's only once people start seeing more than one ideology going on at the same time that communitarianism begins to make total sense.

Q. Is there an easy way people can identify if a communitarian regulation is in violation of U.S. law?

A. Yes. In the U.S., any law not based in property is unconstitutional. All legitimate U.S. law must adhere to constitutional principles, and the U.S. Constitution is based entirely in property ownership. All legitimate criminal activities must produce some level of property damages. Civil suits must also request compensation for damages to property. Communitarian crimes are actions by people that interfere with the community developers' plans for rebuilding a safer, more livable community. Anything designed to improve "quality of life" is a communitarian program.

Communitarian Law is supposed to bring the entire world peace, security, harmony and happiness. Preventing bad people from doing bad things is the communitarians enlightened, moral imperative. Like high tech soothsayers, they steal our most private information and use it to predict our future, then they use their special trained community cops to stop bad people and bad things from happening.

Q. Should I buy more guns? (I hear this one a lot!)

A. Under the communitarian system, individual rights and liberties are not always balanced against the common good in the same violent way it happened to the people of China, the Ukraine, Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The more morally evolved and quasi-spiritual communitarians are a lot nicer when they balance individual and state rights against the rights of the community in more easily persuaded countries.

Q.. Is there an easy way to spot communitarian activity?

A. Yes. Any move by a small group of concerned citizens to change community behaviors is suspect. Their activities often begin with regulating private business and updating land use regulations. If there are a lot of new agencies promoting sustainable development and the creation of small "expert" councils with sub-committees (like the Alaska Food Policy Council) we can soon expect drastic, unnecessary changes to our personal freedoms. Some actions, like the new xray scanners in American airports, are right in our face and can't be ignored. Others are more subtle and behind the scenes; we have to look a little closer to identify them.

Right now they're very busy teaching us our new roles as global citizens. Internationally acclaimed communitarian legal advisers teach people across the world how to teach their neighbors to become better stewards of their local environments.

To a communitarian, we become better citizens and stewards when we willingly give up any constitutional claims to unalienable rights. Community Rights are more moral than outdated Individual Protections under the people's law. Communitarian gods and goddesses are the ones who balance our freedom to travel, move goods, offer services, produce food and products or otherwise live naturally off our privately and publicly owned lands.

Q. What's the final result of communitarianism?

A. The communitarian system changes formerly free people from being controllers over their own lives and resources to becoming the controlled resources themselves.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Is resistance really futile?

It made me very sad to learn Joan Veon passed away a few days ago. We learned about Agenda 21 from her and Berit Kjos. Had it not been for these women and all their posted research on the conferences they attended, it may have taken me a lot longer to expand ACL research to the global level. Devvy Kidd's tribute to Joan's generous contributions to the resistance is at newswithviews; she encourages everyone to use the links to Joan's archives.

Both Nordica and I will be guests on George Butler's radio show this coming Monday at CORRECTION! 5 to 6:15 pm CST. Last time I was on George's show he was live at Texas A&M when Obama was on campus promoting Community Volunteerism (along with Bush's 1000 Points of Light Foundation). He's a very sweet man and it should be a lot of fun having Nordica do a show with him.

In case you haven't been there lately, Nordica revised the entire ACL website. We're also in the process of editing, revising and combining 2020 and the Manifesto into one perfectly bound book. This new 2 book edition may be pre-sold for a limited time. They'll include something "special" for the early buyers.Our friend Sean suggested we make a limited run of DVDs with ten hours of my guest appearances on radio shows, and I like that idea.

I just learned that one of our closest ACL affiliates has been gang stalked. It's the first time that I know of this happening to one of our tiny group of researcher/writers. We've had a few weird things happen to us in Kenny Lake but nothing like what happens when people are actually stalked by these Palmach terrorist groups.. I will ask him to write about the whole experience so I can add it to 2020 under the chapter on Community Oriented Policing. The new communitarian COPS don't just use police as "social resources", they use them in other more innovative and talmudic ways too.

Which reminds me. Amitai Etzioni sent me a group email about this anti Afghan war article he just wrote for CNN. He's going back to his Berekely SDS roots: he's going to help us restart the "peace" movement. He describes his background as an Israeli "commando" and (again) uses it to prove he knows so much about war that he's now against it. He also assures us the Afghan people are stuck in the 12th century and can never become what Germany and Japan became after the Americans rebuilt those nations. Etzioni writes about the Middle Eastern nations as if they're somehow sooo backward. He helped me to realize the Islamic nations are the biggest barrier to sadistic, elitist global government, not the so called "Christian" nations. The Christian "west" has been long over run by the "eastern" invaders. Today the entire western world worships and makes war under the banner of British American Zionism, it's practically the state religion. And yes, I know, the only people Americans are "allowed" to call their enemies are the people in the tribes who will fight the British-Zionist global government to the death.

Obama's Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske's COMPASS program was pilot tested on Seattlites in 1999. COMPASS was the COPS' database program designed to help local community developers to rebuild "better" neighborhoods. It collected many levels of information about the people living in the neighborhood, their financial records, employment, unemployment, medical. legal, criminal, health etc. and one mapping layer included "annecdotal data."

Today almost ALL American police have laptop computers with COMPASS (or some sort of "mapping" database) in their cars. COPS' Fusion Centers are where the information about people is gathered, sorted, stored and distributed. This innovative mapping program allows COPS and the new communitarian LA21 development teams access to all kinds of information about private citizens. Big Mother's field agents are high tech soothsayers.

Americans would like to believe they have somehow retained their "freedom" and "independence" when every move they make can easily be monitored by Israeli trained COPS/thugs who use "concerned citizens" as snitches. I wonder how this borrowed Chinese idea of using the police as social resources is going to turn out for our people. What's going to happen to the people who refuse to go along with the new values? Which ones are they? Do we need to know? Will people identified as a "problem" get points with the new guards if they turn over their friends and family members who say "anti-govt" things? So what was really IN all those Stassi files the East German government was so reluctant to release after the "fall" of communism? (And was that when we moved into the communitarian synthesis?)

Will gangstalkers and public health searchers (like Dawson) evolve into kidnappers and death squads? DEA and SWAT already have. What do we do when our neighbors get dragged off in the middle of the night by the SWAT or the community police? That's easy to predict, isn't it? We'll do nothing, besides maybe hope we're not next on the community developer's "hit list". But then there are those few among us who will resist, who will risk their lives and reputations to stand up and defend the rights and liberties of ALL people, no matter who they are or what they have.

Here's an interesting article that uses Chilkoot Charlies motto to teach about the scam:
http://www.channelingreality.com/Digital_Treason/back_door_man.htm







Monday, October 18, 2010

Pilot to TSA: 'No Groping Me and No Naked Photos'

This came today from Consuelo. It confirms Etzioni's recent CNN article and his advice to our government. Many govt employees can use communitarian "reasons" for stripping our rights and liberties away. It's been a few years since I posted that article from an English newspaper where the London cops took an entire pub hostage and gave them the same choice between a virtual strip search and an actual strip search. Is strip searching bar patrons for drugs and weapons the next step here too? Communitarianism is, after all, a global justice program.

How many Americans are meekly submitting to these Israeli/Nazi checkpoints? Most of them?

Pilot to TSA: 'No Groping Me and No Naked Photos'

by Michael Roberts


October 15, 2010 – My name is Michael Roberts, and I am a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, Inc., based in Houston (that is, I still am for the time being). This morning as I attempted to pass through the security line for my commute to work I was denied access to the secured area of the terminal building at Memphis International Airport. I have passed through the same line roughly once per week for the past four and a half years without incident. Today, however, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at this checkpoint were using one of the new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) systems that are currently being deployed at airports across the nation. These are the controversial devices featured by the media in recent months, albeit sparingly, which enable screeners to see beneath people’s clothing to an extremely graphic and intrusive level of detail (virtual strip searching). Travelers refusing this indignity may instead be physically frisked by a government security agent until the agent is satisfied to release them on their way in what is being touted as an "alternative option" to AIT. The following is a somewhat hastily drafted account of my experience this morning.

As I loaded my bags onto the X-ray scanner belt, an agent told me to remove my shoes and send them through as well, which I’ve not normally been required to do when passing through the standard metal detectors in uniform. When I questioned her, she said it was necessary to remove my shoes for the AIT scanner. I explained that I did not wish to participate in the AIT program, so she told me I could keep my shoes and directed me through the metal detector that had been roped off. She then called somewhat urgently to the agents on the other side: "We got an opt-out!" and also reported the "opt-out" into her handheld radio. On the other side I was stopped by another agent and informed that because I had "opted out" of AIT screening, I would have to go through secondary screening. I asked for clarification to be sure he was talking about frisking me, which he confirmed, and I declined. At this point he and another agent explained the TSA’s latest decree, saying I would not be permitted to pass without showing them my naked body, and how my refusal to do so had now given them cause to put their hands on me as I evidently posed a threat to air transportation security (this, of course, is my nutshell synopsis of the exchange). I asked whether they did in fact suspect I was concealing something after I had passed through the metal detector, or whether they believed that I had made any threats or given other indications of malicious designs to warrant treating me, a law-abiding fellow citizen, so rudely. None of that was relevant, I was told. They were just doing their job.


Eventually the airport police were summoned. Several officers showed up and we essentially repeated the conversation above. When it became clear that we had reached an impasse, one of the more sensible officers and I agreed that any further conversation would be pointless at this time. I then asked whether I was free to go. I was not. Another officer wanted to see my driver’s license. When I asked why, he said they needed information for their report on this "incident" – my name, address, phone number, etc. I recited my information for him, until he asked for my supervisor’s name and number at the airline. Why did he need that, I asked. For the report, he answered. I had already given him the primary phone number at my company’s headquarters. When I asked him what the Chief Pilot in Houston had to do with any of this, he either refused or was simply unable to provide a meaningful explanation. I chose not to divulge my supervisor’s name as I preferred to be the first to inform him of the situation myself. In any event, after a brief huddle with several other officers, my interrogator told me I was free to go.

As I approached the airport exit, however, I was stopped again by a man whom I believe to be the airport police chief, though I can’t say for sure. He said I still needed to speak with an investigator who was on his way over. I asked what sort of investigator. A TSA investigator, he said. As I was by this time looking eagerly forward to leaving the airport, I had little patience for the additional vexation. I’d been denied access to my workplace and had no other business keeping me there.

"Am I under arrest?" I asked.


"No, he just needs to ask you some more questions."

"But I was told I’m free to go. So… am I being detained now, or what?"

"We just need to hold you here so he can…"

"Hold me in what capacity?" I insisted.

"Detain you while we…"

Okay, so now they were detaining me as I was leaving the airport facility.

We stood there awkwardly, waiting for the investigator while he kept an eye on me. Being chatty by nature, I asked his opinion of what new procedures might be implemented if someday someone were to smuggle an explosive device in his or her rectum or a similar orifice. Ever since would-be terrorist Richard Reid set his shoes on fire, travelers have been required to remove their footwear in the security line. And the TSA has repeatedly attempted to justify these latest measures by citing Northwest flight 253, on which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab scorched his genitalia. Where, then, would the evolution of these policies lead next?

"Do you want them to board your plane?" he asked.

"No, but I understand there are other, better ways to keep them off. Besides, at this point I’m more concerned with the greater threat to our rights and liberties as a free society."


"Yeah, I know," he said. And then, to my amazement, he continued, "But somebody’s already taken those away."

"Maybe they have," I conceded, watching the throng of passengers waiting their turn to get virtually naked for the federal security guards.

As a side note, I cannot refrain here from expressing my dismay and heartbreak over a civil servant’s personal resignation to the loss of civil liberty among the people by whom he is employed to protect and serve. If he no longer affirms the rights and freedom of his fellow citizens, one can only wonder exactly what he has in view as the purpose of his profession.

The TSA investigator arrived and asked for my account of the situation. I explained that the agents weren’t allowing me to pass through the checkpoint. He told me he had been advised that I was refusing security screening, to which I replied that I had willingly walked through the metal detector with no alarms, the same way I always do when commuting to work. He then briefed me on the recent screening policy changes and, apparently confused, asked whether they would be a problem for me. I stated that I did indeed have a problem with the infringement of my civil rights and liberty.

His reply: "That’s irrelevant."

It wasn’t irrelevant to me. We continued briefly in the conversation until I recognized that we were essentially repeating the same discussion I’d already had with the other officers and agents standing by. With that realization, I told him I did not wish to keep going around and around with them and asked whether he had anything else to say to me. Yes, he said he did, marching indignantly over to a table nearby with an air as though he were about to do something drastic.


"I need to get your information for my report," he demanded.

"The officer over there just took my information for his report. I’m sure you could just get it from him."

"No, I have to document everything separately and send it to TSOC. That’s the Transportation Security Operations Center where we report…"

"I’m familiar with TSOC," I assured him. "In fact, I’ve actually taught the TSA mandated security portion of our training program at the airline."

"Well, if you’re an instructor, then you should know better," he barked.

"Really? What do you mean I ‘should know better’? Are you scolding me? Have I done something wrong?"

"I’m not saying you’ve done something wrong. But you have to go through security screening if you want to enter the facility."

"Understood. I’ve been going through security screening right here in this line for five years and never blown up an airplane, broken any laws, made any threats, or had a government agent call my boss in Houston. And you guys have never tried to touch me or see me naked that whole time. But, if that’s what it’s come to now, I don’t want to enter the facility that badly."


Finishing up, he asked me to confirm that I had been offered secondary screening as an alternative "option" to ATS, and that I had refused it. I confirmed. Then he asked whether I’d "had words" with any of the agents. I asked what he meant by that and he said he wanted to know whether there had been "any exchange of words." I told him that yes, we spoke. He then turned to the crowd of officers and asked whether I had been abusive toward any of them when they wanted to create images of my naked body and touch me in an unwelcome manner. I didn’t hear what they said in reply, but he returned and finally told me I was free to leave the airport.

As it turned out, they did reach the chief pilot’s office in Houston before I was able to. Shortly after I got home, my boss called and said they had been contacted by the TSA. I suppose my employment status at this point can best be described as on hold.

It’s probably fairly obvious here that I am outraged. This took place today (now yesterday, when I wrote all this down), 15 October 2010. Anyone who reads this is welcome to contact me for confirmation of the details or any additional information I can provide. The dialog above is quoted according to my best recollection, without embellishment or significant alteration except for the sake of clarity. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations for legal counsel – preferably a firm with a libertarian bent and experience resisting this kind of tyrannical madness. This is not a left or right, red or blue state issue. The very bedrock of our way of life in this country is under attack from within. Please don’t let it be taken from us without a fight.

Malo Periculosam Libertatem Quam Quietum Servitium

Michael S. Roberts
3794 Douglass Ave.
Memphis, TN 38111
901.237.6308
FedUpFlyers@nonpartisan.com

October 18, 2010

Michael S. Roberts [send him mail] is a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Friday, October 15, 2010

The "New American Soviet" the European Union is rapidly descending into totalitarianism. by Vilius Brazenas

Gertee Prototype gets a new look!

Haven't read this yet but it looks very interesting. From our friend Kathleen:

The "New European Soviet": the European Union is rapidly descending into totalitarianism. Under NAFTA and the proposed FTAA, U.S. policymakers have adopted the same socialist EU program by Vilius Brazenas | Sept 6, 2004

[1] "The "New European Soviet": the European Union is rapidly descending into totalitarianism. Under NAFTA and the proposed FTAA, U.S. policymakers have adopted the same socialist EU program" --

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_18_20/ai_n25095870/

[2] "The New American" version, republished last week on the occasion of the DEATH of the author at age 97, from the 2004 version:

http://www.calameo.com/books/0001117908a56565e200c

[3] This is about the author:

http://www.calameo.com/books/00011179087fa282aa6a1

saved from the original url:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/4823-vilius-brazenas-lithuanian-american-freedom-fighter-extraordinaire

There are videos out there of this man, but they're in his mother tongue, I haven't found any in English yete.

Kathleen Moore

HABEAS CORPUS CANADA

The Official Legal Challenge

To North American Union\

www.habeascorpuscanada.com

Monday, October 11, 2010

"It's payback time" from the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies

Posters on forums repeatedly suggest I've coined a new word to describe my political beliefs. Just because people have never once heard the term used, they assume nobody else has either.

My letter to the tea party is getting some wild and unsubstantiated rebuttal comments. Maybe I should have directly quoted Etzioni in my letter, but I was trying to make it an easier read. I did not submit it to Alex Jones, but now that it's there I'm learning a lot more about my enemies. :)

Here's the latest "news" from our communitarian guru and his more moral Israeli institute dedicated to merging the U.S. under communitarian global norms. Notice how everything they do is called "new"... now there's even a "new normal" and who better to define what that means than Dr. Amitai Etzioni... the "everything expert" :

The Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies has produced two articles recently that may be of interest to you. The first published at CNN.com (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-04/opinion/etzioni.new.normal_1_pursuits-payback-time-esteem?_s=PM:OPINION) encourages Americans to pursue non-material goals so they can be happier even in tough economic times.

The second piece, at The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/78250/private-security-virtual-strip-search)
defends the use of full-body scanners at airport security screenings.

Are Americans Ready for the New Normal?
October 04, 2010 | By Amitai Etzioni, Special to CNN.com

When I asked an audience, "Do you really need a flat-screen TV? An inflatable Santa Claus? Plastic pink flamingos on your front lawn?" they chuckled with agreement. However, when I added, "A 4G phone?" the room went awfully silent.

The bigger question is: Will Americans learn to live with -- better yet, find -- some new sources of contentment, in the austerity many millions will face for years to come, or will they continue to be sharply disappointed that they have to make do with less? With less when it comes to material goods, that is.

I wish I could send them all a copy of the writing of Abraham Maslow. Maslow pointed out that human needs are organized in a hierarchy. At the bottom are basic needs for food, shelter, clothing and other such essentials (the physiological and safety needs, in Maslow's terms).

Once these needs are sated, psychologically healthy people pay more mind to their social needs, to being loved and loving, to being appreciated and appreciating. And as these higher needs are fulfilled, these good people turn to "self-actualization," to spiritual and transcendental pursuits -- to the pinnacle of human needs.

There is nothing wrong about people who have few resources focusing on satisfying their basic needs. A problem only arises when, as people's income grows -- as it did for the last several decades -- they continue to buy stuff, instead of spending more time in the pursuit of serving their higher needs.

It is the subject of scores of movies, plays and novels: The man feels he did all he should by bringing home oodles of money, which allowed the family to buy a larger house, the latest appliances and so on -- and the family is frustrated because the man has no time for his spouse or kids.

In the social science lingo, people are conditioned to buy objects to express affection (as captured in the commercial tag lines "promise her anything, but give her Arpège" and "diamonds are a girl's best friend") and measure their esteem by the size of their bank account. If Maslow is correct, there is no true happiness down this road, and people ought to be liberated from the use of goods to buy affection and esteem.

The Great Recession provides a golden opportunity to test Maslow's prescription. As most everybody has read by now, we lived beyond our means for decades, and we borrowed about all we could from overseas and indebted our children. It's payback time.


Private Security
In defense of the 'virtual strip-search.'
October 9, 2010 | Amitai Etzioni for The New Republic

If you've passed through a major American airport in the past few months, you may have been subjected to a full-body scan. The new backscatter and millimeter-wave sensing devices that have been deployed across the country check whether people hide forbidden objects under their clothes. Privacy advocates refer to them as "virtual strip-searches." But how worried should one be about these scanners? Are they truly a grave threat to individual privacy, as civil libertarians contend?

I come at this issue as a communitarian. This philosophy, about which I have written extensively, holds that our public-policy decisions must balance two core values: Our commitment to individual rights and our commitment to the common good. Neither is a priori privileged. Thus, when threatened by the lethal SARS virus, we demanded that
contagious people stay home—even though this limited their freedom to assemble and travel—because the contribution to the common good was high and the intrusion limited. Yet we banned the trading of medical records because these trades constituted a severe intrusion, but had no socially redeeming merit. (For more discussion, see The New Golden Rule.) Viewed through this lens, I must say that the case against these scanners is deeply unconvincing.

The actual threat to privacy posed by these scanners has been inflated using sensationalistic imagery. In order to illustrate how intrusive this "strip-search" is, civil liberties advocates often display a rather graphic image obtained from a scanner. Yet they neglect to mention that the image is not of an airline passenger but of a TSA employee who volunteered to test the machine. (After all, if someone is willing to expose themselves, especially for a good cause, we have little reason to object.) Moreover, as you can see, the images of passengers that actually appear on TSA screens are a far cry from the one circulated by civil liberties advocates, because the scanners are equipped with two kinds of privacy filters. One conceals the genitals and the other the face. (What's more, new scanner software replaces the realistic images of the passengers who are being scanned with a cartoon of a generic, clothed body, and marks areas that should be checked further. This software is currently being tested.) Further preserving privacy, TSA staffers who view the images are in a separate room and are unaware of the identity of the passenger who is screened.

True, when we deal with millions of travelers, day in and day out, someone somewhere will cross the line. Thus, civil libertarians make much of the fact that a scanner in use in a Florida courthouse had stored over 35,000 images (although there is no evidence that anybody dispersed these images to people not authorized to review them). Yet efforts to flag such incidents should not distract us from the essential fact that these privacy violations are exceedingly rare and not necessarily damaging.

To wit, there is virtually no evidence that body scanners have actually harmed Americans. Indeed, civil liberties advocates generally do a poor job of explaining precisely what kind of harm the scanners are supposed to cause. "Libertarians may contend that the new security measures have a “chilling effect” on people beyond those directly affected. However, there is little evidence of this effect, and it is hard to explain what exactly it means in concrete terms. Do fewer people fly because of the scanners—even when dealing with short distances, where there are ready alternatives such as the Acela and rental cars?

The ACLU further asserts that the scanners amount to “a significant assault on the essential dignity of passengers” but provides no concrete evidence to this effect. On the contrary, the people whose dignity is supposedly being assaulted do not feel that way : A January 2010 CBS News poll found that roughly three out of four Americans (74 percent) think airports should use full-body x-ray scanners because “they provide a detailed check for hidden weapons and explosives and reduce the need for physical searches.” Who should we trust to judge what does or doesn't threaten a passenger's dignity? Civil liberties activists, or the passengers themselves? As the public is well aware, being unable to fly without fear of being bombed out of the sky assaults people, and not just their dignity.

Most important, civil liberties advocates also ignore the fact that people who subject themselves to body scans do it voluntarily. They are free to choose a pat-down rather than pass through the millimeter-wave machine, and even then about 70 percent of Americans say they prefer to be scanned. (The option of choosing a pat-down should not be considered unduly coercive, since random pat-downs were mandatory even before the installation of body scanners—and civil libertarians cannot seriously argue that there should be no scrutiny at all.) Even a strong libertarian should agree that if one consents to a search, especially when there is a ready alternative, there is no room for challenges. All of these facts suggest that the main libertarian criticisms against body scanners are simply not credible.

Finally, there is the core question of proportionality and context. The real issue at hand is what experience scanners provide to most people, mostof the time, how frequent exceptional violations of privacy are, and what remedies are in place. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), in its critique of scanners, states that new security measures “present privacy and security risks to air travelers because they might create data files directly linked to the identity of air travelers. These files, if retained, could provide the basis for a database of air traveler profiles.” (Emphases mine.) The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen argues that "the greatest privacy concern is that the images may later leak.” Other privacy advocates hold that the radiation involved may harm one’s health. Yet these concerns—almost entirely hypothetical—pale in comparison to the possibility that terrorists might bring down more airplanes, or worse.

And, in their core mission of deterring terrorists, the body scanners cannot help but work. The ACLU argues that, “It is far from clear that body scanners would have detected the ‘anatomically congruent’ explosives [Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] hid in his underwear.” And, it says, “some experts have said explosives can be hidden by being molded against the human body, or in folds of skin, and British newspapers are reporting that government testing in the UK found that the technology comes up short in detecting plastic, chemicals and liquids.” But this type of argument—the same type that the ACLU applies to nearly every security measure—is a bait and switch. It does not answer the question of how much security the scanners add.

Simply put, security effectiveness does not require 100 percent success, just a significant increase in the detection capability of the measures in place. In this way, the millimeter-wave devices narrow the opportunities for terrorists, add ways in which they can be detected, increase the probability that they will make an error, and reduce their confidence—as well as the confidence of those who employ them.

When all is said and done, we must vigilantly protect our rights, but we must also be concerned about our security. The spirit of this approach is embodied in the Fourth Amendment, which does not ban all searches—only unreasonable ones. And the searches that body scanners perform are reasonable, if we keep in mind the fact that terrorists are far from done, and that our nation has a vital interest in protecting not just rights but also lives.


For more information, check out our new website at icps.gwu.edu.

The Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies
The George Washington University
1922 F St. NW, Rm. 413
Washington, DC 20052
ph: 202.994.8190
fax: 202.994.1606
Twitter: @AmitaiEtzioni
Visit our electronic archives at http://dspace.wrlc.org/handle/1961/137
Maybe Etzioni should have included the fact that he already redefined "reasonable" for us?

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Radio Shows

I'll be on Maggie's Unsolicited Truth Radio Show tomorrow at 5:15 pm Eastern.
http://www.theunsolicitedopinion.com/main70.htm

Went on Rense a couple weeks ago and he's going to send me an mp3 file. I'll post it when I get it.

As soon as I'm resettled I'll be contacting the other shows who invited me on over the past summer. I guess my "vacation" from the ACL is over.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

An open letter to all members of local Tea Parties

An open letter to all members of local Tea Parties
from the co-founder of the Anti Communitarian League


Every policy the Tea Party has protested is based entirely in communitarian ideology. From National Health Care to the Bank Bailout to the Stimulus Package to Stop the IRS and End the Fed, it's all communitarian. Yet the actual word, communitarianism, is missing from your protests and debates. Our entire country is being led down a communitarian path without any idea of how it's happening. So, I'd like to present it to you as a topic for discussion.

This is not an attempt to take-over or co-opt your party. I have zero aspirations for political or leadership positions. Simply bringing the topic of communitarian development before American voters has been the driving force behind everything I've written about it for the past ten years. My primary goal is to make the changeover to communitarian government open to public debates in every affected country.

Communitarianism is the belief that individual and national sovereignty must be balanced against the needs of the global collective. Their entire foundation for forced social evolution rests on their Big Idea that all the world's people will be "free" after everyone gives up any claims to their personal freedom. Defined as the new "spirit" of community, Communitarians believe they are leading mankind into an advanced moral and spiritual state of being. Across the globe, communitarian gurus promote a global program designed to create one big, planned, gated community. They call it sustainable community development.

Anti communitarianism is the antithesis to communitarianism. That means we think the opposite of communitarians. We disagree with their Big Idea. We oppose forced social evolution. We disrespect their organizations. We object to communitarian programs, policies, and laws being enforced upon nations that have not legally adopted supremacy of communitarian law. We hate what they've done to America.

The Anti Communitarian League began in Seattle, Washington in the spring of 1999. We were renters who became targets in a huge land war between the community planners and our wealthy landlord. I spent three years volunteering my time to help "slumlord" Hugh Sisley resist hostile, "innovative" government land use actions against him and his tenants. (Sisely and the City won; We the Tenants lost.)

The City of Seattle and King County government had established new agencies with new agency rules. These offices were granted expanded power to write and enforce new judicial administrative regulations. Their new laws supposedly completely overruled our 4th and 5th Amendment Rights. When we complained and insisted on a Redress of Grievances, City officials told us our rights had already been balanced against the "rights of the community at large." When they could not provide evidence for this drastic change to U.S. Rule of Law, I began reading everything about it that I could find .

I learned very quickly that this wasn't just an ordinary local land dispute. It was apparent to me that we were on the front lines of a massive multi-front war against our individual, state and national freedom.

It took me a full year of reading before I identified the replacement system driving the new actions. American officials rarely tell American voters the name of the new system. The Reinvention of America into a Sustainable Communitarian Paradise was never supposed to be debated or voted upon by the American people. By the time we found out about it, it was, according to our officials, already a "done deal."

In the beginning I was still naive enough to think lots of other Americans would join in our fight. I asked everyone I saw if they knew the Bill of Rights had been replaced with communitarian values. Most of them laughed right in my face. I wrote hundreds of snail mail letters and spent thousands of hours studying, reading, and hoping someone more qualified would take over the resistance. I was shocked to learn we were the only anti communitarians in the United States. I remain horrified by the fact that every university in the country teaches communitarianism yet our original thesis against it is the only one ever written.

A lengthy study of the recently available online documents about your party shows me that your loosely affiliated organizations have not taken an official position on the philosophy that drives the Reinvention of American Government. I've found a few local groups that have posted information about UN Local Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development. I haven't found any local Tea Party groups (besides affiliates of Gigi Bowman in NY) who are being asked to discuss or vote on communitarian changes to the U.S. system.

Since my above definition of anti communitarian thinking is based entirely in my own personal research, experience and understanding, it's only fair to provide you with a short synopsis of who I am and how I came to be an anti communitarian thinker.

In the early 80s while I was attending college in Anchorage, Alaska (and bartending nights at Whitekey's Fly By Night Club) I became a registered Libertarian voter. My friend Kenzo and I even attended a fund raiser for Dick Randolf and won a lunch "date" with Ed Clark. Having read Atlas Shrugged in the sixth grade, I thought I knew what the Libertarians stood for.

When I transferred to UMAss, Amherst in 1984, I did deep background research on U.S. policies toward the Sandinistas and found myself opening up to socialism. After writing two extra credit documentaries on U.S. Economic Policy in Central America, I began identifying my politics as Libertarian, Socialist & Feminist, and later added Green to my list. (I never identified with either the Democrats or the Republicans.)

I think I clicked with the Libertarians because I was convinced they represented individual liberty. My freedom to move whenever I want to move on means everything to me. But I also come from German Wisconsin farm stock and have a deep respect for people who work the land. I admired the socialists because I thought they represented land starved Nicaraguans against the arable land gluttony of the ruling Somoza family. I grew up on Steinem and Bella and had always considered myself a feminist. I love camping and being in the woods, so I naturally assumed that's what being a Green was all about.

It was only after I began fighting the new community development policies in 1999 that I did a thorough vetting of all my political beliefs. What I learned was most difficult to swallow.

My first realization was that the Libertarian Party was unwilling to step up and debate the communitarians, even after Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the "last great debate" in American politics was between the Libertarians and the Communitarians. I later realized the party's founders were internationalists promoting free market/free trade communitarianism in the United States.

My second realization was that Bella signed the Communitarian Platform. Feminism, as it turns out, is just another dialectical branch of communitarianism.

My third big realization was the role socialism plays in the phony dialectical evolution into communitarianism. Socialism, like capitalism, exists only to further the communitarian synthesis.

The Green Party ended up being number two on my enemy list, the first place reserved forever for their ideological affiliate Dr. Amitai Etzioni, founder of the Communitarian Network.

By 2002 I decided I would only vote for candidates who defend the U.S. Bill of Rights by openly attacking communitarian policies in the U.S.. Obviously I've never voted since then.

Focusing mainly on The Communitarian Reinvention of American Government under Presidents Clinton and Bush II, some of my ACL research was devoted to minor communitarian Third Way politicans like Senator Evan Bayh. I did make note of Senator Barack Obama's introduction as the Third Way Wonder Boy in 2004. All I needed to know about Obama when he ran for president was the fact that Communitarian Platform signer Professor John McNight also signed Obama's Harvard Law School application.

It was during the 2008 elections that I became acquainted with some people who supported Ron Paul. When I was unable to find Congressman Paul using the word communitarianism once in all his years of published speeches against the U.N. Agenda, and his office never responded to my inquiries, I refused to endorse him on my websites. The ACL has endorsed only a couple of candidates in our entire time online, and one's a Canadian. When the Ron Paul Revolution became the Tea Party protests, I didn't join, but I was happy to see the turnouts. I was relieved that our people were finally showing some gumption.

I am now convinced your smallest local groups are in the position of taking any political direction the members choose to take. Maybe once your members are introduced to their enemies as communitarian thinkers, you can stop everyone else and their brother from defining what it is you stand against.
"Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them." http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904
According to the Communitarians, the U.S. Constitution (and all national government) is "outdated" and poses a barrier to achieving world peace and justice. This appears to be in direct opposition to your principles:
“There already is a universally accepted national tea party statement and a national tea party platform. We've had them for a long time. The national tea party statement is called the Declaration of Independence, and the national tea party platform is the Constitution of the United States. And come to think of it, I can name six or seven national tea party leaders—revered figures who command the movement's loyalties. Their names are among those signed at the bottom of our national tea party statement and our national tea party platform. They are John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison." Tea Party Declaration of Independence from Political Party Loyalties By Paul Beaird March 23, 2010
There are several indications your party is being misled and co-opted by communitarians.

1. Some people are already calling you communitarians:
"They're what I call "molecular," or communitarian, individualists -- that is, individuals cooperating with others to achieve what the politicians promise but can't deliver." http://www.thenews.com.pk/03-10-2010/opinion/7993.htm
2. Branches of your movement are tricking you into supporting Right Wing Conservative Communitarians like Palin and Beck:

Sarah Palin, Tea Party darling, targets Democrats backing 'Obamacare' on website 'Take Back the 20' http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/09/24/2010-09-24_sarah_palin_tea_party_darling_targets_democrats_backing_obamacare_on_website_tak.html

3. Communitarianism is a social science that infiltrates national and state governments via social development programs. It's called Socio-Economics. Why would Tea Party members discount it as an issue?
"This is not a movement based on social issues," Melanie Morgan, a former talk show host who has been active in Tea Party Express, told USA TODAY earlier this year. "Many conservatives are involved only because of the fiscal aspect of smaller government, of lower taxation, of an accountability as far as the debt is concerned, the runaway spending by the liberal Congress." http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2010-09-20-values20_ST_N.htm
4. The Left Wing Communitarian President of the United States is using Right Wing Communitarian Shills and Rolling Stone Magazine to slander you as corporate backed phonies:
RS: What do you think of the Tea Party and the people behind it?

Obama: I think the Tea Party is an amalgam, a mixed bag of a lot of different strains in American politics that have been there for a long time. There are some strong and sincere libertarians who are in the Tea Party who generally don't believe in government intervention in the market or socially. There are some social conservatives in the Tea Party who are rejecting me the same way they rejected Bill Clinton, the same way they would reject any Democratic president as being too liberal or too progressive. There are strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected.

And then there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president. So I think it's hard to characterize the Tea Party as a whole, and I think it's still defining itself.

RS: Do you think that it's being manipulated?

Obama; There's no doubt that the infrastructure and the financing of the Tea Party come from some very traditional, very powerful, special-interest lobbies. I don't think this is a secret. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks, which was one of the first organizational mechanisms to bring Tea Party folks together, are financed by very conservative industries and forces that are opposed to enforcement of environmental laws, that are opposed to an energy policy that would be different than the fossil-fuel-based approach we've been taking, that don't believe in regulations that protect workers from safety violations in the workplace, that want to make sure that we are not regulating the financial industries in ways that we have.

There's no doubt that there is genuine anger, frustration and anxiety in the public at large about the worst financial crisis we've experienced since the Great Depression. Part of what we have to keep in mind here is this recession is worse than the Ronald Reagan recession of the Eighties, the 1990-91 recession, and the 2001 recession combined. The depths of it have been profound. This body politic took a big hit in the gut, and that always roils up our politics, and can make people angry. But because of the ability of a lot of very well-funded groups to point that anger — I think misdirect that anger — it is translating into a relevant political force in this election. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395
5. Obama's and the RS writer's opinion seems to be completely at odds with average people's opinion within the movement:
"Obama could not be more wrong — in fact, his thinking shows a lot more about his problems than the tea party’s. If the Tea Party is being run by special interest lobbies, then our special interest lobbies are in a lot of trouble. The convention was held at the Mill Valley community center. There were about 500 people there; it was standing room only. They spent the whole day milling about between different tables that represented various groups, ranging from the NRA to the seller of a cookbook of “conservative recipes.” I didn’t look, but I assume it was full of recipes for meatloaf and mashed potatoes with nary a sprig of endive in sight. There were funny T-shirts, cut-outs where you can get your picture taken next to Lincoln, Reagan, or Palin, and lots of sugary foods from Costco.

It was all very unprofessional, by which I mean that it did not seem the least bit stage managed or fake, in the way that the events put on by professional political operatives usually are. It was all quite spontaneous. Here’s an example. The speakers were unorganized, and had to speak in the hall in competition with all of the tables. So if people were not interested in a speaker, they would just go on buying and selling books and T-shirts or signing up for petitions, and eventually the speaker would be drowned out. If they were interested, the chatter would stop and eventually people would stop and listen. It was, in a charming way, the competition of the free market of ideas at work. http://www.libertycentral.org/president-obama-is-wrong-about-the-tea-party-2010-10

JakeSense, 19 September 2010 12:30AM said, Please stop repeating the lie that Tea Party members are "Conservatives". Numerous polls in the US consistently show that almost half of people who identify with the Tea Party -- myself included -- are Liberal Democrats. The Tea Party has one, and only one goal -- Fiscal Responsibility. Just because some fools (Sarah Palin and Glen Beck) are trying to co-opt the Tea Party does not make any the rest of us Conservative. We can disagree vehemently with Palin and Beck, yet still think the government must learn to balance it's budget, stop piling on so much debt and the Federal government spending is out of control.
http://www.alternet.org/story/148206/this_country_just_can%27t_deal_with_reality_any_more
6. Communitarian Radicals think they are the experts on what you really mean:
"When tea party activists say they want to change Washington, what they mean is, they want to get rid of politics." http://perspectives.thirdway.org/?p=874
I realize "forests" have already been cut down trying to explain your Tea Party. There appears to be a few solid and agreed upon principles behind it, but every description of what you represent incorporates the writer's personal views and political beliefs into their definition of you. From Obama down to each local group online, the Tea Party is whatever you want it to be. Now that I fully grasp that amazing truth, may I humbly suggest you consider adding anti communitarianism to your local group's discussion list next time you meet up?

Sincerely,
Niki Raapana
Anti Communitarian League
http://nord.twu.net/acl