May 2014 – The Burning Platform

Cynic’s Dictionary

One would think that cynicism has no place on The Burning Platform. After all, TBP is a quiet corner of the Internet where learned people and deep thinkers lurk to, hopefully, teach the rest of us what’s real in this sorry World and what isn’t.

In such a spirit of clarity and helpfulness I offer the following post which, I’m sure will convince each and every TBP shit-throwing monkey that all is right within and upon the world and we must just wait a tiny bit longer for all our dreams to come true.

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Courtesy of Kirkpatrick Sale

Cynic—one who no longer believes in the comforting illusions and protective half-truths that most others naturally use unreflectively to get through their lives.

administration, n.—an abstract concept to disguise a concrete problem of government; an administration of 4.4 million people, such as the U.S. has attained, has been found to be incapable of administering to 310 million citizens, though it is comforting to know that every group of 70 people has an administrator looking after them.

aristocracy, n.—the rule of a state by its ablest and usually richest people; where this is not allowed, as has happened in the U.S. since the popular election of the Senate and the formation of the civil service, there is established the unshatterable illusion, since disproven by experience, that anyone is fit to govern.

beetle, n.—despite those clinging to a contrary belief fostered by the Bible about the primacy of man, beetles are the most popular species by far in Nature’s design, for which J.B.S. Haldane once said the Creator had “an inordinate fondness;” of all known species, 75 per cent are insects, and 60 per cent of those are beetles.

bureaucracy, n.—lit., government by desks; usu. the body of bureaus, offices, and petty administrators whose task is to create an ever-larger leviathan of inefficiency, intrusiveness, insufferability, and inertia so that only those laws that increase their power are carried out.

capital, n.—1. the prime seat of government, as of a state or nation, usually situated as far as possible from the largest city and most populous areas, in the hopes that most people will not know and have little influence on what goes on there, and the rubes in the neighborhood will not understand. 2. the primary coinage by which the capital functions, usually distributed with acute generosity to those in charge there, including the lawmakers as well as the lawwriters, who meet in the lobby.

Christian, n.—one who professes to believe in the New Testament of the Bible, at least insofar as it is compatible with his current life, which may not necessarily contain any of the virtues therein described, but believes it does, or ought, to pertain in all its admonitions and strictures to his neighbors.

civil service, n.—the system of government administration that replaces the graft of cronyism and the corruption of nepotism with the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the lethargy of job permanency.

commonwealth, n.—a group of states with a presumed common interest, though not necessarily in sharing wealth in common; in the U.S., an appellation chosen by certain states (Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia ) to give the illusion that somehow wealth is common to all its citizens, or at least that is the goal its leaders proclaim, though patently this does not pertain.

compromise, n.—an arrangement by which two parties agree to agree, each side giving up nothing it holds dear but trying to convince the other that its future is dark and stormy indeed; it is not a device much used in modern politics because both sides nowadays seem to be convinced of the unalterable faultlessness and exactitude of their differing positions.

congress, n.—generally a meeting for a common purpose, sometimes legislative, from L. con (with) and gredi (step), therefore a body that works in harmony; in U.S. politics, cap., a meeting of politicians in Washington, sometimes legislative, that never works in harmony.

Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons–Menken

conservative, n.—in politics, one who wishes to conserve his superior position, and his superior positions, as one would fruit cooked to a jamlike consistency; see also neoconservative, paleoconservative.

corporation, n.—the fictitious contrivance devised by American robber barons (and baronets and knights below them) in the 19th century to put responsibility on the public for any failure of private greed; in later centuries, the device by which, and for which, the nation was ruled through such fronts as the Congress and the Presidency.

debt, n.—an ingenious device cooked up in the early days of capitalism so as to promote the work of bankers and others of wealth by convincing others of the counterintuitive truth that owing money is the successful way to ultimate riches; the device has been used by modern American governments largely to make wars by vast expenditures of public money with the promise of ultimate riches, behind curtains that assure that the accumulated expenditures remain illusory.

defense, n.—the act of resisting an attack from without, or the fortifications for such a purpose; cap., a modern American department not for defense of any substantial kind but for waging war (formerly, until 1947 and America’s embarkation on a series of wars every year since then down to the present, the properly named War Department) on a scale so vast that it now acknowledges spending more than the next 25 countries in the world—combined.

democracy, n.—a system of government according to which a majority gets to decide the fate of a minority, regardless of the justice, truth, morality, temperance, and common sense of the decisions, to which the minority has no recourse—-until of course it somehow becomes the majority.

dependency, n.—reliance upon others for what you cannot otherwise force from them; the chosen condition for those the state determines poor, or insufficiently wealthy, which no amount of free government money, housing, food, health care, child care, and counseling will alter, nor is it designed to, lest the dependent not vote Democratic.

dictator, n.—the head of a state whose people have chosen to do the bidding of a single man or cabal, in return for being relieved of the agony and uncertainty of having to think, learn, judge, and cast ballots.

economy, n.—the name given by economists for the state of material life at any given time, which they claim to study and understand, though no pronouncement from them has ever stood the test of more than a few month’s duration; its cumulative impact is said to be gross, as in “national product,” “national income,” “national debt,” and the like, and no one who has ever looked at the workings of economists would ever dispute that assessment.

emancipation, n.—the presumed release of human beings from bondage by another, without necessarily securing their true freedom but only allowing the despotism of themselves as preferable to the despotism of others; in American history, cap., the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which freed not a single slave, nor was it intended to, but served eventually to give the Northern forces a supposed moral cause for the slaughter they visited upon their foes that they could comprehend better than the fight for the abstraction called the Union.

equality, n.—that impossible condition in which everyone is presumed to be the same as everyone else, in quality, degree, rank, value, and/or ability; in American politics, a pestilence visited offhandedly by Thomas Jefferson in an extra-legal document, referring to status at birth (“created equal”) that is patently untrue, which various charlatans have subsequently been pleased to refer to as if a condition of the Constitution (where it does not appear) in their quest to increase the power of central government, thus to try to create an equal distribution by government fiat —e.g., in income, rights, opportunity, education, marriage, love, etc.—of that which inherently does not admit of correspondence.

executive, n.—one who sees to the execution of laws, in the sense not of the termination of their lives, though that happens often enough by high-minded executives who disfavor their provisions, but of the carrying out of their instructions; in American government, cap., it is the branch of government that carries out in its own chosen ways (see Presidential Signing Statements) the laws passed by the Legislative until forbidden to do so by the Judiciary.

flag, n.—a piece of cloth of no particular value or interest, that, when it comes to symbolize a nation, regardless of that body’s importance, significance, affluence, or influence, takes on uncommon and indeed unnecessary grandeur and symbolism, somewhat as does the cross, the Romans’ instrument of punishment and torture that was so cruel and horrible that subsequent civilizations, though quite open to many other forms of punishment and death, banned it; in American terms, the “Stars and Bars,” the addressing of which requires from military personnel a salute to the brim of a hat and from civilians a clutch of the right side of the chest similar to that which a person suffering a seizure might make, although the burning of which, held by the highest court to somehow be an act of speech though no utterance of any kind need be involved, may be contrived by anyone anywhere without any prescribed forms of address.

Federal Reserve, n.—in U.S., a self-created collection of private banks that is allowed to serve as a central bank for the American government, whose interests are no more in the public welfare than public toilets and whose authority is no more federal than Federal Express.

Gettysburg Address, n.—a short address by Abraham Lincoln to a crowd in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1863, in which he attempted to make “equality” a formal purpose of American government by claiming the Declaration of Independence as a founding document equivalent to the Constitution, the latter of which evinces no such purpose and indeed endorses slavery; as an example of successful deceit and duplicity, it is likely the most effective piece of rhetoric in American history, which has had much of that.

government, n.—an arrangement of human affairs by which a few manage to operate their society with the sanction of the many, and miraculously contrive to convince them, without offering the slightest substantiation by way of proof, that all other ways of ordering life bring anarchy and chaos, although historical experience has yet to show that those are in fact brought by any other agency than government itself. G. “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” a phrase invented by an abolitionist preacher in Massachusetts and picked up by Lincoln for a short address (c.v.) in which he claims that this is the sort of arrangement that obtains in the U.S., although the Founding Fathers would have rejected all but the last part of the phrase, having a reasonable dislike and distrust of “the people” as the dangerous rabble that a proper government is formed to keep in check.

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history, n.—that telling of events in the past that most of those in the present have no first-hand knowledge of, and generally depend on others, called historians, who have no such knowledge either, generally recounting stories about kings and princes mostly corrupt or power-mad or both, and battles fought between two armies neither of which has any idea about why it is doing what it does but manage a good deal of mayhem and destruction in the process.

humanism, n.—that belief, fostered in the Renaissance when humans were most admiring of themselves despite ample evidence even then of their errancy, that the human species is primary in the eyes of God (man, followed by woman, followed by mammals, fishes, birds, insects), indeed in some senses the equivalent, as in “man the divine,” and is thus fit to rule over the other species as well as their habitats, a truth initially proved by the ability of European humans to conquer and occupy most of the known earth and later proved by the ability of humans to kill off species, including their own, and their habitats.

ignoramus, n.—the condition of ignorance given to the largest number of humans, most of whom are ignorant also of their condition but find that no impediment to acceding to positions of influence in nearly all professions and undertakings, particularly politics.

incumbent, n.—one who holds office and spends his greatest effort, time, and money trying to ensure that this condition will continue to exist so long as life and voice shall last.

Israel, n.— that modern state created in 1948 as an experiment to assuage Ameri-European guilt over aspects of the war and Nazi atrocities by planting down in the midst of an Arab Muslim section of the Levant a foreign Jewish, mostly European, population, whose presence was never welcomed but successfully enforced by Israeli military might supported unquestioningly by the United States; the experiment having proven itself a failure, with no neighboring state accepting of its imposition in over 55 years, and Arab populations both within and without the country increasing much faster than the Jewish, the logical solution would be for its dissolution, the achievement of which should not be anticipated soon.

A Cynic’s Dictionary—II

justice, n.—the condition that the state promises to deliver through its courts and other administrative offices in return for loyalty, obeisance, and regular taxes, though there is of course no one other than the courts to assure that what is delivered is in fact just; in U.S. politics, cap, an officer of the Supreme Court who is appointed for life to assure that there is no recourse to decisions made no matter how foolish or ignorant.

labor, n.—the means by which the rich get richer while allowing the actual workers to have as little of the increased riches as possible.

labor union, n.—in certain democracies, a system by which workers make the ultimate surrender of their freedom to an organization whose leadership professes to look out for their interests immediately after looking after their own; it is most common in professions of civil servants, such as teachers, where it would rationally be illegal, as it provides these public servants with a means of ignoring the wishes and interests of the public as whole while steadily looking after private gain.

law, n.—a profession that teaches people how to bend, maneuver, and otherwise evade the laws or any jurisdiction, all under the rubric not of seeking justice—for that is not what the American system of jurisprudence, rhetoric aside, is all about—nor of seeking truth and veracity as some other legal systems do, but of seeking the best possible case for either side that may be employing them regardless of the merit of the case, this process being overseen by another lawyer who has remarkably managed to be endowed with the gown of judgeship and with that impartiality and wisdom that had not been given him previous to his exaltation.

liberalism, n.—at one time a belief in freedom (Latin liber, free)in behavior or belief, as in “liberal toward artists,” but now meaning the freedom of centralized government to do whatever it wants, particularly in the establishment of a welfare (sic, q.v.) state.

machiavellian, adj.—behavior erroneously believe to have been sanctioned by Niccolo Machiavelli in his The Prince (1532), in which much cunning and conniving is urged upon a man of high office but nothing so wicked and malevolent as that of which the modern office-holder, who evokes his name, is capable.

Mammon—the highest god in the world’s most popular religion, to whom many temples have been built in every major city but whose principal temple, even one might say cathedral, is on the oddly named Wall Street in New York City.

money, n.—that form of currency that is assumed to have worth, though there is often little enough to prove that claim other than the stubborn belief of those who have a good deal of it; though it is of no use whatsoever except when those who possess it part with it, for most people its amassment only instead seems to be their primary goal.

national security, n.—the purported purpose of the instruments of the federal government, even those whose actions and policies serve to threaten the nation’s security; in usage, the excuse by any agency for doing whatever it chooses to do, regardless of constitutionality or legality.

neocon, n., short for neoconservative (obs.)—that kind of conservative who believes in conserving nothing, especially despised governments and the lives of the young, and in the transformation of the world in its image of itself, which embodies about all the glories that politics is capable of; in recent years the neocon has elaborated on its name by adopting the con games (from confidence game, elaborate swindle) of pretending to find weapons where they did not exist and creating imaginary sins for unliked foreign leaders sufficient to justify their destruction.

optimism, n.—a mental aberration by which certain people believe (without evidence, which is the way with beliefs) that everything will turn out to be better on some tomorrow, the arrival of which is never doubted though it never occurs.

paleoconservative, n.—that kind of conservative whose ideas are so ancient that the stem “paleo-,” usually used for earlier geologic eras, is applied, with the suggestion that conservatism actually had a system of ideas having somewhat to do with the conservation of values and beliefs of an earlier, though not necessary a geologic, time.

politics, sing. n—the art of deluding the public for private gain, with its full biannual or quadrennial approval, the mysteries and inscrutabilities of which remain unknown and for the most part unexamined so that the superficialities and posturings may be regularly examined by a most incurious press.

reformer, n.—one who has come to the inevitable conclusion that the government he is under is dishonest, corrupt, insane, undemocratic, and insufferable, but has somehow come to the conclusion that he can change it.

religion, n.—the organized system by which the ignorant are taught to believe in everything known about the unknowable and eternal omniscient deity, which is very little.

republic, n—a rare form of governance far removed from dictatorship and not far from anarchy, where a chosen few decide the laws for the unchosen few, who acquiesce in the belief that they might someday be the chosen, and often are, making a harmonious relationship rare in human affairs.

senate, n.—a body of deliberative purpose, usually to counsel, govern, or pass legislation; in U.S. government, cap., the senior assembly of the Congress, now subject to the voters of one of the fifty states, thus creating politicians not concerned so much with the affairs of the country as with the enrichment of their state, creating a sizeable barrel capable of being filled with expensive porcine products.

suffrage, n.—the right to vote, often taken to be an obligation, even a privilege, and thought desirable in a democracy, regardless of how useless it may actually be; its Latin origin tells it best, from suffragium, from subfragor—sub—meaning under, plus fragor—meaning noise, together being the condition of one out in a thunderstorm, or under a passing subway, that is to say, one without thought, or one incapable of thinking.

What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?–Mencken

tribe, n.—the basic and original social grouping of humankind (averaging around 500 people), characteristic of homo sapiens life for 500,000 years, until recently, though no adequate substitute has been found; still the bedrock fact of life for many in Africa and Southwest Asia, though guilty decorum demands that fact be overlooked.

truth, n.—that quality of a thing that conforms to fact or reality, not necessarily an attribute of speech, particularly political speech, and thought by some to be an impediment to it; it is said to be the goal of philosophy, which is why that discipline in the hands of academics has existed forever and will never come to an end.

usage, n.—the current favorite style in speech or grammar, as opposed to other styles based on logic or other notions of correctness, or descriptive rather than proscriptive; as employed by the illiterate, often found on public radio, use—see also closure, a psychiatric term, employed by the illiterate to mean close or closing.

welfare, n.—once the good fortune of a person or group, now a task that is no longer an individual or even religious duty but exclusively given to the government, generally one centralized and bureaucratized, to perform, and usually to guarantee. And guaranteed to grow beyond any sensible scope one can imagine in addition to destroying the general populations value system, pride and capability to support themselves.

zeal, n.—an ardor given to young lovers and warriors in about equal amounts, doing great damage to others in either case; rarely found in those of superior intellect or inferior gumption.

And thus a cynic’s dictionary’s finally done,

Which may be ignored, but at their peril, by anyone.

SNOWDEN BLASTS NSA PROPAGANDA & THE SHREW – DIANE FEINSTEIN

Via NBC News

Fugitive Edward Snowden on Friday challenged the NSA’s insistence that it has no evidence he tried to raise concerns about the agency’s surveillance activity before he began leaking government documents to reporters, calling the response a “clearly tailored and incomplete leak … for a political advantage.”

“The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers — after more than a year of denying any such contact existed – raises serious concerns,” Snowden said in an email Friday to NBC News. “It reveals as false the NSA’s claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of last year, that ‘after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention.’”

Snowden’s email followed Thursday’s release by the U.S. Office of the Director of Intelligence of an email exchange between Snowden and the NSA’s Office of the General Counsel. The Washington Post received and published a similar response from Snowden on Thursday.

That email, dated April 5 , 2013, and bearing the subject line “Question for OGC re. OVSC1800 Course Content,” was a request for clarification about a legal point in training materials for a mandatory course regarding policies and procedures restricting domestic surveillance by the NSA. Its primary focus was on the question of whether an executive order issued by the president could trump a federal statute.

The NSA has said it is the only email or other communication that it has found in which Snowden communicated with agency officials about the NSA’s surveillance program, countering his assertion that he had sent multiple “emails … to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks … raising concerns about the NSA’s interpretations of its legal authorities,” as he claimed in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams that aired Wednesday night.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

The NSA released this Edward Snowden email to the Office of General Counsel asking for an explanation of some material that was in a training course he had just completed, Thursday May 29, 2014.

Two U.S. officials who spoke to NBC News about the email prior to its release noted that it asked a question about how the NSA was interpreting its legal justifications for domestic surveillance, but had not “raised concerns” about the NSA’s practices.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made a similar point in a statement on Thursday, saying that the email does not support Snowden’s account.

“The email, provided to the committee by the NSA on April 10, 2014, poses a question about the relative authority of laws and executive orders — it does not register concerns about NSA’s intelligence activities, as was suggested by Snowden in an NBC interview this week,” she said.

But in his statement on Friday, Snowden fired back, saying:

“Today’s release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities – such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major U.S. Internet companies — are sometimes concealed under E.O. 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations.

“If the White House is interested in the whole truth, rather than the NSA’s clearly tailored and incomplete leak today for a political advantage, it will require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management, and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA’s improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities. It will not take long to receive an answer.

“Ultimately, whether my disclosures were justified does not depend on whether I raised these concerns previously. That’s because the system is designed to ensure that even the most valid concerns are suppressed and ignored, not acted upon. The fact that two powerful Democratic Senators – Ron Wyden and Mark Udall – knew of mass surveillance that they believed was abusive and felt constrained to do anything about it underscores how futile such internal action is — and will remain — until these processes are reformed.

“Still, the fact is that I did raise such concerns both verbally and in writing, and on multiple, continuing occasions – as I have always said, and as NSA has always denied. Just as when the NSA claimed it followed German laws in Germany only weeks before it was revealed that they did not, or when NSA said they did not engage in economic espionage a few short months before it was revealed they actually did so on a regular and recurring basis, or even when NSA claimed they had “no domestic spying program” right before we learned they collected the phone records of every American they could, so too are today’s claims that “this is only evidence we have of him reporting concerns” false.

“Now that they have finally begun producing emails, I am confident that truth will become clear rather sooner than later.”

Edward Snowden’s Unaired Remarks About September 11

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/31/2014 14:15 -0400

There was much said in last week’s primetime interview between Edward Snowden and NBC’s Brian Williams. But perhaps more interesting than what was said in the one hour time-slot, was what was contained in the three extra hours of conversations that were not broadcast, such as Snowden’s questioning of the American intelligence community’s inability to stop the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. One such segment, as transcribed by RT, involves the former NSA contractor’s response to a question from Williams on how to prevent further attacks from Al Qaeda and other “non-traditional enemies” in which Snowden suggested that United States had the proper intelligence ahead of 9/11 but failed to act.

“You know, and this is a key question that the 9/11 Commission considered. And what they found, in the post-mortem, when they looked at all of the classified intelligence from all of the different intelligence agencies, they found that we had all of the information we needed as an intelligence community, as a classified sector, as the national defense of the United States to detect this plot,” Snowden said. “We actually had records of the phone calls from the United States and out. The CIA knew who these guys were. The problem was not that we weren’t collecting information, it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough dots, it wasn’t that we didn’t have a haystack, it was that we did not understand the haystack that we have.”

Or, as some have suggested over the years, it was not that “we” did not understand the haystack. Quite the contrary. Which is precisely why the attacks took place. But back to the accepted narrative:

“The problem with mass surveillance is that we’re piling more hay on a haystack we already don’t understand, and this is the haystack of the human lives of every American citizen in our country,” Snowden continued. “If these programs aren’t keeping us safe, and they’re making us miss connections — vital connections — on information we already have, if we’re taking resources away from traditional methods of investigation, from law enforcement operations that we know work, if we’re missing things like the Boston Marathon bombings where all of these mass surveillance systems, every domestic dragnet in the world didn’t reveal guys that the Russian intelligence service told us about by name, is that really the best way to protect our country? Or are we — are we trying to throw money at a magic solution that’s actually not just costing us our safety, but our rights and our way of life?

This goes to the fundamental argument that made Snowden blow the whistle in the first place: by overreaching to a level not fathomed even by the author of “1984”, and by scrambling to collect every piece of electronic communication and data exchange, or said otherwise, shotgunning and focusing on the bulk instead of isolating actionable data, what is the tradeoff?

We do know that handing all private data to the NSA on a silve platter has certainly resulted in an abuse of personal privacy by those tasked with protecting Americans as we detailed in the past in “NSA Agents Used Company Resources To Spy On Former Spouses.” Who knows how else this epic trove of private data is being abused by the government for its own ulterior motives, while letting, as Snowden suggested, critical information about the protection of US citizens – the very premise behind the NSA’s existence – slip through its fingers.

Indeed, the director of the NSA during Snowden’s stint there, Gen. Keith Alexander, reportedly endorsed a method of intelligence gathering in which the agency would collect quite literally all the digital information it was capable of. “Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’” one former senior US intelligence official recently told the Washington Post. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . .And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

In recent weeks, a leaked NSA document has affirmed that under the helm of Alexander, the agency was told it should do as much as possible with the information it gathers: “sniff it all, know it all, collect it all, process it all and exploit it all,” according to the slide. “They’re making themselves dysfunctional by collecting all of this data,” Bill Binney, a former NSA employee-turned-whistleblower himself, told the Daily Caller last year. Like Snowden, Binney has also argued that the NSA’s “collect it all” condition with regards to intelligence gathering is deeply flawed.

“They’ve got so much collection capability but they can’t do everything. They’re probably getting something on the order of 80 percent of what goes up on the network. So they’re going into the telecoms who have recorded all of the material that has gone across the network. And the telecoms keep a record of it for I think about a year. They’re asking the telecoms for all the data so they can fill in the gaps. So between the two sources of what they’ve collected, they get the whole picture,” Binney said.

Although NBC neglected to play Mr. Snowden’s remarks to Williams in which he questioned the efficiency of modern intelligence gathering under the guise of being a counterterrorism tool, it did air on television other remarks from the former contractor concerning the terrorist attacks.

Stepping back, this really is a debate about government efficiency, incentives and motives. The biggest problem with the NSA, or rather its modus operandi, according to Snowden is not that it does not have the architecture to use the data already in its possession to isolate and prevent incidents of terrorism: it did, and arguably it had enough facts in its (and the CIA’s) possession to prevent the September 11 attack, and it certainly was equipped with enough surveillance to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing, yet it didn’t. In the meantime, the information grab is expanding until Big Brother, under the guise of (failed) protection now knows everything about its citizens. Simply said: this is merely government bloat in its most purest – spending ever greater amounts of money to become increasingly more inefficient, in the process destroying the concept of individual privacy.

Or as Snowden himself said it in a fragment that was aired,

“It’s really disingenuous for the government to invoke and scandalize our memories to sort of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don’t need to give up and our Constitution says we don’t need to give up.”

Sadly, until the people themselves wake up to this conclusion which prompted one person to speak up against a broken system, all of his efforts will have been largely in vain.

MORE GOVERNMENT OVERREACH

Anthony, a TBP reader, is in the fight of his life. Retailers are already fighting an uphill battle to stay in business. The last thing they need is the fucking Feds sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong. Obama and his control freaks at the FDA allow teenagers to be on Xanax, leading to mass murder, but for guys who just want to smoke a cigar they impose Nazi-like restrictions.

If you are a cigar aficionado, visit Anthony’s site and show your support.

http://www.cigarscity.com/

Band Together – Help Keep Uncle Sam Out of Your Humidor!

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) plans to deem cigars subject to federal regulation and cigar lovers need to band together to protect our rights.

What Does It Mean For You?

Well, mainly it means the government wants to change a number of aspects about the regulation and red-tape associated with cigars. This could have a drastic detrimental impact on the cost of smoking cigars and the culture we enjoy as cigar lovers if the FDA moves forward.

What Could Happen To Cigars If The FDA Steps In?

CigarsCity.com opposes any new regulation of premium or traditional cigars by the United States government. We’re not alone as thousands of cigar fans, the advocacy group Cigar Rights of America, and most cigar manufacturers have also voiced their opposition to the threat of more regulation. The government’s uninvited intrusion into cigar culture is unwelcome and unnecessary!
Here are a few of the things that could happen if the FDA steps in:

– Complete elimination of your right to buy cigars from law-abiding online vendors like CigarsCity.com
– Elimination of walk-in humidors at cigar shops and cigar lounges
– Restrictions on advertisements and promotions of cigars
– Forcing manufacturers to submit blends to the FDA for testing, making cigar production more expensive and time-consuming
– Tougher restrictions on flavored tobacco and flavor infused cigars

What’s Being Done To Stop Them?

Cigar enthusiasts and the industry are fighting back. The good news is, some ears in Washington D.C. are listening.

Specifically, bi-partisan efforts like House Resolution 792 and Senate Bill 772 will clearly spell out that premium and large cigars are off-limts to the FDA. These two pieces of legislation are in committees right now in each the House of Representatives and Senate.
Want more details — well, here’s a bit of legalese if you want to know the specifics:

This proposed definition means any roll of tobacco that is wrapped in 100 percent leaf tobacco, bunched with 100 percent tobacco filler, contains no filter, tip or non-tobacco mouthpiece, weighs at least 6 pounds per 1,000 count, and–

A.) Has a 100 percent leaf tobacco binder and is hand rolled;

B.) Has a 100 percent leaf tobacco binder and is made using human hands to lay the leaf tobacco wrapper or binder onto only one machine that bunches, wraps, and caps each individual cigar; or

C.) Has a homogenized tobacco leaf binder and is made in the United States using human hands to lay the 100 percent leaf tobacco wrapper onto only one machine that bunches, wraps, and caps each individual cigar; and

D.) does not include a cigarette (as such term is defined by section 900(3)) or a little cigar (as such term is defined by section 900(11)).’.

So What Can Cigar Fans Do?

That’s a great question. Generally, we try to stay as far away from politics as possible and we’re guessing you do too. However, if you’re willing to contact your legislators there’s a great tool available at the bottom of this page thanks to the folks at Cigar Rights of America.

Also, it’s going to take more than just those of us who enjoy a good cigar. This political fight is also about personal liberty. If you believe in liberty and to preserve individual freedom, we’d love to have you on our side as part of our band of brothers in support of cigars.

Band Together and Spread the Word

ARE PEOPLE RIDING BIKES?

Gasoline usage always plummets in a thriving economy. And almost 100 million people have simply left the workforce; I guess they’re independently wealthy and don’t need jobs. And 80 million more people are getting money from the government than have jobs, another excellent sign of a thriving economy. Obama’s reign of error has about wiped out our economy. Socialism doesn’t work.

Sarcasm aside, here’s some truth about what’s really happening. The bought and sold MSM mouthpieces don’t want people to see what is really going on, and neither dose the government. Enjoy the truth, while your still able.

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U.S. Gasoline Consumption Plummets By Nearly 75%

Submitted by Jeff Nielsen via BullionBullsCanada blog,

Regular readers are familiar with my narratives on the U.S. Greater Depression, and (in particular) some of the government’s own charts which depict this economic meltdown most vividly. The collapse in the “civilian participation rate” (the number of people working in the economy) and the “velocity of money” (the heartbeat of the economy) indicate an economy which is not merely in decline, but rather is being sucked downward in a terminal (and accelerating) death-spiral.

However, even that previously published data, and the grim analyses which accompanied it could not prepare me for the horror story contained in data passed along by an alert reader. U.S. “gasoline consumption” – as measured by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) itself – has plummeted by nearly 75%, from its all-time peak in July of 1998. A near-75% collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption has occurred in little more than 15 years.

Before getting into an analysis of the repercussions of this data, however, it’s necessary to properly qualify the data. Obviously, even in the most-nightmarish economic Armageddon, a (relatively short-term) 75% collapse in gasoline consumption is simply not possible. Unless we were dealing with a nation whose economy had been suddenly ripped apart by civil war, or some small nation devastated by a massive earthquake or tsunami; it’s simply not possible for any economy to just disintegrate that rapidly, without there being some ultra-powerful exogenous force also at work.

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So how can this raw data, produced by the government itself, be explained? To begin with; the government chooses to measure U.S. gasoline consumption in a very odd manner: by measuring the amount of gasoline entering the domestic supply-chain rather than by measuring actual consumption at the other end of the supply-chain – i.e. “at the pump”.

Why does the U.S. government, which (among other things) leads the world in the manufacture of statistics not produce any simple/direct measurement of gasoline consumption? How can the St. Louis Fed produce nearly 100 different charts on gasoline and diesel prices (for any/every price-category which can be imagined by these statistics geeks), but not a single chart on gasoline supply/demand?

There are several reasons for this unbalanced, anomalous, and simply absurd statistical methodology. First of all; the reason why the U.S. government produces a near-infinite number of charts on prices is because prices are what the Gamblers (i.e. bankers) use as the basis for their $100’s of trillions in gambling in the rigged casinos which the bankers call “markets”.

While supply/demand data is of utmost importance in the real world; the banker-gamblers don’t dwell in the real world. As regular readers already know; their derivatives casino, alone, is roughly twenty times as large as the entire global economy. To the bankers; the “real world” is nothing but fodder for their insane gambling.

Why use this data, at all, since it is such an inferior/distorted means of measuring U.S. gasoline consumption? Because the EIA uses exactly the same data to publish its own “estimates” of U.S. gasoline consumption:

Note: Product supplied measures the amount of gasoline that went into the supply chain and is used as a proxy for gasoline consumption. [emphasis mine]

The other half of this ridiculous statistical hodge-podge, where endless quantities of trivial/irrelevant price data are trumpeted, while any/all data which actually measures the (real) economy is suppressed (if not buried entirely) displays a government desperately trying to hide this massive economic collapse.

If you choose to measure the amount of gasoline leaving U.S. refineries and entering domestic inventories and call this “gasoline consumption”; you can hide the actual collapse in gasoline consumption – until those retail inventories are overflowing, and there is simply no more room in the storage tanks.

This is what we see today in the U.S.: a gasoline market which had been deliberately-and-dramatically over-supplied with gasoline at the wholesale end of the supply-chain (the refineries) has now practically ground to a halt. The same nation which previously amazed the world as it accumulated more automobiles and more miles of highways per capita than any nation on Earth (and by a huge margin) now has such an insane glut of gasoline that it’s massive chain of refineries have had to simply turn off the taps – until this pathetically anemic economy manages to burn-off some of that glut.

This conclusion becomes even more visible/obvious when we view the gasoline data just from the start of the mythical “U.S. economic recovery” to the present. At the start of the “U.S. recovery”; U.S. gasoline consumption was at a rate of 52 million gallons per day (already more than 20% below the 1998 all-time peak). In the five years since the start of this pretend-recovery; U.S. gasoline consumption has fallen all the way to 18 million gallons per day.

Since the beginning of “the U.S. economic recovery”; U.S. gasoline consumption has plummeted by nearly 2/3. As the pseudo-recovery began, and supposedly “strengthened”; U.S. refineries were ordered to fill up the inventories of their dealer network, in anticipation of the increased gasoline consumption which would have occurred in any real “recovery”.

But there never was an increase in U.S. gasoline consumption, because there never was a U.S. economic recovery. Rather, the Greater Depression has simply (and relentlessly) continued to pulverize the U.S. economy like a meat-grinder. To hide this devastation (as well as is possible), the government produces a wide array of its pseudo-statistics, that all contain myriad “adjustments” – which make it possible for these liars-with-numbers to distort the statistical picture of the U.S. economy beyond recognition.

Meanwhile, any/all statistics which measure raw data (and thus cannot be perverted with “adjustments”) are either suppressed (like the civilian participation rate), or not even measured, at all – as is the case with U.S. gasoline consumption. At the retail end; none of the “sales” statistics are adjusted for inflation, not even with the absurdly-fraudulent “CPI” numbers.

By not deflating sales data (at all) the collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption “at the pump” is hidden within all this unreported inflation. As explained in previous commentaries; it is this same, unreported inflation which allows the U.S. to convert its large, negative, GDP readings (which would otherwise reveal the Greater Depression) into “economic growth”. It is this same, unreported inflation which allows the government (and employers) to hide the fact that U.S. wages have collapsed by more than 50%.

But what the liars-with-numbers cannot hide (any longer) is the collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption which has accompanied the continued, downward spiral of the Greater Depression. The storage tanks are now all full. The only way to (temporarily) hide the collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption any further would be to construct even more storage facilities. However, there is no possible economic justification for increasing storage capacity in a market of steadily/relentlessly declining demand.

Indeed, the exact opposite is true. The U.S. economy of the 21st century (a mere hollowed-out husk of what it was only 20 years earlier) will require less and less gasoline storage facilities over time, reflecting a supply network for a steadily shrinking market. As the One Bank completes its plundering of the U.S. economy, and completes its transformation of the U.S. Middle Class into the Working Poor, it is also simply using up more and more of its economic lies.

The Great Inflation Lie will continue to allow the U.S. government (and other Western governments) to crank-out absurd/imaginary positive numbers for GDP. It will continue to allow the U.S. government to crank-out absurd/imaginary numbers for retail sales (and hide the ongoing collapse of the entire U.S. retail sector).

But it can’t hide the fact that U.S. refineries have nearly stopped producing gasoline for the most-motorized society/economy the world has ever seen. It can’t hide the fact that there haven’t been so few people working in the U.S. economy (on a percentage basis) in 35 years.

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Readers who are stubbornly faithful to the plethora of pseudo-statistics which the U.S. government uses to hide this collapse may have been skeptical of my original denunciation of the “U.S. economic recovery”. They may have been more skeptical with assertions that this Wonderland Matrix of lies is being used to hide a Greater Depression.

However, there is no further room for skepticism when official, government numbers indicate a near-75% collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption over a mere 15 years, and a 65% collapse in consumption since the start of the (supposed) Recovery. Numbers such as this can only be encapsulated with acronyms like “DOA”.

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When we look at the EIA’s “gasoline consumption” numbers, and when we see the St. Louis Fed’s chart of the U.S. velocity of money (heartbeat of the U.S. economy); we don’t see an economy which is dying. We see an economy which is already dead.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-30/us-gasoline-consumption-plummets-nearly-75

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RULES FOR RADICALS

Obama will have spent 8 years destroying this country. He’s still got 2 1/2 years to finish us off, and he might. If not, Shrillery is in the wings. Obama’s built a FSA majority voting block, so Hillary is a shoe-in.

Does anyone think we’ll last another eight years under liberal progressive leadership? I don’t. The future looks pretty bleak.

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Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘America’ warns Hillary Clinton will ‘finish off’ the country

By Paul Bedard | May 30, 2014 | 1:51 pm

In his highly anticipated new book and movie “America,” conservative author Dinesh D’Souza is warning that Hillary Clinton won’t be a clone of her moderate husband, but will instead take the baton from President Obama to continue radicalizing the country and “undo the nation’s founding ideals.”

“America — Imagine a World Without Her,” published by Regnery and set for release Monday, charges that as students of radical organizer Saul Alinsky, Obama and Clinton could have enough time to “unmake and then remake America” into a nation the founding fathers wouldn’t recognize.

“They may not be responsible for the suicide of America, but they certainly will have helped to finish off a certain way of life in America, and they will leave us with a country unrecognizable not only to Washington and Jefferson but also to those of us who grew up in the 20th century,” wrote D’Souza.

“If they succeed, there may be no going back. Then it will be their America, not ours, and we will be a people bereft of a country, with no place to go,” he adds on page 87.

“America” is D’Souza’s latest book and movie on how he sees progressive politics hurting the nation. He also created the movie “2016: Obama’s America,” which was the second highest-grossing political documentary.

An advance copy of the book provided to Secrets suggests that progressives aim to remake the nation into one that is less powerful, less wealthy and less influential. If that happens, he warns, “We have committed national suicide.”

He focuses on Obama’s and Clinton’s links to Alinsky in a chapter titled “The Plan.” He claims the two followed the radical’s master plan that they hide their views and ideas until they get into power.

“If you see early pictures and video of Hillary, she looks and sounds like a former hippie. Overtime, however, Hillary started dressing like a respectable middle-class mother and speaking in a clipped, moderate sounding voice. Young Barack Obama, too, looked like a bit of a street thug — in his own words, he could have been Trayvon Martin. Over time, however, Obama started dressing impeccably and even practiced modulating his voice,” the popular author writes.

“Hillary and Obama have both learned the Alinsky lesson that your should aggressively pursue power while pretending to be motivated by altruism,” he added.

“More importantly, Hillary and Obama both adopted Alinsky’s strategic counsel to sound mainstream, even when you aren’t,” wrote D’Souza. “These are the ways in which our two Alinskyites make themselves palatable to the American middle class, which to this day has no idea how hostile Hillary and Obama are to middle-class values.

“If Hillary Clinton is elected in 2016, the baton will have passed from one Alinskyite to another. In this case, Alinsky’s influence will have taken on a massive, almost unimaginable, importance. Obama will have had eight years to remake America, and Hillary will have another four or perhaps eight to complete the job,” he wrote.

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Saul Alinsky’s 12 Rules for Radicals

Here is the complete list from Alinsky.

* RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
* RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don’t address the “real” issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)
* RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
* RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
* RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
* RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
* RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
* RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)
* RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)
* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
* RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)
* RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)