May 2014 – Page 20 – The Burning Platform

WHILE TBP WAS DOWN, POLICE CONTINUE TO SHOOT 93 YEAR OLD WOMEN

Another week, same story. Know your enemy. Hat tip Boston Bob.

Texas town shaken by officer shooting 93-year-old

By PAUL J. WEBER
— May. 9, 2014 3:13 AM EDT

Protesters chant during a rally outside the Hearne, Texas police department Thursday, May 8, 2014, following the Tuesday shooting of 93-year-old woman. Robertson County District Attorney Coty Siegert said Pearlie Golden was shot Tuesday night by Officer Stephen Stem. Stem was responding to a 911 call about a disturbance involving a woman with a gun. The Hearne Police Department says Golden “brandished a firearm” when Stem encountered her. He then shot her multiple times. The investigation into the shooting is being handled by the Texas Rangers. (AP Photo/Bryan College Station Eagle, Stuart Villanueva)

HEARNE, Texas (AP) — Friends say 93-year-old Pearlie Golden still shopped at the grocery store and greeted friends with a jubilant “Hey, baby!” Now they and the mayor of this small Texas town want the police officer who shot and killed her gone.

The fatal shooting of “Miss Sulie” — as residents say she was widely known — has raised tensions in Hearne and the Texas Rangers are investigating what led the officer to fire on Golden while responding to a 911 call at her house this week.

Hearne police have said in a statement that Golden “brandished a gun” when officer Stephen Stem arrived Tuesday night. Dozens of protesters, including some who came in from Houston, marched to police headquarters on Thursday and were met there by Mayor Ruben Gomez, who said he will recommend that the officer be fired during Saturday’s City Council meeting.

“It’s a loss of confidence in the community. We can’t have an officer the citizens have lost confidence in,” Gomez said.

Hearne is home to about 4,500 people surrounded by cotton farms and railways, one of which backs up to Gordon’s brick home.

Robertson County District Attorney Coty Siegert said a preliminary autopsy shows Golden was shot twice in the body and grazed by a third bullet. It’s the second time Stem has shot and killed a suspect since joining the department in 2012, Siegert said.

“There’s no justification. Any police officer would know not to kill a 93-year-old fragile woman when they could have backed off,” said William Foster, 64, a retired professor in Hearne. “She was no threat to him.”

Stem could not be reached for comment because a number for him could not be found. Siegert said he saw Stem’s lawyer this week but didn’t know his name, and Hearne City Attorney Bryan Ross didn’t return a phone message.

Hearne police have declined to comment beyond the statement issued this week. Stem has been placed on administrative leave.

Candles left in vigil remained outside Golden’s home two days after the shooting. Foster and others said she lived alone and that her husband had been a Hearne police officer himself.

A doghouse made of plywood sat in Golden’s recently mowed yard. Next door, a neighbor lived in a trailer surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

Authorities say a revolver believed to be the weapon Golden had at the time of the shooting was found at the scene.

Hazel Embra, a geriatric nurse and a City Council candidate in Saturday’s local election, said she ran into Golden last week at the grocery store.

“That lady should be living today. She should not have died like she did,” Embra said.

The circumstances surrounding Stem’s first on-the-job fatal shooting were very different. Siegert said a group of officers had responded to a call in the middle of the night and wound up chasing several suspects through an unlit area before Stem fired. He was cleared by a grand jury.

The Cat Knows

http://thestrangestbrew.com/

SILLY WABBIT FOR PRESIDENT IN 2016

Our democracy has finally been perfected. The time has come to elect a person who reflects the inner soul of our nation. I think everyone would agree that V Stiviano is that person. The time has come for the nation to be ruled by a downright moron. V Stiviano in 2016. I think a Stiviano/Sterling candidacy would be unbeatable.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H. L. Mencken

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.”

John Dos Passos

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.”

John C. Calhoun, 1836

“The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed…

This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”

Rutherford B. Hayes, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States

“The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

“As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year’s financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.. and the deregulation of the derivatives market.”

Matt Taibbi

I MIGHT BE PARANOID, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE NOT OUT TO GET ME

Last Thursday I was just minding my own business and posting my normal subversive material on The Burning Platform. I was again at war with Google, as they forced one of my new advertising partners to terminate me. I left the office at 4:30 to pick up my mother and take her out to Bertuccis for her birthday. After a few hours of hearing about neighbors, friends and relatives that have died, are dying, or want to die, I was mentally exhausted. I didn’t even try to logon to the site that evening. When I tried to logon Friday morning, I immediately got a timeout message.

I logged onto my DreamHost account where I can view the analytics of what is happening on the site. At exactly 4:20 pm on Thursday afternoon the load time for the site spiked from 1 second to 30 seconds and had stayed at that level permanently. I then entered Live Chat IT Help Desk Hell.

It was not immediately apparent to me the site was under attack because I’m a clueless dolt when it comes to the IT aspects of running a website. I had gone six whole months with no website issues, which was a record for TBP. I wasted the next three days on-line with multiple low level drones from DreamHost giving me horrible advice and offering no help in solving my problem. They at least confirmed that I was under attack. Now I was really pissed. My whole weekend was ruined and I was in a foul mood. You should have seen my reaction when some dude honked at me to move my car so he could get out of a Wawa parking lot when I was at a red light with cars in front and behind me. I was ready to go “Walter” on his ass.

I had previously contracted with Stop the Hacker to fix some weaknesses in the site and asked if they could help. They recommended CloudFlare to fend off denial of service attacks. I signed up for their service and followed all their recommendations to stop the attack. It continued unabated. Now I was really frustrated. I had dropped $200 and had nothing to show for it. The IT guys at CloudFlare were much more helpful than the guys at DreamHost. They told me what DreamHost needed to do to make the CloudFlare protection work. My site’s IP address could not be made public. DreamHost refused to do what we asked.

I was ready to try anything. But my methods were highly unlikely to fix the problem.

By Sunday night I was ready to pull the plug on the site and give up. I had been receiving emails from many of the regulars and people I had never had contact with before offering their good wishes and help. When I was at my low point on Sunday I received an email from a fellow liberty minded, truth telling, oligarch hating blogger. He offered to put me in touch with his webmaster and a beautiful friendship was born.

I felt like the townsfolk in one of Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti westerns who are being beaten, abused and mistreated by the bad guys. And then The Man With No Name arrives in town and takes on the evil doers with his six shooter.

I finally had someone who knew what they were talking about. His advice to DreamHost was spot on, but they were too stupid to understand what he was talking about. Sometime on Monday I realized my only hope was to convince The Man With No Name to take me on as a client. I asked him to save me from the banditos attacking my tiny site. As a retired gunfighter he was reluctant to enter this battle, but he slept on it and decided to do the right thing and help someone he had never met. He did it because he believes in the things I write about. On Tuesday he went to battle against an enemy that was pounding the site with 48.4 million hits over a 24 hour period.

I gave him access to my CloudFlare account and he immediately went to work assessing the situation with the top notch CloudFlare specialists. I can’t say enough about their professionalism and willingness to try new stuff to fight off the attack. I was copied on the email stream, but was completely clueless reading the various query and code banter that was taking place. The Man With No Name did tell me that this was an extremely sophisticated attack undertaken by really smart people. I guess that rules out the NSA and every other government agency.

The CloudFlare guys had to write a special program to fend off the attack. By Wednesday evening the Man With No Name had vanquished the bad guys. In his spare time he had already set up a server, transferred my databases from DreamHost, and upgraded my WordPress, while getting in some tennis, tending his garden, and drinking some beer.

The emails with offers to help continued to pour in. I’ve received a number of generous donations from TBP fans. The support has been very uplifting. Both David Stockman and Jim Kunstler offered help to get the site back up. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Mike Krieger. I’d also like to thank Thinker and RE for keeping people up to date on my plight. A few websites even ran my Under Attack page. Special thanks to Howe Street, Before It’s News, and Steve Quayle. By the end of the day on Wednesday I was optimistic we could be live today. When Clint said it was ready for prime time, I was psyched. I told him to pull the trigger and let’s resume this gunfight with the evil establishment.

So what did I learn from this experience?

First of all, this was a crime. What was done to my site over the last week was against the law. Do you think the authorities give a shit about me and my website? Do you think the police would undertake an investigation into this crime? Not a chance. They are too busy prosecuting farmers for selling fresh milk, ranchers for letting their cattle graze on grass, and tazering little old ladies on the side of the road. The government was either behind the cyber-attack or cheering it on from the sidelines. The rule of law no longer exists in this country. If you are not part of the establishment, you are the enemy.

I learned that TBP is having an impact. This was not an attack carried out by some pimply teenager in the Ukraine. It was an all-out assault on the truth. It was a blatant attempt at censorship. The attacker was attempting to put my website out of commission for good. They do not like what I have to say. They are worried that too many people will start paying attention to what is really happening in this country.

They know I’m a one man operation with limited financial resources and no technical resources to fight such a major attack. They came close to making me throw in the towel. But what they didn’t realize is that words matter. I’ve written hundreds of articles over the last five years. And people with certain skills I do not have, agree with my point of view. They felt compelled to help me fight this battle. This episode proves to me that the little people can stand up to the oligarchs and win.

The TBP community has lost lots of battles against Google, the MSM, and the government, but we will win the war. This country is headed down the wrong path. The accumulation of debt, suicidal monetary policies, and unsustainable fiscal policies, combined with a totally corrupt political system, and a financial system designed by evil men to benefit evil men, will lead to the destruction of our society. I see it as my duty to my children and the other rational thinking people in this country to tear down the existing establishment at every opportunity. The existing social order must be swept away before progress has a chance.

The oligarchs will not go down without a fight. This past week was the opening volley in this battle for liberty. I fear it will get much worse than a cyber-attack on my website. The mass surveillance of all Americans, military training exercises in American cities, and the trashing of the 4th Amendment are all warning signals not being heeded by the general population.

The coming years will require fortitude, courage to stand up to the establishment, sacrifice, and a will to create a better tomorrow for our children and grandchildren. I will keep fighting until some government thugs kick in my front door and haul me off to some FEMA camp. In the meantime, I’m proud to be associated with all the TBP contributors, commenters, and readers. We have a choice between tyranny and liberty. I choose liberty.

Russia responds to Obama Threats

Russia gave it’s response to Obama’s sanctions today. Their nuclear ICBM’s are clearly in working order…

Or maybe this is footage of admin fighting the forces of USSA fascism….

Political Ideologies: Politics Makes Life Ugly

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

We all know people, probably a lot of them, who are decent and well-meaning in most aspects of their lives but whose brains switch into an ugly mode of operation once politics comes up. They are fine neighbors or coworkers until you say something that goes against their ideology, and then they turn into bitter adversaries.

This abrupt change from Ms. Nice to Ms. Nasty can be rather troubling when you see it up close. And for good reason: it’s like a sci-fi movie where an alien takes over one of the crew.

The truth is that political ideologies are a devolutionary influence on us. They make us harsher, angrier, easier to manipulate, and almost impossible to reason with. In almost every way that can be examined, they’re bad for us.

The great problem is that people think they’re required to have political stances. This is a tremendously damaging and false belief, but the Western world is currently addicted to it. In our time, Politics is Almighty.

The truth, however, is that we are more than capable of examining the world and coming to conclusions without the mental partnership of a political ideology.

Ideologies Are Mind Parasites

People usually get pulled into one ideology or another at an early age. Very often they will be raised in an ideology and will slowly adopt it. Other times, teachers will lead them into an ideology or simply force it upon them. This is more or less standard at universities, where holding the wrong ideology takes a point or more off your GPA.

And beyond this, many people will routinely push you into one category or another without even meaning to: “Which party do you like?” “Who are you voting for?” and so on. Once you make a choice, they identify you as being within a specific ideology and will treat you that way. And unless you strenuously defy their categorization, that’s where they’ll keep you.

Once you come to see yourself inside of an ideology, there are emotional benefits. If you align with the Blue Party, you will be continually furnished with reasons why the Reds are to blame for all the ills of the world… and vice versa. The emotional benefit is that by being in the right party, you are absolved from all responsibility – the enemy party is always guilty.

This mind parasite shortcuts your thoughts and pays you off with some fake self-esteem and pats on the back.

People stay inside ideologies for the emotional protection they gain. And if they’re not careful, their identity will merge with their ideology. From that point onward, all political questions become blood feuds.

Politics turns your naturally limber thinking process into an animalistic and angry “us versus them.” The ideology – the parasite – shapes your thoughts to serve itself.

Ugly by Nature

Politics is ugly by nature. Think about what a political process really involves.

Once a political process is completed, people have a binary choice: either obey or be punished.

At the end of every political process are armed men, violently enforcing it. That’s barbaric, and it’s ugly.

The truth is that we really don’t need those embittering ideologies. And if we ever really did need them, we’ve outgrown them.

Most People Are Better than Their Ideologies

Consider your otherwise good neighbor who turns ugly over political opinions. He or she is better than their ideology. In daily life, they are considerate and cooperative. But when politics comes up, they instantly turn confrontational, oppositional… barbaric.

It’s politics that changes your neighbor from a nice person into an angry, hazardous person.

Most people are far better than their ideologies, and I think it’s a good idea to tell them so. You’ll have to wait for a good time, of course, but you might consider saying something like this:

Ron, you’re a good neighbor and a nice guy… except when you talk about politics; then, you’re scary. It’s not your opinions – I may disagree, but I can understand how you’d reach those conclusions – it’s that you change, and you defend them like you’re at war. As a friend, I’d really like for you to step away from that kind of political identity – it diminishes you.

I’m not promising that this will always work, but it is the right thing to do and you are at least likely to plant a good seed in this person. And if you say it at the right time, with genuine concern, it’s unlikely to cause a real problem.

As best I can see it, the truth is that political ideologies make people consistently barbaric and ugly. They make them worse. Our lives would be improved if we dropped them.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

MEDIA NEXUS – GOOGLE’S NEW WHORE

After Google and TBP parted ways in a blaze of glory back in January, I was able to replace them with some alternatives. Media Nexus was a new company that contacted me by email. My “good buddy” Roy Miller told me we would have a long and fruitful partnership. I added the code for their ads and they’ve been paying me an average of $8 per day for the last couple months based on number of impressions for their ads. I was earning a few bucks and their ads were getting 25,000 impressions per day.

One week ago I received this email from my buddy Roy:

Hello Jim,

Attached are your updated tags, these new tags are from our new ad server (Google DFP Premium), once these tags have been updated please let me know via email. Google will be sending you a link, please follow the instructions and register an account in order to view your stats.

I immediately saw trouble on the horizon. I responded:

Hi Roy

I’m confused by what is happening. Is the old log-in page now obsolete?

Will I still receive the money I’ve earned in April under the old program?

I clicked the doubleclick link to register me at the new site.

Is my partner media nexus or google?

Roy’s comforting response was:

Hello Jim,

The old login will be obsolete, the revenue earned with that login will be added together with your new earnings and will be paid out on May 7^th.

We are still Media Nexus, we are simply using Google’s ad server to deliver our ads and ensure quality. We are two completely separate entities.

He told me Media Nexus was just using Google’s server to ensure quality. Isn’t that precious? Shockingly and out of the blue I received this email today:

Hello,

Unfortunately after consulting with our demand team, we have to terminate our partnership. We have deemed that there is no demand for your site at this time.

Your April’s earnings will be paid out on May 7^th.

However if we do get demand for your site, I will certainly reach out to you. It has been a pleasure working with you.

Best,

No more Hello Jim. Just hello and goodbye. I wonder what the old “demand team” saw today that they didn’t see one month ago or two months ago. Oh yeah, Google instructed them to terminate me with extreme prejudice.

You probably realize by now that I prefer to burn down bridges when my fruitful business relationships are terminated. My response to my buddy Roy was as follows:

Hi Roy

What do you mean by “no demand”? Your ads have been getting 25,000 impression per day. How come it took three months for your demand team to decide this wasn’t enough?

Why don’t you tell me the truth? Google told you to terminate our relationship. Isn’t that true?

One week after you begin a partnership with Google, I’m terminated.

Don’t bullshit me with corporate speak. Your company sold out to Google and now you’re their whore.

My good buddy Roy hasn’t gotten back to me yet, but when he does I’ll be sure to pass it on.

So it seems my ongoing war with Google is going quite well. I think they will be surrendering any moment now.

There certainly is no possibility I get rich from this site and sell out to the man.

If you would like to tell the Media Nexus Whores what you think about them, here is Roy’s email address:

[email protected]

I sent Avalon an email complaining that every time it seems like the site will generate a few bucks I get knocked back down. Her compassion knows no bounds as she responded by sending me this video: