When Dissent Becomes a Crime: The War on Political Speech Begins
John & Nisha Whitehead
“Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters…officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.”
Heather Cox Richardson, historian
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state. You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.
You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.
There’s always a boomerang effect.
Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.
Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.
The chilling of political speech and suppression of dissident voices are usually among the first signs that you’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by forces that are not friendly to freedom.
This is how it begins.
Consider that Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-war protester and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested on a Saturday night by ICE agents who appeared ignorant of his status as a legal U.S. resident and his rights thereof. That these very same ICE agents also threatened to arrest Mahmoud’s eight-months-pregnant wife, an American citizen, is also telling.
This does not seem to be a regime that respects the rights of the people.
Indeed, these ICE agents, who were “just following orders” from on high, showed no concern that the orders they had been given were trumped up, politically motivated and unconstitutional.
If this is indeed the first of many arrests to come, what’s next? Or more to the point, who’s next?
We are all at risk.
History shows that when governments claim the power to silence dissent—whether in the name of national security, border protection, or law and order—that power rarely remains limited. What starts as a crackdown on so-called “threats” quickly expands to include anyone who challenges those in power.
President Trump has made it clear that Mahmoud’s arrest is just “the first arrest of many to come.” He has openly stated his intent to target noncitizens who engage in activities he deems contrary to U.S. interests—an alarmingly vague standard that seems to change at his whim, the First Amendment be damned.
If history is any guide, the next targets will not just be immigrants or foreign-born activists. They will be American citizens who dare to speak out.
If you need further proof of Trump’s disregard for constitutional rights, look no further than his recent declaration that boycotting Tesla is illegal—a chilling statement that reveals his fundamental misunderstanding of both free speech and the rule of law.
For the record, there is nothing illegal about exercising one’s First Amendment right of speech, assembly, and protest in a nonviolent way to bring about social change by boycotting private businesses. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) that nonviolent boycotts are a form of political speech which are entitled to First Amendment protection.
The problem, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a president who believes that he can do whatever he wants because he is the law is that anyone and anything can become a target.
Mahmoud is the test case.
As journalists Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin point out, Mahmoud’s arrest for being a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States” (note: he is not actually accused of breaking any laws) is being used as a blueprint for other arrests to come.
What this means is that anyone who dares to disagree with the government and its foreign policy and express that disagreement could be considered a threat to the country’s “national security interests.”
Yet the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.
Indeed, the First Amendment does more than give us a right to criticize our country: it makes it a civic duty. Certainly, if there is one freedom among the many spelled out in the Bill of Rights that is especially patriotic, it is the right to criticize the government.
Unfortunately, the Deep State doesn’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.
This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.
Throughout history, U.S. presidents have used their power to suppress dissent. The Biden administration equated the spread of “misinformation” with terrorism. Trump called the press “the enemy of the people” and suggested protesting should be illegal. Obama expanded anti-protest laws and cracked down on whistleblowers. Bush’s Patriot Act made it a crime to support organizations the government deemed terrorist, even in lawful ways. This pattern stretches back centuries—FDR censored news after Pearl Harbor, Woodrow Wilson outlawed criticism of war efforts, and John Adams criminalized speaking against the government.
Regardless of party, those in power have repeatedly sought to limit free speech. What’s new is the growing willingness to criminalize political dissent under the guise of national security.
Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now, but Trump’s antagonism towards free speech is taking this hostility to new heights.
The government has a history of using crises—real or manufactured—to expand its power.
Once dissent is labeled a threat, it’s only a matter of time before laws meant for so-called extremists are used against ordinary citizens. Criticizing policy, protesting, or even refusing to conform could be enough to put someone on a watchlist.
We’ve seen this before.
The government has a long list of “suspicious” ideologies and behaviors it uses to justify surveillance and suppression. Today’s justification may be immigration; tomorrow, it could be any form of opposition.
This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars.
It’s just a matter of time.
It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration, gun rights, abortion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, criticizing the government, protesting election results, etc.) or which party is wielding its power like a hammer.
The groundwork has already been laid.
Under the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President and the military can detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a terrorist.
So it should come as no surprise that merely criticizing the government could get you labeled as a terrorist.
After all, it doesn’t take much to be considered a terrorist anymore, especially given that the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is what happens when you not only put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police but also give those agencies liberal authority to lock individuals up for perceived wrongs.
It’s a system just begging to be abused by power-hungry bureaucrats desperate to retain their power at all costs.
Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.
Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.
This is not just about one administration or one set of policies. This is a broader pattern of governmental overreach that has been allowed to unfold, unchecked and unchallenged. And at the heart of this loss of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding—or even a deliberate abandonment—of what sovereignty really means in America.
Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.
In other words, as the preamble to the Constitution states, in America, “we the people”—sovereign citizens—call the shots.
So, when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.
That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?
In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.
The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”
This is how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized “we the people” have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.
If we are to put an end to this steady slide into totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none, we must begin by refusing to allow the politics of fear to shackle us to a dictatorship.
President Trump wants us to believe that the menace we face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.
Don’t believe it. That argument has been tried before.
The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have all been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.
We are walking a dangerous path right now.
Political arrests. Harassment. Suppression of dissident voices. Retaliation. Detention centers for political prisoners.
These are a harbinger of what’s to come if the Trump administration carries through on its threats to crack down on any and all who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest.
We are being acclimated to bolder power grabs, acts of lawlessness, and a pattern of intimidation, harassment, and human rights violations by government officials. And yet, in the midst of this relentless erosion of our freedoms, the very concept of sovereignty—the foundational idea that the people, not the government, hold ultimate power—has been all but forgotten.
“Sovereignty” used to mean something fundamental in America: the idea that the government serves at the will of the people, that “we the people” are the rightful rulers of this land, and that no one, not even the president, is above the law. But today, that notion is scarcely discussed, as the government continues its unchecked expansion.
We have lost sight of the fact that our power is meant to restrain the government, not the other way around.
Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, derailed or desensitized.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the moment these acts of aggression becomes the new normal, authoritarianism won’t be a distant threat; it will be reality.
Originally published via The Rutherford Institute
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at john@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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it does not matter what side, who the president is, or whatever else; dissent will always be around, and national security being thrown out there. Columbia University needs to get a grip on controlling their students or whatever you want to call, them, i call them spoiled, asshole little brats that needs a good ass-whooping and sent back to class, and their parents jacked-up for financing them at the university. If i had kids like that that could not restrain themselves from this type of behavior, i would not be paying for their college costs, they would.
Those “moderate rebels” starting to show their true face:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/massacre-of-the-innocents-the-return-of-sectarian-persecution-in-syria/
Who benefits from a failed state in Syria?:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2593591
(Nice the way they bracket those two countries together as if there’s some sort of equivalence here. And I wonder if Turkey is beginning to realise this wasn’t so clever on their part?)
It seems Turkey benefit from it all over.
All the money he get from EU for taking care of the million of refugees, money from EU and US to maintain and protect their terror groups, and fro organ trade.
US benefit. These countries were and are a threat to the dollar for their independent view.
US is bankrupt.
Obama raised the public debt level from -10 trillion to -20 trillion, and Trump is not spending less. This debt can NEVER EVER be paid back.
What to do? Bully all countries to use dollares. Then this debt is of no problem. If the countries refuse to be involved then the next step is WWIII.
I am not lying when I say US/UK are willing to fight WWIII instead of going bankrupt and using less money.
Spot on.
I would also add that Starmer in the UK desperately wants a war so that lots of other things can be slipped under the radar. He is the most unpopular British Prime Minister in history and he’s not even a year in.
He has been instructed to introduce all sorts of things and needs the war to enact those things.
Three hundred and twenty six (and counting) more MURDERS in Gaza by we know who.
$ATAN wears a suit and lives in Israel.
No, Satan has orange hair and speaks gibberish. Satan’s clone “wears a suit and lives in Israel.” As anyone paying attention knows, Hamas was only demanding the other side – which initiated the so-called “Ceasefire” – live up to its agreement. In not forcing his clone to keep to the terms of the agreement, Satan has made it clear he had no intention of keeping the agreement.
(Although I do have to complain a little at giving Satan a bad name by associating him with the likes of Trump and Netanyahu.)
Minus minus, plus plus plus: “Homo oeco-
nomicus” seems to be a kind of capitalism
critique. That’s why the communist band
doesn’t intend to make any money out of it!
Their capitalist “liberal democratic” paradise
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-37288396
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35533616
As a mammonist, you have to have a genuine belief
in wealth, otherwise it won’t come back to haunt you.
Poor people desire wealth, rich people are convinced
they are entitled to it by birthright. Poor people remain
shit magnets, rich people remain eternal gold magnets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P53JgO29Z6A
Never mention da Jews, boy, das ist strikt verboten!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park
The evil German eagle has tyrannized
the sainted Hungarians! Never again!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_for_Victims_of_the_German_Occupation
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI63Rbxml5U
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3XcO9DozY
Dissent was tolerated by the $uiturd$ until the Occupy Movement.
That shook them up.
It’s been water cannons, rubber bullets, truncheons, tear gas, capsicum spray, stomping horses, and fists in the face since then.
Ain’t Brutoctacy wonderful?
Which, perhaps interestingly, coincides with the mainstream popularity of “social media.”
The People of America are citizens of the UNITED STATES, a municipal ‘government services’ corporation based in the District of Columbia and separate from the land mass known as America.
This separate legal-fiction was setup by The Organic Act of 1871.
The term ‘sovereign citizen’ has become an oxymoron since most people identify with their NAME in all capitals eg. JOHN P DOE.
This NAME is just one of three hundred & forty million ‘bonded surety’ franchises belonging to the bankrupt corporation known as the UNITED STATES.
The constitution means nothing in the greater scheme of things.
Excerpt from: We Are Being Smashed Politically, Economically, Medically and Technologically by the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’
With the vast bulk of the human population trapped in the delusion that governments make
the important decisions that shape our lives, virtually all effort to halt the substantial encroachments on our identity, dignity, volition, rights and freedom … has been directed at protest demonstrations, lobbying politicians (or voting for them) and petition-signing with those mobilized…
All the while fear is preventing humanity from resisting the elite program strategically:
As parents, teachers and religious figures, we are told we are responsible for socializing our children. In practice, as everyone unconsciously understands this, it means that we terrorize children into being submissively obedient.
One needs courage to face the truth, and to respond to it powerfully, and courage is not an attribute that can be genuinely ascribed to many people.
It is difficult to investigate the truth when a childhood of being terrorized into obediently believing and doing what you are told stands in the way.
Hence, human history proceeds in a simple linear fashion: We use violence to terrorize children into submissive obedience while using more (particularly ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’) violence to force them to suppress awareness of that fact. The child grows up having unconsciously ‘learned’ to use violence to achieve many outcomes, but particularly how to use violence against their own children to make them obedient. So violence is endlessly recycled: wars and violence of all kinds – against ourselves, other people and nature in an infinite variety of ways and settings – repeat endlessly.
[However,] it is not the violence we end up being too terrorized to confront. It is our own fear.
So we are rapidly entering a world in which all of that terrorizing of children has left us with a world of submissively obedient adults who are doing what they are told by international agencies, their government and the corporate media.
The only way we can defeat thislong-planned, complex and multifaceted threat,is to mobilize sufficient people all over the world who are willing to nonviolently noncooperate with its foundational components, that is, those elements that make the entire Elite program possible.
So if you are interested in being strategic in your resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
Looks worthwhile, I’m in…
Excerpt from the website [ https://wearehumanwearefree.org ]
Brilliant link Veri Tas.
Thank you.
Only 30 strategic goals? Have Science been in and over these lists??
from an anarchist point of view, it would seem to me, the very idea of setting up a central authority in Washington or wherever to oversee a vast territory, decide who to throw in jail for whatever it considers a harmful activity, launch murderous attacks on other territories separated from its domain by imaginary lines on maps, etc, this idea of government on such a scale already carries within itself the seeds of all the abuses and evils the commentary condemns, regardless of whatever highfalutin idealistic declarations of principles may or may not have been enshrined in the government’s charter, since those principles are de facto contradicted from the get-go by the very nature of the beast that we the people have brought to life
If you accidently some day arrive in a Library and get stocked there and forced to read up some history books.
And with regard to your peaceful Country, I am personally happy for our Police driving around.
Conclusion: There is and was a reason.
At least you would have known where you stood with those guys.
Meanwhile, the police in the US drive around in their shiny patrol cars with “To protect and serve” painted on the sides but never does it say who they protect and serve?
Let us try another picture.
Let us anticipate no Police is driving around in cars yes? No Police in our time:
If our Police is not there, then who is? ISIS, El Nusra, Al Qaida, Azov Nazis, Al Capone and his network.
They walk around on the streets with machine guns and shoot people they dont like, and people disappear for never coming back again.
A very very unpleasant society. Ask those countries who have tried it.
If you after a period with these conditions a day suddenly out from your window see a Police car driving around, you can finally tear your sweat off your face, because you now know you can begin to plan more than 24 hrs ahead in your life.
It is only because you live a decadent welfare life, you can come up with these abnormal ideas about the Police.
What? Decadent welfare life 😂
Not me.
Any decadence past, present and future in my life has been, is and will be paid for with my own money. Don’t need no gubbermint handouts to look after me, thank you very much. Although it would be nice to get back some of the taxes I have paid, well over and above anything I have ever received in return.
The Police is thus the entrance and exit door to our civilisation!
Yes , the Founding Fathers of the US Republic, largely enshrined their own rights , meaning the rights of a rich, privileged, Male,Land owning Oligarchy ..many of them were Members of Masonic and other secret societies to boot , hardly the exemplary Libertarian Freedom fighters they are often presented as. They fought for the freedoms of those born to rule , people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and more importantly the puppet masters in the shadows who wield real Power.
How does this vicious action have anything to do with promoting “America First”:
“A Brown University assistant professor and doctor was deported over the weekend from Boston to Lebanon after federal agents found photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader on her cell phone… Rasha
Alawieh described Nasrallah, who was killed last September by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, to the officers as a highly regarded religious leader and told them she follows his religious and spiritual techniques but not his politics.”
A president who’s actually interested in advancing an
America First program would: end the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine; audit the “Pentagon cartel”; rebuild the decrepit US infrastructure; enhance social safety nets for older Americans; provide free daycare for working middle-class families; initiate free state college tuition; provide affordable medical care for all Americans; and rebuild the devastated manufacturing base “without” the assistance of techno/fascist oligarchs who want to privatize everything for further exploitation.
“America First”
seems so last election.
It is now deportation for demonstration.
Wonder what will happen to the unvaked or unmasked.?
This is a template.
All roads Dems/Repubs lead to a totalitarian technocracy.
We also can’t allow enemies of America…including Democrats…to use our Constitution as a weapon against us. Nothing is perfect.
So the solution was there all the time: destroy the US Constitution before anyone can use it to thwart oligarchic plans. Now why didn’t the rest of us think of that?
Why play stupid like you don’t know what I am referring to? As if the Constitution and whole legal system and institutions had not been weaponized against the American people for the last four years. Sorry Jack, your snarky little comments just don’t cut water.
So Half the population of America are now enemies of America ,what are You going to do ,exterminate them?
Thing is Marb, curiously, this all runs parallel with the Malthusian aim to do away with most of us. So, in short, the answer is Yes. In fact, maybe more than half. Stanley Johnson, Boris’s dad, when asked what he thought was the ideal population size of the UK, replied it was 15 million, certainly no more than 25 million. Our current population is somewhere around 65 million, depending on your perspective.
Yeah for sure, Manipulating people based on ridiculous party lines so they hate each other certainly does fit the depopulation agenda , or at the very least prevents a popular uprising to thwart it..people had better know it
Calm down Skippy and take your meds.
The Meds stopped working long ago!
Besides the redundancy of the Whiteheads’ essays, and the lack of mention of any remedy beyond the amorphous and meaningless Howard Beale type, ‘get mad as hell’, ‘stay vigilant’ exhortations, what I find most off-putting and harmful about them now is the continuing history class romantic framing of things.
“…the preamble to the Constitution states, in America, “we the people”—sovereign citizens—call the shots.
* No, we don’t, never have and the Constitution provides no meaningful, immediate means for the citizenry to hold the state or its office holders accountable for anything that happens. The state can ignore any and every ‘check’ or ‘balance’, even from the other branches of gov’t and the citizenry has no recourse whatsoever when it does.
So, when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.
* We are not. This is a demonstrably vacuous platitude.
That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?
* It didn’t even start out that way, and was never going to turn out that way. There is and always has been an ownership class (OC).
In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.
* There is not now and has never been any peaceful, effective way for citizens to prevent that. Americans have enjoyed a customary freedom since the 18th Century, and much of that will have had to do with such freedom being in the interests of the OC.
The government has knocked us off our rightful throne.
* We we never on the throne.
It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup.
* We never had any we could insist upon and make manifest at will, so we never had any, period. That’s pure fiction, a legendary and romantic notion. No coup was necessary. Initially and for a long time, in the Machiavellian sense of not being too overtly oppressive and thus making ruling over people unnecessarily difficult, it was not in the best interests of the OC to hinder the liberty of the general public too much, but even that curtain started to come down a long while back.
Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”
* This point is true, there is almost no pretense now about the state’s expression of power or its disposition to the citizenry. That has changed, maybe because the OC has a greatly lessened need of physical labor, and the liberty of the governed is now increasingly less expedient to its interests.
If we are to put an end to this steady slide into totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none, we must begin by refusing to allow the politics of fear to shackle us to a dictatorship.
* Another Bealian platitude. There’s nothing concrete about getting ‘unshackled by fear’. To then do what lawfully, legally and effectively within the system? To do what?
We are walking a dangerous path right now.
* Right now. Like it just recently got dicey.
We have lost sight of the fact that our power is meant to restrain the government, not the other way around.
* The idea that we have power, concrete mechanisms to express our ‘authority’ and restrain the government is an embarrassing thing for a lawyer to write at this point. We do not, and that’s obvious. Whatever degree of liberty we enjoy is purely customary and tied to its expediency to the OC.
Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, derailed or desensitized.
* Because if you don’t, that will avert the slide into totalitarianism somehow, because you’re aware of it? Should we set up tents in front of state houses, spend our whole lives demonstrating and writing begging messages, filing lawsuits and petitions that will just get thrown out or ignored, talk about who we’re going to vote for 3.5 years from now, spend every waking moment of our lives attempting to stem to the totalitarian tide with absolutely no verifiably effective and concrete means of doing so?
This is a really tired message.
We have no authority. We have a customary freedom, and a system in place that can restrict it at any time, and does, and for which we currently have no remedy. We can not insist on our freedoms as they are taken away. We have seen this clearly.
That’s the system we live in. Let’s talk about and eliminate that.
I am no expert on this, but what you say seems to have a lot of truth to it. However, in view of all of the official lawlessness that has been going on lately, don’t you think that that Bill of Rights thing seems like a pretty radical document, and not at all a bad idea, if it were ever put into effect, that is?
Some nice notions, and noble seeming, yes, but my point has to do with the being or putting into effect, which they are not, and, as things currently stand, cannot be. States are all and always captured, and cannot help but be, and people are all required to associate with and pay for them, regardless. It’s completely irrational.
If thoughtful minds begin to contemplate remedy for this, but, more important, to begin with, to accept that the document is not enforceable by those and whose rights it is ostensibly meant to protect, that will be a profoundly important shift, the far side of which may lie actual remedy.
‘In reality, democracy today means an electoral oligarchy of economic and political elites, in which central areas of society
areas of society, especially the economy, are fundamentally removed from any democratic control and accountability; at the same time, large parts of the social organisation of our own lives lie outside the democratic sphere.
social organisation of our own lives lie outside the democratic sphere.’
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
I’m with George Carlin on this one: We don’t have rights, we have temporary privileges. They can be taken away from us at any time, for any (or no) reason by our owners.
My problem with written constitutions is that the minute you quantify rights, you automatically restrict said rights to those quantified therein. Any semi-literate lawyer can argue their way around them. We are seeing that happen all the time in the UK eg a Somali muslim rapist not deported for raping a 13 yr old girl because he didn’t know rape of a child was illegal. What happened to ignorance of the law being no excuse? Apparently deporting him would have violated his Human Right to be ignorant. There are literally hundreds of similar recent examples of Human Rights being weaponised against society, in favour of pieces of shit.
A bit like the Ten Commandments – where were Thou shalt not keep slaves; thou shalt not rape children; etc? Admittedly, those two examples were being promoted by God elsewhere in the OT so it shouldn’t really be a surprise they were left out, but I’m sure we could think of other things. Or we could have just relied on our own innate sense of right and wrong. Don’t get me wrong – the Ten Commandments are fine. I’m just not sure they needed to be written down, thereby tacitly turning a blind eye to anything outside of the Ten.
I’m more of Common or Natural Law advocate. My ‘rights’ end where yours begin. No need to write anything down. We could all agree on some things – which side of the road we drive on and which colour traffic light means Stop, for example. That makes perfect sense. There will be other, common sense examples of practical, everyday stuff. But not Rights. In my opinion.
The problem is the decades long and intentional dumbing down of the populace who don’t know their rights or what constitutes a crime contrary to their country’s criminal code.
Another problem is the overwhelming obedience to authority depicted in the Milgram experiment, the group think exposed in the Asch conformity experiment and the Stanford prison experiment which exposed humanity’s abuse of power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Absolutely.
Those experiments expose the fundamental nature of what we have been conditioned to become. I don’t believe those experiments would have turned out the way they did without said conditioning.
I also don’t think it’s an accident that people don’t know their ‘rights’ or what constitutes a ‘crime’ anymore. It seems to me that govts deliberately obfuscate and leave things open to ‘interpretation’ (ie their interpretation) in order to cast the net as widely as possible, should they choose to do so in specific cases.
The two tier justice system operating in the UK right now is a prime example of how petty, inconsequential behaviour can be treated more harshly than serious crime, depending upon ethnicity and religious grounds – all done perfectly ‘legally’. Right and wrong do not even get a look in.
You shall not commit adultery. (rape of children).
You shall love yr neighbour as yourself.
The two love Commandments the first and the second are the most important of all the Commandments and laws.
Conclusion: Everything is thought into the 10 Commandments! THIS IS NOT SPARTA, BUT GOD, you sons of multiple b..ches.
Equating adultery with child rape is astounding.
One is sleeping with someone else’s wife/husband. The other is fucking raping a child. I have to ask – how can you see parity in those two things? I understand that if you are a religious person, you will bend scripture to your will as and when required, but come on.
Love your neighbour as yourself. Fair enough. But remind me again of the verses where God offers advice on the treatment of one’s slaves. I understand there are a few. So clearly God didn’t think love they neighbour meant don’t own slaves. A prohibition on owning another person is not the same as loving thy neighbour. I refer you to my previous point re religious people.
Conclusion: The Ten Commandments are re-interpreted by religious people to suit whatever argument they are making at the time.
This is exactly the same thing that happens with codified ‘rights’, so you appear to have, if not proven, at least supported my argument.
ps If only this were Sparta. Schwab, Starmer et al would be well and truly at the bottom of that pit by now.
Since when did you and others came up from your pit and into that position to blame God for not making rules that are self evident?
You should have kept the first rule from the start. All right you broke it because you wanted to be God yourself. This didnt turn out very well yes?
All right? Then God made 10 universal Commandments only to help you through the night. You couldnt keep them either. 10 simple rules.
Then you killed your mother and raped some children and claimed it was God’s fault because God didnt made a rule banning raping of children and banning especially killing of one’s mother.
All right, in order to help you through the night again, God erased the entire mankind except Noah and his Arch, but promised you it was once in a lifetime.
You continued to breach all the laws you could get away with, because you knew better than God how to manage out little earth here.
Then God made Sodom and Gomorrah burn up in hell, and then he made you speak different languages to spread you all over the globe when you tried to make a new Global Government in Babylon with child sacrifices, swinger clubs and slavery.
One last thing. YOU made slavery little boy, not God.
By free will you could have got paradise, but you wanted it the hard way.
When your free will as always goes up in smoke and bs, you cry that God should have been a Nanny to you like a Kindergarten teacher to a spoiled kid.
Excuse me Slapdash, but I understand God’s feelings for this bunch of crybabies like you..
Well that escalated quickly.
My question to you was basically are you equating adultery with child rape? You didn’t really answer. I will assume that you don’t and were merely making a point.
That aside, impressive rant.
You have ascribed to me an awful lot of beliefs and attitudes that I just don’t have. But that’s ok. I forgive you.
Just as a final comment on this: I’m not blaming God for slavery, child rape or indeed anything else. Those things are the sole responsibility of humans. My comment was that the Ten Commandments did not address behaviours which were a problem then and are still a problem now. I do wonder though if those two examples had been included on the list, would those behaviours be so prevalent today? One to ponder, perhaps.
My initial point was that a list which explicitly includes a fixed number of items implicity excludes any items not on the list. The Ten Commandments was an example. As was the Bill of Rights. That is all.
I made an excuse for the type error below. Off it is not you but a third person you.
All right you made examples, but so does the Bible.
All are symbolic in the Bible. If people read it literally, its a book with simple words full of violence, but for the “knower” the words are treasures.
Anyway, its an common error to think our state of affairs is normal.
So your example with child rape is not a normal but an abnormal affair subject to lawyers discipline. Only because we by own free will couldnt or wouldnt follow universal basic principles from the very beginning.
One law, to Ten laws, Hundred laws, to Millions of laws and rules,
and then blaming God for not killing us long time ago.
I agree we don’t follow basic principles where we absolutely should. I think that the vast majority of people know what is right and what is wrong, but for one reason or another, do not act accordingly. These days it is largely because we are proactively encouraged not to.
If you look at some of the small, indigenous tribes in various out of the way places in the world, they fight other tribes for all the usual reasons, but within the tribe they have cohesive, sustainable (in the true sense of the word – not the new ‘woke’ sense) and viable societies that value all the things we know we should value but don’t anymore. Nobody had to tell them what is right and what is wrong. They figured it out over time.
I think this knowledge of right and wrong is innate within us and is the reason we survived as a species before becoming ‘civilised’. This is why I believe writing down rights or modes of behaviour or whatever is restrictive. It’s a trick played on us so we think we have freedoms etc enshrined on paper, but in reeality it is a real world Overton-type window that we all buy into because that’s how we’ve been conditioned. A bit like the lie that we live in democracies.
I don’t think we’re that far apart in our understanding of how things are in the world. Our difference of opinion arises out of the different lenses through which we assess the world. Yours appears to be religion; mine is more pragmatic. But we still both know we’re looking at the same situation.
The two last words should not have been there. Its a neutral third person accusation (We, thee, they, us). Edit button.
More from the multiple personality disorder psychopath:
“5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me”
It is hard to read that as expression of an infallible and omniscient being. Sounds like the workings of a mortal mind to me.
The bit it didn’t say:
And it came to pass that Moses, Aaron and Miriam went up into Mount Sinai and came back with a tablet of stone that they had, er, gifted a patsy 2 loaves of unleavened bread to inscribe earlier that same morning … insert the other better known piece here.
After revelation of the tablets to the throng Moses, Aaron and Miriam had a private party and celebrated with bucket loads of freshly cooked pig’n’bird (pork and quail).
God made humans in his own image.
If yourself have build a house and garden to your family, and a foreign intruder came in and seduced your wife and daughters, drank the wine you have by hard work made, and eat up the fruits and meat of yours, and on top of it, smeared you to everybody as not being good enough.
Wouldnt you be a little pessed? Off course you would.
So you expect God as omnipotent to punish those who insulted him yes? But this was exactly what God did.
God punished the Devil,” you shall eat dust your eternal life”. “Adam and Eve dismissed from Paradise, hard work and labour.
All babies coming from the intercourse between Eve and the Beast to the lake of fire..End of story.
See above and down under.
“God made humans in his own image”
Thus why they are mostly A-holes with a sizeable number of psychopaths in their number.
Makes sense now.
Thanks.
You forgot your friend the Beast. God is not responsible for who you by your free will choose to make friendship with.
Don’t get too cocky.
If you find your free will has you utterly bored circulating round and round the Heavenly Throne a new commandment might pop up out of nowhere:
“thou shalt not get bored from worshipping Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh”
Since, allegedly, there shall be no more wailing or nashing of teeth in your first destination then, presumably, you know where your final destination will be.
You’d better hope that you can then quickly make friends with the Beast.
Free Will – nearly as bad as the curse of gullibility 😆
Spot on. To ensure our freedom, we should specify what is not permitted, and that could be boiled down to something as brief as the 10 Commandments, perhaps with a modern update.
I agree with you in principle.
Eventually though, you’ll run into the same problem. The US system is based on telling people what their Rights are – what they can do. We’ve seen how that works out in reality time and again.
The UK system is based on telling people what they can’t do. So, in theory, in the UK you can do anything you want as long as it doesn’t breach one of the prohibitions. The problem is there are now so many prohibitions, covering just about everything, and they are worded in such a way that they mean whatever the govt (or their owners) wants them to mean from one day to the next. Hate Speech laws are a good example and very pertinent right now.
The basis of most Laws seems to be making unlawful things legal, through legislation, so the govt and its owners can pursue criminal activity without breaking the ‘Law’ they just wrote.
I don’t know what the answer might look like. Or even if there is an answer. Humans are problem solvers by nature and find it hard to accept the notion that a question may not have an answer, but sometimes I think that is the case. Hopefully not in this case though.
Natural law is the sane, logical and simple underpinning for moral societal interaction, yes, and we do not have that. The idea is antithetical to the ownership class’s outlook and agenda, and most people want to control and be controlled, anyway, so it’s not appealing to the majority.
I only now care, however, that it’s true and it’s reasonable, and that what we are generally always talking about is entirely fictional and formless. Some of us know for certain better at this point, and in that segment of people, that should cease, reality be confronted, and from there perhaps remedy and a sane course will emerge. For some, anyway.
More than 50 years of elite democracy have shown us where this path leads. It is the path of destruction. The destruction of community, the destruction of the idea of community, the destruction of millions of lives, the destruction of cultural and civilisational substance – especially in the Third World – and the destruction of our ecological foundations. The beneficiaries of this destruction have no reason to change this path of destruction. The necessary energy for change can only come from below – from us. That is our task and that is our responsibility.
Rainer Mausfeld, ‘The power elites’ fear of the people’
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
You are mistaken on slavery. It is kosher for all 3 Abrahamic religions. Look up NT again.
The Ten Commandments were written (or received, depending on your position) during OT times. The OT contains instructions regulating the owning and treatment of slaves. It specifically does not say slavery is a bad thing.
The NT is something else entirely. Suspiciously so. However, I’m not going to get into an in-depth religious debate as this is not the thread to do so.
The point I am making revolves around the idea that making a list of Commandments or Rights restricts adherents or subjects to only those things listed. This allows other things to slip through the cracks and/or provides definitive targets for unscrupulous people to invent work-arounds.
But you are wrong here Slapdash. If you follow all Ten Commandments you will not be able to rape children or do something else bad not written.
Its your society, traditions and culture who teach you to point a finger to a rule in the Criminal Code.
But in the religious world your behaviour will change after your soul’s submission to the way our earth and we are designed. For our sake.
A man with his sword only responsible to God. A word is a word, a handshake is a handshake, a man of his word, m.m.
Take the two first Commandments: How do you follow a rule saying “Thou shall love………first God and then thy Neighbour”.
This doesnt make sense in our human world today with written laws, but in the religious world with a free will to work for a clean soul it does.
A little Latin love to prove our business: “Because it’s passion, and these things around passion you cant explain, it is only to give in and let it happen”. https://youtu.be/sbXHYQ9l-V0 Forro.
I don’t rape children. Not because of Commandments, but because I know it is wrong. I don’t need Commandments to tell me it’s wrong. That’s the entire point I’ve been making.
I understand how religion may provide the guidance and framework for living a decent life, but then I think of the number of Catholic Priests who have abused children for a long time. I know a victim of one of those priests. It haunts him to this day.
To be clear – that’s not God’s fault, but it is the fault of people who claim to be doing God’s work. They claim to follow the Ten Commandments. Clearly they don’t. Not all priests. Obviously. But it doesn’t have to be all of them. Even some of them doing this, given what they claim, is a disgrace and should be an affront to every religious person.
I suppose my point is this: If religious men can commit atrocities, yet non-religious men can refrain from committing atrocities, is religion the ideal benchmark of right and wrong?
TB;DR 😨
🤔 No idea what that means.
One remedy is to lay numerous private informations (criminal charges) in court against your boss including for warrantless search and seizure of your biometrics using smart (AI) nanotechnology biosensors embedded in masks, tests and jabs for surveillance under the skin via the Internet of Bio-Nano Things and the WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network IEEE802.15.6 in the terahertz band) contrary to Sections 184(1) and 430(5) of the Criminal Code of Canada or its US equivalent.
I don’t believe there are any remedies to be found within the system to correct the system itself, which is part of my point. Lawsuits can and are routinely thrown out or receive corrupted rulings. Can’t rely on those.
Given the scenario you present, it becomes an exercise in silliness to fault the Whiteheads for not offering “solutions.” What on Earth “solutions” are possible to the dilemma you present?
There are several practical things that might be done, or at least tried, jury nullification being one, but I’m certain a necessary precursor/prerequisite for any remedy to develop will be to stop resorting and responding to vacuous exhortations like getting ‘mad as hell’, ‘not taking it anymore’ ‘don’t live in fear’, and to stop discussing the governance documents of the West as though they are enforceable instruments at the disposal of the general citizenry, They’re not, and our governments are captured and always have been. That is just the case.
Magna Carta and The Bill of Rights, however noble sounding the words and ideas therein, are not actionable documents in the service of citizens, and are easily and routinely ignored by captured states in the service of the OC, which all are.
Accepting that is the first step to remedy, I expect, and I think the scenario presented is correct.
I agree with what you write and ask, how would you then eliminate it, and how would you replace it?
The agreement is the starting point, as once contemplated, continued participation in a hyper-harmful system one cannot legally disassociate with is obviously irrational, and the notion of ‘the consent of the governed’ impossible. One cannot be said to have consented to that which one is not permitted to reject and withdraw from.
Voluntary association and engagement is how most of life operates, anyway and already, for most things, and is a moral mode of interaction. Bright minds can figure out how to build and maintain roads, deliver water, etc. outside of this system.
Look up voluntarism (aka voluntaryism), Larken Rose, James Corbett, Freedom Cells, and, one of my favorites, listen to the webcasts of Lee Gaulman, ‘Legalman’, an American lawyer, he’s rational, clear, a brilliant and sane guy.
https://the-quash.captivate.fm
In the meantime, in the collectivist system, jury nullification of bad laws is an actual solution, but the open withdrawal of consent and support is likely inevitable for those that both see and can also accept what this all is.
Only fools loses everything by hypocritically enacting exactly the same evil they seek to eliminate. This is exactly what disgusts us about the Two Party false binary sociopathy, and they’ve stepped right into it. As can be expected. Wealthy rats never make good decisions for the People, only for themselves.
The good folks who insist there’s no difference between one administration and another are ignoring the great big pink dinosaur in the middle of the room: The f**king American people!!!!! The most recent polls show Trump’s maniacal approach to governance is sitting just about RIGHT with the American people. They like the way he’s going.
Yes, fire half the government so that the already unemployed have that much more difficulty finding a decent job.
Yes, Tariff every nation on Earth so that already sky high consumer prices rise another ten to twenty-five percent.
Yes, turn the economy around by planning another huge tax break for the billionaire class (who already barely pay anything).
Yes, Make America Great Again by threatening the rest of the world.
Yes, start deporting anyone supporting the Palestinians so that censorship will have REAL teeth and not just empty edicts.
Yes, override the Constitution and every other law and all decency with a single abominable word that has long outlived its usefulness: antisemitism.
The American People, being history’s most pampered, greediest, most violent creatures on the planet, are not just being played for fools – they’re cheering it on!
Trump: “The war in Ukraine should never have been started”.
Trump, the only dissent and rebel who was not wearing mask.
https://youtu.be/iTg01S-Dhy. July 2020 first time Trump wear a mask to avoid shedding and jumping from the vaccine jerks inside a military building.
Trump who still calls himself “the father of the vaccine”, deployed Operation Warp Speed untested gene therapy platform injections and just gave $500 Billion for AI and mRNA gene therapy cancer vaccines is the hero. Wake up.
I know there are many black spots. But there are also a few lights in between.
You know, after 12 years with Obama and Biden, you are lucky for crumps.
Lucky?
Only for the 95% gullible a-hole squad.
All right, all right, happy then- I know I missed a bus here. Cant you forgive 1 mistake?
Easily.
But,
nearly everything you write is a mistake.
Still slightly amusing but it is getting tedious.
Trump also said he would end the war in Ukraine on Day One of his term. Didn’t happen. It’s still going. Don’t you get it? Trump is a loud mouthed bully who says anything that enters his mind – and who must then be muzzled by the ruling class.
The day is fast approaching when all but his staunchest MAGAdytes will see his face on TV and tell their kids “Oh don’t pay him any mind – he’s just the president.”
All right. I suppose we are back to Biden yes?
You TDS is intricately laced within a false reality…
Then let’s have the true reality….
What part of, you cant handle the truth, dont you understand?
As if someone like you could possibly grasp it,,,
Heard of TFS?
Trump FANTASY Syndrome.
Tis a complete and utter fantasy that he gives a shit about the Useless Eaters.
He is the most vain blowhard since Barnum and Bailey set up
their three ring circuses.
Well, you would certainly be a prime candidate to epitomize “useless eater”.
Whatever slogans the parties wear, whatever battle cries ring out from the demagogues who lead them, you really only have the choice between plutocracy on the one hand and a horde of ridiculous utopians on the other. (H.L. Mencken)
“All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. 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.” (Mencken)
That guy just left office…
Suggesting that this current US administration is somehow worse than previous administrations invites us to believe that there is some sort of difference between them all. I do not belileve that. Yes – there are cosmetic differences, but some things never change, no matter who is sitting in the big chair. The direction of travel has been very evident for a long time.
In Trump’s defence (not words I use often), he hasn’t engaged in mass slaughter of US citizens yet, like so many of his predecessors (caveat – maybe he’s just building up to it at the moment). I would place that higher on the list of govt crimes than arresting people, however unfair, unpleasant, etc that might be. A sense of perspective is important when considering the crimes of government.
Having said that, I do agree with the underlying thrust of the article that govt overreach is a problem. Not just a US problem, either. It seems to be happening everywhere at the same time. Almost as if it were a coordinated effort. I wish I could think of a recent example where most of the world’s governments, whatever their political leanings, population demographics and environmental imperatives took exactly the same actions at exactly the same time ‘to keep us safe’. I’m sure one will come to me eventually.
In Trump’s defence (not words I use often), he hasn’t engaged in mass slaughter of US citizens yet, like so many of his predecessors
Operation warp speed and the lockdown and effect it had. HAD no effect according to your logic!!
Last few days bombing in Yeman leaves no causality.
“Operation warp speed and the lockdown …”
You’re right of course.
I was thinking about his efforts this time around and I was thinking of a mass casualty false flag event a la 9/11, Vegas etc.
Come to think about it, that’s exactly what warpspeed and lockdown turned out to be. I remember wondering at the time, as I do now, whether he knew what he was doing (ie condemning potentially millions to death) or whether he was simply doing what he’d been instructed to do, just like they all do, without giving it much thought at all.
Defense of the ORIGINAL interpretation of the Constitution is NEVER an overreach…you have it right.
“Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters…officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.”
What if these protestors are an assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland(MP) and the US Ambassador giving money and cookies out to their support group in a foreign country?
Or similar organised destabilising Regime Change Operations by foreign entities claiming they can do it better than the prevailing Government, and when they got the chance, everything just got worse??
Isnt it a government’s (Trump, XI, Putin’s, xxxx’s) plight to see through what is organised bs and what is citizens justified claims???
https://youtu.be/zU_rxTZPQF8 Occupy Central USA’s 12 steps to bring China into WW3
Trump’s clamp down on Radio Free Europe/Liberty, m.m. is a clamp down on an outdated Deep State which make more evil (like in Ukraine) than freedom and democracy.
It is an important discussion, so we educate ourselves in what is false and what is true opposition. What is false versus true clamp down.
Would love to read your take on the protests in Serbia?
WHY?…it would be just as stupid and slanted…
“Declaring boycotting Teslais illegal”
There should be no need to.
Anyone stupid enough to buy one of the most ugly cars on the road, that have a habit of spontaneously combusting, crashing into random objects and are as reliable as British public transport needs to give their head a wobble.
Trump supporters for the most part don’t buy Teslas, so he is clearly trolling the woketards.
Now the wokeists are trying to rebadge their Teslas to disguise them out of embarrassment and because other wokeists are vandalising them. There is no disguising an upturned pram that is called a Tesla, so suck it up.
The effeminate men, the type who carry their baby in a harness facing forward looking like Kuato from Total Recall and virtue signalling snotty women who drive these things should have known Melon Husk is not their friend and is just reading a script and playing a role.
Got to hand it to the controllers, their scriptwriters know how to infuriate and wind-up the maximum number of the human cattle and set them off against each other, even now setting the woke against the woke.
Pass me more popcorn….
I don’t think you understand. Your “woke” gibberish aside, those boycotting Tesla are doing so in protest to Elon Musk’s draconian axe wielding attack on the government – and not because they are expressing effeminate woke values.
Here’s a practical textbook case from real life what the federal chopping block amounts to. The county I live in (Harford County, MD, USA), having been mostly taken over by Republicans, has over the years done away with most county services. My HOA Board has been cutting down trees (for the lumber value) like crazy – it’s had to grade to cover the scars. After checking with just about every county agency, a neighbor was referred to the US Forestry Service (one needs a permit to grade). The message: The US Forestry Service was closed. No help available anywhere – thanks to Trump and his Muskrat.
Yeah, I say fuck the Teslas!
The only “gibberish” being spewed is the gelatinous, vomitous mass of TDS horseshit coming out of your pie hole…
Melon Husk is not deciding anything. He is a front man, an actor, a puppet in a theatrical production just as is Trump. They are well connected puppets but are NOT calling the shots. Both do as the controllers tell them, probably with some room for ad-libbing. They have been selected to play roles and they act them out well.
You think that a dude who supposedly runs Tesla, Space X, Twatter (X) and several other companies would have time to waste giving interviews and posting (trolling) on Twatter? Also, to have time to involve himself so heavily in ‘government’. Of course not, no serious businessman does that.
Those jumping up and down like demented banshees are falling for the trick, pointing at Team Trump and booing them, while others cheer them on. Meanwhile their bosses stay in the shadows directing the show. They play all sides and it seems you are letting yourself be played too.
How much more of being knocked from pillar to post, year after year, decade after decade, regardless of the red or blue label does it take for people to get it?
Take a long step back, consider the obvious agendas, then think about the possible less obvious seemingly counter agendas. Consider the use of reverse psychology too which could be used to get you accept any of these possible agendas and not the personalities fronting them or pretending to be against them. The people running the show are not amateurs, they have studied human psychology for decades, if not centuries and have gamed every likely scenario.
A good place to begin is to start to think like they do. Put yourself in their shoes. Also read and learn about their belief systems, including understanding metaphysical and esoteric beliefs.
This notion that because someone behind the scenes who we can never know is who actually runs things; so therefore we must stop cheering or booing whomever carries out their orders and then just…Just What? This notion is becoming increasingly tiresome. It does no good to give the hit man a break because, well, he’s just doing what he’s told. Just following orders.
My concern is NOT with who’s calling the shots. It’s with those among the people who go along with these shots – and therefore make them workable. We know the federal bureaucracy is bloated and that most agencies work against rather than for the people’s interests. But there ARE some things federal employees are needed for. It’s that simple.
The people going along just want a pay check, if they did not go along, they would have to have a talent as good as the one going along.
And I don’t see all those people wading through the fog of life able to see all the shots, so why rock the boat when the ride is smooth.
It was not that deep, they required that the box of explanation be checked and not left blank. When the people refused to check the box, they were let go, its that simple Einstein.
If that were the case it does surprise me, since normally the workshy, lazy or generally useless at their jobs are good at bullshitting and somehow able to survive as public sector employees.
They are lucky they don’t have to justify their very existence. If George Bernard Shaw, the well known eugenicist, had his way every person would have to do so in front of a panel of experts or face death.
Except in that scenario he would be the first to face death as the spectators watched and afterwards had their way.
First, I don’t know what the acronym HOA means. Next, no idea what grading in the context of trees means either. Perhaps, you should have added more context.
Anyway, if you and your neighbours object to your HOA (sounds like a housing adminstrator) going gung-ho with the chainsaws why don’t you all organise to blockade them next time they do it? Do you always need muumy and daddy ‘government’ to sort out your problems?
This is the human condition, where most are incapable or unwilling to organise. You have a good excuse now since you claim the Forestry Service is closed.
True, I left out a vast amount of background information on my HOA (Home Owner’s Association) situation – I didn’t want to turn this forum into a sounding board for my community’s problems. I just wanted to point out the relevance, in real terms, of the actions taken by the federal government. There is no organizing in my community because 1) the investors have bought up so many condos that they outvote the other owners; and 2) few really care, or even see, just what’s happening.
The grading had to be done because the huge tree cutting and removing equipment made a shambles of the “common grounds.” FWIW, for 10 years I sat on our HOA Board and helped make it more accessible and responsive to the Association members – and did all I could to try and thwart the growing influence of the investors. Then, when I was kicked off the Board (illegally in terms of the By-Laws) not one person stood up for me. (And I didn’t have $30,000 in pocket change to get an attorney and fight my removal.)
As to who runs the country, that is totally irrelevant – believe it or not. Someone always runs things, whether he has a fake tan and orange hair or hides within a bank vault. If they hire Mr. T to mess things up, are we to give him a free pass by telling ourselves “He’s only doing what they tell him to do?”
But if Mr T messes things up b/c he wants too, and obviously doesnt care about your free pass, who are you to tell him what to do?
You did at least put your head above the parapet and tried to do the right thing.
However, it seems you quickly discovered what we all discover when giving our time and energy trying to help others, in your case the other association members. Most were apathetic from what you said at point 2) and even those who were not didn’t have the balls to back you up.
Unfortunately, that is life. Too many are willing to abdicate personal responsibility in even the simple day to day situations that affect them directly .
This is precisely why I go out of my way to put the major share of blame on The People rather than on the Rulers. The Rulers will always seek to exploit the people. The fact that the people not only accept but even applaud it makes them co-conspiritors.
I often mention personal responsibility in comments here because if we ALL or at least most of us exhibited it, the world would be a better place and it would be nigh on impossible for the current controllers to exploit us.
However, the difficulty is that we are few in comparison to those who don’t understand or don’t want to understand and participate. Of course this should not give the controllers and their minions a free pass, since if they acted differently the problem would not exist either. Unless, it is human nature to shaft one another. So if they didn’t do it someone else would, perhaps even one of us reading this, given the opportunity.
It is a little chicken and eggy.
Perhaps even a sadomasochistic dynamic. There are sadists and there are masochists and then there are those who switch from one to the other given the chance.
PS. It wasn’t me who downvoted you.
Or beware of sewage leaking from DC basements.
OH!…That was very good!
Surely the act of killing Palestinians is ‘antisemitic’, as they are all Semites?
Therefore, any Zionist supporting Israel right now should face civil litigation for ‘aiding and abetting Antisemitism, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing’?
About time Miriam Adelson was put in the dock, ditto Jared Kushner, Jake Sullivan, Mike Huckabee, the top 50 AIPAC officials etc.
Laws/edicts can always be targeted against Zionists after all.
This leftist, pro-Pallie trope that attempts to defuse the charge of anti-semitism is tired by now. Because the word was coined before 1900 in a specific context. It never meant and does not mean being “anti-speakers of Semitic languages”but being against Jews.
Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages, that’s all. Adelson and all the others belong in the dock alright but not for being “anti-semitic by being anti-Pallie”. .
There is another tired trope, that of the “Khazars”, used to deny Israeli Jew any historical claim to Israel,
Whereby AFAIK human genetics and its DNA studies currently holds that Ashkenazi Jews come down from a small population of Levantine men who had children with Italian women ca, 1,000 years ago. ( So no Khazars.)
Which is not to say that such people have a right to all of Israel. Quite possible that Palestinians are indigenous to the region whereas Sephardic Jews such as Montefiore (UK) etc. come down from N African converts to Judaism at the time of Carthage, see HG Wells’ theory about this 100 years ago as recently revived by Ron Unz at The Unz Review, https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-true-origin-of-the-jews-as-khazars-israelites-or-canaanites/
Any historical claim to “Israel” that is based on something thousands of years ago is meaningless and worthless.
They want to pull this trick, yet the English for example have been the inhabitants of their country continuously for a thousand years and aren’t allowed to call England theirs to keep.
This alone is reason to resent those constantly grifting supremacists.
“Laws/edicts can always be targeted against Zionists after all.”
Dream on!
All animals are equal, but some are more kosher than others.
Cute how Whitehead neither acknowledges the Scamdemic 2020 to date and its ramifications nor in this case, the JQ:
is it just my perception or are the US media, given their ownership and staffing, quite fine with the illegal Trumpian expulsion of some Palestinian activist but get very exercised when Trump moves to expel illegal nonwhite migrants?
(Non-Palestinian) nonwhites of course being DEI favourites and almost as useful for “tikkun olam” (irony:off) as US blacks, historically speaking.
Your problem is the US is a bankrupt entity. You have no rights, the government is an illusion, an act, a show of pretence that you have a vote that matters.
You are a commodity and a slave to the FED.
No shit sherlock…any news you want to share?
But its not completely, its the only country left to financially fight China, so once the financial battle is lost, Chinas war is won. Then you will prolly have fewer rights.
The Whiteheads have zero reason to fear Trump or other US President ending their right to free speech, provided they continue never even mentioning Israel and the international Zionist tribe controlling politics, media, finance, education and popular culture.
The gvt is already being restrained, just not by the citizens.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/globalist_games_they_play_we_pay.html
Begins? With Trump?
Nobody sane believes this crap.
Mahmoud’s arrest yesterday led to a just and daring protest action by opponents of the Zionists and genocide, in Trump Tower. The case received wide coverage, it is practically everywhere (of course, in all anti-genocide and anti-Zionist media of resistance to the dirty plans for a greater Israel and the cleansing of Gaza). The fuc*ing AP also showed conscience and is indignant:
“Jewish protesters flood Trump Tower’s lobby to demand Mahmoud Khalil’s release
March 14, 2025
NEW YORK (AP) — Demonstrators from a Jewish group filled the lobby of Trump Tower on Thursday to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at Columbia University.
The demonstrators from Jewish Voice for Peace wore red shirts reading “Jews say stop arming Israel” and held up banners as they chanted “Bring Mahmoud home now!” on the lower level of the Fifth Avenue building’s public atrium.
After warning the protesters to leave, police said they arrested 98 people who stayed on various charges, including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest.
…
President Donald Trump has said Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come” and vowed on social media to deport students who he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
…
Founded in 1996, Jewish Voice for Peace describes itself as a grassroots movement of American Jews seeking to “end U.S. support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” It is one of a number of Jewish groups around the world advocating for the rights of Palestinians.”
I go to the website of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and read:
“JVP is the world’s largest Jewish organization standing in solidarity with Palestine.
We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews.”
“Our Vision
We envision a world where all people — from the U.S. to Palestine — live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.
Like generations of Jewish leftists before us, we fight for the liberation of all people. We believe that through organizing, we can and will dismantle the institutions and structures that sustain injustice and grow something new, joyful, beautiful, and life-sustaining in their place.
We picture the concrete of the Apartheid wall in pieces on free Palestinian soil. We picture Israeli jails, prisons, and detention centers emptied and dismantled. We picture the return of Palestinian refugees, reuniting with their families and communities…”
“JVP’s Core Values
(selected)
“WE gain strength from the long lineage of Jewish freedom fighters. Behind us are Salonican socialists, Warsaw Ghetto fighters, Israeli Black Panthers, labor organizers, Civil Rights veterans and many more ancestors who worked tirelessly for liberation – of Jews and all people.
We know our communities are under threat. We commit to dismantling antisemitism in the most effective way possible: as part of our struggle against all forms of oppression and bigotry. Our struggles must be united to succeed and we intend on succeeding.
…
Racial Justice & Collective Liberation
Our commitment to racial justice is a core praxis in our work, by which we mean an ongoing cycle of action and reflection within which we are striving to dismantle racism–both outside and within the organization–while also working to grow a liberatory culture for our organizing.
We understand that racism shapes everything in the US, Israel and beyond. Racism dictates who lives and dies, who has the resources they need to survive, who has the power to govern, who faces the most violence, who has the freedom to stay in or move from their homes, whose stories are told and believed. As a diverse, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of Jews we also understand that white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, colonialism, militarism, and capitalism are intertwined at the roots, and that we can’t fully address any of them without addressing all of them. Our commitment to Palestinian liberation is fundamentally a commitment to fight against racism and for a world where everyone lives with dignity, power, love, community, beauty, and justice.
For us to win, we must be a political home that provides connection, wholeness and belonging to all Jews who want to fight for Palestinian liberation. We are committed to building an organizing home where Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, SWANA/Mizrahi, and Sephardi members feel welcome, home, and whole. Where white Jews feel supported to build their anti-racist praxis and bring their full selves. Where all of our work embodies the multiplicity of Jewish histories, lineages, stories, and traditions. Where each of us can name and fight out of our own specific stakes in building Jewish futures beyond nationalism, white supremacy and Zionism.”
Cool.
I have always believed, and I hope that all anti-genocide anti-Zionists share the same thing, that “white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy are intertwined at the roots, and that we can’t fully address any of them without addressing all of them.” Be truly antizionist, say no to genocide, patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia!
Thanks for confirming my suspicion that Khalil is/was a political agent from Israel.
By default, we’re all political agents from Israel now – like it or not. Anything we say or do plays into Israel’s hands. Either we Adelson or we Hamas – makes no difference, Israel will find a way to turn it around and use it for its propaganda.
All the while Uncle Sam is engaged in wondering if his creaking old bones will hold as he bends a knee to perform fellatio on Bibi one more time.
“By default, we’re all political agents from Israel now”
Yes, Howard, but, understand and agree that not everyone is a threat of the same level, there are differences. The most dangerous and harmful are the homophobic and transphobic patriarchal capitalistic white supremacists.
I, for example, do not consider the victory over Zionism complete and I will not rest until this madness is put to an end and a homophile, transgender-communist, racially diverse matriarchy reigns (I think I do not need to add that there should also be the same basic and inalienable human rights for all, such as equal and fair access to life-saving vaccines against covid). I believe that this is the most right and natural, approaching the divine, order. The vast majority of antizionist organizations and media, to which we owe the antigenocide voice, share this vision. Do you share it?
I take it you’re being ironic here? At any rate, being an Anarchist (though not the bomb throwing Emma Goldman type), I find matriarchy no more appropriate than patriarchy – or any other hierarchic system.
(Hint: suggesting there might be even a partial “victory over Zionism” gives the thing away.)