A sombering article about what happens when a government stops recognizing the individual rights of its citizens. Written by Jeff Snyder by way of LewRockwell.com Thanks to Eric for the link.

Plastic People

by Jeff Snyder
by Jeff Snyder

‘plas•tic’: . . . 5: capable of being deformed continuously and permanently in any direction without rupture” ~ mirriam.webster.com

Pierre Lemieux, a French Canadian, economist, professor, author, libertarian thorn in the flesh of the Canadian Leviathan, and a friend, has become a felon. Pierre refused to answer one of the questions on his application to renew his firearms license, and the licensing center refused to renew his license. He now faces the prospect of 10 years in prison for keeping firearms without a license.

I will tell you some of his story. At this stage you may be thinking that it’s going to be about gun control but, rest assured, it’s not. Too many see trees, only trees, everywhere they look, and never a forest. Every abuse, every injustice is singular, isolate, one more thing to be addressed, corrected or reformed – unfortunate, deplorable really, but circumscribed, in an arena separate from the rest of life, someone else’s problem, and someone else’s cause.

No, Pierre’s story is about what it means to be ruled, what it means to need permission from the state. And if you stop looking at trees and see the forest, then Pierre’s refusal to follow orders may pose a question for you: How far will you accommodate the state before you resist? Is there some limit to your ability to mold yourself to the state’s designs? At what point will the state cross a line within you, when what you are ordered to do is more than you will accept or bear, when you will say, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”?

Or does no such line exist? Are you that final object of all the state’s labors, that Quintessential Being that the state expects, demands and needs you to be: a plastic person?

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In 1995 Canada passed an “Act Respecting Firearms and Other Weapons,” generally referred to simply as the “Firearms Act” or by its original bill number, C-68. At the time, Canada already had handgun registration. The Firearms Act created a long gun registry and a new firearm licensing authority, and required citizens to possess licenses to own firearms. The licenses are good for five years. Pierre registered his firearms, and submitted his first application for a firearms license in 1996, which was granted, his first application for renewal in 2001, which was granted, and his second request for renewal in 2007, which was denied.

Pierre believes that Canadians have the right to own firearms without government approval. In fact, he has written extensively on the subject to educate his fellow Canadians and to peaceably restore respect for this right. Nevertheless, like most people, Pierre complied with the registration and licensing scheme in order to keep what he loves and to live a “quiet life.” Unfortunately, despite his best efforts to comply, Pierre ran into his own personal limit with an impertinence in the license application that he simply could not abide, viz., question 6(d) of the license application, which asks:

“During the past two (2) years, have you experienced a divorce, a separation, a breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy?”

The instructions to the application state that all personal history questions must be answered, and that “[I]f you answer YES to any of the questions . . . you MUST provide details on a second page. . . . If details are not provided, your application cannot be processed. A YES answer does not mean your application will be refused but it may lead to further examination.”

In each of 1996, 2001 and 2007, Pierre, waging what he describes as “a dignity battle” against the law, refused to answer this question, instead responding that “My love affairs are none of your business / Ça ne vous regarde pas.” In 2007, Pierre took the additional step of sending, by registered mail, a copy of his application, a cover letter and three pages of his book, Confessions d’un coureur des bois hors-la-loi, which chronicles his resistance against Canadian gun control laws, to the Prime Minister of Canada.

Two months after his license expired, having heard nothing from the licensing center, Pierre made a freedom of information request to find out the status of his application. Eventually, he received word that his license renewal was denied by reason of his failure to answer question 6(d). Pierre now owns firearms – registered firearms – in violation of the law, a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. On the webpage where he chronicles his resistance to the Canadian license law, Pierre wonders: ” Will I be the first Canadian to be jailed for refusing to tell the state about his love life? Not the last one, I fear.”

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If an activity is licensed by the state, then it is a privilege conferred and controlled by the state, and not a right. The conditions on which the privilege is conferred are matters of legislative or administrative grace; the person may not lawfully engage in the activity and is not affirmatively protected from state incursion simply by reason of being a person, as would be the case with an “individual right.” The Firearms Act empowered an agency with a mandate to create and administer a licensing program and vested very broad powers in the agency to establish the particulars of the program. The Act clearly establishes that ownership of firearms in Canada is a privilege conferred only upon those deemed worthy by satisfaction of conditions determined by the licensing authority.

Stop and consider for a moment this by method of “legislation.” The founding “law” simply directs a combined legislative/judicial/executive agency to create and enforce a program without bothering to prescribe the contents of the program or even any significant limits on the exercise of that “authority.” Instead, it vests the agency with very broad discretion to define and administer the program. This form of legislation is, historically, a favorite with advocates of gun control, but it is by no means atypical of modern law-making, and is often used to control all sorts of activities. For example, the act establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States is in large part of this nature, being essentially a mandate to the agency to go forth and create clean air and water.

Consider what this type of “legislation” says about how truly, deeply, worried your “representatives” are about your lives. They cannot be troubled to precisely define the contents of the “laws” to which you will be subject, to define or circumscribe the conditions that may ultimately be imposed upon you or resultant burdens upon you and, therefore, do not limit how impertinent, overreaching or arbitrary they may become. Instead, the laws to which you will be subject largely or in significant part are devised by men and women who are not subject even to the minimum accountability of having to be re-elected to maintain office, who are protected from removal from office by civil service laws and who will never, ever be accountable to the innumerable citizens they harm for the harebrained regulations they impose. The legislators don’t have to make any of the difficult decisions, won’t be blamed for agency regulations that outrage the electorate, and it’s just fine with them if you have to incur significant costs in time, money and energy to bring actions in the courts to overturn the agency’s edicts, or to lobby the legislators to bring their administrative dogs to heel. There’s certainly no problem with more lobbying, it means more political contributions! The legislators dodge responsibility and accountability to the electorate, and position themselves as saviors who can remedy the abuses of the administrative agencies. An ideal system, really!

For reasons known only to it, the Canadian licensing bureau decided that it needs to know details about each applicant’s love life, job losses, and bankruptcies in order to determine whether to issue a firearms license. Doubtless many of us are dulled, if not numb, to the presumptions of wisdom and competence, and intrusiveness, of government agencies, but consider the god-like heights that the Canadian firearms licensing bureau claims as its own. The air is indeed rare there! It is going to make decisions whether to grant or deny a firearms license based on its evaluation of your love woes, job loss or bankruptcy!

“Provide details,” it commands. Assuming you can get past the monumental presumptuousness that demands that you submit, as a matter of official record, intimate details about your life to be mulled over by some police official, really, how does one respond to that? What level of detail, exactly, are they demanding? Would “My wife and I were divorced six months ago” be sufficient? Or is one required to add some salient, hopefully spicy details? “My God! For a while there, it was almost like “War of the Roses!” I refused to leave the house! She smashed some of my things and in retaliation I uprooted her beloved rose bushes! The tears! The screaming fits of rage! It was a complete nightmare! Now it’s over and, fortunately for all concerned, we live in completely different provinces!” Or does one add page after page of Henry James-like psychological detail of every gesture, facial expression and step of the breakup, the job loss, the bankruptcy?

Assuming one provides sufficient details, the agents who process the applications will then decide what significance these personal facts have for firearms ownership. This is pretty impressive! Consider that state-licensed psychiatrists, actual medical doctors who have specialized in the scientific study of mental health, cannot reliably predict, do not even claim to be able to predict, who is and is not going to commit an act of violence. Yet fear not and be ye amazed! The intrepid agents of the licensing bureau can and will determine who among those recently wounded in love, employment or credit relationships may safely own a firearm, doubtless relying upon gut instincts finely-honed through years of processing applications!

Maybe the licensing bureau isn’t going to use psychological profiling. Maybe, instead, the details it needs are the names and phone numbers of your ex-lover, your ex-boss and the creditors who lost a bundle when you filed for bankruptcy. And maybe the bureau will then contact them and make inquiries. “Hello. This is Officer Smith from the Firearms Licensing Bureau. Your [choose one] [ex-lover], [former employee] [former debtor] is asking us to renew his firearms license so that he can continue to own firearms for the next five years. Are you okay with that? Does that give you any cause for concern?” And then the bureau can decide whether to issue a license based on what these people say about you. Not quite a judicial determination of the existence of a crime, you understand, with an actual crime charged, penalties for perjury, the opportunity to confront and cross-examine your accusers and rules about what is and isn’t admissible evidence, but hey! Good enough for administrative agencies, which make their own rules and act as legislature, judge and enforcer.

Who knows how the licensing bureau will evaluate this information? They want it, and they will act upon it, and that is all the applicant needs to know. The activity for which the supplicant need a license is a privilege conferred by the state and, therefore, at bottom rests on nothing more than meeting their conditions, i.e., on pleasing the authorities, who most assuredly will do as they please.

This is what it is to be ruled, for your activities to be privileges conferred by the state, for the conditions of your life to be determined based on some legislator’s or administrator’s “good ideas” for governance. This is what it is to have your life controlled by another who has the power to fine you and throw you in jail for failing to comply with his conditions.

This is why American gun owners vehemently oppose registration of guns and licensure of firearms ownership. It doesn’t matter what the law says or whether it’s a “good idea” or what its supposed socially-worthwhile, beneficially-motivated “intent” is. It’s how the law’s power is wielded that determines the conditions of your life. This is why, when the NRA and gun owners supported “shall issue” concealed carry licensing laws, currently in place in 37 states, the laws were carefully crafted to specify precisely the procedures to be followed, to enumerate the only conditions that could be imposed, all of which were objectively determinable and none of which depended upon the exercise of agency discretion, and to impose time and cost limits for processing, so that, upon satisfaction of strictly objectively verifiable criteria, the licensing authority was required to issue the permit. This is why American gun owners demanded that state legislatures pass these new laws and repeal the old licensing laws that were enacted in the early 20^th Century, laws like the Sullivan Act, which still governs the residents of New York City. While appearing on the surface to be even-handed, those older statutes simply conferred broad, nebulous discretion on a licensing authority, with the result that they have been and, where still in effect, are, administered in a way to insure that only the “right” sort of people obtain permits. In New York City, this means that men like Donald Trump and Howard Stern get carry permits, but not the multitudes whose lives just aren’t important enough to warrant the privilege of self-protection. (For a more extensive discussion of the arbitrary nature of discretionary licensing statutes, see this policy analysis of “shall issue” concealed carry laws.)

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While Pierre is now a felon because of his nation’s gun control laws, never forget that this is how he got in trouble with the state: He acted on the basis that there are some details about his life, important to him, that are his affair and his alone.

No one who believes he has the right to control you, who believes, further, that he has the right to engineer a society according to his ideas and plans, will ever accept this. It is an affront to his arrogance, to his arrogation of power to control you as he deems fit. To have “lawful authority” – really, political power – is precisely to have a free hand to use coercion to suit your purpose, without necessity of justification. If you are simply carrying out a prescribed course, if there is no discretionary element to your “authority” that permits you to shape it and use it to your purpose, it is not power but mere processing and ministration: you are a mere servant, a functionary, a minion. In brief, you are you: a servant and whatever government requires you to be, and manifestly not a king, a sovereign, a president, a semi-divine one, a colossus bestriding the earth.

Anyone who believes they have the right to control you ultimately must act ruthlessly, because a person does not control another unless, in the absence of willing consent or consent obtained through misrepresentation or fraud, he will compel the other to act as he commands. Ask yourself why a refusal to answer a single question about your love life is accompanied by a threat of, and merits, 10 years in prison. The failure to answer this question inflicts no actual harm on any citizen. The punishment cannot, therefore, be for harm the refusal has caused any specific victim or “society” at large. No, the injured party here is the state itself. The refusal to answer the state’s question is an affront to the state’s “authority,” and its claims to operate, and manage society, as it sees fit. The real “crime” is that the subject has failed to follow the state’s orders. He has failed to submit to and participate in the state’s project to control or engineer society in accordance with the state’s plans. Possibly, for example, the licensing bureau’s motivation for asking about love woes, job losses and bankruptcies is that it hopes to be able to prevent some future crimes (with guns, at least) based on certain facts that the licensing bureau believes have some degree of predictive value for determining who will and won’t commit crimes. That is, it may be implementing a general policy directive to shape an aggregate outcome (a reduction in crime) based on the fact that a certain small percentage of ex-lovers, ex-employees and bankrupts will commit armed violence against their former lovers, former employers or creditors. In refusing to answer the question, then, the applicant thwarts the state’s plans and rebukes the state’s claim to an authority to control or engineer society in accordance with its purpose. The “crime” is not a personal crime, like murder, robbery or pollution of the air or water, but a political crime. The essence of the crime is lèse majesté. The “criminal” has refused to obey the state’s fiat, and in so doing has committed an intolerable affront to the state’s claim to an absolute “authority.” He has shown his willingness to keep and act upon his own counsel and not follow orders. The state cannot let that stand and continue to be a state. It is the ultimate crime, and that it is why it is dealt with ruthlessly, meriting the same punishment that Solzhenitsyn informed us that Stalin’s political prisoners in the Gulag received for rebukes to authority: a tenner. Evidently, like minds, each claiming a right to control and engineer both man and society, perceive like threats, and respond with a like “solution.”

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Pierre notes that he is ashamed that he has not joined the Canadian heroes who are resisting the Firearms Act by refusing to register their guns or apply for licenses. These peaceful, otherwise law-abiding men and women occasionally hold open protests in front of government buildings daring the authorities to arrest them and throw them all in jail for ten years. According to information obtained by Pierre under a freedom of information request, as of February 2009, the Royal Mounted Canadian Police estimate that there were 185,925 owners of long guns alone who are not in compliance with the firearms registration and license laws.

We know now that Pierre need not have been ashamed, for it is clear that he is no less heroic. The state pushes and pushes; too much is never enough. It demands nothing less than absolute, complete control over an avidly obedient populace. To the state, there is no difference between 99% compliance and zero compliance. If there is one thing, one thing alone that it commands that you are unwilling to do for it, you have rebuked its authority and you are a threat, and the state will take you down. Pierre tried to comply for the sake of an undisturbed, peaceful life, but there was one thing the state demanded that he was not willing to do. There is something within him, some inherent dignity, he is not willing to relinquish or alter to suit the bastards. And so he refused to act as he was commanded to act, he refused to be a plastic person, forever conforming himself to the shapes devised for him by men and women with delusions of grandeur and whose tools for creating utopia are tasers, guns, fines and prison. And for that he may get ten years in jail.

So this is how it is. If you can labor “within the system” forever to obtain the reform that will correct this abuse, and that one, and each and every other abuse that arises, now and forever; if you can labor forever to exchange your current masters for better ones, a better Congressperson, a better Senator, a better President; if, in short, your idea of “citizenship” or “activism” is playing whack-a-mole with those lording it over you; if you can wait forever for the permission that you need to live life peaceably as you envision it; if you can march forward uplifted on Hope and Change; if you can find reasons and make excuses forever why Change cannot be achieved fully, just yet; if, in short, nothing can cause you to call into question the fundamental belief that it is good and proper for some people to have a “right” to control your life and the rest of society, using, as their tools, lying, fraud, manipulation, threats, grants of legal monopolies, protection and immunities, payoffs (“subsidies”), confiscation, fines, tasers, guns and jail; and if, when their commands are finally issued directly to you and you are confronted with tasers, guns, fines and jail, everything about you is conformable, malleable; if at no point will you ever openly refuse to comply with their plans when you are ordered to do so; then relax, the state is not coming for you. You are a plastic person, deforming yourself to fit into the shape that the state designs for you. You are no threat and you can be controlled because there is no one there to offer any resistance.

But if there is some peaceful activity you care about deeply, if you invest your life in it and the state should seek to control this in a way that that truly hurts you, then you will collide with the state, and what you love will be used against you. That is how the state operates. That is how it implements its self-described mission of “protecting” and “caring” for you. And if, because of this thing you love, you have some limit, some thing or aspect of yourself you will not give up or alter, then you are a threat, then you are an affront and rebuke to your government’s assumption of complete control. You have demonstrated that you will not dance to the state’s tune, that you are an individual and not a cog in the state’s machine, and Pierre’s story may someday also be your story.

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Pierre has filed a motion of appeal before the Québec provincial court, asking that the license refusal be quashed and apologies issued. He also argues that the Firearms Act and related criminal code provisions are unconstitutional, and that he does not need any license to exercise his traditional liberty to possess firearms. The court date has been set for May 26 and 27, 2009, in room 207 of the Mont-Laurier Courthouse, Québec, starting at 9:30 a.m. each morning. Richard A. Fritze, an Alberta lawyer and well-known defender of Canadian firearms owners and their rights, is representing Pierre pro bono. In addition, several expert witnesses will testify on behalf of Pierre’s position, including Joyce Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origin of an Anglo-American Right, Colin Greenwood, a now retired senior English police officer who authored a landmark work on the history of England’s gun control laws and their failure to reduce violent crime, and Professor Gary Mauser, who co-authored an article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy with Don Kates titled, “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?

These experts have generously agreed to assist Pierre for only the cost of their travel and accommodations, but Pierre needs funds to pay for what will most likely be a long and difficult battle. Please consider supporting him. If you wish to assist Pierre’s fight by donating, please contact Paul Rogan, publisher of Canadian Access to Firearms, who is acting as a pro bono fund-raiser. Alternatively, The Canadian Constitution Foundation has established a “Pierre Lemieux Legal Fund.” to provide funds to support Pierre’s case and you may instead donate earmarked funds to the CCF. Mr. Rogan can provide details on how to make your contribution through CCF.

May 6, 2009

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards – Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Jeff Snyder Archives

Abayomi Ariyo is my name. I reside in Agbado A.I.T Road Lagos. As a motivational writer who understand the value of human heart I have written over 1000 life changing quote and lot of inspirational write ups that could heal the heart of the world as a whole. somehow the world could start living without violating the peace of mankind. Below are some of my Quotes and motivational write ups.

It will be my joy if you can put me into consideration as i will need your support such as to puch things out of shell. I promise to map out my best such as to keep reflecting the glorious image of the world at large.

QUOTES:

1. No matter how handsome or beautiful you think you are without wisdom and focus you are equal to ugly. By Yommy Ary

2.The money you give to reduce someone’s mountain is the sacrifice that will promote you and build up the future of your children. By Yommy Ary

3. In the race of life those who trade by luck can never maintain success because hard work with all desire to make positive mark is the secret of success. By Yommy Ary

4. Heroes are those who construct the road of greatness for someone somewhere to become great. By Yommy Ary

5. A man is not normal until he discover the reason why heaven sent him to a world this big. By Yommy Ary

6. Until a man see the picture of his future he can never face his challenges with joy. By Yommy Ary

7. You can’t live to change the world if you don’t dare what it takes to be the dance of positivity.

8.Any fighter can fail but is not a failure if the courage to fight again is swimming in his blood.

9.Don’t look too far for a hero. You are but a great hero if you can do what it takes to be the road to someone’s solution.

10.When trust is not in two, two tangles in war.

“Until a man see the picture of his future he can never face his challenges with joy”

Its obvious that most creature can highly be motivated through the picture they see in the hollow of their mind. You can’t compare the action of a man who has the idea of what he can do to turn his shame to fame to a man that didn’t understand the meaning fame, the value of fame nor glory, the state of their convenience will be different to each other. If an eagle should grow up with fowl surly it will act like mere fowl but if it met herself in the flocks eagle no one will explain to her before it will see herself as a kind of bird that is far beyond the standard of fowl. In the race of life most people are living below there standard because they lack vision. Instead of fighting for a better dream they blindly risking a race that lead to nowhere. Instead of investing words that could open their eyes to great dream and ideas into their mind, they keep searching for money through zero mind, they fail to understand that the original picture of their future is better than mere money that could link to no better end. It good to comb the world in need of opportunity but the truth is that If opportunity didn’t meet better dream, ideas and good preparation with you, you will not fly higher with it, even your destiny will not open up for you to live the good side of life but when opportunity meet great dream and ideal in you, automatically your life will have a great meaning as you will become a place of opportunity where someone somewhere can go to hunt for deal, riches, wealth and opportunity.

The world is becoming worse. It as become a place of tragedy all because children keep growing to see negative people with negative idea, negative speech, negative and negative mission. The irony is that despite their negative role in life still people are celebrating then in the society. If a child that grow to know a negative parent did not encounter spiritual word that could give birth to his positive life style he or she will believe that achievement is measure with the standard of negative action a person could perpetrate in life. Such children will grow up with the believe that life is all about trading with the devil before they can make their ends meet in life. The fact is that you don’t need to shed blood, steal or engage in any deadly adventure before you can make it.

As you grow let the power of positive imagination take you to the picture of your awesome future. Despite all frustration and rejection imagine how joyful Mandela will be in the prison , he was so joyful because he could see the picture of his future, he could see himself becoming the distinguish president of South Africa and he achieve the dream because there is power in what you can see and believe about yourself.

See yourself becoming a great star that could make a great impact on the land of the living. It is the law of life that what you see you can become. A person that see nothing greater than greed will never fly beyond the class of the devil on earth.

You can become great without violating the law of peace and love. Dare to see beyond today, see yourself becoming great tomorrow and start working and praying that the invisible greatness you see should come to reality. Am show you can become better than the man in the mirror. You are beyond the frustrated man you see when you look at your visible mirror, dare to turn to the invisible mirror, which is the word of God, and behold the wonderful picture of your future. You are greater than a man who should betray God in the race of life. God loves you he as made you with a great destiny, all he want you to do is to build the wall of your heart, be bold be honest with all faith keep seeking the face of your creator if you want the great picture of your future to materialize. If you could dare to see the picture of your future, am sure that no adversity in life will be tough enough to break your joy, your precious joy that could surly help you to find the sunshine.

When you see great future, life may take the admixture challenges but you won’t misbehave because you have see what makes a true man of power. Instead to commit suicide you will think more brighter because your focus will be to see your great end. When you see a great future it will be your ultimate joy to see your dream coming true. God loves you, his greatest joy is to see your dream coming true, his greatest joy is to see you establishing the reason why he spent his precious time to create you. Dare to think positive, talk positive, see positive things about yourself . Don’t you know that you are the beauty of God in existence? You are beautiful, you are great, you are wonderfully made. Its time for you to see the treasure that is waiting for you after the raging storm that is design to test your strength and faith.

Well, we are still alive. I expected that anyhow. This morning was just a practice session.

Seems the guys over at CERN have successfully fired up the LHC. That’s the Large Hadron Collider for those of you that are acronymically challenged, or really don’t pay much attention to the world of particle physics.

If you care about particle physics you can check out the official press release. If you don’t care, it’s ok. It should be about 6 weeks before they fire up the massive particle accelerator with particle beams going in both directions, aimed directly at each other.

Why would they want to accelerate a bunch of particles around a huge underground tunnel at the speed of light and crash them into each other? To see what happens of course. They are looking for the “God particle”, amongst other things. Yes, that’s the elusive theoretical stuff that actually gives mass to particles. That’s what I have read anyhow.

You can search for Higgs Boson or LHC today and find all you might want to know about the whole concept…I won’t get into it here. Oh, and don’t be scared. If they do happen to recreate the Big Bang, as they intend to it will either only create a microscopic black hole (or 5000 they don’t know) that should probably die out on its/their own before it/they grow big enough to destroy the earth (current estimate is about 50+ months). Or, everything will be wiped out instantaneously and it won’t really matter.

These guys are scientists, though. So, it should probably be ok. Hey, this is CERN where they invented the WWW so that they could trade supercomputer data amongst labs, or link data amongst documents. Or was it so they could monitor the coffee pot remotely? I don’t remember which, now… but I do remember there were some Archie searches involved before that. Luckily Gopher and Veronica came around to bridge that whole gap prior to the people at CERN (Tim Berners-Lee specifically) stepped up and brought us a good way to access porn and music, I mean find useful information quickly.

Anyhow, we’ve got at least 6 weeks before they Big Bang us…and probably 50 months after that before the black hole engulfs us. I trust the guys at CERN to keep this whole thing under control. I’m sure it was a lot of work to invent the web…wouldn’t want that to go up in smoke would we?

I’m hoping that it all works out as planned. It has been 20 years in the making. If all goes well, who knows? We may get to create stuff from nothing, or make really tiny things really heavy. Or Big things really light? One way or another Discovery Channel will get some good footage. Who knows? Perhaps all these particles colliding will make a smelly mess and Mike Rowe will get to clean it up for us to watch!

~Author’s note:

This is an exact duplicate of my own wordpress blog. I used to submit the occasional article to Wisdomworld, and thought this was appropriate – when I clicked on submit after writing this blog, lo and behold I was back in a wordpress editor! Small world, Island.

~cyber5

written by Larry Abraham

http://www.insiderreport.net

I urge all of my readers to make copies of this report and send them to your friends and relatives. The information is too critical to be overlooked in the madness of this election year.

Part I of this essay was written in January before the Democrat Party primaries settled anything and before the occupation of Iraq took a turn for the worse. However, it is now more obvious that what I wrote about the nature of the Third Great Jihad is all too true. The political picture has deteriorated in Europe and the U.S .to a great degree since then so Part II takes these developments into consideration. Again, I urge all of you to distribute this essay as far and wide as possible without any concern for copyright violation. Our fellow citizens need to know the true nature of what we all face. LHA

As we watch and listen to all the Democrat Party candidates running for the nomination of their party, it is tantamount to enduring the Chinese water torture. The blah, blah, blah goes on and nothing of value comes out except the pain of listening to the same nothingness over and over again. I won’t take the time or space to repeat what you have heard so many, mind numbing times over the past months but what you have not heard is crucial.

I must also fault President Bush and the administration spokesmen for not telling the American people what they really need to know about this “war”. If they don’t do that sometime between now and November it may cost them the election.

It Did Not Start on 9/11

The war we are now facing did not begin on September 11, 2001, nor will it end with the peaceful transition to civilian authorities in Iraq, whenever that may be. In fact, Iraq is but a footnote in the bigger context of this encounter, but an important one none the less.

This war is what the Jihadists themselves are calling the ” Third Great Jihad” and are doing so within the framework of a time line which reaches back to the very creation of Islam in the Seventh century and their attempts to recreate the dynamics which gave rise to the religion in the first two hundred years of its existence.

No religion in history grew as fast, in its infancy, than did Islam and the reasons for this growth are not hard to explain when you understand what the world was like at the time of Muhammad’s death in 632 AD. The Western Roman Empire was in ruins and the Eastern Empire was based in Constantinople and trying desperately to keep the power of its early grandeur while transitioning to Christianity as a de facto state religion. The costs to the average person were unbearable as he was being required to meet the constantly rising taxes levied from the state along with the tithes coerced by the Church. What Islam offered was the “carrot or the sword”.

If you became a convert, your taxes were immediately eliminated, as was your tithe. If you didn’t, you faced death. The choice was not hard for most to make, unless you were a very devoted martyr in the making. At the beginning, even the theology was not too hard for most to swallow, considering that both Jewry and Christianity were given their due by the Prophet. There is but one God-Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet, as was Jesus, and the pre-Christian Jewish prophets of the Torah (old testament). Both were called “children of the book”, the book being the Koran, which replaced both the Old and New testaments for Christians and Jews.

With this practical approach to spreading the “word” Islam grew like wild fire, reaching out from the Saudi Arabian Peninsula in all directions. This early growth is what the Muslims call the “first” great Jihad and it met with little resistance until Charles Martel of France, the father of Charlemagne, stopped them in the battle of Tours in France, after they had firmly established the religion on the Iberian peninsula. This first onslaught against the West continued in various forms and at various times until Islam was finally driven out of Spain in 1492 at the battle of Granada.

The “second great jihad” came with the Ottoman Turks. This empire succeeded in bringing about the downfall of Constantinople as a Christian stronghold and an end to Roman hegemony in all of its forms. The Ottoman Empire was Islam’s most successful expansion of territory even though the religion itself had fractured into warring sects and bitter rivalries with each claiming the ultimate truths in “the ways of the Prophet”. By 1683 the Ottomans had suffered a series of defeats on both land and sea and the final and failed attempt to capture Vienna set the stage for the collapse of any further territorial ambitions and Islam shrunk into various sheikhdoms, emir dominated principalities, and roving tribes of nomads. However, by this time a growing anti-western sentiment, blaming its internal failures on anyone but themselves, was taking hold and setting the stage for a new revival know has Wahhabism which came into full bloom under the House of Saud on the Arabian peninsula shortly before the onset of WWI. It is this Wahhabi version of Islam which has infected the religion itself, now finding adherents in almost all branches and sects, especially the Shiites. What this sect calls for is the complete and total rejection of anything and everything which is not based in the original teachings of The Prophet and it finds its most glaring practice in the policies of the Afgani Taliban or the Shiite practices of the late Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Its Ali Pasha (Field Marshall) is now known as Osama bin Laden, the leader of the “third Jihad”.

Jimmy Carter sets the stage

The strategy for this “holy war” did not begin with the planning of the destruction of the World Trade Center. It began with the plans for toppling the Shah of Iran back in the early 1970′s and culminated with his exile in 1979. With his plans and programs to “westernize” his country, along with his close ties to the U.S. and subdued acceptance of the State of Israel, the Shah was the soft target.

Thanks, in large part to the hypocritical and disastrous policies of the Jimmy Carter State Department the revolution was set into motion, the Shah was deposed, his arm forces scattered or murdered and stage one was complete. The Third Jihad now had a base of operations and the oil wealth to support its grand design or what they call the “Great Caliphate”.

The Great Caliphate

What this design calls for is the replacement of all secular leadership in any country with Muslim majorities. This would include, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, all the Emirates, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and finally what they call the “occupied territory” Israel.

As a part of this strategy, forces of the jihad will infiltrate governments and the military as a prelude to taking control, once the secular leadership is ousted or assassinated. Such was the case in Lebanon leading to the Syrian occupation and what was attempted in Egypt with the murder of Anwar Sadat, along with the multiple attempts on the lives of Hussein in Jordan, Mubarak of Egypt and Musharraf in Pakistan. Pakistan is a particular prize because of its nuclear weapons.

The long-range strategy of the Third Jihad counts on three strategic goals. 1. The U.S. withdrawing from the region just as it did in Southeast Asia, following Vietnam. 2. Taking control of the oil wealth in the Muslim countries, which would be upwards to 75% of known reserves, and 3. Using nuclear weapons or other WMDs to annihilate Israel. A further outcome of successfully achieving these objectives would be to place the United Nations as the sole arbiter in East/West negotiations.
Evidence of the Bush Administration awareness of this plan is found in the facts that immediately following the 9/11 attack, their first move was to shore up Pakistan and Egypt, believing that these two would be the next targets for al Qaeda while Americans focused on the disaster in New York. The administration also knew that the most important objective was to send a loud and clear message that the U.S. was in the region to stay, not only to shore up our allies but to send a message to the Jihadists. The attack on Afghanistan was necessary to break-up a secure al Qaeda base of operations and put their leadership on the run or in prison.

Why Iraq?

The war on Iraq also met a very strategic necessity in that no one knew how much collaboration existed between Saddam Hussein and the master planners of the Third Jihad or his willingness to hand off WMDs to terrorist groups including the PLO in Israel. What was known, were serious indications of on-going collaboration, as Saddam funneled money to families of suicide bombers attacking the Israelis and others in Kuwait.

What the U.S. needed to establish was a significant base of operations smack dab in the middle of the Islamic world, in a location which effectively cut it in half. Iraq was the ideal target for this and a host of other strategic reasons.

Leadership of various anti-American groups both here and abroad understood the vital nature of the Bush initiative and thus launched their demonstrations, world-wide, to “Stop The War”. Failing this, they also laid plans to build a political campaign inside the country, with the War in Iraq as a plebiscite, using a little know politician as the thrust point; Howard Dean. This helps to explain how quickly the Radical Left moved into the Dean campaign with both people and money, creating what the clueless media called the “Dean Phenomenon”.

By building on the left-wing base in the Democrat party and the “Hate Bush” liberals, the campaign has already resulted in a consensus among the aspirants, minus Joe Lieberman, to withdraw the U.S. from Iraq and turn the operation over to the U.N. And, if past is prologue, i.e. Vietnam, once the U.S. leaves it will not go back under any circumstances, possibly even the destruction of Israel.

Should George W. Bush be defeated in November and a new administration come to power we could expect to see the dominoes start to fall in the secular Islamic countries and The Clash of Civilizations would then become a life changing event in all of our lives.

What surprised the Jihadists following the 9/11 attack was how American sentiment mobilized around the president and a profound sense of patriotism spread across the country They were not expecting this reaction, based on what had happened in the past, nor were they expecting the determined resolve of the President himself. I believe that this is one of the reasons we have not had any further attacks within our borders. They are content to wait, just as one of their tactical mentors, V.I. Lenin admonished “two steps forward, one step back”.

A couple of additional events serve as valuable footnotes to the current circumstances we face: the destruction of the human assets factor of the CIA during the Carter presidency, presided over by the late Senator Frank Church and Carter’s CIA Director, Admiral Stansfield Turner. This fact has plagued our intelligence agencies right up to this very day with consequences which are now obvious. Jimmy Carter is the one man who must bear the bulk of the responsibility for setting the stage of the Third Jihad. Americans should find little comfort in how the Democrat contenders constantly seek the “advice and counsel” of this despicable little hypocrite who now prances around with his Nobel Prize, while attacking President Bush with almost as much venom as his fellow Nobel Laureate, Yassir Arafat.

Lastly, we should not expect to see any meaningful cooperation from Western Europe, especially the French.
Since failing to protect their own interests in Algeria by turning the country over to the first of the Arab terrorists, Amid Ben Bella, the country itself is now occupied by Islamic immigrants totally twenty percent of the population.

We are in the battle of our lives which will go on for many years possibly even generations. If we fail to understand what we are facing or falter in the challenge of “knowing our enemy” the results will be catastrophic.

PART II (May 1, 2004)

Since writing the above, we have witnessed some frightening evidence in support of our hypothesis both internally and in other parts of the world.

The al Qaeda bombing in Madrid has emboldened our enemy into believing it can use terror as an instrument for democratic regime change. Based on what happened there, they may be right.

Kerry and bin Laden on the same page

John Kerry and other leaders of his party constantly refer to the United States as “acting unilaterally.” They give no credit whatsoever to countries like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Australia or even tiny Honduras for putting their limited armed forces in harm’s way to support the U.S. led coalition in Iraq. It is little wonder that some are considering doing what Spain has done” pulling out. The leaders in these countries have spent considerable political capital in this effort, and have little to show for it as it relates to fostering good will with the American public. Couple that fact with Osama bin Ladin’s latest offer of withholding attacks on those who “quit” the coalition and you have all the elements for a Democrat party fostered “self-fulfilling prophecy” where the U.S. will be totally alone in the pacification of Iraq. John Kerry and the Bush critics persist in the “lie” of the U.S. going it “alone” in Iraq but Osama bin Laden knows differently and will use the Kerry rhetoric to help isolate the U.S. The terrorists now see themselves as political “king-makers”. They may be right.

Another aspect of the “anti-Bush” political axis is how both his political enemies and the main stream media take ghoulish delight in “the body count,” just as they did in the later days of Vietnam. Oh sure, they pay incidental homage to the memory of the young Americans who gave their lives in the greatest threat this country has ever faced, but they do so with all the sincerity of Madonna making a vow of chastity. As the body bags grow in number, they believe, so grows their political prospects. They may be right.

If the Bush administration is further weakened in the months leading up to the November elections, we will witness a heightened al Qaeda offensive in all parts of the world, including our own country, and especially in Iraq and nations surrounding it ,i.e., Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Events within the past few days in Jordan not only make this argument but also point to the possibility of “what happened to the WMDs.”
Iran and Syria are daily growing more overt and bold in their support of insurgents within Iraq, believing that Bush has been so hurt by internal politics that he is powerless to act against them in any meaningful way. They may be right.

The Leftwing initiative, Political Correctness and Our Will to Win

Within our own country we are witnessing and almost insane application of “political correctness. ” As the barbarism of radical Islam grows more apparent in the streets of the Middle East from Gaza to Basra, we see a cultural suicide taking place within our own schools and communities.

Our children are being taught from the Koran, our professors are preaching intifadah in their class rooms, and Muslim “call to prayer” loud speakers are blaring out from city halls. The more precarious our very existence becomes, the more our liberal brethren embrace their enemies. It is a Stockholm Syndrome which can only lead to the recruitment of young Muslims who will be willing to duplicate in the West what their co-religionists are doing in the streets of Israel and the market places of Baghdad. The liberal P.C. crowd say nothing about the silence of the Muslim religious leadership as it relates to the carnage of innocents but couldn’t speak out fast enough against the inspiration supplied to tens of millions of Christians by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. They were put off by the movie’s “violence” and its alleged “fostering of anti-Semitism”. Movies must represent their “reality” as the real thing moves them not at all. Among liberal Jews in America, hatred of George W. Bush is only surpassed by their contempt for Ariel Sharon; Let them explain it, I am at a total loss to do so. Maybe they just miss seeing Bill Clinton smooching Yassir Arafat in the White House Rose Garden.

The “Reverend” Jesse Jackson is now calling the U.S. “guilty of crimes against humanity” as he sets out to mobilize the non-Islamic Left. None of the Democrat leadership says a word in opposition to Jackson’s treason or Hillary’s attacks on the President and U.S. policy in an Arabic newspaper, while in London. You can bet that al Jezeera didn’t miss a beat in their reporting of both events.

The campaign takes its toll

The campaign is seriously hurting Mr. Bush’s leadership role in the War on Terror. While ducking every new book critical of his initiative or trying to counter the partisan nitpicking of the 9/11 Commission, he has persisted in the misbegotten insistence of “installing democracy” in Iraq. Our purpose for being in that beleaguered country should be restricted to one purpose and one purpose only, to stop the expansion of The Third Jihad and provide a base for doing same in the neighboring areas. This can be done by sealing the borders, attacking anything that moves in violation of same and by making it clear to Syria and Iran that any participation on their part will be considered an “act of war”. Let the country be governed by the local tribes, Shiite in the south, Sunni in the central and Kurds in the north with a U.S. pro consul overseeing the military. Oil revenues could be spilt by population allocation. How about installing a Republic; it worked pretty well here with diverse populations.

The very idea that we should spend our sons and daughters blood or our tax dollars on trying to building a “democracy” in the region which has neither a history nor a desire for such, is sheer nonsense. The very essence of Islamic teaching speaks directly against this principle. Continuing on the current path can only result in fostering greater hatred for the “Great Satan”. Force is the only thing which is respected in that part of the world and this force need not be tied to “reform”. I suggest Mr. Rumsfled acquaint himself with a copy of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Sun Tsu’s Art of War. All the tactics and strategies necessary to subdue the Iraqi insurgents can be found in those two military gems.

Please not the UN

Bringing the U.N. to the party will only compound the problem without adding any accountability. The U.N. has been accused of many things over the years, but being a “democratic” institution has never been one of them. Just the latest scandal of the “Oil for Food” program should provide any thinking person with all the evidence they need to keep the U.N. at bay. But this doesn’t seem to bother the likes of the John Kerry’s of the world who prattle on as if the scam doesn’t even exist.

Just one example will make my case; the UN mandate in Israel, which has been in place since 1948. One more salient point needs to be made on this subject. There is no such thing as “The International Community.” There are only individual countries, each with its own agenda which is always self serving. The myth of a higher level of “moral authority” coming out of the UN as been one of the greater lies of the past half century, but it is a lie which persists in spite of a bloody record of hypocrisy, graft, genocide and “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” I have a suggestion for the 9/11 Commission:.Why don’t they look into what the UN was doing before the attack on the World Trade Center? If they do, they will find that exactly one week before, the UN was holding a Conference on Racism in Durbin, South Africa where the delegates voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel, as “racist and terrorist.” The U.S., Canadian and Israeli delegates walked out in disgust. Nary a word was uttered about Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, or the Taliban, to say nothing of what was happening in Rwanda while they crunched caviar on toast and washed it down with vintage Champaign. Genocide does not qualify as “racism” according to the UN “morality.” Neither we nor the world needs the UN to muck up what is already a very delicate situation. If given proper leadership every Middle Eastern country named above will throw in with the Coalition, for if they don’t they will be the next targets of the Third Great Jihad and the Great Caliphate. Pakistan is already showing the leadership which others will follow. What do you think moved Kadahaffi to cozy up to the U.S. and Great Britain? He fears the Jihadist more than he hates us.

Evil Does Exist

Our current crises, in meeting the threat of the Third Jihad, is one more example of how most Americans simply refuse to believe there is evil in this world and are willing to grant moral equivalence on any human action. Unless the crime is personalized such as in the case of Lacy Peterson, we lose interest quickly and become bored or at least not involved.

To try and understand what we are facing, look into the eyes of your son or grandson and try to fathom a mind which would take pride in strapping a bomb to his body and sending him out to kill himself and countless innocent people. Or in the case of your daughter or grand daughter, try to imagine a religion which commands you to mutilate her vagina to destroy her sex drive or demands you to stone her to death if she has sexual relations with a man other than of your choosing.

If you can comprehend these facts both intellectually and emotionally, then you will start to understand what we are facing in the months and years ahead, both at home and abroad.

The radicals of Islam will stop at nothing to destroy us and all we stand for. They see this war as their “entry to paradise” and a release from the miserable existence they have built for themselves within the confines of an evil and perverse religion. The Jihadist are NOT like us, nor most of their fellow Muslims. But, like terrorists everywhere they have silenced any criticisms from fellow Muslims through threat and intimidation and have, with the help of the “useful idiots” in the West, “created the appearance of popular support”.

If we are incapable of understanding these realities and acting accordingly, within the life time of everyone who reads these words, we will see our cherished way of life cease to exist and chaos become our lot. The Clash of Civilizations is now reaching out and touching all of us. May God grant us the wisdom and the courage to meet the challenge.

I respectfully dedicate the above to the memory of Pat Tillman and his 872 comrades who by their courage and willing sacrifice set an example for every American. May we be worthy of their “greatest love”

written by Chaitanya Keerti

A Story:
For more than fifty years, India and Pakistan have been fighting because they did not listen to the wisdom of the mad people. Life is a mystery: some times mad people prove wiser than the so-called sane people. Now as the Vajpayee-Musharraf’s meeting date nears, I have chosen to tell them a story (told earlier by Osho in his discourse on Sat Chit Anand) that proves the point and also should help both of them draw a reasonable agenda of discussion:

Thus goes the story:

When India was divided into two nations, India and Pakistan, a rumor was heard that there was a madhouse just on the boundary. Neither India nor Pakistan was interested to take the madhouse. But something had to be done. It had to go somewhere. Finally, the chief superintendent of the madhouse called all the mad people and asked them, “Do you want to go to India?”

They said, “No, we are perfectly happy here.”

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written by Vicki Moore Tillard

I feel the stirrings of a broken heart. But that’s just silly isn’t it? After all, my life is good. I am happy and at peace in my world. So why do I feel so disheartened? Why do I wake up in the night with such a sense of dread and sadness I can’t sleep?

Could it be because the heart I fear is breaking is the collective heart of America? Our country is in trouble. The heart of this dear democracy is aching, perhaps breaking. The United States of America is crying out for succor and we who love her must stand by and wait and watch for the dangerous and divisive games to stop.

I awoke on November 7th, with a sense of election day excitement, a growing hope for victory by “our side,” a little trepidation about the possibility it wouldn’t go “our” way, and a lot of relief that the endless campaigning was finally over. Ten days later, I am no more certain about the election results than any other American-an unlikely, even unheard of, turn of events in the sophisticated, well-oiled political machinery of the most powerful country in the world.

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written by Cyber5

By sheer coincidence I was witness to a really touching event the other day!

The day had started with a quick run to the local grocery store, and ended with an enlightened and happier heart. I was on my way back from the grocery store trip, when I was diverted by local police. They had set up a traffic-direction cop that was waving traffic down a detour route. I assumed it was an accident, as there were flares and blinking lights.

While I sat at the stoplight waiting for my turn to be detoured, it occured to me that there were a bunch of motorcyclists turning in the direction I wanted to go, and where I was being deterred from going. The “bunch” turned into “a whole bunch” and then it was my turn to detour. While cruising at an unusually slow pace of 23MPH on a 40MPH street, I noticed that ALL of the oncoming traffic was motorcycles and cycle-like vehicles!

About a mile down the road, I needed to turn left. This was hindered by the fact that there were at least 12 others in front of me that were attempting the same thing. Everything was a standstill. A quick head-pop out the window showed me that another cop was prohibiting all left turns and that he was waving on a never-ending stream of motorcycles. My foot stayed on the brake for a fw minutes, and that turned into me putting the car into park and opening my door. This stream of cycles never-ended, so I started actively watching.

Each and every cycle had a bear or other stuffed animal strapped to it in some fashion! Some bears on the front, under the headlight. Others above the headlight, on the “chopper-style” handlebars. Even more were adorning the back rails of cycles. I saw Harleys, and Kawasakis, superbikes and long-road cruisers. Custom bikes and experimental bikes went past. I even saw a single moped! All had animals (stuffed) in tow, or in the arms of the back-seat passengers who were spending their time grinning and waving.

This continued for 3 minutes, then 5…8…12…30.

Finally it dawned on me that this was the “toy run” I had heard about on the news days before. The person behind me asked what was going on, and I related to him what I had overheard on the news days before. He smiled and lit a cigarette. We sat there watching motorcycles drive by with toys for tots (I’m not sure it was a Toys For Tots drive – so don’t confuse my observation with the actual Toys For Tots drive that is popular this time of year).

I’m sure I spent close to an hour sitting at that light, car door open and waving to the cyclists…not worrying about the things I had to do. This parade definitely took precedence over my tasks, even though I was bringing home diapers for our own disabled son.

I gleefully sat thru every cycle that passed by, as did at least 2 miles of cars behind me, and waved them on! Had we all known about it, we would have had lunches packed and flags to wave, I’m sure! So, we all sat there – outside of our cars, on the median – joyfully waving on our newfound passion (it really touched everyone’s heart, I’m sure), while they waved back and honked.

I saw some bikes that were probably worth $100, and some that were probably worth $100,00 – no joke! Each and every rider and bike though – evoked an emotional response that was priceless. They carried Barney’s and paddington’s, and “Fluffy White Xmas Bears”, Tiggers and Poohs…the list was endless.

I don’t know how many bikers there were, but I estimate that I sat thru 17,000 of them – right up until the the 12 police cars behind them signalled the end of the parade – and I arrived late!

I don’t know where they were from, or where they were destined for…but I can tell you this – on their journey to wherever, they touched hundreds of people and arrived in Heaven at least a thousand times.

I wish those bikers who drove through Melbourne, Florida a wonderful holiday – and a fantastic life. Whether they were wearing santa suits, elf hats, or studded leather – their heart was clearly displayed upon their sleeves that day!

There will be a lot of kids that have a Merry Christmas around here because of some caring bikers. So please – next time you see some scraggly looking biker pulling up at the light next to you, just think that come Xmas time, he might be doing more for the spirit of the holiday then you can even imagine, and cut him/her some slack. Also, pay attention to looking out for motorcycles and bicyclists all-year ’round, because one mistake from a driver might cost a life or two – and, it might also prevent a toy from being delivered to a needy kid at the holidays!

Happy Holidays to Everyone!
Be an angel and help some needy kids next year – your heart will benefit from it.

Cyber5

written by Cyber5