Daily Archives: July 24, 2013

07/24/13

Larry Grathwohl: Eyewitness to Communist Terrorism

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Larry Grathwohl may be best known as the FBI informant in the Weather Underground who disclosed that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and their Weather Underground criminal gang, had plans to eliminate as many as 25 million Americans if they came to power.

Unexpectedly, Larry, a good friend for many years, passed away last week. The Weather Underground had put out a “wanted” poster on Larry decades ago, after his cover was blown and he surfaced. They called him an “enemy of the people.”

Larry traveled around the country, confronting Ayers and his comrades, including Mark Rudd. He didn’t fear for his life, but he was always on guard. He had been speaking out concerning Robert Redford’s movie glorifying the Weather Underground, “The Company You Keep,” and had noted Redford’s sympathy for Fidel Castro. Redford sold out to George Soros several years ago.

Although Larry had some health problems, his death at this particular time is, frankly, a mystery to me. I have questions that need answers.

Since Obama first ran for the presidency, attempting to cover up the nature of his relationship with the Weather Underground, Larry had been trying to tell the truth to the media. He and I worked together for five years on a Project for Justice for Victims of Weather Underground Terrorism. Larry had been working with current and former law enforcement to open and continue investigations—and perhaps convene a grand jury—to hold members of the Weather Underground responsible for the suffering and death which resulted from their bombing campaigns across the United States. Most of their venom was directed against local police, but American soldiers and the FBI were also targets.

Members of an associated group, the May 19th Communist Organization, are still on the loose. Obama may have been a member of the group during his time at Columbia University in the early 1980s. The FBI does not seem to have made much headway under Obama in finding these fugitives, but it did put black terrorist Joanne Chesimard on its “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. We noted that the search for Chesimard, hiding in Cuba, could begin by wiretapping President Obama’s friends, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and other members of the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground helped Chesimard—a convicted cop-killer—escape from a New Jersey prison in 1979 and flee to Cuba.

A Vietnam veteran, Larry understood that the comrades of the Weather Underground were North Vietnamese Army troops and their communist terrorist front organization, the Viet Cong, operating in South Vietnam. The Weather Underground wasn’t anti-war, it was pro-war. A Weather Underground bomb factory discovered by the FBI in San Francisco had bombs, killing instruments, and communist literature, but no anti-war tracts.

Weather Underground members traveled to Cuba and even the old Soviet Union for advice and training.

Larry had come back from the Vietnam War only to find that he had to do battle with communists in the United States. He helped the Cincinnati police and the FBI do just that. He had evidence, presented to a grand jury and the U.S. Senate, that Ayers and Dohrn were involved in the 1970 bombing murder of San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell. McDonnell suffered two days in the hospital before dying from a bomb packed with heavy metal staples. One staple went through his eye.

The communist terrorism that Larry saw in Vietnam had come to America. He had been accepted by the Weather Underground because they perceived him to be a disgruntled serviceman angry over the course of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam.

But Larry never gave up on America and, in fact, risked his life to protect it. A true patriot, he had joined the Army in 1964, wanting to go to jump school and be assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. He got his wish, was assigned to the 2/502 Infantry and sent to Vietnam in July of 1965. After completing his tour he was assigned to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, and became a drill instructor. Later, he worked in various private sector jobs.

Larry fought in what President Reagan called an honorable and noble cause. But a liberal Congress cut off funding for the effort to keep Vietnam free of communism, and the country fell to the Communists. To the dismay of Larry Grathwohl, he saw that the United States was falling to the communists as well.

Ironically, the re-education camps that the Weather Underground had predicted for a communist America were becoming a reality, in the form of colleges and universities, where Ayers and Dohrn both had gotten jobs. They moved from terrorism to “education.”

It wasn’t just the failure to bring Ayers and Dohrn to justice for their terrorism that kept Larry going. It was the inability or unwillingness of the media to understand the threat to America that these criminals and their communist ideology represented. One of the biggest myths was that the Weather Underground was anti-war.

It is worth taking a look at America’s defeat in Vietnam, in order to understand Larry’s motivations as a freedom fighter. He witnessed communist terrorism firsthand.

The distinguished German journalist, Uwe Siemon-Netto, a former Vietnam correspondent, has written a new book, Du’c: A reporter’s love for the wounded people of Vietnam, which examines this tragedy for Vietnam, America, and the world.

“The Vietnam war was the first one in history that was won by one side essentially via the media of the other side,” he told an Accuracy in Media conference in 1979. The death toll was 58,272 American, 4,407 South Korean, 487 Australian, 351 Thai and 37 New Zealand soldiers.

Siemon-Netto’s book also notes:

  • The hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children massacred by the communists in villages and cities, especially Hue.
  • The hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers and officials who were executed, tortured or imprisoned after the end of the war.
  • The millions who were driven from their country and the hundreds of thousands who drowned in the process.

This communist “war of liberation,” as Ayers and Dohrn called it, brought no liberation.

One of Larry’s most powerful insights into the nature of the enemy came in his report, “White Reds Exploiting Blacks: The Weather Underground, Barack Obama, and the Fundamental Transformation of the United States.”

He said, “After I left the Weather Underground and testified against Ayers and Dohrn for their involvement in a murder plot that killed Police Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell, they surfaced in Chicago helping Obama launch his political career. Like true communists, who have been manipulating black Americans since shortly after the Russian revolution, Ayers and Dohrn would have seen revolutionary potential in Obama. He was, in the words of Communist operative Frank Chapman, a ‘revolutionary mole.’ Perhaps that term was meant to be more than a figure of speech.”

Larry’s report, which should be read in its entirety, includes many insights into what we are facing in today’s political environment.

Writing about his experiences in the Weather Underground, Larry said, “I remember one meeting when our Weatherman ‘collective’ brought up the subject of the Kennedy assassinations. At least 20 to 25 people were present and Bill Ayers was one of them. I heard Bill state that the murders of both John F. Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy were a good thing because liberals compromise the conflict between U.S. imperialism and the socialist revolution. Liberals prevent the contradictions from becoming obvious and thus prevent a revolution. Therefore, the assassinations of the Kennedys were to be welcomed as a necessary advance on the road to communist world revolution.”

Larry added, “I look back on those comments by Bill on the Kennedy murders and it helps me understand certain things about the communist conspiracy that continues to target the United States. Blacks can be used for the revolution, but they can be sacrificed as part of the revolution as well. Indeed, like the Muslims, they are cannon fodder for the revolution.”

He went on, “One of my assignments was Detroit, Michigan, and I arrived there in late January of 1970. Shortly after my arrival I was assigned to a cell with four other people and during the meeting with Bill Ayers we were told that our objective would be to place bombs at the Detroit Police Officers Association (DPOA Building) and at the 13th precinct. Furthermore Bill instructed us to determine the best time to place these explosive devices that would result in the greatest number of deaths and injuries. He also directed that the bombs should be set to go off at the same time.

“While we were gathering information regarding these two targets I noted that the DPOA building was a converted single-family brownstone that had been built prior to World War II. A walkway along the side of the building went from the main street to an alley in the back. Next to the DPOA building there was a Red Barn restaurant which was a new structure designed as a fast food outlet. This location was in a predominantly black neighborhood which meant that most of the customers in this Red Barn restaurant were black. After a week of information gathering we had another meeting with Bill Ayers and at this time I suggested to Bill that if we placed the bomb in the walkway between these two buildings the DPOA building would suffer little if any damage while the Red Barn restaurant would most likely be destroyed. I also concluded that customers in that restaurant would die.

“Bill Ayers responded by telling me, ‘sometimes innocent people have to die in a revolution.’ I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that a person who had so eloquently spoke of the black liberation movement could be so callous when it was obvious that the resulting explosion would kill many of the people he claimed to be so concerned about.”

We see a variation of this attitude in the exploitation of the black community by Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and so forth. Blacks are being sacrificed in the name of the revolution. Ayers and Dohrn must be proud.

The death of Trayvon Martin, a teenager heavily into drugs and violence, is being used to indict not just “white America” but America itself.

Not content to exploit the Martin death, Obama’s Organizing for Action (OFA) has just announced “Action August” to press Obama’s agenda on a wide variety of issues in the months ahead.

While the Tea Party and the 9/12 groups are in disarray from IRS targeting, the OFA’s 3.1 million supporters are making calls and training new organizers. It is non-stop community organizing.

Larry had spent some of the final weeks of his life in Florida working with Tina Trent and speaking to Tea Party groups. He had just released an updated version of his 1976 book about the Weather Underground, Bringing Down America.

Tina writes, “Larry was a sweet and decent and very wise man. He risked his life to protect us from murderous adolescent Marxists like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Doubtlessly there would be family members of police and soldiers who would be without their loved ones tonight if Larry had not infiltrated the Weather Underground and exposed their crimes.”

Brandon Darby of Breitbart says, “Those of us who have served in an undercover capacity with the FBI have lost a tremendous friend and a valuable resource.”

It would be a fitting tribute to Larry’s life to purchase his book. It will help you understand the situation we are in from someone who really was in the trenches.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].

07/24/13

HOUSE: Just say no to S744

Once again the U.S. Senate has passed legislation harmful to American citizens and consistent with Obama’s desire to “fundamentally transform” America. The legislation, S744, overwhelms our country over the next decade with 57 million foreign nationals by giving amnesty to illegal immigrants, doubling legal immigration and handing out 27 million guest worker permits.

The U.S. House of Representatives could easily let this horrible bill die by not passing ANY immigration legislation. Any immigration bill passed by the House could be sent to a conference committee with S744 to be reconciled. Members, appointed by Pelosi, Boehner, and Senator Reid, would reject any conservative solutions. S744 or something just as wicked would pass out of conference back to the House and Senate.

Behind closed doors Republicans would give Boehner permission to bring the bill to the floor. They are being heavily lobbied and bribed by the same business groups who bought off Senate Republicans. Their goal is to permanently depress American worker’s wages for higher profits

The bill would pass by Democrats and a few Republicans. The majority of Republicans who did not vote for the bill will believe they are safe.

Raul Labrador is colluding with House leadership by pushing legislation forward for passage in the House. He must be stopped.

NO HOUSE IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION, RAUL! PERIOD!

DR. DENNIS and CAROLYN COOKE

http://www.cdapress.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_5b44a192-f40d-11e2-b008-001a4bcf887a.html

07/24/13

Piggybacking on the Hunt For Massive Oil Discoveries: Interview with AOS

By: James Stafford
OilPrice.com

Africa is becoming the top choice for North American oil companies looking to diversify, and the East African Rift is the hottest of the hot, with Kenya waiting on commercial viability, Angola and Ghana already on the road to rival Nigeria and two newcomers—Namibia and Zambia—where the doors have been thrown open for exploration. Getting in on Namibia and Zambia is an extremely expensive endeavour, but here’s a way to de-risk this adventure, keep your shareholders calm and strategically position yourself to take advantage of the next big find without footing the massive drilling bill: Buy up a ton of acreage and sit back and let others do the expensive exploration and drilling on territory adjacent to yours. Then strike and watch offers come in.

In an interview with Oilprice.com, Alberta Oil Sands (AOS) CEO, Binh Vu … discusses:

  • How to get in elephant-sized plays in the East African Rift
  • How to save cash by piggy-backing on others’ expensive exploration
  • Why Namibia could be a major oil monster
  • What makes Zambia such an attractive oil venue
  • Other African plays that are worth looking into
  • Why it’s hard for juniors to compete in Africa
  • Why someone will always need Canadian oil sands
  • What heavy oil economics will look like over the coming years
  • Why Canada’s Algar Lake is a major sleeper play
  • What qualities investors should look for when betting on juniors

Interview by James Stafford of Oilprice.com

James Stafford: With the oil discoveries in Kenya and a lot of optimism over other rifts and lake systems including those present in Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, etc. the East African Rift System has become an emerging oil hot spot. What we want to know is how to make money here without spending a ton of cash in exploration and drilling? What’s the smart way to stake a claim on the East African Rift Basin?

AOS: That is a great question. The truth is that this area has become quite expensive as it has been found to be increasingly prolific. Major signing bonuses, deposits, and commitments are required in spots like Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. There is very little opportunity for the junior explorers to compete.

We believe that Zambia is a fabulous jurisdiction because it shares the geology and rock age in certain large areas that have hosted the Lake Albert Discovery and the Block 10BB Kenya discovery. However, it is totally underexplored for hydrocarbons and thus provides much cheaper access to very prospective areas. Our company has successfully tied up ~18 million acres or what we believe covers about 33% of the attractive rift areas in Zambia – which equates to oil and gas rights over about 8% of the country.

James Stafford: How does an exploration company on a budget go about covering and “high-grading” targets over such a large area?

AOS: Without a doubt that is a highly important question for any company engaged in the pursuit of elephant-sized targets in new frontiers. One of the things that we do is first is aim for concession agreements that don’t tie us to expensive immediate seismic commitments. Second we eschew large and expensive 2-D seismic programs in favor of a process of high grading using satellites, other remote sensing techniques, and ‘ground truthing’.

We estimate that by using satellite data analysis over a number of criteria–gravity gradiometry, thermal emissivity analysis, geobotany analysis including vegetation anomalies and geo-microbial review over specific high-graded areas on our acreage–we can save millions of dollars and years of time. We then get to specific areas that are ready for smaller, focused electroseismic surveys / 3-D surveys, and that can then be attacked as drillable targets either to take on ourselves, or to farm down to majors who are looking for the next major rift discovery.

James Stafford: What does the playing field look like right now in Zambia? Who’s there, what are they doing, and how are you positioned to take advantage of all the money being spent there on exploration and drilling?

AOS: There are a number of companies there and we have focused on two lakes as well as two dry rifts that show very promising gravity responses from the most up to date databases. Our number one focus is on Lake Tanganyika. This lake spans through Burundi, Tanzania, DRC, and Zambia.

There are currently to our knowledge at least three major active seismic programs on Lake Tanganyika including one recently completed by Beach Energy, an Australian company with a $1.75 billion valuation. Beach is directly adjacent to AOS, on the Tanzania side of the Lake. It is likely that Lake Tanganyika will see at least 1 drill hole in 2014.

We like Lake Tanganyika as the right spot for the next Lake Albert (3.5 billion barrels reserves) discovery because of the almost identical geological setting and rock age as well as the size of the Lake and the major indications of an existing petroleum system. Lake Tanganyika has multiple oil slicks and natural oil seeps including one that is believed to be the largest natural oil seep in the world. You can see it from Google Earth.

James Stafford: You’ve also recently acquired acreage in Namibia, which just made its first-ever commercial oil discovery. What are the prospects here and what kind of timeframe are we looking at?

AOS: I’m glad that you asked that. Namibia to us is a potentially direct analogue to all of the major offshore discoveries in Brazil (plate tectonics theory) and Angola to the north. Offshore Namibia has the identical age and rock type as the discoveries in offshore Angola. Combined, those two countries have nearly 30 billion barrels in reserves.

Namibia itself, however, remains highly underexplored with only 16 wells drilled in 20 years–seven on Kudu Gas Field alone–and the majority of the rest were shallow shelf wells. People are starting to get the idea and now. BP, Petrobras, Repsol, Galp Energia, HRT, are all there.

HRT has had success there on their first well of this three-well campaign where they discovered light oil for the first time. Their second well was dry. The third well on which they will begin drilling in August in their PEL-24 block which borders directly on to AOS’ 2.5 million acre land package in the Orange Basin – blocks 2712A and 2812A. We are at ground zero.

HRT rates their play chance there at 25% and to my knowledge it is their biggest target–a 30 billion barrel monster. If that one works, I would think that there will be companies knocking down our door. We will know likely in late September, maybe the beginning of October.

Regardless, there should be at least five more wells drilled and $500 million to $1 billion being spent offshore Namibia over the next 12-18 months, so it really fits well with our strategy of being in highly active basins where majors and big independents are spending lots of money around us to prove up major discoveries.

James Stafford: AOS’ new Africa portfolio is an ambitious diversification of its original assets in Alberta oil sands. Why the need for diversification here?

AOS: It is indeed; however, I think that what shareholders need to understand (and many of ours do not) is that AOS has been traded for the last 24 months strictly on its balance sheet. It basically always trades at its cash per share. Why is that? Very simply there is or has been in recent times, very little capital market appetite or excitement for small companies developing SAGD oilsands plays.

Athabasca Oil was one bright spot, but that was a marvel of financial engineering that caught a window.

AOS has 500+ million barrels of oil sands resources which are getting no value. Combine a terrible junior market with complete apathy for this asset class, and the result is a share price that declines almost in lockstep with the treasury, and a total lack of response or enthusiasm to basically just about any kind of positive news.

We feel that while AOS is underpinned by its cash and by real assets on which the company has spent almost $65 million developing since 2007, it adds meaningfully to shareholder value by bringing into the fold, as cheaply as possible, blue sky scenarios with major lottery ticket potential and requiring little to no cost commitments over the next 12-18 months.

Ultimately, as we gain approval at our flagship Clearwater project in Alberta, part of our plan as we examine our options to unlock value in two distinct plays could be to dividend out our African assets to shareholders into a new company on a 1 for 1 basis, such that shareholders retain 1 pure play share of Oilsands in Alberta (Clearwater, Grand Rapids, Algar Lake), and one pure play share of our 21 million acre and growing high-impact African exploration portfolio (Zambia, Namibia, DRC).

James Stafford: Mainstream media reports generally put a price tag of $75 to produce a barrel of Canadian oil sands, but is this really reflective of the true price once you get past the start-up phase?

AOS: Some of the junior oilsands development companies that have made the transition to SAGD have stumbled without a doubt. Connacher and Southern Pacific being two recent examples. I believe, however, that the economics are actually superlative once all problems are solved, and of course you can go on producing for a very, very long time. The margins of an operation in full-swing and after start-up/growing pains, are much better than the mainstream media is reporting.

James Stafford: For how long will the US continue to need crude from Canada’s oil sands given current levels of production from US shale plays? What is the production price comparison here? Will it cost more to sustain production from wells in the Bakken and Permian Basins?

AOS: This is an interesting question. My personal view is that whether it be the US or someone else, there will be no shortage of demand for what the Canadian oil sands can produce. Further, there is a lot more certainty in terms of consistency and longevity of the oil sands assets and their production profile, once they get going.

James Stafford: What are your predictions for North American heavy oil economics over the next 2-3 years? Plenty of investors think this is the place to be with a lot of refineries coming out of turnaround and getting heavier and heavier despite all the light shale oil. Will demand for heavy oil rise?

AOS: I read analyst prognostications on this stuff every day. They can certainly have different complexions depending on who you are listening to. To me it’s pretty simple: I don’t believe that prices are going to go outside of a range (below, or above) where extremely healthy margins can be made by good operators, for their shareholders. We will be range-bound here at healthy levels is my overriding feeling on this.

James Stafford: What can we expect from AOS in terms of Canadian oil sands development in the next 6-9 months; in the next 2-3 years? What drilling will occur across AOS’ oilsands acreage?

AOS: Alberta Oilsands has four main projects domestically, and two of them are sleepers.

For our flagship Clearwater asset with 373 million barrels of resources we hope to receive ERCB permits for production in Q4 of this year at an initial rate of up to 5,000 bopd, with a phase II of up to 40,000 bopd. This will be a game changer for us, and is the one thing that probably will move our market much higher immediately.

Our Grand Rapids project has resources of 119 million barrels and we have just completed an EUR study that demonstrates its ability to produce as much as 30,000 barrels a day, for 40 years. This is highly encouraging and is totally overlooked by the market.

Our third asset is a sleeper asset, in my opinion. AOS has taken on a partner to drill its Algar Lake project. We chose this partner because of its history of great exploration success. The team has, from scratch, made two separate billion+ barrel discoveries in Alberta and Saskatchewan and sold each to the majors. They want to turn their focus to Algar Lake now because it has the potential for cold flow production. Cold flow CAPEX is ~25% of SAGD CAPEX. On the OPEX side and on the operational complications side, it is basically the same story as well. Those are fundamental and major benefits.

If I can find a couple hundred million barrels of cold flow today, I think that the world is at my door. The 5 well program this winter will be enough to tell us if we have the next Pelican Lake – CNRL’s most profitable operating division per barrel, full stop.

James Stafford: It is no doubt a very difficult time right now for most junior oil and gas explorers and developers–whether with a domestic focus, or an international focus. What do you tell investors?

AOS: I would say that I don’t see that risk capital coming back for some time. It will be very opportunity specific and success driven. You want to look for companies that have the ability to survive for a while with the cash in the bank, are underpinned by real assets with a real value, and also can provide the excitement and possibility of a geometric return on investment.

James Stafford: And does AOS qualify for those criteria?

AOS: Not to toot our own horn here James, but my view of the world is: AOS is trading at just above cash value. Our combined PV10 between Clearwater and Grand Rapids is $823 million–or about 225X our market cap net of cash. We have a very small burn rate. We have multiple catalysts that can take us much higher in the next few months, including: Success in Namibia by HRT in September; approval at Clearwater for production in Q4; partners on our vast African acreage, or other discoveries near our rift acreage; demonstration of cold-flowing reservoirs at Algar Lake; and a strategic partner for Clearwater or Grand Rapids.

If any of these things come to fruition I think that the market and our own shareholders will sit up and take notice again and realize that right now they get all of those potential outcomes for free while we sit trading at cash value, with 500 million barrels of oil booked, and 21 million acres of prime exploration ground with 100s of millions of dollars being spent right around it.

James Stafford: Thanks very much for sharing your views with us on both the African landscape for exploration and discovery, as well as the outlook for heavy oil prices and oil sands development in Canada.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Interviews/Piggybacking-on-the-Hunt-For-Massive-Oil-Discoveries-Interview-with-AOS.html

07/24/13

Voice of the Copts Plea for justice in Egypt

By: Ashraf Remelah
Voice of the Copts

Plea for justice in Egypt: Egyptian military must go all the way.

With the help of foreign countries, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood together with Hamas is working to destabilize Egypt upon the successful overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President, Mohammad Morsi.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders hold to President Morsi’s promise of bloodshed and a fight in order to reinstate their power. More than 20 days ago, Morsi was asked to step down at the request of 30 million Egyptian freedom lovers, and still, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters refuse to accept the will of the people, regularly spreading violence among innocent citizens and killing Egyptian military personnel.

Muslim Brotherhood leader, Al Beltaghi, admitted Brotherhood use of intimidation and terror in Sinai (and likewise in the streets), announcing from the Al Adawyia ghetto of Cairo a few days ago that, “all these terrorist actions in Sinai will stop immediately once the army allows Morsi to return and the coup is concluded.” For Al Beltaghi, distorting Egypt’s revolutionary action, referring to it as a “military coup,” legitimizes their violence to regain control.

Muslim Brotherhood attacked and killed nine people and injured many others in Tahrir Square on July 22nd. A suspicious road accident on Al Alameen highway was responsible for deaths of 17 Egyptian soldiers. Likewise, soldiers are dying and suffering injuries in Sinai from Muslim Brotherhood backlash.

Voice of the Copts: Now is the moment to chop off the head of the serpent.

The new Egyptian Internal Minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, must stand his ground on behalf of all Egyptian people by arresting and holding for trial every terrorist still operating within the hierarchy of the Muslim Brotherhood and implicated by the secret documents found in their offices (and in Morsi’s presidential office), as well as all persons attempting acts of terror or instigating violence.

Al Jazeera broadcasting operations as well as other media influencing the spread of terror and violence in Egypt must be shut down by the Egyptian military.

To prevent Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists from crossing into Egypt, the Egyptian military must secure Egypt’s border with Sinai as well as destroy all smuggling tunnels between the two countries – most built during Mubarak’s era and Morsi’s term. The Egyptian military must secure Egypt’s border with Libya for the same reasons.

No stone left unturned is the mandate for the Egyptian military acting on behalf of Egyptian freedom fighters.

All members of the disbanded SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) must be arrested as soon as possible. Most importantly, former SCAF leader, Field Marshal Tantawy, must be captured immediately and interrogated. He must be brought to trial for conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood against the Egyptian people during his interim reign. Tantawy is responsible for Egypt’s prolonged suffering due to his dishonest brokering of the country and handing Egypt over to the Muslim Brotherhood when he had the trust of the Egyptian people and freedom fighters.

Egypt’s freedom movement needs the overwhelming support of the international community.

The momentum now underway by the Egyptian army — decisive actions now being taken, purposeful and unwavering, to eradicate the infernal Muslim Brotherhood and dislodge what has not worked for Egypt is good for the free world.

These initial steps are the only way to attain a direct path toward a secure and peaceful Egypt establishing its best potential for democracy. Therefore, Voice of the Copts appeals to all civil and free nations of the world to support the efforts of Egyptian freedom forces and the leaders now in charge on their arduous journey in pursuit of noble goals: liberty, equality and human rights.

Dr. Ashraf Ramelah
Voice of the Copts
Founder and President

07/24/13

This Week’s Watcher’s Council Nominations – Black And White Edition

The Watcher’s Council

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

Council News:

This week, Ask Marion and The Pirate’s Cove took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (which won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6 PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members, while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have this week…

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!

07/24/13

Cuban Official: Snowden Revelations May Lead to Neutering of US Intelligence Services

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

A senior servant of Cuba’s communist regime has commented on the NSA leaks/Snowden case.

carlossss

Professor Carlos Alzugaray Treto believes that Edward Snowden‘s revelations may lead to a neutering of US intelligence services – which of course would be greatly to the advantage of Cuba and other anti-US powers.

Alzugaray takes full propaganda advantage of Snowden’s revelations to take attention off his own country’s appalling human rights record and to paint the US as somehow morally inferior to the communist dictatorship. He also throw’s in the old Cuban propaganda chestnuts about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” and the big nasty gringos bullying little Latin American countries.

Alzugaray compares Snowden to two other well known leakers: WikiLeaks informant Bradley Manning and notorious leftist Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers (and Progressives for Obama and 911Truth.org) fame.

From the Cuban Communist paper Granma:

Revelations made by former CIA analyst Edward Snowden have opened a Pandora’s box and created an international scandal which could easily continue for some time…(if the Cuban’s have their way, it will: Ed)

Speaking with Granma, Cuban professor Alzugaray commented on offers of asylum made to Snowden by Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, saying that no other region in the world is in a better position to take such a stance vis-à-vis the United States. Latin America and the Caribbean, he emphasized, have been a primary target of U.S. intelligence operations and have suffered first hand the consequences of this policy for some time. Although Snowden’s revelations surprised no one, denouncing such espionage is a way of letting the U.S. know that it cannot act with impunity in the region.

The professor pointed out that the Snowden case has brought attention to the expansion of ‘national security’ operations both within the U.S. and internationally…

The 29-year-old technician who leaked details of the government’s secret surveillance of telephone calls and internet messages is for Dr. Alzugaray “a time bomb that could explode at any moment and oblige the administration and Congress to review and reduce the autonomy of these intelligence organizations, from Homeland Security to the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and others”.

Snowden is not, however, the only concern. The list includes Bradley Manning, the soldier who sent Wikileaks thousands of diplomatic e-mails and other documents about the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, who is currently being prosecuted in military court.

U.S: spying around the world is nothing new…He commented that the Snowden case appears very similar to that of Daniel Ellsberg who revealed the Pentagon Papers in the 1970’s, “Ellsberg himself commented to the Washington Post that the U.S. is not the same as it was in his time and that Snowden’s flight was totally legitimate. It is no surprise that many governments and progressive political forces are sympathetic to the young man and are wiling to offer him asylum.”

Carlos Alzugaray is a Cuban expert in global issues and professor at the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies and the University of Havana.

From 1980 to 2007, Professor Alzugaray was on the faculty of the Raul Roa Garcia Advanced Institute for International Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs training and research center/spy school.

He spent 35 years (1961-1996) as a Foreign Service Officer, being posted at Cuban diplomatic and consular missions since 1961.

Alzugaray was posted to Japan, Bulgaria, Argentina, Canada, Ethiopia and Belgium, where he was Ambassador and Head of the Cuban Mission to the European Union.

At the Foreign Ministry, he has been Department Head, Deputy Director and Adviser to the Foreign Minister on Global Political Affairs.

07/24/13

KeyWiki Needs Your Help!

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

KeyWiki needs YOU.UncleSamVolunteerA

How does New Zeal keep breaking stories that few seem even to be aware of?

Stories like these:

Because we have KeyWiki’s extensive database to draw from.

Established in 2009, our site has grown to more than 63,000 files, the most extensive database out there exposing communists, socialists and progressives in the United States.

KeyWiki has received more than 34,000,000 page views so far. Thousands of our pages, including those for Congress members such as Danny K. Davis, Barbara Lee, John Conyers and Jan Schakowsky, are very highly ranked on Google.

But KeyWiki needs your help. We deliberately host KeyWiki in new Zealand so it will be harder to ever shut down. We always need help with hosting costs and also to fund library research expeditions around the US.

If you’d like to support KeyWiki, please use the button below.




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Trevor Loudon
Editor of TrevorLoudon.com and of KeyWiki.org, an online encyclopedia exposing the covert side of U.S. politics.

07/24/13

On Profiling and Stand Your Ground

By: Larry Correia
Monster Hunter Nation

This post isn’t really about the Zimmerman case, though I’ll touch on how use of force laws actually work relating to that case, but it is a result of the ignoramuses who know jack about how self-defense laws work who are currently talking about it and pissing me off. Included in that list is the President of the United States.

On Friday, Barack Obama said the following during a press conference. Our illustrious leader is in italics. My response is in bold.

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.

Yes. We appreciate the leader of the free world chiming in on local crime issues, especially before any facts are known.

Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Were you in the habit of committing battery against people 35 years ago?

And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

And your preconceived notions, feelings, and emotions should be totally irrelevant in the eyes of the law. Justice should be blind, and a case should be decided based upon the evidence and whether the prosecution can convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed or not.

There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.

Me too. And despite my dad being of darker skin tone than Al Sharpton, according to these Home Depot paint chips I’m only Warm Beige. Also totally irrelevant. I’ve got a family member who takes after my mom’s super lily white side of the family, way the hell whiter than my swarthy self, who always got tailed through stores because he managed to look suspicious, and oddly enough got arrested for shop lifting on his 18th birthday.

There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator.

Don’t flatter yourself. Nobody has ever been physically intimidated by somebody wearing mom jeans. Now Vlad Putin on the other hand, he shows up, hide your wife, hide your kids.

There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And this happens to black men, white men, Asians, Latinos, you name it, and I think that’s awesome. That means that woman is paying attention to her surroundings and knows that simple physics gives a huge advantage to the male in case he decides to do something. Aren’t you from the same side that is constantly complaining that America has a “rape culture”?

I happen to look like a scary 6’5” Tony Soprano. I’m actually physically intimidating, and that is at 37 years old and years of desk job. When I was in my 20s I could bench press 365 pounds and was 270 pounds, 16% body fat, of Big Ugly. I usually had a shaved head and a goatee and I looked like my favorite hobby was punching things, which it was. I was a hundred times more physically intimidating that President Lady Parts on his best day. So I’ve been profiled tons, and I’ve had lots of women obviously assess me like I was a threat.

And I don’t think it is a bad thing at all.

#

First off, way to bring America together there, champ, sending the DoJ after a guy who got acquitted with your civil rights violations witch hunt. People get shot every single day, and some of them in cases way more complicated and questionable than this one, but none of those happened in the lead up to a national election where you needed to try and scare the electorate that America is still Mississippi circa 1957.

Second off, that is an incredibly vapid and naïve sentiment, not to mention hypocritical coming from a dude whose family will have armed security profiling potential threats for the rest of their lives.

Over the last couple of days I’ve grown tired listening to people who know jack about use of force laws bloviating on and on about how it is awful to profile people, and how the mere act of being suspicious of another person makes you evil. So today I’m going to talk about profiling, and how come it isn’t a bad thing at all. Notice that I didn’t say racial profiling, because race has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Back when I was teaching concealed carry classes I used to spend a bunch of time going over use of force issues. This can be basically broken into two main categories: Legal, as in when you are legally justified in shooting somebody (a Reasonable Man would believe there is Ability, Opportunity, and an Immediate Threat of Serious Bodily Harm to themselves or a 3rd person from an aggressor), and Tactical, as in the decisions you make in order to maximize your chances of not getting hurt or killed. The two aren’t always the same, as you can be legally justified in getting involved, but it is tactically stupid, or vice versa.

Profiling falls under the tactical end of things.

The single best weapon you’ve got to defend yourself isn’t your gun, but rather your brain. You need to be smart, and try not to put yourself into situations where you would need to use your gun. The best way to do this is by paying attention, and when you notice something which could be construed as a potential threat, you do what you need to do in order to avoid it.

And at this point, somebody is going to read that and shriek about how according to my advice Zimmerman shouldn’t have followed Trayvon… Uh huh, legally that doesn’t matter, because as I noted above law and tactics aren’t the same, and you can be 100% legally justified even if you didn’t make the best decisions in the world leading up to the event. I had somebody get all belligerent on Facebook and demand “would you have done what Zimmerman did?!” And my answer was No, but the jury is going to ask “did you act as a reasonable man?” not “did you act like a guy who has gone through hundreds of hours of training?” And you’d better pray to God they never change it from Reasonable Man to “did you act as Larry Correia would have acted?” because then you’re all screwed.

So getting back on topic, the best way to avoid a violent encounter is to watch out for potential threats so you can hopefully avoid them, or be ready to react appropriately should things go south. That means paying attention to your surroundings. (This also keeps you from getting hit by cars, falling in holes, or being devoured by wild animals, so yay! Happy bonus!) That means paying attention to people who could–but more than likely won’t–want to hurt you.

I used to tell my students to pay attention to their instincts. If you get a bad vibe off of somebody, for whatever reason, pay attention to it. That doesn’t make you rude, or a jerk, that is just you paying attention to survival instincts that have been built into the human species over millennia for a reason. If the person that made you nervous happens to be a different color than you, who cares? That doesn’t make you racist, and it doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means that they’ve made your survival instincts tingle. So pay attention.

I had somebody on Twitter today tell me that according to that reasoning, Martin was justified in attacking Zimmerman, because Zimmerman made him nervous… That’s just freaking stupid. I said pay more attention, I didn’t say go over and commit a forcible felony against them. Duh.

So if you see somebody coming up to your car, where is the harm in locking the door? I know this may offend the president’s tender feelings, but he’ll get over it. You’re out nothing and 99.99% of the time it doesn’t matter, but that .01% of the time you just told a potential predator that he’s better off picking a different victim. (this part is highly ironic, as the people I’ve been debating with keep saying Zimmerman should have stayed in his car, but apparently he shouldn’t have locked the door!)

There’s a saying from firearms instructor Clint Smith, “If you look like food, you’re going to get eaten.” I used to explain to my classes that criminals were as good at their chosen career as the students were at theirs. Criminals are experts at picking out victims, and they prefer the suckers who aren’t paying attention. If you look like work, they’re probably going to pick somebody else to victimize. If you’re paying attention you’ve gone from “food” to “work” and if they wanted to work for a living they’d get a real job.

I think one reason permit holders don’t get into as many violent encounters as the regular population isn’t because the gun is some magic talisman that wards off evil, but rather because once you’ve made the decision to carry a firearm, you tend to pay more attention to the world around you.

So pay attention! Watch people. Watch for those visual, non-verbal clues that set off your survival instincts. If somebody makes you nervous, be prepared for something to happen, or try to move yourself out of the way. I call this common sense. Barack Obama calls it profiling, except for when DHS does it to veterans, because that’s just groovy.

But good people have been trained that judging others is bad! Violent criminals, especially those that specialize in preying on women, are aware of this, and they absolutely love it. The creepers and the stalkers and the would-be rapists take advantage of regular folk’s inclination to be polite. I’ve taught hundreds of female students, and many of them could personally cite some jackass taking advantage of their attempts to be polite, or if the woman stood up for herself (or clutched nervously at her purse and held her breath) they’d get some variation of “how come you gotta be such a bitch?”

Thieves and jerks who want to physically assault you love this too. If somebody is getting into your personal space, the natural human inclination is to move away, but too many people have been trained by liberals to be good little serfs, and they try to avoid giving offense, so they let the bad guy close on them, and once they are too close, it is too late. I’ve seen normal people let scary, aggressive, obviously messed up people close way into their personal space, and they sit there and take it, because they’ve been programmed that “profiling is bad” or he could actually be bug nuts crazy and you let the dude with the rusty box cutter get into bad breath distance. At least after he opens your jugular, at your funeral they’ll be able to say you never judged anyone.

I don’t give a crap if race comes into this or not. I’m the same color as Cheech Marin. During the summer I’m best described as “swarthy” but my olive skin tone and ability to tan well isn’t why I think it is awesome when I see some woman in a parking lot take note of my approach. It is because for all she knows I’m a potential threat, capable of easily physically overwhelming her, and she can stand there like a sucker and bank on fortune and karma that I’m not, or she could notice me and pay attention. Maybe even not stick her head inside the car and obliviously load groceries until I walk past. In fact, I’m so big that I’m used to going around people in places like that, simply to avoid making them nervous.

I’m so big and ugly that if I got into an elevator with Barack Obama he’d hold his breath and clutch his purse. Except I’d never be allowed into an elevator with Barack Obama because his highly trained Secret Service detail would profile me first.

I’m going to teach this to my daughters. Pay freaking attention. I’d much rather they hurt Barack Obama’s delicate lilac scented feelings, than they end up as victims. But then again, I’m also expecting my children to all carry firearms, because a firearm is the ultimate equalizer.

Now, for the people who are getting offended because people are profiling you… Yep. No big deal. Grow up. Some of us are scary looking. Don’t let it hurt your feelings. You just need to come to terms with the fact that humans routinely victimize other humans, and some of us look more like predators than others. Does it sting when somebody reacts like that, even though you’re the nicest, most genuinely friendly person around? Sure does. Now imagine it was your wife, or your daughter, or your mom, or your grandma, and they were dealing with some scary son of a bitch that looks like you… Yeah, that changes your perspective, doesn’t it?

A fact of life is that people are going to look at you and make a snap judgment. If I see a group of young men dressed all Thug Life, you’re damn right I’m going to pay more attention. If you dress and act in a manner that equates with a culture well known for its violent tendencies, well yeah, people are going to be suspicious of you. Duh. If that offends you, pull up your pants. You look like an idiot with your underwear hanging out anyway. I also don’t trust white guys with swastikas tattooed on their faces. I obviously must be racist toward white people.

When I was 17 I got my jaw dislocated and a concussion from a beating I took from four members of an “inner city youth organization”. They came up and sucker punched me because I wasn’t paying attention and dog piled me (though I did actually win in the end, like I said, big dude). Would I notice them now? More than likely, because I’m older, wiser, and I’ve had the experience of getting my ass kicked enough to reinforce the need to pay attention in public places to groups of young men acting like they’re looking to give somebody the “whoop ass”. Knowing what I know now I might have picked up on the indicators, the way they got charged up, the target selection process, whatever, and I might have been able to move myself out of the way, or at least been more prepared for the confrontation. And in this case, all four of them were within two shades of Home Depot paint chips worth of skin color off of me. Race was irrelevant. I’d notice the same thing if they were Nigerian or Norwegian. Because once they are stomping on your head, race is fairly irrelevant.

#

Stand Your Ground Laws

In related idiocy, the other thing that I’m hearing a lot of bleating about is how evil Stand Your Ground laws are. I keep seeing people saying that Stand Your Ground should be repealed, and then they cite a bunch of crap that actually doesn’t have anything to do with SYG type laws. Of course, Attorney General Eric Holder, who is best known for illegally smuggling thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels, is totally trust worthy on this topic.

I saw a blog post from another sci-fi author talking about how SYG laws basically make it legal for white people to kill black people if the black people make them nervous… Wow… That’s like saying we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima because Americans weren’t fond of origami or haiku. No, dumbass, that’s not how the law works. Just because MSNBC told you SYG laws are racist doesn’t make it true.

The thing is, SYG laws protect everybody, and everybody includes minorities. It protects anybody who acts in self-defense from the state and from over-zealous prosecutors. I keep seeing all these liberals talking about the racist injustice inherent in the system and how blacks are more likely to be sent to prison, and in the next sentence they are saying that we need to give the state MORE prosecutorial power and get rid of things like Reasonable Doubt and SYG laws.

There are two differing sets of law that govern how state’s self-defense laws work, Stand Your Ground and Duty to Retreat. Basically all Stand Your Ground means is that you don’t have a Duty to Retreat, and most states have been this way since George Washington chased out the British, so this isn’t anything new.

Duty to Retreat means that you MUST flee from your attacker if possible. If you don’t retreat, and you shoot, then you can be prosecuted for that. Some states even require you to try and retreat from inside your own home. Stand Your Ground means you have no Duty to Retreat (but it doesn’t mean you can just shoot whoever you want whenever you want like people are trying to spin it).

But why wouldn’t you want to avoid shooting somebody? I always taught my students to avoid shooting if possible. That sounds great! Except here’s the problem. You get into a violent encounter. You’ve got a couple of seconds, tops, of gut wrenching terror in which to decide a course of action, commit, and see it through. So somebody attacks you, you are in fear for your life, and you shoot them. Except now when you go to court the prosecution can go after you because in those two seconds, when you didn’t see a way out, the prosecutor thought of one! And nowthey are going to pontificate on what you should have did differently, and how you should have tried harder to get away… Only they are going to do it in an air conditioned court room for ten thousand times longer than you had to decide, and when they get hungry they are going to order pizza.

With Stand Your Ground, that’s not going to come up, because you’re not required to try and run away. That’s it. That’s really all it comes down to. You’re not required to try and flee.

It doesn’t mean you can just shoot brown people who make you nervous. That’s propaganda bullshit. Even in the most lenient use of force law states (one of which I live in and taught this stuff for a decade) that’s not how it works at all. Let me condense down a couple of hours of legal lecture into a few points to see if any given shoot is justified or not. Most states operate on the following criteria:

Would a Reasonable Person (like a jury) make the following assumptions in your circumstances?

Were you in fear of receiving Serious Bodily Harm from an attacker? (some states use the term Grievous Bodily Harm instead, but either way it means were you in fear for your life, or of getting a bad life threatening or potentially life altering injury? Also, in some states it is you, or a third person, meaning that you can get involved not just to save your life, but someone else’s life as well)

If so, would a Reasonable Person come to the conclusion that your assailant(s) met the following three criteria:

  • Did they have the Ability to cause you Serious Bodily Harm? (basically meaning can they actually hurt you?)
  • Did they have the Opportunity to cause you Serious Bodily Harm? (basically meaning can they reach you with their ability?)
  • Were they acting in a manner that suggested they were an Immediate Threat? (basically meaning are they actually acting like they’re going to do all this stuff to you now? Some states refer to this as Jeopardy)

Check. Check. Check… Bang. That’s fundamentally how the law works. Keep in mind in a class I would spend an hour going over examples of shoot and no shoot situations based on those things, but that’s basically all there is to it.

So let’s look at Trayvon Martin getting shot by George Zimmerman. Go through the criteria. The stuff leading up to it is basically irrelevant for this portion. Serious Bodily Harm? In most cases there aren’t even any physical injuries to show, and you’re still justified just by the reasonable belief of potential threat, but in this case there are actual injuries. Slamming your head into pavement meets the legal threshold. In fact, any blow to the head sufficient to render you unconscious is sufficient to kill you, and also if somebody renders you unconscious a reasonable man can say that you can assume they’re not going to stop there. So good to go.

Ability? Yep. Physically Martin was dominating Zimmerman. Opportunity. Yep, it’s happening right now. Jeopardy? Already in play.

Right there, within a couple of days of the shooting most of the self-defense instructors in the nation looked at this case and said, yep, he’s getting off. Not because of race, because for us you could flip the races and it was the 1/8th black Peruvian that got shot after committing battery against a black guy, and the answer remains the same, because that’s how the law is structured.

I say this and I’ve got people saying that I’m rejoicing in the death of a black kid… Sigh… Yeah, don’t tell all the black people I taught to shoot and certified to carry concealed weapons… No, you freaking idiots, my FEELINGS are irrelevant, because law isn’t supposed to operate on feelings. It is supposed to operate on evidence.

So up next comes the legal question of whether the individual did anything which escalated, contributed to, or caused the violent encounter. Now the Reasonable People of the jury are deciding if this was Mutual Combat (when two people mutually decide to fight) that turned deadly. This is actually what most of the Zimmerman trial was about, and this is the point of the phone calls, and the timelines, and the witnesses, and everything else. It was to see if Zimmerman was partially legally at fault for the events, and if so, how much.

In this case, the jury looked at the events in question leading up to the shooting, and they couldn’t say Zimmerman was responsible beyond a Reasonable Doubt. (see, there’s that word Reasonable again).

Remember earlier when I mentioned law and tactics? They’re not the same. Could Zimmerman have done things differently? Certainly. But making bad tactical decisions isn’t necessarily illegal. The jury figured that regardless of what Zimmerman did, ultimately it was Martin that circled back around and committed the Forcible Felony. At that point it went up to the checklist above. Part of being a Reasonable Man is not being able to predict the future with 100% accuracy. Everybody makes assumptions, and sometimes they are incorrect, that doesn’t make it illegal. Jumping on somebody and braining them on the sidewalk is illegal.

I’ve had people demand how come Stand Your Ground didn’t protect Trayvon! (seriously, I’ve seen this like 50 times on Twitter. It is like everybody works off the same narrative talking points). SYG doesn’t apply in this case because apply the checklist of Ability, Opportunity, and Immediacy to Zimmerman. Somebody following you through a neighborhood doesn’t mean that you can go and beat the hell out of them. And if you attack somebody before they reasonably present a threat of Serious Bodily Harm, then it isn’t lawful self-defense, so SYG doesn’t apply.

Prosecution’s witness, Rachel Janteel, (Trayvon’s girlfriend) was on Piers Morgan and said that the reason Trayvon Martin attacked George Zimmerman was because he thought Zimmerman was a “gay rapist”. And also that Martin didn’t mean to kill Zimmerman, that was just a misunderstanding on Zimmerman’s part, and really Travyon just wanted to give him the “whoop ass” (her words, not mine) which was a cultural thing and how they took care of people like that… Despite MSNBC’s narrative to the contrary SYG doesn’t allow you to give the “whoop ass” to somebody just because you think they’re gay.

(On that note, gay rights community… Seriously? I taught and certified a lot of gays and lesbians to carry guns, and the reason they usually gave me was so they could protect themselves from somebody giving them the “whoop ass” because of how they looked, and now I’m hearing crickets. Where’s the condemnation against this reasoning? Where’s the outrage?)

I’ve had people yell at me that there was only one side alive to tell their story… (again, another common talking point) Oh my gosh… That’s so incredibly dumb. That’s not how it works at all. If that was the case then there would never be any murder trials because obviously one side couldn’t testify! There’s ALWAYS more than one side. There’s evidence, there’s witnesses, there’s experts who reconstruct the details, and the prosecution had all of that to present, and the jury still had Reasonable Doubt.

Then I’ve got people crying about how “unjust” Reasonable Doubt is… You fools. You stupid, stupid fools. Put your emotion in check. What Reasonable Doubt really is the final check and balance against the state’s ability to throw your ass in prison forever with a flimsy case. You’re going to bitch and whine about the injustice, and how it is racist that more blacks are prosecuted and incarcerated, and your answer is to make it EASIER for the state to throw people in prison? Holy moly. You have no idea what you are wishing for.

That’s it. That’s how the self-defense laws work. Wrap your heads around the actual laws and calm the hell down. Instead you’re begging stalwart defenders of civil rights like President Drone Strike and the AG who is cool with killing Mexicans to get rid of laws that protect YOU from the STATE. That’s way scarier than any one neighborhood watch guy with a gun.