Ladies and Gentleman: The Second Amendment

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | DECEMBER 24, 2012

Before any serious discussion about the Second Amendment can begin, it is necessary to make sure those discussing its validity, definition and application really understand why it was written and how it applies to modern society.

Today, most politicians do not understand the Second Amendment or refuse to award it its real meaning. They refuse to recognized what the Founding Fathers intended to achieve and instead attach all kinds of connotations originated from their twisted and purposely wrong understanding of the this sacred right.

Two grave mistakes are commonly made when defining, validating and applying the Second Amendment. First, people attempt to interpret what it means, as opposed to simply reading and abiding by it. Second, it is defined, validated and applied according to ‘modern’ precepts issued by government.

Perhaps the best attempt to understand what the Second Amendment means in its raw form was recently presented by journalist Ben Swann, who limited himself to reading the text and, upon consulting constitutional experts and proper dictionary definitions, made a very good case for the correct understanding of what the Second Amendment really means.

The definition held by those who believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms and what it intends to guard against — the very same definition now being diluted by government enforcing illegal laws and the media pushing for gun control — is simpler than what many pundits and talking heads want to make it look.

The Second Amendment was not created to be conditioned to the kind of weapons that people may have available to buy or whatever the federal government thinks are ideal social situations for people to own a gun. It is also not limited by the mental health of a society or the vote of a group of people who are so afraid of armed lunatics, that they prefer to be killed rather than protect themselves and their families.

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

After being victims of foreign aggressors, the Founding Fathers and the United States as a whole understood very well that an armed population, not only a standing army, was the best instrument to keep the country safe from both domestic and foreign attacks. That is why the responsibility to defend oneself was put in the hands of The People.

A number of countries whose armies were swept by oppressors and whose populations fell into the hands of local and foreign conquerors are historically significant. Meanwhile, quite the opposite happened with those nations whose people maintained the right to keep and bear arms. The statistics clearly show a direct link between free, armed populations and lower crime rates. On the contrary, subdued, unarmed people are most often subjected to violence from criminals in and out of government.

Governments alone are responsible for the murder of at least 250,000,000 people in the twentieth century and most of the people who were murdered were either lightly armed in comparison to their aggressors or completely disarmed. If the security of a free State — and such state is indeed composed by its citizens because that State is an independent Nation, depends upon its people — it is then the responsibility and the right of those people to keep and bear arms against all threats.

Therefore, the Second Amendment is not about hunting or the ownership of a specific caliber firearm, but about the ability of the people to be armed as needed to defend themselves from standing armies; both foreign and domestic. It is as simple as that. The people have the right, under applicable laws, to own and use firearms of undetermined calibers, sizes or firepower, to defend themselves, their families and their country.

There can’t be a better time to put that right to work than today, when average criminals, mentally ill people and the government itself pose the greatest danger to the security of the people than ever before in history. For those who understand the meaning of the Second Amendment, it is clear that the full conquest of the United States will not occur unless its people are completely disarmed.

The globalists who control the American government have financially and politically disarmed the country, but they haven’t been able to break the will of the people to defend themselves. Americans are beginning to understand that their government cannot protect them and will not protect them, because government  doesn’t work for them.

Politicians who move to Washington, D.C., work for foreign interests whose goal is to destroy the United States the same way they’ve destroyed countries in Latin America, Africa and Europe. That is why, when studied from a legal standpoint — the only point of view it should be studied from — the Second Amendment explicitly enables Americans to defend their country as well as to defend themselves from their country if necessary.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee the right of the individuals to be equally armed as their country’s military, both to aid the military to defend the country from foreign threats, as well as to defend themselves from the Nation’s military forces, should they turn against The People. The Founding Fathers intended to provide the citizens the ability to be armed well enough to keep their country and themselves free from oppressive forces which could arise internally and externally.

The idea that a semi automatic firearm should not be in the hands of average folks could not be more opposed to the right provided by the Second Amendment, since governments’ firepower has increased exponentially. What kind of self-defense action could an individual sustain with a .22 caliber gun if its government has sound canyons, armed drones and laser beam weapons? In fact, a semi-automatic or even an automatic weapon would be useless.

The next step on the road to serfdom after a population is disarmed is anything and everything that those in places of power believe is enough to keep themselves in power. “You can do all kinds of things when the population is disarmed. You can round them up, you can put them in ghettos, you can execute them, you can do all kinds of things,” says attorney Don Moore.

There is nothing controversial about the Second Amendment and what it means. Controversy arises from those whose power slips away when The People reclaim the rights given to them by their creator, which directly challenge the abusive behavior of corrupted individuals who use government to enslave his fellow citizens.

An honest debate about the Second Amendment will only be effective when those who participate in such a debate do so with full understanding of what they are talking about. The Second Amendment is intended to prevent the control, domination and oppression of the people by the government. Any discussion that starts without recognizing this fact will not only be futile, but also dangerous given the ignorance of the people who are charged with defending its very existence.

No matter what Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, or Pierce Morgan say, firearms don’t kill people. Crazy individuals using firearms murder people just as mad individuals use the power vested upon them by their fellow citizens to murder thousands of innocent civilians in a supposed attempt to ‘bring peace’ to their countries.

As foreign as it may seem for Americans or any other population whose governments want them to hand in their guns, the consequences of centralizing government power and disarming citizens are the predecessors of Genocide.

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Ron Paul: U.S. reached point of no return

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | NOVEMBER 15, 2012

Former presidential candidate and Texas Representative, Ron Paul had an opportunity to talk to the American people Wednesday in what he called his farewell speech. Dr. Paul, who got cheated during the last Republican primaries and caucuses by the Romney political machine, spoke about the United States path to the reality it is living today and how the country has arrived at a moment when the country is simply gone.

Mr. Paul, who spoke from the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C, reminded his colleagues in Congress and the American people as a whole, that the U.S. has deviated from its original path and that little recourse is left to help take it back to where it is supposed to be. Ron Paul served in office for the best part of the last three decades. During his time in Washington, Dr. Paul warned the nation about the dangerous trend that seemed to be growing in the U.S. regarding the violation of constitutional principles and the uncontrolled expansion of the state.

Most, if not all of Ron Paul’s predictions regarding where the United States would be if the trend was not reversed have now come true. The U.S. is, according many experts, a living Police State, where the federal government imposes its draconian policies on the people, where government employees seek to micromanage the lives of their fellow friends and neighbors for the sake of empowering themselves and where citizens are enemies of the state because they speak their mind in public.

Ron Paul reviewed the current condition of the United States as the Union it is by saying that “poverty is nor rampant and dependency of the Federal Government is now worse than any time in our history. All this with minimum concern for the deficit and unfounded liabilities that common sense tells us, can’t go on much longer.” This sentence summarizes Ron Paul’s message from Wednesday, which has been the same consistent one since he began his political career early in the 1970s.

Ron Paul’s last speech on the House floor served to remind his colleagues and the public how they have been instruments for the demise of the country and victims of the hubris accumulated in the minds of their trusted representatives in the U.S. Congress. He also reminded everyone that the country’s foreign policy, not liberty or wealth, is what made it unsafe to be an American. “The major stumbling block to real change in Washington is the total resistance to admitting that the country is broke.”

Watch Dr. Ron Paul’s complete speech below:

Ron Paul added that despite the growing number of people depending on Government to survive, and although history shows that even in times of deep economic and political distress people seem to look for more big government, the number of citizens embracing liberty and its principles has grown exponentially since he began his political career back in 1976.

Dr. Paul recognized that the demise of the American Empire was due to two main reasons: the establishment of the Income Tax and the creation of the Federal Reserve Banking System. Ron Paul was the strongest advocate of a movement to END THE FED, and to AUDIT the Federal Reserve System given its history of operating outside any kind of government control. In fact, as many readers already know, the FED is a private entity which was voted by Congress with the responsibility to create money out of thin air to sustain a never-ending scheme of deficit spending.

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Unintended consequences of Political and Ideological Loyalty

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | NOVEMBER 8, 2012

Is it possible that some Obama supporters do not care about the fact their children will live in servitude to the State for the rest of their lives? Could it be that they justify this horrendous future thinking that since they had to live under that system, it makes sense their children do it as well? Could it be that they see the current debt-based underdevelopment model as a way to guarantee their bribes for their elderly years? Perhaps this way of thinking is not a conscious one, perhaps it is. The fact is that blind loyalty to the party and to the ideology held by Obama brings along an endless list of unintended consequences.

Obama’s re-elections doesn’t only mean that half of the country still supports him. It also means that they agree with the policies he seeks to implement and of course with the ones he’s already imposed on the American people. This outcome gives Obama a green light to attempt to complete his agenda with the intention to “transform the United Sates”. So it is only pertinent that we review what are some of the items on that agenda.

There isn’t a better place to start than the policies and legislation that Obama has supported and enacted himself, through executive orders during the past 4 years. Since Obama has said himself that his project is work in progress, we can only expect that more the same will be brought upon Americans for the next four years. So let’s take a look at what Obama supported during his first term in office.

1. Bailouts, for ‘too big to fail’ banks, so-called stimulus packages, quantitative easing and deficit spending.
2. Sending troops to protect others’ borders and sending American taxpayer money to foreign dictators.
3. The same interventionist foreign policy from the Bush era.
4. Federal restrictions on gun ownership. Obama has pledged to ban semi-automatic weapons which are now legal.
5. The Patriot Act.
6. Spying on American citizens without warrants.
7. Indefinite detention of American citizens without charge, trial or lawyer.
8. Assassinations of American citizens or anyone else without due process.
9. Socialized Healthcare through which the State will dictate who has the right to healthcare and who doesn’t as well as how much of it can an individual get (healthcare rationing).

If there is anyone out there seeking a one sentence answer to what the future holds for the United States and the rest of the world as a result of Obama’s election, I guess that sentence would read “unlimited expansion of the federal government”. As explained by Judge Andrew Napolitano, under Obama, the government will continue to write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event it wants. In other words the Constitution be damned.

And so will continue the political, ideological and social divides. A clear outcome of Tuesday’s election is the clear separation of the American population according to their race, age and ideological blindness. While the gaps continue to expand among social groups, nothing changed in Washington. The Democrats go to keep the White House and the Senate, while the Republicans maintained power in the House of Representatives. Can we expect anything different for the next four years? Mark my words here: there will be no long term economic recovery in the United States and little to no recovery abroad.

Although the divided Congress suggests that there will be gridlock for the rest of Obama’s term in office, one cannot forget about the power of the pen, which is a perfect tool to pass legislation that intends to advance the agenda that works for Obama’s managers. That is how Obama got away with imposing the State’s will on the People regarding healthcare, the homeland security apparatus, financial terrorism, and out of control “stimulus programs” that only resulted in higher corporate bonuses.

What many Obama supporters perhaps forgot is that he won’t have to be accountable to the voters again. He will then let lose his real identity and agenda, which he has managed to conceal to a great extent with the help of the main stream media. The “Transformation of the United States” can go on unchecked.

“Just by re-electing Obama, that means the Affordable Care Act will continue to be implemented, and that’s very important because that’s one of the most important pieces of legislation in half a century,” said Theda Skocpol, a political scientist at Harvard University.

Tuesday’s re-election empowers Obama to continue strengthening his activist government, the same that stooges like Paul Krugman support. For example, the bailout of the automobile industry will be remembered as Obama’s achievement that saved an important sector of the economy. What people who think like that ignore is that through the 2009 auto bailout, General Motors and other companies were literally paid to fire Americans and move their operations to India, China and Brazil. In other words, the 2009 auto bailout was a direct incentive given to the companies to run abroad.

So what can we expect immediately after Obama’s re-election?

1. Further deterioration of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights
2. Expansion of the powers given to the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA.
3. More out of control federal government spending.
4. Enforcement of mandatory government healthcare.
5. Accelerated purchase of firearms and stockpiling of ammunition.
6. Persecution of veterans and people who oppose government policies.
7. More secret arrests of U.S. citizens in at home and abroad.
8. Acceleration of the legalization of 30 million illegal immigrants.
9. Rise in energy prizes due to Obama’s commitment to shut down coal plants without having any alternative sources available to people.
10. $600 billion in tax increases scheduled to take effect during the next four years and beyond.
11. Government’s debt reaching $16 trillion which will get the U.S. that much closer to the fiscal cliff.

These and many more will be the “unintended consequences” of electing Barack Obama to drive the car for the next 4 years.

Is the best really yet to come?

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Will the Global Political Shakedown be for the best?

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | MAY 7, 2012

All around the world there seems to be a wave of people kicking their leaders’ rear ends. The most recent examples of these manifestations of non-conformity with business as usual politics began in Spain, where Mariano Rajoy took over the steering wheel from a failed Jose Luis Zapatero. Then came Greece, who changed its leader George Papandreou for Lucas Papademos.

Over the weekend, elections in France and Germany, carried on the ball as Moamer Khadafi’s friend, Nicolas Zarkozy was unseated as France’s president. He yielded his post to Mr. Francois Hollande. Angela Merkel suffered significant loses in Germany, as her centre-right government coalition lost power in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. By the end of this week, once the counting of the votes is over with, she could also be a victim of what seems to be a generalized european mini-political quake. In Europe, the only nation that seems to have escaped the technocratic attack was Iceland, whose leaders were not totally in the pockets of the bankers who have now taken over Greece.

Meanwhile, in the United States, most of the media has collaborated to pick Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate for president after Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum realized they did not have enough cash to financed their campaigns or pay their debts. Both Santorum and Gingrich are lobbying Romney to take care of those debts in exchange for their vote and support. Most of the gains made by Romney comes from his beauty contest victories obtained during the caucus and primaries, which enabled him to get the highest number of unpledged delegates among his fellow candidates.

Different from the European contests, the American election system is more like a pageant, and the candidate is only elected during a national party meeting. Conventional wisdom would dictate that Romney would be elected as the man to face a decaying Barack Obama in November, and that is what the main stream media and the Republican Party’s machine has tried to do since both Santorum and Gingrich left the race. But in the middle of all the chicanery created to have Romney be the candidate for president, the wave of American discontent seems to be rising. Although many state caucuses and primaries were reported as won by Santorum, Gingrich and Romney himself, the official results in several of those states had not been announced. In the last two weeks, at least five states have changed the outcome of the previously announced results. It turns out that it wasn’t Romney, Santorum or Gingrich who won those states. It was Texas Representative Ron Paul.

Nevada, Washington State, Iowa, Maine and Louisiana are now official Paul’s states. He has also made significant gains in Minnesota and Missouri. So, while the Romney campaign was enjoying the feeling of inevitability, a hard working group of Paul supporters made sure that their votes had the weight they were supposed to have up until the last moment. The Paul campaign has quietly picked up an important number of delegates after Romney was officially ‘elected’ by the GOP to face Obama in November. With his recent gains, Paul is making strides to force a brokered convention in Florida, as supposed to allow Romney to enjoy a victory lap all by himself.

The issue with all the political revolts both in Europe and in the US is whether those revolts against the establishment corporate-backed candidates has rendered or will render anything positive for the people who booted their leaders out of office. In the case of Europe there has been little progress, especially in Greece. After George Papandreu left, the country accepted so-called financial aid from the European Union and adopted a harsh package of government austerity whose only significant result has been the increase in political suicides. Greece is in a worse condition than ever before. The thought that a rich country would eventually be able to pay for its debt in no longer the ephimerous guarantee that it was before. Greece, one of those supposed rich countries is now less capable of paying off his debt than before the sovereign debt problem became apparent. Neither is France, Spain, Portugal or any other European nation. So in the case of the Greek, the change has not been that great. It has been for the worse indeed.

In the case of Spain, things are much different. The government led by Mariano Rajoy has basically continues the same strategy that Zapatero had, which is a powerful government sponsored economy. Since Rajoy took power, the government has not done anything to generate more revenue other than raising taxes. It has also adopted austerity programs in exchange for financial bailouts as it increases government spending in traditional entitlement programs. Spain’s financial health is worse today that it was before, and perhaps it is even worse than Greece. In addition to the gigantic out of control debt, the socialist government continues to borrow money at a very high cost. The unemployment rate has reached 24% which has spurred major economic problems everywhere. Why will Spain be worse than Greece? Because its economy is four times the size of Greece. Economic activity in Spain adds up to just about 12% of the GDP generated in the Eurozone, which makes it the fourth most important in the old continent and number 10 in the world.  A Spanish default will cause a quake that whose ripples will be felt all over the planet. It could even mean the collapse of the Eurozone, analysts say.

France’s economic prospects aren’t that much better. This state of affairs together with Nicolas Sarkozy’s thirst for war cost him his position as president. But will the change be for the best? Has socialism ever worked for the best? The questions is not rhetorical as France’s new leader is a socialist. France lost its AAA rating, if that means anything, while its unemployment continues to rise, even with cooked numbers to over 10%. The country is today in a similar situation than Spain and Italy, drowning in economic insecurity and a growing inability to pay its debt, which is a country’s best presentation card to gain trust and obtain cheap credit. The lousy results of Sarkozy’s window dressing economic and fiscal policies resulted in no growth, to which he responded with more proposals to change the direction of the country. Too little too late, many would say as he lost the election to François Hollande. Mr. Sarkozy wanted to impose a an increase in the value-added tax on consumption, allow companies more flexibility to negotiate working hours and pay, and enshrine a balanced-budget requirement in the Constitution. His intentions did not pick up speed with the French, who found out about his secret dealing with murdered Libyan leader Moamer Khadafi.

Perhaps the only country that looks better is Germany, both financially and politically. But this state of affairs may not last too long. Angela Merkel is also managed to shine panic among the german people. The latest example of her failure to deliver is the loss of support, although small, could begin to shape what the national election will look like in 2013. As Germany seems to be the only European state with a stronger footing, a different issue becomes center stage. As reported by the Express newspaper, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle is working secretly to create an all powerful European leadership position that will merge the powers of the presidency of the European Council and the European Commission while leaving the United Kingdom out of the group. “This is a plot by people who want to abolish nation states and create a United States of Europe,” said one of the opponents of the secret group. Tory MP Douglas Carswell said that it doesn’t matter how the powers of the Council and the Commission are arranged, so long as the technocrats in control of Europe don’t have the ability to dictate the people’s way of living. “They are not elected so they have no legitimacy.”

With the new Greek Prime Minister mortgaging the future of the country by adopting new but ineffective austerity programs and calling austerity a “patriotic duty” there doesn’t seem to be a way out for the Mediterranean nation that now lays in the hands of its creditors. Spain, on the other hand seems to be walking in Greece’s direction as its leaders begin to adopt similar policies of indebtedness and government spending without generating any real job opportunities for the growing numbers of unemployed — especially those under 25 years of age — who are now called the lost generation. “This is the least hopeful and best educated generation in Spain,”   said local blogger Ignacio Escolar. Unemployment for the young in Spain has reached 52% this Spring.

It all comes down to the US then, doesn’t it? Will Americans start a ‘summer spring’ that will continue the wave of much needed change, or will they continue to foolishly trust their corporate chosen leaders to bring about change instead of kicking them out for good? It was the Americans who fought the British for temporary independence after all, wasn’t it? With a skyrocketing debt of over $16 trillion and a growing unemployment rate — some 100 million Americans are out of the work force today — Americans will have to choose between the two party dictatorship model that has dragged them downthe hole they’re in today, or the better option that will indeed get the ball rolling to bring about real change. A major shakedown in the United States could be the trigger for a worldwide awakening and/or rise of unimpressed people who will clamp down on their governments out of control collusion with corporate interests. Someone needs to light up the match in order for the fire to ignite.

Taxed to Death Americans Renounce their Citizenships

REUTERS | APRIL 17, 2012

A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

“‘Truth, justice, and the American way’ — it’s not enough anymore,” the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran.

Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman’s lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That’s a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It’s also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

But not everyone’s motivations are as lofty as Superman’s. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons.

The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April — this year, the deadline is Tuesday — an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.

The National Taxpayer Advocate’s Office, part of the IRS, released a report in December that details the difficulties of filing taxes from overseas. It cites heavy paperwork, a lack of online filing options and a dearth of local and foreign-language resources.

For those wishing to legally escape the filing requirements, the only way is to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship. Last year, IRS records show that at least 1,788 people did, and that’s likely an underestimate. The IRS publishes in the Federal Register the names of those who give up their citizenship, and some who renounced say they haven’t seen their name on the list yet.

The State Department said records it keeps differ from those published by the IRS. They indicate that renunciations have remained steady, at about 1,100 each year, said an official.

The decision by the IRS to publish the names is referred to by lawyers as “name and shame.” That’s because those who renounce are seen as willing to give up their citizenship primarily for financial reasons.

There’s also an “exit tax” for the very rich who choose to leave. During the last 25 years, a number of millionaires and billionaires have renounced their citizenship. Among them: Ted Arison, the late founder of Carnival Cruises and Michael Dingman, a former Ford Motor director.

But those of more modest means renounce, too. They say leaving America is about more than money; it’s about privacy and red tape.

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