Obama confirmed Internet power grab during State of the Union address

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | FEBRUARY 14, 2013

President Barack Obama announced during his State of the Union that he has signed an executive order to ensure national security against possible cyber attacks. According to Obama, the United States has undergone several rounds of attacks directed to private companies and public infrastructure, declared in 2009 as “strategic assets” whose protection is a “national priority”.

“The United States must also address the real and growing threat of cyber attacks,” said the president during his speech. “We know that hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private emails. We know that foreign companies subtract our secrets. And our enemies seek the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions and our systems air traffic control, ” Obama fear-mongered in Congress.

Several U.S. officials claimed in recent months that their systems and facilities have suffered cyber attacks and that any of them could become “the next Pearl Harbor” in the words of then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The executive order identified “critical infrastructure” such as systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital that its incapacitation or destruction could have a debilitating impact on national security, economic, health, or a combination of these “.

In response, the executive order includes measures to clarify the relationships of different sectors of the federal government, which supposedly would ensure and improve the security of infrastructure, facilitate the exchange of information between authorities and companies and create a plan that identifies the infrastructure that is more vulnerable in the event of an attack.

In simple words, the executive order signed by Obama codified the nationalization of all relevant infrastructure which will now be under the control of the Executive. It also legitimizes, at least in the eyes of the federal government, the exchange of private information from internet users, which the government has gathered for years. This will enable the Feds to avoid liability in the event an individual or a company denounces unwarranted government spying.

U.S. fears the consequences of a possible attack on its transmission system or electricity and has admitted they already have evidence that “intruders have gained access to control systems” of various infrastructures. A few weeks ago, several media outlets claimed having fought against the intrusion of Chinese hackers. No one has independently confirmed any of the these claims.

The Obama administration argues that any such attacks would be treated as an “act of war”. The executive order signed Tuesday by the President establishes coordination of various sectors of government, among them, defense, homeland security and anti-terror, but does not specify the methods of response to potential threats. It doesn’t explain how the government will go about gathering information from private companies or individuals.

As Obama said, the new “cyber defenses” will increase the exchange of information and develop standards “to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy.” However, the president also urged Congress to pass legislation that goes even further: “They must also act, passing laws that give our government a greater ability to protect our networks and deter attacks.”

The Government believes that ensuring safety is a shared responsibility between the authorities and companies that often manage internet infrastructure, the networks accessed by citizens, the telephone network, electricity and water supply. To do this, the order provides for the creation of a ‘voluntary program’ in which private companies and government share information about vulnerabilities in their systems and possible threats, so that they can better protect themselves. Note the term voluntary, because it will be voluntary for now. Later, the government will claim that any measures taken somehow worked to perfection before making compliance mandatory.

The executive order also requires that this information be shared “in an appropriate time” and expands the existing cybersecurity program that enabled government to share data on ‘potential threats’ in real time. This data exchange sparked criticism in the private sector, considering that there were not enough guarantees to provide their data to the Government.

The private sector and everyone else do have reason to be concerned, because the latest executive order will do for the web’s infrastructure what it did to healthcare, industry and the economy: it will turn them all into the hands of the federal government. It is a continuation of the process to fully install a Marxist regime in the United States.

The Real Agenda encourages the sharing of its original content ONLY through the tools provided at the bottom of every article. Please DON’T copy articles from The Real Agenda and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Advertisement

U.S. a Police State? It has already happened

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | IPE | FEBRUARY 8, 2013

The Bush regime’s response to 9/11 and the Obama regime’s validation of this response have destroyed accountable democratic government in the United States. So much unaccountable power has been concentrated in the executive branch that the US Constitution is no longer an operable document.

Whether a person believes the official story of 9/11 which rests on unproven government assertions or believes the documented evidence provided by a large number of scientists, first responders, and structural engineers and architects, the result is the same. 9/11 was used to create an open-ended “war on terror” and a police state. It is extraordinary that so many Americans believe that “it can’t happen here” when it already has.

We have had a decade of highly visible evidence of the construction of a police state: the PATRIOT Act, illegal spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the initiation of wars of aggression–war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard–based on intentional lies, the Justice Department’s concocted legal memos justifying the executive branch’s violation of domestic and international laws against torture, the indefinite detention of US citizens in violation of the constitutionally protected rights of habeas corpus and due process, the use of secret evidence and secret “expert witnesses” who cannot be cross-examined against defendants in trials, the creation of military tribunals in order to evade federal courts, secret legal memos giving the president authority to launch preemptive cyber attacks on any country without providing evidence that the country constitutes a threat, and the Obama regime’s murder of US citizens without evidence or due process.

As if this were not enough, the Obama regime now creates new presidential powers by crafting secret laws, refusing to disclose the legal reasoning on which the asserted power rests. In other words, laws now originate in secret executive branch memos and not in acts of Congress. Congress? We don’t need no stinking Congress.

Despite laws protecting whistleblowers and the media and the US Military Code which requires soldiers to report war crimes, whistleblowers such as CIA agent John Kiriakou, media such as Julian Assange, and soldiers such as Bradley Manning are persecuted and prosecuted for revealing US government crimes. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33804.htm The criminals go free, and those who report the crimes are punished.

FULL ARTICLE →

Obama uses shock doctrine to impose gun control

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | JANUARY 17, 2013

Supported by the shock of the massacre at Newtown School, Barack Obama on Wednesday launched the most ambitious offensive against firearms in decades and has promised to surrender all his energy to what will be one of the most expensive projects of his second term.

The president sent Congress a proposal to prohibit the civilian possession of military grade weapons and signed 23 decrees to act without congressional permission in what he said would be an improvement of  arms control measures.

“If only one life we ​​can save, we have an obligation to try. We have an obligation to act now, ” Obama said in the press conference organized to present his unconstitutional initiatives.

The President is aware that it has opened a conflict with one of the most powerful entities in the country, the National Rifle Association (NRA) as well as with a strong portion of the citizenry by trying to to undermine one of the pillars on which rests the birth of the United States, the right to own guns.

It is, therefore, a mission that will find many obstacles along the way. The NRA is not the only organization that works to safeguard the individual liberties, although it is the strongest one when combating anti-Second Amendment sentiment. It is fair to say that the NRA will be rolling in money and emotions in the debate that has already been going on for weeks.

As pointed out before, Obama appeared shielded by families whose children study at the Newtown School, children who were asked to write to the president to ask him for action against gun violence. Recent polls, whether they are trustworthy or not, reflect the desire by at least half of the American public to have something done about gun murders.

The fear created by the idea that anyone who owns a gun could at any point take the lives of innocent people has spread rooted deep in the minds of a population that despite having been liberated by guns, now believes that a disarmed society is a safer society. It is precisely to those people the ones who Obama addressed yesterday, compelling them to demand action against the Second Amendment to carry out his effort to have less guns on the street.

The president’s initiative is ambitious regarding U.S. history and tradition in the sense it will try to limit and eventually eliminate the right to keep and bear arms, even though disarming the population, as history shows, only results in a stratospheric growth in violence.

Obama has asked Congress to ban assault weapons (automatic and semiautomatic rifles used by soldiers on the battlefield), limit magazine rounds to 10 bullets and to set up a more extensive background check system in order to better identity all gun buyers, without exception.

Currently, about half of the weapons purchased in the U.S. are sold at fairs and conventions in which, by law, citizens can buy guns and ammunition. This is where the Obama proposal comes into action. According to statements issued by various Obama administration officials, the idea is to register every gun owner with as much detail as possible so that the government will be in a better position to deny access to firearms, should it determine a person is unfit to own them.

If Congress approves Obama’s proposal or the President himself signs it through an unconstitutional Executive Order, criminals will be on the loose, fully armed and counting on the fact that the average Joe, including those who support Obama’s plan will not be able to defend themselves. This is the reason why pro-Second Amendment folks have flooded gun fairs all over the country so they can get their hands on guns and ammo before the Federal Government effectively puts a ban on purchases or greatly limits who can buy them.

At the moment, Obama not only faces opposition from the U.S. Constitution, but from Congressmen and a significant part of the population who are not ready to surrender their Second Amendment just yet. Steve Stockman, a Republican Representative for the state of Texas, already warned that banning firearms could be grounds for dismissal of the president (impeachment), in that it is a violation of the Second Amendment.

But the U.S. President has been clear about his intention to impose new restrictions by decree his 23 new measures.  The most important section is the introduction of a background check for mental illness, which the Federal Government will manage through rules and regulations built into Obamacare. According to those rules, doctors will work as snitches for the government and medical care will be recommended for those who are found to be mentally unstable for seeking to own firearms that are banned.

Under Obamacare, doctors are expected to ask patients about owning guns, prompt people to report any kind of threat of violence to law enforcement, requires the states to report data under Health Insurance Portability Act, and so on. Eventually, the Federal Government will be able to deny access to guns, or take firearms away from people who are determined to be a danger to society due to their supposed potential to become a mass killer.

The Real Agenda encourages the sharing of its original content ONLY through the tools provided at the bottom of every article. Please DON’T copy articles from The Real Agenda and redistribute by email or post to the web.

25 Questions Society needs to answer before getting out of the Scum Hole

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | NOVEMBER 16, 2012

As if there is a need to prove that big government and excessive government action in any scope of life is a direct result of social immorality, or that government intervention has created the mess where most of the world is into right now, there are a series of questions that need to be asked, so that the public gets to answer them individually in a conscious effort to recognize that government, as it stands today, is the origin of the problems, not the solution.

Let’s review a few examples of the consequences of what I called government intervention, before asking those tough but necessary questions. Although each country suffers from different degrees of financial and economic pain, the appearance of the consequences of government interventions are pretty much the same.

For starters, government has grown exponentially. That alone should be an indicator of the problem. With such an excessive growth, government has had to increase taxes, so it can finance its debt. Along with the out of control increase in the tax burden, governments have also enhanced their power to regulate, mandate and impose its own rules, which are different from the ones already in existence before it was created.

War has been made a primary tool to promote government control of everything, especially those that seek to ‘save us’ from unknown threats. Those wars are waged without any authorization from The People, or their representatives, because such wars, the psychopathic leaders say, are too important to let the people decide whether they should be fought or not.

Government spending to finance the wars skyrocketed as a consequence of the numerous conflicts it is involved in. As a result, less money is invested in improving infrastructure, keeping the peace at home, promoting real economic growth or embracing policies that allow individuals to become successful in their own right. It has been quite the oppossite, in fact. Globally, poverty is at its highest level in history and the gap between the poor and the rich is wider that ever before. The middle class is a species threatened with extinction, while government dependency is at its highest level.

Even though the deficit spending recipe has not worked since it was adopted at the start of the 20th  century, governments not only continue to use it, but encourage uncontrollable levels of debt to finance their bribery programs intended to keep the ignorant masses calm, cool and collected. Politicians in government found a way to use consensus as tool to reinforce deficit spending as the base of any and all ‘development’ models, setting government as the creator, manager and judge of everything — even private business  and private life.

Even though the economic and fiscal policies of the past resulted in the bankruptcy of many governments worldwide, politicians in all political parties lied to the public about such state of affairs, advocating for more deficit spending. Despite the supposed major disagreements in Congress, corrupt politicians were able to agree on one thing: spending is the way to go! Meanwhile, the masses of ignorant people accepted and agreed on spending more as a way to guarantee their piece of the pie even though such spending will mean their continues slavery to a central almighty government. The immoral people embraced authoritarianism as a mechanism of survival.

It is through this mechanism that the immoral people managed to accept illegal wars, government bribery also known as entitlement programs, overregulation of the economy, flawed monetary policy, undeclared economic and military wars, illegal arrests for speaking against the government, sanctions, currency manipulation, bailouts of corrupt banks and so on.

Now that authoritarianism has failed, and after many people — still a minority — realized they have been swindled all along by different management teams that work for the same interests, there is a list of questions The People need to ask themselves to start affecting real change. The answers to those questions will show all the options and the way forward.

So, here is the list. (From Ron Paul’s Congressional Farewell Speech)

1. Why are sick people who use medical marihuana sent to prison?

2. Why do governments restrict and in some places ban the drinking of raw milk?

3. Why do governments limit or ban the production of finished goods from hemp?

4. Why aren’t people allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender?

5. Is the supremacy of the Dollar as the reserve currency beginning to end?

6. Why are political leaders opposed to auditing central banks?

7. Why can’t people decide what kind of light bulbs they can buy?

8. Why are thugs at airport security checkpoints allowed to abuse passengers?

9. Why do governments continue to fight the war on drugs, when all it’s achieved is perpetuate the circulation of massive amounts of laundered money through the corrupt banking system, the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and given the government the monopoly of production and sale of such drugs?

10. How can converting society into a prison solve crimes such as drug smuggling, murder and corruption, when the government is the most significant perpetrator of these and other crimes?

11. Why do politicians around the world continue to surrender all power to the executive branch?

12. Why has changing the political party in power never changed the policies supported by government?

13. Why did large banks and corporations get bailed out in 2008 while the middle class and poor people around the world lost their jobs, homes and lives?

14. Why do bureaucrats believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?

15. Why do so many people believe the government bureaucrats can protect us all without harming our liberty?

16. Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?

17. Why do people throw their arms up and accept executive orders that allow a president to compile a kill list, to detain indefinitely and to murder citizens if he deems them enemies of the state?

18. Why do people believe that patriotism is equal to blindly believing and supporting anything that comes from government?

19. Why don’t people understand that real patriotism is all about challenging government when it is wrong?

20. Why did people give government a safe heaven to initiate violence against them and to hold the monopoly of force?

21. Why does the use of religion to oppress those with a different belief system go unchallenged?

22. Why is Democracy held in such a high esteem, when it is the enemy of the minority and the tyranny of the majority?

23. What is the explanation for the growing discontent with politicians and the political system?

24. Why do people have so much trust in government and little or not trust in themselves?

25. Why do people choose to believe in utopian outcomes such as the American Dream and the immoral use of force in their search for peace and liberty?

Only moral and honest answers to these questions can help society pick itself up from the scum hole it is in right now. Only the correct identification of the real causes of today’s generalized state of crisis will bring true solutions to help us solve the problems that immoral people and their government have so successfully created for the rest of society.

The Real Agenda encourages the sharing of its original content ONLY through the tools provided at the bottom of every article. Please DON’T copy articles from The Real Agenda and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Debt will Increase by $7 trillion in 10 Years

Sen. Rand Paul
August 2, 2011

Today Sen. Rand Paul issued an open letter on the subject of the debt ceiling compromise facing the Senate. Below is that letter.

United States Senator, Rand Paul

To paraphrase Senator Jim DeMint: When you’re speeding toward the edge of a cliff, you don’t set the cruise control. You stop the car. The current deal to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t stop us from going over the fiscal cliff. At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 mph to going over it at 60 mph.

This plan never balances. The President called for a “balanced approach.” But the American people are calling for a balanced budget.

This deal does nothing to fix the overreaches of both parties over the past few years: Obamacare, TARP, trillion-dollar wars, runaway entitlement spending. They are all cemented into place with this deal, and their legacy will be trillions of dollars in new debt.

The deal that is pending before us now:

• Adds at least $7 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years. The deal purports to “cut” $2.1 trillion, but the “cut” is from a baseline that adds $10 trillion to the debt. This deal, even if all targets are met and the Super Committee wields its mandate – results in a BEST case scenario of still adding more than $7 trillion more in debt over the next 10 years. That is sickening.
• Never, ever balances.
• The Super Committee’s mandate is to add $7 trillion in new debt. Let’s be clear: $2.1 trillion in reductions off a nearly $10 trillion,10-year debt is still more than $7 trillion in debt. The Super Committee limits the constitutional check of the filibuster by expediting passage of bills with a simple majority. The Super Committee is not precluded from any issue, therefore the filibuster could be rendered most. In addition, the plan harms the possible passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. Since the goal is never to balance, having the BBA as a “trigger” ensures that the committee will simply report its $1.2 trillion deficit reduction plan and never move to a BBA vote.
• It cuts too slowly. Even if you believe cutting $2.1 trillion out of $10 trillion is a good compromise, surely we can start cutting quickly, say $200 billion-$300 billion per year, right? Wrong. This plan so badly backloads the alleged savings that the cuts are simply meaningless. Why do we believe that the goal of $2.5 trillion over 10 years (that’s an average of $250 billion per year) will EVER be met if the first two years cuts are $20 billion and $50 billion. There is simply no path in this bill even to the meager savings they are alleging will take place.

Buried in the details of this bill is the automatic debt limit increase proposed a few weeks ago. The second installment of the debt ceiling increase is initiated by the President automatically and can only be stopped by a two-thirds vote of Congress. This shifts the Constitutional check on borrowing from Congress to the President and makes it easier to raise the debt ceiling. Despite claims to the contrary, none of the triggers in this bill include withholding the second limit increase.

Credit rating agencies have clearly stated the type of so-called cuts envisioned in this plan will result in our AAA bond rating being downgraded. Ironically then, the only way to avoid our debt being downgraded and the resulting economic problems that stem from that is for this bill to fail.

This plan does not solve our problem. Not even close. I cannot abide the destruction of our economy, therefore I vigorously oppose this deal and I urge my colleagues and the American people to do the same.

Sincerely,

Rand Paul, M.D.
United States Senator