Posted by Justin Kapacinskas on 12/12/10

Note: this is not a Campaign for Liberty sponsored event.

Complete details and RSVP/registration form are here: http://mises.org/events/142

Facebook event listing here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172441149443237

C4L event listing here: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/calendar.php?rsvp=11419

Speakers: Walter Block, Doug French, Jacob Huebert, Roderick Long, and Yuri Maltsev.

The Mises Circle takes place at the beautiful and historical Union League Club of Chicago. Registration is $85 and includes sessions, refreshment breaks, and lunch. Registration and bookstore open at 8:30 a.m., with the first session at 9:30 a.m., and the last session ending at 2:00 p.m. The bookstore will be open until 3:00 p.m. and speakers are happy to autograph books.

James W. Fogal CFP®, Director of Development for the Institute, is available during breaks and after adjournment to discuss charitable/tax saving strategies. Email him if you'd like to reserve a time.

For accommodations at the Union League Club, call them before March 18 at 312-427-7800 or 800-443-0578 and mention the Mises Institute for a special rate of $150 per night plus service charge.

Student scholarships are available. Complete the application and save it to your computer. Email the saved pdf along with a copy of your student ID, or fax to 734-448-8148. To receive e-mails about future events, please sign up here.

Posted by Justin Kapacinskas on 08/20/10

On September 3rd, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, there will be two events which you will not want to miss.

The first event is a "Seminar on Government Fiscal Responsibility" to be held at Columbia College. The description of the event is here. Seating is limited, so please RSVP for the event as described in the event listing to ensure your attendance.

The next event, later in the day, is a "Tea Party for Sound Money", which is just another name for an "End the Fed" rally and sidewalk march.

Both events are free and open to the public. I hope that you will join us.

Posted by Justin Kapacinskas on 02/04/10

I recently replied to a post on Naomi Wolf's Facebook wall. It was a link to a lengthy essay by leftist Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig.

My reply went something like this...

Mr. Lessig's collectivist soliloquy on what he envisions as "our democracy" would be humorous if it weren't so sad to read.

Someone of Mr. Lessig's stature (apparently a professor of law) should understand that the U.S. Constitution codified a republican form of government -- and not a democracy. In fact, I would challenge Mr. Lessig or anyone else to indicate where in this nation-state's founding documents the word "democracy" or any of its derivative forms are used.

Conspicuously absent from his tiresome screed is any mention of the consensus, belligerent, hyper-interventionist foreign policy of the twin wings of the War Party ruling us. No, the U.S. planetary empire, replete with 700+ military bases in some 130 countries, and tandem undeclared wars of occupation (with a third on the way) didn't make the cut for Mr. Lessig's discussion of "our democracy" -- despite the fact that the majority of Americans do not support our state mafia's aggressive wars and an even larger percentage are probably unaware of our expansive, permanent military presence around the world. Some "democracy".

Mr. Lessig's admonitions of what he calls the "Fundraising Congress" and what he theorizes to be the undue, corrupting influence of money on our elected representatives in the legislature ring hollow in my surmise. He bemoans an opportunity lost by the latest corporatist-frontman to "radically remake the American economy", but makes no mention of the transpartisan movement to audit the quasi-private cartel of banks which owns and operates a government-granted monopoly over the issuance of currency and credit -- the very "money", he decries that, according to him, is inexorably corrupting our politicians' actions (without, that is, Lessig's prescription for another Incumbent Protection Act and an associated amendment to the Constitution completely contrary to that document's original purpose).

He cites "the Fair Elections Now Act" as likely legislation which would bring about what he calls "[c]itizen-funded elections". Indeed the popularity of this kind of collectivist view in "progressive" circles and the president's nod to it during his recent SOTU address are cause for some concern and why I decided to post this entry.

The bill in question has 133 cosponsors in the House and 8 cosponsors in the Senate. It was introduced in the Senate by our own Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), who in recent memory correctly described banks as "frankly own[ing]" Congress. Yet, this particular Congressional-hypocrite cannot find it in his heart, despite the multitudinous appeals of his constituents, to cosponsor S 604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act, which would provide for a full and complete audit of the nation's money-transmogrifying outfit, show the American people which Wall Street firms, banks, and corporations have received perhaps some $23.7 TRILLION in taxpayer-backed "bailouts" and loans, and reveal the Fed's agreements with foreign central banks and foreign governments. It is no surprise then that Mr. Durbin is sponsoring the Incumbent Protection Act II, since 79% of the American people think that the Federal Reserve should be audited and Mr. Durbin doesn't necessarily agree.

Even if one were to accept Lessig's premise that a constitutional amendment is called for to extricate the perceived undue influence of big dollars in politics (he favors the States calling for a constitutional convention, while such an amendment has in fact been introduced in the House), what makes anyone believe that the government would adhere to such an amendment when the state mafia ruling us disregards virtually every and any codicil of the Constitution as it sees fit (see the Fourth Amendment and the exclusive power of Congress -- not the president -- described in Article I, Section 8 to "declare War" for an introduction on how the government ruling us treats the Constitution as if it were a blank piece of paper).

Lessig heralds a great need for "reform" in the federal government -- yet his version of reform is to be grafted onto a great Leviathan that attracts the undue influence of special interests (corporate or otherwise) precisely because it has endowed itself with undue powers not afforded to it by the Constitution. But this is of no consequence to Lessig and his hallucinogenic vision of "democracy". Instead he pretends that there is no cogent debate with regard to a government takeover of health care or theorized anthropogenic global warming -- and he contends that the fact that this particular globalist agenda has stalled is an indication of the need for "reform". He laments, in a sort of cloaked way, that the health-control bill in Congress is but a back-door bailout of insurance companies through, of course, the coercive force of government (alas, he doesn't mention that last little part).

I noticed that Lessig praises the "brilliance" of "the private sector", citing MIT as one example. I guess he didn't realize that MIT is a major player in the MIC (the military-industrial complex), raking in hundreds of millions each year in taxpayer-dollars through its role as contractor to the Department of "Defense".

Finally, Lessig quotes Keynesian High Priest Paul Krugman as calling the government "ominously dysfunctional". I disagree with Krugman (a real genius of an economist who was in favor of creating the "housing bubble", literally). I think that the tax-feeding state mafia ruling us is highly functional in infringing upon our rights, extorting from and shaking down the productive class, destroying property, and turning living human beings into corpses. Giving that rogue government more power to say who can and cannot be elected is a terrible idea.

Posted 02/13/10 madcubano1 Palatine, IL

Great reply Justin, you should see about getting it posted on Lewrockwell.com.

Posted by Justin Kapacinskas on 12/17/09

Tune into this Antiwar Radio podcast to hear a great discussion of this article with Scott Horton and William Norman Grigg. They also discuss Red-State Fascist Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

RAND Corporation Blueprint for Militarized "Stability Police Force"

Posted by William Grigg on December 10, 2009 05:08 PM

The RAND Corporation, one of the most fecund research arms of the Military-Industrial-Homeland Security Complex, has released a study entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Creating U.S. Capabilities.

The SPFOR (to use the inevitable acronym) would be a "hybrid" military/law enforcement unit created within the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) for use "in a range of tasks such as crowd and riot control, special weapons and tactics (SWAT), and investigations of organized criminal groups" - both abroad, in UN-directed multilateral military operations, and at home, as dictated by the needs of the Regime.

Initially as small as 2-6,000 personnel, the SPFOR's size "could be increased by augmenting it with additional federal, state, or local police from the United States" as necessary.

The RAND study, which was conducted for the U.S. Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, recommended using the Marshals Service rather than the US Army's Military Police  as host for the SPFOR in order to avoid conflicts with the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids (albeit in principle more than in practice) the domestic use of the military as a law enforcement body.

"The USMS hybrid option ... provides an important nondeployed mission for the force: augmenting state and local agencies, many of which currently suffer from severe personnel shortages," states the report without explaining how the SPFOR could at once "augment" those under-manned agencies while at the same time being "augmented" by them if necessary.

[...]

Continued here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/44590.html

Posted 12/17/09 philprism Colchester, United Kingdom

From Wikipedia Santayana's Law of Repetitive Consequences - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Schutzstaffel (German for "Protective Echelon") ----------------------------------------------- Abbreviated SS- or Runic "SS" (Runic)- was a major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The SS grew from a small paramilitary unit to a powerful force that served as the Führer's "Praetorian Guard," the Nazi Party's "Shield Squadron" and a force that, fielding almost a million men (both on the front lines and as political police), managed to exert as much political influence in the Third Reich as the Wehrmacht, Germany's regular armed forces. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS, under Heinrich Himmler's command, was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, and most of the severest of those crimes. The SS was formed in 1925 as a personal guard unit for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, ("Die Schutz-Staffel der NSDAP" [Shield Squadron of the NSDAP]). Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler between 1929 and 1945, the SS grew from a small paramilitary formation to become one of the largest and most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany.[1][2][3] The first leader of the SS was a journalist named Berchtold from the Nazi party newspaper "People's Observer" (Völkischer Beobachter). Berchtold was then replaced by Erhard Heiden.[4] Merger with police forces ------------------------- As the Nazi party monopolized political power in Germany, key government functions such as law enforcement were absorbed into the SS, while many SS organizations became the de facto government agencies. To maintain the political power and security of the Nazi party, the SS established and ran the Sicherheitsdienst or SD (the party security and intelligence service) and took over the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), the state secret police. These actions effectively put the SS above the law. Death squads ------------ To save ammunition, the SS executioners, under the supervision of people such as Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, used one bullet to kill a victim. The killers would attempt to kill mothers with small children, also with a single shot, by shooting the child first with the bullet passing through child's body and into the mother's.[19] Main article: Einsatzgruppen The Einsatzgruppen were special units of the SS that were formed on an 'as-needed' basis under the authority of the Sicherheitspolizei and later the RSHA, whose commander was Heydrich. The first Einsatzgruppen were created in 1938 for use during the Anschluss of Austria and again in 1939 for the annexation of Czechoslovakia. The original purpose of the Einsatzgruppen was to 'enter occupied areas, seize vital records, and neutralize potential threats'. In Austria and Czechoslovakia, the activities of the Einsatzgruppen were mainly limited to Nazification of local governments and assistance with the establishment of new concentration camps. ### Wither flies America, the land I once knew That soul is departing that soul so true It flies from the darkness that comes in this hour The storm comes closer to place us in its power Farewell then to the light you pass Perhaps you'll return when the storm has passed

Posted 12/17/09 ChrisW San Tan Valley, AZ

It's a scary read. Just why would we need a paramilitary organization for use domestically? I would like to know who and when this was commissioned.

Posted 12/18/09 ScottXS Hoffman Estates, IL

The state's own national guard is suppose to act in disasters like Katrina. Then the federal "Homeland Security" got involved in that. So I can see the need for the feds having a specificaly federal Praetorian Guard for things like G20 meetings, medical-pot farms, and gun stores in states excercising nullification.

Posted 12/18/09 MichaelBarry Sebring, FL

"They also discuss Red-State Fascist Sheriff Joe Arpaio." (?)

Posted by Justin Kapacinskas on 11/11/09
Last updated 11/11/09

Courtesy of Brasscheck TV:
 

It seems like in the years leading up to whatever it was that happened at Fort Hood on November 5th, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was one busy guy. He made it a point to attend a mosque run by a notorious, high profile imam with an overtly anti-American philosophy.
 
He encouraged soldiers to desert.
 
He was loud and outspoken about his opposition to the war.
 
We're not talking some obscure immigrant just off the boat working at a gas station in Bayonne. NJ. This was a freakin' major in the US army...in wartime...who was given the job of providing psychiatric counseling to troops.
 
Did the Army have a problem with any this?
 
No, not at all.
 
The Army is a liberal institution in the best sense of that word and encourages a wide diversity of opinion on its policies. Live and let live. Every man is entitled to his own opinion, right?
 
Any readers ever been in the armed forces? How long do you think you'd have lasted if you carried on this way? For example, can you imagine a Marine walking around base, spouting Marxism and quoting Lenin at the height of the Cold War being given a top security clearance?
 
Ridicu... Ooops. I just described Lee Harvey Oswald.
 
(Pay no attention to the foot high stacks of documents the CIA *still* refuses to release about him.) But hey, that's all "conspiracy" stuff and that's for kooks.
 
The US military has better things to do while it protects the country than keep tabs on a very publicly unbalanced officer who is very publicly against the war.
 
...On the other hand, if you're a *civilian* and not some nut in the making and you're interested in peace, watch out. The resources for keeping track of you are boundless.
 
Video:  http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/353.html

Posted 11/11/09 Savannah Liston Pecatonica , IL

Yes, isn't it funny that they couldn't give records of Hasan's communications to the CIA because it might have violated the 1st Amendment, and yet they do that all the time with civilians? Don't lie to me--they have no qualms about violating the 1st Amendment. Why is it that they always "miss" these people before they actually do something? Hm...I wonder.

Posted 11/11/09 bobjones68 Schaumburg, IL

Savannah, My personal opinion is that the Ft Hood incedent will be used to drum up support for the wars already in Iraq and Afganistan, and for future war in Iran. Maybe I'm just being overly paranoid here, but thats how I see it shaping up.