Posted by bobjones68 on 01/22/10

Obama Justice Department Decapitates Gun Industry: FBI Arrest 21 Gun Industry Executives in Las Vegas to Attend Gun Show

Illinois Gun
Infowars.com
January 22, 2010

What's being touted as the largest single investigation and prosecution against individuals in the history of the Justice Department's enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act occurred Monday in Las Vegas.

The individuals arrested are executives and employees of military and law enforcement products companies that were in Las Vegas to attend the 2010 Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show (Shot show) and are charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The indictments allege that the defendants engaged in a scheme to pay bribes to the minister of defense for a country in Africa but the alleged sales agent was in reality an undercover FBI agent.

The defendants allegedly agreed to pay a 20 percent commission to a sales agent who the defendants believed represented the minister of defense of an African country in order to win a portion of a $15 million sale to outfit the country's presidential guard.

The Las Vegas Sun is reporting the names of those arrested and the location of their companies as being;

Daniel Alvirez and Lee Allen Tolleson, Bull Shoals, Ark., Helmie Ashiblie, Woodbridge, Va., Andrew Bigelow, Sarasota, Fla., R. Patrick Caldwell and Stephen Gerard Giordanella, Sunrise, Fla., Yochanan Cohen, San Francisco, Haim Geri, North Miami Beach, Fla., Amaro Goncalves, Springfield, Mass., John Gregory Godsey and Mark Frederick Morales, Decatur, Ga., Saul Mishkin, Aventura, Fla., John and Jeana Mushriqui, Upper Darby, Pa., David Painter and Lee Wares, United Kingdom, Pankesh Patel, United Kingdom, Ofer Paz, Israel, Israel Weisler and Michael Sachs, Stearns, Ky., and John Benson Wier III, St. Petersburg, Fla.

One name on the list, Amaro Goncalves is reported to be a vice-president of sales for Smith & Wesson (SWHC)

According to reports the arrest did not take place at the SHOT show but the FBI did use the show as an oportunity to bring all of the people together in one place for arrest.

Needless to say with the recent incident involving the BATFE and the Texas Gun Show, this action by the Justice Department and the FBI is causing concern and confusion for patroits and gun owners nation wide.

David Codrea of the Gun Rights Examiner is asking "why the mass arrests here and now"?

One of the main comments from bloggers is "what's wrong with paying a commission."

Since the election of Obama the main question for gun owners as been, "when will Obama come after the guns"?

It looks like that question has been answered!

Posted 01/23/10 Robyn Hamlin Saint Louis, MO

This will probably kick gun sales up again. The people in the USA are not going to give up their guns. The second amendment is not for hunting.

Posted 01/23/10 bobjones68 Schaumburg, IL

My fear is that this was a complete setup by the Feds in order to gain justification of a nation-wide ban on gun shows. Without the shows, how are the dealers going to get the hands-on feel for what's available, and what the buying public might want? While this article might not be as ominous as a report where the feds are going door to door confiscating arms, it still bodes ill knowing this administrations known, demonstrated anti-gun leanings. It might not signal the end of the 2nd Admentment, but I feel that it sets a dangerous precendent toward that goal - hence my decision to repost it here.

Posted 01/24/10 MichaelBarry Sebring, FL

This is typical of every fascist state. It begins with widespread intimidation. Even if the charges are dropped or if a jury fails to convict, who will want to be an executive in the firearms industry?

Posted by bobjones68 on 12/20/09

Supreme Court Guts Due Process Protection

Naked Capitalism
December 20, 2009

Anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person."

Reader Walter passed along this distressing sighting from Chris Floyd's blog. American civil liberties were gutted last week, and the media failed to take note of it.

The development? If the president or one of his subordinates declares someone to be an "enemy combatant" (the 21st century version of "enemy of the state") he is denied any protection of the law. So any trouble-maker (which means anyone) can be whisked away, incarcerated, tortured, "disappeared," you name it. Floyd's commentary:

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever - save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this horrid decision. The fact that the Supreme Court authorized this land grab says we no longer have an independent judiciary, that the Supreme Court itself is gutting the protections supposedly provided by the legal system. Per Floyd:

In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Now Floyd saw this mainly as an issue of the treatment of enemy combatants and Obama hypocrisy about torture, which is bad enough:

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of "national emergency." And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama - who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer - has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution....let's be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand - in court - that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities.

Yves here. The implications are FAR worse. Anyone can be stripped, with NO RECOURSE, of all their legal rights on a Presidential say so. Readers in the US no longer have any security under the law.

Roman citizens enjoyed a right to a trial, a right of appeal, and could not be tortured, whipped, or executed except if found guilty of treason, and anyone charged with treason could demand a trial in Rome. We have regressed more than 2000 years with this appalling ruling.

Posted by bobjones68 on 12/20/09

*****2010 Food Crisis for Dummies*****
by Eric deCarbonnel

If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn't mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless. There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.

Read the whole article here (warning -- quite long).

Posted 12/21/09 fadestyle Walnut Bottom, PA

all we can do is warn people and prepare. its on its way in a hurry. we may start to feel the pain by this spring.

Posted 12/21/09 bobjones68 Schaumburg, IL

I have been telling everyone I know about this and the SCOTUS decision to keep in place the decision that alleged state enemies/terrorists/enemy combatants are non-persons and therefore have NO rights. I see some very dark times ahead in the very near future.....

Posted by bobjones68 on 12/16/09

Shadowstats' John Williams: Prepare For The Hyperinflationary Great Depression
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/14/2009 14:32 -0500

John Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better known as Zimbabwe.

Williams does not mince his words:

Read the rest here..

Posted 12/16/09 fadestyle Walnut Bottom, PA

its on its way for sure. we will gain nothing by saying "i told you so" to all nay sayers.

Posted 12/17/09 bobjones68 Schaumburg, IL

It gives me no pleasure, only sadness, to say 'I told you so', and this will be no exception.

Posted by bobjones68 on 12/10/09

December 09, 2009
Moody's lowers Illinois bond rating
Ethel C. Fenig
In a shuddering preview of what's in store for the U.S., Moody's Investor Services lowered the state of Illinois' bond ratings on Tuesday reports Karen Pierog of Reuters.

Illinois's bond ratings are now the second lowest of all 50 states, trailing only the # 1 holder of this dubious honor--California. In practical terms this means Illinois will have to pay bondholders a higher interest rate to compensate for their higher risk.

Illinois, is the state where then State Senator Barack Obama (D) voted present as a state legislator, consistently voting for tax and spend policies. Then, he moved on to represent Illinois in Washington as Senator Obama where he continued to do the same before moving on to become president of the United States where he continues his pattern of tax and spend, consequences be damned.

He brings forth policies of spending our way out of the recession caused, of course, by his predecessor. His presidential predecessor, of course, had to deal with a Congress that was controlled by the party of the now president of which the now president was a member. And the now president voted present or agreed with all the budget busting legislation.

Got it?

Posted 12/10/09 Isomies Mechanicsville, VA

No state should have the authority to sell bonds. Neither should the federal government, that's one problem with the Constitution. Whereas a corporation which sells a bond has to sell goods and services to service its debt, governments service their debts by violently extracting it from the people. Nobody has the right to impose that kind of burden on others.

Posted 12/10/09 bobjones68 Schaumburg, IL

What this means to me is the following: Just as businesses in California are moving or closing down increasing the unemployment and decreasing the income to the point of state bankruptcy, those in Illinois are following suit. I anticipate that California will shortly field the idea of paying state employees and creditors in IOU's with Illinois being forced to do much the same thing. In short, these states (the most liberal in the country) are BROKE, and BANKRUPTCY is right around the courner. If state paid teachers, administrators, and emergency workers are offered to be paid in IOUs, I would expect them to walk out on strike -- and I wouldn't blame them in the least. With this potential coming on the heals of the Federal Govt talking of raising the debt ceiling an additional $1.8Trillion (http://www.infowars.com/dems-to-lift-debt-ceiling-by-1-8-trillion-fear-2010-bac klash/), an act that could very well cause massive public uprising, with no emergency forces available to prevent the possible looting, rioting, and violence, then the state Governors would have to resort to calling in the National Guard to quell the panic -- Martial Law in other words. If Martial Law is to be declared in the heaviest indebted states, I can pretty much guarantee that outright Civil War would break out.

Posted 12/10/09 fadestyle Walnut Bottom, PA

hmmm both crooked states

Posted 12/10/09 bobjones68 Schaumburg, IL

as well as the most liberal, with the largest numbers of illegal immigrants, and largest welfare loads ...

Posted 12/11/09 sjaye Chicago, IL

For the longest time, many seeked employment with state and federal government agencies based on perceived job security. The one good thing to come of this is that these days are gone! Now, nobody is figuring that being employed by state state of California, or by the state of Illinois is the path to job security- considering what is going on. Anyone that would invest their money in a state bond, especially from CA or IL, probably deserves to lose their money in the upcoming default.