http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/07/03/mark-twain-americas-spirit-of-independence-day/
Mark Twain – America’s Spirit of Independence Day
America’s greatest truth teller and spirit of Independence Day was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) whose fierce independence and homespun humor personified the true American spirit before it was eventually diminished by greed, lies, unjust wars and apathy
by Allen L Roland
- Born: November 30, 1835 (with Halley’s Comet)
- Died: April 21, 1910 (also with Halley’s Comet…Twain predicted that his own death would occur with the return of the comet)
- Nationality: American
- Education: Very little, other than self-education in a library
- Occupation: Printer’s apprentice, typesetter, printer, steam boat pilot, miner, actor, author, humorist, inventor
- Interests/Hobbies: Cats, dogs, gadgets, parapsychology, science, travel and pundit on all things American.
“The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.” Mark Twain
Here are a few of my favorite Twain quotes;
On Patriotism ~
Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.
On Love ~
The heart is the real Fountain of Youth. — Notebook, 1898
When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.– Notebook, 1898
The heart is the real Fountain of Youth. — Notebook, 1898
Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes none knows whence and cannot explain itself.– Eve’s Diary
On Education and the wonder of Discovery
Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned. — Notebook, 1898
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea ~ to discover a great thought. — Innocents Abroad
( Note that this was exactly what I felt when I walked into a precognitive vision of the Golden Gate bridge from Fort Mason, San Francisco in 1987~ a vision that I originally had at 6 years old while living in New England ~ and KNEW in that instant that I was in a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness that existed beyond time and space and my task was to own it with the world )
On Congress
CONGRESS: The only “Distinctly Native American Criminal Class”. — from The Devil’s Dictionary
“No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”– The Gilded Age
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. —Following The Equator
On War
“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.” …The Mysterious Stranger
By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed. — Notebook, 1902
“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out … and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel …. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man” ~ with his mouth”
On Nature
Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. — Roughing It
But it was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that revealed the childlike wondrous heart that existed within Mark Twain as well as his profound connection to nature ~ and his words touched the innocent and adventurous hearts of millions, including myself, who also sensed the miracles that Tom Sawyer witnessed ~ “It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation ~ Gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy ~ All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.” Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Here’s the trailer for the original Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1938 ~ two minute video
Now Journey to Arrow Rock Missouri for an old fashioned 4th of July celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the filming of the Hollywood classic, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. Actors Johnny Whitaker and Jeff East recall what it was like to play Tom and Huck in the great outdoors of central Missouri. Uploaded on Jun 30, 2010 / 3 minute video
Happy Independence day but as Mark Twain wrote ~ The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it — Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The desert of the real.........
Documents Expose Predator Drones Spying Extensively in U.S.
Predator drones used by multiple agencies in domestic airspace could be armed.
Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
July 4, 2013
Infowars.com
July 4, 2013
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is now lending Predator drones to a wide range of federal, state, and local agencies for domestic surveillance and possible “non-lethal” strikes, according to federal documents released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The FBI, the U.S. Marshals and even the Texas Department of Public Safetyhave used CBP Predator drones in U.S. airspace. In 2010, CBP reported that future drone payloads could include“non-lethal weapons designed to immobilize targets of interest.”
The new documents expose the wide extent of domestic drone use. The EFF released the documents after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
CBP drone use by other agencies has increased over eight times from 2010 to 2012.
By 2016, CBP wants airborne drones in domestic airspace 24 hours a day, seven days a week to ensure a “layered security strategy.”
Predator drone mission data can be fused into an information sharing center for federal, state, and local agencies across the country.
This drone data center would operate like current Homeland Security fusion centers which have violated Americans’ civil liberties and privacy according to a two-year Senate investigation.
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone, perhaps the most well-known unmanned aerial vehicle, is extensively used overseas by the U.S. Air Force and the CIA for armed drone strikes.
According to Policymic, in a four-year period drone strikes killed at least 800 innocent people in addition to 22 “suspected terrorists,” a civilian kill ratio of at least 36 to 1. Pakistani sources have claimed an even higher civilian kill ratio of 50 to 1.
Bryant saw drone strikes kill people through a computer screen half-way across the world.
This method of killing is no doubt dehumanizing. Men, women, and children are reduced to pixelated targets for drone operators who grew up in arcades.
Near the end of his career, Bryant received a past mission “score card” showing over 1,600 deaths.
Bryant said he can still see the blood and gore when he closes his eyes. Doctors have diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Only time will tell when Predator drones will be used to kill Americans on U.S. soil, unless they have done so already.
Source Documents:
Cops Draw Guns on Female College Student for Purchasing 12-pack of LaCroix Water
Modern policing! Public safety! No amount of snarky irony can prepare you for this tale of police idiocy in the name of the most minor and absurd of laws, reported in Daily Progress out of Virginia:
When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.
That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.
http://www.infowars.com/fbi-sued-over-secretive-facial-recognition-program/
FBI sued over secretive facial recognition program
RT
June 28, 2013
June 28, 2013
Soon the FBI will be done building a database containing the photographs, fingerprints and other biometric data for millions of Americans, but the agency has been far from forthcoming with the details. A new lawsuit filed this week aims to change that.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights group based out of California, sued the United States Department of Justice this week for failing to comply with multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed last year by the EFF.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation received no fewer than three FOIA requests from the EFF last year for details about its state-of-the-art Next Generation Identification program, or NGI, a system that will store personally-identifiable data for millions of Americans and foreign nationals to act as what the FBI has called a “bigger, faster and better” version of what law enforcement already uses. But while the bureau has indeed already been using fingerprint information to track down potential terrorists and troublemakers for years, the EFF’s main concern revolves around what sort of space-age face recognition abilities NGI will be able to employ.
The FBI previously acknowledged that NGI will “house multimodal biometrics records like palm prints and iris scans” in one master system, as well as facial imaging information and intelligence about scars, marks and tattoos. Eventually, the agency said, it hopes to incorporate technology to track down people using only their voice. For now, though, the EFF is interested in what the facial recognition infrastructure will be able to do, and is demanding the FBI fesses up.
“NGI will change almost everything about how the FBI treats photograph submissions,” the complaint filed this week reads. Citing government documents, the EFF says that the system will allow “the increased capacity to retain photographic images, additional opportunities for agencies to submit photographic images and additional search capabilities, including automated searches.”
“The proposed new system would also allow law enforcement ‘to collect and retain other images (such as those obtained from crime scene security cameras’ and from family and friends) and would allow submission of ‘civil photographs along with civil fingerprint submissions that were collected for noncriminal purposes,’” the EFF continues.
When all is said and done, the FBI will be able to use NGI to scan millions of entries in a single database to find someone based off of a single photograph, and the EFF fears that could send things down a slippery slope.
- A D V E R T I S E M E N T
“Governmental use of face recognition — and the potential for misuse — raises many privacy concerns,” the EFF says in the lawsuit.
Using statements already made by the FBI about the program, the EFF presents an argument about why they should be worried that’s hard to counter.
“The FBI has also stated in a public presentation given at a national biometrics conference that it wants to use its facial recognition system to ‘identify unknown persons of interest from images’ and ‘identify subjects in public datasets,’” the complaint continues. “In the same presentation, the FBI included a graphic image that implied the Bureau wanted to use facial recognition to be able to track people from one political rally to another.”
Another digital watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, previously alleged that NGI system could be integrated with other surveillance technology in order to enable “real-time image-matching of live feeds from CCTV surveillance cameras.”
Obtaining information about how the FBI will manage and operate this information has been a priority for the EFF for over a year now, and the failure to comply with those FOIA requests has finally prompted the organization to ask a court to intervene.
“NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes,” EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch said in a statement this week. “Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy. Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote and mass capture of their images.”
The EFF is asking the court to enforce the FOIA requests sent last June and July, which could compel the FBI to disclose information about the face-recognition program and any plans to merge civilian and criminal records in a single database. They are also asking for the total number of face-recognition capable records currently in the database and an assessment of what number the agency expects to have when it rolls out the program in 2014.
“Before the federal government decides to expand its surveillance powers, there needs to be a public debate,” Lynch said. “But there can be no public debate until the details of the program are presented to the public.”
In a July 18, 2012 assessment, the FBI reported that the program was “on scope, on schedule, on cost and 60 percent deployed.” The program is being put together by contractors Lockheed Martin, who are expected to rake in $1 billion from the government by the time the NGI system is finally up and running.
The FBI previously admitted that they found 7,380 records that were “potentially responsive” to one of the EFF’s request, but has yet to deliver actual information pursuant to any of the three FOIA submissions filed, prompting the nonprofit to allege the FBI is “dragging its feet.”
“FBI has not explained to the public how NGI or IAFIS’s system design would ensure that civil submissions are not ‘tainted’ by criminal submissions or explained why it is necessary to combine the two types of data,” the EFF wrote in the complaint.
“Breaking the Set:” Bush & Cheney Knew About 9/11 Months Before It Happened
“Breaking the Set:” Bush & Cheney Knew About 9/11 Months Before It Happened Says Whistleblower Charged Under Patriot Act (Video)
By Susan Lindauer
Abby Martin is one of the best interviewers I have ever encountered in the corporate media. Abby has guts and smarts. Our interview on “Breaking the Set” was ground-breaking for not flinching from hard questions or provocative answers!
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