Changes to LibertyBlitzkrieg.com

First and foremost, I want to express my most sincere gratitude to everyone who has frequented my site and supported it since its launch only five months ago.  Without you, this site would be nothing and I want to make it clear how much I value your readership, commentary and passion.

When I first started this experiment back in April as a simple free wordpress.com blog, I didn’t know when or if it would ever get to the point that I wanted to take things to the next level. However, because of all of you out there I am moving forward much sooner than expected.

Moving away from wordpress.com to my own server allows me the flexibility to be far more creative with the site.  At the same time, I want to make the transition as painless as possible for everyone so I tried to make things look as similar as possible.  All of the content is exactly where it was before.  The only main difference is there are some ads on the left sidebar and there is also a “Donate via Bitcoin” page on the main menu below the main image.

Besides these changes, there are a few things everyone needs to be aware of.  Current subscribers to the blog need to pay particular attention.  If you have signed up to receive posts using your email address I have been informed that you will be automatically transitioned to the new site.  That said, if time goes by and you are not receiving emails I ask that you go and sign up again.

Unfortunately, those of you that are subscribed through your own WordPress blogs, Gravatar, etc will have to sign up again.  There is simply no way to transition automatically.  I apologize for any convenience this may cause.

As far as comments, I am also unable to transfer authorization status so those of you that are already authorized to comment will have to be authorized again.  Comments are a really important part of the blog so I definitely encourage all of you to continue to make the site as interactive as possible.

As with any transition, I assume there will be other hiccups along the way that I have not anticipated and I would ask that you please bear with me in the process.  If you notice anything that is off, please send me a note and let me know.

At the end of the day, I want to have the flexibility to  grow the site in all sorts of potential directions and migrating onto my own server is the best way to do this.  Once again, I want to thank you all for coming on this journey with me and let’s continue to fight the good fight together!

In Liberty,
Mike

Guess What? The Feds Claim Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking is Legal

Cell phones are tracking devices that make phone calls.
– Jacob Applebaum in this excellent article titled Leave Your Cell Phone at Home

So a recent article from Wired is interesting in that it is an offshoot from the recent judicial ruling that deemed it unconstitutional for police to place a GPS tracking device on someone’s car without a warrant.  The Feds weren’t too pleased with that decision so what have they decided to do?  They have decided to say that they don’t even need to use the GPS device because your cell phone can simply be used to monitor everywhere you go and clearly they don’t need a warrant for that.  Why?  Well…

The Obama administration told a federal court Tuesday that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in cellphone location data, and hence the authorities may obtain documents detailing a person’s movements from wireless carriers without a probable-cause warrant.

“Defendant’s motion to suppress cell-site location records cannot succeed under any theory. To begin with, no reasonable expectation of privacy exists in the routine business records obtained from the wireless carrier in this case, both because they are third-party records and because in any event the cell-site location information obtained here is too imprecise to place a wireless phone inside a constitutionally protected space,” the administration wrote the federal judge presiding over the Jones re-trial.

I mean this is just absurd.  Sorry, but of course I assume that some government thug doesn’t have the right to track everywhere I go via my cell phone.  The fact that the administration is making this argument seem reasonable just goes to show you how far down the path to tyranny we have gone.  Seriously guys, is it really that hard to just get a warrant?

Read the full wired article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

My First Interview with GoldMoney.com

I had the pleasure to record an interview earlier this week with GoldMoney.com’s Alasdair MacLeod.  We talk gold, silver, bitcoin and the two paths humanity can take going forward.  Either toward a centralized, police state gulag or a decentralized, free and open society.  The choice is ours.  Have a listen!

My Trip to Kingsbridge Road

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.
– Isaac Newton

A brave man dies once, a coward a thousand times.
-African Proverb

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
-Albert Camus

A Chance Encounter with William A. Weber
In early February of this year, I was having a brutal day in the markets and, as I often do on such occasions, I stepped outside for a moment to get some fresh air and collect my thoughts.  Within moments along came an old man with a walker and a kind disposition.  I had noticed him around before, but we had never exchanged more than a friendly smile and a quick hello.  I am not always the most talkative person in the world when I don’t know someone (particularly if I am in a bad mood); however, for some reason I felt compelled to spark a conversation with this old man and he was more than happy to oblige.

I realized pretty quickly that I had come across someone special.  From the moment he started talking there was a light that shone from his eyes and an energy that radiated from his being that was simply unmistakable.  His name is William Weber, and as he described it, “I am 93 years young.”  He told me a little about his life.  He started off by telling me how he has worked at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1946.  It was also in 1946 that he founded the University’s Herbarium.  Rather quickly, our conversation progressed into his background.  Like me he was born in New York City.  The only difference is he was born exactly 60 years before me, in 1918.  He told me about his days in The Kingsbridge Road section of the Bronx.  He then mentioned that he has been trying to find someone to take pictures of all the childhood places of his youth.  Coincidentally, I was set to travel to NYC the following week and so I volunteered to make the trip and take the photos for him.

My Trip to Kingsbridge Road
The first step was to get a list of the destinations.  He emailed me them rather quickly, and I must admit, I was a bit overwhelmed.  The list was longer than I thought, but the first item on the list immediately drew me in.  It was Edgar Allen Poe’s cottage, which William wrote “was a favorite place for me to visit, because of the raven that sat on the mantelpiece.”

As for me, I grew up in Midtown Manhattan.  My parents still live in the apartment I grew up in.  I went to high school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, which is a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in the northern section of the borough, nothing like what you would imagine an area of New York City to look like.  Let’s just say my familiarity with Kingsbridge Road was limited.

The Sunday afternoon that I decided to take the subway ride to Kingsbridge Road was cool and clear.  I debated whether or not it would be a good idea to bring my Nixon D90 SLR camera or not.  In the end, I decided to take it and if I felt unsafe I would just leave it in the carrying bag and take the pictures with my iPhone.  The subway ride felt pretty normal at first.  It was the same train you would take to go to Yankee Stadium.  However, as the stations passed by the crowd started to change as did the entire energy in the cars.  Gone were the last of the yuppies with the carefree looks on their faces.  In came the serious faces, the faces of people with serious problems.  People that have to scramble each and every day of their lives to survive.  The clothing was generally worn and cheap and the conversations I overheard were cryptic and heavy.

Once I got off the train I attempted to orient myself in what seemed like a strange land despite it being the city of my birth.  I quickly realized it would not be a great idea to take out my large camera and wear it around my neck everywhere.  This isn’t a popular tourist destination.  Once I was able to get my bearings, I started walking over to the Edgar Allen Poe cottage.  It was right along the Grand Concourse, which is a major thoroughfare.  I really started to grasp that the area I was in wasn’t as safe as the areas I normally frequent when I noticed the door was locked.  A few moments after ringing the bell a timid, gentle British man opened up the door and rushed me in.  He locked it back up behind me.  This was about 2pm.

The cottage tour was fun but I had places to go.  This is where things started getting a little tricky.  To get to the apartment he grew up in, the public school that he attended and the homes of relatives he wanted me to photo, I had to go into the heart of some neighborhoods rather than just hang around on near the main road.  Here, the streets weren’t crowded at all.  More importantly, there was a general heaviness that permeated the air.  In the neighborhoods I normally frequent, whether here in Colorado or in NYC, there is a general vibrancy to everyday life that emanates from the surroundings.  There was none of that apparent here.  People seemed beaten down and hopeless.  It was palpable and very depressing.  One other thing that stood out was the fact that there seemed to be brand new cars everywhere.  It seemed completely out of place with everything else I witnessed in the environment.  At first I wondered whether it was related to illicit activities, but I have since realized it is probably just a manifestation of all the subprime auto loans going around.

The rest of my journey went off without a hitch.  I was able to find and photograph pretty much every place he requested.  As it got later in the day, I recall really wanting to get out of there as soon as possible.  Particularly as the sun starting to grow lower on the horizon.  I felt really awful about what I had witnessed.  It wasn’t the material aspects of the neighborhood that affected me.  It was the depressed energy of the community.  It felt very third world.  It was extremely sad.

As I waited on the subway platform for my train home, I remember it seemed to take forever for it to arrive.  Once I got on and started back home I recall a huge sigh of relief.  What really got me though was exiting the subway station at Grand Central Station.  Walking out into the street with the gleaming Chrysler building shooting skyward made me feel a massive sense of wealth as well as modernity’s inescapable presence.  The contrast absolutely blew my mind, yet the place I had just been was only ten miles away and in the same city.  The city of my birth.  The city of William Weber’s birth.

Take the Journey for Yourself
I had considered writing about this journey several months ago, but I clearly never got around to it.  The reason that I decided to finally write about it was because I had the idea to recommend others take the same trip.  I know that many of my readers live in and around the NYC area, and so I request that you consider taking the time to retrace my steps one weekend.  I think you will find the thoughts and feelings that you experience on such a trip to be well worth it even if they aren’t the same as mine.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t dismiss taking the trip just because you have visited many “poorer” places.  So have I.  I have travelled extensively in Central and South America and my brother was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala.  When I visited him I stayed in his tiny village for a bit.  The key thing is that this is right in your backyard.  It’s a few hours.  Give it a shot.

I also would ask that those that do take the trip post their experiences in the comments section or send me an email.  I’d love to hear them.

So without further ado, here is the William Weber tour, in the words of the man himself:

My birthplace. When I was small, there was a hemlock forest in back of it. The Grand Concourse was the first street to the west. 2789 VALENTINE Ave. The apartment house where I was born, is on the west side of the street. 

Across the street from 2789 a small private house is sandwiched in between apartment houses. There is still a small garden plot in front which when I saw it some years ago, is now painted  red. One day when I was playing with Helen Wack, she accidentally pushed me off the stoop and I fell on my head on the concrete border. I got a depressed fracture which is still visible on my left forehead

The Edgar Allen Poe Cottage was a favorite place for me to visit, because of the raven that sat on the mantelpiece. It was or is at the junction of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse.

P. S. 46   was a few blocks south of my home. I believe it was on Briggs Avenue which parallels Valentine.

My aunt’s house was a private house with a front porch, at 2665 Briggs Avenue. Josie was my favorite aunt, and I spent a lot of time devouring the magazines of natural history on the bookshelves of her living room

My father was a pharmacist. He worked at Atkins Drug Store, which was on 199^th Street and Valentine. It had become a Latino food store when I last saw it.

Finally, here is a great story on William from a local paper that discusses how they have named the Herbarium after him.

Peace and Wisdom,
Mike

The Latest Banker Plan Would Fund Super-PACs to Sway Senate Races

The banker zombies are not content at having been bailed out at the expense of the living standards of all future generations of Americas. No.  In fact, they are fighting tooth and nail for the right to continue to steal more and more from the increasingly impoverished citizenry.

With the election right around the corner, this is what the banksters are up to now.  From a Bloomberg article:

A banking trade group is preparing to set up a political fund that would allow members to funnel money anonymously to pro-industry candidates in the final months of the U.S. election campaign.

The American Bankers Association board is set to vote tomorrow on a plan to create a nonprofit that would donate to super-political action committees, or super-PACs, that can spend unlimited amounts on TV ads and other campaign activities.

Note what that said above.  Bankers are setting up a non-profit to buy off politicians with anonymous donations.  Oh yeah, this is going to turn out well for us.  How are they able to do this?

A series of court decisions and regulatory changes in 2010 unraveled previous federal limits on political donations. The donors pool their money in nonprofits, which keep contributor names secret, and super-PACs, which have amassed $350 million through the end of July.

Also, just bear in mind the next time you read some nonsensical bankster apologist policy paper; think about how it got funded.  Also from Bloomberg:

In accord with federal rules, ABA staff members said that the fund would spend 51 percent of its money on “public-issue advocacy,” such as research, policy papers and media campaigns.

The bankers would like to thank you America.  If so many of you weren’t such ignorant, apathetic sheeple they never could have gotten away with the 2008 heist and everything they have done and continue to do to you since.  USA! USA!

Read the full article here.

Juice Rap News: Excellent and Entertaining Video on the Surveillance State

This is simply a great way to spend 5 minutes on another horribly boring day in the markets.

Meet Amber Lyon: Former Reporter Exposes Massive Censorship at CNN

I saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting.
– Amber Lyon

The Amber Lyon story is just the latest in a series of articles that expose the total Joseph Goebbels like censorship rampant in mainstream media today.  The first one I posted several weeks ago exposed how the NY Times basically just regurgitates whatever government officials tell them, while the other showcased how an NPR reporter covering D.C. had to leave and do her own thing out of frustration.  This is precisely why alternative media sites are taking off.  They provide the only outlets left for genuine journalism.

So back to Amber.  Back in March 2011, CNN sent a four person team to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring.  Once there, the crew was the subject of extreme intimidation amongst other things, but they were able to record some fantastic footage.  As Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian writes in his blockbuster article from today:

In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances. She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists. And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters. In sum, the early 2011 CNN segment on Bahrain presented one of the starkest reports to date of the brutal repression embraced by the US-backed regime.

Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary. Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision. To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi.

Having just returned from Bahrain, Lyon says she “saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting.”

After Lyon’s crew returned from Bahrain, CNN had no correspondents regularly reporting on the escalating violence. In emails to her producers and executives, Lyon repeatedly asked to return to Bahrain. Her requests were denied, and she was never sent back. She thus resorted to improvising coverage by interviewing activists via Skype in an attempt, she said, “to keep Bahrain in the news”.

In March 2012, Lyon was laid off from CNN as part of an unrelated move by the network to outsource its investigative documentaries.

“At this point,” Lyon said, “I look at those payments as dirty money to stay silent. I got into journalism to expose, not help conceal, wrongdoing, and I’m not willing to keep quiet about this any longer, even if it means I’ll lose those payments.”

Amber Lyons, I salute you.

Please forward this post to everyone you know.  I for one want to live in a country with some real and free press.  Not some CIA propaganda arm that pretends to be a reliable source of news.

Read Greenwald’s excellent article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

The Obama Administration is Officially Bragging About Cracking Down on Whistleblowing!

You’ve got to love our President.  In one his first official memos to federal agencies after his inauguration our Puppet in Chief wrote:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge.

Fast forward to 2012, and this is what Obama is officially bragging about on his own website!

The Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many cases under the Espionage Act as all other administrations combined.

Under the President, the Justice Department has prosecuted six cases regarding national security leaks.

Before he took office, federal prosecutors had used the Espionage Act in only three cases.

Read it here.

Never in my life have I come across a bigger pathological liar.  Change you can believe in!

OBaaaaahma

Mike

FBI Agent’s Laptop Hacked and Found to Contain Over 12 Million Apple User IDs

This is just lovely.  So apparently several hacker activist groups got into FBI agent Christopher Stangl’s laptop and found:

A list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.

What makes this story even better is that Mr. Stangl was the guy who posted a video in 2009 imploring Computer Science majors to join the FBI.  Makes sense.  I guess you need a lot of people to keep tabs on the sheeple’s communications 24/7.  Move along folks…nothing to see here.  Your government loves you.  Now go get on food stamps, watch some football and shut up.

Forbes covered this story and you can read the article here.

“It’s Time to Look Forward…” Deconstructing the Latest Orwellian Meme

As of late, I have noticed increased usage of the very dangerous and duplicitous meme “time to look forward.”  This is typically used as a rebuttal to someone questioning past crimes committed by the criminal elite and their henchmen.  The statement seems to work well on the sheeple, as in their minds this sounds reasonable.  That is always how the elite target the sheeple mind.  Say something that sounds good and assume they won’t think too much.  Unfortunately, it usually works.  I mean, why dwell on past mistakes when we have so much work to do to make for a better future!  Of course, this is completely ridiculous.  For one thing, the biggest threat to our future is a lack of confidence and the reason for the lack of confidence is the increasing realization that a criminal oligarchy runs America and is never held accountable for their crimes.  They have total immunity.  So who wants to invest in and participate in such a society?  No one, of course.

However, the meme is even more dangerous on a philosophical level.  By definition the moment after a crime is committed it is immediately “in the past.”  So not dwelling on the past and “looking toward the future” means that you can essentially excuse any crime you want forever.  Not only past crimes but also future crimes since as soon as a crime is committed it will be moved into the category of “the past.” See how these guys operate.  They love semantics to make people think their own servitude “seems reasonable.”  So my advice to everyone is that the minute you hear anyone in a position of power or influence utter this meme you know they are not to be trusted.

In any event, the reason I started thinking about this today is an article I read from Glenn Greenwald on the fact that Holder’s Department of Injustice has decided to give final immunity to all Bush era CIA torturers.  Although even back to June 30, 2011 Holder’s department had decided that in “more than 100 cases the justice department had reviewed, there would be no charges brought in any of them – except two.”

Well they have just decided not to bring charges on those two either, despite the fact that both detainees died in custody.  Here are some key points from the article:

This is so despite the findings of General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the torture regime and said that “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes” and “the only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” And it is done even in the face of General Barry McCaffrey’s extraordinary observation that:

“We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.”

The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer yesterday said:

“That the justice department will hold no one accountable for the killing of prisoners in CIA custody is nothing short of a scandal … the decision not to file charges against individuals who tortured prisoners to death is yet another entry in what is already a shameful record.”

Beyond the disgust that these events, on their own, should invoke in any decent person, there are two points worth making about all of this which really highlight just how odious all of it is.

First, Obama has shielded Bush torture crimes not only from criminal prosecution, but any and all forms of accountability. Obama himself vigorously opposed and succeeded in killing even a congressional investigation into the torture regime at a time when his party controlled both houses of Congress.

Moreover, notice how Obama’s stance changed as soon as he was elected:

During his 2008 campaign for president, Obama repeatedly vowed that, while he opposed “partisan witch-hunts”, he would instruct his attorney general to “immediately review” the evidence of criminality in these torture programs because “nobody is above the law.” Yet, almost immediately after winning the 2008 election, Obama, before he was even inaugurated, made clear that he was opposed to any such investigations, citing what he called “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.

This is the same line many apologists use to excuse the bankster bailouts.  I bet this defense wouldn’t work for you or me in a court would it?

So what is the main reason Obama isn’t going after anyone for this?  Well it’s simple really.  He doesn’t want to ever be called out for his own criminality.  As Charlie Savage noted in the NY Times:

Because every president eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor’s tenure.

This is America folks.  Time to wake up.

Read the full Greenwald article here.

In Liberty,
Mike