Staff Sgt. Robert BalesMail.com

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) — An older brother of the U.S. soldier who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year is telling a military jury about what his sibling was like as a youth.

Bill Bales says Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was an outgoing youngster who served as his high school class president and captain of the football team in Norwood, Ohio, where they grew up. The elder Bales is the first defense witness in the case to determine if his brother should receive life in prison with the possibility of parole, or without it.   Continue reading “Brother testifies for defense in Afghan massacre”

Information Clearinghouse – by Jonathan Turley

While each new national-security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.   Continue reading “Ten Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free”

Housewives are introduced on Sunday as the newest members of the self-defense force in the southern Mexican town of Xaltianguis. EFEVida Latina

Mexico City, Aug 19 (EFE). — More than 100 women in the southern Mexican town of Xaltianguis have taken up arms to protect their community from organized crime groups, a local selfdefense force official said Monday.

The women signed up over the past four days with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero State, or UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez told reporters.   Continue reading “Over 100 women take up arms in Mexico to defend community”

Economics Voodoo

Continuing reports that banks are making it more difficult for their customers to remove their gold from the banking system, or a trading house getting its gold delivery as Germany faces a slight problem in its request to repatriate its gold being held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. There are also delivery problems of a different nature.

Recently I learned that a family member has been experiencing great, great difficulty in withdrawing their 401(k) funds for over a year now. I would like to share a few observations in case it helps to highlight the risks and issues with the 401(k) – worse yet, an unallocated 401(k) – that includes below, a notification and request for assistance in locating several individuals and why.   Continue reading “401(k)s: Delivery Problems of a Different Nature”

RT News

Reports by “biased regional media” about alleged chemical weapons use near Damascus might be “a provocation planned in advance,” says Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich.

“It draws attention to the fact that biased regional media have immediately, as if on command, begun an aggressive information attack, laying all the responsibility on the government,” Lukashevich said in a statement on Wednesday.    Continue reading “Russia suggests Syria ‘chemical attack’ carried out by rebels, provocation not ruled out”

backpack21n-5-webPat Dollard

Excerpted from Washington Times – Students in select areas of the country are heading back to school with the likes of bulletproof backpacks and whiteboards that also work as shields — even though some are calling it overkill.

“It may be well-intended but it’s not well thought-out,” said Ken Trump, a Cleveland-based school safety consultant who is also the father of young children, on NBC. “I would ask this question: If you need a bulletproof backpack, wouldn’t the child also need a bulletproof front pack and a helmet and a Captain America shield?”   Continue reading “Bulletproof Backpacks Sales Surge As Kids Head Back To School”

Photo: Wikimedia CommonsIntelliHub – by Andrew Freeman

Since the NSA scandal broke months ago the US government has been searching for excuses to justify their insane practices.

Despite the fact that the US government has never stopped a terrorist attack that they didn’t actually facilitate themselves, they have continued to insist that they have intercepted multiple terrorist plots.    Continue reading “False Flag Alert: U.S. intelligence Warns of Al Qaeda Train Attack”

U.S. soldier Bradley Manning is escorted into court to receive his sentence at Fort Meade in Maryland August 21, 2013. REUTERS-Kevin LamarqueReuters – by Ian Simpson

Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier convicted of the biggest breach of classified data in the nation’s history by providing files to Wikileaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday.

Judge Colonel Denise Lind, who last month convicted Manning of 20 charges including espionage and theft, could have sentenced him to as many as 90 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for 60 years.   Continue reading “U.S. soldier Manning gets 35-year prison sentence”

Aren’t the ‘Chosen Ones’ carrying this anti-Semitic thing a bit too far?

Sporting News

Looking for support to back his appeal against a positive drug test before the 2012 season, Ryan Braun told stars around baseball Dino Laurenzi Jr., the man who collected Braun’s urine sample, was anti-Semitic and a Chicago Cubs fan, sources told Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan.   Continue reading “Ryan Braun told other players the urine collector was anti-Semitic Cubs fan”

A woman jogs past the Remington Arms Company in Ilion, N.Y., in January 2013. Residents in this blue-collar stretch of the Mohawk Valley defended Remington after New York lawmakers banned the sale of semiautomatic assault-style rifles.Tennessean – by Getahn Ward

One of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers, Remington Arms, has looked at sites around Nashville for a potential corporate relocation or expansion that would likely include hundreds of manufacturing jobs.

The Madison, N.C.-based company, which is part of the nation’s largest firearms company and has its largest plant in Ilion, N.Y., has scouted sites near Nashville’s airport, Lebanon and in Clarksville, Tenn.   Continue reading “Remington Arms scouts Middle TN after N.Y. bans its rifle”

The Last Resistance – by Philip Hodges

They might as well remind parents that their kids don’t belong to them; they belong to the “community.”

When I was a little kid, some of my brothers and I went to a small Christian school, and my dad would drop us off on his way to work. He’d leave us at the curb, and a schoolteacher would make sure we got in safely. That’s what most parents did. But for some others, especially the parents of little kids, they’d park and walk them in themselves and make sure they got settled in their classroom before leaving. No one cared or thought anything about it.   Continue reading “Texas Schools To Parents: No More Walking Your Kids To Classrooms”

Improved RFID Technology in Smart Guns Threatens Second AmendmentThe New American – by Bob Adelmann

The development of RFID (radio frequency identification) chips (here shown next to a grain of rice) has advanced to the point where gun makers will shortly be offering “smart guns” for sale in the United States, according to Anthony Gucciardi, who has been watching the movement with increasing concern for years.

The advancement will allow the manufacturer and the federal government to “turn off” the firearm and render the weapon useless at any time, a tactic that will be used “to take away legal firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens,” according to Gucciardi.   Continue reading “Improved RFID Technology in Smart Guns Threatens Second Amendment”

The EU: Regionalization Trumps SovereigntyThe New American – by Alex Newman

It all began as a simple “Coal and Steel Community” between six European nations after World War II. The scheme was supposed to help prevent further war, or at least that is what its proponents claimed. In the decades since 1952, however, the first real supranational body has morphed into an emerging super-state that will eventually obliterate national sovereignty, and inevitably individual liberty, if left unchecked.   Continue reading “The EU: Regionalization Trumps Sovereignty”