From the Trenches World Report

Mint Press News – by Max Ocean

Over 65 tech companies, open Internet advocates and other organizations released two open letters to negotiators of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Wednesday, expressing their concern that the trade deal’s approval will force websites to censor content and block Internet users.

Spearheaded by the United States, the TPP––dubbed a “free trade” deal––includes twelve of the world’s most economically-prosperous countries that cumulatively account for 40 percent of the global economy. With the possibility of wide-reaching effects on everything from Internet freedom to the prices of medicine in developing countries, critics have slammed it as a “corporate coup d’etat” and “NAFTA on steroids.” Although the text of the deal has not been seen in its entirety by anyone outside of the negotiations, a draft version of the intellectual property rights section of the deal was released last November by WikiLeaks, and Internet rights groups have voiced their opposition ever since.   Continue reading “Digital Rights Groups Warn TPP Will Force ‘Policing’ Of Internet Users”

Weed Activist

It happens to the best of us. One minute you are just kicking it with this seemingly cool person, and the next minute you realize they are really a snake. It is a tough pill to swallow.

First there is a sense of disbelief. You can’t believe your one time friend could actually be a down and dirty low-life snake in the grass. It can’t be, can it? Could this person, or group of people, who you trusted and admired sold you out for some financial compensation and fancy trinkets? Have you been lied to this whole time? Do ethics and morality mean nothing?   Continue reading “What to do when you are friends with snakes”

Fox News

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly claimed that it has the authority to unilaterally garnish the wages of individuals who have been accused of violating its rules.

According to The Washington Times, the agency announced the plan to enhance its purview last week in a notice in the Federal Register. The notice claimed that federal law allows the EPA to “garnish non-Federal wages to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed the United States without first obtaining a court order.”    Continue reading “EPA claims it has the power to garnish wages without court approval”

Police State USA

HENDERSON, NV — Police forcibly commandeered homes from two innocent families because they wanted to use the properties to surveil a neighbor. After their plan was denied by phone request, police conspired and executed a plan to break into the homes and arrest the innocent homeowners, a lawsuit reveals.

The incident took place on July 10th, 2011.  The Henderson Police Department (HPD) was issued a complaint about suspected domestic violence.  Police decided that they wanted use two neighboring houses to observe the suspect. In conjunction with the North Las Vegas Police Department (NLVPD), officers devised a plan to commandeer the home of Anthony Mitchell, as well as the home of his parents, Michael and Linda Mitchell — both living adjacent to the suspect.  Each of them were innocent and uninvolved in the suspected crime.   Continue reading “Two homes forcibly commandeered by police, innocent homeowners arrested”

Your Crazy Uncle Bubba

KOB 4 News – by Ryan Luby

New Mexico’s largest police department, mired in controversy over the use of excessive force, is about to supply military-style weapons to officers using taxpayer money.

The investigative team at KOB Eyewitness News 4 learned that Albuquerque Police awarded a bid to a local vendor for the purchase of AR-15 rifles — the type of gun used to kill James Boyd in the foothills in March.   Continue reading “Arizona Police Department to buy 350-plus AR-15 rifles”

Huffington Post – by David McCabe

The State Department awarded more than a billion dollars in funding to the security firm Blackwater and its later incarnations even after one of the company’s top officials allegedly threatened a government investigator’s life, a review by The Huffington Post has shown.

The New York Times revealed last week that the State Department’s chief investigator reported being threatened by a Blackwater official in Iraq in August 2007. The investigator said project manager Daniel Carroll told him “that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.”    Continue reading “State Department Awarded Blackwater More Than $1 Billion After Threat On Investigator’s Life”

The Heritage Foundation – by Evan Bernick and Paul Larkin

Brandy Berning spent the night in a Florida jail because she used a cell phone to film a traffic stop on I-95.[1] George Thompson of Fall River, Massachusetts, claimed that he was verbally abused, arrested, and locked up overnight for filming a profane police officer with a cell phone from his front porch. The officer was across the street in full view and within earshot of anyone who happened to be passing by his home.[2]Most recently, Florida police arrested and charged Lazaro Estrada with obstruction of justice for peacefully filming an arrest with his cell phone on a public street.[3]   Continue reading “Filming the Watchmen: Why the First Amendment Protects Your Right to Film the Police in Public Places”

AZ Central – by Megan Cassidy

A Phoenix man is suing a Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputy after he says the deputy collided with his truck and then handcuffed the plaintiff when he tried to write down the deputy’s license-plate number.

Detective Steve Chervenak denies the allegations of assault, false imprisonment and civil-rights violations, and instead claims the driver was combative, forcing Chervenak to detain him for safety concerns. The case is making its way through federal court.   Continue reading “Suit: Deputy caused crash, handcuffed other driver”

Breitbart – by DANIEL NUSSBAUM

FONTANA, CA — Breitbart News has learned that 46 illegal aliens, mostly women and children originally destined for the U.S. Border Patrol station in Murrieta, CA, were bused instead Thursday to the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Fontana, roughly 45 miles north. The 46 are among several hundred Central Americans who were caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and have been transferred to California since.   Continue reading “46 Illegal Aliens Bused to Church in Fontana for Release”

Tom Dispatch – by Rebecca Gordon

Once upon a time, if a character on TV or in a movie tortured someone, it was a sure sign that he was a bad guy. Now, the torturers are the all-American heroes. From 24 to Zero Dark Thirty, it’s been the good guys who wielded the pliers and the waterboards. We’re not only living in a post-9/11 world, we’re stuck with Jack Bauer in the 25th hour.

In 2002, Cofer Black, the former Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, told a Senate committee, “All I want to say is that there was ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off.” He wanted them to understand that Americans now live in a changed world, where, from the point of view of the national security state, anything goes. It was, as he and various top officials in the Bush administration saw it, a dangerous place in which terrorists might be lurking in any airport security line and who knew where else.   Continue reading “The 25th Hour – Still Living With Jack Bauer in a Terrified New American World”

Lew Rockwell – by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The classical argument in favor of free immigration runs as follows: Other things being equal, businesses go to low-wage areas, and labor moves to high-wage areas, thus affecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital. An influx of migrants into a given-sized high-wage area will lower nominal wage rates. However, it will not lower real wage rates if the population is below its optimum size. To the contrary, if this is the case, the produced output will increase over-proportionally, and real incomes will actually rise. Thus, restrictions on immigration will harm the protected domestic workers qua consumers more than they gain qua producers. Moreover, immigration restrictions will increase the “flight” of capital abroad (the export of capital which otherwise might have stayed), still causing an equalization of wage rates (although somewhat more slowly), but leading to a less than optimal allocation of capital, thereby harming world living standards all-around.   Continue reading “On Free Immigration and Forced Integration”

Yahoo News – by Steve Holland

AUSTIN Texas (Reuters) – President Barack Obama may look back on this week as the time when he dropped all pretense of political decorum and let all his frustrations with Washington gridlock spill forth.

Obama’s public speeches on a three-day trip, like the one he delivered at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, covered many of the same talking points he delivers at Democratic fund-raising events.   Continue reading “Obama lets rip on trip out of Washington”