Bearing Bitter Fruit

It can be well argued that great American pastime is stating our various ideological conflicts. We are now in a situation where we are constantly in conflict over of what America should be, what it was, and what we truly are now. The condition of our country now is most definitely critical and yet there is only one thing that we can all agree on. There is one bipartisan issue where both the right and left can agree:

The government is wielding too much power.

However, rather than focusing on this one issue, the ideological battles continue between the conservative right and the liberal left. Both sides claim to be living in the same country, both pledge allegiance to the same flag, and both should understand that all of this is made possible by a foundation of law found in the same Constitution.

The problem begins with the fact that the two sides have been successfully divided by pundits using confirmation bias. Both sides have vastly different ideas on what the constitution means, they are fundamentally divided on issues pertaining to civil rights, privacy and justice.

These are the building blocks for what can be called a civil culture war, where discussions are heated, and the powerful surveillance and police state apparatus steps in to participate in government overreach, when citizens decide to rise up and declare their rights as they see them.

There is a war that is being waged now against Americans that still want to live the American dream, while being told that they have to be policed and jailed as a precaution against living in an American nightmare.

The United States – when it operates in a way that provides life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – has always professed that it has a moral center where all things revolve. It is argued what that center is. Many believe it is our faith in God, while others believe it is a mixture of both a belief in a creator and faith in a government that provides for the common defense of liberty and the general welfare of the people.

When the moral center is removed and there is no standard bearer to the law or to guarantees of security provided by faith and constitution, a deterioration into despotism becomes the norm and soon more and more citizens become victims of their own military and police forces.

The warning has gone out from the Ground Zero radio show about the overreach of government and how there will be a moment where we have to decide which side we are truly on. We now live in times where an overzealous police state is convincing Americans that potential threats need to be neutralized before they even happen, and what is even more insidious is that the media and the government has somehow convinced us that they have the power to profile a potential threat and then without a trial or due process eliminate that threat that they think is potentially dangerous.

In our world today we are being told that it is better to surrender privacy and that transparency is a state security threat. We also mistakenly believe that if the police are surrounding a suspect that he or she must be guilty. If the suspect decides to fight back or take a stand, it is punishable by death no matter who is right or wrong.

In the world today, the police state is always right and there are plenty of citizens that will support that notion.

Many years ago the idea of “just following orders” was never a good defense with regard to any criminal activity that has been ordered in a police or military situation. Now it is basically the only defense that benefits. It doesn’t benefit the victim, it benefits the government and it also benefits the police state.

The police state has created, on behalf of our President, a judicial execution list that is secretly used to kill perceived enemies of the state for the benefit of all. We are told that the list is limited only to terrorists an perceived or potential enemies of the state. However, the list continues to grow and more and more intriguing stories of brutality and needless killings of American citizens have now graced the mainstream news.

It used to be that talk show hosts and news programs could argue cases of police state overreach.

The problem now is that when there are arguments in favor of due process and police brutality, there is a up swell of complaint and commentary about liberal bias and a soft view on citizen criminality.

In the end, the critique becomes far too loud and the police state wins, the surveillance continues and the human rights violations go without being challenged.

Last night, Ground Zero reported on the developing story of a rancher named Cliven Bundy.

As Paul Joseph Watson writes: “A Ruby Ridge-style standoff is brewing in Nevada, where dozens of armed federal agents are closing in on cattle rancher Cliven Bundy over claims that Bundy has allowed his cows to graze illegally on government land, endangering a protected species of tortoise.”

Cliven fears that protecting his ranch and his family will be his death warrant.

Bundy says that he is standing up for liberty and freedom as his 600,000 acre range is surrounded by marshals and staging areas for the media and protesters have been roped off by the police sort of a “free speech” zone.

Bundy is being accused of “violating a 1993 Bureau of Land Management ruling which changed grazing rights in order to protect the endangered desert tortoise.” Bundy has refused to pay his BLM fees because of the nebulous changing of the law.

The BLM and federal courts have ordered him to stop allowing his cattle to graze on the land located near Gold Butte, an area near the Nevada/Utah border.

As Ground Zero guest George Knapp reports for KLAS: “Bundy refused to go along and stopped paying his fees. Since then, the BLM and federal courts have ordered him to stop letting his cattle roam throughout Gold Butte, and he has ignored the orders because he does not recognize federal authority over the land.”

In 1981, a similar case happened involving cattle rancher Byron Dale where 42 police officers arrived at his ranch to speak with him about some of his views about money and the Federal Reserve.

Dale was concerned about his fellow farmers and how they were getting deeper in debt and was investigating how farmers would work hard and yet were suffering and how other government agencies would bail out others and not his fellow ranchers.

The story was told here: http://www.sharelynx.com/papers/Mozel2.php

“At 42, Byron Dale was, like most farmers and ranchers, working hard to build a future for his family. He had served on the school board, been active in Farm Bureau, had received the county’s ‘Outstanding Chairman’ award and been honored as an outstanding manager by his community. Byron’s records documented his outstanding management skills.

The family ranch had become a very efficient and productive operation with the help of Byron’s wife and sons. It was evident however, that Byron and his family were not getting the benefit of their efficiency and production. Many times, Byron had commented to his wife that if they’d gotten the benefit of all the interest they’d paid to the bank they’d be living like kings.

Byron understood that acquiring the tools needed to become productive and efficient required a lot of capital but he wondered how it could be that people like himself produced all the wealth but the banking system had all the money? He decided to write to the U. S. Treasury to get answers to some important questions like:

What is money?

How is money created?

How does new money get into circulation so that people can use it?

How does that affect our lives?”

But Byron Dale’s problems were only beginning as a debt dispute then prompted an inspection of his farm.

The court records on OpenJurist.org show:

“PCA [Production Credit Association] brought suit in state court on October 18, 1982, to enforce its inspection rights and alternatively for possession of the cattle should the inspection reveal a default. Dale was served with an order to show cause and a temporary restraining order. At the hearing, Dale defended by asserting his “payment-in-kind”1 note and PCA’s refusal to accept tender. The court ordered Dale to allow PCA officials onto his property.”

“On March 18, 1983, state officials including Governor Janklow, State Highway Patrol Director Baum, and Officer Murphy, devised a plan to draw Dale away from the ranch so that the order could be executed peacefully. Dale learned of the plan, however, and returned to the ranch. Governor Janklow then telephoned Dale and attempted to dissuade him from resisting. Dale insisted that he would defend his property with his life.

Director Baum and Officer Murphy arrived at the ranch to serve the court’s order and ensure the safety of the receiver in executing that order. At the time that Director Baum and Officer Murphy were present, Dale was armed. During the course of their conversation, Officer Murphy hit Dale with a catsup bottle and after a struggle Dale was subdued.”

In other words, police officers then jumped on Dale and beat him almost to death.

Now as for Cliven Bundy, if the reports are correct the federal government has militarized internal police and heavily armed troops at the ready against a farmer, his wife and a few cow hands. There are also reports of militia groups that are now being dispatched that will have no problem having an armed conflict with the militarized police.

Twenty five of his neighbors have already been driven off their properties by armed federal police officers and he is literally the last man standing. He says that his ancestors have owned this land long before the BLM existed and the cows and the tortoises have been able to get along for a long time.

Not only does he see this as his last stand against tyranny he also sees it as liberty’s last stand.

This is the case of one farmer fighting the system. The system that bears the bitter fruit of the police state where the ideological divide has been created by pundits and a small group of bureaucrats in Washington DC.

Like columnist Charley Reese said, this bureaucracy consists of one president, nine Supreme Court justices, one hundred senators and 435 congressmen, that is a total 545 people that are in control of the men surrounding that ranch. There are 300 million people in this country that should demand that the overreach of government be stopped.

That is 300 million versus 545.

545 plus forty or more police officers, tactical units using high powered ordinance and MRAPS that I am sure are waiting to take a cattle ranch by force to protect a tortoise.

Isn’t this a sign that this has gone too far?

There are untold thousands of others employed to enforce the police state on a federal and local level. Several alphabet agencies report to the chosen 545 and do not question their motives. They only know that they are to arm and neutralize a perceived or potential crisis and to enforce an order that imposes civil rights violations across the board.

The CIA and the NSA, along with several highly private security and militarized security groups that do not answer to congress, use their unlimited budgets to wiretap, observe, search and seize property without due process.

They also kill perceived bad guys that are painted as guilty by the media without their day in court. Once again, the negation of due process is cheered on by those who observe without a court hearing or even a peep from a jury of the defendant’s peers.

The unfortunate thing about the typical American is that they are too comfortable with the idea that America is too big to fail. They believe that our very form of government is immune to collapsing into a different form. We as Americans SHOULD know full well when our government is teetering on the brink of socialism, communism, or even despotism. But we don’t. We believe that it just can’t happen here.

It already has happened here and it continues.

CNN has now reported that an autopsy report has been made public in the strange case of Miriam Carey, the woman that was chased through Washington D.C. and was eventually gunned down in front of her baby by police. The autopsy finally made public after six months shows that the 34 year old woman was not on any SSRI medication for mental illness as was reported, did not ram any White house gates, and was shot 5 times in the back after she stepped out of her car.

CNN says: “The office of the District of Columbia medical examiner said in the autopsy that one round struck Carey in the left side of the back of her head, and she was also hit three times in the back and once in her left arm. The report didn’t determine in what sequence Carey was hit. Toxicology tests determined Carey didn’t have alcohol or drugs in her blood… The family is suing the Department of Justice, the Secret Service and U.S. Capitol Police for $75 million.”

A lot of people want to continue their politics as usual without setting them aside so that they can understand that the rules of the game are changing at a rapid rate and that Barack Obama has chosen to play within the boundaries of a global agenda, an agenda that has been put into play by despots that have rendered your ability to have life liberty and the pursuit of happiness useless.