This article is reprinted with the permission of Becky, and the generous FREEMAN. Please visit the site if you are concerned with the course of the nation.

by Becky Akers

Boston lies under a foot of snow this Monday March evening in 1770, so icy and cold that anyone who can huddle at home on the hearth should. Instead, much of the town is abroad and abuzz like an angry hive. Bostonians are infuriated at something their descendants will take for granted, indeed, will prize so highly they’ll pay for it: police are patrolling their city.

And have been for many months. In September 1768 a thousand British Redcoats disembarked at the town’s wharves. From there they “marched sword in hand through the principal streets of [Boston], then in profound peace.”¹ Their purpose was not to protect the 15,000 inhabitants but to keep them in line, much as police presently do. And, again like modern officers, they will collect money for the government, though rather than writing traffic tickets, they will enforce customs duties.

The colonists do not share their descendants’ idealism that the police “protect and serve,” nor do they mistake the Redcoats for “Boston’s Finest.” They see the soldiers stalking among them as the government’s bullyboys, and they despise them for it. Tonight, that antagonism will explode, becoming famous as a Massacre for killing five civilians and wounding others.

Historians offer a bevy of explanations and excuses for that calamitous confrontation: Americans resented the British as an occupying force; off-duty soldiers worked at odd jobs for low pay, stealing opportunities from Boston’s day laborers and provoking more resentment; the Redcoats were naturally arrogant, the colonists naturally touchy. But behind it all lies the simple fact that the soldiers were policing Boston. They marched through the city searching for contraband, infractions of the government’s rules, and anyone the administration deemed suspicious.

They also reintroduced His Majesty’s customs officers at the point of their bayonets. Prior to the Redcoats’ advent in 1768, Bostonians had so intimidated these officials that they fled the city. Ann Hulton was sister to one; she wrote, “Every officer of the Crown that does his duty is become obnoxious & they must either fly or be sacrificed. . . .” Ann flew with her brother and others to Castle Island, now part of the mainland but then a fort lying at a safe distance in Boston Harbor. From there, Miss Hulton continued her account of the colonists’ cowing of Customs: “These Sons of Violence after attacking Houses, breaking Windows, beating, Stoning & bruizing several gentlemen belong’g to the Customs, the Collector mortally & burning his boat.”² Only when the Redcoats could ensure their safety did the officers return to Boston. They remained for the next 18 months, retreating again with the troops after the Massacre: “The inhabitants of the town assembled in Faneuil Hall . . . unanimously resolved, that no armed force should be suffered longer to reside in the capital . . . . [T]he people, inflexible in their demands, insisted that not one British soldier should be left within the town . . . . [W]ithin four days the whole army decamped. . . . The commissioners of the customs and several other obnoxious characters retired with the army” to the fortified Castle Island.³

Could we whisk the army from their eighteenth-century fort to a modern precinct, the Redcoats would likely agree that their policing differed little from today’s—except in one remarkable detail. They would be astounded at the enormous authority most Americans grant the police and at the enormous respect, even glorification, following from that.

Both are centuries removed from the ridicule and revulsion red-coated police rated in eighteenth-century Boston. Perhaps the difference in attitude arises partly from our powerlessness against a force armed far beyond what most of us can manage. The Bostonians milling about the freezing streets that night carried pistols and swords every bit the equal of muskets and bayonets. If a man didn’t own a gun or blade, he hastened toward the coming showdown with the “invaders” and “foreign enemies” openly bearing a wooden stave or club, a knife, a hatchet, even a chunk of ice scooped off the street.⁴

Their weapons rendered the colonists boisterous and aggressive when standing up to the Redcoats. British General Thomas Gage reported that “The people were as Lawless and Licentious after the Troops arrived, as they were before. The Troops . . . seemed only offered to abuse and Ruin . . . to suffer ill usage and even assaults upon their Persons till their Lives were in Danger. . . .”⁵

That “lawlessness” bedeviled the Redcoats from their first moments in Boston, when they began hunting barracks. Thomas Hutchinson, Massachusetts’s royally appointed governor, offered a large public building to the soldiers, ignoring the “outcasts of the Workhouse and the scum of the Town”⁶ already renting rooms there. The “scum” objected to the governor’s exercise of eminent domain as much as Hutchinson would have had they offered the Redcoats his mansion. They promptly barricaded themselves inside the building.

Boston’s sheriff, backed by some soldiers, soon arrived. He discovered an unlocked window, climbed into the building, and ordered the “outcasts” out. They promptly barricaded him inside, too.

Meanwhile, the sheriff’s martial escort stood helpless, unable to rescue him, because the scowling, muttering townspeople surrounding the place heavily outnumbered the soldiers. This standoff continued for two days after Boston’s Council sided with the “scum” and refused to authorize their eviction.

Nor did the colonists’ “ill usage” abate over the next year and a half. Before the shooting began on the night of the Massacre a citizen scolded a group of British officers: “Why don’t you keep your soldiers in the barracks? . . . Are the inhabitants to be knocked down in the streets? Are they to be murdered in this manner? You know the country has been used ill. You know the town has been used ill. We did not send for you. We will not have you here.”⁷

Contrast that succinct and spirited lesson in liberty with the shuffling slave mentality of modern Americans. We bow and scrape when dealing with police officers in their various guises, whether the state trooper during a traffic stop or the Transportation Security Administration screener searching us without cause or warrant at the airport.

Also astonishing is the deference the Redcoats’ officers showed the colonists. Sometime after one Bostonian had scolded the officers, another asked British Captain John Preston whether he would order his men to fire on them. “By no means, by no means,” Preston answered respectfully. “My giving the word ‘fire’ under those circumstances would prove me no officer.”⁸ Thus while modern police order us about as though we are slow and stupid children, British officers requested, explained, and begged pardon.

After the Redcoats fired that night, a silversmith named Benjamin Burdick approached, obviously studying the troops in the moonlight. “I want to see some faces that I may swear to another day,” he said. Would any of us dare stop when we see a car on the side of the highway, with a trooper ticketing the driver, to announce ourselves as witnesses? Granted, Burdick was an imposing man, estimated to weigh 380 pounds by a neighbor,⁹ but even the largest among us is unlikely to heckle an armed cop. Not only do they outgun us, but there are too many laws protecting them, too much presupposition that, in any encounter, the state is right and the citizen wrong. The Redcoats in eighteenth-century Boston could rely on no such privileges. Indeed, the only response Captain Preston made to the brave Burdick was a mild, “Perhaps, sir, you may [be summoned to court as a witness].”¹⁰

Unthinkable, isn’t it? The police buffaloed, and citizens riding herd on them! But that’s become an impossible dream; it is as if the people and the police have swapped places. Why? Are Americans really that different now? Or have policemen, their nature and their relationship to the people they “serve,” changed?

William the Conqueror

Eighteenth-century Englishmen, whether in the colonies or at home, had a horror of the military’s policing them, of the government’s bringing troops against them instead of against national enemies, such as the French and the Spanish. This horror dates back centuries, to the Norman invasion of England in 1066, when an army under William the Conqueror devastated the countryside. The soldiers robbed, raped, burned, and brutalized, committing all the atrocities at which armies excel. Then, their victory secure, they added insult to injury by quartering their troops on the native Saxons. They also taxed them.

The Saxons contrasted this abuse by professional soldiers with the behavior of their own militias. Saxon farmers and shopkeepers fought to defend themselves when attacked, but they returned to their farms and shops once the danger had passed. They did not make a career of robbing people on behalf of the king, nor did they burn a man’s home and sack his shop. Militias were defensive, armies offensive: the difference keenly impressed Saxon farmers pondering plundered towns, farms in flames, and wives and daughters traumatized or even dying from rape.

This martial skepticism was reinforced during the civil wars of the 1600s, especially Oliver Cromwell’s military dictatorship. A “standing army,” with its professional killers and its existence even during peacetime, was considered the worst evil that could afflict a free people—if a people so afflicted could be called free.

By the eighteenth century this national attitude resulted in a poorly manned army of thin ranks. Add to this an abusive command relying on physical torture and low pay to control the soldiers, and it’s no wonder the British army had to resort to kidnapping to fill its brigades. It drafted almost literally out of the gutter those soldiers it didn’t take from the hangman. (Judges sometimes offered convicted murderers and other miscreants a choice between killing for the King or being killed.)

Recruits who weren’t ducking the scaffold usually came from society’s lowest rungs. Impressment officers prowled the streets of London, promising the naked, starving underclass a warm uniform and regular rations. When these blandishments failed, the officer tried to get his victim so drunk he would grasp a shilling: astoundingly, the government considered that pittance a fair exchange for a man’s life. You might think it easy to slip a coin into a poor man’s hand, especially one plied with free booze all night. But however brutal life on the streets was, everyone knew the army was worse. Nor was there any escape: once a soldier, always a soldier. It took death to free a man from his “deal” with the King.

Citizens feared the army drawn from such ranks much as we would a mob from our slums and penitentiaries. Perhaps a beggar or prisoner with the soul of a poet was recruited now and then, but if so, he was rapidly desensitized once he donned his uniform. Discipline was draconian, merciless, excessive, terrifying—we can exhaust the thesaurus and still not come close to describing the torture regularly inflicted on the poor cuss turned soldier or sailor. The most minor of transgressions earned horrific retribution, with flogging the favored punishment. These whippings consisted of hundreds of lashes and sometimes a thousand; they were so savage they could kill or, at the least, cripple the victim for life. Often the lashes were administered in sets over the course of several weeks or a month: this allowed the muscles (little skin would be left after the first strokes from the cat-o’-nine-tails) of the back to begin healing before they were once again ripped open. When the brutality finally ended and the victim’s wrists were loosed from the crossed halberds, a bucket of salt water was dashed across him—a crude and unspeakably cruel antiseptic.

Men abused so horrifically were unlikely to show mercy, kindness, or empathy to the civilians who crossed their paths. Governor Hutchinson described those in one of the two regiments loosed on Boston: “They are in general such bad fellows in that regement [sic] that it seems impossible to restrain them.”¹¹ An unbridgeable gap yawned between “citizen” and “soldier,” and though these men might protect England from France’s vengeance, most Englishmen felt little gratitude for this “service.” Britain engaged in many of the trade restrictions that our government does, spawning a century’s worth of war. This benefited the same politicians, bureaucrats, and manufacturers of armaments that current wars do. Everyone else realized the army guarded the interests of these groups at his expense—literally. Nor did people swallow any line about the troops’ “protecting” their liberty: these same soldiers also quelled civilians who rioted in protest of the government’s policies.

In some ways, using soldiers may have been friendlier to freedom than a dedicated police force. Sending troops against a citizenry that feared the army kept folks continually on their guard against them. Anyone who tried to portray these armed aliens as allies, in league with honest citizens to defend society from the bad guys, would have been dismissed as a fool.

Robert Peel

Then along came Robert Peel, MP, creator of England’s first police force.

Born in 1788, Peel joined Parliament as a Tory in 1809. His career there hopscotched between the party line and independence. This allows admirers to portray him as principled, while those who understand political power consider him adept at manipulating it. In 1812, as chief secretary for Ireland, he instituted the “Peace Preservation Police.” Ireland foamed then as now with religious-cum-political conflicts, so “peace preservation” translated to quashing resistance to the decrees of King and Parliament.

Peel’s police quashed so successfully that he was appointed home secretary in 1822. This was a troubled decade in England; four years later, a depression crippled the country. Predictably, crime and rioting increased with unemployment, especially in the cities. But, again predictably, this did not sway government to end the mercantilism causing the depression. Instead, as would any astute politician already famous for “solving” a similar problem, Peel called for a committee to investigate the possibilities of a police force in London.

Unfortunately for Peel, the committee wasn’t as astute as he. The first time around it reported that police were by their nature inimical to a free society. Peel sent them back to the drawing board for a more acceptable answer. Not surprisingly, the committee then recommended that the government should act. Specifically, it should organize and augment London’s existing officers.

There were about 450 of these, ranging from magistrates’ “runners” to Marine Police patrolling the Thames for contraband and untaxed goods. Peel consolidated these agents, hired enough new men to bring his number to 1,000, trained them, and put them in uniform as well as on the public’s purse.

Peel also codified nine principles for his police. These ranged from a mission statement (the purpose of the “peelers” or “bobbies,” as they were called in Peel’s honor, was to prevent crime and keep the peace) to the practical tip of securing the public’s cooperation through impartiality and courtesy. But one of Peel’s Principles struck liberty a blistering blow. For the first time, instead of the state’s agents being hurtful and alien, a force snatched from prison and poverty and turned loose on the public by a vengeful king, the bobbies were instead to pose as friends and neighbors. “The police,” Peel insisted, “are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interest of community welfare and existence.”¹²

The new bureaucracy, complete with two commissioners, was up and running by 1829. Given London’s crime wave, it seems reasonable to assume that law-abiding folk welcomed these guardians. Instead, they despised them. Nor did they cooperate with them. They called the bobbies by names far more Anglo-Saxon, sometimes assaulted them, and occasionally killed them. A jury even returned a verdict of “justifiable homicide” for a civilian charged with murdering one.

But just as a man gets used to hanging, so Londoners did to bobbies. Their hostility faded with time. Actually, the public’s feelings about these “members . . . paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen” probably little mattered when it came to continuing the bobbies’ patrols: an ostensibly free country now had an unanswerable excuse—protecting citizens from nongovernmental criminals—for infiltrating and monitoring the population. It would hardly relinquish this immense advantage without prolonged, mass rebellion.

Other governments eagerly watched Britain’s experiment with the intent of copying it. The first American city to do so was New York, in 1853. We might hope that a country founded in freedom would resist paying some citizens to enforce the state’s whims against others. Instead, Philadelphia boasted a force by 1856 and Boston by 1859, despite its rioting just 90 years before against red-coated police. Perhaps the blue coats lulled suspicion.

Preventing Crime

Americans heard the same excuses for the state’s monitoring them as Londoners had—the same excuses, in fact, which prevail today: the police would keep the peace and prevent crime. Never mind that the police have a questionable record of solving, let alone preventing, crime. Typically, police departments in large cities “solve” only 55–65 percent of homicides, though that doesn’t necessarily include apprehending the culprit. Governments have long resorted to asking, even haranguing, the public for help in solving crime; many now host websites listing their failures in the hopes that citizens will ride to the rescue.¹³ And despite New York City’s phalanx of 40,000 cops—an army larger than George Washington ever commanded at one time during the Revolutionary War—17,875 cars were stolen in 2005, a “sharp drop” from previous years.¹⁴

Broken promises have never threatened the existence of police departments, however. That’s because these institutions are extremely useful to the politicians who determine their fate. With the advent of New York City’s first force, politicians rejoiced at having an entire department of voters depend on them for a raise; even more did they appreciate the management positions they could award to influential supporters. They often looked on their city’s cops as political bodyguards, akin to Caesar Augustus’s praetorian guard: during elections, cops made sure the “right” folks voted.

Civil-service rules supposedly eliminated such corruption in the late nineteenth century, but any improvements were offset by the police’s expansion into everyday life. Their consistent presence on the streets attracted the attention of anyone wanting help. Folks who might have relied on family and neighbors turned instead to the patrolman in his noticeable uniform. Police were soon chaperoning lost children, adjudicating domestic disputes, controlling traffic, and even boarding bums in their station houses. Official involvement elevated these matters, sometimes serious but often merely mundane, into crises worthy of their own bureaucracies, fertilizing the growth of municipal governments.¹⁵

In contrast to their eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century forefathers, modern Americans take police for granted, much like driver’s licenses and parking tickets. If they think about them at all, it is not as a standing army quartered among them but as heroes who serve and protect. Even the latest corruption scandal or physical abuse of a prisoner scarcely dents the apathy and mistaken perception. Those who do rail against corruption and abuse seldom question the basic premise behind policing; instead, all that’s required is weeding out the rogues, tinkering with the regulations, and reforming the department yet again.

This is especially tragic given the warped emphasis policing brings to crime. The American judicial apparatus focuses on punishing those who transgress the government’s decrees, either extracting their money for the state or imprisoning them or both. Restoring the criminal’s victim is hardly ever a consideration (perhaps because most “crimes” the state now prosecutes actually have no victims). This contrasts baldly and badly with Anglo-Saxon justice, in which making the victim whole was the sole concern.¹⁶ Neighbors mutually pledged to assist anyone who suffered loss at the hands of a thief or murderer. Once the miscreant was apprehended, the community assessed his guilt and, if satisfied, required him to make restitution. Those criminals who refused faced ostracism, leaving them vulnerable to vengeance from their victims.

Occasionally, a violator was stronger than the community on which he preyed, at which point folks might solicit the king’s help. Early Anglo-Saxon kings maintained a palace guard, though these forces were small in number because the king paid them from his own pocket. Communities began including a royal recompense, then, in the violator’s restitution. But the royal eye quickly recognized a river of revenue in that recompense. This created a perverse incentive to invent more “crimes” with large fines. Gradually, the state arrogated to itself a monopoly on “solving” crime, with its profits trumping the victim’s restitution. That left folks with little reason to report misdeeds beyond the hope that the criminal, if caught, would no longer prey on them, and they quit doing so. The state had the last laugh, though: it became a crime not to report a crime. This permeates practically all American penal codes to this day.

Obviously, government’s interest lies in persuading taxpayers that the police protect them not the state. But the priorities are obvious. How many dollars of stolen goods are returned to citizens versus how many dollars in traffic tickets go to the state?¹⁷ How many political demonstrations are “contained” by the police versus how many stolen cars are recovered? How often is a senator or governor coddled by a police escort when he descends on a town versus how many ordinary folks fear to venture down a dark alley? Indeed, New York City’s percentage of “solved” murders in 2005 plunged perhaps because so many detectives were busy protecting visiting pooh-bahs. Clearly, the state profits far more from the police than do the people.

I once watched a trial in which a policeman was suing the police force that had employed him. He had been fired a few days before he would have retired. This brought his pension in doubt, which in turn brought him into court. His attorney emphasized his client’s valor by insisting that for 20 years he had performed “paramilitary” duties with a “paramilitary” force. He consistently and repeatedly portrayed the police as “paramilitary.”

Tragically, that makes us the “para-enemy.”

Obviously we can’t depend upon the Supreme Court, which picks and chooses the cases it will hear, and then legislates from the bench.

We can no longer depend upon those we send to congress to abide their oath of office. They are just paid-off pawns in what appears to be an agenda designed to eliminate liberty.

Author, and historian Tom Woods talks about Nullification and the importance it played when forming this nation in this interview at Press TV.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/materials/HR1207-Shame-List.pdf

We feel that every representative should have stood in favor of this important legislation for several reasons.

The primary, and most basic reason being  that in the 97 years of its operation the Federal Reserve has NEVER been audited. EVER!

Do you think perhaps it is overdue? Especially in light of what has transpired with the economy in the last 24 months?

Can any of these representatives offer a valid reason for voting aginst this legislation? I dont think so, and we here at RTR have heard them all.

1. The most ridiculous being that it would disrupt operations and pose a risk to the recovery. What recovery? Most recently: Wells Fargo  laying off 2,800, Microsoft laying off 5,800, and the tens of thousands that have lost their jobs?

High unemployment, and a moribund housing market have increased risks to the U.S. economic recovery, while the public debt looms large and needs to be cut.

2. Investors were worried that greater political influence in the Fed’s operations, could weaken the central bank’s resolve to fight inflation in the future. Please note, the dollar has lost approximately 95% of it’s value since the Fed came into being in 1913. I think the Fed, based upon this fact, is losing it’s battle against inflation.

The U.S. House of Representatives had approved a bill in December of 2009 that included a provision, championed by Texas Representative Ron Paul, that would have opened the Fed’s dealings to audits much the same as agencies of the government. But in a statement on June 15 of this year, House Democrats participating in negotiations over a final financial reform bill signaled a willingness to live with a narrower Senate audit provision that does not cover monetary policy.

The Fed, which has admitted it was too complacent about regulatory oversight in the run-up to the global financial crisis, has come under heavy fire for being too close to the banks it regulates. So, in the end, the U.S. central bank appears to be emerging largely unscathed by the regulatory reform efforts. It successfully fought off a Senate push In May 2010, that would have stripped it of its oversight of smaller banks, and is poised to emerge as the most powerful financial regulator when reforms are complete.

If you agree with us that this legislation should have passed, then exercise your right in the next election cycle and vote out those who failed once again to do the right thing, and uphold their oath to defend, and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.

Today people such as Barack Obama, Janet Napolitano, and Eric Holder would label them terrorists. Members of congress, and the media would cringe at the notion that men such as Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry were not yet hunted down and prosecuted for daring to speak out against the abuses of government.

It is our right and our duty to speak freely against the tyrant, but we have set in office those who believe otherwise. We have done so through our own negligence, ignorance, and in some part, our greed.

Instead of studying, and teaching the marvelous words written into the Declaration of Independence, our school administrators are much more content instituting criminal actions against boys who do what boys do, get into scuffles.

Instead of adhering to the rule of law as set out in our Constitution, congress and the courts would much rather conspire to diminish and destroy the Republic by creating and confirming acts that have no basis in enumerated powers.

Instead of protecting our rights the state would much rather take bribes from the federal government, institute petty laws, and harass its citizens at every level by regulating not only our lives, but also our property.

Instead of screaming freedom as we arrest judges, prosecutors, and legislators for violations of the oath of office, we are far more likely to put out our hands and ask for benefits while we give away our rights, and liberty.

Instead of reason, fortitude, and pride we have degenerated in to the most contemptible, lazy, and self-indulgent people the world has known. The kind of citizenry that always signals the end of an era.

The Fourth of July is the day that this nation declared that when “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them” they ought to explain what brought them to this most grievous determination.

A consideration of all the evils that the king, and parliament had placed upon the colonies was therefore debated, and in grand and rhythmic script laid upon a broadside, and signed by fifty-six, and make no mistake, brave, and resolute men.

Today as a tribute to their strength, we drink beer, barbeque, set-off fireworks, elect men such as Barak Obama who has so little respect for this country and its laws that he gives us people such as Sonya Sotomayor, Eric Holder, and now Elena Kagan. This is a group of thugs that have no respect for the rule of law, and believe that they can change what was written long before they came to this plane of existence in order to achieve their own doctrine of how this country should exist.

Kagan, the most recent buffoon to be nominated for the supreme court, believes that our government, that which is subject to our will, can change the law of the land to deny free speech if it offends government officials, and to remove our mark of last resort, the right to keep and bears arms, should we the sovereign citizens believe that we have no recourse but to physically dismantle the tyrants as was done by our Founding Fathers.

What have we done to be part of the destruction of this nation? Why is it that so many of our fellow citizens sit idly by while our country disintegrates into a ‘banana republic’?

Have we become a country so devoid of the spirit of liberty that we care not what happens to ourselves, or more importantly our children?

“Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

But this Fourth of July, as the many that I have lived through passes into history; my fellow citizens are content for the most part. While our young men are cast into a meat grinder half-way around the world, our economy sinks, and our freedom slips away, those of us who can still enjoy the trappings of a descent life will barbecue, drink our beer, and ruminate over the tragedy of why our team slipped out of first place, or how it was that he cheated on her, or how it was that stock market rose or fell on the most curious of government figures.

We are at a crossroad, and we must recognize the situation as dire. We must prepare ourselves if no one else will listen. We must do what we can, as did Samuel Adams when he evaded the British. We must learn from our history for it is the truth that “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.”

This Fourth of July I will pray that our men come home safe, that we might awaken to the fact that all is not well, and that we must act, or be cast into a conflagration that will tear the very fiber of humanity apart.

This Fourth of July I will prepare because I have little hope that the decadence that has cast itself upon this nation will relent, and we will regain the fighting spirit that once shone upon this nation.

‘Nick’

Appearing on the Alex Jones Show earlier in the week, pastor Lindsey Williams said that gases — Hydrogen Sulfide, Benzene, Methylene Chloride, and other toxic gases — pose a greater risk to human health than the presence of oil washing up on Gulf of Mexico beaches. Williams said the EPA is not reporting on the amount of gases escaping from the BP oil gusher. However, the second video below suggests the EPA has released data on the amount of Hydrogen Sulfide and Benzene in the air in Louisiana.

On May 14 WWLTV in New Orleans ran a report on the levels of Hydrogen Sulfide and Benzene in the air at that time. 5-10 parts per billion is the established allowable amount for Hydrogen Sulfide. WWLTV reported that on May 3 the level was recorded at 1,192 ppb. Pastor Williams said his sources report the level detected in the Gulf at 1,200 ppb and the amount poses a serious and even fatal health risk.

“The media coverage of the BP oil disaster to date has focused largely on the threats to wildlife, but the latest evaluation of air monitoring data shows a serious threat to human health from airborne chemicals emitted by the ongoing deep water gusher,” the Institute for Southern Studies blog reported on May 10.

Today the Louisiana Environmental Action Network released its analysis of air monitoring test results by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s air testing data comes from Venice, a coastal community 75 miles south of New Orleans in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish.

The findings show that levels of airborne chemicals have far exceeded state standards and what’s considered safe for human exposure.

For instance, hydrogen sulfide has been detected at concentrations more than 100 times greater than the level known to cause physical reactions in people. Among the health effects of hydrogen sulfide exposure are eye and respiratory irritation as well as nausea, dizziness, confusion and headache.

The concentration threshold for people to experience physical symptoms from hydrogen sulfide is about 5 to 10 parts per billion. But as recently as last Thursday, the EPA measured levels at 1,000 ppb. The highest levels of airborne hydrogen sulfide measured so far were on May 3, at 1,192 ppb.

From the H2S Safety Factsheet:

Health Effects of Hydrogen Sulfide

H2S is classed as a chemical asphyxiant, similar to carbon monoxide and cyanide gases. It inhibits cellular respiration and uptake of oxygen, causing biochemical suffocation. Typical exposure symptoms include:

Prolonged exposures at lower levels can lead to bronchitis, pneumonia, migraine headaches, pulmonary edema, and loss of motor coordination.

Health Effects of Exposure to Benzene (from the CDC):

- The major effect of benzene from long-term exposure is on the blood. (Long-term exposure means exposure of a year or more.) Benzene causes harmful effects on the bone marrow and can cause a decrease in red blood cells, leading to anemia. It can also cause excessive bleeding and can affect the immune system, increasing the chance for infection.

- Some women who breathed high levels of benzene for many months had irregular menstrual periods and a decrease in the size of their ovaries. It is not known whether benzene exposure affects the developing fetus in pregnant women or fertility in men.

- Animal studies have shown low birth weights, delayed bone formation, and bone marrow damage when pregnant animals breathed benzene.

- The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has determined that benzene causes cancer in humans. Long-term exposure to high levels of benzene in the air can cause leukemia, cancer of the blood-forming organs.

People who breathe in high levels of benzene may develop the following signs and symptoms within minutes to several hours:

* Drowsiness
* Dizziness
* Rapid or irregular heartbeat
* Headaches
* Tremors
* Confusion
* Unconsciousness
* Death (at very high levels)

People Fall ill in BP Spill Cleanup, May 27, 2010 (from Democracy Now)

The government is passing the buck on illnesses related to exposure to BP. “Getting statistics on worker illness related to the Gulf oil spill is proving to be difficult, as federal agencies continually refer requests either to another federal agency or to BP,” ProPublica reported on June 10. “When we asked for statistics on health complaints related to the Gulf spill, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us to ask the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA has told us to ask BP. The Environmental Protection Agency recommended via e-mail that we contact someone at the Department of Homeland Security.”

Do you think BP will address this serious health issue? The corporation will not even allow the media to report in oil washing up on beaches.

Government and corporations are not in the business of protecting our health. Corporations are in the business making as much money as possible and government is in the business of making sure corporations make as much money as possible. The health and welfare of the American people does not figure into the equation.

As a note here, Mr. Grigg uses the original quote from the 12^th Century Crusade that gave us “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”

by William Norman Grigg

Recently by William Norman Grigg: The Death of Aiyana Jones: ‘Showtime Syndrome’ Claims a Child

Kevin Weeks was a career criminal employed as a Mob hit man, but even he possessed sufficient good judgment and self-restraint to avoid risking the life of a seven-year-old girl.

In Brutal, his aptly titled memoir of the years he spent working for Boston Mob boss – and protected FBI asset – James “Whitey” Bulger, Weeks describes how he was given an order to assassinate Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who relentlessly tormented Bulger in print. Weeks set up a sniper nest near Carr’s home. He had the target set up for the kill, but didn’t pull the trigger because Carr’s daughter, “a little girl, like seven-years-old or so,” was walking hand-in-hand with her father.

“I couldn’t take a chance of the bullet fragmenting and ricocheting or hitting her or just killing her father in front of her,” recounts Weeks.

This episode, admittedly, is retold from the self-serving perspective of a convicted murderer. Ironically, Carr himself, in his valuable book The Brothers Bulger, relates a somewhat similar story of a proposed contract hit that was vetoed by former Boston Mob boss Raymond Patriarca.

Joe Barboza, a hitman employed by Patriarca, pointed out that the hoodlum targeted by the contract lived in a three-story house in Boston. Barboza suggested that he could “break into the basement and pour gasoline all around and torch the place, after which I either get him with the smoke inhalation or I pick him off when he’s climbing out the window.”

“Barboza had worked out a plan for every contingency,” notes Carr. “He would bring three shooters with him, to watch each side of the house. They would cut the telephone lines to the houses, so that the victim couldn’t call the fire department. And just in case one of the neighbors called, before setting the house on fire Barboza planned to phone in false alarms across the city to tie up every fire company.”

Patriarca, who had few compunctions about killing when it suited him, wasn’t keen on Barboza’s plan, in large measure because of the potential harm to non-combatants.

“Patriarca asked Barboza if anyone else lived in [the targeted hoodlum's] house, and Barboza mentioned the victim’s mother,” continues Carr.

“You’re gonna kill his mother too?” asked Patriarca.

“It ain’t my fault she lives there,” the hit man snorted by way of reply.

“Patriarca canceled the contract,” Carr tersely summarizes. Barboza, not surprisingly, proved to be too ruthless and deranged for the Mob, and ended up – like Bulger – as another of the FBI’s protected assets.

It is a monumental pity that the Detroit Special Response Team, or the decision-makers above them in the Detroit PD, didn’t have the sense of proportionality displayed by Mob figures like Kevin Weeks and Raymond Patriarca. If they had, the murder suspect they sought – 34-year-old Chauncey Owens – could have been taken into custody without the midnight paramilitary raid that resulted in the burning and shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones.

Shortly after midnight on May 16, while Aiyana – a radiant little girl who might have grown up to resemble Zoe Saldana – was sleeping on the downstairs living room sofa where she would be killed just a few minutes later, the raid team gathered for a “safety briefing.”

As described by police sources to the Detroit Free Press, that briefing dealt entirely with considerations of “officer safety,” which – as any honest observer will admit – is the highest and most important consideration in any law enforcement operation.

The raid team “was told there was information that the suspect might be armed, possibly with an assault rifle and a handgun,” reports the Free Press. “Someone said there also might be dangerous dogs and that the house was believed to be a possible dope den.”

Another intelligence source speculated that the unprepossessing duplex might actually be the location of the missing Iraqi WMDs, which had been stored in a basement vault guarded by a basilisk.

No, not really.

But in its anxiety over officer safety, and its eagerness to stage a properly impressive raid for the benefit of the embedded A&E camera crew, the SRT did not take into account “the possibility of any children being present,” despite the fact that the front yard was littered with toys – a clue that even a police officer should be able to recognize – and warnings to that effect offered by neighbors as the raid unfolded.

Street officers and homicide detectives were already on the scene when the SRT’s armored personnel carrier rolled up in front of the duplex.

The APC was driven by Officer Joseph Weekley, who was also the first through the door after a flash-bang grenade had been thrown through the window. Weekley went barreling into the living room armed with a machine gun and protected by a ballistic shield.

Meanwhile, Aiyana – according to at least one eyewitness – was being severely burned by the incendiary grenade that had been thrown into her bed.

It’s not clear whether Aiyana suffered her fatal gunshot wound before or after Weekley entered the house. In either case, Officer Weekley has been identified as the shooter. He initially claimed that his gun accidentally went off during a “scuffle” with Aiyana’s 47-year-old grandmother.

Within a few hours that account was “clarified” by the police, who said that there was incidental “contact” between Weekley and Aiyana’s grandmother; the latter denies having contact of any kind with Weekley.

Geoffrey Fieger, the attorney representing Aiyana’s family, claims to have seen a videotape of the raid showing that the shot was fired into the house shortly after the grenade was hurled through the downstairs window.

Chauncey Owens, who has been charged with the murder of 17-year-old Je’Rean Blake, was arrested in the upstairs flat, a separate domicile from the one in which Aiyana was killed. Prior to the SRT raid, Owens had been seen on the streets near the duplex. There was no reason – well, none not dictated by the demands of Homeland Security Theater – to mount a midnight paramilitary operation to take Owens into custody.

Why wasn’t an effort made to arrest him on the streets – after staking out the duplex, if necessary? That question, of course, fails to take into account the “reality TV” camera crew. Once that factor is considered, it’s a matter of res ipsa loquitir.

A&E’s Detroit SWAT program made Joseph Weekley a television star. The May 16 raid, as some veteran police officers might put it, wasn’t Weekley’s first rodeo. Nor was this the first time his conduct put children at severe risk.

Weekley took part in a February 2007 SRT raid on a Detroit residence occupied by several children. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the family claims that the SRT gunned down two dogs “without any justifiable reason whatsoever,” and that during the operation the officers “had their guns pointed at … [a] child and [an] infant.”

In that 2007 raid Weekley and his comrades were pursuing a suspect in an armed robbery. As was the case last Sunday, the SRT wasn’t dealing with a hostage situation or a barricaded shooter, let alone a heavily armed serial killer on a rampage. None of the people terrorized by the raid and detained at gunpoint was charged in connection with the crime. At least in that earlier incident, the SRT – in what appears to be an example of unwonted restraint – declined to use a flash-bang grenade.

Paramilitary units like the Detroit SRT are used to carry out what are described as “high-risk” operations. This description is generally true – when applied to those targeted by the raids; the risks experienced by the heavily armed raiders in body armor are minuscule.

On average, between 100–150 such raids take place every day in this supposedly free country. Most of them are narcotics enforcement actions against people involved in non-violent, consensual behavior. Typically, the only “risk” confronted by law enforcement personnel in such circumstances is the possibility that if they knock on the door and present their warrant the evidence will disappear down the toilet. Under this order of priorities, the convenience of prosecutors enforcing asinine drug laws is served at the expense of those brutalized and often killed without reason in their own homes.

The decision to carry out a SRT raid was almost certainly dictated by the media ambitions of Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans, who – in the words of Detroit News columnist Charlie LeDuff – is positioning himself as a “reality TV” star.

“Television executives around the country have been shown what is known in television parlance as the ‘sizzle reel’ of Chief Evans himself, a video compilation of Detroit’s top cop trying to take back the streets,” writes LeDuff, who saw that footage several weeks ago. “It is part of a pitch for a full-blown television series.”

As Detroit’s civic and economic implosion accelerates, the city has become an irresistible setting for state-centric media outlets “peddling mayhem,” continues LeDuff. “Spike TV featured the Detroit bureau of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008. A&E is taping a season of ‘Parking Wars’ here; production on a series about the Fire Department wrapped late last year. Even Animal Planet is in on the deal with ‘Animal Cops Detroit.’”

Chief Evans’ “reality” show pitch begins with the uniformed bureaucrat “gripping a semi-automatic rifle, standing in front of crumbling Michigan Central Depot, staring down a camera and declaring that he’ll do whatever it takes to take his city back from crime. The camera will tag along with Warren Evans as he goes on house raids, smokes cigars with his underlings and recalls words to live by told to him by his mother.”

LeDuff’s disclosures do much to explain why the A&E camera crew went along on the SRT raid that killed Aiyana Jones, and why the Department chose to stage a midnight “Shock and Awe” operation rather than quietly bringing in the suspect.

Aiyana Jones was killed because the Detroit PD wanted to boost Chief Evans’s Q Score.

Nearly two decades ago, millions of Americans were mortified by the assault on Randy Weaver’s family in northern Idaho and the federal siege of the Branch Davidians at Mt. Carmel.

In the first atrocity, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi proved – by gunning down a nursing mother who was cradling her infant daughter – that he wasn’t burdened with the scruples that prevented Kevin Weeks from pulling the trigger on Howie Carr.

The latter episode ended with the FBI (aided by the Delta Force) carrying out – on a much larger scale – an arson/murder plan very similar to the one proposed by Mob hit man Joe Barboza, and vetoed by Mob boss Raymond Patriarca. As Barboza proposed, the Feds pumped the Branch Davidian dwelling full of gas and, when the fire erupted, used snipers to pick off anybody attempting to flee the holocaust. They even interdicted fire and emergency crews while the victims burned and suffocated.

Waco and Ruby Ridge were anomalous only in the sense that they were large, well-publicized versions of the daily acts of state terrorism carried out by the Regime, both here and abroad. Pashtun and Tajik families terrorized by Special Forces raids in Afghanistan could profitably compare notes with survivors of SWAT raids in the United States.

Jason Moon, who served with the U.S. Army in Iraq, brought back a video in which a sergeant told his troops that “The difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they are dead or alive.” For the benefit of those who fail to take that sergeant’s meaning, Moon explains: “If you kill a civilian he becomes an insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat.”

Jason Washburn, who served three tours in Iraq, has recounted how troops were encouraged to carry “drop guns” to be deposited near newly-minted “insurgents”; eventually, this instruction was modified to permit “drop shovels,” since a solider in the heat of combat must assume that someone armed with a shovel was planting an IED, and the holy imperative of “force protection” dictates that he take no chances.

By his third tour of Iraq, recounts Marine Jason Wayne Lemue, the rules of engagement had achieved a certain compelling clarity: “[W]e were told to just shoot people and the officers would take care of us.”

Terrifying as all of this is, the really bad news is that there is substantial reason to believe that there are fewer restrictions on the use of lethal force by domestic paramilitary police than there are on U.S. military personnel operating overseas.

This trend will likely grow much worse when the Homeland Security Apparatus is filled with veterans of the Empire’s current foreign campaigns. You know, the kind of people who can blithely dismiss the anguish of a father whose children have been gunned down by foreign invaders by saying, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their children to a battle.”

I can’t help but see just a hint of that casual sadism in the following detail regarding the death of Aiyana Jones: Charles Jones recalls that after he heard a flash grenade followed by a gunshot, he rushed into the living room, where “police forced him to lie on the ground, with his face in his daughter’s blood.”

It was a terrible thing, of course. But at least the troops were safe. And, as Joe Barboza might observe, it wasn’t the SRT’s fault that Aiyana lived there.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/25-questions-to-ask-anyone-who-is-delusional-enough-to-believe-that-this-economic-recovery-is-real

If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery.  In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before.  But is that really the case?  Of course not.  You would have to be delusional to believe that.  What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time.  But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse.  The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever.  At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.

And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation.  For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving.  German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money.  But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.

Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase.  So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn’t mean much of anything.  As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.

Any “recovery” that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary.  The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.

But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.

So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real….

#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy?  In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011.  Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?

#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March.  This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005.  So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?

#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period.  That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago.  Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?

#4) How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?

#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?

#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that “terrible cuts” are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?

#7) But it just isn’t California that is in trouble.  Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades.  What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?

#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008.  Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate.  So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?

#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April.  So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?

#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015.  So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?

#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster.  In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?

#13) The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high.  Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke.  So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?

#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming.  So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?

#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money.  So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two “pillars” of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?

#17) 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.  Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin.  With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?

#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent.  So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America’s biggest cities?

#19) Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th.  That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year.  Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?

#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession.  So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?

#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.  So is Barack Obama’s mantra that “what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street” actually true?

#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming.  Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?

#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010.  In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier.  Does that look like a good trend to you?

#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% - the most in 16 years.  Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?

#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008.  Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005.  So shouldn’t we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words “economic recovery”?

According to a Memphis jury’s verdict on December 8,1999, in the wrongful death lawsuit of the King family versus Loyd Jowers “and other unknown co-conspirators,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government. Almost 32 years after King’s murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, a court extended the circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat James Earl Ray to the United States government.

I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the trial’s second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there several days, turned to me and said, “Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson’s trial was the trial of the century. Clinton’s trial was the trial of the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who’s here?”

What I experienced in that courtroom ranged from inspiration at the courage of the Kings, their lawyer-investigator William F. Pepper, and the witnesses, to amazement at the government’s carefully interwoven plot to kill Dr. King. The seriousness with which U.S. intelligence agencies planned the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. speaks eloquently of the threat Kingian nonviolence represented to the powers that be in the spring of 1968.

In the complaint filed by the King family, “King versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators,” the only named defendant, Loyd Jowers, was never their primary concern. As soon became evident in court, the real defendants were the anonymous co-conspirators who stood in the shadows behind Jowers, the former owner of a Memphis bar and grill. The Kings and Pepper were in effect charging U.S. intelligence agencies — particularly the FBI and Army intelligence — with organizing, subcontracting, and covering up the assassination. Such a charge guarantees almost insuperable obstacles to its being argued in a court within the United States. Judicially it is an unwelcome beast.

Many qualifiers have been attached to the verdict in the King case. It came not in criminal court but in civil court, where the standards of evidence are much lower than in criminal court. (For example, the plaintiffs used unsworn testimony made on audiotapes and videotapes.) Furthermore, the King family as plaintiffs and Jowers as defendant agreed ahead of time on much of the evidence.

But these observations are not entirely to the point. Because of the government’s “sovereign immunity,” it is not possible to put a U.S. intelligence agency in the dock of a U.S. criminal court. Such a step would require authorization by the federal government, which is not likely to indict itself. Thanks to the conjunction of a civil court, an independent judge with a sense of history, and a courageous family and lawyer, a spiritual breakthrough to an unspeakable truth occurred in Memphis. It allowed at least a few people (and hopefully many more through them) to see the forces behind King’s martyrdom and to feel the responsibility we all share for it through our government. In the end, twelve jurors, six black and six white, said to everyone willing to hear: guilty as charged.

We can also thank the unlikely figure of Loyd Jowers for providing a way into that truth.

Loyd Jowers: When the frail, 73-year-old Jowers became ill after three days in court, Judge Swearengen excused him. Jowers did not testify and said through his attorney, Lewis Garrison, that he would plead the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed. His discretion was too late. In 1993 against the advice of Garrison, Jowers had gone public. Prompted by William Pepper’s progress as James Earl Ray’s attorney in uncovering Jowers’s role in the assassination, Jowers told his story to Sam Donaldson on Prime Time Live. He said he had been asked to help in the murder of King and was told there would be a decoy (Ray) in the plot. He was also told that the police “wouldn’t be there that night.”

In that interview, the transcript of which was read to the jury in the Memphis courtroom, Jowers said the man who asked him to help in the murder was a Mafia-connected produce dealer named Frank Liberto. Liberto, now deceased, had a courier deliver $l00,000 for Jowers to hold at his restaurant, Jim’s Grill, the back door of which opened onto the dense bushes across from the Lorraine Motel. Jowers said he was visited the day before the murder by a man named Raul, who brought a rifle in a box.

As Mike Vinson reported in the March-April Probe, other witnesses testified to their knowledge of Liberto’s involvement in King’s slaying. Store-owner John McFerren said he arrived around 5:l5 pm, April 4, 1968, for a produce pick-up at Frank Liberto’s warehouse in Memphis. (King would be shot at 6:0l pm.) When he approached the warehouse office, McFerren overheard Liberto on the phone inside saying, “Shoot the son-of-a-bitch on the balcony.”

Café-owner Lavada Addison, a friend of Liberto’s in the late 1970’s, testified that Liberto had told her he “had Martin Luther King killed.” Addison’s son, Nathan Whitlock, said when he learned of this conversation he asked Liberto point-blank if he had killed King.

“[Liberto] said, ‘I didn’t kill the nigger but I had it done.’ I said, ‘What about that other son-of-a-bitch taking credit for it?’ He says, ‘Ahh, he wasn’t nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri. He was a front man…a setup man.’”

The jury also heard a tape recording of a two-hour-long confession Jowers made at a fall 1998 meeting with Martin Luther King’s son Dexter and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young. On the tape Jowers says that meetings to plan the assassination occurred at Jim’s Grill. He said the planners included undercover Memphis Police Department officer Marrell McCollough (who now works for the Central Intelligence Agency, and who is referenced in the trial transcript as Merrell McCullough), MPD Lieutentant Earl Clark (who died in 1987), a third police officer, and two men Jowers did not know but thought were federal agents.

Young, who witnessed the assassination, can be heard on the tape identifying McCollough as the man kneeling beside King’s body on the balcony in a famous photograph. According to witness Colby Vernon Smith, McCollough had infiltrated a Memphis community organizing group, the Invaders, which was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his trial testimony Young said the MPD intelligence agent was “the guy who ran up [the balcony stairs] with us to see Martin.”

Jowers says on the tape that right after the shot was fired he received a smoking rifle at the rear door of Jim’s Grill from Clark. He broke the rifle down into two pieces and wrapped it in a tablecloth. Raul picked it up the next day. Jowers said he didn’t actually see who fired the shot that killed King, but thought it was Clark, the MPD’s best marksman.

Young testified that his impression from the 1998 meeting was that the aging, ailing Jowers “wanted to get right with God before he died, wanted to confess it and be free of it.” Jowers denied, however, that he knew the plot’s purpose was to kill King – a claim that seemed implausible to Dexter King and Young. Jowers has continued to fear jail, and he had directed Garrison to defend him on the grounds that he didn’t know the target of the plot was King. But his interview with Donaldson suggests he was not naïve on this point.

Loyd Jowers’s story opened the door to testimony that explored the systemic nature of the murder in seven other basic areas: l) background to the assassination; 2) local conspiracy; 3) the crime scene; 4) the rifle; 5) Raul; 6) broader conspiracy; 7) cover-up.

1) Background to the assassination: James Lawson, King’s friend and an organizer with SCLC, testified that King’s stands on Vietnam and the Poor People’s Campaign had created enemies in Washington. He said King’s speech at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, which condemned the Vietnam War and identified the U.S. government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” provoked intense hostility in the White House and FBI.

Hatred and fear of King deepened, Lawson said, in response to his plan to hold the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. King wanted to shut down the nation’s capital in the spring of 1968 through massive civil disobedience until the government agreed to abolish poverty. King saw the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike as the beginning of a nonviolent revolution that would redistribute income.

“I have no doubt,” Lawson said, “that the government viewed all this seriously enough to plan his assassination.”

Coretta Scott King testified that her husband had to return to Memphis in early April 1968 because of a violent demonstration there for which he had been blamed. Moments after King upon arriving in Memphis joined the sanitation workers’ march there on March 28, 1968, the scene turned violent – subverted by government provocateurs, Lawson said. Thus King had to return to Memphis on April 3 and prepare for a truly nonviolent march, Mrs. King said, to prove SCLC could still carry out a nonviolent campaign in Washington.

2) Local conspiracy: On the night of April 3, 1968, Floyd E. Newsum, a black firefighter and civil rights activist, heard King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis. On his return home, Newsum returned a phone call from his lieutenant and was told he had been temporarily transferred, effective April 4, from Fire Station 2, located across the street from the Lorraine Motel, to Fire Station 3l. Newsum testified that he was not needed at the new station. However, he was needed at his old station because his departure left it “out of service unless somebody else was detailed to my company in my stead.” After making many queries, Newsum was eventually told he had been transferred by request of the police department.

The only other black firefighter at Fire Station 2, Norvell E. Wallace, testified that he, too, received orders from his superior officer on the night of April 3 for a temporary transfer to a fire station far removed from the Lorraine Motel. He was later told vaguely that he had been threatened.

Wallace guessed it was because “I was putting out fires,” he told the jury with a smile. Asked if he ever received a satisfactory explanation for his transfer Wallace answered, “No. Never did. Not to this day.”

….

The rest of this article can be found in The Assassinations, edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.

Senator Bayh,

As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the health care bill before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the brazenness of the government’s proposed involvement in the patient-physician relationship. The very idea that the government will dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in designing a health care system that works for all. Every physician I work with agrees that we need to fix our health care system, but the proposed bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if passed.

I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.

Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self-insure!!
Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.
Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!
Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC benefits for you. You have no choice!
Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise.
Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals’ finances & a ‘National ID Health card’ will be issued! (Papers please!)
Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for elective funds transfer. (Time for more cash and carry)
Page 65 Sec 164: Is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in unions & community organizations: (ACORN).
Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the ‘Exchange.’
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans — The Govt will ration your health care!
Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. (Translation: illegal aliens.)
Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups (i.e. ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. (AARP members – your health care WILL be rationed!)
Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid eligible individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. (No choice.)
Page 124 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Govt monopoly.
Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association – The Govt will tell YOU what salary you can make.
Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto-enroll employees into public option plan. (NO choice!)
Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part-time employees AND their families. (Employees shouldn’t get excited about this as employers will be forced to reduce its work force, benefits, and wages/salaries to cover such a huge expense.)
Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option will pay 8% tax on all payroll! (See the last comment in parenthesis.)
Page 150 Lines 9-13: A business with payroll between $251K & $401K who doesn’t provide public option will pay 2-6% tax on all payroll.
Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesn’t have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.
Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay.) (Like always)
Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of the GOVT HC Admin. will have access to ALL Americans’ finances and personal records. (I guess so they can ‘deduct’ their fees)
Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” (Yes, it really says that!) ( a ‘fee’ instead)
Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors. (Low-income and the poor are affected)
Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors: It doesn’t matter what specialty you have trained yourself in — you will all be paid the same! (Just TRY to tell me that’s not Socialism!)
Page 253 Line 10-18: The Govt sets the value of a doctor’s time, profession, judgment, etc. (Literally– the value of humans.)

Page 265 Sec 1131: The Govt mandates and controls productivity for “private” HC industries.
Page 268 Sec 1141: The federal Govt regulates the rental and purchase of power driven wheelchairs.
Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS – Cancer patients – welcome to rationing!
Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever the Govt deems preventable (i.e…re-admissions).

Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors: If you treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission — the Govt will penalize you.
Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. (The Govt tells doctors what and how much they can own!)
Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion. (The Govt is mandating that hospitals cannot expand.)
Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have the opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. (Can you say ACORN?)
Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: The Govt mandates establishment of outcome-based measures. (HC the way they want — rationing.)
Page 341 Lines 3-9: The Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. (Forcing people into the Govt plan)
Page 354 Sec 1177: The Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of ‘special needs people!’ Unbelievable!
Page 379 Sec 1191: The Govt creates more bureaucracy via a “Tele-Health Advisory Committee.” (Can you say HC by phone?)
Page 425 Lines 4-12: The Govt mandates “Advance-Care Planning Consult.” (Think senior citizens end-of-life patients.)
Page 425 Lines 17-19: The Govt will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. (And it’s mandatory!)
Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: The Govt provides an “approved” list of end-of-life resources; guiding you in death. (Also called ‘assisted suicide.’)(Sounds like Soylent Green to me.)
Page 427 Lines 15-24: The Govt mandates a program for orders on “end-of-life.” (The Govt has a say in how your life ends!)
Page 429 Lines 1-9: An “advanced-care planning consultant” will be used frequently as a patient’s health deteriorates.
Page 429 Lines 10-12: An “advanced care consultation” may include an ORDER for end-of-life plans.. (AN ORDER TO DIE FROM THE GOVERNMENT?!?)
Page 429 Lines 13-25: The GOVT will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order. (I wouldn’t want to stand before God after getting paid for THAT job!)
Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end – of-life! (Again — no choice!)
Page 469: Community-Based Home Medical Services = Non-Profit Organizations. (Hello? ACORN Medical Services here!?!)
Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover marriage and family therapy. (Which means Govt will insert itself into your marriage even.)
Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, and rationing those services.

Senator, I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.

Furthermore, if you vote for a bill that enforces socialized medicine on the country and destroys the doctor-patient relationship, I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose your job in the next election.

Respectfully,

Stephen E. Fraser, MD

Dear Reader,

I urge you to use the power that you were born with (and the power that may soon be taken away) and circulate this email to as many people as you can reach. The Power of the People can stop this from happening to us, our parents, our grandparents, our children, and to following generations