US Government Asset Seizures on the Rise

[T.G.]

It really is time to wake up. We do have a tyranny forming.

[Hubert Mitchell]

It really is time to wake up. We do have a tyranny forming.

What will it take for those in denial to wake up?

[styky]

In America the Rule of Law Is Vacated

by Paul Craig Roberts

With bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free, the US Department of Justice (sic) has nothing better to do than to harass the famous Tennessee guitar manufacturer, Gibson, arrest organic food producers in California and send 12 abusive FBI agents armed with assault rifles to bust down yet another wrong door of yet another innocent family, leaving parents, children, and grandmother traumatized.

What law did Gibson Guitar Corp break that caused federal agents to disrupt Gibson's plants in Nashville and Memphis, seize guitars, cause layoffs, and cost the company $3 million from disrupted operations?

No US law was broken. The feds claim that Gibson broke a law that is on the books in India............http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts323.html

[T.G.]

What will it take for those in denial to wake up?

Well one thing's for sure ... people had better start acknowledging there really are conspiracies against the common people.

[T.G.]

In America the Rule of Law Is Vacated

by Paul Craig Roberts ...

Interesting quote: "I have seen studies that show that police actually commit more acts of violence against the public than do criminals, which raises an interesting question: Are police a greater threat to the public than are criminals? On Yahoo I just searched 'police brutality' and up came 4,840,000 results."

[Red Green]

In America the Rule of Law Is Vacated

by Paul Craig Roberts ...

Interesting quote: "I have seen studies that show that police actually commit more acts of violence against the public than do criminals, which raises an interesting question: Are police a greater threat to the public than are criminals? On Yahoo I just searched 'police brutality' and up came 4,840,000 results."

Of course they are and that fact is self-evident to anyone with half a functioning brain. We have lots of people here cooing on about how they love the "vast majority of good pigs", but every time the govt reaches out to beat down the common man, who is it carrying the cudgel? The pigs are the only violent gang that gets to operate out in the open with absolute impunity.

[styky]

It really is time to wake up. We do have a tyranny forming.

Something I fell on today............

from C.S. Lewis:

"A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery."
—The Abolition of Man

"The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation."
—Christian Reflections

"You cannot go on seeing through things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. . . .If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is the same as not to see.”
—The Abolition of Man

[T.G.]

Yes ... in other words, there are no accidents. Every effect has its cause.

[styky]

Guns vs. Guitars

by Joel Bowman
The Daily Reckoning

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
’Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.

~ Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Bullying small and medium businesses, sending armed goons to American factories, confiscating private property, closing down production and harassing business owners and their employees; a curious strategy for nurturing domestic job creation, wouldn’t you say?

The above strategies might seem ludicrous, even downright criminal, to we laypeople, but to government officials, it’s “all in a day’s work.” Take, for example, the latest case of The Feds vs. Gibson Guitars.

Actually, it’s not even a case yet, not officially…but that didn’t stop armed agents from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (these guys have guns?) from raiding two of Gibson’s production facilities in Tennessee and its Nashville headquarters last Wednesday. The agents confiscated “nearly $1 million in Indian ebony, finished guitars and electronic data,” according to the company’s CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz.

“It was a nightmare,” fumed Mr. Juszkiewicz after the incident, “We had people sitting there making guitars. We had no weapons.”

This is not the first time the feds have actively sought to bum Gibson’s vibe (a job-creating vibe, let us not forget – Gibson’s Tennessee factories alone employ over 700 people). The feds last crashed the party back in 2009, seizing a shipment of ebony from Madagascar. They claimed they were there – and, again, armed – to enforce the Lacey Act, a century-old endangered species act that was amended in 2008 to include plants and animals.

But before activists get their patchouli incense sticks in a knot, it’s worth noting that Gibson is not your typical – or even atypical – enemy of the planet.

“Agents seized wood that was Forest Stewardship Council controlled,” Juszkiewicz noted, in a quote carried on the company’s website. “Gibson has a long history of supporting sustainable and responsible sources of wood and has worked diligently with entities such as the Rainforest Alliance and Greenpeace to secure FSC-certified supplies. The wood seized on August 24 satisfied FSC standards.”

Your editor has no idea where the Forest Stewardship Council, the Rainforest Alliance and Greenpeace stand in this particular case…but we’d bet it’s not on the side of the “greedy, seal-clubbing, old growth-uprooting capitalist pigs.”

“We’ve been importing this wood for 17 years, consistently, on a regular basis, with no problem,” Juszkiewicz told Fox News yesterday. “And our competitors continue to use and buy this wood without any problem today.”

Juszkiewicz says the government won’t tell him exactly how – or if – his company has violated that law.

“We’re in this really incredible situation,” continued Mr. Juszkiewicz. “We have been implicated in wrongdoing and we haven’t been charged with anything,” he says. “Our business has been injured to millions of dollars. And we don’t even have a court we can go to and say, ‘Look, here’s our position.’”

It’s also worth noting that the relevant law doesn’t actually protect the trees themselves…just how – or, more specifically, where – the wood is finished. It’s perfectly legal for Gibson to use the wood, in other words, it just can’t use its own workers to fashion the wood into a guitar. That work needs to be done in India. Call it “mandatory outsourcing”…from the same people who will next week bring you their ideas on how best to create jobs in America....................http://lewrockwell.com/orig12/bowman-joel5.1.1.html

[styky]

Province seizes $5.4 million in criminal property
By: ctvbc.ca

Date: Tuesday Jan. 11, 2011 12:51 PM PT

British Columbia's Civil Forfeiture Program seized $5.4 million worth of property, cars and cash from criminals in 2010, Solicitor General Rich Coleman said Tuesday.

A mansion valued at $1.2 million in Vancouver's upscale Kerrisdale neighbourhood became the most valuable property forfeited to the province after police busted a grow operation there in 2009.

Police seized 959 marijuana plants from the five-bedroom house on West 53rd Avenue. It took about a year to arrange the forfeiture, repair and sell the property. The sale resulted in a $600,000 gain for the program. ..................http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/loca ... lumbiaHome

[styky]

Gibson Guitar Raid: A Fox Case Study
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201109130020

[styky]

Environmental, industry groups push back against Gibson Guitar

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valle ... son-guitar

[styky]

Hundreds Rally in Support of Gibson Guitar, Blast Federal Government for ‘Abusing its Power’

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/hundred ... its-power/

[k smith]

You condone it as being for the good of the state.

No, I condone it because it made our public highways safer.

That's supposition on your part.

Dont drive like a a-hole and nothing will happen to you.

Until it does happen to you, which is what happens with all such programs.

Driving is a privledge. If I breaks the rules I have to face the consequences. That rule is posted on giant signs and we all have speedometers.

It is not a supposition, deaths on our highways are down. Added to that my anecdotal evidence that jerks passing me at a 100 mph has not happened to me in a few years now. It used to be a regular occurence.

All this talk about strret racing would make sense if stuff like this did not happen:

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/21/br ... till-drive

This nonsense about the laws working are just that nonsense, if they cannot be bothered to sentence the real criminals then the optics are that the current street racing laws are nothing more than a cash grab.

[styky]

New Bedford fisherman forced to give up 800-pound tuna
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs. ... /-1/NEWS01