Thursday, November 7, 2013
So, how many did Communism kill?
Via WRSA
At more than 850 pages of carefully sifted evidence by a group of
top-level scholars from a variety of countries and disciplines, the
Black Book is as solid a piece of scholarship as any other you'll find
being taught in our schools.
Is it definitive? How could it be? Communist regimes went to great lengths to conceal their crimes, and one of the most oppressive of all, North Korea, still exists to this day. What the book does is use the best available evidence to give a sense of the scale of what we are dealing with.
In introducing the Black Book, lead author Stephane Courtois, Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, offers the following rough breakdown of the numbers of people that communism killed:
USSR -- 20 million
China -- 65 million
Vietnam -- 1 million
North Korea -- 2 million
Cambodia -- 2 million
Eastern Europe -- 1 million
Latin America -- 150,000
Africa -- 1.7 million
Afghanistan -- 1.5 million
Communist movements, parties not in power -- 10,000
| The Tuol Sleng Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia |
Why isn't the Black Book of Communism on the curriculum of
every school in Europe? Because it isn't exhaustive enough? Because its
authors lack credibility? Because there is still more to be understood
and researched on the matter?
Is it definitive? How could it be? Communist regimes went to great lengths to conceal their crimes, and one of the most oppressive of all, North Korea, still exists to this day. What the book does is use the best available evidence to give a sense of the scale of what we are dealing with.
In introducing the Black Book, lead author Stephane Courtois, Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, offers the following rough breakdown of the numbers of people that communism killed:
USSR -- 20 million
China -- 65 million
Vietnam -- 1 million
North Korea -- 2 million
Cambodia -- 2 million
Eastern Europe -- 1 million
Latin America -- 150,000
Africa -- 1.7 million
Afghanistan -- 1.5 million
Communist movements, parties not in power -- 10,000
More @ The Commentator
A run like no other: Triumphant touchdown transcends competition
Via The Lonely Libertarian
Unbeaten and state Class 1A power Stratford led Memphis, 35-0, with about 30 seconds left Friday night. This idea of Memphis coach Andy Correll, which seemed almost outlandish eight weeks ago, just might work.
He called timeout and met with Stratford coach Eddie Metcalf at midfield.
Correll already had broached the idea with Metcalf via email earlier in the week. Correll knew he would need his and the Elks’ cooperation to make it work.
But, now, with Stratford having held his team scoreless, Correll wasn’t so sure.
“I said, ‘Coach, I don’t know now,’” Correll said. “Your boys have played too hard to allow him to score. Maybe he could just run for 10 yards or so.”
Metcalf didn’t want to hear any more.
“Coach Correll was telling me that I don’t want to ruin your shutout,” Metcalf said, “and I told him that didn’t mean anything, that what you’re doing for that kid is more important than zeroes on the scoreboard.
“I said, ‘I’m going to tell our defense they better not touch him, so unless he trips and falls, he’s going to score,’” Metcalf said.
Metcalf went back to give his defense the unusual instructions. Correll told the confused Memphis offense that Kenbriel Hearn was going in at running back, and this was the play to run and lead him into the end zone.
“Coach told us that we play for more than just winning, and that I was going in and getting the ball,” Hearn said. “I thought I was just suited up for moral support. Coach told me to go do my thing. The announcer called my name. The crowd went crazy, and I thought, ‘Man, my mom is going to be mad at me.’”
Life’s audible
Kenbriel Hearn (6), second from right, holds hands with Memphis High
School football teammates during a pregame prayer. Hearn, sidelined due
to complications from a brain tumor, ran in a touchdown Friday night in
the closing seconds of a game against Stratford High School.
Unbeaten and state Class 1A power Stratford led Memphis, 35-0, with about 30 seconds left Friday night. This idea of Memphis coach Andy Correll, which seemed almost outlandish eight weeks ago, just might work.
He called timeout and met with Stratford coach Eddie Metcalf at midfield.
Correll already had broached the idea with Metcalf via email earlier in the week. Correll knew he would need his and the Elks’ cooperation to make it work.
But, now, with Stratford having held his team scoreless, Correll wasn’t so sure.
“I said, ‘Coach, I don’t know now,’” Correll said. “Your boys have played too hard to allow him to score. Maybe he could just run for 10 yards or so.”
Metcalf didn’t want to hear any more.
“Coach Correll was telling me that I don’t want to ruin your shutout,” Metcalf said, “and I told him that didn’t mean anything, that what you’re doing for that kid is more important than zeroes on the scoreboard.
“I said, ‘I’m going to tell our defense they better not touch him, so unless he trips and falls, he’s going to score,’” Metcalf said.
Metcalf went back to give his defense the unusual instructions. Correll told the confused Memphis offense that Kenbriel Hearn was going in at running back, and this was the play to run and lead him into the end zone.
“Coach told us that we play for more than just winning, and that I was going in and getting the ball,” Hearn said. “I thought I was just suited up for moral support. Coach told me to go do my thing. The announcer called my name. The crowd went crazy, and I thought, ‘Man, my mom is going to be mad at me.’”
Life’s audible
More with video @ Amarillo
New evidence suggests Kremlin poisoned Arafat
Does the newly publicized Swiss report of evidence Yasser Arafat was poisoned by radioactive polonium-210 indicate the Palestinian leader was killed by Russia’s intelligence agency, the heir of the Soviet Union’s KGB?
A little more than four months before the news this week that tests on Arafat’s body in a Swiss investigation showed “unexpected high activity” of polonium, a book co-authored by former Romanian spy chief Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa was published documenting Arafat’s training by the communist Soviet Union and pointing out that the only other known case of polonium-210 poisoning was the death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
More @ WND
Northernizing the South
John Brown hanged at Charles Town, Virginia (present-day West Virginia — another thing Virginia lost during the Civil War). {Illegally so by the Tyrant. BT} This 19th-century drawing is from the Virginia Military Institute archive of the event, which includes eyewitness accounts of soldiers who attended the hanging, including Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
It is arguable that the first shots of the War Between the States were fired by Reverend Beecher’s guns in mid-1850s Kansas, and John Brown’s armed attack on Virginia in 1859 was a logical result of this abolitionist fanaticism. Unwilling to work toward a practical and peaceful solution to the riddle of African slavery in the United States, they plunged the country into revolution and war costing nearly a million lives.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Northernizing the South
“By the fall of 1856, some members of the Massachusetts aid committee, concluding that private support for the Kansas free-State settlers was not sufficient to protect them from proslavery advocates there, were urging northern State governments to intervene in the territory. [Amos Lawrence] consulted with some of his conservative friends about the idea and was told the State of Massachusetts had no constitutional authority to act in Kansas affairs.
Lawrence
admitted that such an action could then only be justified upon "higher
law" ground. The concept of higher law was one abolitionists were fond
of invoking, and Lawrence confessed that it was a concept "which I never
believed tenable, except for extreme cases, which come up once in a
lifetime."
[Lawrence] told Samuel Gridley Howe that he deemed the denial of honest elections in Kansas to be "a sufficient cause for revolution." Lawrence hoped to avoid civil war in the territory, but if it came to that, he predicted, "it will be a contest between liberty and slavery, and it cannot last long for the slaves will not wait for its termination." Instead, they would revolt and the uprising would spread into neighboring Missouri, toppling slavery there.
The leaders of the [New England Emigrant Aid] company made every effort to divorce themselve’s from the abolitionist camp. Rather than emphasize the evils of slavery for the slave, most of the men active in the [company] stressed the threat of slavery to northern values and institutions . . . New Englanders believed that the very future of republican government was at stake in Kansas and, furthermore, the nation. Thus for them, Kansas became battleground between New England and Southern ways of life.
Eli Thayer, who founded the company, shared in this New England sense of mission. He hoped to keep the Emigrant Aid Company alive and to use it to promote free-labor colonies north and south of Kansas. By 1858, he was even proposing to "New Englandize" Central America..."we [will] send steam engines sir, which are the greatest apostles of liberty that this country has ever seen."
[Lawrence] told Samuel Gridley Howe that he deemed the denial of honest elections in Kansas to be "a sufficient cause for revolution." Lawrence hoped to avoid civil war in the territory, but if it came to that, he predicted, "it will be a contest between liberty and slavery, and it cannot last long for the slaves will not wait for its termination." Instead, they would revolt and the uprising would spread into neighboring Missouri, toppling slavery there.
The leaders of the [New England Emigrant Aid] company made every effort to divorce themselve’s from the abolitionist camp. Rather than emphasize the evils of slavery for the slave, most of the men active in the [company] stressed the threat of slavery to northern values and institutions . . . New Englanders believed that the very future of republican government was at stake in Kansas and, furthermore, the nation. Thus for them, Kansas became battleground between New England and Southern ways of life.
Eli Thayer, who founded the company, shared in this New England sense of mission. He hoped to keep the Emigrant Aid Company alive and to use it to promote free-labor colonies north and south of Kansas. By 1858, he was even proposing to "New Englandize" Central America..."we [will] send steam engines sir, which are the greatest apostles of liberty that this country has ever seen."
[At]
. . . the company's annual meeting in 1856 he raised the possibility of
colonizing Virginia . . . and in 1857 settled some northerners in
western Virginia, near the Ohio River. By such means, Thayer proposed to
"Northernize the South."
(Lawrence)...preferred to secure the western territories for freedom and let the superiority of the northern economic system eventually transform the South. Until then, the Southerners should be left alone to bear responsibility for owning slaves; "it is not for us who imported their ancestors to complain."
(Cotton and Capital, Boston Businessmen and Anti-Slavery Reform, Richard H. Abbott, UMass Press, 1991, pp. 42-47)
(Lawrence)...preferred to secure the western territories for freedom and let the superiority of the northern economic system eventually transform the South. Until then, the Southerners should be left alone to bear responsibility for owning slaves; "it is not for us who imported their ancestors to complain."
(Cotton and Capital, Boston Businessmen and Anti-Slavery Reform, Richard H. Abbott, UMass Press, 1991, pp. 42-47)
Marines may put pirates in crosshairs with beefed-up Nigerian mission
Via avordvet
Pirates, beware — the U.S. Marine Corps could be coming to troubled waters near you.
As armed pirates continue to terrorize waters off Africa’s west coast at three times the rate than their Somali counterparts on the continent’s eastern coast, Marine officials are considering expanding its presence in and around the Gulf of Guinea to ward off piracy and other threats. Capt. Eric Flanagan, a Marine Corps spokesman, told FoxNews.com the force would be an extension of a larger crisis-response team established earlier this year in Spain to handle emergencies in northern Africa.
“What we’re doing is looking at potential extension of that same force,” Flanagan said. “With the current fiscal environment, it’s about the Marine Corps maintaining presence without the need for amphibious shipping.”
Pirates, beware — the U.S. Marine Corps could be coming to troubled waters near you.
As armed pirates continue to terrorize waters off Africa’s west coast at three times the rate than their Somali counterparts on the continent’s eastern coast, Marine officials are considering expanding its presence in and around the Gulf of Guinea to ward off piracy and other threats. Capt. Eric Flanagan, a Marine Corps spokesman, told FoxNews.com the force would be an extension of a larger crisis-response team established earlier this year in Spain to handle emergencies in northern Africa.
“What we’re doing is looking at potential extension of that same force,” Flanagan said. “With the current fiscal environment, it’s about the Marine Corps maintaining presence without the need for amphibious shipping.”
More @ Fox
Lavabit's Dark Mail Initiative
Via Bill
There is an audible pause in our analog lives; a preverbal squelch on
the digital line that defines the very privacy everyone expects, but is
rarely guaranteed.
That audible pause, that digital squelch carries with it a subtle promise that someone is reading, or listening, or cataloging and (ab)using every footprint we each press into the digital landscape. No one can guarantee that a third-party is or is not eavesdropping on a series of communications, but Dark Mail can guarantee that when a third-party does gain access, or demands access, the privacy users rightfully deserve is maintained without fail.
The goal is to cleanup and release the source code
that was used to power Lavabit as a f/oss project with support for dark
mail added.
That audible pause, that digital squelch carries with it a subtle promise that someone is reading, or listening, or cataloging and (ab)using every footprint we each press into the digital landscape. No one can guarantee that a third-party is or is not eavesdropping on a series of communications, but Dark Mail can guarantee that when a third-party does gain access, or demands access, the privacy users rightfully deserve is maintained without fail.
More @ Kickstarter
Why Preppers Should Be THRILLED That The Stock Market Has Hit An All-Time High
I am a prepper and I LOVE the fact that the stock market is at an all-time high. In fact, I hope that it keeps going up for as long as possible. Why? Because it gives me more time to prepare for the inevitable collapse that is coming. As I will discuss extensively below, anyone with half a brain should be able to see that a great financial disaster is coming to this nation. If you still doubt this after reading this article, please go check out The Economic Collapse Blog where I have posted nearly 1000 articles that break this down in excruciating detail. Unfortunately, a lot of preppers out there are being really, really stupid right now.
More @ Freedom Outpost
High Anxiety: Obama Holds Closed-Door Meetings with Nervous Democrats
Healthcare.gov is broken, numerous state-run exchanges remain busted, enrollments are trickling in at a pathetic rate, millions are losing their current health coverage, tens of millions are experiencing sticker shock, and the HHS Secretary just admitted that Obamacare's "navigators" -- who handle Americans' sensitive health and financial data -- have not been subjected to criminal background checks. What could possibly be making Democrats skittish? Time for a panic pow-wow:
More @ Townhall
VIDEO: Solid Concepts produces the world’s first 3D printed metal 1911
While hysterical politicians are considering the regulation of 3D plastic printers over fears that criminals will print plastic guns—because so many 6th-grade dropouts are CAD savants—Solid Concepts has bypassed the plastic gun drama entirely, and has printed the first functioning, firing 3D printed metal gun, a .45 ACP that has already sucked down an entire 50-round box of hardball.
More @ Bearing Arms
Teacher's Union Investigates Jewish Dad Who Complained about Liberal Bias
Josh Barry, of Camp Hill, Penn., wants to know why the president of the local teacher’s union thinks he’s a neo-Nazi after he complained about a classroom assignment that he believed to be biased.
“I’m Jewish and my wife is half-black, half-white,” Barry told me in a telephone interview. “I am the furthest thing from a neo-Nazi.”
Last week, his daughter’s eighth grade American History class at East Pennsboro Middle School was asked to analyze a New York Times story about the recent government shutdown.
Barry, who said he is a registered independent, read the story and then read a list of questions his daughter was required to answer and he immediately determined the assignment was “grossly slanted.”
The worksheet included questions like “To what issue do House Republican leaders insist on tying the federal budget?” and “Whom do you hold most responsible for the government shutdown?”
Barry fired off letters complaining about the assignment to his daughter’s teacher as well as the school board. But a few days later, he was shocked to discover that the head of the local teacher’s union was making calls around town – asking if he was a neo-Nazi.
The story was first reported on the website Examiner.com.
“It is safe to say that I am less than pleased with your non-objective approach to education when it pertains to current political discussions in the classroom,” he wrote. “You have a duty to be objective and your information you provided my child was not only grossly slanted but it is incompetently incomplete.”
He pointed out the questions in the lesson were loaded with political ideology and “pre-loaded with incorrect premises.”
More @ Townhall
3 deadly family feuds in Alabama history that rival Hatfields and McCoys
Via Billy
Most everyone knows the story of the Hatfields and McCoys, the families that feuded across decades and state lines in West Virginia and Kentucky, until a dozen people had been killed.
But Alabama history includes some rough-and-tumble families of its own and several feuding families used pioneer justice to settle their differences. Here are the stories of three major Alabama family feuds:
Aunt Jenny Brooks’ boys ‘died with their boots on’
Aunt Jenny Brooks of Lawrence County in Alabama lived to the ripe old age of 98, dying in 1924. Thanks to their gun-slinging ways, she outlived her husband and sons, but Aunt Jenny reportedly said “they died like men, with their boots on.”
Most everyone knows the story of the Hatfields and McCoys, the families that feuded across decades and state lines in West Virginia and Kentucky, until a dozen people had been killed.
But Alabama history includes some rough-and-tumble families of its own and several feuding families used pioneer justice to settle their differences. Here are the stories of three major Alabama family feuds:
Aunt Jenny Brooks’ boys ‘died with their boots on’
Aunt Jenny Brooks of Lawrence County in Alabama lived to the ripe old age of 98, dying in 1924. Thanks to their gun-slinging ways, she outlived her husband and sons, but Aunt Jenny reportedly said “they died like men, with their boots on.”
More @ AL
Government Power Grab: FDA To Ban Trans Fats
Via Bill
OPINION:
The United States is over 17 trillion dollars in debt, the national unemployment rate is over seven percent, and one-sixth of the American population is on food stamps. But fixing those problems is just so hard! So, some courageous politicians have decided to spend time and money dictating what we should be allowed to eat. They do this in the name of “keeping us healthy.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a plan to ban trans fats because they are a “threat to people’s health.”
OPINION:
The United States is over 17 trillion dollars in debt, the national unemployment rate is over seven percent, and one-sixth of the American population is on food stamps. But fixing those problems is just so hard! So, some courageous politicians have decided to spend time and money dictating what we should be allowed to eat. They do this in the name of “keeping us healthy.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a plan to ban trans fats because they are a “threat to people’s health.”
More @ Ben Swann
Virginia gun rights advocate Adam Kokesh pleads guilty to gun charges, released from jail
Adam Kokesh, a Fairfax County gun rights advocate, pleaded guilty Wednesday to various charges associated with an Independence Day incident in which he videotaped himself loading a shotgun in Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White House.
Kokesh, 31, was ordered released from the D.C. jail, where he has been for nearly four months , pending a January sentencing hearing.
Kokesh’s impromptu plea came during an unscheduled hearing in D.C. Superior Court, just two weeks after he pleaded not guilty to the charges and told Judge Patricia A. Broderick that he was exercising his constitutional rights. Kokesh, who had grown a long, thick beard while in custody, said he was replacing his attorney, who had been involved in the case since Kokesh’s arrest.
A trial had been scheduled for Nov. 18, and Kokesh’s supporters had been advocating for jury nullification in his case.
More @ The Washington Post
Self Defense Map
The map below shows all of our stories geo tagged on a map. Many stories do not give the exact addresses for obvious reasons, but we try to get the points as close as possible with the information provided.
The map shows incidents recorded from August 1, 2011 – Present. There may be handful (less than a dozen stories) recorded prior to that.
More @ Guns Save Lives
'Unacceptable': Democrat unloads on Sebelius 'We were told everything was on track'
It’s impossible to do something in this administration that gets you fired. Impossible!” thundered Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
He had asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to explain during a Senate hearing why the administration knew for years that Obamacare would cause millions of people to lose their health care insurance, yet President Obama continued to say otherwise.
She began to give the same explanation the president tried to offer Monday, that people could keep their health plan “if it hasn’t changed since the law passed,” a caveat he had never offered in the many years he had been making the claim.
‘True or false?’
The senator cut her off and demanded to know, “Is it true or false” that people could keep their plans?
When she began to dodge the question by referring to the “vast majority of Americans” Cornyn declared, “I will just let the record show you refused to answer my question.”
Earlier, he asked her rhetorically why lying to Congress was a crime but lying to the American public was not?
“Most Americans believe in grace but you and the President of the United States have been misleading the American people!” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., exclaimed.
The secretary’s fellow Kansan, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was even more to the point, saying she should lose her job.
Request for resignation
More @ WND
Arizona prosecutors: Smoking weed weeks earlier enough for DUI charge
Via avordvet
![["Marijuana Smoke Consumer - Young Lady" on Shutterstock]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sINsMeQWgmKGjC-2ERAcayZ-dKwX4vUjR9bhPDjplNZnQujMytBOyY9HIJoSHgUuj8LVt7Hpm-JwAbXG9W2Rd5rgAj_MosATpemWQyajSLEpQFKN7sRFdhKq7CkP7QLPQDNrjh_RHFe1V2ie6nYGPIpN6TknWcMlFS9CK4JZDqfwEDejgyLqMJ=s0-d)
Prosecutors in one Arizona county argued on Tuesday that people who smoked marijuana days or even weeks earlier could be charged with driving under the influence of drugs.
Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Susan Luder argued before the Arizona Supreme Court that the county had acted properly in charging a man with for driving under the influence after finding Carboxy-THC, a secondary metabolite of marijuana, in his blood after stopping him for a traffic violation.
According to Capitol Media Services reporter Howard Fischer, Luder did not dispute her own expert witness who agreed that the presence of Carboxy-THC did not necessarily mean that someone was impaired.
Prosecutors in one Arizona county argued on Tuesday that people who smoked marijuana days or even weeks earlier could be charged with driving under the influence of drugs.
Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Susan Luder argued before the Arizona Supreme Court that the county had acted properly in charging a man with for driving under the influence after finding Carboxy-THC, a secondary metabolite of marijuana, in his blood after stopping him for a traffic violation.
According to Capitol Media Services reporter Howard Fischer, Luder did not dispute her own expert witness who agreed that the presence of Carboxy-THC did not necessarily mean that someone was impaired.
More @ The Raw Story
NC: TAKE ACTION IN BLOWING ROCK
TAKE ACTION IN BLOWING ROCK
|
As of its first reading, Blowing Rock's proposed parks ordinance, “Weapons on Town Property-Amendment” (# 2013-12), was in perfect compliance with state law. However, the proposed ordinance is on course to be torpedoed by a trio of anti-gun councilmen: Doug Matheson, Albert Yount and Jim Steele. If the “Weapons on Town Property” ordinance is not enacted as initially approved, Matheson, Yount and Steele will most certainly attempt to expand the “criminal empowerment zones” in Blowing Rock parks beyond where state law says that concealed carry can be prohibited; up to and including entire parks! This must not be allowed, and below you’ll find critical information on action you can take to halt this pending attack on your rights. This Tuesday: Blowing Rock Town Council Meeting Please attend the Blowing Rock Town Council meeting, this Tuesday, to send a message to the anti-gun councilmen. They need to see that, when your gun rights are on the line, you will not just sit down and take it. Opportunities to speak at the meeting will be limited, but your mere presence will send a strong message of support for the pro-freedom position. When you arrive, see the GRNC volunteer at the door to pick up your “Guns Save Lives” sticker to wear. Find more details about the meeting below. Right Now: Send a Message to the Town Council Below, find information on how you can send a strong message to the Town Council, right now. You can also let the Chamber of Commerce know where you stand on this issue. Use the provided contact information and suggested message to tell them what you think about unlawful gun bans. |
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