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Bush Hands Over Reins of U.S. Economy to EU

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 2:28 PM

By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Article Font Size

The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy.

In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in total, to the Western European model of socialism, stagnation, and excessive government regulation.

Sovereignty is out the window. Without a vote, we are suddenly members of the European Union. Given the dismal record of those nations at creating jobs and sustaining growth, merging with the Europeans is like a partnership with death.

At the G-20 meeting, Bush agreed to subject the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and our other regulatory agencies to the supervision of a global entity that would critique its regulatory standards and demand changes if it felt they were necessary. Bush agreed to create a College of Supervisors.

According to The Washington Post, it would "examine the books of major financial institutions that operate across national borders so regulators could begin to have a more complete picture of banks' operations."

Their scrutiny would extend to hedge funds and to various "exotic" financial instruments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), a European-dominated operation, would conduct "regular vigorous reviews" of American financial institutions and practices.

The European-dominated College of Supervisors would also weigh in on issues like executive compensation and investment practices.

There is nothing wrong with the substance of this regulation.

Experience is showing it is needed. But it is very wrong to delegate these powers to unelected, international institutions with no political accountability.

We have a Securities and Exchange Commission appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, both of whom are elected by the American people. It is with the SEC, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve that financial accountability must take place.

The European Union achieved this massive subrogation of American sovereignty the way it usually does, by negotiation, gradual bureaucratic encroachment, and without asking the voters if they approve.

What's more, Bush appears to have gone down without a fight, saving his debating time for arguing against the protectionism that France's Nicolas Sarkozy was pushing.

By giving Bush a seeming victory on a moratorium against protectionism for one year, Sarkozy was able to slip over his massive scheme for taking over the supervision of the U.S. economy.

All kinds of political agendas are advancing under the cover of responding to the global financial crisis.

Where Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism by regulating it, Bush, to say nothing of Obama, has given the government control over our major financial and insurance institutions. And it isn't even our government!

The power has now been transferred to the international community, led by the socialists in the European Union.

Will Obama govern from the left? He doesn't have to.

George W. Bush has done all the heavy lifting for him. It was under Bush that the government basically took over as the chief stockholder of our financial institutions and under Bush that we ceded our financial controls to the European Union.

In doing so, he has done nothing to preserve what differentiates the vibrant American economy from those dying economies in Europe.

Why have 80 percent of the jobs that have been created since 1980 in the industrialized world been created in the United States? How has America managed to retain its leading 24 percent share of global manufacturing even in the face of the Chinese surge?

How has the U.S. GDP risen so high that it essentially equals that of the European Union, whose population is 50 percent greater?

It has done so by an absence of stifling regulation, a liberation of capital to flow to innovative businesses, low taxes, and by a low level of unionization that has given business the flexibility to grow and prosper.

Europe, stagnated by taxation and regulation, has grown by a pittance while we have roared ahead. But now Bush — not Obama — Bush has given that all up and caved in to European socialists.

The Bush legacy? European socialism. Who needs enemies with friends like Bush?

© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Pentagon to detail military to bolster security:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27989275/

The reason

The fingerprints and DNA samples of more than 857,000 innocent citizens who have been arrested or charged but never convicted of a criminal offence now face deletion from the national DNA database after a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.

In one of their most strongly worded judgments in recent years, the unanimous ruling from the 17 judges, including a British judge, Nicolas Bratza, condemned the "blanket and indiscriminate" nature of the powers given to the police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to retain the DNA samples and fingerprints of suspects who have been released or cleared.

The judges were highly critical of the fact that the DNA samples could be retained without time limit and regardless of the seriousness of the offence, or the age of the suspect.


DNA decision: 'Any interference with privacy has to be for solving crime'
Link to this audio The court said there was a particular risk that innocent people would be stigmatised because they were being treated in the same way as convicted criminals. The judges added that the fact DNA profiles could be used to identify family relationships between individuals, meant its indefinite retention also amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their private lives under the human rights convention.

The case provoked an expression of disappointment from the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the promise that a working party, including senior police officials, will report back to Strasbourg by next March on how the government will comply with the judgment.

"The government mounted a robust defence before the court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice. The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgment."

It is thought that the policy in Scotland, where DNA samples can only be held for a maximum of five years and only in serious violent and sexual cases, even if the suspect was not convicted, will be the first option to be looked at.

The Strasbourg court ruling came in a case brought by two Sheffield men who asked for their DNA records to be destroyed. The first man, Michael Marper, aged 45, was arrested in 2001 and charged with harassing his partner, but the case was dropped three months later after the couple were reconciled. He had no previous convictions.

In the second case, a 19-year-old named only in court as S was arrested and charged with attempted robbery in January 2001 when he was 12, but was cleared five months later.


Both asked the South Yorkshire police to remove and destroy their DNA samples and profiles and fingerprints. But police said they needed to retain them "to aid criminal investigation".

Their lawyer, Peter Mahy, said last night: "This is a fantastic result after a seven-year hard fought battle against the UK government. We are obviously delighted that the European court of human rights found in our clients' favour. It will be very interesting to see how the government respond - they should start immediately to destroy the DNA records of innocent people on the DNA database. "

The ruling will have a major impact in shaping the future development of the DNA database in Britain and its use across Europe. Set up in 1995, the British DNA database which now holds the samples of 4.3 million individuals in Britain, including children, is already proportionately the largest in the world.

The Home Office acknowledged yesterday that its plans to extend the retention of DNA to low level, so-called non-recordable offences, including littering and minor traffic offences were now dead in the water.


Tony Bunyan of Statewatch, the European civil liberties monitoring group, also said it put a question mark over EU plans to share fingerprint and DNA data across the 27 member states.

The Association of Chief Police Officers said the ruling would have a profound impact on their use of DNA technology. They pointed out that over a four-year period from May 2001, 200,000 DNA samples taken from unconvicted suspects, had led to 8,500 individuals being linked with 14,000 offences including 114 murders and 116 rapes.

But Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "This is one of the most strongly worded judgments that Liberty has ever seen from the court of human rights. The court has used human rights principles and common sense to deliver the privacy protection of innocent people that the British government has shamefully failed to deliver."


The Equality and Human Rights Commission said it welcomed the judgment and would work with the Home Office and the police to ensure the implications of the ruling were implemented.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/05/dna-database-civilliberties

Justices to Decide Legality of Indefinite Detention
Case of Qatari National, Held Without Formal Charges, Is Test of Executive Power Asserted by Bush

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri has been held without formal charges in a Navy brig for more than five years. (The Journal Star Via Associated Press)
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Who's Blogging» Links to this article
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 6, 2008; Page A02

The Supreme Court said yesterday it will decide whether the president may order the indefinite detention of suspects living lawfully in the United States, one of the broadest claims of executive power the Bush administration has asserted in the nation's anti-terrorism efforts.

The court said it will review the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national studying in Illinois when he was seized in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and held in a Navy brig for more than five years without formal charges.

The case will present President-elect Barack Obama with an immediate decision on whether to endorse President Bush's aggressive use of executive power or to strike a new path in how the country confronts those suspected of planning additional al-Qaeda attacks.

The Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration four times on cases that involve the assertion of executive power with limited judicial review. Most recently, the court ruled 5 to 4 that terrorism suspects held at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal court.

While Marri is the only person seized on U.S. soil and currently held as an enemy combatant -- the administration says he was part of a sleeper al-Qaeda cell intent on mass murder and disrupting the banking system -- the larger question of the president's powers might be the most significant the court has yet considered.

"The constitutional scope of the administration's unilateral detention powers," said Robert Chesney, a national security expert at the Wake Forest University law school, "is the question we've all been waiting for an answer to."

In a splintered decision this summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond ruled that the president had the power to detain Marri under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks. But a separate majority also said Marri had the right to challenge his designation as an enemy combatant before a district court in South Carolina, where he is currently being held.

The Bush administration had urged the Supreme Court to allow that process to go forward before taking Marri's case.


But lawyers for Marri had urged the justices to take the case now, saying the administration's reading of the military force authorization is "clearly not what Congress intended," in the words of Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The president has deviated from the principles on which the United States and its Constitution were founded: that individuals cannot be imprisoned for suspected wrongdoing without being charged with a crime and tried before a jury," he said in a statement.

But Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre, in a brief to the court, said it was "absurd" to assert that the president was doing anything other than what Congress had given him power to do to prevent "another September 11."

"All signs point to the conclusion that Congress intended to authorize detention of al Qaeda agents who, like petitioner, come to this country to commit hostile or war-like acts," Garre wrote. "And a contrary conclusion would severely undermine the military's ability to protect the nation against further al Qaeda attack at home."

The court said it would consider whether the law authorizes -- and if so, whether the Constitution allows -- "the seizure and indefinite military detention of a person lawfully residing in the United States, without criminal charge or trial" based on government assertions of al-Qaeda contacts.

Marri was a graduate student in Peoria, Ill., when he was arrested in December 2001. He was charged a year later with lying to the FBI and using a false name and a stolen Social Security number to apply for bank accounts in Macomb, Ill., for a fictitious business.

But just before his trial in June 2003, Bush ordered the attorney general to turn him over to the military, and he has been held in isolation in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., since.

The government says Marri trained at an al-Qaeda camp and met Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the summer of 2001, and officials have said that the FBI came to think he was al-Qaeda's senior operative in the United States. A government affidavit filed with the court quoted a defense intelligence official saying that "Al-Marri offered to be an al Qaeda martyr."

Marri is the last of three designated enemy combatants held in the United States since 2001. His case is most similar to that of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen originally accused of attempting to explode a radiological "dirty bomb" in the United States. Padilla was transferred to civilian custody to face terrorism charges before the Supreme Court could take up the issue of the military's power to detain him.

Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli probably will be heard in March, after Obama takes office with his new team at the Justice Department. Although Obama has strongly opposed Bush on the claims of executive power he has made in fighting terrorism, his views on Marri and enemy combatants held inside the country are unclear. Obama has promised to abolish military commissions underway at Guantanamo Bay and has said that accused terrorists should be tried in civilian courts or military courts-martial.

A spokeswoman for Obama's national security team yesterday declined to comment. "President-elect Obama will make decisions about how to handle detainees as president when his full national security and legal teams are in place. There is one president at a time, and we intend to respect that," Brooke Anderson said.


Obama's options include backing the administration's current position of broad detention authority. He -- or the Bush administration -- could also short-circuit the court's examination by attempting to charge Marri in federal court or by deporting him to his native country.

But Chesney, the law professor, said it was unclear whether the statements relied upon by the government to detain Marri would be admissible as evidence in federal court.

Obama also, of course, has the option of reversing the administration's interpretation of the law once he takes office.

A prominent group of former judges and Justice Department lawyers, along with retired military officers, filed briefs backing Marri's position. They include Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation into abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The ruling supporting Bush is "a grave threat to the civil liberties of American citizens," said the brief submitted by the group, which also included former attorney general Janet Reno and former federal judge Abner Mikva, a longtime Obama mentor.

Additionally, liberal civil rights groups who have been hostile to Bush and friendly to Obama cheered the court's decision to take the case, and made it clear that they expect the Obama administration to see the policy differently.

"Conflicts like this one are among the best reasons to look forward to a new administration," said Kathryn Kolbert, president of the liberal People for the American Way.

Staff writer Jerry Markon and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/05/AR2008120501884_2.html

'Hoax' call during siege put Pakistan on alert
A man claiming to be India's foreign minister spoke to Pakistan's president in a 'threatening' manner, a newspaper reports. India makes first arrests since the end of the siege in Mumbai.
By Laura King and Henry Chu
6:09 AM PST, December 6, 2008
Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and New Delhi -- A hoax caller claiming to be India's foreign minister spoke to Pakistan's president in a "threatening" manner during the final hours of the Mumbai attacks, prompting Pakistan to put its air force on its highest alert for nearly 24 hours, a Pakistani news report said today.

Meanwhile, authorities in India reported the first arrests since the end of the siege in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people. Two men in the eastern city of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, were detained by police and accused of providing the mobile phone cards used by the attackers.



India, Pakistan keep a lid on tensions
The hoax call and subsequent air force alert reported by the English-language Dawn newspaper underscored the volatile atmosphere between the nuclear-armed neighbors during the 60-hour rampage by gunmen in India's commercial capital that began the night of Nov. 26.

The report also seemed certain to raise new questions about the competence of Pakistan's civilian government, elected less than a year ago. The civilian leadership has already been criticized for initially promising to send the chief of its main spy agency to help in the Indian probe, then hastily reneging after objections from the political opposition and the security establishment.

The newspaper's account said it took intercession by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other diplomats to establish that the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had not made the call to President Asif Ali Zardari on the night of Nov. 28.


A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Lou Fintor, said he was unaware of any such incident having occurred, and a Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Sadiq, referred calls to the Information Ministry, which said it would be making a statement later on what it described as the "so-called" hoax.

However, a Western diplomat and a Pakistani security official confirmed the broad outlines of the Dawn account.

India has blamed Pakistan-based militants in the attacks but not the Pakistani state. Pakistan has denied any official involvement, and there is widespread public anger over the fact that India accused Pakistani elements even while the attacks were still unfolding.

During the air force alert, Pakistani warplanes carried out patrols while carrying live weapons, Dawn said. Senior intelligence officials also suggested to reporters during that interval that Pakistan might shift tens of thousands of troops from the border with Afghanistan to the Indian frontier.

The incident reportedly began when a caller who identified himself as Mukherjee urgently requested to speak with Zardari. The two had earlier been in phone contact, and because the situation was so fluid at that point, presidential aides bypassed normal identification checks and put the call through, the newspaper's account said.

Most analysts believe a Pakistani group could not have carried out the Mumbai attacks without the help of local Indian accomplices, and the two arrests reported today by authorities could help support that thesis.

However, a police official in West Bengal, the state where Kolkata is situated, cautioned that the two men did not necessarily have direct links with the attackers or prior knowledge of the plot.

Authorities said the arrested pair had bought large batches of cellphone SIM cards that included one later used by the gunmen during the attacks. How the SIM cards came into the attackers' possession remained unclear.

Police say the gunmen were in touch by mobile phone with handlers in Pakistan while the siege was taking place, allegedly seeking guidance on how to proceed and on whom to kill and whom to spare among their hostages at luxury hotels and other sites.

Police have already released details of another Indian national who they say was recruited by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba to scout out possible target sites in Mumbai, including some of those that were hit during the recent attacks. Police say the man was found carrying hand-drawn maps of the sites.

Although it has not been established whether the man was directly connected to the attacks that eventually unfolded, public outrage in India has grown over the perceived failure of authorities to act on intelligence pointing to an imminent strike on Mumbai. On Friday, India's new home minister admitted that there had been "lapses" in security.

King and Chu are Times staff writers.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-india7-2008dec07,0,383051.story

check this site out to read the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/08/ST2008120801947.html

This is what is done by motivated people when you don't agree with the government's policies and there is no recourse. ...and the military industrial complex says "yippie.... we'll just make more....and laugh all the way to the bank."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081207/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan pics at the link.

More than 160 US, NATO vehicles burned in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Militants torched 160 vehicles, including dozens of Humvees destined for U.S. and allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, in the boldest attack so far on the critical military supply line through Pakistan.

The American military said Sunday's raid on two transport terminals near the beleaguered Pakistani city of Peshawar would have "minimal" impact on anti-Taliban operations set to expand with the arrival of thousands more troops next year.

However, the attack feeds concern that insurgents are trying to choke the route through the famed Khyber Pass, which carries up to 70 percent of the supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan, and drive up the cost of the war.

It also dents faith in Pakistani authorities already under pressure from India and the U.S. to act on suspicion that the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai were orchestrated by Islamic extremists based in Pakistan.

The owner of one of the terminals hit Sunday denied government claims that security was boosted after an ambush last month in which bearded militants made off with a Humvee and later paraded it in triumph before journalists.

"We don't feel safe here at all," Kifayatullah Khan told The Associated Press. He predicted that most of his night watchmen would quit their jobs out of fear. "It is almost impossible for us to continue with this business."

The attack reduced a section of the walled Portward Logistic Terminal to a smoldering junkyard.

Khan said armed men flattened the gate before dawn with a rocket-propelled grenade, fatally shot a guard and set fire to 106 vehicles, including about 70 Humvees.

Humvees are thought to cost about $100,000 each, though the price varies widely depending on armor and other equipment, meaning Sunday's losses may exceed $10 million.

An Associated Press reporter who visited the depot saw six rows of destroyed Humvees and military trucks packed close together, some on flatbed trailers, all of them gutted and twisted by the flames.

Khan said shipping documents showed they were destined for U.S. forces and the Western-trained Afghan National Army.

The attackers fled after a brief exchange of fire with police, who arrived about 40 minutes later, he said.

Nine other guards who stood helplessly aside during the attack put the number of assailants at 300, Khan said. Police official Kashif Alam said there were only 30.

At the nearby Faisal depot, manager Shah Iran said 60 vehicles destined for Afghanistan as well as three Pakistani trucks were also burned.

The attacks were the latest in a series highlighting the vulnerability of the supply route to the spreading power of the Taliban in the border region, which is also considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Vast quantities of supplies pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi. Some is routed through Quetta toward the Afghan city of Kandahar, but most flows through the Khyber Pass toward Kabul and the huge U.S. air base at Bagram.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan said in a statement that an unspecified number of its containers were destroyed but that their loss would have "minimal effect on our operations."

"It's militarily insignificant," U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green said. "You can't imagine the volume of supplies that come through there and elsewhere and other ways."

Still, NATO is seeking an alternative route through Central Asia, which it acknowledges is more expensive.

Pakistan halted traffic through the Khyber Pass for several days in November while it arranged for troops to guard the slow-moving convoys.

Shahedullah Baig, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Islamabad, insisted Sunday that the extra security covered the terminals.

"They are fully protected, but in this kind of situation such incidents happen," Baig said.

However, Khan, the depot manager, said that was untrue, and that there were only a handful of lightly armed police at the targeted terminals on Sunday afternoon.

Peshawar has seen a surge in violence in recent weeks, including the slaying of an American working on a U.S.-funded aid project. On Saturday, a car bomb detonated in a busy market area of the city, killing 29 people and injuring 100 more.

Mehmood Shah, a former chief of security in Pakistan's tribal badlands now working as a consultant, said militants appeared to have moved into the Khyber region from both sides of the border in recent months to put pressure on the supply route.

The terminals, like the route itself, could not be adequately protected by private security guards, he said.

"The government should have done it or the U.S. should have insisted that the government do it," he said.

Reference:
http://z13.invisionfree.com/MS_Minuteman/index.php?showtopic=2354

Being an old hand at believing in triple firewalls, 2 hardware and one software, it comes to pass that an old hacker as I once was, I still learn a few things, some of which the hard way.

There is a new threat out on the "net" that all members, regardless of where you surf that you need to guard yourself and your tool you use to stay connected with.

Today, this Byte-Brother got zapped.

The culprit: Surfing and looking for Patriot sites and a pop-up window attempting to offer a free virus scan. This was a pop-up was random, even though pop-ups are disbaled via the browser and software firewalls, it still happened. After getting popped, I went back to the sites and the pop-up was not there. Which is very bizarre. This leads me to believe that this is a BOT generated attack on randomly selected IP addresses. This raises another concern that a system infected with the Trojan may not know it and it is being used as a vehicle for generating attacks

The weapon: A Malware/Trojan called Win32.Downloader.injcter.akd.36

Operating Systems affected: ALL, Windows 2000, XP, Pro, Home and Vista. There are reports of Apple/Mac infections. Yes I said Apple/MAC. There for the age of invincibility of the Apple/Mac may be over.

No reports of Linux

Mode of infection: Pop-up Screen, even though you hit cancel or close it by clicking on the red X in the upper right hand corner, it will deposit it onto your system via a file called sysaudio.sys.

This is a relatively new Trojan with very few discussions of it even on major Anti-Virus forums such as Norton, Kaprisky, TrendMicro, AVG etc. Dated as of Sept 08 on information, nothing older. However there are a lot of people screaming for help.

Speculation: This may be the same or similar Trojan that tore the Pentagon network a new one.

It acts like a stealth Trojan that can be transferred via file, email etc...

Outcome: All your browser searches are redirected to other sites. it is an open door for someone to take control of your system. It sends information to a remote system.

Threat: Extreme

Symptoms: System becomes sluggish, your anti-virus/Adware programs see's an infection but cannot identify it , Your Browser (IE7 or Firefox, it does not affect Google Chrome) will open very slowly and bookmarks become invalid and searches become invalid using Google or Yahoo.

Treatment options: combination of three programs: ZomeAlarm Pro Virus or AVG, Malewarebytes and Superantisypware.

Summary: Although I keep strict control of what enters our network via commercial hardware and software firewalls and ZoneAlarm Pro Commercial, this was a directed attack. Reason? Unknown.

I would stress VERY strongly that you take every precaution you can take and at the very least scan your respective systems using the later two programs in combination at minimal. This is a system killer and one of the nastiest Trojans I have ever seen.

Norton, Trend Micro and AVG used alone will not see or find this Trojan.

If you have questions, I would be happy to assist.

Reference:
http://z13.invisionfree.com/MS_Minuteman/index.php?showtopic=2353

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.
There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly supicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.

Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.

This same type of abusive search and seizure was reported by those innocents who fell victim to oppressive federal drug laws passed in the 1990s. The present circumstance raises the obvious question: is there some rabid new interpretation of an existing drug law that considers food a controlled substance worthy of a nasty SWAT operation? Or worse, is there a previously unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in the Homeland Security measures? Some have suggested that it was merely an out-of-control, hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be a best-case scenario. Anything else might spell the beginning of the end for the freedom to eat unregulated and unmonitored food.

One blogger familiar with the Ohio situation has reported that:

“Interestingly, I believe they [Manna Storehouse] said a month or so ago, an undercover ODA official came to their little store and claimed to have a sick father wanting to join the co-op. Both the owner and her daughter-in-law had a horrible feeling about the man, and decided not to allow him into the co-op and notified him by certified mail. He came back to the co-op demanding to be part of it. They refused and gave him names of other businesses and health food stores closer to his home. Not coincidentally, this man was there yesterday as part of the raid.”

The same blog also noted that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has been chastised by the courts in several previous instances for its aggression, including trying to entrap an Amish man in a raw milk “sale,” which backfired when it became known that the Amish believe in a literal interpretation of “give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away” (Matthew 5:42)

The issue appears to be the discovery of a bit of non-institutional beef in an Oberlin College food service freezer a year ago that was tracked down by a county sanitation official to Manna Storehouse. Oberlin College’s student food coop is widely known for its strident ideological stance about eating organic foods. It seems that the Oberlin student food cooperative had joined the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in order to buy organic foods in bulk from the national organic food distributor United, which services buying clubs across the nation. The sanitation official, James Boddy, evidently contacted the Ohio Department of Agriculture. After the first contact by state ODA officials, Manna Storehouse reportedly wrote them a letter requesting assistance and guidelines for complying with the law. This letter was never answered. Rather, the ODA agent tried several times to infiltrate the coop, as described above. When his attempts failed, the SWAT team showed up!

Food cooperatives and buying clubs have been an active part of the American landscape for over a generation. In the 1970s, with the rise of the organic food industry (a direct outgrowth of the hippie back-to-nature movement) food coops started up all over the country. These were groups of people who freely associated for the purpose of combining their buying power so that they could order organic food items in bulk and case lots. Anyone who was part of these coops in the early era will remember the messy breakdown of 35 pounds of peanut butter and 5 gallon drums of honey!

These buying clubs have persisted and flourished over the years due to their ability to purchase high quality organic foods at reduced prices in bulk quantities. Most cooperatives have participated greatly in the local agrarian economies, supporting neighborhood organic farmers with purchases of produce, eggs, chickens, etc. The groups also purchase food from a number of different local, regional and national distributors, many of them family-based businesses who truck the food themselves. Some of these food cooperatives have become large enough to set up mini-storefront operations where members can drop in and purchase items leftover from case lot sales. Manna Storehouse had established itself in such a manner, using a small enclosed breezeway attached to their home. It was a folksy place with old wooden floors where coop members stopped by to chat and snack on bags of organic corn chips.

The state of Ohio boasts the second largest Amish population in the country. Many of the Amish live on acreages where they raise their own food, not unlike Manna Storehouse, and sell off the extras to neighbors and church members. There is a sense of foreboding that this state crackdown on a longstanding, reputable food cooperative operation could adversely impact the peaceful agrarian way of life not only for the Amish, but homeschoolers and those families living off the land on rural acreages. It raises the disturbing possibility that it could become a crime to raise your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the road, or butcher your own chickens for family and friends – bustling activities that routinely take place in backwater America.

The freedom to purchase food directly form the source is increasingly under attack. For those who have food allergies and chemical intolerances, or who are on special medical diets, this is becoming a serious health issue. Will Americans retain the right to purchase food that is uncontaminated by pesticides, herbicides, allergens, additives, dyes, preservatives, MSG, GMOs, radiation, etc.? The melamine scare from China underscores the increasingly inferior and suspect quality of modern processed institutional foods. One blog, commenting on the bizarre and troubling Manna Storehouse situation, observed that:

“No one is saying exactly why. At the same time the FDA says it it safe to eat the 40% of tainted beef found in Costco's and Sam's all over the nation. These farm raids are very common now. Every farmer needs to fully eqiped [sic] for the possibility of it happening to them. The Farmer To Consumer Legal Defense Fund was created just for this purpose. The USDA just released their plans to put a law into action that will put all small farmers out of business. Animals for the sale of meat or milk will only be allowed in commercial farms, even the organic ones.” December 3, 2008 7:09 PM


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http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3526645/Citigroup-says-gold-could-rise-above-2000-next-year-as-world-unravels.html

The MEMO:
http://butasforme.com/2008/12/03/chief-strategist-at-citibank-economy-will-not-recover-but-will-meet-inflation-or-depression-civil-disorder-and-possibly-wars/

http://www.infowars.com/?p=6584

Court Ruling:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/38110lgl20081215.html