­by Bob Livingston

Personal Liberty Digest

Not all police are what this photo and article reflect. Somewhere in our communites there are still police officers who are truely peace officers dedicated to preserve peace and order, who treat people with respect. (Photo somewhere in the U.S.).

Law-abiding citizens are no longer safe from police. Once the motto for police officers was “To protect and serve,” but now it seems to be “To harass, assault and attack.”

Across the country, police officers are increasingly militarized and increasingly militant. They make up laws out of thin air, claiming that innocuous activities like watching or videotaping police activities – including arrests on public streets, walking in certain neighborhoods, parking on certain streets and putting trash in trash cans – are crimes.

While the vilest offenders are SWAT teams, even regular patrol officers become violent at the least provocation. Thanks to YouTube and similar content-sharing sites, more of these incidents are coming to light. However, capturing video of these incidents has put the videographer at risk from the police, who often unlawfully and forcibly take the phone or camera and erase its contents or remove its memory card.

It’s not unusual for the videographer to be roughed up and/or threatened with arrest in the process. A list of recent incidences of police brutality and other police misconduct can be read at Injustice Everywhere. Cops have come to think of themselves as gods above the law whose commands are to be obeyed immediately and without question.

Any hesitation often leads to the “suspect” being left bleeding and broken or quivering from electricity introduced by a TASER. It doesn’t matter if the person was unable to understand the command because of a language barrier, or if the person was unable to comply due to disability or defect. Officers expect immediateand complete compliance with no questions asked. They are shooting dogs for barking, tasing and pepper spraying children in schools and shooting wheelchair-vbound men in thevstreets. They apparently feelvthey operate above the law.

http://personalliberty.com/2012/02/13/the-violent-militarization-of-local-police/.

Many, if not most, patrol cars now carry dash cams. Sometimes, dash cam videos are preserved, which allows abused citizens – if they are persistent and dogged enough – to get justice and restitution occasionally. Such was the case shown here, where the officer threatened to shoot a suspect in the head for not revealing he had a concealed weapon in the car. Often, though, the dash cam video mysteriously disappears before trial.

According to a report by the CATO Institute, tens of thousands of raids are conducted by SWAT teams each year. The report claimed: These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

The so-called War on Drugs is undoubtedly the casus belli for the increased militarization of the police. SWAT officers are armed and armored as well as, if not better than, soldiers. Drug task forces receive Federal funding to purchase assault weapons, armor and armored vehicles to use in drug raids. They no longer serve warrants by knocking on doors or by picking up suspects on the streets. Instead, they bash down doors or use chain saws to gain entry.

SWAT teams argue their safety requires they swarm into homes. But that doesn’t negate the fact that they create an explosive situation that often leads to innocent people being harmed or killed. Sadly, they often force their way into the wrong residence.

The instance in Tucson, Ariz., in which Iraq veteran Jose Guerena was shot 60 times by SWAT officers in his home is prima facie evidence of the danger these situations create. In the early morning hours Guerena’s wife, Vanessa, saw a man pointing a gun at her through the window. She awakened her husband, who was asleep after working the night shift. Thinking a home invasion was in progress, Guerena told his wife to get into a closet and grabbed his gun.

The SWAT team forced open the door and opened fire on Guerena, then stood by and watched him bleed for an hour before letting paramedics treat him. By then, he was dead. SWAT officers then lied about who shot first. The safety was still on Guerena’s gun, indicating he never fired. Nothing illegal was found in Guerena’s home. It is grounded in conservative American psyche to defend oneself and one’s home. Yet responding to an unannounced and violent intrusion by police will leave you as dead as it left Guerena.

And even if you aren’t shot dead, the police have no qualms about destroying your residence. They claim it is police procedure to gas the house, tear up floor boards, kick in doors and walls, and strew contents of cabinets and furniture to the winds. Requests for compensation are ignored, even if nothing was ever found. But it’s not just suspected drug dealers who feel the wrath of police officers. Just ask Marianne Godboldo of Detroit. Police thugs forcibly removed her daughter for the crime of Godboldo not giving her daughter a pill prescribed by a physician.

Most people dismiss claims of an increasingly violent and aggressive police force as either conspiracy theory or sour grapes by criminals. Minorities have long seen their claims of police brutality dismissed out of hand by white America. Many people naively believe that if they don’t commit a crime, they won’t have anything to worry about from police. But it’s high time that people see this for what it is and connect the dots on the news stories of today.

Congress has just authorized having as many as 30,000 unmanned drones patrolling the U.S. skies. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are greatly expanding the definition of extremist and terrorist to include people performing normal activities or objecting to paying taxes. The USA Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act have given government carte blanche to detain Americans without charge and without trial and ship them to the Guantanamo  Bay prison resort.

In a series of debates on socialism in 1914, John Basil Barnhill said, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” The government fears the people and the coming conflagration it has sparked. By tightening its grasp on liberty through the militarization of the police force, the pendulum is swinging to where the people are now beginning to fear their government. Where this will lead is anybody’s guess, but I predict it won’t be pretty.

­http://personalliberty.com/2012/02/13/the-violent-militarization-of-local-police/.

by Aurora Geib
Natural News

Aspartame, an artificial sweetener commercially known as Nutrasweet, Spoonful and Equal, has infiltrated the world market and has become almost as ubiquitous as the sugar it seeks to replace. From soda drinks to chewing gum, it offers a low-fat, low-calorie and no-sugar option enticing to diabetics and people who are trying to lose weight.

Strangely, diet products containing aspartame has been shown to actually cause weight gain, and the components that make up aspartame have also been found to be toxic in themselves. Why then, despite the numerous studies conducted on this substance finding it to have potentially harmful effects, is it still considered safe for human consumption?

Interview with Russell Blay lock

In an interview conducted by Betty Martini and Jon Baum over Personal Achievement Radio, Dr. Russell Blaylock, a respected neurosurgeon and author of the book “Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills,” speaks about excitotoxins and shares his thoughts on why he believes aspartame is dangerous.

According to Dr. Blaylock, excitotoxins are substances that excite brain cells or neurons to the point of exhaustion and death. Normally, these substances act as transmitters, a substance allowing brain cells to relate with one another.

However, these compounds are so harmful that the body keeps them in low concentrations. Anything that alters or increases these substances can cause neurodegeneration, degeneration of the spinal cord and the brain. Excitotoxins are normally found in plant substances, and, where most people are concerned, in food additives.

One of the components of NutraSweet or aspartame is aspartic acid, a powerful excitotoxin similar to glutamate. Moreover, phenylalanine, one of its components, an amino acid and a neurotoxin at high levels in the rain, has been known to cause seizures.

Dr. Blaylock goes on to add that what makes aspartame so dangerous is that it contains three neurotoxins: methanol, phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Methanol is a powerful neurotoxin whose exposure is carefully allowed by the EPA in minute levels in food and environmental exposure. Nutrasweet, however, provides levels that are seven times the amount the EPA will allow anyone to use. It’s been known to produce blindness and cellular destruction in the brain and spinal cord, particularly the optic nerves.

Aspartic acid, on the other hand, produces cellular excitation. It is an excitotoxin that causes cell death in the brain and significantly affects neural developments in infants, resulting in behavioral changes and even hyperactivity in children. Phenylalanine, like aspartic acid, can also alter brain development during fetal formation and create a lowering of the seizure threshold. Phenylalanine and aspartic acid are both wellrecognized neurotoxins and according to Dr. Blaylock, three neurotoxins in one mix are just unbelievable. Neurological side effects

Today, aspartame is found in over 6,000 product and consumed by 250 million people world wide. There has been more report for aspartame reactions to the FDA than all other food additives put together. In 1988, 80 percent of complaints to the FDA about food additives were aspartame related. After more than 8,000 complaints on the side effect of NutraSweet, the FDA released a list of 92 side effects associated with aspartame consumption.

This is without taking into account other findings that show what aspartame can cause: Destruction of kidney function – In a study conducted by scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, it was discovered that subjects who drank more than two artificially sweetened beverages daily increased their risk of rapid kidney decline.

Headaches/migraines – In a study published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, it was discovered that ingestion of aspartame by those who suffer migraines caused a significant increase in headache frequency for some subjects. Increase of hunger and body weight – In an article published in the UT Health Science Center, it was revealed that diet soft drink consumption seemed much more related to the chances of becoming more overweight or obese.

Increase of the risk of preterm delivery – In a study funded by the Center for Fetal Programming, Division of Epidemiology, a connection ­was discovered between the intake of artificially carbonated drinks and increased risk of preterm delivery.

Seizures and Convulsions – As early as 1987, a study was already conducted by Timothy Maher and Richard J. Wurtman who, through their work, discovered that aspartame potentially induces seizures. Cancer – In a remarkably recent study conducted by the Ramazzini Institute, it was discovered that in rodents, aspartame was a carcinogenic agent in multiple sites with autopsies that showed a significant risk to lung and liver cancer. Why is it still legal? Laws were meant to protect people from harm. Despite this, the FDA has continued to ignore years of research pointing to aspartame’s negative effects and continue to declare that aspartame is safe for use.

This artificial sweetener openly sold in the market has caused many recorded health issues and was never tested in humans prior to its approval. We are now the unwitting subjects in a grand experiment whose results have long been foretold by the questionable way this additive came to be approved. It’s about time we stop relying on the government and do our own thinking. Perhaps, if we are not complacent, we can choose not to be victims.

­by the El Reportero’s news services

ex Presidente Manuel Zelaya

The Honduran Electoral Supreme Court (TSE) allowed the registration of new party Partido Libertad y Refundacion (Freedom and Refoundation, LIBRE), led by former president Manuel Zelaya, to become the seventh political institution in the country.

LIBRE fulfilled all the established requisites in the Honduran electoral law, gathering more than 42,000 required signatures, presenting structures in the 18 departments of the nation and in more than 50 percent of the municipalities, so now, it can start the formal registration to participate in the future electoral processes.

This new party wants to take Xiomara Castro, wife of Zelaya, as the only candidate to the presidency, and gathers all the groups opposed to the coup in June 28, 2009 in Honduras.

The Morazanic Information Net published that for the first time in Honduras, electoral participation of a movement coming from the people, has been assured.

“With the union of political strength and social struggle, LIBRE and the National Popular Resistance Front (Fnrp) will be towards the power,” said the Morazanic Information Net.

In October 2011, LIBRE presented more than 80,000 signatures requesting its inscription as a legal political party before the TSE authorities, together with documents showing its municipal, department and national structures, statutes, programs and constitution act.

When the TSE official resolution official TSE was known, by means of which the inscription and recognition is legalized and its authorities at national level, they will just wait for the publication of that resolution in the Official Gazette, with which it would be come to request the legal personality.

It assures that with the inscription of that new political force it is qualified for its participation in the general elections and this way to dispute the power to the traditional parties of the oligarchy.

Last week, TSE approved the request of registry of Partido Anticorrupción (PAC) that postulates television announcer Salvador Nasralla for the Presidency of the Republic.

Until then, the Liberal, National, Innovation and Unidad (PINU), Christian Democracy (DC) and Democratic Unification were enrolled legally (UD).

Guatemala: Former soldier involved in massacre sentenced

Guatemalan ex soldier Pedro Pimentel was sentenced on Tuesday to 6,060 years in prison in a trial in which he was prosecuted for a massacre in an indigenous community in 1982.

The three judges dismissed the plea of innocence of the defendant and his lawyers by confirming the veracity of the evidence presented by the prosecutors and the witnesses’ testimonies about his involvement in the events.

Pimentel was sentenced to 30 years in prison for each of the 201 peasants massacred from Dec. 6 to 8, 1982, in the village of Dos Erres, 8in the northern department of Peten, and 30 others for crimes against humanity.

­However, technically, the penalty for the former member of the Kaibiles, the elite force of the Guatemalan Army, is 50 years, because it is the maximum sentence allowed in the Criminal Code.

The Dos Erres massacre is considered one of the most famous killings committed by the military, among dozens of them that took place during the domestic armed conflict (1960-1996).

by Anna M. Tinsley
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH — Gun sales are booming. Enthusiasts are stocking up on guns and ammunition, and some in the industry are wondering whether sales are spiking as they did after Democrat Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008.

That rush created a nationwide shortage.

“We’re at the top of the roller coaster and we’re about to plummet down the side,” said DeWayne Irwin, owner of the Cheaper Than Dirt gun store in north Fort Worth, which set a sales record for the month of February. “It’s fixing to happen again. I don’t know if it will be to the same extent it was before, but I see it coming.

“Look who the Republicans are trying to put against Obama,” he said. “It’s the Keystone Kops and people are getting scared. People are terrified he’s going to get re-elected and then he won’t care about getting votes next time. He’ll just pass whatever legislation he wants.”

Some say the uptick in sales at gun stores could also be linked to anything from the arrival of tax refunds to a spending spree by fans of the National Geographic Channel’s Doomsday Preppers show, which chronicles people preparing for the end of the world.

Nationwide, more people than ever are buying firearms.

Last year, the FBI received more than 16.3 million inquiries from people running criminal background checks on potential gun buyers. That’s up from 12.7 million in 2008 and 11.4 million in 2007, FBI records show.

Texas had around 1 million such requests in each of the past four years, the second most, behind Kentucky, which had nearly double that. Officials say Kentucky’s numbers are high because fresh background checks are run every month there on gun owners with concealed-weapons permits.

“I’m constantly getting questions from people in the gun community about this [issue],” said Alan Korwin, author of nine gun law books, including Gun Laws of America, and operator of gunlaws.com. “People are concerned that if Obama wins, as a lame duck, he will go after firearms in a way we have never seen before.

“We saw a fire sale when he was elected last time,” he said. “But the speculation is that now … with his need to get re-elected gone, the sky is the limit on attacking the Second Amendment.”

Assault weapons ban?

Before taking office, Obama said he respected the constitutional right to bear arms. In 2007, after more than three dozen Chicago children had been killed, he also said he wanted to restore the ban on assault weapons.

In the days and weeks after the 2008 election, people began stocking up on firearms and ammunition, eventually creating a shortage. It took nearly a year for supplies to become more plentiful and for prices, which spiked because of the demand, to come down.

President Bill Clinton signed the last so-called assault weapons ban on Sept. 13, 1994, and it expired 10 years later. Just months after he signed the ban, voters went to the polls and the House and Senate flipped from Democratic to Republican control.

When the assault weapons ban came up in Congress for reauthorization in 2004, the measure failed.

“It’s bad politics to be on the wrong side of the Second Amendment at election time,” Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, has said.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Obama administration “has consistently favored the reinstitution of the assault weapons ban. It is something that we think was useful in the past with regard to the reduction that we’ve seen in crime and certainly would have a positive impact on our relationship and the crime situation in Mexico.”

Fort Worth’s Mark Greene, a hunter and former member of Gun Owners for Obama, said he’s tired of people using this argument to influence Obama’s re-election bid.

“I still own guns and I still support Obama,” he said.

“And I still have very little in common with the fear mongers and bunker-mentality gun nuts who will tell any lie they think they can get away with to try and bring down this president they hate so vehemently and irrationally.”

Some in the industry ­cite a variety of reasons for the rise in gun and ammo sales, including that manufacturers are better marketing guns — primarily pink ones — to women.

B u t a b i g r e a – son may be politics. A prominent businessman recently shopped at Cheaper Than Dirt, saying that “Republicans  don’t have a prayer against Obama” this year. That man, Irwin said, spent $25,000 on ammunition, magazines and other gun paraphernalia.

“The folks  paying attention to the political climate think this might be an opportunity to stock up,” Irwin said. ‘War on gun owners’ John Woods, who has lobbied for legislation to keep guns off college campuses, said many fears surfacing are unwarranted. “The gun lobby has long known that fear is a remarkable marketing and fundraising tool,” said Woods, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin who attended Virginia Tech and lost his girlfriend in the 2007 shooting there that claimed 33 lives. “But the Supreme Court ruled recently that the Second Amendment is an individual right, so that fear is completely misplaced.”

Not everyone is stocking up .

Robert Chafin, who lives in Denton County, says he was among those who stocked up during Clinton’s presidency.

“I stockpiled a variety of firearms that I feared might not be available in the future,” he said. “As it turned out, in the wake of the disaster that befell the Democratic Party in the ‘94 elections, attacks on firearms ownership evaporated as Democrats learned a painful lesson. And it appears they have remembered that lesson.” That’s why he isn’t stockpiling right now, he said, even though Obama’s “administration has waged an oblique war on gun owners.”