As a teenager, Alton Lucas believed basketball or music would pluck him out of North Carolina and take him around the world. In the late 1980s, he was the right-hand man to his musical best friend, Youtha Anthony Fowler, who many hip hop and R&B heads know as DJ Nabs.
But rather than jet-setting with Fowler, Lucas discovered drugs and the drug trade at the height of the so-called war on drugs. Addicted to crack cocaine and involved in trafficking the drug, he faced decades-long imprisonment at a time when the drug abuse and violence plaguing major cities and working class Black communities were not seen as the public health issue that opioids are today.
By chance, Lucas received a rare bit of mercy. He got the kind of help that many Black and Latino Americans struggling through the crack epidemic did not: treatment, early release and what many would consider a fresh start.
“I started the landscaping company, to be honest with you, because nobody would hire me because I have a felony,” said Lucas. His Sunflower Landscaping got a boost in 2019 with the help of Inmates to Entrepreneurs, a national nonprofit assisting people with criminal backgrounds by providing practical entrepreneurship education.
Lucas was caught up in a system that imposes lifetime limits on most people who have served time for drug crimes, with little thought given to their ability to rehabilitate. In addition to being denied employment, those with criminal records can be limited in their access to business and educational loans, housing, child custody rights, voting rights and gun rights.
It’s a system that was born when Lu-
See WAR ON DRUGS, Page 3A
“I started the landscaping company, to be honest with you, because nobody would hire me because I have a felony.”
Alton Lucas
Following the passage of stiffer penalties for crack cocaine and other drugs, the Black incarceration rate in America exploded from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 in 2000. DOUGLAS C. PIZAC/AP
Continued from Page 1A
cas was barely out of diapers.
Fifty years ago this summer, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Today, with the U.S. mired in a deadly opioid epidemic that did not abate during the coronavirus pandemic’s worst days, it is questionable whether anyone won the war.
Yet the loser is clear: Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities. A key weapon was the imposition of mandatory minimums in prison sentencing. Decades later those harsh federal and state penalties led to an increase in the prison industrial complex that saw millions of people, primarily of color, locked up and shut out of the American dream….
Why bother reading anymore. Same old government story.
There is, in fact, only either just or unjust discrimination. Yet, egalitarian democracy remains adamant in its totalitarian policy. The popular pastime of modern democracies of punishing the diligent and thrifty, while rewarding the lazy, improvident, and unthrifty, is cultivated via the State, fulfilling a demo-egalitarian program based on a demo-totalitarian ideology.
Democratic tyranny, evolving on the sly as a slow and subtle corruption leading to total State control, is thus the third and by no means rarest road to the most modern form of slavery.
Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy. Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways. Before describing these several patterns of social change, let us state precisely what we mean by “democracy.”
Pondering the question of “Who should rule,” the democrat gives his answer: “the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives.” In other words, equality and majority rule are the two fundamental principles of democracy. A democracy may be either liberal or illiberal.
Genuine liberalism is the answer to an entirely different question: How should government be exercised? The answer it provides is: regardless of who rules, government must be carried out in such a way that each person enjoys the greatest amount of freedom, compatible with the common good. This means that an absolute monarchy could be liberal (but hardly democratic) and a democracy could be totalitarian, illiberal, and tyrannical, with a majority brutally persecuting minorities. (We are, of course, using the term “liberal” in the globally accepted version and not in the American sense, which since the New Deal has been totally perverted.)
How could a democracy, even an initially liberal one, develop into a totalitarian tyranny? As we said in the beginning, there are three avenues of approach, and in each case the evolution would be of an “organic” nature. The tyranny would evolve from the very character of even a liberal democracy because there is, from the beginning on, a worm in the apple: freedom and equality do not mix, they practically exclude each other. Equality doesn’t exist in nature and therefore can be established only by force. He who wants geographic equality has to dynamite mountains and fill up the valleys. To get a hedge of even height one has to apply pruning shears. To achieve equal scholastic levels in a school one would have to pressure certain students into extra hard work while holding back others.
The first road to totalitarian tyranny (though by no means the most frequently used) is the overthrow by force of a liberal democracy through a revolutionary movement, as a rule a party advocating tyranny but unable to win the necessary support in free elections. The stage for such violence is set if the parties represent philosophies so different as to make dialogue and compromise impossible. Clausewitz said that wars are the continuation of diplomacy by other means, and in ideologically divided nations revolutions are truly the continuation of parliamentarism with other means. The result is the absolute rule of one “party” which, having finally achieved complete control, might still call itself a party, referring to its parliamentary past, when it still was merely a part of the diet.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909-1999) was an Austrian nobleman and socio-political theorist who described himself as an enemy of all forms of totalitarianism and as an “extreme conservative arch-liberal” or “liberal of the extreme right.” Described as “A Walking Book of Knowledge,” Kuehnelt-Leddihn had an encyclopedic knowledge of the humanities and was a polyglot, able to speak eight languages and read seventeen others.
Elle: “No.” [Bored] “And why should they? It’s an academic theory taught mostly at the grad student level. But what they think it means is teaching white kids that all white people are bad and racist. And so, of course they’re afraid of that.”
They’re afraid!!! Wait — remind me: Who’s banning books, again? Who’s flipping out about “microaggressions”? Who’s demanding that Big Tech censor people? Who’s demanding “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” from speech they don’t like?
Parents aren’t “afraid”; they’re incensed. They’re paying the salaries of people who spend all day telling their kids that America is racist. (Elle didn’t give that explanation. Perhaps it frightens her.)
As we discussed last week, “critical race theory” is a subtle philosophical construct where the answer to everything is: THAT’S RACIST! Teachers hawking this glop are being defended by their journalist allies, who sneer that CRT critics are too stupid to understand the nuances of the theory.
The Aristotelian ideal of this sneer was Elle Reeve’s “special report” for CNN — pre-taped to eliminate any danger of Elle being contradicted by someone smarter, such as a 10-year-old.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar introduced the segment by asking her: “Do these vocal opponents of critical race theory actually understand fully what it is?”
(That’s what’s known as a “rhetorical question,” kids!)
Elle: “No.” [Bored] “And why should they? It’s an academic theory taught mostly at the grad student level. But what they think it means is teaching white kids that all white people are bad and racist. And so, of course they’re afraid of that.”
They’re afraid!!! Wait — remind me: Who’s banning books, again? Who’s flipping out about “microaggressions”? Who’s demanding that Big Tech censor people? Who’s demanding “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” from speech they don’t like?
Parents aren’t “afraid”; they’re incensed. They’re paying the salaries of people who spend all day telling their kids that America is racist. (Elle didn’t give that explanation. Perhaps it frightens her.)
The “vocal opponents” of CRT who “don’t actually understand fully what it is” seem to be mostly billionaire investment bankers — at least judging by the articles in the Daily Mail. Elle’s conclusion: A “theory” that consists of going around shouting “RACISM!” is too complex for those guys to understand.
The format of Elle’s pre-taped report consisted of her interviewing opponents of CRT … then nailing them with her brilliant comebacks! Except even with CNN doing the editing, the CRT opponents sounded perfectly reasonable, while Elle’s comebacks kept revealing her yawning stupidity.
The New York Times has reported there have been twenty terrorist plots against the U.S. Three of those plots were real; the other 17 were created — and then stopped —by the FBI.
Over two dozen people were killed during the Antifa and BLM protests in 2020. It is routinely reported that “five people died as a result” of the Jan. 6 disturbance. This is a totally accurate statement, however, it is still misleading. Only one of the deceased died as a result of violence. She was actually murdered by a government official. Relating these deaths allows the media to routinely describe Jan. 6 as a “deadly insurrection” as opposed to the “mostly peaceful” protests by Antifa and BLM. Prior to Jan. 6, Trump supporters had held dozens of mass rallies without burning cities or murdering people. This was a major embarrassment for the Deep State. Media coverage of the Jan. 6 event has been largely successful in minimizing that embarrassment. This was a major Deep State coup and the planning and execution of this “insurrection” reveal a disturbing relationship between the government and radical groups. The FBI did not only fail to adequately prevent the disturbance, they appear to have actively facilitated it. The FBI and radical leftists are branches of the Deep State.
The FBI has a history of instigating terrorist plots that they thwart with great fanfare. This is not a conspiracy theory.
The New York Times has reported there have been twenty terrorist plots against the U.S. Three of those plots were real; the other 17 were created — and then stopped — by the FBI.
The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case is based on evidence provided by two FBI informants and two undercover agents according to the FBI’s affidavit. As many as twelve informants were used in this case. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was at one time an FBI informant. Several sizable right-wing organizations were involved in the Jan. 6 disturbance. The FBI had infiltrated every one of them and therefore knew exactly what they had planned.
The DC Metropolitan Police also had at least one undercover employee embedded within the pro-Trump crowd. This is not speculation. It is based on court records.
It is preposterous to contend that the FBI did not have operatives in this disturbance as Christopher Wray contends. Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented, “What would be shocking and strange is not if the FBI had embedded informants and other infiltrators in the groups planning the January 6 Capitol riot. What would be shocking and strange—bizarre and inexplicable—is if the FBI did not have those groups under tight control.”
The FBI and the Capitol Police knew in advance that the demonstration would turn violent.
The Capitol Police had clearer advance warnings about the Jan. 6 attack than were previously known, including the potential for violence in which “Congress itself is the target.” But officers were instructed by their leaders not to use their most aggressive tactics to hold off the mob, according to a scathing new report by the agency’s internal investigator.
Yet the head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, told reporters that the agency did not have any intelligence suggesting the Trump rally would not be peaceful.
During Senate testimony, Senator Amy Klobuchar suggested that the FBI had not infiltrated these groups. She asked Christopher Wray, “There must be moments where you think if we would have known, if we could have infiltrated this group or found out what they were doing, and that — you have those moments?” Wray did not correct her. The knowledge that there would be violence was based partially on a document acquired by the Norfolk FBI. It asserted, “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
The FBI does not reveal the source of this document. Was it really the work of a Trump supporter? Still, the violence could have been prevented.
According to Kash Patel, Chief of Staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, “We had offered the Capitol Police, and Mayor Bowser of Washington, D.C., thousands of National Guardsmen and women, two days before Jan. 6. And they turned us down.”
Defenders of left-wing radical groups stress the fact that they are “decentralized.” Wikipedia‘s description of Antifa mentions its “decentralized” nature numerous times. Yet, the left is capable of acting in unison, as if under the command of a single director. Mike Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, is mentioned in a Time magazine article giving a reason why left-wing groups were not visible on Jan. 6. He credits the activists for their restraint: “They had spent so much time getting ready to hit the streets on Wednesday. But they did it. Wednesday through Friday, there was not a single Antifa vs. Proud Boys incident like everyone was expecting. And when that didn’t materialize, I don’t think the Trump campaign had a backup plan.” Podhorzer continued, “To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was ‘strenuously discouraging counter activity.’” All these “independent” groups decided in unison to stay home that day. Or did they?
Antifa activist John Sullivan’s brother James claims that there were 265 disguised Antifa members at the disturbance. The FBI will investigate this just as they are investigating child sex crimes. (Unfortunately, David Harris, who was in charge of investigating crimes against children, was arrested for numerous child sex crimes.)
Part of the reason for the feds not releasing the government videos is that there are literally tens of thousands of researchers who plan on viewing the tapes. They may reveal FBI informants taking part in the violence. The left has an extensive network of training facilities for agents provocateurs.
Scott Foval, former National Field Director at Americans United for Change claimed, “We have to have people prepared to go wherever these events are, which means we have to have a central kind of agitator training.” He continued, “I’m saying we have mentally ill people that we pay to do sh—, make no mistake.” Robert Creamer, founder of Democracy Advocates and husband of Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky, stated, “Wherever Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events, we have a whole team across the country that does that.”
According to Rep. James Comer, the Republican leader of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, protestors are kept in deplorable conditions. Yet, John Sullivan, who is recorded on tape saying “Let’s burn this shit down” was released without bail and placed on house arrest. Many of the “unindicted co-conspirators” appear to have been more violent than those placed in solitary confinement. This is possibly why the Department of Justice refuses to release to the public over 14,000 hours of video taken at the Capitol during the “insurrection.” Selected clips are presented in court as evidence against Jan. 6 defendants. Capitol Police argue that making all the tapes available to defense attorneys —let alone to the American public—could provoke future violence.
John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing). He has a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from St. Mary’s University. He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. He is featured on the BBC’s program “Things We Forgot to Remember:” Morgenthau Plan and Post-War Germany.
So now we come to Gretchen Whitmer. Apparently there were 18 folks involved in the alleged plot. How many do you suppose were government agents or “informants?” Twelve. Guess which ones were in charge – – –
What’s a “Handschu Scam” and what, if anything, does it have to do with the alleged terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, the latest fiasco in the U.S. “Justice” Department’s Julian Assange farce, and the January 6, 2021 D.C. riot, mega-hyped into an “insurrection” to satisfy the gullible?
When government agents infiltrate lawful political organizations, they’re under pressure to come back with information. And what government hearings have revealed time and time again is that they come back initially with no information, with information about lawful activities and then they’re under pressure to generate some business. And they try to entrap people and foment illegal activity. …and the people behind the plot to blow up anything [in the Handschu case] were all government agents. –ACLU’s Donna Lieberman
So how far will that “pressure to generate some business” make them go? Here’s a clue – – –
A 22-year-old Bangladeshi man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City with a fake bomb as part of an elaborate FBI sting. Quazi Nafis pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in February. His case drew claims of government entrapment after the FBI supplied the inert explosives, the van used to carry them, the detonator and even the storage facility where an agent helped Nafis assemble the fake bomb. Man Sentenced to 30 Years for Bid to Attack Federal Reserve with Fake Bomb
As revealed in the Handschu case mentioned by Ms. Lieberman, this government entrapment scam is one of the U.S. law-and-order-industry‘s dirty little secrets.
L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics, designed and built a house, ran for Nevada State Senate, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. For the next few decades, he supported his writing habit by beating casinos at their own games. His hobby, though, is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.
Far from “ending cancer” in the way most Americans might envision it, the proposed agency would merge “national security” with “health security” in such a way as to use both physical and mental health “warning signs” to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur. Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic “pre-crime” organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as “wrongthink.”
SAFE HOME would suck up masses of private data from “Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home” and other consumer electronic devices, as well as information from health care providers to determine if an individual might be likely to commit a crime. The data would be analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms “for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence.”
A “new” proposal by the Biden administration to create a health-focused federal agency modeled after DARPA is not what it appears to be. Promoted as a way to “end cancer,” this resuscitated “health DARPA” conceals a dangerous agenda.
[April 28, 2020], President Biden was widely praised in mainstream and health-care–focused media for his call to create a “new biomedical research agency” modeled after the U.S. military’s “high-risk, high-reward” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. As touted by the president, the agency would seek to develop “innovative” and “breakthrough” treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, with a call to “end cancer as we know it.”
Far from “ending cancer” in the way most Americans might envision it, the proposed agency would merge “national security” with “health security” in such a way as to use both physical and mental health “warning signs” to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur. Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic “pre-crime” organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as “wrongthink.”
The Biden administration has asked Congress for $6.5 billion to fund the agency, which would be largely guided by Biden’s recently confirmed top science adviser, Eric Lander.
Lander, formerly the head of the Silicon Valley-dominated Broad Institute, has been controversial for his ties to eugenicist and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his relatively recent praise for James Watson, an overtly racist eugenicist. Despite that, Lander is set to be confirmed by the Senate and Congress and is reportedly significantly enthusiastic about the proposed new “health DARPA.”
Inflation & shortages are created by Federal Reserve counterfeiting and government interventions in the economy. Every other excuse is just that, an excuse that is meant to distract you from the sources of these ills.
Inflation & shortages are created by Federal Reserve counterfeiting and government interventions in the economy. Every other excuse is just that, an excuse that is meant to distract you from the sources of these ills.
