WikiLeaks Publishes Statement From Edward Snowden in Moscow (July 1st): Obama Uses "Old, Bad Tools of Political Aggresion"

[WIKILEAKS]

Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow
Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization

The noose is tightening on liberty. The United States Congress is steadily headed to a place where those who owe money to the US government shall be treated criminally. This phenomenon is advancing domestically and now, increasingly, internationally. The first shot in this latest campaign took place in 2010 when US President Barack Obama signed into law The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. It demanded, basically, that foreign banks withhold up to 30 percent of the income that an American abroad might earn. This bill isn't working so well because overseas banks are not cooperating (a state of affairs that was certainly expected). Thus, there is a need for something else: Senate Bill 1813, recently introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). This bill, in part, states that taxpayers with unpaid taxes over US$50,000 may find their passports confiscated. This isn't criminal per se, but the IRS has recently made noises about "sharing" information with police a...

Thomas Sowell Returns

By: Thomas Winslow Hazlett Reason

How To Cripple The Real Estate Market In Five Easy Steps

If the government and the banks had just allowed real estate prices drop to market equilibrium, we'd be out of this mess and housing would truly be affordable. But the government is determined to artificially prop up housing prices, whatever the cost to the economy. If you were head of Central Planning (howdy, Ben!) and were tasked with crippling the real estate market, here's what you would recommend. Choke the market and banking sector with zombie banks... Have the central bank (the Federal Reserve) buy up $1 trillion in toxic, impaired mortgages... Lower the rate that banks can borrow from the Fed to zero, and then pay the banks interest on all funds deposited at the Fed... Try to prop up the housing market by giving poor credit risk buyers loans with only 3% down... Load young people up with the equivalent of a mortgage in student loans... OK,let's see how our Organs of Central Planning are doing: check, check, check, check, check: a perfect score! they're...

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