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In wake of Giffords shooting, the mere act of questioning the government now being demonized
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Associated Press, meanwhile, actually blamed the "political climate" for the shooting, saying, "The nation's caustic political climate has become a suspect of sorts in the rampage that left six dead and a lawmaker critically injured in Arizona." The implication from these kinds of stories is that if you criticize the government, you therefore promote violence.
That is, of course, a silly idea, especially considering the fact that the government nearly always uses the threat of violence against its own citizens to get what it wants. To use the example of Obamacare, the law itself says that if citizens don't buy health insurance, the U.S. government will essentially extract a large sum of money from you by force through the use of IRS agents and, if necessary, the government seizure of your assets.
On the health care front, remember it was the U.S. government that committed medical violence against children by forcing teens with cancer to undergo chemotherapy against their will (http://www.naturalnews.com/019617.html). Various local governments also routinely threaten vegan parents with having their children taken away by Child Protective Services if they don't start feeding their children processed factory foods such as hamburgers.
The FDA, for its part, routinely sends extremely threatening letters to natural product companies (cherry growers, walnut growers, green tea importers, etc.) that contain extremely threatening language that imply company executives will be "criminally prosecuted" by the FDA, or have their assets seized, or even have their businesses shut down if they don't agree to admit to crimes they never even committed (selling "unapproved drugs" which are really just cherries). (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html)
No one is surprised when the government uses the threat of violence to get what it wants these days. Today, the government actually commits felony crimes against the American people on a daily basis! It's called the "enhanced pat-down" by the TSA. If you did the exact same thing to another person at your office, you would be arrested as a "violent criminal" and charged with sexual assault.
The FDA, too, has a long history of armed raids against innocents (http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html) who were merely trying to help others improve their health with the power of nutritional supplements. These raids are always conducted with the use of firearms.
The FDA even sent agents into Ecuador last year to illegally kidnap Greg Caton (http://www.naturalnews.com/027750_G...) and fly him out of the country, in complete violation of international law. This, too, was conducted with the use of multiple armed agents wielding firearms.
More recently, the U.S. government led an armed raid on a Venice, California food cooperative selling raw milk (http://www.naturalnews.com/030136_R...).
When the government commits acts of violence, it's okay?
There are many other examples of similar acts of violence by the government committed against the People of America, but it all brings me to this important question: Why are people so outraged when citizens commit acts of violence against a government official while relatively few people seem to care when the government commits acts of violence against the People?
The outrage expressed in the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is entirely justified, as violence is never the answer to disputes. Yet shouldn't we all be similarly outraged when the government uses violence or the threat of violence to achieve its own political aims with the People?
The mainstream media is dedicating a tremendous amount of coverage to this story on Giffords, and that is certainly appropriate for its own reasons. But did that same media cover the armed raid of a raw milk food store in California? Of course not.
Or how about the story that the U.S. government is conspiring with the GMO industry to threaten "a list of retaliatory targets" in Europe who resist the introduction of GMOs there? (http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_G...) You won't find that story in the New York Times, USA Today, LA Times or any other U.S. newspaper that I'm aware of.
The language used by the U.S. ambassador to France -- the "list of retaliatory targets" -- is precisely the kind of language that Sarah Palin is now accused of using against her political opponents in America. Sarah is being called out as an instigator of this shooting, yet I'm not aware of a single mainstream news outlet in America that bothered to cover this story of the U.S. government's GMO conspiracy to push toxic crops into Europe. By the way, I'm not a Sarah Palin supporter, so that's not where this is coming from. I'm a Ron Paul supporter, but now it seems that even supporting something like a desire to audit the Fed or honor the Constitution is going to be characterized as "radical" speech that will somehow be blamed for these acts of violence carried out by the mentally deranged.
Non-violence must be a two-way street
This is not meant in any way to excuse this act of violence against Giffords and those who attended her meeting. I'm already on the record condemning this act, and in every case that I have pushed for grassroots advocacy on this website, it has been done with the strict urging of non-violent action.
Yet, unlike so many in the mainstream media, I believe non-violence should work both ways. I believe the United States government should stop using violence and the threat of violence against its own People in its efforts to oppress food freedom, to vaccinate children against their parents' will, and to force people to buy into a health care plan they do not wish to purchase or use.
If you do not yet understand that the government uses violence as a matter of course to get its way, then I challenge you to stop paying your property taxes for a few years and see what happens. Before long, your property will be taken from you (seized) and then sold in order to pay your "liability" to the government. And when they come to remove you from your property, will they bring happy people bearing flowers? Nope. They bring men with guns. The guns, of course, are at their sides to let you know that your compliance is not voluntary. (I pay my property taxes, by the way, and I'm not opposed to financially supporting local government where it makes sense. I use this as a simple example to point out one way in which the threat of violence is used by government.)
Real peace requires governments to be kept in check
If we truly condemn violence, we must condemn it from all sources, including our own governments which are, strictly speaking, the most violent and murderous organizations in the history of the world. Virtually every mass-murder that has taken place in human history has been carried out by a government claiming to be working for "a better world." (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, you name it...)
This is why the most peaceful society is one in which the government's power is not absolute, and where the government is held in check by the citizenry who watch over the actions of government. This is also precisely why the founding fathers of the United States of America specifically created a limited federal government structure while guaranteeing certain freedoms and rights to the People as enumerated in the Bill of Rights. When Bush was in office, the government took huge steps to weaken that Bill of Rights with the setting up of secret military prisons and the Patriot Act which allows the government to arrest and detain you indefinitely, without being charged, with no attorney, for any reason they claim is related to terrorism.
The Patriot Act, of course, exists in complete violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. President Obama actually ran on the platform that he would shut down Guantanamo Bay and end the secret military prisons. (There's another broken campaign promise, eh?)
Statistically speaking, the risk of violent acts occurring in any given country is far, far greater when governments rule over their people with absolute tyranny (Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.) than in a more balanced scale of power where governments must answer to the People. The most important way to prevent violence over the long term is to keep government in check and make sure that its power never nullifies the rights of the People.
This is not a conservative nor liberal point of view. This is a practical peace philosophy that recognizes this simple inescapable fact: Most of the violence committed in our world has been committed by governments against their own people (or against the people of other nations).
As someone who finds the application of violence to resolve problems deeply offensive, I am appalled by the mainstream media's "selective" outcry of violent acts in certain selected situations while they ignore the threat of violence used every day by the government itself. The violent resolution of disagreements is unacceptable in a civilized society, yet the media apparently has no problem whatsoever covering their eyes and allowing violence to be committed against the People by the government.
Stop government violence against innocents
That is the real tragedy here. How many more innocents must be killed by acts of violence committed by the government before we will wake up and realize that peace is a two-way street?
When the government stops allowing the poisoning our water supply (fluoride), poisoning our food (GMOs), and the mass poisoning of our children (vaccines and psychiatric medication), the anti-government rhetoric will quickly reflect such changes and naturally morph into something far less confrontational. There is a sensible reason why the anti-government rhetoric of today is so strong: Because government is not listening to the People.
When the federal government bails out rich Wall Street banksters to the tune of trillions of dollars while everyday people are losing their jobs and homes, people tend to get irritated (to say the least). When people are treated like cattle by the TSA and sexually molested for merely trying to travel on an airplane, they tend to not like that very much. When farmers are arrested for selling raw cow's milk to their neighbors, and people who carry homemade chocolate are arrested and treated like drug smugglers, it tends to tee off more than a few citizens.
And when the Obama administration forces us all into buying an insurance police for a sick-care system that we neither use, nor support, nor believe in, people can get downright angry about it. This is not irrational; it is entirely understandable. And it deserves open debate which must include people being able to stand up and point out what's wrong with various government laws, or policies, or regulatory agencies. This is part of the Democratic process.
Maybe instead of asking why so many people are speaking out against the government, the media should be asking why the government has so little respect for the rights and freedoms of the People in the first place.
And perhaps instead of condemning the People so often, the government should spend a little time trying to figure out how to serve the People. That is, of course, what government was supposed to do in the first place: Serve the interests of the People.
Questioning your government is necessary in any functioning democracy
To the extent that government continues to betray the People (FDA, TSA, CDC, etc.), it should surprise no one that the People aren't happy about it. Questioning government is one of the most patriotic acts in which an American citizen can engage, because it is that questioning -- and a demand for accountability -- that forces bureaucrats to answer to the People in some small way.
It is shameful and inexcusable that the mainstream media would now exploit this act of extreme violence committed in Arizona and use it as a condemnation of those who seek to keep their government in check by asking intelligent questions. It's almost as if the media now wants to order Americans to "shut up and do what you're told" because Big Government has all the answers for you. Just take your vaccine shots, buy your rip-off sick-care insurance and keep sweating away to earn a few dollars while the Federal Reserve effectively steals your money by creating trillions of dollars that are used to bail out the world's wealthy elite.
If the mere act of questioning the integrity of the federal government is now going to be blamed for every violent act, then we truly live under a society where the insanity of Jared Loughner has infected the minds of the newsmakers, too. It is a cowardly act to hide behind these deaths in Arizona while shouting out, "The questioners caused this! No more questioning the government!" This is precisely what the government-controlled press announced in the Nazi era. Anyone who dared to ask questions about Hitler's ever-expanding power was arrested and (usually) put to death.
I believe this is a time when, more than ever, we all need to be standing up and asking questions such as: Is the FDA's censorship against healthy nutrition part of the reason we have so much mental illness in America?
There's a question that makes the mainstream media extremely uncomfortable. Pharmaceutical advertising money is at stake, of course, and the last thing the media wants is people asking questions that really threaten to expose the truth behind why so many people in America suffer from mental illness. Hint: It has everything to do with nutrition, which has everything to do with the FDA's tyrannical censorship of free speech about nutritional therapies.
We'll cover more about that in a follow-up story. In the mean time, keep questioning government. It is your duty as a free citizen to do so. It is essential to the health and long-term sustainability of any democracy. It is patriotic and fundamentally necessary for the protection of freedom in a functioning democracy.
Do not let the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords be the beginning of America's jack-booted march down the dark path of stifling Free Speech and demonizing rational dissent.
My heart goes out to Giffords, her staffers and the others who were killed or wounded in this senseless act of violence. I literally pray for a world where all such violence comes to end, including government acts of violence against the People.
Jan. 9, 2011
www.naturalnews.com/z030954_Giffords_anti-government.html