APPARENTLY THEY’RE REHYPOTHECATING COPPER AND ALUMINUM TOO…

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Bankers • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/06/apparently-theyre-rehypothecating-copper-aluminum/

Now, while we’re still on Earth and foregoing, for the moment, our recent concentration on space issues, there was an important article that appeared on Zero Hedge about three weeks ago, and as I’m pre-scheduling blogs this month and on into the first week of July due to the Secret Space Program conference, I’m actually writing this on the day that the article in Zero Hedge appeared. But anyway, this may be – and my intuition says it is – a significant story, for it would appear that Chinese officials have discovered a vast missing store of copper and aluminum. Here’s the article:
China Scrambling After “Discovering” Thousands Of Tons Of Rehypothecated Copper, Aluminum Missing
Now for our purposes, note the following things from the article, with Zero Hedge’s own comments:

Metal imports have been partly driven in China as a means to raise finance, where traders can pledge metal as collateral to obtain better terms. In some cases the same shipment can be pledged to more than one bank, fuelling hot money inflows and spurring a clampdown by Chinese authorities.

“It appears there is a discrepancy in metal that should be there and metal that is actually there,” said another source at a warehouse company with operations at the port.

“We hear the discrepancy is 80,000 tonnes of aluminium and 20,000 tonnes of copper, but we hear that the volumes will actually be higher. It’s either missing or it was never there – there have been triple issuing of documentation,” he said.
Beijing last year set new rules to curb currency speculation amid signs that hot money inflows helped push the yuan to a series of record highs. The rules required banks to tighten the management of their foreign exchange lending and types of clients that are able to access those loans.
“It’s such a massive port I would think virtually everybody has exposure,” the trading source said.
“Once the investigation is over, it could be bearish for metals. I think that a lot of Western banks will try to offload material and try not to deal with Chinese merchants,” the trading source added.

Critically – this is a major problem for any shadow-banking credit creation process as if the rehypothecated commodity-backed CCFDs are ultimately unwound, 1) someone will not get their collateral (payment problems – bailouts?), 2) less real collateral means less real credit expansion (which banks can;t fill because the firms that use this method of financing are anything but creditworthy), and 3) liquidation of any assets will proceed rapidly…

Goldman concludes that “an unwind of Chinese commodity financing deals would likely result in an increase in availability of physical inventory (physical selling), and an increase in futures buying (buying back the hedge) – thereby resulting in a lower physical price than futures price, as well as resulting in a lower overall price curve (or full carry).” In other words, it would send the price of the underlying commodity lower. (Boldface-italicized and underlined emphasis added)

Then of course, we have Zero Hedge’s final comment here:

“So if tens of thousands of tons of copper and aluminum are suddenly “missing”, one can assuredly say: “at least the gold is still there.” Right?”

Now, the first thing to note here is that the missing metal commodities re-hypothecation game appears to have reached China, and that the Chinese government is investigating. This suggests that there is an element within the Chinese government or corporate bureaucracies that is party to something very big, and something of international scale, but that this group or faction is unknown to the central and highest authorities in Beijing. So, if this be true, watch for China’s intelligence apparatus to get involved, and that could begin the process of unravelling the huge story that I have suspected all along lies behind all this missing and re-hypothecated gold….. woops…I forgot. We’re talking about copper and aluminum now.
The second point to note is Zero Hedge’s statement ”Critically – this is a major problem for any shadow-banking credit creation process as if the rehypothecated commodity-backed CCFDs are ultimately unwound…” What this indicates is that Zero Hedge is beginning to entertain the re-hypothecation secret system finance idea a little bit more seriously, though, it should be pointed out, that they are still not mentioning the latter idea – a secret system of finance – at all. But I strongly suspect it is beginning to become a possibility in their thinking… And as they point out, the sudden appearance of re-hypothecated commodities on the markets would drive prices lower, bad news, particularly if, like me, you suspect that the figures of gold in existence are so badly obfuscated that if one were to take an average of those figures, they might be low by as much as an order of magnitude.
But I’ll be honest… when I read this article, I had too immediate thoughts, and both of them are in the realm of speculation that is so high it’s in geosynchronous orbit. The first thing I thought was, “this is an international system and network, and it extends even into China.” Now, this, if you’ve been following the whole re-hypothecated gold and bearer bonds stories as I’ve been trying to outline it in my books and blogs, the presence of China in the story began during the pre-war era of Chiang Kai-shek. And it’s no surprise that there’s an international component to this; after all, secret deals to use Axis loot after World War Two as a secret reserve on which to establish a Top Secret source of finance puts the intelligence community not only directly into banking, but directly into contact with the Axis elites of Europe and Japan. The expansion of this system to include drug trade also puts you into contact with a whole different set of nefarious characters, from Southeast Asia (ahem) to South America(“Senor drug lord, meet Herr Nazi.”) It wasn’t the international aspect of this that struck me when I read the Zero Hedge article, in other words, it was the possibility that those Chinese participants in what may be a vast international scheme of hidden finance were still in existence, and that the Chinese government had pulled on a thread it didn’t previously know existed. Rest assured, the Chinese government will continue pulling that thread and investigating, and one cannot blame them.
However, there was a second, more sobering though that occurred to me while reading this story, one that is so “out there” I almost hesitate to mention it, but one that, in the final analysis, I think I must. While elaborating this hypothesis of a “hidden system or tier of finance” with respect to the black budget, I was relieved to find in former Assistant Secretary of HUD Catherine Austin Fitts someone who had come to a similar conclusion, though via a very different route and for very different reasons. Her reasons were financial and institutional, being involved at a high level of the federal government as she was. My reasons were historical and methodological. During the course of mutual discussions, she has observed that the financial system in place appears to be a system designed to “harvest the economy” from the local to the national and international levels, and from the poor, middle class, all the way up to the super-wealthy (those people, in fact, who interest me vis-a-vis the bearer bonds scandals).
As I read the article in Zero Hedge the thought occurred was, what if we are looking at yet a completely different component of that international hidden system of finance: a commodities skimming and harvesting operation? What if this system is literally stealing the raw materials – via collateralization arrangements and agreements – and using them in whatever hidden manufacturing they might be doing, while re-hypothecating what they have stolen?  In other words, to employ Catherine Fitts’ apt term, they’re not just harvesting economies, they’re harvesting  - skimming – commodities as well. Tens of thousands of tons of copper and aluminum simply don’t disappear. The amounts suggest manufacturing.
So, for the moment, Beijing has a problem… but I’ll bet it is not just Beijing’s problem; it’s everyone’s. If Beijing does confirm even the tiniest portion of this wild scenario, then that will be news.

Farming for the Future

that's right !  investing in each other !!      it's ONLY a matter of ...time !!!

By Dahr Jamail

Global Research, June 25, 2014

Truthout 23 June 2014

Theme: Environment

(Photos: Dahr Jamail; Edited: JR / TO)
As the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) continue to escalate, drought, wildfires, flooding and other extreme weather events continue to intensify and last longer as a result.
In parts of Africa, the sociopolitical translation of this means wars over water, crops and animals, as drought and theensuing conflict spinning out of it have become the norm.
In the United States, this looks like ever-increasing food prices, growing evidence of overt animosity towards the government, and increasing economic and health concerns about what the future holds as drought, wildfires and temperature extremes continue to intensify.
As a growing number of US citizens wonder what they might be able to do to take care of themselves as this dystopian future comes into focus, silver linings are emerging from the darkening clouds.
One of them is a small farm on the outskirts of one of the largest cities in the country.

(Photo: Dahr Jamail)
More Than a Farm
The 23-acre Blackwood Educational Land Institute grows everything from peaches, pears and plums to kale, broccoli and figs, constitutes three ecosystems (Piney Woods, Black Prairieland and Savannah Post Oak), runs a community-supported agriculture (CSA) operation, and hosts yoga retreats, wilderness first-responder training and children’s education programs.
One would not expect a place like this to be only a half-hour drive from downtown Houston, Texas, nestled within an area not known for having progressive politics, let alone making advanced preparations for ACD.
Hans Hansen, the horticulturist who oversees the gardening operations at Blackwood, told Truthout he is already acutely aware of the need to make adjustments for what is already well underway.

Horticulturist Hans Hansen, with the Blackwood Educational Land Institute since it started in 1989, hopes their work creates a “basic language to communicate to as many sectors of the community as we can.” (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
“We’re having to adapt our crops and techniques to climate change and the growing season changes that it is causing,” Hansen explained. “And my goal is to raise consciousness levels in Southeast Texas in regards to our relationship with the planet, as well as growing food.”
The institute, founded in 1989, is small-scale, sustainable, organic and functions as a CSA: It provides regular shipments of food to distribution points in Houston so that people there have access to affordable, organic produce.
Hansen is optimistic about the future of agriculture on a local level, in that he believes Houston “has shifted in recent years from post-modern thinking to having sectors that are taking a leadership role in sustainable food and where it intersects with the culinary world.”
Cath Conlon, the president and CEO of the institute, believes that not only will we be healthier and happier if we learn how to feed ourselves, but that we must also concentrate on learning other skills for self-sufficiency.
“We provide Wilderness First Responder (WFR) training to all our [nature camp] counselors,” she said. “But also with kids who come here who are graduating college. Look at our medical system . . . people don’t know how they are going to be taken care of. So hopefully by giving training, we can help alleviate that concern.”

Cath Conlon, the president and CEO of the Blackwood Educational Land Institute. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
Currently Blackwood has direct working relationships with eight middle and high schools, which have incorporated the institute’s work into their curriculum.
Conlon believes society needs people within every workplace environment who know how to take care of themselves and others during an emergency, as well as on an organic, basic living level.
“We offer that kind of training here, in that we grow our own food, we offer the WFR training, we compost, and we stress conscious living,” she said. “We also model social justice, supporting environmental issues, and how to support our health and spirit. I don’t know of other places around here that teach all this.”
The institute is sustained, according to Conlon, by “grants, gifts, and hard work. But mostly hard work.”
Using permaculture and biodynamic farming, the institute aims to “work towards creating the world we want to live in, here and now,” Conlon said.

Conlon showing the water level of all the rainwater harvesting tanks used at the institute. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
Nine people work at the institute and on the farm, which also harvests rainwater for all of its drinking and irrigation needs.
When the farm hosts nature camps, WFR trainings, yoga retreats and gardening classes, all of the participants are fed directly from what the farm produces.

In addition to being a CSA provider, the farm feeds everyone who attends workshops and retreats at the institute. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
“We teach folks about riparian corridors, how to manage a canoe and kayak, water safety, how to cook, religious tolerance, and conflict management,” Conlon added. “We also bring in 20 kids from Taiwan and mix them in with local kids for mutual learning, in something we call the Mandarin Camp.”
The institute also participates in Bioneers, a group that describes itself as working to provide and promote “visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.” Bioneers does so, in part, by holding annual national and local conferences, hosting radio programs and engaging in extensive media outreach.
Conservation and Renewal
“The garden is like someone’s body,” Conlon explained. “All our land here was raped because they used fertilizers and grew hay which locked up the natural process. So we had to rehab this land, just as humans sometimes need drug rehab, the land goes through the same processes.”
Hansen agreed.
“Our theme is the parallels with the body of the earth and the human body, and soil is like the microflora in our gut,” he said. “I like to have people relate to the land as part of their body and to integrate this understanding.”

Teachings and practices at the institute meld spirit, mind, body and earth. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
Hansen aims to do all the work at the institute “with a sense of spirit, intelligence and compassion” in the hope that these values might spread.
However, as the city of Houston continues to undergo another economic boom driven by fracking and the ongoing expansion of the oil and gas industry, both Hansen and Conlon are worried about encroachment as the city grows.
“I would think others around here would be concerned about the encroachment too,” Conlon said. “I mean, where will kids go to be able to see how food grows?”
Nevertheless, the institute’s work continues to grow; it already has several students from nearby high schools who want to work there, and apparently that is what will be necessary as the institute looks to the future.

Although small, the institute continues to slowly grow in size and personnel over time. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
“It takes every person here to keep all the moving parts working,” Conlon said. “And we’re always looking at how we can stay ahead of the curve, to keep learning and growing and adapting, along with the planet.”
Given the advancement of ACD and what this means for our ability to feed and care for ourselves, Blackwood farm could well be a model for our collective future.
Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted witht permission.

Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

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The Real Reason Dianne Feinstein is Obsessed with Taking All Your Guns

 OMFG u look  me in the eyes & tell me ..she's not a crazy bitch lol      bride of fuckenstein  :o

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Richard Anthony

Why does Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) seem almost obsessed with taking firearms away from you and me? What’s the reason for her to do this? To understand her thinking, we’ll have to take a trip down memory lane, and when I’m done, you’ll understand why. As I dug deep into this subject, I came to the conclusion that Feinstein has “issues” with guns… your guns. 

California Democrat Senator spends most of her days in the senate thinking of new ways to get your guns away from you, that is, when she’s not using her position as a U.S. senator to increase her wealth and that of her husband. Feinstein likes to think of herself as a “gun expert.” Although she does have a Concealed Weapon Permit and has taken training classes on how to use a gun, that hardly makes her an “expert on firearms.” From a physiological standpoint, one would almost say that she is obsessed with guns (once again…YOUR guns). It all started about forty years ago.

In an article by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008:

On November 27th, 1978, at the time, Feinstein was president of the Board of Supervisors and a confidante of Dan White, the ex-supervisor who quit his seat only to want it back. Moscone had plans to appoint someone else and told Feinstein. She tried to track down White to explain the decision. She never got the chance. She was sitting at her desk at City Hall and tried speaking to White as he walked by. She did not know that he had just shot and killed the mayor.

She was sitting at her desk at City Hall and tried speaking to White as he walked by. She did not know that he had just shot and killed the mayor.

“I saw him come in. I said, ‘Dan, can I talk to you?’ And he went by, and I heard the door close, and I heard the shots and smelled the cordite, and I came out of my office. Dan went right by me. Nobody was around, every door was closed.

“I went down the hall. I opened the wrong door. I opened (Milk’s) door. I found Harvey on his stomach. I tried to get a pulse and put my finger through a bullet hole. He was clearly dead.

“I remember it, actually, as if it was yesterday. And it was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life,” Feinstein said Tuesday. “It was a devastating moment. For San Francisco, it was a day of infamy.”

Feinstein, who replaced Moscone as mayor and went on to win two terms in her own right, now is California’s senior senator. She rarely has spoken publicly about the slayings. But she sat down for an hour with reporters in her San Francisco office Tuesday to recount the devastating events of Nov. 27, 1978, that shook San Francisco to the core.

On the day of the killings, Feinstein had just returned to City Hall after a three-week absence. She had gone on vacation to the Himalayas with Richard Blum, the man whom she would later marry, and had contracted dysentery. She then spent time at home recovering from the infection and an allergic reaction to antibiotics.

While abroad, she had spoken briefly to White, a colleague she said she had known well. He told her he was quitting his low-paying seat on the Board of Supervisors because the economic strain was taking too big a toll on his family. Feinstein said she told him that was the right thing to do.

But White, a conservative ex-firefighter and ex-policeman, was getting pressure from the business community and others who supported his candidacy to get his seat back. Moscone, a liberal who had struggled to muster the six votes he needed on the board to push through his progressive agenda, had decided to appoint a political ally to fill White’s seat. The mayor informed Feinstein of his decision that morning. She said she tried to reach White.

“I still believe that if I could have been there for that three weeks, I could have stopped it,” Feinstein said, her eyes reddening. “Now, who knows? Who knows?”

She said White hunted Milk down NOT because he was “homophobic,” but because he had considered Milk a friend who betrayed him for not helping persuade Moscone to reappoint him. Feinstein said Milk and White, both elected under a new system of district elections, met weekly for coffee in the Castro.

Okay, that’s a really good reason to be afraid, but it goes even deeper than that Lets fast forward to 2012.

In an article by Kerry Picket of BREITBART, she wrote:

“Senator Dianne Feinstein (D – CA), author of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, is leading the charge on Capitol Hill to bring back the legislation since it expired in 2004.

“I’m going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House, a bill to ban assault weapons. It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession. Not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill. We’ve been working on it now for a year,” Sen. Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Feinstein’s plans to resuscitate the gun ban law comes on the heels of the deadly mass slaughter at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by gunman Adam Lanza.

After the deadly Aurora, Colorado shooting Feinstein criticized those who said responsible conceal carry permit holders could have stopped gunman James Holmes, saying “…and maybe you could have had a firefight and killed many more people. These are people in a theater.”

Opponents of the Assault Weapons Ban point to Feinstein’s hypocrisy on the issue, as the Senator herself said she obtained a concealed carry permit in California when she felt her life was threatened.

“In 1995, Feinstein described this experience: “Less than 20 years ago, I was the target of a terrorist group. It was the New World Liberation Front. They blew up power stations and put a bomb at my home when my husband was dying of cancer and the bomb was set to detonate around 2 ‘o clock in the morning, but it was a construction explosive that doesn’t detonate when it drops below freezing. It doesn’t usually freeze in San Francisco, but on this night it dropped below freezing and the bomb didn’t detonate.

“I was very lucky, but I thought of what might have happened. Later the same group shot out all the windows of my home and I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. When I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick, I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out I was going to take them with me. Now having said all of that, that was period of time ago and I’ve watched through these 20 years as terrorism has increased both on the far extremist left and the far extremist right in this country.”

Well, that is plenty of reason to be afraid and want to arm yourself. Who could blame Feinstein for wanting to protect herself with a gun? Let’s take a look at the group that supposedly targeted Feinstein.

The “New World Liberation Front,” was a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization which had carried out an uninterrupted urban guerilla offensive around the Bay Area and Northern California for almost three years, was at the time (the 1970′s), the most tactically advanced guerilla group in the United States.

What they weren’t:  “Tea Party, bible thumping, conservative gun-toting red-necks.”  Sounds kinda “Left-Wing” to me.

Hmmm….. a “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” organization? From her attempts to curtail our God given rights under the 2nd Amendment, isn’t she adopting that exact ideology? After all, those guys (Communists) were strict in their belief about the peasants not owning guns too.

It looks to me like Feinstein has real reason to be afraid, but instead of going after the group, or individuals that supposedly wanted her dead, she has more of a “blanket approach” when it comes to gun control legislation. Now, most “terrorists groups” don’t go down to the local gun store and legally purchase weapons. Sadly, there are a number of cases where someone purchasing a firearm lies on the Firearms Transaction Record, or Form 4473.

However, the reality is that criminals and terrorists don’t buy their guns “legally” anyway.  So introducing legislation that would prohibit law-abiding citizens from owning handguns and rifles, especially what Feinstein calls “assault weapons with high capacity magazines,” is not aimed at those she claims to want to restrict guns from (which we never gave the Federal Government authority to do in the first place).

I’ve clarified what the difference was between a “sporting rifle” and an “assault rifle” is before. However, Dianne Feinstein ignores the obvious and continues on her endless crusade to limit and even prohibit, private ownership of the various “sporting rifles” modeled after real “assault rifles.” But not wanting to leave any stone uncovered, Feinstein wants to do away with what she calls “high capacity” magazines for various sporting rifles and handguns as well.

Since the good senator is now 81 years old, one can’t help wonder, why she doesn’t just retire and take the fortune that she has made and enjoy her “golden years” in peace and luxury? Why does she continue to bang the drum for harsher gun control laws?

I’ll tell you - fear! She obviously is scared to death of the possibility that she is a “target,” and that death by assassination is constantly stalking her. With the fortune that she has made for herself and her husband during her political career, she could buy an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and pay for a private army to protect her around the clock. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to see that she obviously lives her life in fear. In a way, I almost feel sorry for the old gal, but I don’t. The only thing that she lives for, it seems to me anyway, is to make sure that you and I (regular citizens) have nothing more than pop-guns and slingshots to protect ourselves and our families with.

I would say that the senator might even be suffering from a slight case of PTSD or maybe dementia has set-in (Well, she is 81 years old!). If that is so, then using her own logic, she should not be allowed anywhere near a gun, let alone, try to lecture law abiding citizens on responsible gun ownership and limit our Constitutional right to bear arms. Either way, at 81 years of age, maybe she needs to think about purchasing that island I mentioned earlier and retiring.

Richard Anthony is a US Army veteran who served from 1975 to 1980. He was stationed in Frankfurt West Germany from 1976 to 1978 with the 3rd Armored Divisions 143rd Signal Battalion as a Tactical Telecommunications Center Specialist and was also with the 1st Cavalry Division 1st/12th Cav as a Combat Medic until discharge in 1980. He has been married for 20 years and has 3 sons. He’s also a very involved Tea Party activist. Be sure to follow Richard on Facebook.

Contributed by Freedom Outpost.

16 Ways the Supreme Court Built the Police State and Destroyed Your Rights

Posted on June 25, 2014 by John W Whitehead

“[I]f the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can ‘seize’ and ‘search’ him in their discretion, we enter a new regime. The decision to enter it should be made only after a full debate by the people of this country.”—U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas 

The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. In the police state being erected around us, the police and other government agents can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching innocent motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

These are the hallmarks of the emerging American police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

A review of the Supreme Court’s rulings over the past 10 years, including some critical ones this term, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. In Plumhoff v. Rickard (2014), the Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police officers can stop cars based only on “anonymous” tips. In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California (2014), the Court declared that police officers can, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. This ruling came on the heels of a ruling by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Westhoven that driving too carefully, with a rigid posture, taking a scenic route, and having acne are sufficient reasons for a police officer to suspect you of doing something illegal, detain you, search your car, and arrest you—even if you’ve done nothing illegal to warrant the stop in the first place.

Secret Service agents are not accountable for their actions, as long as they’re done in the name of security. In Wood v. Moss (2014), the Court granted “qualified immunity” to Secret Service officials who relocated anti-Bush protesters, despite concerns raised that the protesters’ First Amendment right to freely speak, assemble, and petition their government leaders had been violated. These decisions, part of a recent trend toward granting government officials “qualified immunity”—they are not accountable for their actions—in lawsuits over alleged constitutional violations, merely incentivize government officials to violate constitutional rights without fear of repercussion.

Citizens only have a right to remain silent if they assert it. The Supreme Court ruled in Salinas v. Texas (2013) that persons who are not under arrest must specifically invoke their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in order to avoid having their refusal to answer police questions used against them in a subsequent criminal trial. What this ruling says, essentially, is that citizens had better know what their rights are and understand when those rights are being violated, because the government is no longer going to be held responsible for informing you of those rights before violating them.

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” justifying any and all police searches of vehicles stopped on the roadside. InFlorida v. Harris (2013), a unanimous Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. In doing so, the justices sided with police by claiming that all that the police need to do to prove probable cause for a search is simply assert that a drug detection dog has received proper training. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state.

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. In Maryland v. King (2013), a divided Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious offenses.” While the Court claims to have made its decision based upon concerns of properly identifying criminal suspects upon arrest, what they actually did is open the door for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can stop, search, question and profile citizens and non-citizens alike. The Supreme Court declared in Arizona v. United States (2012) that Arizona police officers have broad authority to stop, search and question individuals—citizen and non-citizen alike. While the law prohibits officers from considering race, color, or national origin, it amounts to little more than a perfunctory nod to discrimination laws on the books, while paving the way for outright racial profiling and destroying the Fourth Amendment.

Police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the “offense.” A divided Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington(2012), the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a virtual strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Immunity protections for Secret Service agents trump the free speech rights of Americans.The court issued a unanimous decision in Reichle v. Howards (2012), siding with two Secret Service agents who arrested a Colorado man simply for daring to voice critical remarks to Vice President Cheney. However, contrast the Court’s affirmation of the “free speech” rights of corporations and wealthy donors in McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), which does away with established limits on the number of candidates an entity can support with campaign contributions, and Citizens United v. FEC (2010) with its tendency to deny those same rights to average Americans when government interests abound, and you’ll find a noticeable disparity.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King (2011), the Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can interrogate minors without their parents present. In a devastating ruling that could very well do away with what little Fourth Amendment protections remain to public school students and their families—the Court threw out a lower court ruling in Camreta v. Greene (2011), which required government authorities to secure a warrant, a court order or parental consent before interrogating students at school. The ramifications are far-reaching, rendering public school students as wards of the state. Once again, the courts sided with law enforcement against the rights of the people.

It’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name. In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada (2004), a majority of the high court agreed that refusing to answer when a policeman asks “What’s your name?” can rightfully be considered a crime under Nevada’s “stop and identify” statute. No longer will Americans, even those not suspected of or charged with any crime, have the right to remain silent when stopped and questioned by a police officer.

The cases the Supreme Court refuses to hear, allowing lower court judgments to stand, are almost as critical as the ones they rule on. Some of these cases, turned away in recent years alone, have delivered devastating blows to the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Legally owning a firearm is enough to justify a no-knock raid by police. Justices refused to hear Quinn v. Texas(2014) the case of a Texas man who was shot by police through his closed bedroom door and whose home was subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household.

The military can arrest and detain American citizens. In refusing to hear Hedges v. Obama (2014), a legal challenge to the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), the Supreme Court affirmed that the President and the U.S. military can arrest and indefinitely detain individuals, including American citizens. In so doing, the high court also passed up an opportunity to overturn its 1944 Korematsu v. United States ruling allowing for the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps.

Students can be subjected to random lockdowns and mass searches at school. The Court refused to hear Burlison v. Springfield Public Schools (2013), a case involving students at a Missouri public school who were subjected to random lockdowns, mass searches and drug-sniffing dogs by police. In so doing, the Court let stand an appeals court ruling that the searches and lockdowns were reasonable in order to maintain the safety and security of students at the school.

Police officers who don’t know their actions violate the law aren’t guilty of breaking the law. The Supreme Court let stand a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Brooks v. City of Seattle (2012) in which police officers who clearly used excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a pregnant woman during a routine traffic stop were granted immunity from prosecution. The Ninth Circuit actually rationalized its ruling by claiming that the officers couldn’t have known beyond a reasonable doubt that their actions—tasering a pregnant woman who was not a threat in any way until she was unconscious—violated the Fourth Amendment.

When all is said and done, what these assorted court rulings add up to is a disconcerting government mindset that interprets the Constitution one way for the elite—government entities, the police, corporations and the wealthy—and uses a second measure altogether for the underclasses—that is, you and me.

Keep in mind that in former regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the complicity of the courts was the final piece to fall into place before the totalitarian beast stepped out of the shadows and into the light. If history is a guide, then the future that awaits us is truly frightening.

Time, as they say, grows short.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State andThe Change Manifesto.
Courtesy of Activist Post.