Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

What Do "Sustainable Development," "Community Policing," and "Fusion Centers" Have in Common? UN Agenda 21

"Community policing" is a good idea for neighborhoods that actually have crime problems, but should it be a blanket policy for every neighborhood in America?

The police are sworn "To Serve and Protect" the public, but whom will they serve if given addition powers such as power to enter homes, to question at will? Won't this violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, part of the United Nations Agenda 21?

Agenda 21
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Niki Raapana:

We sure hear a lot of talk about revolution these days. There's the Ron Paul Revolution, the Revolution Against Evolution, the Revolution of Change, the Internet Revolution, the Carbon Revolution, the Green Revolution, the Obama Revolution, the Alex Jones Revolution Against the New World Order, and the Jesus Revolution. It's too bad we don't hear more about the Quiet Revolution. This is the global-to-local policing revolution, and it's getting quietly stronger every day.

"In the U.S. community policing originated as a "quiet revolution" seeking recognition in the 70s (Kelling, 1988; Greene, 1989) and has since become a tour de force to be reckoned with in the 90s. (Bayley and Sheering, 1997; Rosenbaum, 1994; Cordner, 1989). " Community Policing in China: Continuity and Change, by Kam C. Wong, 2000.

The tactics for the new paradigm shift in domestic policing began in urban ghettos and HUD projects in the 70s. HUD employees wrote and published The Broken Window Theory. It was used by the community cops to test "innovative strategies of enforcement." Part of HUD's untested theory was that poor neighborhoods and the people in them are the cause of "full blown fear." According to Kelling, this happens when there are old houses and unlit streets and yards, which creates an atmosphere of "feeling that nobody's in charge and nobody cares."

"There are at least two areas where the federal government can and should act to promote security in inner city neighborhoods: (1) Community Policing for inner city residents (2) Drug treatment for inner city offenders." The Essential Communitarian Reader, by Amitai Etzioni, 1998.

Do we want to be subjected to the discipline of International Law? Harold Koh believes we should.

Meghan Clyne, "Obama's Most Perilous Legal Pick," March 30, 2008:

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.

Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.

President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.

Hollow States vs. Failed States

Lately many pundits have characterized Mexico and Pakistan as on the way to being a failed state. There is, however, an in-between stage: a hollow state.

A considerable number of analysts contend that Mexico and other countries suffering assaults by open source insurgencies/crime aren't in danger of becoming failed states. They are right given the limitations of their modeling. A failed state is a complete breakdown in the delivery of political goods (security, law, health, education, infrastructure, etc.), the dissolution of most arms of the government (often what's left is in absentia), and widespread chaos. Think Somalia.

In contrast, these states are well on the road to becoming hollow states. A hollow state is different from a failed state in that it continues to exist on the international stage. It has all the standard edifices of governance although most are heavily corrupted and in thrall to global corporate/monied elites. It continues to deliver political goods (albeit to a vastly diminished group, usually around the capital) and maintains a military. Further, in sections of the country, there is an appearance of normal life.

One of the most confusing aspect of modern insurgency for the "experts" * is that nearly every guerrilla group worth observing is advancing on the objective of state failure rather than state replacement.** As in, why would Hezbollah want to rule Lebanon? Who would want that headache?

Global Guerrillas: Tribes!

This may fill in some gaps for people thinking about surviving the future intact.

How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proven it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem.

If you are like most people in the 'developed world,' you don't have any experience in a true tribal organization. Tribal organizations were crushed in the last couple of Centuries due to pressures from the nation-state that saw them as competitors and the marketplace that saw them as impediments. All we have now it is a moderately strong nuclear family (weakened via modern economics that forces familial diasporas), a weak extended family, a loose collection of friends (a social circle), a tenuous corporate affiliation, and a tangential relationship with a remote nation-state. That, for many of us, is proving to be insufficient as a means of withstanding the pressures of the chaotic and harsh modern environment (D2 in particular).

The solution to this problem is to build a tribe. A group of people that you are loyal to you and you are loyal in return. In short, the need for a primary loyalty to a group that really cares about your survival and future success.

A Medical Madoff: Anesthesiologist Faked Data in 21 Studie

SURGEON AT WORK: Investigation reveals anesthesiologist published string of studies based on bogus research touting the supposed benefits of drugs for pain management.

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Brendan Borell, Scientific American, March 10, 2009:

Over the past 12 years, anesthesiologist Scott Reuben revolutionized the way physicians provide pain relief to patients undergoing orthopedic surgery for everything from torn ligaments to worn-out hips. Now, the profession is in shambles after an investigation revealed that at least 21 of Reuben's papers were pure fiction, and that the pain drugs he touted in them may have slowed postoperative healing.

"We are talking about millions of patients worldwide, where postoperative pain management has been affected by the research findings of Dr. Reuben," says Steven Shafer, editor in chief of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, which published 10 of Reuben's fraudulent papers.

Paul White, another editor at the journal, estimates that Reuben's studies led to the sale of billions of dollars worth of the potentially dangerous drugs known as COX2 inhibitors, Pfizer's Celebrex (celecoxib) and Merck's Vioxx (rofecoxib), for applications whose therapeutic benefits are now in question. Reuben was a member of Pfizer's speaker's bureau and received five independent research grants from the company. The editors do not believe patients were significantly harmed by the short-term use of these COX2 inhibitors for pain management but they say it's possible the therapy may have prolonged recovery periods.

Australia: The rise and rise of new Muslim Brotherhood gangs

Gangs are nothing more than coagulating contemporary tribes of like-minded individuals that find each other.

Although done in the name of Mohammad and Islam, Muslim Brotherhood Movement gangs have more in common with non-Muslim street gangs than they do with mainstream Muslims.

Mainstream Muslim disapprove of the "criminal" behavior of Muslim gangs, but do they also disapprove of the Islamic Supremacy movement that is part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood as uses violence, threats and intimidation to achieve the goals and purposes of Islam, "using any means necessary"? If not, they have more in common than they wish to acknowledge.

At Muslims Against Sharia:

THEY call themselves MBM - the Muslim Brotherhood Movement - a gang of 600 men who boast they are the toughest and best young street fighters of Middle Eastern descent in Sydney.

MBM claims to be the biggest of four new gangs to emerge on Sydney streets in the past year. Its numbers rival those of the state's largest bikie gang, the Rebels.

The sudden appearance of MBM, with its growing membership recruited predominantly from the city's south-western suburbs, has alarmed senior police already battling to combat open warfare among outlaw motorbike gangs.

Even hardened private security guards have expressed concern to police about the indiscriminate "punch and run" tactics of MBM members who, in the past two weeks, have arrived in large numbers at city nightclub venues and who walk the streets in intimidating mobs. But the objectives of MBM - its emblem features two crossed pistols and a hand grenade - and its leadership remain unclear to officers of both the Organised Crime and Gang Squad and Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad.

The Future of U.S. Business?

Who should we "look out for" now?

Building Our Own "Road to Serfdom"

Bailing Out of the Constitution

Those of us old enough to have received a "real" education, as opposed to what passes for education today, in which the Constitution and the Federalist actually were read and studied, know that something very wrong has been going on in Washington, D.C.

George F. Will, The Washington Post, March 29, 2009:

It is high time that Americans heard an argument that might turn a vague national uneasiness into a vivid awareness of something going very wrong. The argument is that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) is unconstitutional.

By enacting it, Congress did not in any meaningful sense make a law. Rather, it made executive branch officials into legislators. Congress said to the executive branch, in effect: "Here is $700 billion. You say you will use some of it to buy up banks' 'troubled assets.' But if you prefer to do anything else with the money -- even, say, subsidize automobile companies -- well, whatever."

FreedomWorks, a Washington-based libertarian advocacy organization, argues that EESA violates "the nondelegation doctrine." Although the text does not spell it out, the Constitution's logic and structure -- particularly the separation of powers -- imply limits on the size and kind of discretion that Congress may confer on the executive branch.

The Vesting Clause of Article I says, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in" Congress. All. Therefore, none shall be vested elsewhere. Gary Lawson of Boston University's School of Law suggests a thought experiment: