Month: September 2018

“What do you think about … creating an awesome festival where only non-men are welcome until ALL men learn how to behave?”  This comes from the article titled “Women Cheer as Sweden’s Man-Free Music Festival Kicks Off.”  Initiated as a response to the wave of sexual assaults at Swedish festivals in recent years, only female bands are performing, and “neither male security guards nor journalists are allowed to enter.”  However, “transgender women [sic] born as men are allowed to attend.  Only men who identify with the sex they were born with, also called cis men, are banned.”

Such a radical view balkanizes and scapegoats men while applauding transgender behavior.

In fact, the misandry has led the Swedish Equality Ombudsman, a government agency that promotes equal rights, to “examine whether the festival is compatible with discrimination laws.”

It appears that the left-wing feminist movement has become the perpetrator of man-hatred, all in the name of protecting women.  Yet overlooked by the advocates of the man-free festival is that it was a plethora of Muslim migrants who perpetrated the dreadful assaults and rapes.  These migrants come from societies where this is considered an acceptable way to treat women.  In fact, “no issue is taken with toxic Islamic masculinity.  This thinly-veiled excuse-making may be considered an attempt at dispelling anti-Islamic bigotry.  Yet, holding woefully low standards for men based on their background is an equally poor form of bigotry.” 

Thus, the elephant in the room is being deliberately ignored.  Accusations of bigotry must be avoided at all costs.  It is easier to inflict collective blame than to deal with the actual guilty parties.

By scapegoating all men, ignored is the fact that Sweden is not providing the proper security to protect its women from sexual assaults.  At the same time, the country is spending vast sums of money to support more migrants from the Muslim world.  They bring their culture and religion to bear, and it is decidedly anti-female.

No one in authority dares question why there has been an increase in sexual assaults.  No one dares wonder why the Islamic world does nothing to assist its own brethren while the West is expected to pick up the tab.

Reason and logic are vanquished as all men are targeted as sexual predators.  Instead of connecting the increase of sexual assaults that has occurred since the mostly Muslim migrants were invited into the country, left-wing ideology takes hold, and innocent men are denigrated, sexes are separated, and biology is ignored.

Some background: “FKP Scorpio, organizers for Sweden’s Bråvalla Festival officially announced the end of the country’s largest and most popular music festival.  Following last year’s event, organizers said the festival would be canceled for 2018 after an excess of sexual assaults.”

First question: Why now?  What accounts for the sudden increase of sexual assaults since this festival first began in 2013?  It is true that rapes had been reported at Swedish music festivals at Arvika in 2006 and 2010. 

But “after the nation’s parliament decided to transform Sweden with mass immigration into a multicultural society, violent crime has increased by 300 per cent and rapes by 1,472 per cent.  Now, Sweden has the worst rates of physical and sexual violence committed against women in the European Union (EU), according to a survey by the EU’s rights agency.”

Swedish authorities have been repeatedly slammed for their inaction.  In an effort to look proactive they handed out wristbands with ‘don’t grope’ written on them at the Bråvalla festival.  Several girls who were assaulted were wearing the wristband, which did not offer them much protection.

Last month, an official report by Swedish police into the migrant sex attack phenomenon blamed ‘Nordic alcohol culture’ and the ‘non-traditional gender roles’ of European women for the growing problem.

Migrants, the police said, might not be able to ‘handle the alcohol’, simply feel ‘horny’, have ‘ignorance of the consequences for the girls’, ‘have misplaced feelings’, be ‘expressing anger in this way’, or be acting due to ‘peer pressure’.

Meanwhile, “Sweden has a critical shortage of police officers, which means that it is easy to commit crimes and get away with them.  If one would, against all expectations, get caught, the punishment in Sweden is not harsh.  If someone is convicted of rape, he would be incarcerated from two to six years.  In 2015, the proportion of rapes where the police actually found the suspect was 14%.  This means that in 86% of the rapes, the rapist got away.  The police could simply not do their job because of lack of resources and poor leadership.”

Many might say that it is racist to associate migrants with sexual crimes.  The Swedish police published a report in June 2016 which gave a status report of sexual abuse.  In the report, one can read the following quote: ‘In cases where the crimes were carried out by offenders in a larger group in public places and in public swimming pools the perpetrators have been mainly youngsters who have applied for or have recently received asylum in Sweden.’

In February 2016, “mass immigration continued to claim victims in Sweden.  Murder, assaults and rape have become everyday occurrences in this small country, with a population just short of ten million, which in 2015 opened its doors to almost 163,000 immigrants.  The latest victim is 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher.  She was stabbed to death last week by a so-called unaccompanied refugee child at the asylum house where she worked.”

Moreover, “[m]igrant sex attacks at music festivals are not limited to Sweden.  Breitbart London reported in June on a similar attack at the Schlossgrabenfest music festival in Darmstadt, Germany, which was likened to the Cologne attacks in which over 1,000 men and women were assaulted and robbed.”

It is important to factor in the Islamic belief that if a woman is uncovered, it is acceptable to assault her.  This idea can be directly linked to “a senior Muslim cleric in Australia, Shek Taj Aldin al-Hilali who compares women who do not wear a headscarf to ‘uncovered meat’, implying that they invited sexual assault.”

In addition, the British Abduljalil Sajid, a senior figure in the Muslim Council of Britain,  offered support for Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali’s views, saying “loose women like prostitutes encourage men to be immoral.”

Moreover, the Karbala in Iraq imposes its version of modest dress on female visitors. Thus, “the council agreed not to allow visitors to enter without the hijab.  [It also took] the decision to ban music in the holy city, as well as dancing and tight clothes, with God’s permission.  And women will not be able to go out without an abaya or whilst wearing makeup.”

There is an undeniable truth that two diametrically opposed societies are on a major collision course, and the accommodating group is being destroyed because of its consideration and respect, which is being met with violence and destruction.  There is also the insertion of radical feminism in the mix, which basically promotes its own agenda and uses the opportunity to co-opt impressionable young women.

That all this is being ignored and replaced with men-free spaces is an invitation to disregard the real problem.  Until immigrants are properly assimilated into Western culture and taught genuine respect of women, the violence will not be curtailed. 

In many cases, male-only and female-only venues have served people well – that is, until radical left-wing militant ideology is promoted.  Boy Scouts are no longer just for boys.  It is important to question the underlying reason for the left’s advocating such events.  Is it to scapegoat or to safeguard?  Does such expression of discrimination against all men aid and abet the Muslim agenda of destroying the Western civilization from within?  Are left-wing radicals and the Muslim world helping each other’s causes while promoting their own?

Instead of Swedish officials dealing realistically with the issue, they offer an opening to what I call ideological abuse – now these young women accept that all men are sexual predators except those men who claim they are women.

Confusing and dangerous at best.  

The jihadist world repeatedly claims that it will infiltrate the West to destroy it.  Extremist feminists have publicly acknowledged that the traditional family structure is to be utterly restructured.  What clever deception by the red-green axis as they exploit these young impressionable girls who do not understand how they are being used and who do not have the information or critical thinking skills to refute these destructive ideas.

Perhaps the worst culprits are the Western countries who allow it to happen.  A country is supposed to protect its young.  When it fails that, it has doomed itself.  If a country stops honoring the inviolable promise to protect its children, it will surely lose them in the long run to one ideology or another.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

Doing good for those less fortunate is a positive thing; however, doing good for the purpose of virtue-signaling can have hugely devastating unintended consequences.  An example of this can be found in the various liberal pure water initiatives, which strive to save lives by providing unfettered access to potable drinking water in isolated African villages and other locations where pure water for all has not been previously available.

Organizations such as the William and Melinda Gates Foundation have become well known for their work in this area, and a common claim by these groups is the number of lives that are – or, if they’re in a fundraising mode, can be – saved by universal access to safe drinking water.  People can feel good about themselves by donating to these causes without considering the consequences.

And why not?  On the face of it, who can question the benefits of pure water?  However, this brings us to the issue of unintended consequences, and they can be awful.

Let’s take, for example, a single hypothetical village in sub-Saharan Africa.  It has a stable population of about 1,000 people, with live births roughly balancing natural deaths.  Local agriculture produces sufficient food to support this population.  The local education infrastructure is sufficient to train those children who survive the high infant and early childhood mortality rates.  Finally, sufficient medical care exists to maintain a mortality rate equal to the birth rate.  Life in this egalitarian village is hard but stable.

Then along comes a group of outsiders from one of these liberal foundations.  They create the technology to provide sustainable, potable water for the entire population.  This is clearly a good thing.  But it also has grievous unintended consequences stemming from enhanced life expectancy.

Since impure water has a disproportionate impact on infants and young children, the child mortality rate plummets – another good thing.  The vulnerable elderly population also tends to suffer from impure water, so life expectancy increases.  This is also a good thing.  There can be no virtue in the deaths of the youngest, the oldest, and the most vulnerable in society.  However, there are three problems that – if not also addressed at the same time – can shatter the village.

As the population grows dramatically, three critical problems will emerge.  And the population will grow – not only from enhanced mortality rates, but also because – absent a balancing achieved by the parallel implementation of widespread birth control – parents who had previously suffered the loss of young children will be motivated to bring to life children who will survive. 

With that inevitable and seemingly positive population growth comes a fast-growing demand for food, a demand that will quickly outstrip the village’s long established ability to provide for its population.  Hunger becomes a problem.  Eventually – and this won’t take long – food will become a commodity whose price is determined by the inexorable law of supply and demand. The rich will continue to eat well; the middle class will continue to eat, but not well; and the poor will be forced to make do with the gleanings left by a society with too many mouths to feed.

Education becomes another problem.  Within five years, the need for education exceeds the village’s established ability to educate its population.  At first, classes grow in size, while fixed resources are stretched thin.  Within ten years, education, like food, will become a supply-and-demand commodity.  The rich will be better educated.  The middle class will become educated, though not so well, and the poor will be lucky to have any education for their children. This will reinforce a class division that can have short-term divisive impacts and long-term stratification that will make permanent the class differences – with all the potential for strife that exists between have and have-not societies.

Perhaps most painfully, the fixed infrastructure for providing health care services will quickly be stretched to the maximum and beyond.  At first, the opposite will occur.  As the elderly and infants survive in larger numbers because of pure water, the demand for health care services will relax, which may or may not result in a reduced supply.  However, either way, once hunger becomes an increasingly prevalent issue, new diseases – ones that prey on those whose immune systems are compromised by chronic starvation – will become endemic.  Here, too, the law of supply and demand will kick in.  Those who can afford lifesaving health care will have it; those who can’t will suffer the inevitable consequences.

Once these three factors begin tearing apart the long established stable and egalitarian structure of the village, second-order problems will arise.  This comes from the rapid transformation of a stable village society into one where there are haves and have-nots, with the difference between the two literally being the difference between life and death.  The turmoil this leads to can be found in South Sudan and other areas where access to limited supplies of food has created powerful warlords and starving masses.

What conclusions can we draw from this?  Clearly, providing potable water to those who don’t have it is a desirable goal.  However, providing potable water without addressing the inevitable impact of increased life expectancy on food supplies, medical care, and education is akin to treating the broken arm of a man who broke it while collapsing from a heart attack.  Of course the broken arm should be treated, but so, too, should the potentially deadly heart attack. 

Virtue-signaling do-gooder liberals don’t think this way.  They find some unassailable cause, such as pure water; they give their contribution; and they don’t think about the unintended consequences of their largesse.  Conservatives – a good example here are Christian missionaries, but there are many others – tend to look at the larger society of the community they serve, striving to balance the consequences of doing good to create a healthier and more viable society.

Ned Barnett, founder of Barnett Marketing Communications, has been a professor at Middle Tennessee State and UNLV in Las Vegas.  He is a widely published author, a consultant, and a political campaign strategist.

We are told that Trump-haters are seeking solace in mindfulness meditation, using faddish apps of dubious efficacy.  They may bring fleeting respite from anti-Trump hysteria, but upon returning to reality, they’re again seized by cognitive convulsions, uncontrollable outbursts, and perseveration. 

Meditation and mindfulness apps are popular.  “Calm,” described in the Apple app store as “the perfect mindfulness app for beginners,” was the 2017 App of the Year.  The co-CEO of the company that makes it observed that downloads doubled in the months following president Trump’s election.  Nevertheless, Trump Derangement Syndrome remains pervasive, plowing a pernicious path through liberals’ precious psyches.

The faddish mindfulness programs predominating in app stores are more oriented toward meditation methods that induce temporary rapture but not lasting enlightenment.  In general, they seek to make the mind calmer and encourage focusing on the present moment.  The goal is to achieve heightened states of concentration that lead to tranquility – the effects are temporary.  After focusing on automatic banalities like breathing, they generally encourage expanding awareness of sounds, sensations, and ideas.  Very disturbing ideas, indeed.

Commercialization of mindfulness has even infiltrated the halls of Congress and is especially popular among Democrats.  Democrat Congressman Tim Ryan, one of the leading proponents of the mindfulness sessions, stated, “There is value in having some quiet time before votes – it can help anyone make better decisions.”  Oh, dear!  It doesn’t seem to be working: recent voting patterns reflect more of a vegetative state of oppressive orthodoxy than a meditative state of awareness.

Instead of quick, convenient sessions in search of instant emotional well-being, the Dems might be better off by cultivating Vipassana meditation in order to apprehend ultimate reality.

Vipassana, with its emphasis on noble silence, is a more gradual process that seeks insight into the inherent nature of things by changing the way we perceive and understand our wondrous universe.  Its purpose is permanent change, transforming a haze of illusion into brilliant clarity and oneness with nature’s ways.  A wise 35-year practitioner recently convinced me that the resultant illumination into inner truths of reality is liberating and can free one from the insidious, self-imposed anguish resulting from muddled musings and impaired perceptions.

Rather than being misguided by popular implementations of modern mindfulness, TDS-sufferers might achieve lasting relief by patiently pursuing Vipassana meditation.  It would help them eradicate their mental impurities and resist obsequious obedience to obstructionist orthodoxy.  They might even refrain from mindless utterances like “America was never that great.”  Tell that to the downtrodden masses from the wretched areas around the globe who continually seek the American Dream.  One who harbors, or supports, similar thoughts is mindlessly currying favor with seething socialists and intolerant insurrectionists rummaging for relevance in the scrapyard of history.

Not acceptance, but recalibration of their warped perceptions would be constructive.  Nevertheless, some meditation practitioners assert that Trump’s detractors need mindfulness more than ever, even if it reinforces their views that the world is against them.  However, misapplied meditation methods magnify their neuroses; despite all their mindfulness downloads, their downward spiral into anti-American mania irrevocably accelerates.

But don’t fret: Vipassana provides a promising path for liberal obstructionists to attain lasting calmness rather than madness.  First, they need to quiet their minds, second, to quell their inner demons.  As the old adage advises, achieving anything worthwhile in life takes time and effort.

As this article points out, some of the studies that promote the benefits of mindfulness are less than robust; some don’t even control for placebo effects.  Indeed, recent studies indicate that quick-fix, Westernized forms of Buddhism promote selfishness rather than selflessness.  It seems that impatient and less trained mindfulness patrons are “full of it.”  Indeed, many tend towards egocentrism – a trait that’s pervasive among the disaffected liberals who have twisted themselves into emotional pretzels by ruminating on their feeble collusion concoctions.

Perhaps one reason why the less rigorous methods offer only temporary respite from stress and anxiety is that they have to contend with our natural proclivities.  For example, two recent research papers examine the way we perceive the world.  It turns out that our minds are more naturally “silent” than they are persistently in tune with our environment; instead of a steady stream of consciousness, our conscious thoughts constantly fluctuate between on and off.  The recent research, published in Neuron, shows that it’s hard for our “distractible” brains to consistently focus.  No wonder the benefits of samatha-style meditation are temporary – once focus on superficial sensations is inevitably lost, anti-Trump zealots revert to their malevolent mayhem.  The step-by-step thoroughness of Vipassana is more suitable to the way we are wired.

One thing is empirically demonstrable: modern mindfulness applications aren’t quelling the burgeoning ranks of tormented liberals.  But a carefully cultivated regimen of Vipassana meditation might soothe them by opening their imprisoned minds, riddled as they are with peculiar thoughts more suitable to a mental asylum than a vibrant public square.

Fashionable mindfulness encourages illiberal malcontents to hyper-focus on their doctrinaire thoughts and subversive sensations – without judgment.  Their egos prevail as they accept their ideas and feelings unquestionably.  They need to let go; they should embrace the noble silence of Vipassana.  Voice silence would also be nice until they are decent enough to repudiate intolerant instigators of mob rule like Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and their impudent ilk among the nasty Demon-crats.

Dr. Jane Goodall is a pioneer in the study of chimpanzees.  In 1960, she set up camp in Tanzania’s Gombe National Stream Park to live among the wild chimpanzees.  In 1984, Dr. Goodall was asked to study the unusual but frequently observed habit of chimpanzees flinging their feces while in zoo captivity.  This behavior rarely occurs in the wild.

Since President Trump’s inauguration 21 months ago, it’s more than evident that many of the president’s critics, detractors, and enemies have gleefully adopted the repugnant behavior of captive chimpanzees.  According to Dr. Goodall’s research, chimps in captivity resort to feces-flinging because of stress, agitation, and pent up frustration.  

Yes, there is absolutely unresolved stress since the election of Donald Trump.  Almost two years have passed, and no, there isn’t a groundswell of acceptance among Democrats.  If anything, the anxiety has risen to near a hysterical state.  What began as Trump Derangement Syndrome, those afflicted and unable to reconcile the fact that Hillary Clinton lost, has evolved to episodic psychosis.

In fact, the tension and stress have reached extreme levels.  Journalists such as Chuck Todd of Meet the Press find it necessary to pen articles defending the media’s negativity and overt hostility toward the president.  In Mr. Todd’s twisted opinion, despite the overwhelming adverse press specifically directed at the president, the media somehow remain fair and unbiased purveyors of the news.  Labeling Fox News viewers as “old white people” certainly cements Mr. Todd’s claim that the media are not biased.  In other words…not a smidgen of bias.  (Wink, wink.)

Yes, the Democrats are agitated – so much so that bouts of feces-flinging now occur with certain regularity.  To date, several salacious books (and one forthcoming) have been written warning that the White House is in turmoil, Donald Trump is crazy, and the White House staff loathe and despise him.  According to “in the know” authors, White House staffers operate in a constant state of trepidation.  Their panic is palpable, and they are consumed with dread and alarm.  The latest tome of tongue-lashing, Fear, written by Bob Woodward, is simply a rehash of uninteresting gossip.  Just like many of his nattering, like-minded essayists, Woodward quotes sources in and out of the White House, several of whom have categorically denied ever speaking to or meeting Mr. Woodard.  Sound familiar?  Author Michael Wolff’s book is also a plethora of gossip and innuendo.

CNN’s first review of Bob Woodward’s book calls life in the White House “harrowing.”  New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner claims that while Woodward was never a graceful writer, he (Woodward) is able to spin tales of a man (Trump) who is “emotionally over-wrought, mercurial, and unpredictable.”

If we are to believe Mr. Woodward, White House aides have taken it upon themselves to hide important documents from the president.  White House aides also routinely block the president’s most dangerous impulses.  Sure they do, Bob.  

Inevitably, all of this stress and agitation leads to pent up frustration, hence more feces-flinging, evidenced by the opening day of Judge Kavanagh’s Supreme Court hearing.  Judicial Committee chairman Senator Chuck Grassley couldn’t even complete his first sentence before Senator Kamala Harris interrupted him, demanding a delay in the hearing.  Beyond rude and ill mannered, she continued her tirade, claiming that the White House had purposely and with malice withheld critical documents authored by Judge Kavanagh that are imperative to the hearing discussion.  Despite the fact that over 400,000 documents have been released, Senators Booker, Blumenthal, and Klobuchar accused the administration of hiding “something.”  Thus far, they have yet to specifically identify the elusive “something.”

More unbearable, during the course of the opening remarks by various senators, loud-mouthed, banshee-like screeching protesters interrupted the proceedings time and time again.  If that wasn’t enough, Fred Guttenberg, father of a deceased Florida Parkland High School student, rushed Judge Kavanagh just as the committee recessed for lunch.  Startled, Judge Kavanagh recoiled as he rose from the table, turning away as security intervened.  Dianne Feinstein admitted she had invited the father, who earlier in July tweeted, “Judge Kavanagh must not become a SC judge, because he is a risk to public safety.”

The coordinated feces-flinging attack during the hearing was a sordid spectacle.  It is a sure sign that even more disgusting behavior is planned as the liberal hysteria explodes. 

Entrenched Democrat establishment career politician Jerrold Nadler may have met his match in Naomi Levin. Her campaign website sums it up well: “growing up she was keenly aware that entitlement is not an American value hard work is.” Running as a Republican in the Tenth Congressional District, she seems the perfect foil to Congressman Nadler, a man who supported Obama’s disastrous Iran deal and has made resisting the duly elected President Trump his chief goal.

Levin, the daughter of immigrants from the former USSR, has been interviewed on Fox and Friends. In that interview she contrasts her capitalist views with another NY millennial turned politician. Unlike Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Naomi does not believe in socialism but rather believes in making America great and that it doesn’t need what Obama referred to as a fundamental transformation. Instead, Naomi appreciates this country and wants to cut taxes, which in NY are extremely high.

Naomi Levin is the perfect foil for her opponent. She wants to go to Washington “to influence a system overhaul.” Contrast that with Nadler, a pillar of the Washington establishment since 1993. Her opponent represents the epitome of an establishment which is seeing its political clout fading. Unlike Nadler and the open borders Democrat NY establishment, Naomi Levin supports law enforcement and believes in enforcing immigration law, saying “We also need to control who can cross our border and support our efforts to do that.”

Like many establishment politicians of both parties, Nadler has opposed the president’s agenda at every turn. He refers to Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy as an “extreme legal ideology” even though Judge Kavanaugh is an originalist hardly outside the mainstream of judicial thinking. Nadler has also, in the words of Levin, acted as the now-disgraced former FBI and deep state actor Peter Strzok’s defense attorney. In a now-infamous Strzok was lauded by Nadler despite his attempt to weaponize the FBI as a tool to elect Clinton and defeat President Trump.

New York’s Tenth Congressional District now has a chance to elect a Republican outsider to a seat held by the Democrat establishment since the 1990s. The president needs more allies in Congress, and this is a great opportunity to overthrow a career politician.

I don’t know if you’ve felt them, but we’ve had many warnings of a major catastrophic human-made earthquake that threatens the foundations of our 242-year-old existence as a free nation. The needle on the political Richter Scale started shaking after the 2000 election of George W. Bush. The rumblings began with the Democrats contesting the 527-vote Florida game-changing presidential win by Bush over Gore that eventually was confirmed by a recount. But thereafter, Bush was for his eight more years in the White House referred to and treated by the Left as America’s first sitting “Non-President.” 

Then we suffered the rattling election of Barack Obama, whose active membership in a white, Jewish and America-hating church was well known to the electorate. His close personal relationship with the likes of his adored Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan was no secret. Obama was open about his goals. He told us he was out to “Fundamentally transform America” and the world. He did, with racial unrest, blacks against whites, attacks against law enforcement, hatred against people of wealth, the cover-up of Muslim hate crimes, the admission of millions of illegals, the deliberate condemnations of our nation’s history, the “Arab Spring” that turned the Middle East into a raging inferno of destruction and death, the support to the terrorist nation of Iran and the eight-year unsuccessful effort to undermine the Jewish State of Israel. Worrisome tremblings, indeed.

Recently, the threats have increased in volume and intensity with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The grinding Democrat tectonic plates beneath our (small “d”) democracy have sent rumbling tremors that indicate a major catastrophe to our nation is on the near horizon. The forces of hate against our president have reached catastrophic levels on the political seismic scale that threaten to take down the pillars of liberty and freedom. The fraudulently concocted charges of treason and collusion with an enemy nation against Trump have shaken the nation’s stability. Calls for his impeachment, assassination, and the physical attacks against his staff and supporters have rattled us all. And our Democratic elected leaders are feeding this frenzy. The recent live broadcasts of the funerals of Aretha Franklin and John McCain coming so close together should have knocked us off our feet with the eulogists standing over caskets attacking our legally elected president. The shock of having three open haters of whites, Jews, and America in the first row at the Franklin services seated purposely and openly right next to a former president should have rocked our senses. But it didn’t… and that’s scary.

Lastly and perhaps the most significant recent shudders, came in the current Senate hearings for the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice. The well-planned observer tantrums requiring the ejection of violent demonstrators for the whole world to see, along with the coordinated Democratic disruption from the official seats represented a massive threat to our liberties. We have no control of nature. Earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, and tsunamis are generated by earth’s forces. But the undermining rattling of our halls of justice, our Constitution, and our liberties for which so many have sacrificed their lives is occurring because we are permitting it to happen. The willful closing of our eyes to the earthshaking warning signals of calamity, growing not only in frequency but in intensity, will result in the irreparable cracks in the foundations of our liberties and freedom. The next shock may be coming soon.