The bigoted and homophobic population of North Carolina voters and religious fundamentalist nutjobs will be able to vote in favor of a totally unnecessary amendment to the NC Constitution which will further discriminate against unmarried couples, and couples legally married in other states, and possibly disrupt many NC families, when they go to the polls this primary season. Since there are so many bigoted homophobic religious fundamentalist whackos in NC, the ballot question is very likely to pass and take effect immediately unless enough informed people who love equality and want fewer laws which regulate individual behavior get motivated enough to go to the polls and vote against this horrible amendment.

The amendment appears as a result of Session Law 2011-409, which began as Senate Bill 514, with the title “Defense of Marriage”. The name of the bill is very inappropriate and misleading.  A vote in favor of the amendment would actually attack rather than defend marriage. It attacks the marriages of certain people legally married in other states, by failing to recognize their marriage as legal, and would also prevent marriages between people who love each other but are out of luck if they want to live in this state. It is very much like the Jim Crow laws which prevented interracial marriage. Again, the politicians are trying to trick everyone by titling bills which do the opposite, such as Clean Air Act actually enabled more air pollution and should have been called the Dirty Air Act, and the Patriot Act actually should have been called the Act to Repeal the Bill of Rights and the 4th Amendment.

You can click here to see the wording of the entire bill, and you can even see if your elected representatives voted for or against it.

Prove to the politicians you are smarter than they give you credit for. Vote Against the Amendment.

NC House Bill 381 Checking Station Pattern Selection keeps moving
Raleigh (AMP) April 6, 2011

North Carolina House Bill 381, H381, titled Checking Station Pattern Selection, which most people in the motorcycling community “should” favor since it will clarify motorcycle only roadblocks (MOR) otherwise referred to as checking stations or checkpoints, are prohibited in NC was heard in Judiciary Subcommittee B yesterday, where there was a committee substitute, and received a FAVORABLE report. It is heading back to be put on the calendar for the House. I believe it will get scheduled as a 2nd Reading of the bill, and then go directly into a 3rd reading of the bill (unless the Speaker of the House does an unexpected move). It is quite possible for a motion to arise on the floor of the House to ask that the bill be scheduled for the House Transportation Committee, as a courtesy prior to any vote.

Expect it to clear the House and move to the Senate with plenty of time to meet crossover deadlines.

To see H381 Checking Station Pattern Selection and check on its’ status here is the link:
http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2011%20%…

For our last report on this bill, see http://boltusa.org/node/231/ NC Reduce Profiling

By Pepe Escobar

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighborhood in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, “This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner.”

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to “seduce” three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a “conspiracy”, as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud – saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P – “responsibility to protect” does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new – oily – human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

Whatever they say won’t alter the facts on the ground – the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There’s no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League’s Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya – even the water. And we’re not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.

Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that’s just a “kinetic military action”.

There’s been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate – and short of the “coalition of the willing” bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion – Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.

But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame (“Gaddafi must go”, in President Obama’s own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won’t settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.

Round up the unusual suspects
One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, “they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there’s no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi’ites.”

Full article here

Editorial opinion by Liberty Fairbanks.

How light bulbs are going to make you thirsty.

In 2007, President G.W. Bush signed a law that will outlaw incandescent light bulbs. When the law goes into effect, within just a few years, a percentage of groundwater across America will be more poisoned by mercury than it already is. When those new mercury lightbulbs wear out or break, people are just going to throw them in the trash. From there, they get lugged away to a landfill, where the mercury will seep into the aquifer.

Robber barons from the energy industry understand all too well; oil and gasoline are not essential to life. Neither is gold. Water is.

As water resources are poisoned by the mercury from lightbulbs as a result of the law signed by Bush, and there is no more clean drinking water anywhere in America, expect G.W. Bush to hoard potable water from his 99,000 acre aquifer in Paraguay until the price is right. If you don’t buy the water from Bush, you might buy it from another Texan, T.Bone Pickens, who has bought up all the land which contains a large aquifer. Currently, large amounts of drinking water are being exported to China rather than being kept for Americans.

Anyone who has an IQ above 100, should recognize that when we talk about light bulbs, there is a much larger issue involved. The problem is, most people know government is going to do whatever the heck government wants to do, so they prefer to not think of the bigger picture, leaving it up to government, even if the ramifications are only several years into the future. So, for those people, we’re relegated to talking about the light bulb issue as if it is only going to be a daily inconvenience that will invade their life, as a limitation to their choices as consumers.

Even if the big picture does not get you so darn ticked off at government, as you should be, that you want to erect gallows in Crawford, and on the lawn of the Capitol and the White House, as a warning that you will not take these bad laws sitting down, does the smaller picture of removal of your choice of lightbulbs upset you enough that you might, at least, complain to your legislator? Do you think the government should be removing your choice, as a consumer, to purchase incandescent light bulbs?

(AMP) Raleigh
If HB 375 passes the NC General Assembly and becomes law, those roadblocks which stop traffic and violate everyones’ rights might become just a bad memory of a state which was rapidly becoming a police state rather than a free state.
House Bill 375 introduced in the NC General Assembly by first-term representative Glen Bradley of Youngsville would clarify that checkpoints are illegal in the state. Law enforcement refers to roadblocks as checkpoints, check points, or safety checkpoints. US Supreme Court has ruled checkpoints are seizures without a warrant and without probable cause, and as such are unconstitutional in violation of the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, but the court specifies there are exceptions which allow police to violate the law in the name of public safety. For example, if police received a tip that there are religious extremists with a bomb on the way to blow up a building, there may be good reason to conduct a roadblock. It would still be illegal, but it would be an allowed exception to the Bill of Rights.

Rep. Glen Bradley explains, he hands out copies of the US Constitution to police when he is stopped, saying they obviously “need them” (to know they are violating peoples’ rights). The US Constitution is law which limits the powers of government in order to preserve the rights of the people.
In the embedded video, Wake County Sheriff Harrison clearly wants to continue the violations, and opposes the bill. Harrison favors continuing to accept federal funds (which adds to the debt) to set up checkpoints.

The General Assembly will also review a much weaker bill regarding roadblocks and checkpoints. HB 381 would prevent police from setting up checkpoints in order to profile specific types of vehicles.

Make no mistake about it, those federal funds used to fund states to set up checkpoints do come from taxpayers wallets. The US House of Representatives is currently considering House Resolution HR 904 which would prevent the US Department of Transportation (DOT) from providing federal funds to create motorcycle only roadblocks (MOR).