"The essence of tyranny..."

...or minor inconvenience?

Jones was very keyed up yesterday over this footage of a cameraman (whom I've identified as Steven Greenstreet of the American News Project) being told by security personnel not to film the Federal Reserve:



Here are a few facts about this incident:

1. It is not illegal to film federal buildings from the sidewalk, provided you aren't violating any restrictions. However, this cameraman was clearly off the public sidewalk and on Federal Reserve property.
2. This kind of incident is not common. The cameraman admits he had already taken footage of the White House, the Treasury, the Capitol, and the National Academy of Sciences "with no problem".
3. While somewhat disturbing, this is hardly "the essence of tyranny", as Jones called it. True tyranny would involve detainment, a trip to the head of security's office, the trampling of film, etc.

This has happened to me, too. While photographing my stepkids inside a government building in '01, security told me that I could take pictures in a north-south direction (as I was doing), but not in an east-west direction. I thought I was being punk'd or something. Then the guy explained that since government offices like Revenue Canada (that's the Canuck IRS, for non-Canadian readers) are arrayed along the eastern and western sides of the building, they wanted to ensure I wasn't doing reconnaissance for a terrorist attack. If I did take pictures of these offices, he informed me politely but firmly, they would have to confiscate my film.

There are a couple of valuable lessons to be drawn from experiences like this:

1. Even though security personnel cannot legally confiscate film or prevent filming/photography in most public places and circumstances, there are some legal restrictions on photographing/filming federal property, particularly for commercial purposes. It's a good idea to know your rights (and your limits) before filming. Find out if your film or equipment can be legally confiscated (in most places it can't). And keep in mind that some places only appear to be public property.
2. It is perfectly within the bounds of both law and propriety for security personnel to politely question you about filming/photography. It's also common sense. Security people are responsible for what happens on their watch. If they allow you to film the exterior of a building for half an hour, and that building later becomes the target of an intrusion or attack, they've got to explain to their bosses why they let you scope out the building without any interference whatsoever. I don't blame these folks for erring on the side of caution. It's their job. Overcaution or improper training on the part of security personnel does not necessarily equal tyranny.

Alex vs. G.I. Joe

Whilst ranting/singing about National Guard recruitment propaganda, Jones brought up one of his favourite accusations: The U.S. military is deliberately injecting each and every military officer with vaccines that contain very aggressive cancer viruses. I'll be exploring Jones's ideas about a global depopulation agenda in other posts, but I wanted to point out this Prison Planet article on cancer viruses in polio vaccine. It contains one of the weirdest statements I have ever seen in a Prison Planet article, and that's saying quite a lot:

"polio can be prevented in most people simply by eliminating sugar from their diet."

Where is one even supposed to begin with a statement like that? First of all, polio is an infectious (viral) disease with no known risk factors, other than transmission-related ones (like being unvaccinated or coming into contact with an infected person). There are risk factors for paralysis caused by polio, but "consuming sugar" is not among them. In fact, there are no dietary risk factors at all. But back in the '40s and '50s, a Dr. Benjamin P. Sandler declared that diets high in sugars and starch might increase risk of heart attack, bronchitis, polio, and virtually any other disease.

Was Sandler's hypothesis ever tested? No. His only support for it consisted of his clinical experience, together with a drop in North Carolina polio cases in 1948-49 (which didn't necessarily have anything to do with his dietary recommendations). The notion that diet alone can stave off all infectious disease was, and remains, extremely popular among certain quacks and their victims.

"That's what's really going on with this criminal government..."

Jones later mentioned this widely-reported story of two Pennsylvania judges who pled guilty to receiving kickbacks from a private company, PA Child Care, to place juveniles in the company's detention facilities. This is a deeply troubling story, and it should be widely reported. However, it's not quite the symptom of New World Disorder that Jones presents it as. Democracy Now! more accurately describes it as an "unprecedented" case. It is also a case of judicial corruption rather than government malfeasance. Not to mention that both judges have been disbarred and were sentenced to 87 months in prison. If this scandal was a genuine instance of the government "trying to destroy all the liberties we've got", it would have been swept under the rug.