Superman Renounces U.S. Citizenship in 'Action Comics' #900

Comics Alliance
Laura Hudson
April 27th, 2010

After recently undertaking a journey to walk -- not fly -- across the United States in the "Grounded" storyline and reconnect with the country and everyday Americans, Superman appears to be taking another step that could have major implications for his national identity: in Action Comics #900...
...Superman announces that he is going to give up his U.S. citizenship. Despite very literally being an alien immigrant, Superman has long been seen as a patriotic symbol of "truth, justice, and the American way," from his embrace of traditional American ideals to the iconic red and blue of his costume. What it means to stand for the "American way" is an increasingly complicated thing, however, both in the real world and in superhero comics, whose storylines have increasingly seemed to mirror current events and deal with moral and political complexities rather than simple black and white morality.

The key scene takes place in "The Incident," a short story in  Action Comics #900 written by David S. Goyer with art by Miguel Sepulveda. In it, Superman consults with the President's national security advisor, who is incensed that Superman appeared in Tehran to non-violently support the protesters demonstrating against the Iranian regime, no doubt an analogue for the recent real-life protests in the Middle East. However, since Superman is viewed as an American icon in the DC Universe as well as our own, the Iranian government has construed his actions as the will of the American President, and indeed, an act of war.

Superman replies that it was foolish to think that his actions would not reflect politically on the American government, and that he therefore plans to renounce his American citizenship at the United Nations the next day -- and to continue working as a superhero from a more global than national perspective. From a "realistic" standpoint it makes sense; it would indeed be impossible for a nigh-omnipotent being ideologically aligned with America to intercede against injustice beyond American borders without creating enormous political fallout for the U.S. government.

While this wouldn't be this first time a profoundly American comic book icon disassociated himself from his national identity -- remember when Captain America became  Nomad? -- this could be a very significant turning point for Superman if its implications carry over into other storylines. Indeed, simply saying that "truth, justice and the American way [is] not enough anymore" is a pretty startling statement from the one man who has always represented those values the most.

It doesn't seem that he's abandoning those values, however, only trying to implement them on a larger scale and divorce himself from the political complexities of nationalism. Superman also says that he believes he has been thinking "too small," that the world is "too connected" for him to limit himself with a purely national identity. As an alien born on another planet, after all, he "can't help but see the bigger picture."

Do you think the shift to a more global role makes sense for Superman? If he really is going to renounce his U.S. citizenship in order to function as a more international figure, how do you think it will affect the character?

Read more about Superman and other comic heros at Comics Alliance.

EDITORS FOLLOW UP:

More about Captain America's flirtation with Nomad from Wikipedia...

The original Nomad is an alternate identity, which Steve Rogers adopts after he abandons the Captain America costume and title.

In Captain America #180 (December, 1974) Rogers becomes disillusioned with the U.S. government when he discovers that a high ranking government official (heavily hinted to be the then President of the United StatesRichard Nixon) is the leader of the terrorist organization known as the Secret Empire.

Rogers then decides to abandon his Captain America identity, feeling that he cannot continue to serve America after this latest discovery has shattered his faith in the nation's status. However, a confrontation with Hawkeye (disguised as the Golden Archer) forces Rogers to realize that he cannot abandon a life of heroism, and he subsequently takes on the name "Nomad" (as it means "man without a country") adopting a new dark blue and yellow uniform with no patriotic markings on it at all.

This identity is short-lived, with Rogers maintaining it for a mere four issues of the comic to varying degrees of success; he even trips over his own cape at one point. At the conclusion of Captain America #184 (April, 1975) Rogers returns to the role of Captain America when he realizes that he could champion America's ideals without blindly supporting its government.

Video Reporting Possible CIA/Saudi Snipers in Syria

Land Destroyer Report
Tony  Cartalucci
April 23rd, 2011


NOTE: This post is developing as readers send in information and will be updated and expanded as new information comes in. We need some translations and info on this video, and second opinions from Arab speakers familiar with this network's credibility. 

Last Updated April 25, 2011 - No sooner was "Color Revolution's Mystery Gunmen" posted covering the use of provocateurs to escalate foreign-funded color revolutons, when a reader sent in a news clip from Iran's Al-Alam News Network reportedly indicating Saudi/CIA snipers are in Syria taking out protesters. Al-Alam broadcasts throughout the region, in Arabic.

The clip features English text along the bottom stating that Saudi/CIA snipers are operating in Syria, purposefully gunning down protesters in order to expand unrest. It describes a motorcycle driver delivering a sniper to a building before speeding off. Once in position, the sniper fires on protesters. Syrian security forces surround the building and a shootout allegedly takes place. The text concludes stating that the sniper is injured and taken to a hospital.

Another video sent in by a reader shows further evidence that snipers are intentionally shooting protesters, one man caught appears not to be even Arabic at all let alone Syrian. The corporate owned media, meanwhile, continues relying on activist "witness reports."

This report and footage would corroborate both government and eye-witness accounts cited by international media stating that "snipers on rooftops" were shooting at protesters. While "rights activists" assume the snipers are security forces, the government maintains that gunmen have opened fire on protesters and security forces alike. A CNN report from April 5, 2011 cited a Syrian official who stated that "an unknown "armed group" on rooftops shot at protesters and security forces." Activists said they believe the people on the rooftops were snipers from security forces but have put forth no evidence beyond "witness accounts."


Read more of this amazing article at Land Destroyer Report.

Health Care Nullification on Governor’s Desk in North Dakota

The 10th Amendment Center
Michael Boldin
April, 22nd 2011

Nullification in North Dakota? That’s just what could be coming if Governor Jack Dalrymple signs Senate Bill 2309 (SB2309). This week, the bill passed the senate by a vote of 32-15 and the house by a vote of 69-24.

The bill, just one page of legislative language, states:

1. The legislative assembly declares that the federal laws known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [Pub. L. 111 - 148] and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 [Pub. L. 111 - 152] likely are not authorized by the United States Constitution and may violate its true meaning and intent as given by the founders and ratifiers.

2. The legislative assembly shall consider enacting any measure necessary to prevent the enforcement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 within this state.

3. No provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 may interfere with an individual’s choice of a medical or insurance provider except as otherwise provided by the laws of this state.

This is a modification of the Tenth Amendment Center’s Federal Health Care Nullification Act – introduced in more than ten states this legislative session. Click here to track progress.


NULLIFIED!

Nullification – any act or series of acts which results in a particular federal law being rendered null and void, or unenforceable, within a state, is what Thomas Jefferson referred to as “the rightful remedy” to unconstitutional acts by the federal government.

Implied in any nullification legislation is enforcement of the state law. In the Virginia Resolution of 1798, James Madison wrote of the principle of interposition:

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

Interposition is explicitly stated in SB2309 through its requirement that the legislature to consider measures preventing the Affordable Care Act from being enforced within the state.

SUPREMACY

Opponents, however, claim that the law is “meaningless because state law can’t override federal law.” But, constitutionally-speaking, such a statement is dubious, at best.

All the founders agreed that the federal government would only be able to exercise those powers delegated to it in the constitution. It was clearly represented to the Constitution’s ratifiers that laws made outside those powers were not really laws at all – they were usurpations.

And, more importantly, such a statement is a direct reference to Article VI, the “supremacy clause” of the constitution. But, claiming that state laws cannot override federal law as a blanket statement is flat out wrong. Here’s the full text of the clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. [emphasis added]

The key points:

1. For a federal law to be supreme, it must be made in pursuance of a power delegated to the federal government in the constitution. If not, it’s no law at all, and state law is supreme.

2. There is no number two, it’s that straightforward.

Read the rest of Michael Boldin's article with the 10th Amendment Center here.

Confederates in the Attic - Really?

Reason's Crier
by Topher Morrison

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Unlike many people I harbor a guilty pleasure while watching the Rachel Maddow show.  I enjoy the occasional cocktail she concocts if only because I wish I had a show in which I had an excuse to drink and drink well for that matter.  I find extraordinary eloquence in her perlocution, I enjoy her enthusiastic sarcasm and subsequent pause as if she's waiting for a laugh track that never comes.  She has a wonderful knack for talking right passed the debate by supplying her own self-contained argument albeit through abandoning the basic tenants of the opposition, but it is this frequently employed stratagem which allows Maddow to frame such an advantageous position.  There are rarely concessions in her take-no-prisoners approach to any exchange, therefore I find her to be a deft political pundit.

However, once her arguments are integrated with the facts  her self aggrandizing tirades are instantly dealt with as any pathogen would be within a body of truth.  


In Maddow's world:

- Nullification was used to support slavery and thereby claims only a nefarious history e.g. espoused by the likes of John C. Calhoun, vice-president of the Confederacy.


- The "nullification cause inspired a lot of anti-US militancy" ostensibly leading the South to war against the North.


- Nullification advocates "downplay" the Civil War being about slavery.


- "Confederate politics" are in fashion again 150 years after it lost on those ideas. 


- [Melissa Harris-Perry] Submits that confederate ideas moved out of the South during reconstruction and only thereafter the Civil War did it become a part of the national fabric.


- [Melissa Harris-Perry] In regards to the resurgence of these principles we would be "foolish to imagine this is uncorrelated with having an African-American president."


- [Melissa Harris-Perry] Having an African-American president brings up unresolved political baggage i.e. nullification, currencies based on gold/silver, etc. derived from the "confederate mindset."


- Derided are states who are "flexing their tenth amendment muscles, flexing their state sovereignty muscles, flirting with secession..." 


-  [Melissa Harris-Perry] posits that opposition to the recent Health Care Reform is based on an "others" i.e. latino immigrants, African-Americans, etc. anxiety where [white] people are made to believe they are going to be taken advantage of by minorities. 


- Almost out of nowhere Maddow concludes with: "There has never been a moment in US history where we would not have been better off with a bigger vocabulary for talking about class."


In the real world:


- The battle of Fort Sumter, which officially kicked off the Civil War is merely one event in a long chain of crises and confrontations between the North and South of which many rarely centered around the issue of slavery. 


- Abraham Lincoln heralded as the "Great Emancipator" used nullification to justify not returning slaves to the South after escaping to the North.


- Nullification has been used to extricate our states from the costly and futile drug war, however, Maddow's overtly Liberal audience wouldn't see too much red meat in the phrase “These neo-confederates are trying to destroy the union by refusing to comply with the drug war! Beware!!” 


- Nullification has also been used by half the states in the Union and is championed by the ACLU to reject Bush’s 2005 Real ID act.  Again no red meat there.


- While she did mention nullification of new "Food Safety" laws (as if simply pronouncing the contrived title forestalls the debate over its substance) she conveniently omits the fact that the recent "Food Safety and Modernization Act" passed by Congress creates yet another branch of government called the Food Safety Administration (FSA).  Isn't the FDA and USDA charged with the safety of our food and drugs?  Apparently more government is needed. 


- Maddow also avoids the fact that the 10th Amendment Center also advocates nullification of TSA pat downs and body scans which is definitely a sore subject for most Americans.  Maddow served herself well by avoiding that prickly issue, claiming that "Nullifiers want to inhibit the government from sticking their hands down your kids pants and radiating you with unknown amounts of radiation."  Wouldn't garner a whole lot of sympathy for her derisive argument. 


- In a classic Straw Man approach Maddow and Harris-Perry obfuscate the fact that principles of state sovriegnty, sound money, small central government (versus nationalist government), nullification of law, and secession from tyranny are part of our national tradition since the Revolution not merely that of the Confederacy which only thereafter bled into the national fabric.  


- Nullification is just one more weapon in the arsenal of freedom and something which our own jury system is charged with exercising if they deem state or federal laws to be unconstitutional.  Repeated repudiation of a given law by juries nullifies that law - this is constitutional. 


- The slave trade and its institutionalization in the South was deplorable, but to say the Civil War was predominantly focused on this issue is false.  The emancipation proclamation was delivered only well into the civil war, it had a strategic purpose for the North and is evidenced in the fact that over 1/2 a million slaves in Northern border states were not freed because of it until those states passed legislation to that effect.  The civil war was about the enlarging role of central government at the detriment of state government (this included the slave issue adding to the complexity of the debate), tariffs were an issue (what a surprise Americans fighting over taxes), a central banking system, standing armies, etc.  A significant shift from traditional mores was occurring in the 1860s some positive, but most negative in directions thereby leading to the Civil War.


It is in our best interest to emancipate ourselves from our oversimplified vision of American history and reclaim the truth about the Civil War and its legacy in American politics. 


For a southern libertarian view on the South and its secessionists tendencies here is the Southern Avenger. 

  

Lion Of Liberty Says...

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."


 – Pericles (430 BC)

Pericles (Greek: Περικλῆς, Periklēs, "surrounded by glory"; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age —specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

Thucydides, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens". 

Depression is in your Mind not your Brain

Depression is NOT a chemical imbalance in your brain - Here's proof


April, 7 2011
mercola.com
Dr. Joseph Mercola




This powerful video contains interviews with experts, parents and victims. It is the story of the high-income partnership between drug companies and psychiatry which has created an $80 billion profit from the peddling of psychotropic drugs to an unsuspecting public.  How did these drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go-to treatment for every kind of psychological distress?

This is an excellent documentary detailing how the psychiatric drug industry was born and its powerful and profitable partnership with the drug industry, which has turned psychiatry into an $80 billion drug profit center.

• But is any of it based on real medical science?
• How valid are the psychiatric diagnoses being handed out?
• And are the drugs safe?

Unfortunately, the evidence is overwhelmingly stacked against psychiatric drugs. It's becoming ever clearer that most of today's psychiatric diagnoses and subsequent drug treatment is a sham, successfully promoted to make you believe it's based on some scientific truth.

But it's not...

Read more at Dr. Mercola.com.

Jesse Ventura speaks out about 9/11 on ABC

Editors Note: The 9/11 conspiracy theory and its adherents (pejoratively refered to as "truthers") as of late have garnered more attention than ever before.  Both Geraldo Rivera and Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News have recently aired concerns and devoted segments to exploring what really happened on that day and more specifically what happened to WTC building 7.


April 4, 2011
ABC News
George Stephanopoulos


In his new book, "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read," former wrestler turned governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura takes a close and at times disturbing look at major historical events. Ventura draws on public but often overlooked information about such events as John F. Kennedy's assassination and the 9/11 attacks, offering fresh, often intriguing insights.

Here is an excerpt from "63 Docrments the Goverment Doesn't Want You to Read":

There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment."

 – John F. Kennedy

Read the rest of the story at ABC News.

Related video...

Memo suggests FBI had mole inside ABC News in the 1990s

John Solomon and Aaron Mehta

The Center for Public Integrity 

April 5, 2011

A once-classified FBI memo reveals that the bureau treated a senior ABC News journalist as a potential confidential informant in the 1990s, pumping the reporter to ascertain the source of a sensational but uncorroborated tip that the network had obtained during its early coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The journalist, whose name is not disclosed in the document labeled “secret,” not only cooperated but provided the identity of a confidential source, according to the FBI memo — a possible breach of journalistic ethics if he or she did not have the source’s permission.

The ABC employee was even assigned a number in the FBI’s informant database, indicating he or she was still being vetted for suitability as a snitch after providing “highly accurate and reliable information in the past” and then revealing information the network had obtained in the hours just after the 1995 terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh.

The journalist “advised that a source within the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service advised that the Oklahoma City bombing was sponsored by the Iraqi Special Services who contracted seven (7) former Afghani Freedom Fighters out of Pakistan,” an April 17, 1996 FBI memo states, recounting the then-ABC journalist’s interview with FBI agents a year earlier on the evening of the April 19, 1995 bombing. (The Iraqi connection, of course, never materialized.)

The memo recounts multiple contacts between the FBI and the journalist over a one-year period in 1995-96 but does not name the network insider, instead using the informant number NY290000-SI-DT and a simple description as “a senior official employed by ABC News for over 15 years.”

ABC News told the Center for Public Integrity that it is not certain about the identity of the journalist involved in the 1995-96 episode, but does not believe he or she still works for the network. Spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said the FBI description of its interactions with the reporter raises serious concerns about intrusions on the First Amendment.

“If true, it would certainly be of grave concern to us that the FBI would have created an informant file based on information gleaned from a reporter,” Schneider said. “It certainly would be very troubling for the FBI to recruit a news employee as a confidential source.”

“It can create a perception of collusion between the government and the news organization. It would put journalists everywhere at risk if people believed that journalists are acting as government agents. And it could raise the specter of the government trying to spy on a news organization,” he added.

Read entire article at The Center for Public Integrity...

Lion Of Liberty Says...

"War is just one more big government program." – Joseph Sobran (1946 - 2010)

Joseph Sobran was a former columnist for the National Review and senior fellow at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute and famously complained about "a more or less official national obsession with a tiny, faraway socialist ethnocracy [Israel]." 


Just love that quote! 

Obama Announces Reelection Bid - 582 Days Away

It is 582 days until the 2012 Presidential Election and Barack Obama is in.  With a fitting recycled logo and staff of elite consultants he's off and ahead of the field in the 2012 race for the White House.  

Obama launches this effort amid much tumult and if not economic depression certainly a ubiquitous psychological depression in the minds of Americans.  This malaise, albeit similarly acute in the 1970s, has for the first time (since professional polling began) shown more American's to be pessimistic about the idea that their children's future will be brighter than their own.  

Since its passage the American public has consistently rejected Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment – most want Obama's health care reform repealed.  Real unemployment as opposed to government numbers is around 18% frankly meaning those able to work are not, regardless of whether they are on the proverbial dole, disgruntled, underemployed, or have taken early retirement.  The end result is these people are not producing and in a country where we love to spend, the math doesn’t look good.

On the international stage, although many are confoundingly reticent to admit Obama has engaged us in yet another “war” in the Middle East, there is consensus that he most certainly has had trouble extricating our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, this failure to deliver on a key campaign promise is magnified after another embarrassing and demoralizing gaff paralleling George W’s Abu Ghraib fiasco at the hands of the "rogue" US Stryker Team in Afghanistan.  Additionally the ex constitutional scholar not only took direct marching orders from the UN, but didn’t even consult Congress before engaging in his “kinetic military action.”  What a line!

The atmosphere is much different for Obama than it was in 2008. The national anxiety was palatable then, the Republicans and George W. Bush had to go, America was ready for change.  Barack Obama and Co. hijacked that feeling and manifested it in campaign slogans, songs, and chants around the country, but after the last 2 1/2 years it is unlikely those bombastic slogans and soothing earth-blue tones will drum up the same command and euphoria they once enjoyed.

According to Marc Ambinder of the National Journal:

“The trajectory of Barack Obama’s presidency was supposed to be vertical. He would reform the way Washington worked, restore a sense of pride in government, and bolster the liberal nostrum that government can be effective, efficient, and helpful. He would reform health care and use his Democratic majorities to put a price on carbon. People would feel better.”

The fact is while Obama has served up a different dish than George W. Bush the diet is still the same; unhealthy bloated government sticking their hands in places they don’t belong.  Unfortunately the crux of Ambinder’s hope that things would have changed in Washington, that somehow Americans after centuries of distrust for government would have some how come around to finding a “sense of pride in it” and that Obama with all the powers vested in him could convince anyone that “government can be effective, efficient, and helpful” in the face of a mountain of contemporary and historical evidence to the contrary is as naïve as it is benighted.

Obama will be a one-term president and he knows it.