Category Archives: Freedom

North Korea has put another American behind bars, bringing to three the number of U.S. citizens imprisoned in the rogue regime's infamous gulags even as tensions on the peninsula threaten to spiral out of control.

Tony Kim, a 58-year-old Korean-American professor, was detained at Pyongyang International Airport after teaching accounting for a month at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and working on aid and relief programs to North Korea.

In the past, North Korea has generally quickly released any American citizens it detained waiting at most for a U.S. official or statesman to come and to personally bail out detainees. But that appears to be changing.

Kims arrest makes him the third American citizen currently detained in North Korea, and while activists and U.S. government officials have lobbied for the release of these prisoners, little progress has been made as relations between Washington and Pyongyang deteriorate amid the latters continued missile tests and refinement of nuclear weapons.

Here is a look at the three American citizens being held in North Korea.

Tony Kim (also goes by his Korean name, Kim Sang-duk)

Kim was detained in North Korea on Saturday, according to Park Chan-mo, the chancellor of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, as he was trying to leave with his wife on a flight to China.

The Swedish embassy in Pyongyang said Sunday it was aware of a Korean-American citizen being detained recently but could not comment further. The embassy looks after consular affairs for the United States in North Korea because the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.

The State Department also said it was aware of the report about a U.S. citizen being detained, but declined further comment "due to privacy considerations."

Park said he was informed that the detention had "nothing to do" with Kim's work at the university but did not know any further details.

Kim previously taught Korean at the Yanbian University of Science and Technology in Yanji, China, not far from the North Korea border, said the school's Communist Party committee secretary.

As of Monday morning, North Korea's official media had not reported on the detention and there so far have been no details on why Kim was detained.

Otto Warmbier

The 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student from Ohio was detained on January 2, 2016, at Pyongyang International Airport, while visiting the country as a tourist with Young Pioneer Tour.

Warmbier was charged with stealing a political sign from a staff-only floor in the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang and committing crimes against the state. He was given a one-hour trial last March at which the government presented fingerprints, CCTV footage and pictures of a political banner to make its case against the American student.

I beg that you see how I am only human,Warmbier said at his trial. And how I have made the biggest mistake of my life.

Despite his pleas,the college student was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. In a post-trial video released to the world, Warmbier, under obvious duress,praised his captors for his treatment and for handling of the case fair and square."

Little is known about Warmbiers current condition, but his parents have pleaded with both the Obama and Trump administrations to help free their son.

President Trump, I ask you: Bring my son home. You can make a difference here, Fred Warmbier said during an appearance on Fox News Tucker Carlson earlier this month.

Julia Mason, a State Department spokeswoman,told theCincinnati Enquirerthat the U.S. government continues to actively work to secure his earliest possible release. Mason added, however, that U.S. emissaries in North Korea have not been able to visit Warmbier for more than a year.

A representative from the Swedish Embassy last visited Mr. Warmbier on March 2, 2016, Mason said. We are in regular, close coordination with representatives of the Embassy of Sweden.

Kim Dong Chul

The plight of the Korean-American businessman is probably the most hazy case of all the Americans being held in North Korea.

A former resident of Virginia, Kim was living in China with his wife and operating a business in a special economic zone of North Korea when he was detained in October 2015 while in the city of Rason. His detainment was not made public until North Korean officials introduced him to a visiting news crew and allowed him to be interviewed through an interpreter.

It was later revealed that Kim had been detained on suspicion of engaging in spying and stealing state secrets. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labor after a brief trial in Pyongyang. North Korea's Supreme Court found Kim guilty of espionage and subversion under Articles 60 and 64 of the North's criminal code.

When he was paraded before the media in Pyongyang last March, Kim said he had collaborated with and spied for South Korean intelligence authorities in a plot to bring down the North's leadership and had tried to spread religion among North Koreans before his arrest.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the country's main spy agency, has said Kim's case wasn't related to the organization in any way.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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US citizens held in North Korea see diminished hope of freedom amid rising tensions - Fox News

Cross-posted with theWashington Post.

In recent weeks, we have seen a barrage of news showing the fragility ofsupport for freedom of inquiry and expression. After disturbances at Middlebury and Claremont McKenna College,Ann Coulter has drawn media attention for being threatened with unmanageable protests at UC Berkeley. Apparently, beingdenied the opportunity to hold forthat UC Berkeleyhas made her inflammatory nastiness attractive to those who would otherwise ignore her attempts at provocation. The talk has since been rescheduled on campus. As Robert Reich, who teaches at Berkeley, noted:How can students understand the vapidity of Coulters arguments without being allowed to hear her make them, and question her about them? Whats next? Will Bill OReilly be called a champion of free speech because someuniversity administration denies him a platformto speak on womens issues?

We must recognize the rights of protestors while at the same time ensuring that those invited to speak on our campuses get a hearing. At most colleges, this proceeds without incident, becauseinvitations goto scholars or other public figures accustomed to engaging in dialogue based in evidence and reasoning. However, when entertainers or other celebritiesare invited because of their ability to provoke, we should not be all that surprised that some members of a campus community are in factprovoked. But attempting to shut down speakers is a sign of weakness not strength, and it plays into the hands of those who in the long run want to undermine theability of colleges and universities to expand how we think and what we know.

As I wrote in this space a few years ago:We learn most when we are ready to recognize how many of our ideas are just conventional, no matter how radical we think those ideas might be. We learn most when we are ready to consider challenges to our values from outside our comfort zones of political affiliation and personal ties. My role as a university president includes giving students opportunities to make their views heard, and to learn from reactions that follow. Debates can raise intense emotions, but that doesnt mean that we should demand ideological conformity because people are uncomfortable. As members of a university community, wealways have the right to respond with our opinions, but, as many free speech advocates have underscored, there is no right not to be offended. Censorship diminishes true diversity of thinking vigorous debate enlivens and instructs.

While we in the United States fret about whether right wing provocateurs can speak in the evening or the afternoon (the current issue at Berkeley), a far more dire situation has developed in Budapest. The Hungarian government is trying to shut down Central European University, a major beacon of research and teaching. The university was supported by Georges Soros (a multiple Wesleyan parent, by the way), and is currently led by Michael Ignatieff, achampion of freedom of inquiry. The right-wing government ofPrime Minister Viktor Orbn has put enormous pressure on CEU, but supporters around the world have rallied to its defense. We should too!

Here is a letter recently drafted by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy with bipartisan support:

We are writing today with concern about legislation passed by the National Assembly that threatens the existence of Central European University, an accredited U.S. institution of higher learning and one of Europes most renowned universities. Since its founding in 1991, Central European University in Budapest has demonstrated a commitment to rigorous academic study, outstanding scholarly research, and a diverse student body. It has also played an important role in developing cultural and academic ties between Hungary and the United States through student exchanges and study abroad programs that benefit both our countries. In so doing, Central European University has become one of the highest-ranked universities in Europe, bringing new opportunities and prestige to Hungarian citizens.

As you know, the legislation includes a requirement that foreign-accredited universities operate a campus in their own countries. It includes exceptions that would apply to the other 27 international universities in Hungary, so that in the end it applies solely to CEU. This legislation threatens academic freedom and disregards the longstanding relationship Central European University haswith the Hungarian people. Cooperation and exchanges in the field of education are foundational elements of the Helsinki Final Act. Instead of shutting down academic institutions that expand bilateral relationships, we should be working together to strengthen them and expand their accessibility.

Ultimately, we fear that this legislation puts at risk academic institutions and academic freedom in Hungary. The Hungarian people have long benefited from Central European Universitys educational activities in your country. We encourage you to work with Central European University to find a solution that ensures their continued place as an important center of higher education in Europe and a valuable link between our two countries.

When freedom of inquiry and expression is threatened on campus, it will be threatened elsewhere in society. In the long run, its the most vulnerable who have the most to lose.

Go here to see the original:

Threats to Academic Freedom in Europe and at Home - Wesleyan Connection (blog)

Forbes

Dogsitting Freedom Advances In Colorado Forbes This week the Colorado Senate will consider a bill to ensure residents can look after someone's dog without a license from the government. Like many sharing economy bills, the legislation (HB 1228) arose after an excessive regulatory crackdown. Across ...

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Dogsitting Freedom Advances In Colorado - Forbes

Conservative Review

Tax Freedom Day: You've been working for Big Gov to THIS point Conservative Review Falling on April 24 this year, Tax Freedom Day rather perversely celebrates the part of each year where the government generously allows us to keep our own money. It is the dividing line between that portion of the year where we work for the government ... Illinois' Tax Freedom Day a week later than average AmericanIllinois News Network Crossing the Line Tax Freedom Daynwitimes.com Tax Freedom Day still to come in UtahKSL.com all 20 news articles »

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Tax Freedom Day: You've been working for Big Gov to THIS point - Conservative Review

In the past few years, Ive become something of a counselor. I have no formal credentials and a bad track record at the very thing Im supposed to help others avoid. How can I be critical of Israel, friends and strangers ask, without losing my job or getting into trouble? Im flattered to be approached in this way, I am. But I cant help but think: me? Youre asking me how to manage a career in academe while being critical of Israel? Ive lost two jobs in the past three years because of my sharp criticism of Israel and Im a month away from being unemployed again. I mean, Ill try, but if you want to ask me about how to get into trouble in academe, Im on better footing.

I recall one such inquiry from a colleague last month. It was a routine, even banal, question, nothing that would normally require a halting answer. And yet, as is often the case with ordinary things, the question was filled with a world of complexity.

My colleague wanted to know if she should join a delegation of scholars to Palestine. A well-respected organization offers a development seminar on Palestine for US professors, including a short visit to the country. Its a nice opportunity: participants get a trip to the Mediterranean, where they will be treated to visual beauty, warm hospitality, and wonderful cuisine. They will have an opportunity to interact with sharp intellectuals and activists and to visit the holy sites so grandiose in humanitys imagination.

This kind of trip is common for scholars, who visit places around the world with sponsorship from research groups or universities. There is only one instance where the question should I go? needs to be raised: in relation to Palestine. My friend wasnt concerned about safety or other fantastical perils, but about the possibility of being condemned by Zionist groups and damaging her chances at tenure. She was right to be worried.

We had a long conversation weighing the benefits of the trip against its potential pratfalls. Its a fun adventure. Youll come back with plenty to write about. This is important to your research. The networking possibilities are attractive. But. A number of organizations torment anyone who goes to Palestine unless its to serve in the IDF. Incorporating Palestine into a program of radical scholarship has potential to tip the balance from Im wary of her to shes gotta go. Universities are filled with individual faculty who relish punishing colleagues who dont express adequate fealty to Israel. They certainly exist on your campus.

I had no easy answer. Palestine has a way of reaffirming a persons most empathetic sensibilities, so I was confident my friend would come back invigorated. But I wasnt certain she would remain unscathed.

Just go, I finally declared. Then I felt guilty for the next two days.

It was an exemplary moment of existential silliness. After all, why is it even a question if somebody should go to Palestine? Its a terrific place to visit. Overzealous Israeli authorities are the only real threat to visitors. Travel, however, isnt neutral. Its always a political choice even when it has hedonistic ambitions. The question, then, isnt rhetorical. Understanding why going to Palestine is inadvisable allows us to discard the silly notion that were free to do as we pleasebecause of pluck or protocol.

The episode illuminates the special status to which Palestine is subject in US academe. Professors will be lauded and rewarded for visiting certain places, but Palestine isnt one of those places. It doesnt offer the sort of war porn that titillates the political imagination. How countries and regions come to be understood as worthy of adulation or sympathy depends on a constellation of policy conventions, institutional cultures, power dynamics, narrative orthodoxies, and economic interests, all of them variously in concert and at odds with one another. That the possibility of visiting Palestine evokes consternation suggests we have a case where those phenomena are largely aligned.

It also illuminates the depth of pressure certain students and faculty experience on campus. Two years ago, a joint report by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights found nearly 300 cases in which speech or activism around Palestine was suppressed. Those cases included disciplinary action for campus activists, the suspension of student groups, employment termination, and the cancellation of course sections.

This suppression goes beyond campus, too, though its tentacles manage to slither into our well-manicured spaces. Numerous states have introduced legislation criminalizing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [BDS], a highly effective, nonviolent strategy for opposing the Israeli occupation. Whatever one makes of BDS, it is indubitably a form of protected speech, as affirmed by dozens of court rulings. That so many politicians and legislative bodies are willing to make it illegal shouldnt be understood simply as constitutional negligence, but as evidence of a political culture that values power over mobilization. Countries such as France and the UK, not to mention Israel itself, have pushed to criminalize BDS. Suppressing Palestine is a transnational industry.

We need academic freedom to criticize Israel, but it takes more than academic freedom to contest the sites of power invested in protecting Israel from criticism. Most commentators, however, are too scared to name Zionism as a problem. People spend considerable time these days arguing about speech and disruption on campus, yet Palestine is shockingly absent from the conversation. Exploring the repression of ideas at universities while ignoring Palestine is like discussing LeBron James without mentioning basketball.

Palestine isnt the totality, or the crux, of todays debates about speech and resistance on campus. Theres too much repression preceding Palestine, and now in existence alongside it, for that to be true. But Palestine deeply informs the substance of those debates, and by recovering this sunken reality we can better understand the disputes around free speech and academic freedom that generate so much attention.

*****

It is impossible to speak, or be heard, with a set of impartial senses. Free speech, in both philosophy and practice, is attached to structures of power (seen and unseen, discernible and oblique, steady and unstable). Despite the states professions of fairness and benevolence, free speech is never fixed or disinterested. It is prosecuted according to circumstance. It is reified based on the needs of the audience. And it is conditioned by race, gender, nationality, class, religion, ideology, culture, sexuality, and so forth.

Take UC-Berkeley, a longtime testing ground for these matters. Its administrators proclaimed that nothing short of a near-riot would compel them to cancel a recent lecture by right wing provocateur Milo Yianopoulis. Yet last semester the same university shut down a legitimate course about Israeli settler colonization offered by a Palestinian instructor. In the end, Milos lecture was disrupted and the course was allowed to proceed. It wasnt the infallibility of a concept that changed the outcome of each situation, but an organized shift in relationships of power.

Free speech, in short, is a limited commodity pretending to be a universal ideal.

We cant understand the importance of free speech in civic or academic settings unless we also engage the politics that precede its invocation. Rallying around free speech is easy, which is why arguing about it never solves any problems. Nobody opposes free speech as an ideal. The term is often a slogan or shaming device that can be summoned in order to safeguard a viewpoint or ideology without having to confront its ethical anatomies and material consequences. Free speech isnt the actual site of contestation in our cantankerous debates. What we talk about matters more.

Here we can pivot back to academic freedom because its function on campus mirrors free speech in US society more broadly. The preservation of academic freedom as an end in itself isnt the best allocation of intellectual energy. We still have to discuss, and, ideally, resolve, the issues that generate controversy because they supersede academic freedom. Given the serious problems now facing academecorporatization, receding faculty governance, donor influence, decreased public funding, administrative bloat, systemic racism, obscene student debt, sexual violenceour campuses wont survive current trends if we refuse to analyze the structural conditions that often get reduced to frames of ahistorical disagreement.

Suppose we desire any of the following: to liberate Black people, decolonize North America, destroy a neo-Nazi resurgence, get some economic justice, free Palestine. If we treat those desires merely as rights to be practiced in controlled environments, then academic freedom becomes a pretext to normalize conventional politics. It has potential to supplement transformative writing and organizing, but that potential must be created. Academic freedom isnt inherently radical.

*****

For Palestinians, any type of freedom, including the academic variety, is acutely unavailable. Living under military occupation in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and as second-class citizens inside Israel, their lives are controlled by an unequal legal system that proffers rights according to religion (as defined by the state). Palestinians suffer extrajudicial assassination, limited movement, arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention, home demolition, restricted speech rights, harassment and torture, land expropriation, and forced exile.

There are currently 6300 Palestinian political prisoners. 700 of them just began a hunger strike, in fact. 300 of them are children. The unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip is nearly fifty percent, the highest in the world. Real per capita income is $970. Eighty percent of the population receives some sort of social assistance. Almost forty percent live below the poverty line.

Gaza has been under a land, air, and sea blockade for ten years, which has reduced its GDP by half: Israel, in cooperation with Egypt, determines what comes in and what goes out. Israeli politicians speak of putting Gaza on a diet, that is, allocating a certain amount of foodstuff for the territory based on minimal caloric requirements. At other times, those politicians speak of mowing the lawn in Gaza, which means exactly what it sounds like. The cancer rate is unusually high. Life expectancy is dismal. Fishing boats, one of the lifelines of the economy, are sometimes destroyed, or their occupants are shot at. Citizens deal with extended power cuts. Schools and hospitals are undersupplied. According to both local and international doctors, the psychological damage from the blockade and Israels periodic war crimes has been extraordinary. The children of the territory suffer abnormal levels of trauma and anxiety. There is no developed medical apparatus to mitigate these problems.

Narrowing the focus to academe, Palestinian students and professors experience forms of institutional repression that on US campuses are virtually unimaginable. For decades, universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been bombed, invaded, looted, and closed for extended periods. Students, staff, and professors often cant make it to campus because of checkpoints and unexpected curfews. Their political activity is closely monitored. Professors sometimes meet class in their living rooms. It is difficult to get permission to travel abroad for conferences and research symposia. And when students graduate, they enter into an economy devoid of skilled jobs. (In this, at least, the comparison to US academe is striking.) Compounding this problem, Palestinian citizens of Israel face significant discrimination in the labor market.

I studied at Birzeit University, near Ramallah, in the summer of 2000. My best friend there was from Gaza, but didnt have permission to study in the West Bank. Both territories, mind you, are said to comprise the same country. As an illegal student, he couldnt travel to Ramallah, just down the road. The Israelis sometimes erected a mobile checkpoint between the two towns. In turn, he was stuck in the hamlet of Birzeit. Getting home to Gaza, fewer than a hundred miles away as the crow flies, would have required illegally crossing three borders, as he did to get to Birzeit in the first place. Many of the students from Gaza faced the same hardships. Plenty of students from the West Bank couldnt travel abroad, or even to nearby Jerusalem. Those with Western passports were free to explore. The foreigner had greater rights than the native, a condition to which Palestinians were accustomed. Strangers, after all, have transformed their lives into a simulation of existence, where one merely bides time, with no place to go, while impatiently narrating the dream of actually existing.

These brutal realities inhabit campus speech and they are blithely minimized when scholars make Palestine contingent on Western sensibilities. In short, we shouldnt compromise the seriousness, or the severity, of our investment in certain political sites, both geographical and imaginative, in order to accommodate the strictures of academic freedom as a self-contained phenomenon. Doing so actually limits the effectiveness of academic freedom by providing it a kind of philosophical autonomy that restricts its immersion into material politics. Academic freedom is only meaningful in relation to the sites of contestation that necessitate its presence.

When we think about the difficulties that Palestinians face in academe, then, its crucial to orient critique around the hostile conditions of repression rather than merely safeguarding ourselves against hostility.

*****

My maternal grandmother died last year. She was my connection to Palestine, having lived through the nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, and the messy histories that followed. Her familys home in Palestine was forever lost to Israeli settlers and she wouldnt return to the country for four more decades, this time on a tourist visa.

She could be a difficult woman: stubborn and blunt and imperious. She wasnt one for shows of affection, but from my childhood I remember very well the protective and efficient quality of her supervision. Neither I nor my cousins dared to disobey her, but we relished the fact that in her care nobody would dare to cause us harm. When I was in high school, she regularly visited us in rural Appalachia, a place ill-suited to her cosmopolitan predilections. We never spoke much, though she was delighted when I became competent enough in Arabic to hold a conversation. She adamantly disapproved of my fledgling attempts at facial hair and nagged my mother to buy me proper clothes.

Like all memories of this variety, theyve evolved from moments of annoyance to subjects of affection. The original sentiment of one memory, however, has only intensified with time. I had driven my mom and grandmother to the grocery store. My grandmother unexpectedly opted to wait with me in the car. My daughter talks too much, she explained after my mom had left, a tacit condemnation of small-town culture. My fingers tapping the steering wheel provided the soundtrack for our tense silence. Then, out of nowhere, she began talking about Palestine. About 1948. About her village. About her displacement. About the pain that had never gone away. These things, I never forget, she concluded matter-of-factly. No. I never forget.

I was a kid in that moment, sixteen and preoccupied with teenage drama, but I understood exactly what she was telling me: that I could never forget, either. Academic freedom doesnt preserve this memory. But it damn sure gives me the right to remember.

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Speaking of Palestine and academic freedom Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss

Hackaday

ESP32's Freedom Output Lets You Do Anything Hackaday The ESP32 is Espressif's new wonder-chip, and one of the most interesting aspects of its development has been the almost entirely open-source development strategy that they're taking. But the almost in almost entirely open is important there are ...

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ESP32's Freedom Output Lets You Do Anything - Hackaday

In Los Angeles, Danny Lederman, the 26-year-old director of digital media for the county's Democratic party, said "We used to look up to intelligence and aspire to learn more and do more with that intellectual curiosity. And we've gone from there to a society where ... our officials and representatives belittle science and they belittle intelligence. And we really need a culture change."

The rallies in more than 600 cities put scientists, who generally shy away from advocacy and whose work depends on objective experimentation, into a more public position.

Scientists said they were anxious about political and public rejection of established science such as climate change and the safety of vaccine immunisations.

"Scientists find it appalling that evidence has been crowded out by ideological assertions," said Rush Holt, a former physicist and Democratic congressman who runs the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "It is not just about Donald Trump, but there is also no question that marchers are saying 'when the shoe fits.'"

Despite saying the march was not partisan, Holt acknowledged it was only dreamed up at the Women's March on Washington, a day after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

But the rallies were also about what science does for the world.

"Most people don't know how much funding for the sciences supports them in their lives every day. Every medical breakthrough, their food, clothing, our cellphones, our computers, all that is science-based," said Pati Vitt, a plant scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. "So if we stop funding scientific discoveries now, in 10 years, whatever we might have had won't be; we just won't have it."

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Scientists across the world take to the streets to demand freedom from political interference - Telegraph.co.uk

As if there needed to be any extra motivation for Saturdays battle of Bethlehem, the Freedom and Liberty baseball teams entered the contest as two of the top teams in the area with just three losses between them.

But in a game that had a playoff-like intensity, it didnt last as long as perhaps either team expected.

The Hurricanes rallied for a pair of five-run innings, turned in some defensive gems along the way and Alex Super took care of the rest on the mound in a 10-0, five-inning win over the Patriots at a wet William Sheridan Field.

Im proud of all the kids, Liberty coach Andy Pitsilos said. They stepped it up. It was a huge game, 8-1 (Freedom) and 8-2 (Liberty). My kids came to play today and they did very well.

Now 9-2 on the season, the Hurricanes came into Saturday on the heels of a tough loss Thursday when they were walked off on by Pocono Mountain East. They quickly put that game out of their mind with the rivalry on deck.

Liberty got on the board first in the bottom of the second inning on a controversial play at the plate. With two outs and runners on first and second, Gabe Albino cracked a single to center field. Freedom (8-2) center fielder Alec Huertas came up firing with a strike to the plate, where catcher Teddy Liadis was waiting.

Liadis was unable to corral the throw, though, as Jake Unangst collided with him and the ball went to the backstop. Patriots coach Nick DAmico heatedly argued the call, to no avail.

(The umpire) told me (Unangst) didnt lower his shoulder. He said (Unangst) was diving into home plate, DAmico said. Thats his call, obviously. It was a big call at that moment and it led to a lot of runs. But he saw it one way and I cant complain about it. We did a lot of other things wrong that contributed to that big inning.

Leadoff man Kyle Hlavaty (2-for-3, two runs, two RBI) followed with an RBI infield single and then Jared Burcin belted a two-run double to right field to put his team ahead 4-0.

It felt great, said Burcin, a senior catcher. We played a great game against a great team. We had great pitching. Stuff happened to go our way. We hit the ball well and the breaks came for us, so hey, why not?

Sammy Kraihanzel finished off the scoring in the second with an RBI single to left field, but the Hurricanes were only getting started.

After Super tossed a shutdown 1-2-3 inning that took just nine pitches in the top of the third, Liberty got cooking again on offense.

Unangst (2-for-3, two runs) led off the bottom of the frame with a single, Jake Morgan walked and Jake Wagner hit a sacrifice fly for the 6-0 lead. Albino and Hlavaty came up next with back-to-back bunt singles and both later scored when Burcin crushed another two-run double to the gap, stretching the lead to 9-0.

I dont know what to say about Burcin, Pitsilos said. Every game, its unbelievable. He does a heck of a job behind the plate and hits the heck out of the ball. Hes got a very beautiful swing and hes a very heady kid.

Elias Gross capped off the rally with another sacrifice fly, making sure the game could end after five innings with the 10-0 margin.

Super finished with five strikeouts while scattering three hits and one walk over five innings.

Supes been throwing the ball well all year, Pitsilos said. Hes very consistent. He throws strikes with three pitches and he keeps everybody off balance. He did a hell of a job today.

The Hurricanes, who entered Saturday as the No. 2 team in the lehighvalleylive rankings, handed the No. 1 Patriots their second loss in three games.

Obviously we try not to look at the rankings, but some people do, Burcin said. This one just had a lot of extra motivation.

Freedom couldnt catch a break all day. As it looked to spark a rally in the fifth inning, Thomas Bonilla led off with a fly ball to the gap that looked like extra bases before Unangst got on his horse from right field and made a stellar diving snag for the out.

Unangst is outside his mind, I dont know what else to say, Pitsilos said. Think about where he caught the ball, its unbelievable. Hes just a great kid, hustling, and playing really well right now.

It was that kind of day for the Patriots. Another potential hit was taken away in the third inning when Gross made a barehanded scoop on a dribbler to shortstop and fired to first for the out.

They had that play in right, they had their shortstop make a heck of a play, DAmico said. Thats a good team over there. Give credit to Liberty. They took advantage of things.

Greg Joyce may be reached atgjoyce@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter@GJoyce9.FindLehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.

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Liberty baseball powers past Freedom in short order - lehighvalleylive.com

If you ask around the country, or around the world for that matter, what one word exemplifies the essence of America? What word best describes what America represents? What single concept is etched in our constitutional DNA? It would be freedom!

It was the quest for freedom that inspired a group of colonists to fight for and create a new nation. It is the idea of freedom that was pervasive in every word written into our founding documents. It was the desire to perpetuate freedom that lead to the creation of our unique system of government with its singular responsibility to defend our freedom from enemies both foreign and domestic. There cannot be a reference to America that doesnt contain the underlying principle of freedom.

Why then have we strayed so far from that most fundamental founding principle? We are no longer free to conduct our lives as we see fit. There are at least 5,000 federal criminal laws. There are so many regulations that can be enforced criminally. They cannot even be counted but the number is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. And that doesnt account for all the state and local laws. Each of these laws and regulations is a little bit of our freedom stolen from us.

Now I am not an anarchist who believes there should be no law. I believe that we should be free to go about our lives as long as we do not harm or violate the rights of someone else. John Stuart Mill, author of the classic treatise On Liberty wrote: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized society, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. In other words, the legitimate role of government in a free society should be restricted to ensuring that only those offenses that injure another person should be purview of government force.

At one time, freedom was defined as the absence of coercion. The Progressive Era brought about an expanded definition as it applies to government, the freedom from want. If you believe that the federal government exists as originally intended, for the explicit purpose protecting your rights, then the pursuit of freedom from want has no place in governments role in our free society.

The Framers knew if they were to provide something to someone, that benefit could be used as an excuse, no matter how illegitimate, to impose the governments will upon not only the recipient but the population en masse, which is exactly what has happened. That is why the Framers where adamant that the central government be given no power or responsibility to provide goods and services beyond safety, defense, and a few to promote the economy and trade. The Framers went even further to explicitly limit the power of the federal government to eighteen enumerated powers. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution defines the governmental guardrails meant to keep the federal government from veering into areas they have no authority to venture.

It is the application of the freedom from want that has provided pseudo-justification for the government inserting itself into every aspect of our daily lives. If someone or something provides you with a good or service, is it not reasonable to expect that the provider would want you to behave in a manner that would not exacerbate your want or need for that good or service? And if the service provider is government, they can impose that behavior modification with force.

This completely changes the relationship between citizen and government. The citizen becomes a subject of government as opposed to the government acting with the consent of the citizen. Let us take a look at one easily understood example, the motorcycle helmet laws.

I doubt there is one case where the absence of a helmet made the rider more of a danger to their fellow citizens. So what is the justification for forcing a person to wear a helmet? Medicaid and Social Security. Should a person become disabled because they were not wearing a helmet they might become a lifelong liability on the social welfare system.

Thus the government has an interest in mitigating the injuries that can be sustained by someone operating a motorcycle. This is done at the expense of everyones freedom. Now all motorcyclists have lost the freedom to feel the wind in their hair in an effort to reduce the probability that some might become wards of the state.

The freedom from want or the redistribution of wealth, has been used for the past eighty years as rationalization to implement a plethora of unconstitutional, freedom squelching laws and programs. They use taxation and regulation to nudge people in a direction that is more advantageous to government and less conducive to individual freedom.

As usual the government acts like a bull in a china shop. Instead of holding the individual responsible they punish the entire community. It would be easy to pass a law that states if you are injured or disabled because you choose to ride a motorcycle, you relinquish all claims to government social welfare benefits. But no, that would connect voluntary actions to accepting responsibility for the outcome of those actions and the government works overtime to sever that connection.

We now have in Washington D.C. a group of a little over thirty Republican Representatives who are members of what is known as the Freedom Caucus. Now give that some thought for a moment. Only thirty or so members of the House of Representatives want to be affiliated with a group dedicated to getting government out of the way of our individual freedom. If you go back to the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the entire Congress was the Freedom Caucus.

Today, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Lincoln would be considered alt-right radicals. Even Democrat John F. Kennedy with his ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country and his tax cutting policies would be considered by the liberals and media as completely out of the mainstream.

If freedom is to prevail, we must eliminate the incentive for government to infringe on our liberty. We must demand that the government return to its Constitutional limits. James Madison, father of the Constitution, stated; Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. Ronald Reagan once said, Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didnt pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

The question we must ask ourselves, do we want to go down in history as the generation that allowed the flame of freedom to be extinguished or do we rise up and force our government to again respect its Constitutional boundaries?

Area resident Jack Loesch is a longtime teacher at the University of Akron. Read his website at http://www.TorchnFork.info. He may be reached at: TorchNFork@frontier.com

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Freedom I: The essence of America - SalemNews.net

Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. Thats our problem people are obedient, all these herdlike people. Howard Zinn

If truth be known, Americans are no more free than were Germans under Gestapo Germany. Freedom and Democracy America is the greatest lie in the world.

Countries sink into tyranny easily. Those born today dont know the freedom of the past and are unaware of what has been taken away. Some American blacks might think that finally after a long civil rights struggle they have gained freedom. But the civil rights that they gained have been taken away from all of us by the war on terror. Today black Americans are gratuitously shot down in the streets by police in ways that are worse than in Jim Crow days.

American women might think that finally they have gained equality, and they havethe equality to be abused by police just like men. As John Whitehead reports,

women are forced by police to strip naked, often in public, and have their vaginas explored as part of a drug search. When I was a young man, society would not have tolerated any such intrusion on a woman. The officer and police chief would have been fired and if not prosecuted for rape, would have been beat into bloody pulps by the enraged men.

Tyranny was brought to Americans intentionally by their government. Perhaps it began in 1992 with the unaccountable use of police power against an American family at Ruby Ridge. Randy Weavers 12 or 13 year old son was shot in the back and murdered by federal marshals. Then his wife was murdered with a shot through her throat while she stood at the door of her home holding a baby in her arms. There was no justification for this gratuitous violence against a peaceful American family, and the federal marshals who murdered were not held accountable. The Congress, the peoples representatives held a hearing, and those responsible for murdering a family told the representatives that they had to trust the police.

A year later, 1993, the Clinton regime murdered, using poison gas as well as gun fire, more than 100 members of the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas.

Women and children comprised most of the victims of freedom and democracy America. The Branch Davidians had done nothing except be different. They were a threat to no one. But the Clinton criminal government knew that it could portray the Branch Davidians, as they were different, in unfavorable lights. They were said to be in possession of, and perhaps manufacturing, illegal machine guns. They were said to be having sex with underage girls in their collective.

When the Branch Davidian compound was attacked by a tank spewing chemical warfare and then burnt to the ground, insouciant Americans were told that justice had been done to child abusers. No one objected that the same justice had also been done to the allegedly abused children.

Again the representatives of the people held a hearing. The result was that the Clinton criminal regime and Janet Reno got approval for dealing effectively with those who violate gun laws.

Ruby Ridge and Waco established the precedents that the US government could murder large numbers of Americans, and at Waco some foreigners, without consequence. The representatives of the people accepted the executive branchs lies in order to avoid having to hold the executive branch accountable for what were clearly without any doubt capital crimes against American citizens for which the federal perpetrators of these crimes should have been tried and executed.

These two instances established the precedent that the US government could murder US citizens at will.

The next step was to take away the constitutional and legal protections of citizens that are in the Bill of Rights, the amendments to the US Constitution, and are, or were, institutionalized in legal practices.

The false flag attack of September 11, 2001, was the instrument for deep-sixing the bill of rights. The George W. Bush regime made us safe by taking away our civil liberties. Habeas corpus, the foundation of liberty, was destroyed by the executive branchs assertion that the President on his sole authority, the US Constitution notwithstanding, can detain US citizens indefinitely without evidence, without going before a court, without any accountability to law whatsoever.

The Obama regime not only endorsed this murder of the US Constitution, Americans First Black President even went further. Obama declared that he had the power to sit in his office and write down names of US citizens whom he could murder at his will without accountability.

Congress did not object. The Supreme Court did not object. The American media did not object. The law schools and bar associations did not object. The Republican Party did not object. The Democratic Party did not object. The American people did not object. Washingtons allies in Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada did not object. The Christian churches did not object.

I objected, and a few others like me, such as John Whitehead.

9/11 clearly, without any doubt, destroyed American liberty. Even if you are so brainwashed as to believe an obviously false story of the event, even if you believe that a few Saudi Arabians without government or intelligence service support outwitted all 16 US intelligence agencies, the National Security Council, all intelligence agencies of Washingtons vassals abroad, outwitted Israels Mossad, US Air Traffic Control, caused US Airport Security to fail four times in one hour on the same day, and prevented for the first time in history the US Air Force from sending fighters to intercept off course airliners, the fact remains the same: the US government used 9/11 to destroy the constitutional protections of US liberty.

The raw, ugly, but true fact that our government has destroyed American liberty is the reason that everyone of us is subject to experiencing the abuses that John Whitehead describes.

Who will be next? You? Me? Your Wife? Your Son? Your daughter? Your aged and infirm parents?

When it happens, it was the American people who permitted it.

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If This is Freedom and Democracy, What is Tyranny? - Center for Research on Globalization