Gibson Factory Raided at Gun point

[cbass]

nevermind

[NickC]

I say we drive up to TN and surround the plant with armed volunteers and let the production continue!! This infuriates me that the government would send armed agents into a plant of hard working skilled Americans over WOOD!!!!! Something tells me this wont be the only time we see this in the NEAR future.If thats how our government works then F*** them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I sympathize with your frustration. But I'm afraid that would turn out even worse than Waco and Ruby Ridge combined. There are radicals on both sides (left and right) that would love to exploit such an event, and they're fascists on both extremes of the political arc.

[NickC]

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/137745/ ... ng-police/

[kevster]

cbass,

A good friend of mine (we grew up together in Florida, and he was my best man at my wedding) lives right up the road from you in Licking, MO. He never mentioned the checkpoints, but he is often out of the area on the road (truck driver). He loves it there, but the checkpoints you talk about would not sit well with him. He's a big, 6'8" biker who weighs about 325 pounds. NOT the kind of guy to annoy.

[thyx]

I would imagine we will be seeing them doing this to several others who are also using illegal woods to build instruments...

I would imagine we won't. This has nothing to do with wood or the environment...in spite of the spin you'll see in those directions by every mass-media article on the subject. This is about shutting down lemonade stands...fining Amish who sell milk to their neighbors...arresting farming co-ops for growing their own food...it's about desensitizing the public to the reality of the coming police-state. What concerns me is that, years ago, folks would have taken to the streets in protest of things less dramatic than this. Now, except for the forum discussions here and there, all we get is silence. Silence is consent. Something within the population of this country has changed.

[NickC]

I would imagine we will be seeing them doing this to several others who are also using illegal woods to build instruments...

I would imagine we won't. This has nothing to do with wood or the environment...in spite of the spin you'll see in those directions by every mass-media article on the subject. This is about shutting down lemonade stands...fining Amish who sell milk to their neighbors...arresting farming co-ops for growing their own food...it's about desensitizing the public to the reality of the coming police-state. What concerns me is that, years ago, folks would have taken to the streets in protest of things less dramatic than this. Now, except for the forum discussions here and there, all we get is silence. Silence is consent. Something within the population of this country has changed.

People are afraid.

Several in this thread have cited "right wing rant" (words to that effect) in the news sources presented ..... so here is one from the left .... Pravda ...... very sobering:

http://engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/to ... ning-free/

In America The Rule Of Law Is Vacated
Bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free...

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts


Global Research, August 31, 2011



With bank fraudsters, torturers, and war criminals running free, the US Department of Justice (sic) has nothing better to do than to harass the famous Tennessee guitar manufacturer, Gibson http://rt.com/usa/ne...-raid-wood-489/ , arrest organic food producers in California http://rt.com/usa/ne...ents-year-milk/ and send 12 abusive FBI agents armed with assault rifles to bust down yet another wrong door of yet another innocent family, leaving parents, children, and grandmother traumatized. http://rt.com/usa/ne...ily-adams-home/ .

What law did Gibson Guitar Corp break that caused federal agents to disrupt Gibson’s plants in Nashville and Memphis, seize guitars, cause layoffs, and cost the company $3 million from disrupted operations?

No US law was broken. The feds claim that Gibson broke a law that is on the books in India.

India has not complained about Gibson or asked for the aid of the US government in enforcing its laws against Gibson. Instead, the feds have taken it upon themselves to both interpret and to enforce on US citizens the laws of India. The feds claim that Gibson’s use of wood from India in its guitars is illegal, because the wood was not finished by Indian workers.

This must not be India’s interpretation of the law as India allowed the unfinished wood to be exported. Perhaps the feds are trying to force more layoffs of US workers and their replacement by H-1B foreign workers. Gibson can solve its problem by firing its Tennessee work force and hiring Indian citizens on H-1B work visas.

In Venice, California, feds spent a year dressed up as hippies purchasing raw goat milk and yogurt from Rawesome Foods and then, decked out in hemp anklets and reeking of patchouli, raided with guns drawn--always with guns drawn--the organic food shop. The owner’s crime is that he supplied the normal everyday foods that I grew up on to customers who requested them. For this heinous act, James C. Stewart faces a 13 count indictment and is held on $123,000 bail.

How did raw milk become a “health threat?” Far more Americans have died from e-coli in fast food hamburgers and from salmonella in mass produced eggs and chicken. Like many of my generation, I was raised on raw milk. Mathis Dairy delivered it to the homes in Atlanta. Even decades later a person could purchase Mathis Dairy’s raw milk in Atlanta’s grocery stores. How did supplying an ordinary staple become a crime?

The FBI agents who broke down Gary Adams door in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, claim they were looking for a woman. Why does it take 12 heavily armed FBI agents to apprehend a woman? Are FBI agents that effete? If the feds can never get the address right, how do we know they have the name and gender right?

I can remember when it only took one policeman to deliver a warrant and to arrest a person, and without gun drawn and without breaking down the door, tasering or shooting the object of arrest. It turns out that the FBI agents who broke into the Adams home not only were at the wrong address but also didn’t even have a search warrant had they been at the correct address.

The practice of sending heavily armed teams into American homes has resulted in many senseless murders of US citizens. The practice must be halted and SWAT teams disbanded. SWAT teams have murdered far more innocents than they have dangerous criminals. Hostage situations are rare, and they are best handled without violence.

Jose Guerena, a US Marine who served two tours in Bush’s Iraq War was murdered in his own home in front of his wife and two small children by a crazed SWAT team, again in the wrong place, who shot him 60 times. When his wife told him that there were men sneaking around the house, he picked up his rifle and walked to the kitchen to see what was going on and was gunned down. The hysterical SWAT team fired 71 shots at him without cause. Brave, tough, macho cops out defending the public and murdering war heroes. http://rt.com/usa/ne...-american-hero/

I have seen studies that show that police actually commit more acts of violence against the public than do criminals, which raises an interesting question: Are police a greater threat to the public than are criminals? On Yahoo I just searched “police brutality” and up came 4,840,000 results.

Meanwhile, the real master criminals, such as Dick Cheney, who, if tried for his actions at Nuremberg, would most definitely have been executed as a war criminal, run free. Cheney is all over TV hawking his memoirs. On August 29, interviewed by Jamie Gangel on NBC’s Dateline, Cheney again proudly admitted that he authorized torture, secret prisons, and illegal wiretapping. These are crimes under US and international laws.

Cheney claims breaking laws against torture is “the right thing to do” if “we had a high-value detainee and that was the only way we can get him to talk.”

Three questions immediately come to mind that no member of the presstitute media ever asks. The first is, why does Cheney think the office of Vice President, President, or Attorney General has the power to “authorize” breaking a law? Our vaunted “rule of law” disappears if federal officials can authorize breaking laws.

The second is, what high-value detainees is Cheney talking about? Donald Rumsfeld declared the Guantanamo detainees to be “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” http://www.defense.g...e.aspx?id=43817 But the vast majority had to be released when it turned out, after years of their lives were spent in a torture prison, that the vast majority of the detainees were hapless innocents who were sold to the stupid Americans by war lords as “terrorists” for bounties. To save face, the US government has held on to a few detainees, but hasn’t enough confidence in their alleged guilt to put them on trial in a court of law.

The third is why does Cheney think that he knows better than the accumulated documented evidence that torture doesn’t produce truthful or useful information. If the person under torture is actually a terrorist, he knows that his tormentors don’t know the answers that they are looking for and so he or she can tell the torturers whatever serves the tortured victim’s purposes. If the person under torture is innocent, he has no idea what the answers are and seeks to discover what his torturer wants to hear so that he can tell him.

As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, Dick Cheney, who presided “over policies that left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead from wars of aggression, constructed a worldwide torture regime, and spied on Americans without the warrants required by law” is now being feted and enriched thanks to “the protective shield of immunity bestowed upon him by the current administration.” http://www.informati...rticle28970.htm

Meanwhile Gibson Guitar faces prosecution because of the feds’ off-the-wall interpretation of a law in India, and the owner of Rawesome has a 13-count indictment for supplying customers with a food staple that was a part of the normal diet from colonial times until recently.

In America we have the rule of law--only the law is not applied to banksters and members of the executive branch but, as Greenwald says, is only applied to “ordinary citizens and other nations’ (unfriendly) rulers.”

A country this utterly corrupt is certainly no “light unto the world.”

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

[Structo]

Good article.

[CHIP]

I think TERM LIMITS on all those serving in Washington would help to begin the clean-up. Our system of government was never intended for "career politicians".
Even the good ones, if in long enough get tied into the system, and the corruption of power begins.
Congreesmen and women are plagued with lobbiest everyday. Everyone wants "our " money to fund their little projects. Lobbies like the "tree huggers" get more and more laws of restrictions passed. And your freedom deteriorates. So inorder to get re-elected they give in, it's easy it's not their money. If their re-election wasn't possible alot more would just say NO.
I find nothing wrong with conservation, but just like anything that get too big and radical, it infringes on the freedom rights and livelyhood of others.

[kevster]

The article Nick C posted makes me admire "The Greatest Generation" all the more. They were able to defeat REAL enemies.

My mother once joked about "Soon it'll be Retroactive Abortion" when watching someone talk about the "right to choose". Funny joke at the time, seems that the increasing level of truth in the joke makes it less funny now.

[talbany]

Someone should raid the Justice Dpt's ATF.. Read Fast and Furious!!...WTF

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... s-scandal/

So Corrupt you will be

Tony

[NickC]

Who is going to raid the Justice Dpt.ATF.. Read Fast and Furious!!...WTF

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... s-scandal/

So Corrupt you will be

Tony

Indict the ATF geniuses responsible for Fast And Furious for aiding and abetting criminals and felons, gun running, conspiracy ..... try them in a court of law ........ convict the guilty ones with no privilege for rank ..... send them to Leavenworth Penitentiary.

[talbany]

Who is going to raid the Justice Dpt.ATF.. Read Fast and Furious!!...WTF

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... s-scandal/

So Corrupt you will be

Tony

Indict the ATF geniuses responsible for Fast And Furious for aiding and abetting criminals and felons, gun running, conspiracy ..... try them in a court of law ........ convict the guilty ones with no privilege for rank ..... send them to Leavenworth Penitentiary.

Then this would be an admission of guilt!!.. No instead let's pick a fall guy and fire his ass!..Make everyone think we actually care!!

This makes the Watergate break in look like rather childish..

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/us/31guns.html

BTW..They should re-name Homeland Security to DAWWS.. Do anything we want security

Tony

[NickC]

Who is going to raid the Justice Dpt.ATF.. Read Fast and Furious!!...WTF

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... s-scandal/

So Corrupt you will be

Tony

Indict the ATF geniuses responsible for Fast And Furious for aiding and abetting criminals and felons, gun running, conspiracy ..... try them in a court of law ........ convict the guilty ones with no privilege for rank ..... send them to Leavenworth Penitentiary.

Then this would be an admission of guilt!!.. No instead let's pic a fall guy and fire his ass!..Make everyone think we actually care!!

This makes the Watergate break in look like rather childish..

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/us/31guns.html

Tony

They're admitting guilt ..... just not taking the responsibility or position of legal jeopardy:

“Today’s announcement is an admission by the Obama administration that serious mistakes were made in Operation Fast and Furious,” Mr. Grassley said, “and is a step in the right direction that they are continuing to limit any further damage that people involved in this disastrous strategy can do. We’re looking for a full accounting from the Justice Department as to who knew what and when, so we can be sure that this ill-advised strategy never happens again.”

Downright Orwellian and straight out of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (sans dark humor) at the same time.

[qtone]

I would imagine we will be seeing them doing this to several others who are also using illegal woods to build instruments...

I would imagine we won't. This has nothing to do with wood or the environment...in spite of the spin you'll see in those directions by every mass-media article on the subject. This is about shutting down lemonade stands...fining Amish who sell milk to their neighbors...arresting farming co-ops for growing their own food...it's about desensitizing the public to the reality of the coming police-state. What concerns me is that, years ago, folks would have taken to the streets in protest of things less dramatic than this. Now, except for the forum discussions here and there, all we get is silence. Silence is consent. Something within the population of this country has changed.

I would direct you to read the statements being released by fish and wildlife about this.. It states they are going for the ones who are making profit by using these endangered woods. If that is indeed the case and it is clearly the case id say several are about to get raided It does not seem fair they would just go after Gibson and not others who have been doing it and are still doing it.

I was told by a source two days back the feds have a pen device that they touch the wood with and it tells the origin of where the wood came from..
He was not kidding when he told me that cause I laughed and said BS.
Evidently they can indeed tell where its from.

The problem Gibson has now is they did not list their name as where the wood would be going to. Even buying from same source for 19 years you
would think they would have their name on where the wood would be delivered.. That looks odd to customs and Fish and wildlife when they go in and find the paper work.

Which leads me to this how many small builders have paperwork on every piece of wood in the shop ?

Even if you bought the wood in the states or have had it for 20 years in the states you cant prove where you got it they confiscate it....

Last time I checked many builders were using rosewood ebony bone if they have no documentation for where it came from that can be seized .

The lobbyists backing US loggers are bitching about the US importing woods vs using their woods and they are putting pressure on the Feds to do something about it....

Gibson will be the skape goat followed by several others and it does not matter if your selling them lemon aide stand style or you have a large shop if they get word your doing this they will go right into your place and
shut it down.

Since competition is so ugly in that business my bet is several are going to be raided especially the ones who were ugly...

What goes round comes round and when it does it hits hard.

Its swift and sudden and you have no time to expect when they will be coming.

They just come in like they did at Gibson... and that is that.

[gary sanders]

I say we drive up to TN and surround the plant with armed volunteers and let the production continue!! This infuriates me that the government would send armed agents into a plant of hard working skilled Americans over WOOD!!!!! Something tells me this wont be the only time we see this in the NEAR future.If thats how our government works then F*** them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I sympathize with your frustration. But I'm afraid that would turn out even worse than Waco and Ruby Ridge combined. There are radicals on both sides (left and right) that would love to exploit such an event, and they're fascists on both extremes of the political arc.

Sorry about that...... Im from the South.