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CHRISTIAN MEDIA
WORLDWATCH

MONDAY MARCH 8, 2010

Iran unveils first cruise missile before Ahmadinejad trip to Kabul

If the Iranians are to be believed, they have launched production of their first cruise missile, the short-range Nasr 1 (Victory 1), which was claimed by Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi Sunday, March 7 to be capable of destroying warships of up to 3,000 tons when launched from the ground or sea vessels.
The new weapon imperils US naval carriers and US and Israeli submarines stationed in the Persian Gulf.
The next Nasr version will be designed for launching from helicopters and submarines, said Vahidi.
Last month, Tehran inaugurated production lines for new Qaem (Rising) ground-to-air and Toofan (Storm) surface missiles.
DEBKAfile's Iranian sources say Tehran and its allies Syria and Hizballah feel they are in the midst of rapid military and diplomatic momentum compared with American ineptness and Israeli inertia.
Sunday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suddenly announced he would pay an official visit to Kabul Monday and hold talks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. He prepared his visit 48 hours earlier by calling the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers of New York "a big fabrication" and "a provocation" to justify America's war on terror and invasion of Afghanistan.
The Iranian president has therefore embarked on a verbal offensive to undermine the legitimacy of the US military presence in Afghanistan in the eyes of its population, at a time when the new Afghan strategy composed by Barack Obama last year is in full swing with 30,000 extra US troops on the way.
In Kabul, he is expectedly to call stridently for an immediate pull-out of US troops.
Ahmadinejad used the same trick when he denied the Nazi Holocaust ever happened in order to question Israel's right to exist.
This time, he is aiming at two targets: He arrives in Kabul at around the same time that US Vice President Joe Biden lands in Israel. Biden's overriding mission (alongside the US envoy George Mitchell's effort to revive Israel-Palestinian peace talks) is to make sure Israel does not exercise its military option against Iran's nuclear facilities in view of the fading prospects of international harsh sanctions.
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman poured salt on Western wounds Sunday by asserting that "sanctions would not materialize" in view of the lack of consensus among the six powers working to halt Tehran's nuclear program. [no further content, emphasis added]

Source:     debka.com  LINK

Note: see also Iran Says It Has Started Cruise Missile Production  LINK

Israel treading carefully to avoid war with Syria

In the last few weeks, Israel has been at pains to cool tensions with Syria and prevent misunderstandings that could spiral into confrontation on its northern border.
A huge central command training exercise, "Firestones 12", which took place in the north last week, conspicuously omitted simulations of war with Syria. Instead, the IDF fought mock battles in preparation for clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The army also cancelled emergency call-up drills for large numbers of regular forces and reserves, fearing Syria might mistake such a move as mobilization for war. At the same time, the government exploited both public and covert channels to send soothing messages to Damascus.
Recent weeks have seen increasingly frequent references by senior figures in Iran, Syria and Hezbollah of the prospect of war with Israel, which they accuse of planning a confrontation . . . .
Israel's effort to avert another escalation in the north, closely coordinated with the United States, is twofold, combining both assuagement and deterrence. The government is placating Syria with the message that it has no interest in war; but it also making threatening noises about the need to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah.
A senior IDF intelligence officer told the Knesset this week that Syria had supplied Hezbollah with "components" more significantly sophisticated than in the past. And the Lebanese newspaper al-Hayat reported that that U.S. Secretary of state Hilary Clinton had warned Nabih Beri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament, that the U.S. might be hard pushed to restrain Israel from an excessive response if the flow of arms to Hezbollah continued.
Participants in last week's exercises returned encouraged by IDF commanders' professionalism - but depressed by the underlying reality. If war returns to the north, Israel may struggle to find a winning formula. Certainly, the air force could easily rain destruction on Lebanon and its infrastructure, but there is no way of cutting drastically Hezbollah's ability to bombard northern Israel with Katyusha rockets, or launch even heavier ordnance at Tel Aviv . . . .
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last week at a Washington Institute memorial lecture for Haaretz correspondent Ze'ev Schiff that Hezbollah has around 45,000 missiles and rockets in Lebanon. This is considerably higher than Israel's previous estimates.
"We cannot accept these artificial differentiations between the terrorists of Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon and their sponsors," Barak said.
He continued: "We don‘t need this conflict but if it is imposed upon us, we will not run after every individual terrorist but we will take both the Lebanese government and other sources of sponsorship, but mainly the Lebanese government and the Lebanese infrastructure, as part of the equation facing us."

Source:     haaretz.com (Israel)  MORE

More Radical Palestinian unrest in store to torpedo talks

Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, accusing Israel of stirring up a religious war, appealed to the UN Security Council Friday, March 5 to put a stop to Israeli actions on Temple Mount, Jerusalem. He was referring to a clash earlier [that] day, in which Israeli riot police stormed the mosques from which Palestinian youths hurled rocks at the Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall shrine below, forcing its hurried evacuation. Some 50 Palestinian rioters and 18 police officers were injured before order was restored . . . .
The Obama administration understood the Jerusalem riots had been provoked deliberately to destroy the indirect Israel-Palestinian peace track - which has taken more than a year to set up - just before it was due to start rolling.
Three hands stirred the pot: The Iranian-backed Palestinian Hamas, the Tahrir Islamists, who control the technical administration of Temple Mount, and the radical Northern Wing of the Israeli Arab Muslim Movement.
They figured that spiraling Temple Mount violence with many Palestinians injured and some even dead would make it impossible for Abbas to sit down with Israel - even for indirect talks.
Now they are planning to accompany the arrival of American Vice President Joe Biden on March 8 with spreading unrest to common Jewish-Muslim holy sites and flashpoints outside Jerusalem, like the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The extremists believe such dramas will force the American visitor to address the crisis and, in any event, make the Obama administration acknowledge that no Middle East accommodation is feasible without co-opting Hamas and the other Palestinian Islamic radicals, including Israel Arab extremists.
Washington hopes to launch the indirect talks in the coming week, if US presidential envoy George Mitchell can swing it. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been lining up their chips in recent weeks for the bargaining ahead . . . .
Furthermore, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority discreetly instructed their respective security forces to keep things quiet for now. Abbas ordered his US-trained and funded special units not to allow demonstrations to erupt on the West Bank in the run-up to the talks. And in fact they stepped in to keep the lid on in Hebron, with Israeli forces forming a protective cordon around them.
Israeli police swiftly brought the Temple Mount riots under control Friday.
But DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources estimate that Hamas and other Islamic extremists will to their utmost to generate pandemonium for Biden' visit, possibly even attempting acts of terror. It will then be up to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to avoid trading recriminations and join hands to get the talks started. US determination will also be put to the test.

Source:     debka.com  MORE

Note: see these related stories:

Barak: Israel Would Rather Be Negotiating Face To Face - "Proximity talks won't stop until we have found a way to direct dialogue between us and the Palestinians, in which every issue can be laid on the table," Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak said ... Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Monday that U.S.-mediated indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians will be a last chance to keep the Middle East peace process alive  LINK

Abbas: Israel Crossed Red Lines In Jerusalem  LINK

'Israeli Actions Against International Law' - The PA president urged the US and the international community to intervene and stop tensions from escalating further  LINK

Cyber-war declared as China hunts for the West's intelligence secrets

Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout NATO and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyber-war attacks originating in China.
The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states.
NATO diplomatic sources told The Times: “Everyone has been made aware that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.” The sources said that the number of attacks had increased significantly over the past 12 months, with China among the most active players.
In the US, an official report released on Friday said the number of attacks on Congress and other government agencies had risen exponentially in the past year to an estimated 1.6 billion every month . . . .
Sources at the Office for Cyber Security at the Cabinet Office in London, set up last year, said there were two forms of attack: those focusing on disrupting computer systems and others involving “fishing trips” for sensitive information. A special team has been set up at GCHQ, the government communications headquarters in Gloucestershire, to counter the growing cyber-threat affecting intelligence material. The team becomes operational this month.
British and American cyber-defences are among the most sophisticated in the world, but “the EU is less competent”, James Lewis, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said. “The porousness of the European institutions makes them a good target for penetration. They are of interest to the Chinese on issues from arms sales and nuclear non-proliferation to Tibet and energy.” . . . .
Jonathan Evans, Director-General of MI5, warned in 2007 that several states were actively involved in large-scale cyber-attacks. Although he did not specify which states were involved, security officials have indicated that China now poses the gravest threat. Beijing has denied making such attacks . . . .
British officials said that everyone in sensitive jobs had been warned to be especially cautious about disseminating intelligence and other classified information. Whether British intelligence is involved in retaliatory attacks is never confirmed. However, officials said that there was a significant difference between being part of an information war and indulging in aggressive attacks to disrupt another country’s computer systems.
Dr Lewis said that neither the US nor any of its Western allies had formed an effective response to the Chinese threat, which has its origins in a massive boost to Chinese technology ordered by Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader, in 1986. The West’s own cyber offensives have so far been directed largely at terrorists rather than nation states, giving China virtually free rein to penetrate Western systems with its own world-class hackers and increasingly popular Chinese-made components.

Source:     timesonline.co.uk  MORE

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NEWS BRIEFS
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U.S.-Israel tough sanctions strategy falls apart ... Tehran is sitting pretty

The US-led Western powers are scrapping tough measures incorporated in the original motion they drafted for a UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran, according to diplomats at the UN Center. To make the draft more acceptable to Russia and China, the blacklisting of Iran's central bank has been replaced by a decision to "strengthen vigilance" over the bank's transactions, leaving only new overseas Iranian banks to be targeted. The text earlier dropped the restrictions proposed by France against Iran's oil and gas industries, as well as the original US plan to halt supplies of gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran. As the haggling goes on, Moscow refuses to endorse a full arms embargo similar to the regime in place against North Korea. DEBKAfile reports: By the time it is tabled, the sanctions resolution will be toothless as an instrument for holding back Iran's dash for a nuclear bomb and its weapons of delivery. Tehran already senses the new penalties will leave it sitting pretty with its economy, military assets and commercial ties unimpaired.  MORE

Jane's: New Iran rocket launch site shows North Korea links

LONDON -- Iran is building a new rocket launch site a short distance from an existing complex and seems to be working with North Korea, information group IHS Jane's said Friday. Construction visible from satellite imagery of the new site, near the city of Semnan east of Tehran, suggests that Iran has been collaborating with Pyongyang, said the London-based defence intelligence group. Iran unveiled the Simorgh (Phoenix) space-launch vehicle (SLV) on February 3 but has not publicly revealed the location of the rocket's launch complex, it reported . . . "It appears midway towards completion," it said, adding that the launch pad could easily accommodate the 27-metre Simorgh if the gantry were to be extended by an additional 10 metres. And it added: "The development of the Semnan facility and the Simorgh SLV both demonstrate the likelihood of collaboration with North Korea in Iran's missile programme . . . "Similarly, the first stage of the Simorgh strongly resembles the North Korean Unha-2, with four clustered engines and nearly the same dimensions." The respected information group concluded that Iran appears to be forging ahead with developing its missile and rocket capabilities despite US-led diplomatic pressure, including threats of new United Nations sanctions. "Given these investments in its missile infrastructure, and despite the United States attempting to garner support for further sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme, Tehran appears determined to continue developing its missile and rocket capabilities in the foreseeable future," it said. The West suspects Iran of secretly trying to build an atomic bomb and fears the technology used to launch space rockets could be diverted into developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.  MORE

Petraeus warns Iran becoming 'thugocracy'

WASHINGTON -- General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, warned Sunday that Iran is becoming a "thugocracy" in attempts to suppress popular anger over last year's contested presidential vote results. "I think you have heard it said by pundits that Iran has gone from being a theocracy to a thugocracy," Petraeus, whose command stretches from Egypt to Pakistan and includes Iran, said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS". "And that is again because of the emergence of this reform movement of the citizens who are outraged at the hijacking of the election that took place back last summer." Iran has executed protesters who took to the streets to demonstrate against the presidential election in June 2009 that saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned to power despite widespread allegations of fraud . . . Petraeus said it was not clear whether Tehran had definitively decided to pursue nuclear weapons, as many Western nations fear. But he said such a decision was "a little bit immaterial at this point in time, because all of the components of a program to produce nuclear weapons ... have been proceeding." . . . Petraeus said Iranian actions were making it easier for the United States to build a coalition and added: "President Ahmadinejad is often our best recruiting officer."  MORE

A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. [see text of bill LINK (pdf format)] According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning. (There is no distinction between U.S. persons - visa holders or citizens - and non-U.S. persons.) It would require these "belligerents" to be coded as "high-value [detainees]" to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the president ...  MORE

Banned in 160 Nations… Yet U.S. FDA Regards it as Safe?

A livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs has been approved by the FDA. The beta agonist ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, was recruited for livestock use when researchers found the drug, used in asthma, made mice more muscular. Ractopamine is started as the animal nears slaughter. How does a drug marked, "Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask" become "safe" in human food? With no washout period? The drug is banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, and more than 1,700 people have been "poisoned" from eating pigs fed the drug since 1998, but ractopamine is used in 45 percent of U.S. pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle ...  MORE

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MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY
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Note: Views expressed in the commentaries on this website are those of individual authors and not necessarily those of Christian Media Daily or our host - Christian Media Network. Quotes are obviously the opinion of the source. A quote is just a quote and these are offered without comment. Use of a news story or commentary is not an endorsement of the source website.

Report: SENATE REJECTS BONUS FOR SENIORS (Jayme Levy)

A measure to give older adults, veterans, and persons with disabilities a $250 check has been rejected by the Senate in a vote of 50-to-47. The payments would have added $13 billion to a $108 billion job-creation package pending in the Senate. Congress approved payments last year as part of the $862 billion stimulus package.
Seniors aren't receiving the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for the first time since 1975 because of a series of events that began with the 2008 increase in energy prices. That increase helped seniors because it led to a larger-than-usual 5.8% adjustment last year in Social Security benefits. Because inflation is now lower, no increase is due this year.
The plan would have been attached to a $150-billion measure to extend unemployment benefits through the rest of this year, provide $25 billion to state governments, extend miscellaneous tax cuts and prevent cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.
It is sad news for people that depend on a yearly COLA to make ends meet. Republicans argue that it is only $250 and it wouldn't make much of a difference, but to low-income seniors living in America, it is needed. [no further content]

Source:     examiner.com  LINK

Note: see also No Bonus For Social Security Recipients  LINK

Opinion: MASSIVE FRAUD CRACKDOWN GOES NOWHERE (William Campbell Douglass)

I hope you’ve got a little extra in the piggy bank - because ObamaCare is going to need a lot more help.
Don’t want to pay? Tough. Don’t have the money? Too bad. The key word here is sacrifice - and you’re playing the part of the lamb while the Washington party rolls on.
The little Bolsheviks behind ObamaCare claim one of the ways they’ll pay for their socialist medicine scheme is through cost savings … like eliminating the $60 billion lost each year to Medicare fraud.
There’s just one problem: We’ve either got the world’s smartest crooks, or the Keystone Kops have been placed in charge of catching them.
Two years into a major crackdown on Medicare freeloaders, fraudsters and other crooks … and we’ve got practically nothing to show for it. Medicare fraud prosecutions were up just 2 percent last year.
That’s it - 2 percent.
Since this crackdown began under President Bush in 2007, it’s proof that failure is truly a bipartisan effort. That’s two different administrations who’ve tried - and failed - to rein in Medicare fraud.
And as a taxpayer, you’re getting the bill three times over. The first bill is for those $60 billion in fraudulent claims paid each year. The second bill is to pay for all those Kops, investigators and prosecutors who aren’t cracking down on it (I’m sure they’re enjoying those nice offices in Miami, though). And the third bill will come due with ObamaCare - when you’ll be forced to pony up extra bucks because the savings never materialized.
I’ve done the math. For many Americans, their monthly ObamaCare bills will be the biggest cost in their household - even more expensive than mortgage payments, and that’s if you believe the numbers they’re throwing around right now.
Trust me, it’ll be more - a lot more.
Remove those imaginary savings from the equation, and when the real bill comes due, no health-care system in the world will be able to ease the pain.
They can’t seem to find the freeloaders and fraudsters - but they’ll sure as heck find you. And then, Obama’s call for change will turn into cries of, “Buddy, can you spare some change?” [no further content]

Source:     douglassreport.com  LINK

Commentary: The Financial Coup d'Etat: Consolidation of America's Economic Elite (David DeGraw)

Excerpt:
Every step of the way, the economic terrorist organization led by Paulson, Geithner and Bernanke held our economy hostage by declaring that all their demands must be met or the entire economy would be destroyed, as a result of the very actions the players being rewarded had taken. (I don’t use the words “economic terrorists” as hyperbole. The threat posed by them and the amount of death, destruction and misery they have already caused the United States is much greater than that caused by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda - it’s not even close.)

Through the crisis, the fundamental structure of the stock market has been proven to be a scam. The Ponzi scheme activities, outright market manipulation and massive worldwide fraud perpetrated by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, AIG, the three major ratings agencies and several other Wall Street elite firms are blatant. Just in the housing and oil futures markets alone, the criminal activity and economic theft is in the multi-trillions.

By looking the other way, the SEC, Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama are complicit. An analysis of actions taken, or most often not taken, by the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties prove that they are now accomplices. They have not only let it happen; they continue to look the other way and have been stonewalling laws, investigations and prosecutions in what is clearly criminal activity.

If we had a nation of law, none of these things would have happened. This proves to anyone who cares to look that we now live in a Banana Republic. Our democracy has clearly become a farce.

The overwhelming majority of our politicians are now on the Economic Elite payroll. This financial coup started under Hank Paulson in the Bush Administration and has been carried through, without even the slightest hitch, under Geithner in the Obama Administration, and all along Ben Bernanke has been leading the Federal Reserve. Bernanke’s reconfirmation shows you who the co-conspirators are - just look at the members of Congress who voted for it.

All three branches of our government are now complicit in what is literally the greatest theft of wealth in history, along with a mainstream “news” media that keeps going about their “reporting,” as if this wasn’t a crime, business as usual. Nothing to see here ...

Source:     ampedstatus.com (2-21-10)  MORE

Note: The above commentary is from part 4 of a six part report by this author. See also:

Part 1: Economic Terrorism: The Consequences Are Poverty And Mass Unemployment  LINK

Part 2: The American Nightmare: US Economic Elite Wages War On The American People  LINK

Part 3: The Axis of Greed: The Nature And Structure Of The Economic Elite  LINK

Part 5: Overcoming The Divide And Conquer Strategy  LINK

Part 6: How To Fight Back And Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won - The Economic Elite vs. The People Of The USA  LINK

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ADDITIONAL NEWS & ANALYSIS
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Iraq holds landmark vote ... attacks kill 38  LINK

PM Maliki emerges as front-runner after Iraq vote  LINK

Timetable for U.S. Troop Withdrawal on Track, Obama Says, After Iraqis Vote  LINK

Iran tells Russian pilots to leave  LINK
Iran gives commercial pilots two months to leave country as tension mounts over S-300 missile deal

Reported Arrest of American Militant in Pakistan Could Lead to First Treason Trial in Decades  LINK

China foreign minister says U.S. ties ['seriously disrupted']  LINK

Acting TSA Head: Agency to Continue Using only Small Portion of Terror Watch List to Screen Passengers  LINK

[analysis]: Should an Internet Tax Pay for Cyber-security?  LINK

[analysis]: The decline of the international civil servant  LINK

Four U.S. Banks Shut Down as Failure Count This Year Reaches 26  LINK

Big bank oversight to stay with Fed  LINK

Postal Service Urged to Weigh Three-Days-a-Week Mail  LINK

FDA is the Only Government Agency to Get Budget INCREASE  LINK

Obama policies projected to add $9.7 Trillion to U.S. debt by 2020  LINK

Volcker Says Euro to Survive as Greek Budget Crisis Manageable  LINK

Iceland rejects plan to pay back Britain (Followup)  LINK

Beijing studies severing peg to U.S. dollar  LINK

U.S. currency soon to be radically altered  LINK
In 2002 an advocacy group – the American Council of the Blind - filed a lawsuit interpreting the "Rehabilitation Act" as requiring the government to design its currency in such a way as to be easily identifiable by the blind and the visually-impaired

Prices skyrocket after cold snap decimates Florida tomato crop  LINK

Upper Midwest braces for severe spring flooding  LINK

6.6 and 6.0 Magnitude Earthquakes Hit Chile  LINK

Strong [magnitude 6.0] quake kills 57 in Turkey  LINK

Panic Alert: Methane bubbles in Arctic seas stir warming fears  LINK
It is unclear, however, if the Arctic emissions of methane gas are new or have been going on unnoticed for centuries ...

Catholic School Kicks Out Preschooler with Lesbian Parents (Colorado)  LINK
The statement says students in Catholic schools are expected to have parents who abide by policies of the school and church

Neglected by 'lazy' nurses, [patient] rang the police to beg for water (UK)  LINK

Expansive food recall leaves consumers asking: What is HVP?  LINK
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein, like monosodium glutamate, is a salty and savory flavor enhancer used in thousands of processed foods such as "soups, sauces, chilis, stews, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, gravies, seasoned snack foods, dips and dressings"

HEALTH HIGHLIGHTS: MARCH 5, 2010  LINK

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"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
President Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence
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