Tag Archives: Dictatorship
West Point center cites dangers of ‘far right’ in U.S.
I suppose it was only a matter of time. Expect more of this.
A West Point think tank has issued a paper warning America about “far right” groups such as the “anti-federalist” movement, which supports “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”
The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”
The center — part of the institution where men and women are molded into Army officers — posted the report Tuesday. It lumps limited government activists with three movements it identifies as “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.”
The West Point center typically focuses reports on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists attempting to gain power in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through violence.
But its latest study turns inward and paints a broad brush of people it considers “far right.”
It says anti-federalists “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government. Extremists in the anti-federalist movement direct most their violence against the federal government and its proxies in law enforcement.”
Read more: p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/17/west-point-center-cites-dangers-far-right-us/#ixzz2IQNvj8fK
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GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama’s demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping
To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster “any bill” that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.
But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that – the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise – actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote – caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.
Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.
In doing so, the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping “scandal” that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.
The 2008 FISA law provided that it would expire in four years unless renewed. Yesterday, the Senate debated its renewal. Several Senators – Democrats Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon along with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul – each attempted to attach amendments to the law simply to provide some modest amounts of transparency and oversight to ensure that the government’s warrantless eavesdropping powers were constrained and checked from abuse.
Just consider how modest these amendments were. Along with Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Sen. Wyden has spent two years warning Americans that the government’s eavesdropping powers are being interpreted (by secret court decisions and the Executive Branch) far more broadly than they would ever suspect, and that, as a result, these eavesdropping powers are being applied far more invasively and extensively than is commonly understood.
As a result, Wyden yesterday had two amendments: one that would simply require the NSA to give a general estimate of how many Americans are having their communications intercepted under this law (information the NSA has steadfastly refused to provide), and another which would state that the NSA is barred from eavesdropping on Americans on US soil without a warrant. Merkley’s amendment would compel the public release of secret judicial rulings from the FISA court which purport to interpret the scope of the eavesdropping law on the ground that “secret law is inconsistent with democratic governance”; the Obama administration has refused to release a single such opinion even though the court, “on at least one occasion”, found that the government was violating the Fourth Amendment in how it was using the law to eavesdrop on Americans.
But the Obama White House opposed all amendments, demanding a “clean” renewal of the law without any oversight or transparency reforms. Earlier this month, the GOP-led House complied by passing a reform-free version of the law’s renewal, and sent the bill Obama wanted to the Senate, where it was debated yesterday afternoon.
The Democratic Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, took the lead in attacking Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul with the most foul Cheneyite accusations, and demanded renewal of the FISA law without any reforms. And then predictably, in virtually identical 37-54 votes, Feinstein and her conservative-Democratic comrades joined with virtually the entire GOP caucus (except for three Senators: Paul, Mike Lee and Dean Heller) to reject each one of the proposed amendments and thus give Obama exactly what he demanded: reform-free renewal of the law (while a few Democratic Senators have displayed genuine, sustained commitment to these issues, most Democrats who voted against FISA renewal yesterday did so symbolically and half-heartedly, knowing and not caring that they would lose as evidenced by the lack of an attempted filibuster).
In other words, Obama successfully relied on Senate Republicans (the ones his supporters depict as the Root of All Evil) along with a dozen of the most militaristic Democrats to ensure that he can continue to eavesdrop on Americans without any warrants, transparency or real oversight. That’s the standard coalition that has spent the last four years extending Bush/Cheney theories, eroding core liberties and entrenching endless militarism: Obama + the GOP caucus + Feinstein-type Democrats. As Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, put it to the Huffington Post: “I bet [Bush] is laughing his ass off.” (Read more)
How Murray Rothbard Changed my Mind on War | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Blanchester Police: Obedience to the law is liberty
Authors’ Corner – Lincoln Uncensored by Joseph Fallon
Extensive CSPAN Interview w/ Ron Paul
Back to the Business of Government: Get Bradley Manning
The legendary court system has done its work on Bradley Manning, the whistleblower who dared to stand up to the global empire and its expose terrible war crimes by giving evidence to WikiLeaks. Bradley, who is only 24-years old, will plead guilty in a bargained attempt to avoid life in prison.
He didn’t cheat. He didn’t make anything up. He didn’t even hurt anyone. All he did was reveal what is true. (The best background on the case comes from Wikipedia.) The result was explosive in showing the world what goes on behind the scenes in the wars for democracy. He showed innocents being slaughtered, people taking pleasure in bombings and killings, a gigantic catalog of deceptions and tricky, and much more. It wasn’t hard to find this material. He only had to download it and upload it.
Any true American would have done the same — or should have. It takes guts to stand up for what is right. He has languished in prison for two and a half years, for the Orwellian crime of revealing the truth. Julian Assange is exactly right that he is a hero. (Read more)
Ron Paul goes full Anarcho-Capitalist in Farewell Speech
He talks not about the Constitution, but about the initiation of force, and the state as a monopoly of force.
The Restoration and the Navigation Acts 1660-1663
ish imports and exports from England were limited to English ships alone. As part of the Restoration compromise, Charles II continued to gratify the London merchants and passed a series of Navigation Acts in 1660–63. Part of the commissioners’ instructions, indeed, was to see to the enforcement of these acts.
The new Navigation Acts drastically restricted and monopolized American colonial trade, to the detriment of the colonies.
The Navigation Act of 1660–61
1. restricted all colonial trade to “English” ships (English and American), that is, ships built, owned, and manned by Englishmen;
2. excluded all foreign merchants from American trade; and
3. required that certain enumerated colonial articles be exported only to England and English colonies.
We have already seen the havoc caused in the Southern colonies by tobacco being made one of the enumerated goods. Among the others were sugar, cotton wool, and various dyes. The second important Navigation Act was the Staple Act of 1663, which provided that all goods exported from Europe to America must first land in England. Only a few colonial imports were exempt from this prohibition: salt, servants, various provisions from Scotland, and wine from Madeira and the Azores.
The Staple Act meant that English ships and merchants would monopolize exports to America, while English manufacturers selling to America would be privileged by extra taxes being levied at English ports on foreign exports to the colonies. The enumerated-articles provision ensured that these staples would be exported only by English merchants and in English ships. (Read more)
U.S. Drones
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Bilderberg paniced by Ron Paul
I’m not sure who this guy is, but I like his report of Ron Paul sending globalists and would-be tyrants into a panic.
Obamacare — it’s a tax
The Tax Man wants your travel plans — US & Argentina
Imagine a day when you plan a trip abroad… and you exchange some dollars for the currency of your destination country before you depart.
At the airport, uniformed agents ask whether you have any foreign currency. You are then asked to prove you obtained the currency legally… and inform the IRS about where you’re going, how long you’ll be away and the reason for your trip.
As of seven days ago, this is the new reality in Argentina. And as of 11 days ago, an event in Washington should give pause to anyone who says, “it can’t happen here.”
The new rules in Argentina came into effect a week ago today. They are aimed squarely at holders of U.S. dollars.
The government wants to keep those dollars within the country, the better to shore up the central bank’s reserves and pay down its debts.
“Many Argentines,” reports The Associated Press, “only declare part of their wealth and income to evade taxes, and use black-market currency exchanges to convert their inflationary pesos into dollars. Travel agencies are the latest target since they manage multiple currencies and offer customers black-market rates for their money.”
A curious letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner raises the specter of similar rules coming down the pike in this country.
Dated May 24, it comes from Rep. Barney Frank, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee… and Rep. Sander Levin, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
“Frank and Levin,” says a joint press release, “have long been concerned that the language in U.S. trade and investment treaties was too restrictive and did not leave adequate flexibility for governments to use controls to stem the massive flows of speculative capital that can exacerbate economic crises.”
So they’re asking Geithner to make it clear, in writing, that the United States retains “the ability to deploy capital controls on the inflow or outflow of capital without being challenged by private investors.”
“You no longer have to read between the lines when it comes to currency and capital controls,” says an email from Addison this morning. Indeed, you can just read the lines directly.
Once Geithner obliges the Congress members with a written statement — do you really expect him to do otherwise? — a new brick will be erected in the “virtual Berlin Wall” that Addison has described to readers of Apogee Advisory for nearly a year now.
“Even if you’re a person of modest means,” he wrote last July, “and you merely want to ‘spread the risk around’ by putting a portion of your wealth outside U.S. banks and the U.S. dollar… it’s becoming harder and harder to do so.” (Read more)
Great debate between Stefan Molyneux and a typical statist
You can see the gear beginning to turn in Jake’s head.