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Tag Archives: Dictatorship
‘Big brother’ lamp posts can hear, see and bark ‘Obey!’ at you
America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.
ÂWith a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country.
Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they have a number of “homeland security applications” attached.
Each has a microprocessor “essentially similar to an iPhone,” capable of wireless communication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker.
Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is “working with Homeland Security” to deliver his dream of making people “more informed and safer.”
(Read more)
Record Six Journalists / Whistle-blowers prosecuted under US Espionage Act
. . . But as the State Department touts its press freedom record in a press release today and encourages other countries to improve their own laws, it’s also important to critically look at the U.S.’s current approach to press freedom, in particular their statement that “the United States honors and supports media freedom at home and abroad.”
Journalists’ sources in the U.S. have been the hardest hit in recent years. The current administration has used the Espionage Act to prosecute a record six whistleblowers for leaking information to the press—more than the rest of the previous administrations combined. Many of these whistleblowers have exposed constitutional violations such as the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and the CIA’s waterboarding practices—issues clearly in the public interest—and now face years in prison. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has brought no prosecutions for the crimes underlying the exposed allegations.
In addition, a grand jury is reportedly still investigating WikiLeaks for violations of the Espionage Act for publishing classified information—a practice that has traditionally been protected by the First Amendment and which other newspapers engage in regularly.
. . . .
The U.S. also has repeatedly detained Oscar-nominated filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras at the border. Poitras has received critical acclaim for two films she has produced about the U.S.’ post-9/11 wars, and is in the midst of making her third film on the subject. As Glenn Greenwald reported, “On several occasions, her reporter’s notebooks were seized and their contents copied, even as she objected that doing so would invade her journalist-source relationship,” clearly violating her rights as a reporter.
And while the State Department said today that they “advocate for freedom of expression and raise media freedom issues, including specific cases, in bilateral discussions with other governments and in multilateral bodies,” the administration has come under fire for lobbying the Yemeni government to keep a prominent Yemeni journalist Abd al-Ilah Haydar Al-Sha’i in jail. (Read more)
The Wall Street Journal’s NDAA Cheerleading Editorial Scares Me
I wasn’t going to address this, but since it is an editorial published in The Wall Street Journal — and not on some dude’s WordPress blog — I will do so.
On April 29, the newspaper published an opinion piece mocking those who are opposed to the NDAA’s imprisonment without trial of American citizens provisions. The editorial is so loony that it would actually be funny, if it were not in fact real. It’d be hilarious if it were penned by someone like Stephen Colbert, in jest.
First paragraph: “The tea party movement has generally been constructive, but every so often it runs off the road. A case in point is its emerging condominium with the anti-antiterror left to block terrorist detentions.”
Yes, The Wall Street Journal just used the phrase “anti-antiterror left.” That’s inspired Orwellian creativity. It really is.
Moving downward: “This modest law has sprouted a burst of political delusion in several states and Congress. A tea party outfit called the Tenth Amendment Center calls the law ‘an unconstitutional and dangerous federal power grab’—though the statute merely codifies existing practice under Presidents Bush and Obama.”
Modest law? Modest?!
Here’s how the ACLU has characterized the NDAA: “On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. The NDAA’s dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield.”
Yeah, sounds modest to me. (Read more)
Jim Rogers on expatriation: “JFK is a third world airport”
“Why Marxism?” An Evening at FEE with C. Bradley Thompson
Obama Administration uses post-9/11 “Bank Secrecy Act” to target Small Farm family
Over the past few years, agencies under the Obama administration have been commencing full scale raids on individual farmers, as well as on family farms, under the auspices of non-legislative regulation created by the ATF, EPA, and FDA. These raids focussed on several agricultural areas that included the sale of raw milk, grazing on federal lands, water collection and usage, and the raising of certain categories of swine.
On April 23rd however, the stakes got much higher for the individual farmer as the FDA is now using the terrorist based “Bank Secrecy Act” as justification to invade, investigate, and even confiscate the bank accounts of Americans in the agricultural business.
Now, Obama has the Dept. of Justice going after small farmers under the post-911 “Bank Secrecy Act” which makes it a crime to deposit less than $10,000 when you earned more than that.
May Day Protester Wants More Government
WikiLeaks lawyer, on ‘inhibited person’ travel list, stopped at airport
Australian human rights lawyer and WikiLeaks supporter Jennifer Robinson appears to have been placed on a travel watch list and was prevented from leaving the UK this morning until approval was secured from the Australian High Commission.
Robinson was returning to Australia to speak at the same conference as Attorney-General Nicola Roxon tomorrow — the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association’s Regional Law Conference — on the apt subject of “Lawyers in the firing line”. Roxon is giving an address on human rights.
Robinson was stopped when checking in at Heathrow early this morning Australian time and told she was an “inhibited person” and that approval from the Australian High Commission would be needed before she was allowed to proceed. She tweeted
Security guard: “you must have done something controversial” because we have to phone the embassy. “Certain government agencies” list.
Intriguingly, however, no Australian agency uses the term “inhibited person”. A DIAC spokesman told Crikey “the only mechanism that would restrict uplift of a person to Australia is the Movement Alert List (MAL).” (Read more)
Machiavelli’s “The Prince” — a review
A review by my friend Andy Duncan:
Machiavelli offers advice for imperial aggressors on how they should conquer a Muslim state:
But if once the Turk has been vanquished and broken in battle so that he cannot raise new armies, there is nothing to worry about except the ruler’s family. When that has been wiped out there is no one left to fear, because the others have no credit with the people.
So, capture Saddam Hussein and kill his sons. But once we achieve that, what do we do next with a former Muslim leader’s country:
When states newly acquired as I said have been accustomed to living freely under their own laws, there are three ways to hold them securely: first, by devastating them; next, by going there and living there in person; thirdly, by letting them keep their own laws, exacting tribute, and setting up an oligarchy which will keep the state friendly to you.
So, set up an interim appointed government and eventual elections guaranteed to keep the interim appointed government in place, with good options on the oil supply made out to your business friends. But what do we do about a possibly resentful population?
Violence must be inflicted once and for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful. Benefits must be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.
Ah, yes. Gradually re-establish the water and the electricity supplies, then link in the ‘election’ of your interim appointed government to coincide with further improvements, so as to keep this government in place and suitably disposed towards yourself.
But we should avoid blaming Machiavelli for our own modern world. It is our politicians who have created it, not this wonderful Florentine writer. He was just telling it like it was. Many of his views even coincided with our own:
The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms; and because you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow…Rome and Sparta endured for many centuries, armed and free. The Swiss are strongly armed and completely free.
His belief in the sanctity of arms would even have stood comparison with the National Rifle Association:
There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed.
So next time you hear your local police calling themselves public servants, ask yourself who has the guns, and who has the power. (Read more)
the Trotskyite roots of the National Review and ‘neo’ conservatism
Have you ever used the term “Islamofascist?”
Do you get excited when some politician gets up on his hind legs and starts babbling about “American exceptionalism?”
You, too, may be a Trotskyite.
. . . .
The typical American wannabe conservative does not want to think too deeply about why a supposedly right-wing publication would get so worked up about a piece of writing that offends liberal sensibilities.
That wannabe conservative has been brainwashed by the heirs of old Leo.
I get these pests commenting constantly on my blog. They parrot the neocon line about spreading human liberation to every corner of the Earth without even realizing that every word of it has been planted in their brains by Trotskyites.
Here on the Lew Rockwell blog is a good explanation of the roots of “neo” conservatism in the thought of Trotsky:
From the anti-Stalinists who became conservatives — including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol — the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an injection of passion. The ex-radicals brought with them the knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example, William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist. In its early years, National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists, such as Burnham and Chambers.
Read the whole thing. Then you will get some understanding of why NR seemed conservative at a time when worldwide communism was a real threat but now seems so liberal. By “liberal” of course I mean in favor of the sort of big-government, centralized state that the Republicans created under George W. Bush.
You can see why these NR types feel so threatened by Ron Paul. He represents a return to the small-government, decentralized conservatism popular before the Trotskyites took over the American “right.”
They’re much happier with a hack like Newt Gingrich who can stir up the masses to concentrate even more power in Washington. They can overlook his support for cap-and-trade and the individual mandate as long as he pushes their internationalist foreign policy. (Read more)
Stefan Molyneux on being a libertarian, against all odds
AG Beau BIDEN, Mandates That Sheriffs No Longer Have Arrest Powers
A very dangerous power grab. Central control of the guns is one of the most important steps toward tyranny.
Sheriff Jeff Christopher of Sussex County, Delaware, when he was elected to the office in 2010, thought he was handpicked by the people to represent them as the highest-ranking law officer in the county. Instead, he has found himself in the middle of a fight for the future of American law enforcement as a result of a nationwide effort to abolish the sheriff’s office altogether.
It is one more example of federal and state governments ignoring the will of the people as well state laws. In the case of Delaware, the state’s own constitution stipulates that the office of the sheriff is a constitutionally created position just like the secretary of state and the attorney general. Delaware’s Constitution states: “The sheriffs shall be conservators of the peace within the counties . . . in which they reside.”
This time it is Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, sending out mandates to commissioners informing them that their sheriffs no longer have arrest powers. In an opinion released Feb. 24, State Solicitor L.W. Lewis said that neither the state nor the common law grants arrest powers to the county sheriffs.
It would appear that Lewis is a little confused. The office of sheriff was created more than a century before the official founding of the United States. Delaware’s first sheriff took office in 1669.
“Now my deputies and I have been relieved of all arrest powers and can’t even make a traffic stop,” he said. “Delaware has only three counties. . . The other two sheriffs . . . will not stand up with me” to prevent the elimination of county law enforcement, he said.
Beau Biden’s questionable ruling against the longtime tradition of the sheriff being the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the county because of election by the people means the state’s usurpation of the office appears to be a forthcoming fact. (Read more)
The FBI’s Snitch on your Neighbor Flyers
I wish this was an April Fool’s Day joke.
The following collection of 25 flyers produced by the FBI and the Department of Justice are distributed to local businesses in a variety of industries to promote suspicious activity reporting. The flyers are not released publicly, though several have been published in the past by news media and various law enforcement agencies around the country. We have compiled this collection from a number of online sources. . . .
Threat Areas
Airport Service Providers
Beauty/Drug Suppliers
Bulk Fuel Distributors
Construction Sites
Dive/Boat Shops
Electronics Stores
Farm Supply Stores
Financial Institutions
General Aviation
General Public
Hobby Shops
Home Improvement
Hotels/Motels
Internet Cafes
Shopping Malls
Martial Arts/Paintball
. . . .
(Read more)