Tag Archives: Dictatorship

Supreme Court Likely to Endorse Obama’s War on Whistle-Blowers by Chris Hedges

Below are some excerpts from a great essay by Chris Hedges. The only thing I disagree with is his surprise that the state chooses to increase its authority.

I’m no longer surprised when government courts rule that the government is right, and we underlings are wrong. This is Hoppe’s argument for what he calls “a private law society” (what others call anarcho-captialism). A monopoly on justice will always rule in its own favor.

Historian and author Tom Woods makes a strong case for nullification being a better protector of the Constitution than the panel of providentially appointed judges.

The government also gets to unilaterally decide how much to charge you for this “service” and kidnaps you if you refuse to pay, labelling you a “tax evader.”

open quoteTotalitarian systems disempower an unsuspecting population by gradually making legal what was once illegal. They incrementally corrupt and distort law to exclusively serve the goals of the inner sanctums of power and strip protection from the citizen. Law soon becomes the primary tool to advance the crimes of the elite and punish those who tell the truth. The state saturates the airwaves with official propaganda to replace news. Fear, and finally terror, creates an intellectual and moral void. . . .

And a conviction of Bradley Manning, or any of the five others charged by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act of 1917 with passing on government secrets to the press, would effectively terminate public knowledge of the internal workings of the corporate state. What we live under cannot be called democracy. What we will live under if the Supreme Court upholds the use of the Espionage Act to punish those who expose war crimes and state lies will be a species of corporate fascism. And this closed society is, perhaps, only a few weeks or months away.

Few other Americans are as acutely aware of our descent into corporate totalitarianism as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 to The New York Times and is one of Manning’s most ardent and vocal defenders.

. . . .

The Supreme Court has yet to hear a case involving the Espionage Act. But one of these six cases will probably soon reach the court. If it, as expected, rules that the government is permitted to use the Espionage Act against whistle-blowers, the United States will have a de facto official secrets act. A ruling in favor of the government would instantly criminalize all disclosures of classified information to the public. It would shut down one of the most important functions of the press. And at that point any challenges to the official versions of events would dry up.

The Obama administration, to make matters worse, has mounted a war not only against those who leak information but those who publish it, including Assange. The Obama administration is attempting to force New York Times reporter James Risen to name the source, or sources, that told him about a failed effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer, is charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information about the program to Risen. If Risen confirms in court that Sterling was his source, Sterling probably will be convicted. A Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Espionage Act would also remove the legal protection that traditionally allows journalists to refuse to reveal their sources.close quote (Read more)

FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists

open quoteAnti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.close quote (Read more)

Expect more of this. Dissent cannot be tolerated for long. Dissenters must be demonized.

UN panel says retool world economy for sustainability

Translation: Everybody must obey.

open quoteThe world can no longer afford to ignore the environmental cost of economic growth and must redefine the very concept of national wealth, a UN panel of heads of state and environment ministers said Monday.

The panel challenged leaders to recognise that “current global development is unsustainable.”

“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Addis Ababa to mark the release of the panel’s report, which outlines more than 50 policy recommendations.close quote (Read more)

Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress

open quoteLook! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.close quote (Read more)

Alien vs. Predator, and the hypocrisy of Allen West

Originally published on Ad Libertad:

The battle lines are forming in Washington DC. Barring any tricks which the embattled (racist, redneck, kooky, backward, radical, unelectable) libertarian wing of the Republican Party may still have up its sleeve, it seems to be another contest between Marxist-Leninist Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of social welfare, and National Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of national security. Much like in Alien vs. Predator, whoever wins, we lose.

I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon toward tyranny and fiscal ruin long ago, and the important thing now is to brace for calamity. A fiscally conservative friend of mine is appalled by my cynicism. He invokes America’s greatness and my veteran status in an attempt to bring me back to the noble cause of shutting up and blindly supporting the Republican Party. He recently encouraged me to watch Allen West’s speech at CPAC 2012. He wants, presumably, for me to give people like Allen West my time, money, attention and respect, because nothing is more important that defeating Obama (. . . says the Predator about the Alien).

In the speech, Allen West goes on at length about the virtues of the Constitution. He said, “[The founders] laid out in no uncertain terms the types of things government would have the right to do, and the types of things it wouldn’t.” I’d love to hear him reconcile this with his discussion of “a Chamberlin-Churchill moment,” and “kinetic solutions” to Iran’s nuclear research, and “the precipice of World War Three.” Does he know the Constitution requires presidents to seek congressional declarations of war? Or does he, like most politicians, only believes in the Constitution when it foils his political opponents.

He said, “The founders knew that if government were allowed to restrict the freedom of the people . . . freedom would not long survive,” yet he voted in favor of renewing Patriot Act provisions.

He decries reckless spending: “We’ve allowed the federal bureaucracy to balloon out of control,” yet he voted in raise the debt ceiling. When questioned by Young America’s Foundation’s Ron Meyer, he asked for the thing all politicians have always requested: unity and support. Presumably, Allen West’s rapid betrayal of the principles he invoked in his campaign would be remedied if only I gave him more money, time, attention and respect. . . .

Read more from Ad Libertad

Enrich the troops; Ignore everyone else.

There was a fantastic mises daily article about creeping taxes and tyranny in the Roman Empire. Available in audio too. mises.org/daily/3663

Here are some excerpts:

– The advice that the Emperor Septimius Severus gave to his two sons, Caracalla and Geta: “live in harmony; enrich the troops; ignore everyone else.”

– “nobody should have any money but I, so that I may bestow it upon the soldiers.”

– “. . . he doubled the inheritance taxes paid by Roman citizens. When this was not sufficient to meet his needs, he admitted almost every inhabitant of the empire to Roman citizenship. What had formerly been a privilege now became simply a means of expanding the tax base.”

– “One of the Christian fathers, Saint Gregory Nazianzus, commented that war is the mother of taxes. I think that’s a wonderful thing to keep in mind: war is the mother of taxes. And it’s also, of course, the mother of inflation.”

– “the class known as the decurions. This was your prosperous, small- and middle-landowning class who were the dominant elements of the cities of the Roman Empire. They were the class from whom the municipal counsels, magistrates, and officials were chosen. . . . they had donated, not merely their time, but also their wealth to the betterment of the urban environment. Building stadiums and bathhouses, and repairing the streets and providing for pure water were considered benefactions. It was a kind of philanthropic act and their reward was, of course, public recognition and esteem. . . .The central government could no longer collect its taxes effectively, so they made the decurion class collectively responsible for getting revenues and passing them on to the imperial government. The decurions, of course, had as much difficulty as anyone else in doing this, and the returns were, again, frequently inadequate. So the government solved that problem by simply passing a law that any taxes that decurions could not collect from others, they would have to pay out of their own pockets.”

– “merchants and artisans were now compelled to make deliveries of goods. So that if you had a factory for making garments, you now had to deliver so many garments to the government requisitions. If you had ships, you had to carry government goods in your ships. In other words, what we have here is a kind of nationalization of private enterprises, and this nationalization means that the people who use their money and their talent are now compelled to serve the state whether they like it or not. When people tried to get out of this they were then, by law, compelled to remain in the occupation that they were in. In other words, you couldn’t change your job or your business. This was not sufficient because, after all, death is a relief from taxes. So the occupations were now made hereditary. When you died, your son had to take up your profession. If your father was a shoemaker, you had to be a shoemaker. These laws started by being restricted to the defense-oriented industries but, of course, gradually it was realized that everything is defense-oriented.”

– “The Roman people, the mass of the population, had but one wish after being captured by the barbarians: to never again fall under the rule of the Roman bureaucracy.”