Thursday, May 28, 2015

Progressives Betray Struggle Against Surveillance State

A struggle of some consequence is now being waged in Congress to keep on life support the NSA’s massive spying on the American people.   And in this struggle the progressives (aka liberals) are engaged in a massive betrayal of all they profess to believe in.   Instead too many of them are scurrying about attacking Rand Paul, the libertarian, anti-interventionist, Republican Senator who is leading the charge against the Bush/Obama spying program.  Among other things Senator Paul has engaged in a filibuster to stop this nefarious program.  So far he has been successful.

Let us try to make the crucial events in Congress as simple and crystal clear as possible.  There are two pieces of legislation that were before the Senate last week.

The first is the Patriot Act itself, Section 215 of which, in the government’s secret interpretation, allowed the NSA to vacuum up data on virtually every piece of electronic communication by every American and indeed everyone on the planet.  This secret interpretation and use of 215 came to light only when the heroic Edward Snowden blew his whistle.  Such massive spying has already been declared illegal by a recent opinion of the Second Circuit Court, although the NSA ignores this ruling.  The Patriot Act is due to expire on June 1, and Obama is desperate to keep its essentials alive.  Since the government has not been able to produce any convincing data that such surveillance has protected the U.S., one might well ask why Obama is so frantic, almost hysterical, to keep it alive.  Why indeed.

The second is a “reform” of the Patriot Act, called the “USA Freedom Act,” proposed by Obama and company.  However, the USA Freedom Act is not different in its essentials from the original Patriot Act.  One “difference” is that the telephone and Internet companies will hold the data rather than the government itself, and then the government will vacuum it up from those companies.  A distinction without a difference, to be sure.  Here is what the ACLU has to say about the “USA Freedom Act”:

“This bill would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision – the material-support provision – would represent a significant step backwards,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. “The disclosures of the last two years make clear that we need wholesale reform.”

Read the entire article

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Israel and Nonproliferation

The U.S. once again provided cover for Israel’s nuclear arsenal at the recently-concluded Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference:
Israeli officials criticized the Obama administration last week when they thought the U.S. was about to support a United Nations conference on nuclear weapons in the Middle East—with or without Israel’s participation or consent.
But by Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Secretary of State John Kerry and praised the White House for instead blocking the proposed meeting, which might have pressured Israel to disclose its presumed nuclear-arms program.
This has become a familiar pattern with the Obama administration. It will make some noises about possibly taking a tougher line with Israel, it will have a few officials make anonymous threats in the press, and when it comes time to do something that might actually inconvenience or annoy the Israeli government the administration balks and backs Israel’s position. The fact that the administration typically backs down and yields to the preferences of a client government doesn’t win it any goodwill or cooperation from that government on other issues. It does tell the client government that it doesn’t have to worry about any consequences for its blatant and public efforts to derail a major U.S. diplomatic initiative. On the contrary, the U.S. is only too happy to try to buy off the client to keep it quiet.

Paul Pillar calls the failure of the NPT conference a “missed opportunity” for nonproliferation, and that’s obviously correct. It undermines the cause of nonproliferation when the U.S. allows its relationship with the region’s only nuclear-weapons state to take precedence over its own nonproliferation goals in the same region. Of course, this has been going on for decades, but it has become harder to ignore when the same state with a nuclear arsenal lectures the U.S. about its efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear program. No one expects Israel to admit publicly to possessing nuclear weapons, and no one seriously expects Israel to ever reduce or dismantle its arsenal, but at the very least the U.S. could stop covering up something that everyone already reasonably assumes to be true and it could stop subordinating its nonproliferation agenda to the preferences of one of the world’s leading flouters and non-members of the NPT. 

Read the entire article

Monday, May 25, 2015

Friday, May 22, 2015

THE CIA AND THE MYTHS OF THE BIN LADEN RAID

If you read the sketchy New York Times article on the Delta Force raid into Syria a few days ago — how an ISIS leader was killed when he “tried to engage” American commandos while his fighters used women and children as shields, and an 18-year-old slave was freed with no civilian casualties thanks to “very precise fire” — you can be forgiven for thinking, “Haven’t I seen this movie before?”

You probably have, and it was called Zero Dark Thirty, the film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by Mark Boal and backed with gusto by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA provided Bigelow and Boal with privileged access to officials and operators behind the hunt for Osama bin Laden — and not coincidently, their movie portrayed the CIA’s torture program as essential to the effort to find and kill the leader of al Qaeda. It grossed more than $132 million worldwide.

Zero Dark Thirty was criticized by a number of writers (including me) when it came out in 2012, and now it is being treated as a political farce in a new Frontline documentary scheduled to be broadcast by PBS on Tuesday, May 19. Titled “Secrets, Politics and Torture,” the show explores the CIA’s effort to persuade Congress, the White House and the American public that its “enhanced interrogation methods” were responsible for extracting from unwilling prisoners the clues that led to bin Laden and other enemy targets.

Jane Mayer, the New Yorker writer whose work on CIA torture has been exemplary, explains that the team behind Zero Dark Thirty was conned by the CIA.

“The CIA’s business is seduction, basically,” she says in the documentary. “And to seduce Hollywood producers, I mean they are easy marks compared to some of the people that the CIA has to go after.”

Another journalist, Michael Isikoff, connects the final dots by pointing out the harm caused by political lies that find their way into blockbuster films.

Read the entire article

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Militarization Is More Than Tanks and Rifles: It’s a Cultural Disease, Acclimating the Citizenry to Life in a Police State

“If we’re training cops as soldiers, giving them equipment like soldiers, dressing them up as soldiers, when are they going to pick up the mentality of soldiers? If you look at the police department, their creed is to protect and to serve. A soldier’s mission is to engage his enemy in close combat and kill him. Do we want police officers to have that mentality? Of course not.”— Arthur Rizer, former civilian police officer and member of the military
Talk about poor timing. Then again, perhaps it’s brilliant timing.

Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers, after communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets, after Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser, after lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones, after hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later, after a whole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—only now does President Obama lift a hand to limit the number of military weapons being passed along to local police departments.

Not all, mind you, just some.

Talk about too little, too late.

Months after the White House defended a federal program that distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police, Obama has announced that he will ban the federal government from providing local police departments with tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms and large-caliber firearms.

Read the entire article

Monday, May 18, 2015

New Military Spending Bill Expands Empire But Forbids Debate on War

On Friday the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for 2016 that will guarantee US involvement in more wars and overseas interventions for years to come. The Republican majority resorted to trickery to evade the meager spending limitations imposed by the 2011 budget control act – limitations that did not, as often reported, cut military spending but only slowed its growth.

But not even slower growth is enough when you have an empire to maintain worldwide, so the House majority slipped into the military spending bill an extra $89 billion for an emergency war fund. Such “emergency” spending is not addressed in the growth caps placed on the military under the 2011 budget control act. It is a loophole filled by Congress with Fed-printed money.

Ironically, a good deal of this “emergency” money will go to President Obama’s war on ISIS even though neither the House nor the Senate has debated – let alone authorized – that war! Although House leadership allowed 135 amendments to the defense bill – with many on minor issues like regulations on fire hoses – an effort by a small group of Representatives to introduce an amendment to debate the current US war in Iraq and Syria was rejected.

While squashing debate on ongoing but unauthorized wars, the bill also pushed the administration toward new conflicts. Despite the president’s unwise decision to send hundreds of US military trainers to Ukraine, a move that threatens the current shaky ceasefire, Congress wants even more US involvement in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The military spending bill included $300 million to directly arm the Ukrainian government even as Ukrainian leaders threaten to again attack the breakaway regions in the east. Does Congress really think US-supplied weapons killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine is a good idea?

The defense authorization bill also seeks to send yet more weapons into Iraq. This time the House wants to send weapons directly to the Kurds in northern Iraq without the approval of the Iraqi government. Although these weapons are supposed to be used to fight ISIS, we know from too many prior examples that they often find their way into the hands of the very people we are fighting. Also, arming an ethnic group seeking to break away from Baghdad and form a new state is an unwise infringement of the sovereignty of Iraq. It is one thing to endorse the idea of secession as a way to reduce the possibility of violence, but it is quite something else to arm one side and implicitly back its demands.

Read the entire article

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Greatest Threat to Free Speech Comes Not From Terrorism, But From Those Claiming to Fight It

We learned recently from Paris that the Western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That’s a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the West — perpetrated not by The Terrorists but by the western politicians claiming to fight them.

One of the most alarming examples comes, not at all surprisingly, from the U.K. government, which is currently agitating for new counter-terrorism powers “including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalize young people.” Here are the powers which the British Freedom Fighters and Democracy Protectors are seeking:
They would include a ban on broadcasting and a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media or in print. The bill will also contain plans for banning orders for extremist organisations which seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech in public places, but it will fall short of banning on the grounds of provoking hatred. 
It will also contain new powers to close premises including mosques where extremists seek to influence others. The powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities that misappropriate funds towards extremism and terrorism will also be strengthened.
In essence, advocating any ideas or working for any political outcomes regarded by British politicians as “extremist” will not only be a crime, but can be physically banned in advance. Basking in his election victory, Prime Minister David Cameron unleashed this Orwellian decree to explain why new Thought Police powers are needed: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.'” It’s not enough for British subjects merely to “obey the law”; they must refrain from believing in or expressing ideas which Her Majesty’s Government dislikes.

Read the entire article

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Climate Hoax Aimed at New World Order, Says Aussie PM Advisor

The United Nations climate czar and various alarmist media outlets this week sought to dismiss as a “joke” recent comments by a top advisor to Australian leader Tony Abbott on frauduelent man-made global warming theories being used to advance global tyranny. In an explosive column, Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, argued that theories on alleged human-caused climate change were not only bogus, but are serving as the basis for imposing a totalitarian “new world order” on humanity. Despite the uproar among global-warming theorists, UN bureaucrats, and the alarmist press, the evidence suggests Newman is correct.    

In the column, published May 8 by The Australian newspaper, Newman begins by blowing the lid off a “well-kept secret” — the climate models purporting to prove that man’s practically irrelevant emissions of carbon dioxide are responsible for catastrophic global warming have been proven wrong. But that is not surprising, he wrote. “We have been subjected to extravagance from climate catastrophists for close to 50 years,” he explained, citing an array of examples of climate fear-mongers and media outlets warning of global cooling and other problems just a few decades ago. The more recent pronouncements of the alarmists are equally ludicrous.

Source

Friday, May 8, 2015

On a Fast Track to National Ruin

In the first quarter of 2015, in the sixth year of the historic Obama recovery, the U.S. economy grew by two-tenths of 1 percent.

And that probably sugarcoats it.

For trade deficits subtract from the growth of GDP, and the U.S. trade deficit that just came in was a monster.

As the AP’s Martin Crutsinger writes, “The U.S. trade deficit in March swelled to the highest level in more than six years, propelled by a flood of imports that may have sapped the U.S. economy of any growth in the first quarter.”

The March deficit was $51.2 billion, largest of any month since 2008. In goods alone, the trade deficit hit $64 billion.

As Crutsinger writes, a surge in imports to $239 billion in March, “reflected greater shipments of foreign-made industrial machinery, autos, mobile phones, clothing and furniture.”

What does this flood of imports of things we once made here mean for a city like, say, Baltimore? Writes columnist Allan Brownfeld:

Read the entire article

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

The Rise of the “African-American Police State”

Black people in America live in a police-state-within-a-state. The African American police state exercises its authority over the Black minority through an oppressive array of modern day lynchings by the police, increasing for-profit mass incarceration and the government sanctioned surveillance and assassination of Black leaders. The African American police state is unquestionably a modern day crime against humanity.

The first modern police forces in America were Slave Patrols and Night Watches, which were both designed to control the behaviors of African Americans.


Historian Victor Kappeler notes that in 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first Slave Patrol. Historical literature is clear that prior to the Civil War a legally sanctioned police force existed for the sole purpose of oppressing the slave population and protecting the property and interests of white slave owners. The glaring similarities between the eighteenth century Slave Patrols and modern American police brutality in the Black community are too salient to dismiss or ignore.

America was founded as a slave holding republic and slaves did not take too kindly to being enslaved and they often rebelled, becoming enemy’s of the state. Slave Patrols were created in order to interrogate and persecute Blacks, who were out and about, without any due process or formal investigation. To this day, police do not serve and protect the Black community, they treat Blacks as inherently criminal and sub-human.

Ever since the first police forces were established in America, lynchings have been the linchpin of the African American police state.

The majority of Americans believe that lynchings are an outdated form of racial terrorism, which blighted American society up until the end of the era of Jim Crow laws; however, America’s proclivity towards the unbridled slaughter of African Americans has only worsened over time. The Guardian newspaper recently noted that historians believe that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on average two African-Americans were lynched every week.

Compare this with incomplete data compiled by the FBI that shows that a Black person is killed by a white police officer more than twice a week, and it’s clear that police brutality in Black communities is getting worse, not better.

Read the entire article

Monday, May 4, 2015

U.S. Military: Put in Harm's Way for Global Empire

An article published on April 24 in the Wall Street Journal carried the following subtitle: "Over the past year, special-operations forces have landed in 81 countries, mostly to train local troops to fight so Americans don’t have to."

But if Americans don't have to be, then why are they in so many countries? Surely this is not necessary for defending the United States of America — the purpose of the U.S. military.

It has been observed that the rise of the American empire is inversely proportional to the decline of the American republic. And such has been the trajectory of the republics of the past. But unlike Rome, the various Greek confederacies, and other historic republics, the American republic cum empire has innumerable means at its disposal to distribute its military might throughout the entirety of the globe.

The Wall Street Journal piece highlights one of the (momentarily) most popular methods of keeping the U.S. armed forces involved in “81 countries:” the deployment of special operations/forces troops, A.K.A. “commandos.” Here’s the Journal’s nearly poetical encomium of the U.S. special operations activities around the world:

These days, the sun never sets on America’s special-operations forces. Over the past year, they have landed in 81 countries, most of them training local commandos to fight so American troops don’t have to. From Honduras to Mongolia, Estonia to Djibouti, U.S. special operators teach local soldiers diplomatic skills to shield their countries against extremist ideologies, as well as combat skills to fight militants who break through.

President Barack Obama, as part of his plan to shrink U.S. reliance on traditional warfare, has promised to piece together a web of such alliances from South Asia to the Sahel. Faced with mobile enemies working independently of foreign governments, the U.S. military has scattered small, nimble teams in many places, rather than just maintaining large forces in a few.