Over 100 pages of redacted material: That’s what you get from the US government if you ask what guidelines its FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents follow in determining when to surveil American citizens using GPS (Global Positioning System).
The American Civil Liberties Union, reports RT, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in which it asked for specifics, for right now none of us knows what can trigger long-term surveillance without a warrant.
The written report omits the flare and cultural references the journalist, Gayane Chichakyan, makes. (What a novelty.)
“To the question of how, when and why the government can track its citizens, the FBI responded with this [holds up blackened pages]. It takes a lot of ink to print out something like this,” says Chichakyan, also one of my favorite reporters (because she’s super smart and goes after the story).
“Some artistic souls may think of the painting ‘Black Square’ by Malevich,’…” she adds. [“Think”? Now that’s optimistic.]
We are on the receiving end of two poxes in one day: BHO’s Inaugural and MLK’s Day.
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was found unfit to have a holiday named for him. Instead, we celebrate a man whom America’s most engaging first lady deemed “terrible,” “tricky” and “a phony.”
There were many reasons not racist for which to dislike MLK, not least of them was the man’s dalliance with communists. “His associations with communists” is why Jacky’s husband, hero of Chris Matthews’ last book, ordered the wiretaps on King.
Mrs. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy—recounts Patrick J. Buchanan in “Suicide of a Superpower”—”saw to it that the FBI carried out the order.” Among his other endearing qualities, the not-so enchanting Martin Luther King had “declared that the Goldwater campaign bore ‘dangerous signs of Hitlerism.”
Indisputably, MLK set the tone for “assailing America as irredeemably racist” forever after. Other brothers have built on MLK’s work to sculpt careers as professional race hustlers.
Read Into the Cannibal’s Pot for more on MLK. But here is a short excerpt from the sub-chapter, “What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Say?:
The historical elevation of the democratic socialist Martin Luther King Jr. above the Founding Fathers is significant, since Jefferson’s libertarianism is inimical to King’s egalitarianism—never the twain shall meet. The attempts by many a modern conservative to conflate the messages of the two solitudes don’t pass muster. That King advocated a color-blind society is a pipe-dream exploded by historian Thomas E. Woods Jr. “Contrary to the sentiments he expressed in his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, King favored racial quotas. In fact, he called for massive government spending [on blacks] to make up for centuries of discrimination against them—‘a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.’ Late in his life he grew more radical, calling for a socialist system in America.”
Bring back the vomitorium says I (I am well aware that the concept is misrepresented, but the misrepresentation is worth retaining. It’s a good one).
I have been able to avoid some of the solipsistic orgy over Obama—to say nothing of the obscene platitudes and paradoxes: The Ass With Ears spoke of “Preserving our individual freedoms” through “require[d] collective action.” Moron.
This morning, I gave a prerecorded interview to RT (Russia Today TV, where my Paleolibertarian Column features). It was a pleasant, polite, intellectually stimulating, and professionally conducted exchange.
Ideas were the focus, not personalities. It always is this way with RT.
My RT experience has been vastly different from my experience with American hosts. How? Well, the RT producer’s starting point is a familiarity with and interest in some of the work written by the interviewed individual. She’ll point out which aspects piqued her curiosity, what she’d like to explore on air, etc.
Wow. Intellectual curiosity and courtesy: What old-fashioned concepts!
On the other hand, inquiries stateside invariably begin with the host’s persona and perspective. As follows:
US host: “Like, hey, We want to interview you.” Ilana: “Sure, what about?” US host: “Check us out on YouTube. We don’t read.”
You are expected to come on a show and rap, move your mouth. If you’re as chatty and as self-absorbed as your hosts invariably are, then all’s copacetic. But if you’re a person who tends to use words sparingly and with attempted precision, you’re out of luck.
When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise. For her devoted mother, this perceptive chatterbox of a child reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. “My mother,” she wrote in her girly cursive, “is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.”
To that my friend, writer Rob Stove, responded: “If everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.”
Amen.
If he’s having a good day, your host may just exhibit a limited interest in you, not in your output, by sending you some obscure link or file that has caught his attention. The idea is that his inner world and current preoccupations should become your own.
UPDATE (Jan. 21, 2013): The interview was on RT’s “The Truthseeker.” The process was fun and professional. The end result not ideal, as the sound conked-out on me and only a short snippet was harvested from the lengthy interview. There’s always a next time.
Below is an excerpt from the current weekly column,“The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,”now on RT (“hoplophobic” in the tagline is courtesy of the editor—I had never heard that word before today. Very cool):
“Piers Morgan is preaching treason from his perch at CNN—and not because he is undermining the dead-letter US Constitution, as some have claimed.
Most people would define treason as a betrayal of one’s country or sovereign. In my book, the book of natural law, treason is properly defined as a betrayal of one’s countrymen—and, in particular, the betrayal of the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. (To your question, yes, this renders almost all politicians traitors by definition.)
A right that can’t be defended is a right in name only. If you cannot by law defend your life, you have no right to life. If you cannot defend your property, you have no right of private property. And if you cannot defend your liberty, you are not a free man.
It follows that inherent in the idea of an inalienable right is the right to mount a vigorous defense of the same rights.
Knowing full well that a mere ban on assault rifles would not give him the result he craved, our redcoat turncoat has structured his monocausal appeals against the individual’s right to bear arms as follows:
1) The UK once experienced Sandy-Hook like massacres.
2) We Brits banned all guns, pistols too.
3) There were no more such massacres.
… This week, the CNN host will be fulminating over the shortfalls of 23 new imperial orders against firearm owners and in furtherance of federal tyranny. Piers believes the president’s extra-constitutional diktats don’t go far enough to void what’s left of the Constitutional scheme (to say nothing of the Hippocratic Oath. The Dear Leader has decreed that, “Doctors and other health care providers … need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms”).
Last year, an admirably rebellious Egyptian people revolted against President Mohamed Morsy for issuing a single executive order. America’s “King Tut” issued 23 such directives in one day! But—and by contrast—Piers thinks nothing of this “attempt by the [US] executive to make laws in violation of the Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution” …
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