Category Archives: Homeland Security

Prior Restraint Arguments As Pretex To Watch YOU

Argument, Constitution, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Law, Liberty, Rights, Socialism, Terrorism, The State

If we accept state aggression based on prior restraint arguments, then aggress we must ad absurdum. Why not stop all statists from procreating, lest they sire proponents of state theft and aggression? Such a program would at least be in furtherance of liberty. (And we could all do with fewer Meghan McCains.)

Prior restraint arguments are being galvanized as justification for nation-wide information sweeps conducted by the state for over a decade. Another cow, “Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching,” said “that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future.”

It is quite telling that the story about the “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily” was broken by Glenn Greenwald (an American) writing for The Guardian (British).

Most serious libertarians have been shouting about state snooping from the rooftops for over a decade. Now you’re listening! I already told you weeks back that there was absolutely nothing new about state snooping.

Via The Guardian:

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.
The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order.
The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI’s request for its customers’ records, or the court order itself.
“We decline comment,” said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman.

(I believe “Entertainment Interruptus,” published on November 28, 2001, was my first column touching on the The Patriot Act.)

UPDATE IV: Dying For Nothing Day (You’re For The Military, But Not For Liberty)

Bush, Classical Liberalism, Homeland Security, Just War, libertarianism, Nationhood, Propaganda, The State, War, Welfare

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. My sympathies go out to Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it, and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but I won’t worship at Moloch’s feet to make you feel better.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Every Israeli stops on that day, wherever he is, and stands still in remembrance. We would have died or been overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland, and not some far-away imperial project.

But can we Americans, in 2013, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that someone killed an Iraqi or Afghani or a Libyan so that we can … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

UPDATED (5/26): GIVE GOVERNMENT A LEG, RIDE WITH DUBYUH. Thomas DiLorenzo nails it:

That’s how emailer John D. describes the Marc Levin (“The Grate One”) radio show Friday night during which he “played nationalistic and patriotic music nonstop” during the third hour, motivating “a weeping veteran” to call in to say “thank you for all you do, Mark.” One envisions a “weeping veteran” who lost both legs or an arm or two in Iraq calling in to thank the neocon propagandist/shill for the military-industrial complex for making it all possible. It’s kind of like those old pictures of legless veterans with their new iron “legs” jogging with President Dub-Yuh and smiling away at the “honor”he bestowed on them.
Get ready for all the chubby chickenhawk neocons like Levin and Limbaugh, who never even tried on a military uniform, to produce an explosion of war propaganda tomorrow.

UPDATE II: “For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned.” Robert Glisson was once asked by myself to write an op-ed for Barely A Blog about the “Patriot Guard Riders.” I prefaced his op-ed—which I entitled “For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned”—with this comment: “I do not identify with the military mission, but who can fault the humanity of the effort?”

It’s a shame Robert failed to remember the distinction when engaging with boorish warmongers on my Facebook Timeline.

UPDATE III: DITTOHEAD DAY. The military is still a government job; a career path with huge risks. How fast the so-called small government types forget this immutable truth. From the appropriately titled “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program” (which the military has become):

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”—ILANA (“Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.”)

UPDATE IV: IF YOU DON’T GET THIS; YOU’RE FOR THE MILITARY, BUT NOT FOR LIBERTY. From “Classical Liberalism And State Schemes”:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”

The Anglo-American Traitor Class

Britain, Government, Homeland Security, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Terrorism, The State

The British traitor class is every bit as good at betraying the public’s trust as its American equivalent. Thanks to the traitor class, British taxpayers came close to funding and facilitating the murder of butchered soldier Drummer Lee Rigby.

Spy agencies have come under scrutiny after uncorroborated allegations by a friend of Adebolajo on Friday that intelligence officers tried to recruit him six months ago.
Asked whether the security services had contacted the men, Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May told the BBC: “Their job is about gathering intelligence. They do that from a variety of sources and they will do that in a variety of ways. And yes, they will approach individuals from time to time.”
A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that both suspects were known to the MI5 domestic security service. However, neither was thought to pose a serious threat.

Adebolajo “was arrested with a group of five others trying to travel to Somalia to join militant group al Shabaab.”

Also via Reuters comes the news that “Kenya’s anti-terrorism police” had arrested Michael Adebolajo, the butcher from Woolwich, in November 2010, and deported him to Britain (his home, after all, because, although Dr. Putnam has confirmed that diversity immiserates—utterly—it is nevertheless to be enforced as a strength. Or so claims the traitor class).

Thanks to the same traitors were Americans, likewise, indirectly forced to fund and facilitate the bombing of the Boston Marathon, on April 15, a fact that demonstrated yet again that, “Uncle Sam’s stool pigeons … move swiftly and ruthlessly against law-abiding, patriotic nationals and newcomers (a mission the TSA takes very seriously), but not against the people’s natural enemies. … To no avail did Russian state security twice practically beg the FBI and then the CIA, in 2011, to place Tamerlan Tsarnaev on counterterrorism watch lists. It was pointless. The FBI turned the Russians down (as the Transportation Security Administration intensified its assaults on grandpa and grandma from the prairie).”

“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).”

(From “The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan.”)

UPDATE II: It Takes A Village Idiot: The Latest On Hillary Clinton’s Culpability In Benghazi

Democracy, Feminism, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Intelligence, The State

Today came confirmation, in the form of a promised comprehensive progress report on Benghazi, of what I had prognosticated back in November, 2012.

“In the fullness of time … it will transpire that the woman who crack[ed] the whip at Foggy Bottom had decided to leave the U.S. embassy in Libya undefended.
The open community center [Hillary Clinton] was running there was meant to signal that the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, was a success. (Recall, Libya was a war of the womb, a product of the romantic minds of three women who fantasized about an Arab awakening. This estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids began, as in Greek mythology, with the Gorgon sisters. Medusa’s posse included Samantha Power, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. They helped Hillary devise the casus belli for the war.)”

It takes a village idiot, and state immunity, to run an “open community center” in a country you’ve turned into Jihad Central.

Released today and reported by Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, the Benghazi report, which will likely be ignored by most media, is so fresh and damning—that it is still unavailable online.

I will post a link as soon as one becomes available. Send one if you have one.

UPDATE I: Via Fox News: “Report: WH Altered Benghazi Talking Points to Protect State Department”:

Researchers for five Republican-controlled House committees have come out with a scathing indictment of the Obama administration’s response to the September 11, 2012 terror attack in Benghazi.
Jennifer Griffin reports that the 46-page progress report concludes that the administration’s response was a concerted attempt to insulate the Department of State from blame following the attack.

“Findings in the report include”:

“Prior to the Benghazi attacks, State Department officials in Libya made repeated requests for additional security that were denied in Washington despite ample documentation of the threat posed by violent extremist militias.”
“Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton.”
“In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.”

UPDATE II: Text of the “Interim Progress Report,” with thanks to Mr. Love on Facebook.