Category Archives: Terrorism

Satan’s Little Republican Helper

Journalism, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Terrorism, The State

No wonder Republican Peter King ((R-NY) is gunning for former Salon journalist Glenn Greenwald, who facilitated Edward Snowden’s disclosures to the British Guardian about the NSA. (At the behest of Obama, the NSA has been eavesdropping on half the country with the aid of meta-data sweeps.)

Greenwald had done much to expose King as “one of President Obama’s most outspoken defenders and supporters,” when it comes to the violation of civil liberties (individual rights being the better term).

Via Jake Tapper (who credits his bare-bones report with being an “analysis”):

King told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday that he thinks the journalist should be prosecuted.
“If they willingly knew this was classified information, I think actions should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude,” said King.
“I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral and also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security,” said King.
In response, Greenwald tweeted, “Is it true, as I was just told, that Peter King on CNN called for criminal prosecution of journalists reporting the NSA stories?”

The real news here is that CNN alpha female Anderson Cooper has assented to covering some news, as opposed to camping at the site of a riot or a shooting or a natural disaster or a baby/dog/cat/horse rescue to solicit sob-stories.

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.)

The Grey Lady Shakes Off A Flea Or Two

Barack Obama, Media, Technology, Terrorism

The “august” NYT EDITORIAL BOARD has finally taken a slightly less reverential, more cynical tone toward its godhead Obama, in light of “the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation.”

Wow. And what next? Will the NYT acknowledge that centralized power everywhere and always leads to tyranny?

Nah. Rest assured, the Grey Lady might have shaken off a flea or two, but the New York Times will continue to lie down with dogs (with apologies to dogs).

By the way, I already told you weeks back that there was absolutely nothing new about state snooping. “From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA”:

A pesky detail has eluded all those invincibly stupid special interests who’re piping up for the privacy of the press, as opposed to fighting for the privacy of all Americans. Have the various tele-lawyers, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and protesting members of the House Judiciary Committee forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, whose provisions were extended until December 31, 2017, by the people’s representatives?

There is nothing new about warrantless wiretapping—other than that the American people haven’t been particularly exercised about them. They’ve trusted Uncle Sam to go about this activity judiciously. Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against “United States persons.” Were a “United States person” to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without “judicial and congressional oversight,” puled the same perverts.
It’s not as if the National Security Agency (NSA) under George Bush was not accused of bypassing the courts to spy on the 43rd president’s many critics. It was! Sideshow “O,” however, has done Bush one better. Obama is using the FISA provisions against “friendlies.”

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.”)