Government Gone Wild

Government, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Liberty, The State

Government Gone Wild
By Myron Pauli

If there is one thing that I can guarantee, it is that “the government” does not listen to ME! In 1988, I was at an “intelligence community meeting” where they wanted a consensus over doing “engineering-level-drawings” of everything that “the Soviet Union” would be deploying 62 years later in 2050, when some dissident in the rear (me!) pointed out that 62 years ago, we did not know of “…the neutron, jets, transistors, computers, lasers, DNA, penicillin, inertial navigation ….” In frustration, I said, “We don’t even know if there will be a Soviet Union in 10 years!”. A USAF Colonel responded eloquently with “shut up!”

In fact, the government cannot be listening to most Americans. It certainly did not pay any attention to Major Nidal Hasan who was carrying on for months about killing Americans. The government could not even monitor that a buck private, Bradley Manning, was downloading 750,000 documents! Did they think he was a speed-reader?? Nor can the government listen to over 300,000,000 Americans – but it CAN archive everything – to be searched later, on any pretense. The odds of some nutcase Adam Lanza posting on FACEBOOK “I am going to shoot up P.S. 84” is remote and the odds of the NSA picking that up is even remoter.

After the fact, of course, they can datamine Tsardaev, Lanza, Ron Paul, Pope Francis, Glenn Greenwald or anyone of interest. And will millions of people having who-knows-what access to these databases, who-knows-what mischief can happen. The crucial issue, in my opinion, about Edward Snowden, who “outed” himself, is: Who else has access – how do we know that Putin and Xi are not accessing the American database on Americans – what could be more convenient to China but to tap into the database that the NSA updates – if Bradley Manning can do it, why not Xi? And since Uncle Sam shares intelligence with “our allies” – do they let the Germans spy on Americans while our government spies on Germans and share the data?

Keep in mind the old movie “All the Kings Men,” where corrupt Governor Willie Stark wanted this reporter to “get the dirt” on his enemy, Judge Stanton. How much easier with billions of dollars of computers and trillions upon trillions of bytes of information to access? Remember J. Edgar Hoover who had the goods on Presidents, Congressmen, and Martin Luther King? What a field day he would have nowadays.

But the ultimate tragedy is that most Americans care not a hoot for the Fourth Amendment or the rest of the constitution. Feeling safe is what counts. Arguably, locking up drunk drivers or all black men aged 14-34 might reduce drunk driving or reduce inner-city crime. But what is more appalling is how many Americans would support such odious rubbish in the name of “safety.”

“It can’t happen here? Ask the over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were locked up in “concentration camps” (FDR’s words!) without a shred of evidence and in clear violation of the 14th Amendment and supported by a Supreme Court decision, Korematsu v. US.

TSA, NSA, DEA, DHS, HHS, IRS, whatever – it is all an unaccountable bureaucratic maze – keeping track of the American subjects who vote for the same Congressmen and Presidents who promise use everything from “health care” to “security” to “world leadership” – everything but liberty (an abstraction that few have any understanding of). The problem is not Bush or Obama or Pelosi or Graham or “federal employees” or “contractors” but the Americans who empower this government gone wild.

As for monitoring “the enemy”: Walt “Pogo” Kelly said it best. “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

P.S.: I recommend that everyone watch “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

**************

Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

Man Up, World! Give An American Patriot Asylum

English, EU, Europe, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Morality, Terrorism, The State

The USA is still the biggest bully in the world. The BBC reports that “Mr. Snowden has already asked 21 countries for asylum, most of whom have turned down his request.” (This is the Queens’s English? I would have written, “Most of which.”)

The US has been blamed for being behind the decision by France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to close its airspace to Bolivia’s president, whose plane was grounded in Austria for 13 hours as a result. …Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro said it would give asylum to the intelligence leaker, who is believed to be holed up in a transit area of Moscow airport.

Let this young man live out his life in Venezuela, instead of in a US cage.

Those who’re not suspended in the moral abyss with mainstream media already know that Edward Snowden is the best of America. Let us prove ourselves worthy of his sacrifice. Come every Memorial Day—more aptly called “Dying For Nothing Day”—we direct a commonplace saying at members of a military that has not defended authentic American liberties for decades. It is, however, to a young man such as this that we should say:”Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden.”

Like son like father:

Edward Snowden’s father Lon Snowden, in an open letter co-authored with his lawyer, compared his son’s leaks to Paul Revere warning of incoming British troops, “summoning the American people to confront the growing danger of tyranny and one branch government.”
The letter, released to news organizations, lauded Edward Snowden as following the “honorable tradition” of “brave men and women refusing to bow to government wrongdoing or injustice, and exalting knowledge, virtue, wisdom, and selflessness over creature comforts as the North Star of life.”

UPDATED: Morsi, The Military: Egypt Is A Hot Mess (The Size of Discontent)

Democracy, Elections, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East

There are perhaps two not entirely unhappy conclusions to take away from the events underway in Cairo, Egypt. This week’s WND column, “Independence And The Declaration of Secession,” lamented that America has become a nation “of deracinated, fragmented and demoralized people, managed to their detriment by a despotic State.” (Updated here.)

The Egyptians, on the other hand, still have a redeeming quality, and it is a profound contempt for power. “Son of 60 dogs” is an Egyptian expression for a political master. This quality should serve them well.

The other thing I took away from listening to the more enlightened Egyptians of Tahrir Square is that many want what Americans once had thanks to their founders. Modern secular Egyptians are articulating a wish for a republic that safeguards minority rights, and not for a raw democracy in which those rights are subject to the whims and wishes of the majority, and where few are the issues that are not adjudicated by a national majority.

Moreover, while Americans have a hard time understanding the difference between a democracy and a republic, I get the impression that some Egyptians are hip to these distinctions.

Those who’ve been misled into believing that Morsi is not democratically legit, for what that’s worth, ought to be reminded that the Democratic Alliance for Egypt, “a coalition of political parties,” the largest party of which was the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party,” won the 2011-2012 election with 37.5% of the vote.

The runner-up was the Islamist Bloc, the “second largest political bloc in the parliament.” It was even more devout than The Brotherhood. It won 27.8% of the vote.

The nature of democracy and humanity is such that it is quite possible that their former supporters no longer back these parties. These supporters have realized, as Benjamin Barber put it, that “politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians”:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends.

Economic Policy Journal (EPJ) quotes Ron Paul’s on the Egyptian mess:

“A military coup in Egypt yesterday resulted in the removal and imprisonment of the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, a closure of media outlets sympathetic to him, the house arrest of his advisors, and the suspension of the constitution. The military that overthrew Morsi is the main recipient of the $1.3 billion yearly US aid package to Egypt. You could say that the US ‘owns’ the Egyptian military that just overthrew its democratically-elected leader. The hypocrisy of the US administration on these events in Egypt is stunning …”

“Let’s review US policy toward Egypt to see the foolish hypocrisy of the government’s interventionism,” write Paul:

“First the US props up the unelected Hosni Mubarak for decades, spending tens of billions of dollars to keep him in power. Then the US provides assistance to those who in 2011 successfully overthrew Mubarak. Then the US demands an election. The Egyptians held an election that was deemed free and fair and shortly afterward the US-funded military overthrows the elected president. Then the US government warns the military that it needs to restore democracy – the very democracy that was destroyed by military coup! All the while the US government will not allow itself to utter the word “coup” when discussing what happened in Egypt yesterday because it would mean they might have to stop sending all those billions of dollars to Egypt. ”

UPDATE (7/8): We now have some idea of the size of Egyptian discontent: “22 million …—a large number considering Egypt’s estimated population of 93 million people.” We got those numbers from revelation of a “signature-gathering campaign called ‘Tamarod’ or ‘Rebel.'”

I will write more, however, on western delusions of representation (my book already does this http://www.ilanamercer.com/newsite/into-the-cannibals-pot.php) in a future post. Suffice it to say that the Egyptians have a better idea than we in the West of how to remove their rulers. Game. Set. Match, Egyptian people.

UPDATED: Independence And The Declaration of Secession

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, libertarianism, Natural Law, Taxation

“Independence And The Declaration of Secession” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Tea party,” “patriot,” “Constitution,” and “Bill of Rights”: these keywords are the very stuff of the American Revolution, which took place during the last half of the 18th century. They are also some of the words that cued the “Infernal Revenue Service” (IRS) to target the philosophical descendants of the Revolutionaries, in 21st century America.

Had they been aware that in 2012 not all Americans are created equal, the targeted not-for-profit organizations, aiming to fly beneath the IRS radar, would have also avoided any references to “The Declaration of Independence,” whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate as Independence Day.

Ordinary Americans of a certain age are already in compliance with the anti-American program carried out by their government, Democratic or Republican. Having been conditioned by our country’s many Orwellian Ministries of Truth, they celebrate July 4th firecrackers, fire-sale prices and cookouts. The Declaration doesn’t feature. As this column once remarked, contemporary Americans are less likely to read The Declaration of Independence now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. As historian David Hackett Fischer recounted in “Liberty and Freedom,” printer John Dunlap had worked “through the night” to set the full text on “a handsome folio sheet.” And John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, urged that the “people be universally informed.”

And so the people were.

“From the beginning,” wrote James McClellan, “American Constitution-makers had the general support of their countrymen. The principles of government they espoused during the Revolution and implemented after the British surrender at Yorktown were widely shared in every town and village. It was on the basis of this remarkable consensus, this serene moment of creation, this fertile ground of American political experience, that the new Constitution was established.” (Page 59) …

The complete column is “Independence And The Declaration of Secession.” Read it on WND.

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Happy Independence Day.

UPDATE (7/5): LETTERS I LIKE.

The great historian of the South, Dr. Clyde Wilson:

From: Clyde Wilson
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 4:37 AM
To: Ilana Mercer
Subject:

Dear Lady, in re your Declaration of Independence column. In my last years of teaching I found that students not only had never read the Declaration (or the Constitution) but that they could not begin to understand them. They could only give canned responses. Sad but true.
Best wishes, Clyde Wilson

WND reader Steve Tanton:

• 5 hours ago @ WND Comments:

“Other than the short the article on July 1 in the Washington Times by Allen West, this is the most significant article on the true meaning of Independence Day that I have come across this year.”