Gary Johnson Hates Liberty and Freedom

Quick question: which of the current candidates running for President of the United States issued the following statement last year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?

“As we all pause this weekend to remember the events of September 11, 2001, our thoughts are with those who lost their lives, those who saved so many lives, and a nation that showed its greatness in countless ways. 9/11 and the days after were a time when ordinary Americans did extraordinary things. Our thoughts and our gratitude are also with the amazing men and women of our military who are putting themselves on the line every day to keep us safe. The fight against those who would do us harm continues today, and it is a fight we must carry out with the same determination that was so magnificently displayed by the heroes of 9/11.

“America is about liberty. Ten years ago, liberty was attacked. To those who lost their lives and those many more whose lives were forever changed, our deep obligation is to insure that liberty prevails not just today, but for generations to come.”

So was it job-exporting, Wall Street oligarch Willard Mitt Romney? Or was it Patriot Act-loving, American-citizen assassinating President Hopey-Changey? Wrong, Natch. It was, in fact, Libertarian candidate for president and supposed lover of human freedom Gary Johnson.

Whatever else you may think about the events of 9/11, and I am not here to get into a debate about whether it was an inside job or anything like that, it must be stated that no singular event in American history has caused a greater curtailment of civil liberties and human freedom than our government's out of control reaction to it. Two unnecessary wars of choice that have massacred hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, the establsihment of concentration camp in Gunatanamo Bay, a world wide campaign of assassination without trial, the acceptance of torture as a legitimate use of government power, drone missile strikes abroad, drone surveillance at home and the enactment of the Patriot Act are merely the highlights of a systemic program representing a far greater attack on "liberty" than anything Osama bin Laden and his minions could have whipped up in their wildest dreams.

I've been on record here stating that I do not plan to participate in the upcoming sham election this November, but if I did go to the polls it would be to at least cast a ballot against the two oligarch-approved candidates by voting third party. With a statement like the one above, however, that could have come from one of the horrible speeches at the recently concluded Republican and Democratic National conventions, Gary Johnson has placed himself squarely on the side of our oppressors and thus is unworthy of support by anyone who REALLY cares about liberty.

So what should Governor Johnson have said instead? How about something along these lines:

"As we pause to remember the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States and to appreciate again the actions of the heroic first responders who gave their lives on that awful day, we must also reexamine ourselves and question whether our nation's collective response during this past decade to those attacks have been appropriate or consistent with a nation that supposedly values liberty.

"We must strive to curtail the abuse of liberty by immediately ending all foreign occupations, closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, vigorously prosecuting the use of torture, repealing the Patriot Act, ending assassinations without trial and stopping the use of drone missiles to carry out random attacks abroad and drone aircraft to conduct domestic surveillance. Only by respecting the human rights and dignity of all of the world's people and the Constitutional rights of our own citizens here at home may we possibly hope to maintain the ideals of liberty and freedom that the founders of this great nation bestowed upon us."

After all, if you can't trust the Libertarian Party to support liberty, whom can you trust?


Bonus: "Whether your state is red or is blue...always be wary of people who rule"

Nazi Germany’s Example and the Future of America (Part 2)

In the first part of this essay last Friday, I briefly recounted the history of Nazi Germany’s final years and how Hitler’s government managed to stave off collapse well past the point where the world war became a hopeless quest by marshalling all of the resources still available to the nation. The takeaway is that even though the inevitability of eventual collapse may have been as apparent to any rational observer then as it should be in America today, when it comes to extending the status quo for as long as humanly possible, rationality usually finds itself locked out in the cold.

In part two, I would like to examine what life is like for an average citizen living under a regime that is beginning to see its delusions of grandeur crumbling into dust. Once again, we can look to Hitler’s Germany for clues as to what our own future may well hold. Many people with only a superficial grasp of Nazi Germany’s history seem to have the idea that Hitler simply took power, snapped his fingers, and unleashed the Holocaust. The reality, however, is far more complex. Though life for Germany’s Jews was certainly precarious once Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, their situation in fact only slowly deteriorated and it was not until 1942—more than two years after World War Two began—that the Final Solution became the official policy of the German government. In fact, by the time Reinhard Heydrich called the Wannsee Conference in January of that year, sealing their fate once and for all, the tide of war was already beginning to turn inexorably against the Nazis.

The lesson here is again fairly simple: governments become more repressive during times of national crisis, and that repression increases as the situation becomes more desperate. Looking back at some of the greatest assaults on individual liberties throughout American history—the Alien and Sedition Acts in the late 1790s, the suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War, the imprisonment of antiwar protestors during World War I, the Palmer raids during the first wave of Red scares, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the McCarthy hearings early in the Cold War, the Kent State shootings when the Vietnam War had become a hopeless quagmire and waterboarding, rendition, and warrantless wiretapping during the “War” on Terror—shows that they all occurred at a time when America was either actively at war or feared it was about to be attacked.

What is even more illustrative than the Holocaust in the case of Nazi Germany is the repression the regime unleashed against many Aryan Germans once defeat became inevitable. The Nazi regime was built on terror, of course, and many communists, labor unionists, Social Democrats and others deemed “undesirable” were rounded up after Hitler’s ascension to power to be beaten and tortured in the first concentration camps. What is less well remembered is that after the regime had successfully placed its boot heel on the necks of the German populace, many of the concentration camp inmates were released, and by the late 1930s, only a relatively small number of Germans were still suffering “indefinite detention.”

The fact is, if you were a non-Nazi “Good German” during this time—law abiding, able bodied, willing to work and not too vociferous in your complaints about the nation’s leadership—the first seven years or so of Hitler’s rule must have seemed like a glorious time to be alive. Even after Hitler launched the war and chronic shortages of nearly every consumer good became endemic, for awhile you could at least take national pride in the seemingly never ending stream of German military successes. In fact, unless you were one of the unlucky souls slogging it out in the brutal combat of the eastern front, it was only after the defeat at Stalingrad and the appearance of American and Royal Air Force bombers overhead with relentless regularity that your quality of life really began to suffer.

The Nazi leadership was not blind to this importance of morale on the home front. Because one of the key memes used by Hitler during his rise to power was the so-called “stab in the back,” when the “traitors” supposedly turned on Kaiser Wilhelm at the end of World War One, the SS’s intelligence service was forever monitoring the mood of the population, determined to stamp out any such “insurrection” before it had a chance to threaten the regime. By 1944, an ill-advised casual joke told about Der Fuhrer overheard by the wrong person could result in its teller being swiftly bundled off to a concentration camp.

Worse still, by early 1945 when the Russian tanks were already closing in on Berlin, fervent Nazis took to the streets and began summarily hanging anyone they considered to be a “defeatist” or a “deserter.” One might view their actions in light of the looming total defeat as insanity, but they did ensure that the German people continued to at least passively accept the regime right up until the very moment when their own city or town was “liberated” by the Allies.

Just as many Nazis refused to accept the approaching reality that their nation had been totally defeated in war, most Americans today refuse to accept that our “way of life” is not only negotiable but in fact completely unsustainable and already unraveling. From this perspective, it is hard not to hear someone spout the idiotic phrase, “Drill, baby, drill” without thinking of how it in spirit resembles the “Horst Wessel Song.”

While it is hyperbolic to say that America is already an authoritarian regime, it is not too difficult to see where the trends of this past decade are heading. As our economic decline continues we can expect that there will be a corresponding increase in the curtailment of individual liberties. The supreme irony is that as growing energy restraints force the Pentagon to begin dismantling its overseas empire of military bases, political repression will likely be increasing here at home.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you should expect to wake up one day and see a squadron of jackboots goose-stepping down your street. When overt repression finally comes to American streets and towns beyond putting down Occupy protests it will more likely be, as we are starting to see already, in the form of electronic monitoring, internal check points and surveillance drones, augmented by a healthy number of informants planted among the citizenry. Don’t be surprised if “hoarding” gets placed on the list of “subversive” activities, which is all the more reason preppers would be well advised to keep their activities as low key as possible.

The most amusing thing about many Americans’ messianic belief in our “exceptionalism” is the idea that this country is somehow different in behavior than any other nation-state or empire in world history despite all of the evidence to the contrary. As the reality of our predicament becomes more and more undeniable in the coming years, we’re about to find out that many of us have merely been “Good Germans” all along and that being so won’t save us from inclusion in the eventual Gotterdammerung.


Bonus: From my You Tube channel - A cool song about domestic spying (yes, really)

Preventive Detention In Obama's America

Still think it matters whether Obama or Romney wins the election this November? If so, then please explain this, as reported by the Examiner.com:

According to an interview with National Lawyers Guild (NLG) spokesman Kris Hermes, Chicago police officers raided a Bridgeport apartment complex on Wednesday evening without a valid warrant and detained up to nine people without cause.

The NLG is working in Chicago this week sending monitors to protests at the NATO Summit 2012 to insure activists rights are not violated. They are also functioning as lawyers for anyone detained during the week's activities.

The NLG worked through the night to locate the arrested activists. They were unable to get any information from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) or even any acknowledgement that a raid had taken place.

"We've called police officials at every level trying to find out where they were being held. We were denied any information at all about any people being arrested, let alone a raid happening last night. So essentially these people were disappeared for more than 12 hours until we could finally locate them," said NLG spokesman Kris Hermes.

They were found at the CPD Organized Crime Division police station lock up at 3340 W. Fillmore St. on the West Side.

Lawyers from The NLG were allowed to meet with nine individuals and reported that they were in low spirits, confused about why they were arrested and shackled at both their hands and feet at the meeting. No charges have been filed against them almost 24 hours after their arrest and an Illinois States Attorney at the station refused to meet with the NLG lawyers.

And spare me any bullshit about this being a local matter out of Obama's control. He is from Chicago and his former chief of staff is now Chicago's mayor, meaning he absolutely could influence what happens in that city if he wanted to. The fact is, he doesn't give a shit about civil liberties any more than his predecessor did, and if you vote for him in November thinking that he is somehow on your side you are seriously delusional.

Update: It's now being reported that three "terrorism" arrests have been made in Chicago, though it is unclear if the three detainees are connected to the incident reported above:

Three men loosely connected with the NATO protests have been arrested in Chicago for planning terror attacks on major police stations and businesses downtown, as well as President Obama's campaign headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house.

Brian Church, 20, Jared Chase, 24, and Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, have been charged with criminal acts relating to terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and possession of explosives. The three were arrested Wednesday evening after a raid on a Chicago apartment found them loading Molotov cocktails into the back of a truck. According to court documents, the four had travelled to Chicago from out of town ahead of the NATO protests. They spent the days leading up to the weekend training themselves and planning their course of attack. Their plans for the weekend included:

According to court documents, the men planned to first attack four Chicago police stations and destroy several squad cars with "destructive devices" in order to divert the department’s attention and resources.

While authorities were distracted by those strikes, the group intended to hit Obama’s national campaign headquarters in the Prudential Building, Emanuel’s home in Ravenswood and other downtown financial institutions, prosecutors said. The group had already done reconnaissance work on the Chicago Police Department headquarters in Bronzeville in preparation for the attack, law-enforcement officials said.

Law enforcement records say the police confiscated, "four completed Molotov cocktails... a mortar gun, swords, a hunting bow, throwing stars and knives with brass knuckle handles," plus protective equipment like, "pre-positioned shields, assault vests and gas masks to help hide their identity during the planned attacks," according to the Chicago Tribune. "These men were here to hurt people," said the state's attorney Anita Alvarez. “The individuals we charged are not peaceful protesters, they are domestic terrorists,” said Alvarez.

But the lawyers in charge of defending the three men are alleging they're being set up by the Chicago police department. According to the New York Times report on the story, the lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild in charge of defending the three are going to argue for entrapment. They say a man and a woman who were either informants or undercover officers came up with the plans and provided the three men charged with the explosive equipment.

If this is part of the same action, even if the police account is true, that is some pretty weak tea. We are really supposed to believe that these guys were going to make a direct assault on the massive security wall surrounding Obama or Emmanuel with such puny weaponry?


Bonus: "I've got no patience now...so sick of complacence now"

Police Armored Vehicle Purchase Causes Uproar in New Hampshire Town

image: Keene, New Hampshire, don't need no stinkin' tanks for its police force

Here is a story from the Huffington Post with multiple storylines, all of which are indicators of just what is wrong with America these days. First up, you have the ongoing unwarranted militarization of local police forces:

"We're going to have our own tank."

That's what Keene, N.H., Mayor Kendall Lane whispered to Councilman Mitch Greenwald during a December city council meeting.

It's not quite a tank. But the quaint town of 23,000 -- scene of just two murders since 1999 -- had just accepted a $285,933 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to purchase a Bearcat, an eight-ton armored personnel vehicle made by Lenco Industries Inc.

But those plans are on hold for now, thanks to a backlash from feisty residents. Resistance began with Mike Clark, a 27-year-old handyman. Clark, who said he's had a couple encounters with Keene police and currently faces a charge of criminal mischief, read about the Homeland Security grant in the newspaper. "The police are already pretty brutal," Clark said, claiming he was roughed up in both his encounters with local police. "The last thing they need is this big piece of military equipment to make them think they're soldiers."

Then you have municipal governments who often conduct their business in almost complete secrecy because of public apathy:

Clark's father, Terry Clark, is on the Keene City Council, and so far the only council member to publicly oppose the Bearcat. But Mike Clark said he knows how the council works. "They can pass these things without any public discussion," Clark said. "And you don't hear about them until they've already passed. But if you collect enough signatures, you can force them to reconsider the motion." Clark did just that, collecting more than 500 signatures opposing the Bearcat.

Throw in a federal government that has run up over five trillion in additional debt during just the past four years alone somehow still giving out massive amounts of money for such boondoggles:

Since the 1990s, the Pentagon has made military equipment available to local police departments for free or at steep discounts. This, along with drug war-related policies, has spurred a trend toward a more militarized domestic police force in America. Law enforcement and elected officials have argued for years that better-armed, high-powered police departments are needed to fight the war on drugs.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the war on terror has accelerated the trend toward militarization. Homeland Security hands out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns, many specifically to buy military-grade equipment from companies like Lenco. In December, the Center for Investigative Reporting reported that Homeland Security grants totalled $34 billion, and went to such unlikely terrorism targets as Fargo, N.D.; Fon du Lac, Wisc.; and Canyon County, Idaho. The report noted that because of the grants, defense contractors that long served the Pentagon exclusively have increasingly turned looked to police departments, hoping to tap a "homeland security market" expected to reach $19 billion by 2014.

Shake well, and when you're done you'll get one of the most hateable statements from a contemptable Corporate Flack I've read yet:

Jim Massery, the government sales manager for Pittsfield, Mass.-based Lenco, dismissed critics who wonder why a town with almost no crime would need a $300,000 armored truck. "I don't think there's any place in the country where you can say, 'That isn't a likely terrorist target,'" Massery said. "How would you know? We don't know what the terrorists are thinking. No one predicted that terrorists would take over airplanes on Sept. 11. If a group of terrorists decide to shoot up a shopping mall in a town like Keene, wouldn't you rather be prepared?"

Massery said Keene's anti-Bearcat citizens deliberately mischaracterize how the vehicle would be used, and pointed to incidents he said have saved police officers' lives. "When you see some Palestinian terrorist causing problems in Jerusalem, what do you usually see next? You see a tank with a cannon show up outside the guy's house, and the tank blows the house to smithereens. When a Lenco Bearcat shows up at a crime scene where a suicidal killer is holding hostages, it doesn't show up with a cannon. It shows up with a negotiator. Our trucks save lives. They save police lives. And I can't help but think that the people who are trying to stop this just don't think police officers' lives are worth saving."

Keene residents opposed to the Bearcat point to a video Lenco uses to market the vehicle to police departments. (See below.) The video doesn't stress negotiation, but shows the vehicle being used aggressively. The video viewpoint is similar to that of a shooter role-playing game, set to the AC/DC song "Thunderstruck." Cops dressed in camouflage tote assault weapons, pile in and out of the vehicle, and take aim at targets from around and behind the vehicle. They attach a battering ram to the front of the vehicle, break through the front door of a house, then inject tear gas. The Keene city council barred Clark from showing the video at the February committee meeting, and LENCO has since removed the video from publicly-accessible pages of its website.

"That video is totally irrelevant," Massery said. "We used some Hollywood effects and slick marketing to promote our product. So what?"

But hey, it's "free," right? So what the hell?

Some city council members have said that because the vehicle will be paid for by a federal grant, the town would be foolish not to take it. O'Meara doesn't buy it. "They try to say it's 'free.' Well it isn't free. Taxpayers are still paying to put this militaristic thing in our town. And it isn't about the money, anyway. It's about what kind of town we want to be."

And, after all of that, we get to the real problem afflicting not just Keene, New Hampshire, but the entire country these days:

The Keene city council will take up the issue again next month. Massery predicted opposition from Keene residents will ultimately be in vain. "We have Bearcats in 90 percent of the 100 or so largest cities in America," Massery said. "This is going to happen. It has already happened. To resist now would be like saying police officers should scrap the Glock and go back to the revolver. It's a fantasy."

Yep...when it comes to a battle between corporate profits and democracy these days, corporate profits always win. That's the part of the whole "personal liberty" equation rigid-minded Libertarians like Ron Paul never seem to get.

God Bless America, and be sure to bow down in welcome for our new corproate overlords when the jackboots and their fucking tank coming marching down your street.


Bonus: Dedicated to Lenco Government Sales Manager Jim Massery...I think we now know who the thieves are in this case

Government Waste Porn: $45 Million Down the Drain in Illinois Homeland Security Boondoggle

The sad fact is that during much of this past decade, while the federal debt levels were exploding to previously unprecedented heights, you could get the green light from the feds on just about any dumbass project as long as you tied it somehow into combating terrorism. The latest example of just how all those gobs of money thrown at Homeland Security were being pissed down the sewer was reported the other day by the Chicago Sun Times:

Project Shield was supposed to make citizens safer. But in the end, the $45-million Homeland Security program more resembled a disaster, wasting taxpayers’ dollars and failing to make a single citizen more secure.

The failed Cook County initiative was replete with equipment that failed to work, missing records and untrained first responders according to a report by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The report, to be released Monday but obtained by The Sun-Times and NBC5 News, found “millions of tax dollars may have been wasted.”

Under Project Shield, two police squad cars in all 128 Cook County suburbs were to be fitted with cameras capable of feeding live video to a central command. In addition, fixed mounted cameras were to be installed to feed pictures in case of a terrorist attack or emergency in Cook County.

A six-month investigation by the IG found “equipment was not working, was removed, or could not be properly operated.”

Investigators visited 15 municipalities between January and June last year and found “missing records, improper procurement practices, unallowable costs and unaccountable inventory items.”

Funny how no one connected with this boondoggle thought to question why it should cost $45 million dollars to set up some stupid surveillance cameras. Surely, they could have moseyed on down to the local Radio Shack and gotten a better fucking deal than this.

The report goes on:

Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grants were funneled from DHS to the State and on to Cook County. The report concludes, “FEMA did not adequately ensure that the State of Illinois effectively monitored Cook County’s expenditures...”

And questions remain. “Both FEMA and the State need to improve the review process and perform better oversight,” according to the IG, adding proposed actions to better monitor how funds are spent “remains unresolved and open.”

Another open question might be why no one is sitting in jail for having perpetrated this act of criminal stupidity. But we can't have actual accountability in this country because then there would be no one left to make such idiotic decisions in the first place.


Bonus: Lewis Black isn't a big a fan of FEMA

Snow Cones for Homeland Security

There was a time in my life when I was an aspiring fiction writer. Mysteries specifically. Sadly, I had just enough talent to know how much I sucked...kind of like Salieri beholding Mozart, actually. I seem to do a bit better at this Gonzo Journalism thing I've got going on now. I might never be able to make people forget the late good Dr. Thompson, but whatever.

One thing I've come to realize about my former ambition to be a fiction writer as I've gotten older is that my imagination, while fertile, is just not expansive enough to compete with reality. For example, you could have chained me in a room with a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years and I never would have written anything this absurd:

The United States is fighting terrorism — one snow cone at a time.

Montcalm County recently received a $900 Arctic Blast Sno-Cone machine.

The West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission (WMSRDC) is a federal- and state-designated agency responsible for managing and administrating the homeland security program in Montcalm County and 12 other counties.

The WMSRDC recently purchased and transferred homeland security equipment to these counties — including 13 snow cone machines at a total cost of $11,700.

The machines were funded by a grant from the Michigan Homeland Security Program. The request for a snow cone machine came from another county, but all 13 counties received them.

Really, if you're a fiction writer you need to give it up. How can you possibly compete with the idea of a country where the national debt just topped $15 trillion, and where teachers, firefighters and police officers are being laid off in huge numbers, buying sno-cone machines with Homeland Security funds?

So what was the justification for this purchase? Uh, you might want to sit down for this:

“It is used to attract people so they can be educated and prepared for homeland security,” Dey said from his office in Muskegon. “More importantly, they (homeland security officials) felt in a medical emergency the machine was capable of making ice packs which could be used for medical purposes.”

Really? People need to be bribed with a snow cone in order to pay attention to bullshit Homeland Security propaganda? And when all of the first responders get laid off, who is going to be left to administer the ice packs?

I take back what I said about fiction writers. Matt Groening, please step forward and claim your prize, for we have truly become a nation full of Homer Simpsons. "Mmmmmmm...snow cones"


Bonus: "If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough"