Showing posts with label US_Constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US_Constitution. Show all posts

3 June 2016

Soldiers don't fight for your freedoms

The Blog


We owe "our freedoms" to the government and the soldiers and thugs it commands around killing people (including its own people). So will say your government, various prostituted scribblers in the press, and self-justifying murderers who otherwise can't bear to look in their bloodied mirror.


Constantly repeated in the media, post-9/11 in particular, is this view that the threat to Americans' "freedom" always emanated from foreign rulers - Hitler, Saddam, etc. Even more absurd is the idea that Middle Eastern terrorists are a new threat to freedom in the US, although they have made no real or imagined moves to overturn the US Constitution or seize power in the US.

 In the meantime, the US government robs people of their freedoms, spying on them all and treating them all as the enemy. Even the people working for the US government are not exempt, being kept on a controversial "insider threat" database for having the slightest dissenting views from the regime.

 One think tank contributor argues that in fact the threat to one's Constitutional liberties (in the US in any case) has always been the government itself.

Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society pointed out in a recent short article that "Our civil liberties are fundamentally protections, not against foreign countries, but against the government that claims to represent us right here at home." He rejected Charles Province's 1970 poem "The Soldier", often used in Memorial Day ceremonies, as "cringingly stupid" for crediting members of the US Military rather than dissidents and campaigners for winning people's freedoms.

Carson corrects the record for Americans, writing, "it’s the dissidents, the hell-raisers, the dirty flag-burning hippies, the folks with bad attitudes towards authority in general, who have given us our rights throughout history, by fighting for them".

So no, soldiers don't fight for your freedoms - unless you are talking about some ex-soldiers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who know who the real enemy is.


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17 May 2016

GOP's stupid "third party" backup plan

The Blog


Authored on May 14, a short analysis at the Garrison Center responds to the US Republican Party elite's last-ditch effort to escape Donald Trump's triumph over them by funding a new independent candidate.


The short article questions, ostensibly from the GOP's point of view, whether such a move would suit their goals. "The draft effort’s reputed short list includes Ohio governor John Kasich and US Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE)", the piece notes.

Such a plan is a "very bad idea" if the Republicans want any chance of winning the actual election, author Thomas Knapp states. To put it shortly, "Two well-funded, ably promoted Republican candidates on the same ballots means a Democratic win". GOP elites, meanwhile, are so concerned with their own infighting that they may be unable to focus on actually winning the White House. They are worried to see Trump "displacing them in their role as Pied Pipers", Knapp writes.

Another possible reason for a Republican "third party" backup plan stated by Knapp might be to avoid real third parties such as the Libertarians or constitutionalists experiencing a boom in membership, in the wake of alienation of GOP supporters caused by Trump.

In conclusion, the post points out how artificial such a third candidate would be if the GOP elite chooses to back him as an alternative to Trump, and "A fake third party campaign won’t save the GOP".


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6 May 2016

Govt can make you unlock your phone

The Blog


Noting the arrival of "biometric" authentication methods on smartphones, Garrison Center Director Thomas L. Knapp argues it "comes with a cost".


The focus here is on using one's fingerprint to unlock one's phone. Considering rulings in Virginia and California that you can be "forced to put your finger on the phone to unlock it", the technology is being used as an excuse for US authorities to violate the Constitution in new ways.

As explained by Knapp, "Giving the police access to your phone is no different than telling them about every call you made". This goes against the strong components of the law that prevent you from "testifying against yourself, which you cannot constitutionally be required to do."

The state is normally limited in when and how it can coerce individuals to incriminate themselves. For example, "If the door is locked, they can break it down, but you don’t have to unlock it for them. If they find your hidden compartment full of evidence, they find it. But you don’t have to show them where it is, or even tell them that it exists."

What will you do about the increasing use of biometric data, when you know you can be coerced to unlock your property using it? For now, Knapp advises you need to "secure your phone with a long and complex pass code, not with your fingerprint."


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1 December 2015

Obama to fail on Gtmo closure promise

The Blog


Writing at Examiner.com, human rights expert and Mont society member Deborah Dupre criticized US President Barack Obama's weakness on his former promise to close the Guantanamo Bay torture camp still maintained by the US regime.


In a short report, Dupre said Obama's existing rationale for blocking the insidious National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was "short of what constitutional and human rights defenders view appropriate". From the report:
Obama's stated rationale... neglects constitutional and human rights issues. It was about funding "national security" and economics. In what constituted treason and flagrant breach of human rights, according to rights groups, the NDAA stripped Americans of their constitutional rights like no other legal document in history...
Following Obama's veto against the legislation, critics claimed that Obama needs to do more than simply prevent more excessive national security legislation. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) claimed "lawmakers’ attempts to keep Guantánamo open for partisan political gain are no excuse for President Obama’s failure to close the prison". In sum, Obama should fulfill his promise to actually close the camp, and not try to merely battle those trying to make America's national security state even more pervasive and dangerous.

Dupre claims that Obama is unable to pressure the political will to close Guantanamo Bay. Further, she adds, "If he doesn’t take bold steps now, he will fail to close Guantánamo", tainting his legacy as the US President.


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17 November 2015

UK govt assassins get bombed by op-ed

The Blog


The killing of Mohammed Emwazi, so-called Jihadi John, by the UK government without a trial is a terrible precedent that opens the door to arbitrary executions by the British state.


Certainly, sentiments that he was a "scumbag" who deserved death or worse for his involvement in the Takfiri militant group ISIL were not misplaced. However, that isn't a sufficient reason for society to throw the law out the window and just trust the government to kill whoever it wants.

Such behavior by the assassins of the British government was recently struck hard in an op-ed by Steve Topple for Common Space, published 13 November. He accused the UK's ruling Conservative regime of demagoguery, using a "self-defense" argument and emotional appeals to the population to justify extrajudicial killings.

The killing, Topple says, shows that the UK government can now summarily execute anyone and not be held accountable. He wrote that the state is now "saying that they can decide who among their citizens are classed as 'threats', summarily do away with them first and then ask the questions later."

Describing the illegal assassinations by the British and American regimes as "psychopathy", the op-ed gave the following warning for all readers to consider:
The precedent it (and the killings of Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin in September) sets should not be underestimated. Who, in the next few years, will be deemed as a threat to national security, requiring action in 'self-defence'? The Marxist PKK in Turkey? The socialist coalition in Portugal which has just overthrown the right-wing government? Domestic extremist Jenny Jones of the Green Party?
As with out-of-control surveillance of the population, the hand of the assassins has been freed by Western governments to kill with impunity, on the basis that the population is sufficiently frightened by the "terror threat" that they'll allow the government to do anything. Ironically, Western regimes make constant references to preserving the "rule of law" to defeat terrorism, but are not afraid to break the law themselves.

In the US, the people are so determined to protect their Constitution from "foreign" enemies that they don't notice their own government violating it on a daily basis.


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30 October 2015

US targets its own people instead of ISIS

The Blog


The US government is more concerned by its own people than foreign terrorist threats such as the so-called ISIL Takfiri terrorist group, the founder of We Are Change has alleged.


Luke Rudkowski, founder of the American grassroots alternative media team We Are Change, has lashed out attempts to label his organization an extremist group. In one video, he confronted mainstream media journalist Chris Matthews for using just such a description of his organization. The video shows a stumped Matthews refusing to answer questions about his slander of the media activist group, and trying to flee.

In a stunning analysis in a different video, Luke Rudkowski connected the mainstream media attack on his organization with the US Department of Justice's "pivot" away from foreign terror groups like ISIL towards its own people. Much of this attack, Luke says, will consist of misrepresenting progressive or nonpartisan groups who merely criticize the US government as "racist" and "bigots", as Matthews did in a televised broadcast mentioning We Are Change.



Fixated on what it sees as the internal threat of vigilant armed Americans and Americans exercising other Constitutional rights such as their free speech, elements of the US government would like to abandon the almost farcical few airstrikes the US carries out against ISIL. Their idea is to focus instead on targeting Americans, who are described as "domestic terrorists" in the regime's clouded language of murder and deceit.


Vowing never to stop his reporting, no matter what threats and intimidation come from the US federal government, Luke described the regime as "power-hungry parasites" and "insane". The final portion of the video called for viewers to counter the regime's lies by tuning in to his videos and other media.


The momentum of US efforts to censor criticism of the regime appears to be growing, and alternates between calls to prosecute Americans for speaking to shutting down foreign news broadcasters. A think tank led by US Senator John McCain recently called for alternative media channels like the RT network to be taken off the air in the US. While the think tank described its agenda as stopping "propaganda" from Russia's President Vladimir Putin, it must be seen in view of the larger pressure to censor all alternative media and criticism of the regime.


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2 October 2015

Catholic Church should take on the NSA

The Blog


The L'Ordre blog based at the top world faith press source Beliefnet called on the Roman Catholic Church to strike back at the US government for its spying.


The Roman Catholic Church has secrets, such as what the L'Ordre blog called the "machinations of succession" within the Church. When the US National Security Agency (NSA) spied on such activities, it violated centuries of Catholic tradition and directly committed sacrilege within the property of the Church. This was the argument given in a recent post at Beliefnet.

Calling the NSA's spying against Pope Francis as "aggression at a diplomatic, military, political level", the blog said this should not go unanswered by the Vatican. The blog noted the great wealth of the Roman Catholic Church and suggested legal action would be the way to resolve the conflict. The NSA's offenses should be "challenged in the highest courts in the land", the blog argued.

In addition to this analysis, the blog characterized the "wall of separation" between church and state as failing because government has become too aggressive in its surveillance and meddling in civil society. While churches are shy to do anything that might be interpreted as political, the government has no hesitation about invading, offending and hurting churches on a daily basis.

The conclusion of the post said that the targeting of the Catholic Church proves  the US is not only going after Muslims, but will target any religious group it distrusts. It is setting a precedent that can and will violate the Constitution if it wants to monitor or incarcerate a religious sect.

What the US government has done by targeting religions and thwarting their privacy is one of many mounting blatant violations of its own Constitution.

The full post can be read and shared via social media at Beliefnet.


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8 September 2015

US Black protesters to receive weapons?

The Blog


Writing at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS), analyst Ryan Calhoun praised an initiative by a local chapter of the Oath Keepers militia to arm protesters in Missouri with assault rifles.


The Oath Keepers are a decentralized militia in the United States who conform to a libertarian interpretation of the United States Constitution. While Calhoun noted that adherence to the Constitution is not a perfect ideology, with the Constitution itself being responsible for some historic injustices like slavery at certain times, he noted that more faithful adherence to the Constitution may result in a better regime in the United States at this juncture.

The national leadership of the Oath Keepers has continued to hold a "colonial" attitude towards its relationship with the Black communities most subjected to injustice by police forces in Missouri, seeing its role as the defense of businesses from the "rioters", as the American regime prefers to call Black protesters. The local chapter of the group in Missouri, however, has other intentions.

"The Missouri Chapter of Oath Keepers want to arm 50 black protestors with AR-15s", Calhoun points out, and this has caused a kind of schism within the Oath Keepers, as the chapter would prefer to arm the Black community and enable it to defend itself from police brutality rather than simply backing up the police state for the sake of protecting businesses.

Calhoun praised any move to arm the police-occupied Black community for the purpose of "handing over the power of a rifle to men and women who we, as a society, have stripped of the right to self-determination".

Whether or not the Missouri Chapter's efforts succeed, the next time the US police state tries to forcibly suppress protests, the regime might not just have to watch out for Black protesters but for militias of all races who recognize the plight of this minority and its need for armed defense.


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