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November 29, 2005
Storm Troopers in Miami
From the files of Police State, USA:
Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.
Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.
"This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there," Fernandez said.
The operations will keep terrorists off guard, Fernandez said. He said al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plot attacks by putting places under surveillance and watching for flaws and patterns in security.
Police Chief John Timoney said there was no specific, credible threat of an imminent terror attack in Miami. But he said the city has repeatedly been mentioned in intelligence reports as a potential target.
Link via Drudge, who, at this time, has on his home page a photo of the Miami police, looking like nothing so much as SS/KGB storm troopers.
Ask any conservative about the encroaching police state, however, and you will be told that you're a paranoid leftist who's with the terrorists.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2005
CDC Wants to Track All Travelers
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a phone-book-thick proposed rule yesterday that would give the federal government new powers to track the comings and goings of individual travelers and expand the circumstances under which passengers exposed to a serious communicable disease could be isolated or quarantined. . . .
The new provisions -- the costs of which would fall mostly on the travel industry -- call for greater scrutiny of passengers for signs of illness and greater efforts by airlines and others to obtain personal contact information from travelers. They also broaden the list of symptoms that would make people subject to quarantine. . . .
The proposed regulation requires airlines operating out of major airports and international cruise operators to request detailed contact information from passengers; maintain that information -- along with the passenger's seat location -- electronically for at least 60 days; and transmit it to the CDC within 12 hours of a request.
Would Americans submit to this? Of course they would, and the CDC knows it:
Officials said they are confident that the vast majority of Americans will support the changes so the government could better protect them from a major outbreak -- whether naturally occurring or from a bioterrorism attack.
After all, it's "for our own good" and "to protect us from terrorism." Who could possibly object?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
More on the Bush/al-Jazeera Story
The White House isn't denying the story outright. They're merely saying the charges are "outlandish" and "absurd," as in this response from Scott McClellan: "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response."
When a politician doesn't flatly deny something but merely dismisses the charges as ridiculous or politically motivated, there's a good chance the charges are true. (See Clinton, Bill.)
Also from that same MSNBC story is this interesting tidbit:
Meantime, NBC News analyst Bill Arkin says that while there is no military order to bomb any media outlet, the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha has been given responsibility for exploiting and disrupting the communications and computer systems of news media outlets worldwide.
All the better to keep the truth of Uncle Sam's "benevolent global hegemony" from getting out.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
All the News That's Fit to Bomb
PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.
But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.
A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency. . . .
The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.
In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.
For once Tony Blair served a useful purpose: restraining the warlike tendencies of George Dubya Lincoln.
(Thanks to Drudge for the link.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Yellowstoned National Park?
If this doesn't prove that the War on Drugs is a hopeless cause, nothing will:
Hikers in national parks such as Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon are encountering a danger more hazardous than bears: illegal marijuana farms run by Mexican drug cartels and protected by booby traps and guards carrying AK-47s.
National Park Service officials testified in Congress on Thursday that illegal drug production in national parks, forests and other federal lands had grown into a multibillion-dollar business in recent years -- mostly concentrated in California.
If the feds can't eradicate drugs on their own property--drugs protected by booby traps and armed guards, no less--then how in the world can they possibly eradicate drugs in the entire country?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:18 AM | Comments (1)
Americans "less enchanted" as Sole Superpower Says New Poll
Which was quite a blow for the poll’s sponsors the New York based Council on Foreign relations. The US role defending the turf of the multinational corporations and the oil companies as well as being the Global Policeman of the world is getting tiresome and expensive.
"I believe", said USMC Major General Smedley Butler in 1933, "in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag."
Who knows being an isolationist may again be hip and cool in American culture soon.
Sweden and Switzerland are both long standing neutralists in foreign affairs have not been in a war in nearly three hundred years, so don’t write me and say "Ali that policy is unworkable", OK? As that wise and much ballyhooed Founding Father Ben Franklin noted, "There never was a good war or a bad peace." Whether this advice is applicable in all circumstances or not I dunno. This policy used to be fashionable albeit with negative political consequences sometimes. However I for one am willing to give his advice a chance and see, eh?
Posted by Ali Massoud at 09:49 AM | Comments (1)
November 17, 2005
What Kind of Eye Never Blinks? The Surveillance Camera Mate!
From the UK Register comes word of this new anti-terror crime-fighting program. To wit:
"A "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that logs everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years is now being built, according to an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) strategy document leaked to the Sunday Times. The system, which will use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), and will be overseen from a control centre in Hendon, London, is a sort of 'Gatso 2' network, extending, enhancing and linking existing CCTV, ANPR and speedcam systems and databases."
It might actually help nab a crook or three, but on the other hand, the snoops will have real-time knowledge of where your car is 24/7 pretty much anywhere you go in urban England. And no doubt this program will spread to the rural locales of Albion shortly too, no doubt.
This kinda shit is enough to make you a Luddite. Or me anyhow.
(Thanks to Claire at Wolfesblog for this tidbit.)
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2005
Best Presidents Ever?
I have some nominees, in response to Douglas Herman's article on the worst of the worst to have occupied the Oval Office, for best POTUSA. My nominees are:
followed closely (pun intended) by
Mister, we could use a man like "Silent Cal" again!
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 12:18 PM | Comments (2)
November 14, 2005
And the World Didn't End!
On this day in history a decade ago, congressional Republicans and the Clinton administration, unable to agree on a budget, caused the US government to shut down. And nobody died and the world didn’t end either! Thanks for the reminder from Leon’s Political Almanac.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
Confessions of a Repentant War Supporter
This is the best antiwar column I've read in a long time. It gains potency from the fact that the author voted for Bush in 2000 and formerly supported the Iraq war. (It's obvious that it was a painful decision for him to relinquish his support.) Plus, it's cogently but thoroughly argued with a minimum of hyperbole.
Good job, Mr. Frey.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
A “complicated word game"?
Stephan Molyneux’s article Disproving the State: Four Arguments Against Government posted at Lewrockewell.com and linked to STR today is an interesting read. However I don’t think it’ll do much in the way of opening any minds to the concept of stateless liberty.
I emailed the article to a friend and she emailed me back later that it seemed to her a “complicated word game”. That means to me that either she didn’t read it all the way through or didn’t understand it if she did. Neither choice is especially good news for people trying to get their point across to the uninitiated though is it?
Please don’t get me wrong. I agreed with Molyneux’s reasoning, but complex philosophical constructs based on the formal rules of logical argument (as are used by academic philosophers) inspire about as much passion as reading a random page in a telephone book. Passion is what inspires and motivates people.
Just my two cents worth here.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 09:31 AM | Comments (2)
November 11, 2005
There's No Need to Fear: "Success" Is Here!
If Iraq is such a great success story for America, if things are going so well, and if the Iraqi people are so grateful for all the U.S. has done for them, how come no member of the Bush administration is willing to appear in Iraq with advance notice?
The latest surprise visitor is Condoleezza Rice, who declared "that the American approach of 'clear, hold and build' was working despite criticism at home that the Bush administration lacked a plan for success in Iraq and for the eventual withdrawal of American forces," as the New York Times put it.
Yeah, right. I'll believe that when you, Rummy, and the president are all willing to show up in Iraq in broad daylight, with plenty of advance notice.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Michael Sessions’ Big Adventure in Democracy!
The people have spoken…the bastards! So it seem is the sentiment today in Hillsdale, Michigan a small college town not about a 20 minute drive from where I live these days.
Michael Sessions, an 18 year-old high school student who lives with his mother ousted the incumbent mayor, who was running unopposed, based solely on write-in votes. Sessions wasn’t even on the ballot. Says Yahoo News:
“Sessions, who turned 18 on Sept. 22, ran as a write-in candidate because he was too young to get on the ballot in the spring. The young politician used $700 from a summer job to fund his door-to-door campaign in Hillsdale, Mich., a town of about 9,000.
Unofficial results show that Sessions got 732 votes, compared with 668 for Mayor Doug Ingles, 51. Once his victory is certified and he's sworn in - the ceremony is set for Nov. 21 - he may be the youngest mayor in the USA. The U.S. Conference of Mayors lacks the data to determine whether he'll be the youngest mayor ever, says spokeswoman Elena Temple.”
Sessions plans to devote after-school hours to the job and use his bedroom as his office because other than a $250 per month salary, he receives no other compensation. The mayor doesn’t even have an office at city hall.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry here. I regularly advocate for very limited voluntary governance at the local level and so I would feel hypocritical if I denounced this result now. And besides, there are nine other councilpersons to keep an eye on Hizzoner too.
“Democracy”, said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." Well, I don’t know about “good and hard” in this case, but I for one will be watching to see what the good people of Hillsdale end up with here. Stay tuned.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 10:52 AM | Comments (3)
November 08, 2005
Do as I Say, Not as I Do
Not only did the U.S. employ chemical weapons against the Iraqi people (as linked on today's STR home page), doing precisely that which our government accused Saddam Hussein of doing and thus justifying its war against his country. We find also that the U.S. is flying unmanned aerial drones over Iran. Saddam's phantom unmanned aerial drones were, of course, going to fly over Chicago and dump chemical weapons (such as white phosphorous, perhaps?) on the innocent folks of the Midwest. Those drone allegations, too, were used as justification for the war on Iraq.
I guess it's okay for our government to do these things because "we" are "good" and "they" (Iraqis and Iranians) are "bad."
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:43 AM | Comments (2)
November 06, 2005
The ARI Strikes Out Again
Last Friday I made a final check of my personal email before I left for the day and found this one from the Ayn Rand Institute. It reads in part:
“Jeff Britting, archivist at the Ayn Rand Institute and producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary 'Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life,' will participate in a panel discussion on Hollywood's blacklist sponsored by the Liberty Film Festival titled: ‘Was Communism a Threat to Hollywood?’ “
Now I have thought for sometime the folks at the ARI are misanthropic and xenophobic nuts who got lost in the mindset of the Cold War years. Nevertheless I thought I’d tune in to the panel discussion on C-Span 2 and give a view and see how the ARI’s views went over. What a disappointment Mr. Britting was at expressing Rand’s views or his own. He was the least articulate and coherent of the seven member panel who ranged in views from Libertarian to Marxist.
Maybe the brain drain at the ARI has gotten so bad that this guy is the best they could come up with, or perhaps it is seriously loosing vitality with Dr. P at the helm so long?
Posted by Ali Massoud at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2005
Immoral, Illegal, and Ineffective
From Claire at Wolfesblog:
“I'm astonished that any sophisticated, civilized nation tolerates such a foul crew leaders and aparatchiks. Torture is not what Americans do. Torture is not what America does. Not as national policy. Not as wink-wink, nod-nod. Torturers are the enemy. Who on earth can't see that?”
America’s founding document (see Amendment Vlll) specifically banned cruel and unusual punishments and so by implication, torture. That was in 1789 too. We seem to be moving backwards as a society with all this stuff like secret prisons, CIA torture exemptions, and the preposterous idea that because a captive, detainee, or EPW is outside the legal territory of the US that none our laws and traditions apply to them anymore.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2005
“Over There” is Over
Says the talking head for the FX network:
“ ‘It became evident to us that the American public didn't want to see a dramatization of a war that was already going on,’ Yemaya Royce, a spokeswoman for Bochco's production company, told Reuters.”
Yeah, that and the show sucked, “critically acclaimed” or not. Good riddance to this crap too.
There are mainly two kinds of people that really like war movies and TV shows; war junkies and chickenhawks who have a fetish-like attraction for all things military much the same way that dateless losers often have with pornography.
And then there are the politically correct types who loved this show because it portrays both the perfidy of the Bush administration and Pentagon brass and shows what losers the lower classes (who after all are the vast majority of the Army and Marine cannon fodder) are. The rural white hillbillies and jive-ass black and brown ghetto/barrio residents whose daily lives were a pathetic soap opera even before they went to war. In the elite’s estimation anyhow.
Laughing at them is a guilty pleasure that Hollywood, the coastal elites, academia, and the Comedy Central channel types all love to do, but dare not admit to. So they deny their contempt for the underclass by praising what a refreshing and honest view of “this war and the men and women who fight it” is. Yeah, whatever. So much for “critically acclaimed” methinks.
What did you expect Mr. Bochco? Given the daily news reports showing us all the mayhem and carnage in Iraq in painfully graphic detail and the media elite talking heads arguing about the war nightly on the cable news channels as well, what the hell was this death carnival and underclass soap opera supposed to provide us with in the way of entertainment?
Posted by Ali Massoud at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
Paper, Plastic, or Politician?
If taxing umpires whose calls state legislators don't like wasn't enough for you, get a load of this:
San Francisco officials have struck an ambitious deal with large supermarket chains to reduce by 10 million the number of grocery bags used by shoppers by the end of next year.
Mayor Gavin Newsom is expected to announce the agreement at 3 p.m. at City Hall.
The deal, to be honored by Alberston's, Andronico's, Bell Markets, CalMart, Cala Foods, Foods Co., Mollie Stone's and Safeway, will permit the city's Department of the Environment to count grocery bag usage -- normally a closely held business secret for supermarkets. City officials are banking on better in-store recycling efforts and promotion of reusable bags to help reach the lofty reduction goal. . . .
Mayoral staffers credit the Department of the Environment -- which pushed to create a 17-cent bag tax -- with getting supermarket chains to agree to the deal. The agreement will preclude the city from pursuing such a fee until the deal expires next year. The companies also will pay $100,000 toward a public awareness campaign in San Francisco highlighting the conservation and recycling program. . . .
Newsom staffer Wade Crowfoot, who helped draft the agreement with the grocery chains, said a bag tax remains an option if the companies show less than good faith in their efforts to cut bag usage in San Francisco.
Yes, in the "land of the free," government can now tell supermarkets how many bags they can use.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2005
Strike?! That Was a Mile Outside! Tax the Ump!
Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes this:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - A state lawmaker and Cardinals fan says umpires should pay for what he sees as bad calls made during the playoff series in which St. Louis lost to the Houston Astros.
Rep. Jeff Roorda wants to expand the state athlete and entertainer tax to cover officials such as umpires and referees. The tax is charged to out-of-state residents who earn money in Missouri while performing in such events as baseball games and concerts. The revenues are supposed to go to the arts, public libraries and other cultural programs.
Roorda said his idea grew out of his frustration with umpires in the NL championship series. But he also contends that it is logical to tax the officials affecting a game's outcome, not just the athletes who play it.
"I think if they're not going to pay attention, they ought to at least pay taxes," Roorda said Wednesday. "Seriously though, I think it's good public policy. Referees and umpires play a critical role in the outcome of this game and are part of the entertainment experience."
Yes, folks, bad calls by umpires are now cause for state intervention. Worse yet, the intervention itself will do nothing to rectify the results of the bad calls--not that baseball game outcomes are any of the state's business--but will merely rob guys making an honest living so that guys making a dishonest living (i.e., state legislators) can spend the money on wasteful and destructive programs.
Not even the great American game of baseball is safe from the depredations of government anymore.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)
A Deal’s A Deal, eh?
If you give your word you should follow through on your commitment. Whatever political, religious, or ethical system of belief you hold this is usually the main tenet.
Claire Wolfe, the freedomista novelist and blogger, has now officially bailed on the Free State Project she says in her blog. The FSP gave a deadline for 20,000 FSP adherents to move to New Hampshire. As the deadline occurs, they are a bit short. Well actually they are way short of the threshold number. So in good conscience she can now demur without it being a renege on her promise.
“Now,” says Claire, “like a government program that begins with a limited, worthy-sounding goal, the FSP seems merely interested in continuing its own existence despite obvious inability to achieve its aims. And the less you actually have to offer your members, the more you expect your members to give to you.”
I was very interested and enthusiastic about the FSP until they picked New Hampshire. That state may have a long tradition of individualism and self-reliance but as the Massholes and New Yawkers and others stream in every increasing numbers (along with their statist mentality and political preferences) the Granite State ethos becomes more and more a wistful memory rather than an actual practice.
Too bad for the rest of us too. The FSP was about the last best chance for “freedom in our lifetime” that I saw here in America.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 12:20 PM | Comments (2)
November 01, 2005
The War that Doesn’t Have to Be
As I've written of before, the current US policy of being a "world policeman" is slowly but surely causing America to paint itself into a corner with the People's Republic of China. And so two world superpowers, which need each other to survive, are steadily moving toward military conflict.
China acts as the workshop for American companies and buys the US government's debt which allows it to fund all the programs, wars, and other boondoggles it involves us in.
China in turn is peeved that the US involves itself in arming and defending Taiwan, which they see as a renegade province. North Korea is a thorn in China's side as well as America's and is very adept at playing the two super-states off against each other.
Following a less interventionist foreign policy and getting the federal budget back in balance would do more to reduce the hostile drift toward eventual military conflict than any other course of action. Neutralism in Asia (and the rest of the world as well) would seriously reduce this risk. James Pinkerton, writing in the paleo-conservative (i.e. non-interventionist) American Conservative, agrees.
Posted by Ali Massoud at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
Report the (Republican) Government's Line or Go to Jail, Comrade
Remember when conservatives complained that liberals were the ones who wanted to stifle dissent through speech codes and "hate speech" legislation?
Well, here's our friend Alan Caruba, a supposed conservative, complaining about press coverage of the war on Iraq:
Thanks to Tony Blankley's excellent new book, "The West's Last Chance", consider the National Association of Broadcasters' wartime guide to reporting, issued on December 18, 1941, within weeks of Pearl Harbor. "Do not broadcast any long list of casualties. This has been specifically forbidden."
Or the Press Codes issued by the federal Office of Censorship on February 20, 1942. "Criticism of equipment, appearance, physical condition or more of the armed forces of the United States or any of its allies" was forbidden, with a special warning that "Equal caution should be used in handling so-called atrocity stories."
Compare that with "War's toll on U.S. troops nears 2,000" an accompanying story to the one that jumped from page one to page eight. Across the top of page eight ran a banner graphic of "Tragic milestone in Iraq fighting" which literally showed a line of bars indicating by month the "number of deaths weekly." Other daily newspapers insist on printing the photos and names of casualties.
I suggest this is nothing more than treacherous journalism whose purpose is to undermine support for our armed forces and for the war they are fighting to defeat America's enemies in the Middle East before they bring that war-again-to our shores.
It's bad enough that Caruba thinks such reports are "treacherous," but then he essentially proposes the incarceration of dissenting journalists and the shutting down of their newspapers:
[Reporter Helen] Thomas has long opposed the war to overthrow the vicious tyrant, Saddam Hussein, at one point asking then White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, why Bush wanted to "bomb and kill thousands of Iraqis, including women and children?"
This is the kind of journalism that, in World War II, would have put its perpetrators behind bars and put newspapers out of business.
Red-state fascism is alive and well.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)