February 2018 – Page 7 – Republic Reborn

And for the only analysis that matters: Reason: If you think the Nunes memo will discredit the FBI or DOJ, you haven’t been paying attention to the past 50 years: “Are Americans stupid for feeling like its government is not worthy of respect and confidence? No, of course not. The people in government, especially a string of mostly inept-at-best and power-mad-at worst FBI directors and attorneys general have brought us to a place where we don’t trust them anymore. Especially in an age of forced transparency, squabbles between highly partisan members of Congress is a diversion from bigger and harder truths. Just like in the early to mid-1970s, when the Pentagon Papers, LBJ’s constant lies about Vietnam, Nixon’s illegal actions here and abroad, and revelations of COINTELPRO and massive abuses by the FBI, CIA, and NSA came to light, we need a new Church Commission and Rockefeller Commission if we’re ever going to be able to believe in our government again.

There are extremely serious problems with low-trust societies, and it seems pretty clear that the United States is sliding toward less and less faith in both public and private institutions. That’s bad news, because it usually ends with people calling for more intervention into every aspect of our lives by the very government we know is either crooked, incompetent, or both. If we keep talking about “the memo” and the larger Russia investigation only in partisan terms, the only thing we’ll have to show for ourselves is even less trust and confidence.”

Sheldon Richman: The Church of America

EFF: Keep border spy tech out of ‘Dreamer’ protection bills

MintPressNews: Trump’s drone kill rate 80 times greater than under Bush

The Diplomat: China’s swarms of smart drones have enormous military potential

Cato: The new national ID systems

Police State, Oklahoma edition: Reason: Cops raid house, kill 72-year old woman who was asleep, woke up, tried to defend herself with a pellet gun

Cato: Court: Pennsylvania must rehire trooper legally barred from carrying a gun

New Yorker: California makes marijuana a wellness industry

02/02/18 Morning links

Posted on February 2, 2018 by S. Smith

Washington Times: The FBI’s war on Trump. Ed: You don’t have to be a Trump supporter to see what’s wrong with an intelligence/surveillance establishment that can target elected officials that are not to their liking.

RawStory: Pentagon doesn’t want to give Trump plans for North Korea, because they’re afraid he’d use them

The Guardian: Guantanamo: Bush-era officials warn keeping prison open may be $6 billion error

National Review: Law enforcement unions have too much power

Washington Examiner: US Afghan intervention is a failure of concept, not execution

Techdirt: Ohio appeals court says says speed trap town must pay back $3 million in unconstitutional speed camera ticket

New York Post: 6-year old becomes first person in Texas to get medical marijuana

FEE: Support the troops by giving them peace and the right to try new, unproven medications

The FBI once tried to convince MLK Jr. to kill himself

Posted on February 1, 2018 by S. Smith

The Surveillance State is ugly, petty, and inhuman, as evinced by how Martin Luther King Jr. himself was treated during his lifetime by the FBI. The “Suicide Letter”, which was published in unredacted form by the New York Times back in 2014 is as ugly as it sounds. Look at it and behold the nature of the bureaucracy we’re dealing with:

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“It’s a storm in a teacup, Dryden. A sideshow.”

Posted on February 1, 2018February 1, 2018 by S. Smith

First off, welcome to all the new readers. This is basically a stripped-down news aggregation site, from the point of view of someone very worried about a point hidden somewhere in our future when total surveillance becomes the norm, and syncs with other government-controlled technologies to become an almost-perfect digital prison for all of society. I sincerely hope the trend can be reversed before its too late. I still believe, like many of those involved with the Ron Paul campaigns, that this republic can truly be reborn, that total surveillance is not our fate to be quietly accepted, but only one possible future that must be actively, and peacefully, resisted. We choose liberty, privacy, and peace, and work to realize that goal, if not for our sake, then for our children, and their children. I, for one, don’t wish to see my children grow up to meet a Leviathan armed with the most all-encompassing surveillance bureaucracy the world has ever seen. I prefer to see my children live their lives as free individuals, not tagged and monitored cattle, being led toward a kill pen. I also prefer that they didn’t turn to me in some distant time and ask why I did nothing to prevent this mess.

No, I resist. In my own small way. Life is too short, and too beautiful, to allow such small, bureaucratic vermin spend our money to build the means of our lifelong bondage. The value of our money is stripped, the lives of thousands of foreigners are snuffed out, and an ancient, evil creature wraps itself in our flag, propagandizing in the name of those who gave their lives in eternal opposition to that abomination, blaspheming the ideals of our Declaration, making a mockery of the spirit of its creation, when, as Lord Acton said, “ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden from Latin folios–burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man.”

There is no fate but what we make. We have it within our power to begin the world again. We see total, all-ecompassing surveillance on the horizon, accompanied by total war and the yet unborn centuries of death and destruction that will inevitably follow, and we make a choice. Passivity and acceptance, or resistance. This is a haven for those who choose to resist. It would be easy to ignore the news and settle in to an easy slavery. And slavery is what it will be, for us in our old age, and our children. The gift of liberty is the rarest in history, but where in those small windows of time where it has been given life, civilization has arisen and flourished.

I write this also because the one writer most responsible for my making any attempt at writing at all, Justin Raimondo, has late-stage cancer. It’s strange to think that the greatest libertarian essayist of my generation, in my opinion, one who I’ve studied for several years, and never fail to read, could leave us at any moment. A void would be left that could never be filled by anyone else. And the sudden question of his mortality mas made me contemplate our duty to give our voice, to make our outrage known. If we see the coming catastrophe, a galloping totalitarian State with virtually omnipotent technological power, it is our duty to say something. To do nothing, yet knowing something must be done, is to become a deserter in the peaceful, intellectual war for liberty. Which brings me to a quote from Ludwig von Mises that I try to remind myself of every day:

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern: the interests of everyone hang on the result.”

I, for one, am going to say quite a lot in this space. Read if you will.

Image result for surveillance state

And now just a small comment on the latest “scandal” sweeping DC, the “Nunes Memo”. The brouhaha over the memo is very likely to end up being a giant slice of nothing, and I base that purely on the observation that Congress has never once cared about surveillance overreaches on the part of the intelligence community. Ever. How short do they think our memories are? They voted to extend and expand Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act for another six years just last month, allowing the NSA and god knows who else free rein to conduct the type of mass surveillance that Edward Snowden risked his life and liberty to expose.

It’s a storm in a teacup, a sideshow of a sideshow. The real war against total surveillance is being fought on a different front.

I welcome all manner of correspondence, which can be sent to digitalsunset86@gmail.com