REPUBLIC REBORN

American Spectator: Memo: FBI used Hillary opposition research to justify surveillance

New York Times: Thank Progressives for the Nunes memo

The Hill: Nunes accuses Dems of lying about role of dossier in surveillance warrant

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

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 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:

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.

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

Washington Post: Nunes memo centers on a 40-year old law written to prevent surveillance abuses

Politico: FBI memo fight puts fresh spotlight on controversial surveillance law

Washington Times: Trump likely to release memo by Friday, White House says

American Spectator: From publishing the Pentagon Papers to suppressing the Nunes memo, what happened to the media’s love of releasing government secrets?

Reason: FBI’s unsavory history casts shadow over debate about political meddling

EFF: How Congress’s extension of 702 may expand NSA’s warrantless surveillance authority

Reason: This boring British Cops clone may show the future of mass surveillance

MyStatesman: Facial recognition scanners to be tested soon at Texas-Mexico border

Nation: The US has bases in 80 countries. All of them must close.

The Week: Retreat, America.

Boston Herald: Scandal-ridden FBI must be abolished

Nautilus: Does aging have a reset button? Well, yes.  Crocodiles are biologically immortal, as well as other animals.  Why not humans?

Washington Post: Showdown escalates between Trump, Nunes, and the FBI 

Fox News: House intel committee releases transcript of contentious meeting over surveillance memo

Zero Hedge: FBI opposes memo release due to “inaccurate information”

Also Zero Hedge: FBI texts discussed “destroying evidence”, scramble to find hard drive

CNBC: Google and Facebook are watching our every move online. It’s time to make them stop.

The Hill: Digital privacy shouldn’t be optional on the US border

NY Daily News: NYPD cops ordered to limit cooperation with ICE agents

The Guardian: The kill chain: Inside the unit that tracks targets for US drone wars

Slate: ICE is out of control

SFGate: San Francisco will wipe thousands of marijuana convictions off the books

Vox: Drug companies shipped 21 million opioids to a town of 2,900 people

Activist Post: Libertarian response to State of the Union

ScienceMag: Listen to killer whale say “hello” and “bye-bye”

Antiwar.com: Trump signs order keeping Guantanamo open

Politico: Trump expected to tap Army cyber warfare chief to lead NSA

Techdirt: Minnesota Supreme Court says unlocking a phone with a fingerprint isn’t a Fifth Amendment issue. Ed: Nothing beats the security of a good, old-fashioned password.

Forbes: New AI tech blinds computer facial recognition systems

FCW: TSA tests facial recognition tech at LAX

Newsweek: Texas’ first marijuana dispensary spurs hopes of Republicans jumping aboard legal weed

Mises: Net Neutrality advocates are asking the wrong questions

Zero Hedge: Declassified docs expose UK’s secret Cold War plan to nuke Middle East oil fields

National Review: 29 and euthanized: Dark news from the Netherlands

Chemistry World: Robot with AI brain learns to evolve synthetic protocells

We need to know. Economist: Why we still don’t have a space elevator

Atlas Obscura: Russia’s psychedelic salt mines

Express: Is nuclear fusion key to rocket fast enough to land humans on Mars?

I’ve always found it fascinating at how governments always and without exception move towards totalitarianism, immediately hacking away at the liberty of its citizens.  It’s almost like some automatic process of nature, with government employees not even truly aware of what they’re doing.  It would be interesting, if possible, to travel through history and observe every single action on the part of a governing class that slowly built the structure that would eventually be used against their own people.  It sounds far more interesting that bird-watching at least, which reminds of this quote from Baltasar Gracian:

“Many people spend time studying the properties of animals or herbs; how much more important it would be to study those of people, with whom we must live or die.”

Today, of course, we have somewhat of a more complete record of the genesis of the post-9/11 National Security State.  The wheels that were set in motion, the money spent, etc.  But the strange this is, the wheel was already there, awaiting a crisis.  Power grabs always happen amid turmoil and national fear, and after 9/11, to say that the power was grabbed would be something of an understatement.  Seventeen years later we have what you see: a Middle East burning like a toxic waste dump, a trillion-dollar Surveillance State getting itself organized and aimed at every US citizen like some digital Eye of Sauron, a supplicated Silicon Valley eagerly constructing the technology for total omnipresent, all-encompassing surveillance, and a civilian class not caring a whit.  Like I said, I’d love to observe the history of the past two decades as some kind of invisible time-traveler, not only watching the chain of decisions that has led to our present predicament, but also the facial expressions, any sign of moral injury or wavering.  Maybe I just want to believe that the people who created this mess were actually human, or people who were capable of feeling a fragment of distress about their decisions.

I would probably be disappointed.  Every government in history has been comprised of people, just like you and I, and yet they still found within them the will to unleash mass murder and enslavement upon a many other people.

So the flaw within government is the flaw within us.  Power over others leads to all manner of cruelty and evil.  Political power, that is.  The power to command the police or the military to commit an atrocity is what I mean.  The power to murder and enslave.  And it seems that, throughout history, wherever that power has existed, it was put to use.

And it also seems that, wherever some small amount of that power has been granted, it continually seeks to expand that power.  The liberty of the citizens is a roadblock to greater power, and so it appears as an enemy to government.  And that is something that should probably always be kept at the back, if not forefront, of every individual’s mind: liberty and government are mortal enemies.  Their coexistence is unnatural, and has always been a fleeting phenomenon throughout history.  Tyranny is the rule, not liberty.

Government is just a collection of people.  BUT, but.  They are a collection of people actively working to diminish liberty in the service of power expansion.  And also remember, every diminishment of liberty, no matter how small, is a step toward slavery.  And, to put it plainly, that is the only state of affairs that would feel “natural” to government.  Everyone tagged, sorted, surveilled, ordered around.  Every step a government takes, wittingly or not, is a movement in the direction of that more “natural” state.

This is what we resist.  Government is the institution of force, and force is antithetical to liberty.  Liberty is cooperation, voluntarism.  Civilization depends on the existence of such voluntary behavior.  Which in turn means that government, for the most part, is decivilizing.  Societies that suddenly embrace an ideology of government force as the path to civilization rapidly descend into slavery, mass murder, mass starvation and totalitarianism.  Just look at the rubble of the 20th century total states of Russia and China.  Their embrace of Marxism, which does nothing more than baptize government force, led directly to the deaths of millions upon millions of civilians.

Government is unnatural to liberty. But do we need it, in some form?  How to we enforce a voluntary society? How do we protect voluntary behavior from the emergence of force in some organized form?

And that’s a can of worms that centuries of treatises have been aimed at.  I’m not interested in writing a treatise here.  But these are questions that must be rolled around with an honest mind.  How is liberty to be defended once it’s restored?  Do we need to create a government to protect against the rise of government?  Does that even make sense?  These are the fundamental questions at the heart of a theory of liberty.  And of course answers have been offered up, but none that really offers up anything new on the subject.

The most fundamental question probably is this: which is more sustainable, tyranny or liberty?  And for liberty to exist in any form, must we create the very institution that at its core is motivated to destroy liberty, and civilization along with it?

Send complaints to digitalsunset86@gmail.com

Just Security: Five questions the Nunes memo better answer

EFF: California Senate rejects license plate privacy shield bill

Techdirt: First Amendment lawsuit results in Louisiana police department training officers to respect citizens with cameras

The Atlantic: How the swamp drained Trump. Ed: Wish I’d thought of this headline.

The Week: The myth of America’s immigration problem.

Fortune: Why bitcoin may not be digital gold after all.  Ed: Stories like this means it’s probably time to buy the cryptocurrency

Zero Hedge: Second person of interest identified in Las Vegas massacre

Counterpunch: The My Lai Massacre, 50 years later

ArsTechnica: Pocket-sized DNA reader used to scan entire human genome sequence

ExpressUK: 8.5-mile ‘pyramid’ found on bottom of ocean

IB Times: UK surveillance law used to spy on calls, texts, and the internet ruled ‘unlawful’

Fox News: Paul Ryan calls to ‘cleanse’ the FBI, back FISA memo release

The Hill: House Intel committee votes to make Nunes’ memo public

The Hill: Robert Mueller’s forgotten surveillance crime spree

Aljazeera: Pentagon blocking release of ‘key facts’ on Afghan war

DW: Journalists go to court over Germany’s ‘unrestrictive’ surveillance laws

My alma mater. Reason: Oklahoma State activists want a bias response team with the power to punish racially insensitive speech

Rare: The war on drugs destroys communities of color

The Maven: Future tanks: 30-tons, artificial intel, commanding attack robots

FEE: Guess why hundreds of busboys just lost their jobs

Scientific American: Missing neutrons may lead a secret life as dark matter

Big Think: How a Feynman experiment may lead to a Theory of Everything