Whistle-Blowers and the State: Part 2

Last week I wrote part one of what will be a multi-part series about whistle-blowers, their revelations, and their treatment at the hands of the State. This part will focus on another original NSA whistle-blower, Russell Tice.

Well before we had the Edward Snowden revelations, we had original NSA whistle-blowers like Russell Tice, Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Mark Klein. Tice is credited as being the at-the-time confidential source for the 2005 New York Times article which first alerted us to unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping under the Bush administration. Russ had been an intelligence analyst for the Air Force, the DIA, and the NSA for twenty years at the time of those revelations. Tice was fired from the NSA just days after publicly advocating for stronger whistle-blower protections but before the NYT article came out. With the recent Snowden leaks, Tice has once again started speaking out again against the NSA with new and even more scandalous proclamations about just how far NSA spying has gone.

 Since Edward Snowden leaked his story to The Guardian, there has been renewed interest in whistle-blowers who came before him to see how much of his information they can corroborate and to see if they can add any new insight to the situation. Here, Tice gives a BOMBSHELL interview to another government whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds, who I featured in my last expose on whistle-blowers, where he reveals that in 2004-2005 he had his hands on the paperwork that gave the orders to target some of the government's most prominent figures in wiretapping operations. Some of the people singled out were members of the Congress Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, law firms and lawyers, multi-national corporations, military generals and more. He then went on to drop names, names like General Colin Powell, Senator John McCain, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. When he mentioned Alito, he also said that he had been told by his colleagues that all 9 justices were under surveillance but Tice only personally saw paperwork on Alito.

As if that weren't eye-opening enough, the biggest bombshell comes later when he drops the name of the biggest, most important person of all: an at the time somewhat unknown Chicago community organizer who was running for Senate office. He currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Any idea who that could be? Anyone? In case you couldn't figure it out, he was referring to none other than our current sitting president, Barack Obama. 

Hello?? Earth to society?? Are you registering what Russell Tice is saying here? He is saying that he had his hands on paperwork that directed that these very prominent and important government and national figures, including the current president, were to be illegally wiretapped and their communications recorded and stored for future use by unknown entities for unknown purposes. Needless to say, this is all highly illegal and very scandalous and yet we get nothing but complete silence from our media about this.

In addition to naming names about these targeted surveillances, Tice goes on to refute the official NSA/government line that they only wiretap foreigners and it's all done within the limits and scope of the Patriot Act. He warns that with the new center in Utah plus their existing Fort Meade compound, the NSA now has the power to vacuum up every piece of electronic communication in the US, content included, and that we should assume they are doing so. And just to add the cherry on top of this story, Tice goes on to say that these wiretap orders came all the way from the top, indicating that he believed the evil genius Dick Cheney to be the mastermind behind this whole operation.  

Wouldn't you expect announcements like this to garner significant media attention? Shouldn't it be a national news story that our sitting president was under NSA surveillance during his original Senate run until who knows when? While we're talking about NSA overreach, shouldn't the media be falling all over themselves to interview an insider who, not only can corroborate what Snowden's leaks have documented, but give additional information as to the true size and scope of the NSA spying machine?

No, of course not. This is America where investigative journalism is all but dead and most major news networks are nothing but stenographers for White House press releases. In the interview with Sibel, Tice reveals that he had had 4 or 5 TV interviews lined up with major networks where he was set to reveal all this info but they all backed out at the last minute often with no explanation given. He said in one instance that he was sitting in the chair with the earpiece in his ear all ready to go when he got the word that they were cancelling his interview. Essentially, the network's lawyers got involved and shut it down. Why would they do this? Obviously they must have gotten pressure from higher up the food chain to not allow this interview to go forward and our media, being good little lapdogs, subserviently obeyed.

Eventually, one network, MSNBC, did do a short segment with Mr. Tice but even that was censored. According to correspondence with Boiling Frogs Post immediately after the interview, here is what happened:

When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.” - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/21/msnbc-censors-nsa-whistleblower-russ-tice-minutes-before-interview/#sthash.pyFtt0Pb.dpuf

 “When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.”

Some say it's small victory that Tice got on a MSM station like MSNBC at all, but the first indicator of what kind of interview it's going to be is the length, a mere 5 minutes. Contrast that to the initial interview I linked to earlier with Sibel Edmonds and Peter Collins and that's over an hour. You need at least that long to properly flesh out all of the myriad components of this story.

Furthermore, while MSNBC prevented Russ from speaking about some of the specific wiretaps he was privy to while at the NSA, he was allowed to reveal to the anchor that the NSA is collecting all of our communications including content. The anchor looked somewhat incredulous at this pronouncement and asked one quick follow-up question to verify his statement before casually moving on to other matters. That's it. Nothing more. Russell Tice makes an even bigger allegation against the NSA than Edward Snowden and the anchor barely even acknowledges it before casually moving on to other matters.

This is what you get when you've only allotted 5 minutes for an interview and the anchor has to move on to the next question. But this works another insidious angle, too, in that the reaction and tone of the anchor goes a long way in directing the viewer how to feel about a story. If the anchor would have acted more alarmed and pressed further on the issue, that conveys to the audience that this is something of importance (whether it is or isn't). Bill O'Reilly is a master at this, acting with indignation at every story or opinion that isn't consistent with his own worldview which, of course, is then picked up on by his viewers. In the MSNBC interview, the fairly nonchalant reaction to Tice's disclosure serves to non-verbally signal to the viewing audience that this unveiling is not a big deal and we don't need to devote any more time exploring this issue. Any initial spark of curiosity or surprise by the viewer will be immediately squashed by the matter-of-fact way in which the anchor brushes the matter aside and carries on with the interview. This is but one of many tactics the media uses to influence us.

“When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.” - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/21/msnbc-censors-nsa-whistleblower-russ-tice-minutes-before-interview/#sthash.pyFtt0Pb.dpuf

“When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.” - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/21/msnbc-censors-nsa-whistleblower-russ-tice-minutes-before-interview/#sthash.pyFtt0Pb.dpuf

Now that we've heard allegations of some very important and well-known government officials having been wiretapped what, if anything, does this all mean? Good question. The way Tice sees things, he believes that the NSA has turned itself into a "rogue agency". Think of the implications. Does anybody think our government or its various entities are above blackmail? Is it any surprise that Dianne Feinstein, one of the aforementioned wiretap targets, is one of the most ardent defenders of the NSA and its programs? Nobody is perfect, but for some reason we expect our politicians to have been. Since we tend to hold them to superhuman standards, politicians know that even the slightest transgression of theirs can be used against them. Perhaps The Powers That Be at the NSA and whoever they report to use some of the information gleaned from these wiretaps to control the various players in the game.

Remember the part where Russ alleged that all 9 Supreme Court justices were under surveillance? Imagine how the information gathered from those wiretaps could be used to sway one of those judges to tip the court one way or another on important cases. Recall how surprised everyone was that a "conservative" justice, Justice John Roberts, provided the crucial deciding vote to determine that Obamacare was, in fact, Constitutional, thereby giving the go ahead for its continued implementation? Maybe we have a clue as to why, now.

But now we've reached the land of speculation. I have no evidence of this, although it's not hard to imagine scenarios like this at play. I don't really put much past our government, present or past; they've certainly shown themselves time and again to be a gang of liars, thieves, and murderers who will stop at nothing to get their way.

As an aside, I do have a friend who opined that any potential blackmail that might occur as a result of these wiretaps would result in our politicians being more honest, not less, as if those pulling the strings are standing over these politicians with a copy of the Constitution in one hand and bully stick in the other threatening them that if they don't honor their oath they'll tell the world that they were bed-wetters until the age of 11. Dear me. Bless his soul, he obviously puts such naive faith in the goodness of our government it never occurs to him to think that they would act in any other way, despite the Everest-sized mountain of evidence that proves otherwise. Oh wait, no, according to him Democrats would never act in such an untoward manner. It's just those evil Republicans we have to look out for. Or so I'm told. Riiight. 

In the two exposes I've written so far about whistle-blowers, we've clearly seen a pattern of marginalization that these courageous individuals experienced as a result of their actions. Thomas Drake and Sibel Edmonds directly lost their job for their efforts while Russell Tice curiously lost his job for urging stronger whistle-blower protections months before it was revealed that he was the source for the controversial New York Times story about the Bush wiretaps. He was then subjected to psychiatric evaluations, ones he'd taken numerous times as a high clearance intelligence officer, where all of a sudden he was found to be suffering from "psychotic paranoia" despite, according to his examiner, not showcasing any of the classic symptoms. This predictably allowed the conservative media to smear and discredit any of his allegations as coming from a mentally unbalanced ex-employee with an ax to grind.

You might have noticed in the last article about whistle-blowers that I put the phrase "proper channels" in quotations numerous times. "Proper channels", as in the predetermined channels a whistle-blower is supposed to go through in their particular agency when they uncover wrongdoing. It's in quotations because when you listen to all these people talk about their cases, they snicker at the mention of these so-called "proper channels"; it's all a big joke. They get smeared in the Establishment-serving media as if these whistle-blowers hadn't already tried to go to their superiors with their information or hadn't already taken it further up the chain of command at their agency or hadn't tried to talk to various Congress members in charge of these matters. They don't want to hear it, they don't want to ruffle any feathers, and so it goes nowhere. The talking heads on TV and mainstream print sources sneer at them as though it was each of their first inclinations to go straight to the media with their stories to reveal classified information to the public in defiance of the outlined protocol.

NO. A thousand times, NO. What has been verifiably and unequivocally demonstrated is that these truth-tellers did everything they could to report their findings through all the proper channels and were dismayed that nothing ever was done. When people's livelihoods and safety were on the line, they weren't just content to have made one mention to their immediate superior where it got filed away into oblivion and nothing changed. No, they saw wrongdoing, injustice, and unconstitutional actions and were adamant something be done about it. The only way to do so, once it became clear that nobody within the "proper channels" was going to act, was to shine a public light on it via the media. Or perhaps the media never even picked up on it until it became a court case worthy of attention. What we can see is that because of their actions they were retaliated against by the State, being fired and/or prosecuted even while some of the individuals they were accusing of wrongdoing actually got promoted.

I think it's important to highlight these stories because people have a very misguided view of how our government operates (see, once again, my friend from above who thinks the government will blackmail people to make them more honest). It's because we've been fed a fairy tale since we were young about how great and exceptional our government is because we have checks and balances and were founded upon the rule of law. We've had this drilled into our heads so long and so often that people can't even begin to fathom the degrees of deception our government routinely and systematically engages in. We've been told that these are behaviors that only other governments engage in. The U.S. government is wholly well-intentioned and our checks and balances ensures that the criminality found in other governments doesn't happen here.

The incredibly eye-opening stories of all these whistle-blowers should rip the mask off that facade once and for all. We need to start seeing through the lies and smoke screens our government puts up on a daily basis from administrations on both sides of the aisle. Only then can we start viewing their actions through the appropriate lens, with extreme skepticism and with the knowledge that their sole intent, like virtually every other government in the world, is to consolidate power. While there might be a few honest actors in government, these people do not make it to the top. They are not the shot-callers. "Because government has tremendous power, it attracts people who are eager to game the system, obtaining by force of law what they could never achieve through consensus." The people at the top are exactly those types of people. And our beloved whistle-blowers, through their audacity to tell the truth, threaten their power. Through them we can clearly see that it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.


Join me next time when we delve into the story of another whistle-blower and connect the dots even further. We'll continue trying to break through the glossy facade those in power and their media lapdogs would have us believe so we can start regarding government as our Founders intended: as a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Here is the audio from the first interview with Russell Tice, Sibel Edmonds, and Peter Collins:


Here is the audio from the follow-up interview Tice gave to Collins shortly after:

The Obamacare Debate

Seeing as how Sen. Ted Cruz is currently on the TV filibustering the legislation known as Obamacare, now seems the appropriate time to throw in my 5 cents. I'm going to offer my top 3 reasons for opposing Obamacare, even though much more could be said about it. For the sake of brevity, I've limited it to just three though.

I'll start by saying that I'm no expert on the law. I haven't read the bill. I mean, it was 2,700 pages, who has time to read 2,700 pages of legalese? Certainly not our politicians. Certainly not Ms. Nancy "We Have to Pass the Bill So We Can Find Out What's In It" Pelosi. But you don't have to read the bill to fundamentally see how detrimental this law will be. 

First of all, there's the matter of the individual mandate. A government mandate forcing all Americans to buy a product or be fined for it. That is about as un-American as it gets. I don't need to have read the bill to know that I fundamentally oppose the government forcing an individual to buy a product, any product, be it broccoli or healthcare, for any reason. And it is being forced upon us. The government is sticking a gun to our heads and saying "You must buy healthcare or else you must pay a fine". So I must buy healthcare, pay a fine, or go to jail. What kind of legislation is that? Since when was it acceptable to be told by your government that you must buy what they order you to or pay a price? This sets a very disturbing precedent for further encroachments of our liberty down the line. That's just the first absurdity about Obamacare.

Next, there are all of the disincentives for jobs. According to Obamacare, full-time employment is 30 hours. Anybody working 30 hours or more per week is considered full-time. That's strange. Last time I checked, most people considered a full-time job to be 40 hours a week. Regardless, with the newly defined full-time work week, it creates an incentive for employers to slash employee hours below 30 hours per week. For many businesses, it will be much more cost effective to hire 2 employees for part-time work than to hire one full-time employee and have to bear the burden of their health insurance. That means that one of those employees who might have had a decent full-time job now no longer is working the same hours as before, not earning as much money as before, has to go hunt for another job (probably part-time) in this shitty job economy and still won't have health insurance after all of that. How is that a recipe for success for the future of America?


The other perverse incentive is the 50 employee threshold. If a business has over 50 employees, they are forced to provide health insurance for all of their employees or, once again, they will be forced to pay a fine. Yet again, we see government holding a gun to the heads of businessmen and women nationwide and forcing them to act in a way that they otherwise would have. If a business is just under that 50 person mark, they must then start hiring part-time employees or slow their business growth down. If a business is just over the 50 person mark, they might have to layoff employees or cut their hours. In the middle of a recession that we still haven't recovered from, we pass legislation that actually provides incentives to slow job growth, cut hours, or cut jobs altogether? How does this make any sense?

Of course, not every business will experience these grievances. Not every wage worker is going to be relegated to the realm of part time work. But there are hundreds of thousands of verifiable employers and employees who have expressed their outcry at having to comply with these arbitrary standards. Sen. Cruz is making that very clear right this very moment with his reading of some of the tweets and letters of the millions of voices who oppose this legislation for personal reasons or as a matter of principle. There are new headlines every day highlighting these stories. Not to mention all of the hundreds of thousands of people who were promised that "if you like your coverage, you can keep it" who are receiving letters from their insurance companies saying that either their policy is changing or their premium is rising due to Obamacare.

The supporters of Obamacare will surely trot out their success stories. The stories of people who had preexisting conditions who can now receive coverage for their illnesses. The young people who can remain on their parents' insurance (because they can't find a full-time job to provide it for them). And whatever other successes might arise out of this law. But the question remains, is it fair to burden and disenfranchise one group of people for the sake of another group? Is it fair to bestow privileges on one group of people at the expense of many others? If the negatives outweigh the positives, is it worth it? Is it moral to help one group of people at the expense of another? My answer to all these questions is, 'no'. Government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers and that's what it's doing here, trading one set for another.

My final reason for opposing Obamacare lies simply with Congress themselves. The proof is in the pudding. If Obamacare isn't good enough for them, then it's not good enough for us. If Congress wants to exempt themselves (and their union buddies), then you better be damn sure that it exempts EVERYONE. We don't have a ruling class here in America (supposedly). We don't have a separate set of rules that govern our lawmakers from those that govern everyday Americans (at least that's what I've been told). If it's not good enough for them, then it's not good enough for us. NUFF SAID.

Obamacare is about force. Forcing people to buy things they don't want, don't need, or can't afford. Forcing them to pay fines if they don't buy the insurance or comply with its mandates. Forcing people and businesses to act in a manner that is counter to their own best interest. Any law that is based on force is inherently immoral and must be rejected. The role of government is to protect liberty, no more, no less. Its role is not to force people to comply with its mandates for the sake of some and at the expense of many others. I don't need to read a 2,700 page tome to understand that. And that's why I oppose Obamacare.

Update: I was wrong about the part about individuals being forced to pay a fine or go to jail. At the moment, the law states that no criminal action or liens can be imposed on people who don't pay the fine. That doesn't change my qualm with individuals being forced to buy a product against their will. Also, that could change in the future too if enough people are smart enough to realize that they don't have to buy the insurance or pay a fine and the young, healthy people needed to subsidize the sick, older Americans don't sign up for the programs and cause premiums to skyrocket

Shit Gets Serious in Venezuela

Making the rounds this morning is a Yahoo! article with the headline: Venezuela orders temporary takeover of toilet paper factory. The lead paragraphs in the article read,

"A Venezuelan state agency on Friday ordered the temporary takeover of a factory that produces toilet paper in what it called an effort to ensure consistent supplies after embarrassing shortages earlier this year.

Critics of President Nicolas Maduro say the nagging shortages of products ranging from bathroom tissue to milk are a sign his socialist government's rigid price and currency controls are failing. They have also used the situation to poke fun at his administration on social media networks."

The latter part of that statement is true, as you can see below hehe

@JeffShetler Yeah, shit's getting real serious down there
— One Small Voice (@hosvblog) September 21, 2013

 So like the article states, this is a failure of socialistic price controls creating shortages in a desired good. Totally obvious, right? Well, apparently not. A few paragraphs later we get this,

"Government supporters laud efforts by Maduro, the successor to late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, for maintaining tough regulations of private businesses.

They blame unscrupulous merchants for hoarding products to make quick profits, and celebrate the socialist government's legacy of social assistance programs."

<Facepalm> This is what we're dealing with here, are masses who completely fail to see the relationship between government mandated price controls and the shortages they're experiencing. And in this lack of understanding, they think the answer to a government created solution is more government control.

This plays out well for the offending government because they can be seen as "doing something" and acting on behalf of the people against the "wicked capitalists" who are holding the toilet paper hostage as if they're sitting on their gilded thrones having a private little giggle at the thought of tens of thousands of people having to use a banana leaf to wipe their ass or something while they have a whole wall of toilet paper stacked behind them.

Unfortunately, we have a similar situation here in the US. We have tens of millions of people who believe the whole housing bubble and economic crisis from 2008 was caused by the failures of the free market. Ha! It was those wicked capitalists again ruining the economy for their own personal gain. Ok, well this is partially true but what all these people miss is that none of their actions would have been possible were it not for the government aiding, abetting, mandating, and, yes, regulating the Too Big To Fail banks into taking the actions that they did. For a full treatise on this, I highly recommend Tom Woods's book Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse.

And just like they're doing in Venezuela, we have the ignorant masses calling on government, the same government who created the problem, to swoop in and fix the problem and really put the hurt on those evil capitalists. Boy, they sure showed those banks, wrangling up all the execs and throwing them into jail, levying massive fines against businesses like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan who committed fraud on an epic level, and letting the market punish them for their poor business choices. Oh wait.

Nonetheless, the people still seem to think that the government which aided in the crisis and then failed to punish or prosecute hardly anyone over a situation that affected millions of people can somehow be trusted to all of a sudden do the right thing by them and fix it. 'In Government We Trust' seems to be the thinking of people worldwide.

The sad irony is that in the end, despite (supposedly) good intentions, in both situations more government intervention will just make things worse. It's my hope that through social media, which is allowing information to spread farther and wider than it ever has before, that we can provide the knowledge to the masses so we can maybe, finally start learning from our mistakes instead of making the same ones over and over again.

Perhaps in the future if we keep pushing and educating and networking, people like those in Venezuela will see their toilet paper shortage for what it is, a byproduct of government mandated price controls, and they will cry out for the correct answer which is less government, not more. Until then, things will remain shitty for the poor people of Venezuela.

Whistle-blowers and The State: Part 1

Somewhere along my journey for truth, I've come across the stories of various whistle-blowers of this past decade. I believe my first introduction to these courageous individuals started with Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI agent who was hired post-9/11 for her middle-eastern language skills. I don't remember exactly how I came across her, although I believe it was some news articles that redirected back to her website, Sibel Edmonds's Boiling Frogs Post.

It was through subsequent visits to the BFP website that I became acquainted with her saga when she would talk about it in snippets as she gave context to various world events. Then she finally laid it all bare in her recently self-published memoir, Classified Woman. The book is so titled because Sibel is the most classified woman in U.S. history. She uncovered serious security breaches and even evidence of espionage within the FBI, not to mention egregious wastes of money and just plain ineptitude at all levels. When she tried to go through the "proper channels" to report some of the most flagrant breaches of law that she felt were jeopardizing national security, she was shut down every step of the way.

Just think of what Edward Snowden has already been through. To those paying attention, it should be fairly obvious that the attempted retaliation against him has been as swift as it has been furious. Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a letter to his Russian counterpart asserting that, should Snowden return to the U.S., he won't face the death penalty nor will he be tortured. How comforting that must sound to Snowden in light of the treatment Chelsea Manning received. Edmonds and many other whistle-blowers have been treated with similar disdain and with the assumption from the State that they are the criminals, and guilty until proven innocent at that.

But back to the Edmonds case. When Edmonds was going through her ordeal in 2004 and beyond (the case dragged on for quite some time) she was slapped with the esoteric "State Secrets Privilege" which was so arcane at the time John Ashcroft used it on her that it only received 7 hits on a Google search. Sibel was fired from the FBI for trying to blow the whistle and then, when she took her case to Congress, as was the next chain in the predetermined channel for whistle-blowers, members of Congress were retroactively gagged from speaking about her case. Almost her entire personal history was deemed "classified" including the languages she spoke and her prior work history. Such were the lengths that the State went to to try and silence Edmonds and to use their might to bully and intimidate her into shutting her mouth when they should have been praising and promoting her for bringing to light grievous violations that could have tightened national security. But that's not how things work in government, despite what we are led to believe.

Thomas Drake is another heroic whistle-blower who came way before Edward Snowden in his attempt to blow the whistle on unconstitutional NSA programs and massive waste within the agency circa 2005. He became a material witness for a case in which other retired NSA employees had filed a complaint about egregious waste and fraud in connection with the NSA's rejection of the cost-effective and privacy-sensitive "ThinThread" program in favor of the bloated, ineffective, and unconstitutional "Trailblazer" program. Once again, using the predetermined "proper channels" for whistle-blowing, he experienced much of the same backlash from his agency as Ms. Edmonds once did. Facing down intimidation, marginalization, and isolation, his case concluded with actual trumped up charges being filed against him, including 5 charges of violating the "Espionage Act". He beat most of the serious charges against him at great personal expense after the DOJ's case fell apart (because there was no actual evidence against him) but he did have to plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of "exceeding authorized use of a computer".

I find it very telling to listen to interviews with these truth-tellers. While it certainly is fascinating and shocking to hear their tales of going against the goliath of the State, what often gets missed in the mix is what they were actually trying to blow the whistle on in the first place. This is why, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald who broke the Snowden story (and who has also been retaliated against by the State), Edward Snowden has turned down numerous interview opportunities because he wants to keep the focus on the NSA and not on him and his tale.

The allegations that all these people have made via their own individual but eerily similar experiences are, in a word, EXPLOSIVE. Edmonds was trying to blow the whistle on espionage activities and evidence of narco-trafficking within the government amongst many other things. Thomas Drake claims that the "ThinThread" program that protected privacy and was extremely cost effective but which was shelved by the NSA could have prevented 9/11. As it stands, Drake also makes accusations that the NSA and its former director, Michael Hayden, were hoarding information that could have prevented 9/11 and that Hayden and the NSA have completely deflected any blame that was levied at them for their role in 9/11. Drake also believes that the 9/11 inquiries were not much more than a whitewash and that if the US government truly wanted to get to the bottom of what happened that day and why, then they should do a lot more digging around the NSA than they've done previously. Coming from an NSA insider, aren't these pretty incriminating allegations? Shouldn't the media be all over this? Shouldn't some of these heavy accusations be investigated by someone? No, the State decided to shoot the messenger instead.

Sibel Edmonds offers similar allegations in regards to 9/11 in which two other FBI officers received credible intelligence four months prior to the attack from a decade long informant about Osama bin laden planning an attack on the USA in multiple cities using airplanes. Despite the FBI agents' reporting of this information to their superior, this information was never acted on. There were other missed opportunities in relation to 9/11 due to inefficiencies, incompetence, and devious behavior within the translation department that Ms. Edmonds covers extensively in this damning open letter to the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Short of reading her book, her letter outlines in much detail some of the criminal behavior Edmonds uncovered and witnessed first hand while working for the FBI.

Both Edmonds and Drake tried to do the right thing by going through the "proper channels" laid out for them in their handbooks. Both were shut down every step of the way, told to look the other direction when they saw wrongdoing, they were threatened, intimidated, put through drawn out and costly trials, and ultimately lost their jobs for trying to speak the truth. Yet they each kept fighting at great personal expense to expose the government's criminality and wrongdoing. They should be lauded as heroes and shining examples of upholding their oaths but instead they've been demonized by the government, ignored by the media, and are almost completely unheard of by an uninformed and apathetic public.

I'm going to explore more about the plight of the whistle-blower and try to connect some dots with all of this in subsequent blog posts. There is much more territory to cover than what can reasonably be addressed in one post. Next, we'll talk about Russell Tice, yet another NSA whistleblower (why so many, hmmm?) and highlight some of his recent allegations and start putting all this into a bigger context.

In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to listen, if you can, to the interview Thomas Drake gave to Peter Collins this past April detailing his saga. I'm not the only one who noticed the apparent weariness, pain, and agitation that permeates his voice as he recounts his tale. It might be only available to subscribers (so subscribe!) but if nothing else then listen to the 2:30 preview clip. Even that's worth it. Also, here is the link with a summary of Drake's story.

Here is the link to an in depth interview Sibel had with Alex Jones of Infowars. Don't worry, Alex was very respectful and let her speak almost the entire time with minimal interruption. Please look into both of these individuals' epic battles, you'll be shocked and disgusted at their treatment at the hands of the State and at some of the incredible info they have to share from their experiences inside the belly of the beast.

Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon...     

    

Remembering 9/11 by Arming Al-Qaeda in Syria

Our nation certainly has an odd way of remembering the horrible events of 12 years ago. According to a just-released news article from the Washington Post, the CIA has started arming the Syrian rebels with weapons and munitions. According to the article:

"The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war."

I mean, what? We are now providing the same faction who flew airplanes into buildings and killed 3,000 people with "light weapons and other munitions"? Isn't that a slap in the face to the families of the victims of 9/11 and all of our brave young men and women who volunteered to fight this threat and lost limbs and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan abroad?

It's this same confused foreign policy that's gotten us in this mess to begin with. The more we meddle the more of a quagmire it becomes which requires ever more meddling. Is this gross ineptitude on our part or a devious plan by those beholden to the military-industrial complex to keep us mired in war and lining their coffers decade after decade?

What you must remember is that this extends further than just this past decade. The kindergarten fairy tale that our government wants us to believe and that was peddled to us in the days following 9/11 is that these people hate us for our freedom. At the time, I was a young, naive 20 year old college student and, believe it or not, I was never taught about the Soviet-Afghan war in any of my high school history classes. Only people with a Bachelor's or higher degree in history would have been able to connect the dots between our support for the Mujahideen in the Soviet war in Afghanistan to Osama bin Laden to the fateful day in September twelve years ago. With the internet still in its adolescence, it wasn't as widely known back then about our support and training of Osama bin Laden by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and how our one time ally turned on us and became our enemy a decade later.

This is precisely the phenomenon that Ron Paul was referring to when he talked about "blowback". Blowback is the unintended consequences of a covert operation that is suffered by the aggressor. While our intentions might have been good, well-meaning, and even rational at the time, we could not have predicted that our allies would turn on us years later. Blowback was also the cause of the embassy ambush that occurred in Libya last year that resulted in the deaths of 4 Americans. In our rush to oust Gaddafi, we once again armed and aided "rebel" troops that consisted of al-Qaeda elements. Less than a year after we ousted Gaddafi, our embassy was attacked.

Now it seems we are embarking on yet another foolish venture and trying the same thing that hasn't worked anywhere else in the Middle East at any time. What's the definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I have two other points to make about this:

1) Did all the rebels pass background checks before we handed out their "light weapons" to them? Are these weapons capped at a 15 round magazine capacity? I mean, if these laws are good enough for Americans, aren't they good enough for al-Qaeda as well?

2) If we're arming al-Qaeda in Syria, does that mean Obama and others are now eligible for indefinite detention under Section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA for rendering assistance to known terrorist groups or associated forces? I don't have to prove this, I just have to suspect it in order to lock him/them up and throw away the key forever.

To be fair, not all of the rebels fighting in Syria are al-Qaeda. But how are we to know who's who? Do they wear separate uniforms? Do they wear name badges attached to lanyards hung around their neck? If the rebels do win (with our assistance), do we then have to stay in Syria even longer to make sure that none of the al-Qaeda elements assume power? You know, check their lanyards and say that those with the "Syrian Rebel-Official" designation can stay but those with "al-Qaeda", "al-Nusra" or "Other" have to pack their bags and get on the next train to Kabul? The rebels win and then what? Another 9/11? Another Libya? Based on previous events, this is not difficult to imagine.

What if we just stopped arming or financing either side of this fiasco? Held our hands up and said, "You know what, you guys fight this one out for a change". Sure, someone else might fill the void, but at least the blood is off of our hands. Maybe without the interference of the international power players these wars would fizzle out on their own or perhaps never even occur. The questions are endless and the answers are few.

I may be young-ish, but in my experience if there is a situation that presents no good, immediate solution, then often the best course of action is to do nothing. Wait it out and see if another course of action presents itself further down the road. Unfortunately, our government seems to be comprised more of the "jump and build your wings on the way down" ilk. But how many times do we have to splat to the ground before we figure out that this isn't working? In the words of the great political philosopher, Thomas Sowell, "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than to put those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong". Couldn't agree more, Mr. Sowell. Now we just need more to start agreeing with you as well. 

Syria and Presidential War Powers

At the moment, I'm not going to get into ALL of the reasons why a war, err, excuse me, "military action" on Syria is a bad idea. Aside from the fact that we'd be fighting on the same side as Al-Qaeda, whom we went to war with due to their actions exactly 12 years ago today, there is lots of conflicting info about who actually released chemical weapons. Not to mention there is no exit strategy, the tens of billions of dollars it will probably cost, the hypocrisy, and we're not even sure if the outcome will be favorable to the US. But I digress.

Nonetheless, the official line from the war propagandists like John Kerry, President Obama, Rep. Peter King, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and many others insists that despite Obama's decision to turn the matter over to Congress, that the President still has the authority to launch an attack on his own. It's merely out of his kind benevolence that he's going to let We the Peons have a say and then, after that, maybe he'll listen to us or maybe he won't and he'll rain some peace bombs down on Syria anyway. 

Despite what they'll have you believe, he and all the other warmongerers in Congress and in the media are still dead wrong when they claim that the president has the authority to act without Congressional approval. They'll take advantage of the fact that most people either haven't read or have forgotten what was written in the Constitution and that according to our founding document, while the president is, in fact, the Commander-in-Chief of the military, that it is still Congress who must vote to decide whether to send those in uniform into battle. Once Congress votes to use military force, then the Commander-in-Chief can determine in what manner to use it, but not beforehand.

If the first round of BS doesn't pass the smell test, next the propagandists will throw out some half-baked historical precedent (which upon closer examination is usually mostly false or taken way out of context) or issue (true) claims that previous presidents have done the same thing many times so 100 wrongs must make a right, right?

Whatever it is, whatever slippery sophistry they try and sneak pass the American public does not change the fact that they are wrong. Take a look here at this article about presidential war powers by Tom Woods, written specifically as a rebuttal to all the hawks out there who are beating the war drums over this situation in Syria. Woods has a PhD in History from Columbia University and is also a Constitutional scholar. In this article, he rebuts some of the most common arguments the neocons use in order to convince the public that the President can go to war whenever he wants.

Why should you believe Tom Woods over some of the other intellectuals out there with (or without) fancy degrees and impressive credentials? Well, I think primarily because when he makes his arguments, he goes out of his way to cite the Founders themselves via their own words at the Constitutional Conventions or in the Federalist papers. It is in those words, letters, and papers that the true intent of the Framers becomes clear. Everyone else, of course, ignores these sources and hopes most people don't know about them because they unequivocally refute the lame arguments the opinion-makers try and thrust upon us to justify their illegal or immoral acts.

Bookmark Tom's page so that you can use it as a rebuttal the next time you hear someone mindlessly parrot what the talking heads fallaciously told them on TV to further their own agenda. And while you're at it, don't forget to sign-up for Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom where you can continue learning about the history and economics they never taught you in high school or that you've since forgotten. For only $99/year you can get an in-depth education on myriad subjects like Constitutional History, Logic, Western Civilization, and more. That's great value considering you'd pay thousands of dollars at a university to learn almost the same thing.

It's time to arm yourself with information and knowledge to combat the ceaseless lies and propaganda that come from our government and our media. Much to the dismay of The Powers That Be (TPTB), Americans are slowly but surely wising up to their schemes and are seeing through their smokescreen. Are you one of them?

The Philosophy of Liberty

Let's start at the beginning. Many who decry libertarianism might do so because they don't recognize that there are guiding principles that inform the viewpoints of liberty. First and foremost is the concept of self-ownership. You own your own life. No other human being or group of human beings has a higher claim on your life or property than you do. Nor do you have any claim on anyone else.

This parlays into the other cornerstone of libertarianism: the Non-Aggression Principle. The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) states that you cannot initiate force against another person or group of people or delegate doing so to another person or group of people. This does not preclude people from acting violently in self defense, however.

The latter part of that statement is the most important part. But it's the former part of the statement that is more familiar because it sounds a lot like the Golden Rule. Most people recognize the moral argument in the first part of NAP that asserts that I can't attack you, steal from you, or commit fraud against you. I can't go into your home, hold a gun to your head, and force you to give me one of your 3 cars because I only have 1. But for some reason, we have become accustomed to allowing this same use of force and coercion to happen when we cloak it in the robes of government and slap a supposedly humanitarian label on it. This goes against the latter part of NAP which states that you cannot delegate violence to another person or group of people. This includes government.

Here's a short video that explains very simply these exact concepts:

So this is the basis of liberty and libertarianism. It is within this context that libertarians view most political or moral dilemmas. It is a consistent set of principles from which to base a decision on. It's not just an arbitrary opinion or the desire for my will to usurp someone else's, which constitutes a large portion of the push-pull and political divide between the two leading political parties.

Using this as a jumping off point, we'll apply these principles and the philosophy of liberty to look at news headlines, world news, and other current events trending around the globe.

Are you on-board with the NAP? Let us know in the comments below!

Why (l)ibertarian?

Why (l)ibertarian? First, you might be wondering why I put the 'l' in parentheses. It's an important distinction to make as (l)ibertarian implies a political philosophy whereas (L)ibertarian is someone who is a member of the Libertarian Party or other official Libertarian group. Many libertarians don't necessarily want to associate themselves with a political party since one of the cornerstones of libertarianism is individuality. The notion of a political party with an official platform that is supposed to represent everyone who registers or identifies themselves as such runs contrary to the individualism espoused by those who subscribe to the libertarian school of thought.

But going back to the original question, there are many reasons why more and more people every day are embracing libertarianism. The primary reasons usually entail some combination of the following:

• Self-ownership
• Peace
• NAP (the non-aggression principle)
• Voluntaryism 
• Economic and personal freedom

We're going to cover each of these ideas in various ways as this blog continues. It's impossible to make a compelling case for liberty in one blog post! It's going to be an ongoing conversation. I might be preaching to the converted, or there might be some curious types lurking around who might have previously dismissed the notion of libertarianism but are thinking about giving it another shake. And, of course, there will be trolls. Hopefully they'll be kept to a minimum so that we can have a civil conversation about some of the ideas presented here.

In the meantime, I'm but one person, one small voice, advocating for the ideas of personal and economic liberty. But another group dedicated to spreading the ideas of liberty, Learn Liberty, has created a unique tumblr page with a collage of people all holding signs offering a short explanation of why they are libertarians. Don't just take my word for it. Click here to go to that page and see why hundreds of others have found appeal in the ideas of liberty.

While you're at it, why don't you leave a comment with your own reasons for embracing libertarianism? Or, if you're not there yet, leave a question or concern you have when trying to envision a libertarian society.