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http://www.pollstar.com/blogs/news/archive/2010/03/19/714617.aspxnshared vid http://addthis.com

the truth as to the real causes of America’s woes

Political Prisoner Ernst Zundel Released From Ingrid Zündel 2-29-10

To our Zundel friends around the world –

This morning at 2:45 EST, I received a phone call from our British friend, Lady Michele Renouf, who told me:

“We have him in the car! All is well! Here he is…” and I could exchange a few happy words with my husband.

Ernst assured me that his release went smoothly and that he would call me a bit later with additional details.

Half an hour later I received a fax from his lady attorney, Alexandra Rittershaus, who told me:

“Ernst is in freedom. A few people were (at the prison gates), but everything went peacefully. I did not have an opportunity to talk to him, but he looked happy.”

Below is a photo taken just a few minutes ago, showing Ernst with his splendid Austrian defense attorney, Dr. Herbert Schaller who, at the young age of 87, fought like a lion for Ernst’s release!

I will send a more detailed description later in the day, provided there won’t be any Internet censorship or enemy interference, as has happened off and on these past few weeks.

Yours with many Tennessee greetings,

Ingrid Zündel

Thé Mulindwas Communication Group “With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy” Groupe de communication Mulindwas “avec Yoweri Museveni, l’Ouganda est dans l’anarchie”

I don’t think they did, and your boy Obama is still there and is now looking in new countries

Your rhetoric doesn’t work Kennytard which is why you lost New Jersy

your only defense of your shitty liars and grifters like Pelosi Reid and Odumbie is “Boooshh!”

Bush isn’t running and the people taking you out never supported him anyway

And they all know that Odumbie is just as big a liar. As are you who keeps spinning this evasive lie in his defense

You whores are toast

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Kenneth Sloan wrote:

Holocaust denier slated to be freed in Germany

By DAVID RISING, The Associated Press

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http://www.canoe.ca/CanoeGlobalnav/invisible.gif German right wing extremist Ernst Zundel sits in a court in Mannheim, southern Germany, Nov. 8, 2005. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Michael Probst)

BERLIN – Ernst Zundel, the far-right activist deported from Canada in 2005, will soon be released from prison after serving his five-year sentence for denying the Holocaust, a German prosecutor said Wednesday.

Mannheim prosecutor Andreas Grossmann said Zundel, 70, will be released March 1 after receiving credit for time served ahead of his 2007 trial.

He was convicted in February 2007 of 14 counts of inciting hatred for years of anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a website devoted to denying the Holocaust – a crime in Germany.

Prosecutors were able to bring charges in Germany because the website was accessible there. Zundel, who also has lived in Tennessee, and his supporters had argued he was exercising his right to free speech.

Zundel is a German citizen so he can go wherever he wants in the country following his release, Grossmann said, adding that he has relatives in the Stuttgart area.

Zundel, author of “The Hitler We Loved and Why,” was deported from Canada in 2005 after a lengthy fight.

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Grossmann said he understood that Zundel is banned by the United States and Canada from returning to those countries.

Zundel’s wife, Ingrid Zundel, told The Associated Press in an email that he was not technically barred from North America but that they “expect huge diplomatic barriers to keep him inside Germany where freedom of speech simply doesn’t exist.”

Lawyer Peter Lindsay, who represented Zundel at the hearings in Canada, said Zundel is technically barred from the country.

“He was subject to a security certificate in Canada and he was deported after being found to be a danger to national security in 2005, so he can’t come back to Canada,” he said.

Ingrid Zundel said she has been in regular contact with her husband and that he fears for his life upon his release, because he is “ferociously hated” by many for his writings about the Holocaust.

“We fear that, at the very least, he will be re-arrested on flimsiest pretence and put back into prison for life,” she said.

However, she told The Canadian Press in an email that her husband intends to obey German laws after his release, because he has said all there is to say.

“What else could he possibly add?” Ingrid Zundel wrote.

“As long as he lives in Germany, even if he is free, he will obey the laws of Germany. That does not mean he agrees with them.”

“My guess is he would like to live a normal life and get back to what he likes best – doing his beautiful paintings.”

Born in Germany in 1939, Zundel emigrated to Canada in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001. Canadian officials twice rejected his attempts to obtain Canadian citizenship, and he moved to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., until being deported to Canada in 2003 for alleged immigration violations.

In February 2005, Federal Court of Canada Justice Pierre Blais ruled that Zundel’s activities were not only a threat to national security, but “the international community of nations” as well, clearing the way for his deportation to Germany.

Blais found Zundel to be a hate-monger who posed a threat to national security because of his close association with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups that had resorted to violence to press their political and social causes.

Zundel’s lawyer at the time said he was treated unfairly by the Canadian legal system but that no one was interested in protecting the rights of unpopular people.

Zundel spent the last two years of his time in Canada in solitary confinement in a Toronto jail under anti-terrorism legislation. Despite his long stay in Canada, he was not able to convert his landed immigrant status into citizenship.

Since his arrest, Ingrid Zundel – who has remained in the United States – said she has been running his website, so she cannot risk being present when her husband is released.

“I would be risking immediate arrest if I stepped on German soil,” she said.

-With files from The Canadian Press

Thé Mulindwas Communication Group “With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy” Groupe de communication Mulindwas “avec Yoweri Museveni, l’Ouganda est dans l’anarchie”

The Troops Protect Our Freedom, and Other Lies I Learned in School
Posted by Kevin Carson on Dec 19, 2009

Barrack Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech included this self-congratulatory little gem:

“But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions­not just treaties and declarations­that brought stability to a post-World War II world.  Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this:  The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.  The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.”

Before Mr. Obama dislocates a shoulder patting himself on the back, maybe we should look at the record.

When it comes to guaranteeing stability and promoting democracy, the United States’ record is pretty clear.  “Global security” and “stability” mean the security and stability of a particular global order guaranteed by the United States­a global order that reflects the interests of the coalition of class forces that control the American government.

The United States’ record with regard to “enabling democracy” is also clear.  When it has best served the interests of the corporate world order to replace a dictatorship with a formal democracy, the United States has done so.  But when it has best suited the interests of corporate power to overthrow a democracy by force, the United States government has not hesitated to do so.

A lot of American blood has, indeed, been shed in battlefields around the world.  Even more blood has been shed by the people who lived in those countries, fighting American soldiers.  And the wars in which all that blood has been shed have had little to do with the prosperity, freedom, or other interests of the people where the wars were fought.

The list of killing fields, stained with “the blood of our citizens”­and of many other people­is indeed a long one.  It includes the millions killed by military regimes and death squads in Central America, from the overthrow of Arbenz in 1954 to U.S. support for the Contras’ terrorism in the 1980s.  It includes the victims of the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone of Latin America, installed with the support of Operation Condor in the ’60s and ’70s.  It includes the hundreds of thousands massacred by Suharto (with the CIA’s Jakarta station drawing up the hit lists) and millions more by Mobutu.

“Freedom,” in operational terms, has translated into whatever degree of freedom was compatible with secure profits for United Fruit Company and ITT­which wasn’t much.

More often than not, the United States has intervened to protect the corporations who own the world from the people who live in it.  As Noam Chomsky put it, the Cold War in practical terms can be summed up as a war by the U.S. against the Third World, and by the USSR against its satellites, with the “threat” of the opposing superpower in both cases serving mainly as a pretext.  It’s a lot like Emmanuel Goldstein described the three rival superpowers of “1984”:   three sheaves of corn propping each other up, and enabling one another to defend their respective internal systems of power.

One of the most central items in the American creed is the belief that the troops “protect our freedom.”  By definition, any war the United States fights is to “defend our freedoms.”  Just watch the cable news shows,  or read your local newspaper’s editorials on Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, if you don’t believe it.  If any one belief is central to the ideology of One Hundred Percent Americanism, this is it.

But it doesn’t bear much looking into.  I once saw JCS Chairman Richard Myers on C-SPAN, addressing the Army War College, criticizing China (with a straight face) for having military forces beyond its “legitimate defensive needs.”  This from the highest-ranking military officer in a global superpower whose military budget exceeded those of the rest of the world combined.

When most people of common sense think of “defending our country,” the first thing that comes to mind is probably defending against an actual military attack on the territory of the United States.  But if you look at all the foreign “threats” the U.S. government “defends” itself against, strangely enough they mainly involve what some country on the other side of the world is doing within a few hundred miles of its own borders.  Most of them don’t even have the logistical capability to project force more than a few hundred miles outside their own borders.  So if you think about it, it’s only fair that the U.S. military “defend our country” and “protect our freedoms” on the other side of the world.  If Uncle Sam weren’t generous enough to meet them more than halfway, we’d never get to have any wars.

Myers’ comments about China, and the nature of the other “threats” the U.S. national  security state points to, provide an interesting glimpse into what “American exceptionalism” is really all about.  The United States is the only country in the world that is permitted to define as “excessive military capabilities” the ability to successfully resist an American attack.  The United States is the only country with the right to define as “aggression” what another country does in its own immediate vicinity on the other side of the world­while the United States itself intervenes militarily all over the globe to force others to obey its will.  The United States is the only country which is allowed to define a “threat” as another country’s ability to disobey the orders of the global hegemon within a few hundred miles of its own borders.  By definition, a “threat” is any country that doesn’t do what it’s told.

So when Liz Cheney criticizes Obama for not believing in American exceptionalism, she’s all wet.  He believes in it, all right.  As Chomsky pointed out, American liberals, as much as American conservatives, share the implicit assumption that “we own the world.”  They may believe that Vietnam or Iraq was a “mistake,” but never for one second do they question the premise that the United States has the right to intervene in such cases.

Let’s get something clear.  The United States’ military does not “defend our freedom.”  There hasn’t been a war in my lifetime that involved a genuine foreign military threat to our freedom, and the United States government has been actively involved in suppressing freedom around the world for decades.  The United States government is a threat to our freedom, and the freedom of people everywhere.

http://c4ss.org/content/1558

February 1, 2010

PATRIOTS’ COMMITMENT TO BE TESTED BY ARTICLES OF FREEDOM Not the Hour for Summer Soldiers or Sunshine Patriots The 2010 Plan to Restore the Constitution

Today, the We The People Foundation and the We The People Congress are pleased to announce the launch of www.articlesoffreedom.us , where the Articles of Freedom can be read, the Nationwide Civic Action and Pledge can be signed, and where WTP’s Plan for 2010 can be studied: the appropriate next steps in our process of restoring and maintaining the Constitution. A resounding Plan for all those who are uneasy and anxious about the fate of America: The action required of all Patriots is two-fold: 1) SIGN THE PLEDGE IN THE ARTICLES OF FREEDOM, to hold elected officials accountable to the Constitution and to engage in civic action if millions of other People also take the Pledge, and 2) BE AT YOUR STATE CAPITAL ON PATRIOTS’ DAY, APRIL 19, 2010, to serve the Articles of Freedom on your elected officials. The Articles of Freedom, produced by the Continental Congress 2009, document:

1) the fact that the Government has been violating fourteen provisions of the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, and they have been doing so for many years, over many Administrations and with the complicity of both Parties and each of the several states, and 2) the fact that the Government has refused to listen or respond to those citizens who have tried to hold them accountable to the Constitution, often answering their Petitions only with repeated injuries. The Articles of Freedom, a post petition-era document, include specific Instructions to each branch of the Federal Government and to each of the several States, all designed to end those fourteen violations and ultimately, ALL VIOLATIONS of the Constitution, and show America the way back to Constitutional Governance, as the only means to save our Nation. The Instructions follow decades of unanswered Petitions for Redress. The Articles of Freedom are of, by and for the People and therefore come with recommendations for civic action by the People of each of the several States to ensure compliance with their Instructions. SUCCESS requires that tens of millions of Patriots, including the newest, SIGN the Articles of Freedom AND STAND side-by-side in their state capitals on April 19, 2010. SUCCESS requires the PARTICIPATION of millions of Patriots, including the newer, from all 50 states, each doing a part of the work to mobilize those tens of millions of signers. SUCCESS requires that thousands of Patriots, including the new, organize and guide the activities of those millions, state-by-state, county-by-county, town-by-town. SUCCESS requires dozens of Patriots, including the old, doing the yeoman’s work to facilitate the Plan by designing and developing the resources needed by the Patriots to bring the Articles of Freedom and the Plan to the attention of everyone in America and to have 5% of Her People stand in defense of the Constitution on Patriot’s Day. Are you a Patriot? Prove it. Here is what you can do, NOW:

1. READ AND SIGN the Articles of Freedom; 2. SEND IT OUT to others and ask everyone you know to do the same; 3. SEND A MESSAGE TO YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS from our web site that says “I’ve signed the Articles of Freedom.” Watch as the messages to them increase by the thousands in the days leading up to Patriots Day, demonstrating a massive show of support never before seen in our history. 4. VISIT THE AOF WEBSITE at www.articlesoffreedom.us. 5. DOWNLOAD NEW TOOLS to use in your location from the Resources page on the website. 6. RESOLVE TO BE AT YOUR STATE CAPITAL ON APRIL 19: start coordinating transportation and ride shares with your friends and families in advance. 7. HELP YOUR STATE/COUNTY COORDINATORS (find contact info on the AOF website.) If you do not find a network established, start one. 8. READ THE NATIONAL DAILY UPDATE at www.articlesoffreedom.us 9. READ THE DAILY UPDATE ON YOUR STATE PAGE. 10. JOIN THE WEEKLY CONFERENCE CALL for your state. 11. DISTRIBUTE AOF/EVENT FLYERS DOOR-TO-DOOR (our design and yours) and reach out to your neighbors and town. 12. SEND OUT THE VOICE OF FREEDOM: PLACE FULL PAGE ADS in your print and broadcast media (those designed by us and your own). 13. ARRANGE POT LUCK DINNERS in home-after-home to help others learn about and discuss the Articles of Freedom and what these mean for America. 14. POST MEETINGS in the “Calendar of Events” in your newspapers; look for patriot group meetings and attend them! 15. BUILD A COALITION in your state of organizations and individuals who know the time has come to take a stand. Contact local organizations such as Veterans, Rod and Gun, Patriot, etc. 16. FLOOD YOUR LOCAL MEDIA: Send letters to the editor, call-in to radio talk shows, identify opportunities on local commercial and public access TV about the Continental Congress and the Articles of Freedom, and discuss the importance of these HISTORICAL events. Make this a group effort by organizing letter-writing campaigns and call-in days. Work parties are fun and build excitement among volunteers! 17. NOW THAT’S EDUCATION: If you have children in school, print out copies of the Articles of Freedom and this Action Plan for each of their teachers and the principal, and ask for comments and support for this HISTORICAL effort. 18. THE MEETING OF CHURCH AND STATE: If you attend a church or synagogue, provide a copy of the Articles of Freedom to your spiritual leader. Set up a meeting with him/her in order to discuss the Articles of Freedom personally. You can make this a group effort with other like-minded members. 19. GET ON THE AGENDA of any social or civic organization, contact the Chair to request a special meeting in order to make a presentation about the Continental Congress and the Articles of Freedom. Your State Coordinator or any of your state’s Continental Congress Delegates will be glad to present or assist you. Find them at www.GiveMeLiberty.org (click through to your state’s page). 20. TAKE AOF EVERYWHERE: Drop a copy of the Articles of Freedom on the doorstep of your local fire department; leave one on the front desk of your local police department. Discuss the Articles of Freedom with your doctor, your dentist, your hair-dresser, and any other professional you hire. With permission from the business owners, provide copies for their waiting rooms, with signs that say: FREE: TAKE ONE. Be sure to provide local contact information on the cover, and restock regularly. Get the word out to as many people as possible! 21. STOP SUPPORTING THOSE WHO VIOLATE OUR RIGHTS: Remember, the idea behind this Plan of Action is ACCOUNTABILITY. Every American is accountable to uphold and defend the Constitution. Therefore, seriously consider withholding your business and support from any professional who gives aid and comfort to those who would violate our rights. Withdraw your support not only from those directly responsible for violating the Constitution, but to their supporters! 22. FORGET THE GUY WHO IS NOT INTERESTED, FOR NOW: Time is short and we have many people to reach. DO NOT WASTE VALUABLE TIME ‘WINNING’ ANYONE OVER! In the time you use fighting and arguing with that one person you have been working on for so long (and not really getting anywhere) you could have reached a dozen people that are receptive to your message and they, in turn, would be spreading that same word to countless others. Leave those ‘tough nuts’ alone. As more and more people sign on, the atmosphere becomes more attractive. The ‘hard sell’ people tend to wait and watch on the sidelines, and then jump on the Bandwagon ‘of their own accord’ when things start looking good. They’ll come around – eventually. Until then, go for the ‘easy’ ones first, and let’s build up the numbers of concerned Americans that we KNOW are out there. 23. DOOR-TO-DOOR CANVASSING: Hit the streets and reach out. Those volunteers that are physically unable to participate should take charge of bulk mailing and Phone Banks – small groups of people getting together and making phone calls to raise awareness of the Articles of Freedom, gain donations, and increase support for the effort to restore Constitutional Rule of Law in America. 24. SET UP A BOOTH AT ANY AND EVERY EVENT: Gun Shows, County and State Fairs, Art Fairs, Farmer’s Markets, Conventions, Conferences, anything where people gather in large numbers that allows vendors to purchase space is an opportunity waiting to happen. This is also valid for Flea Markets and Swap Meets. The costs for obtaining permission to distribute materials varies depending on the size of the event, but that takes into account the amount of people you can reach. Be advised that most of these events will only allow you to give away material without any exchange of funds; and it also varies whether you can take donations or not, so make sure to be clear about these issues before paying any fees to avoid any confusion later. 25. DEVELOP A CUSTOMIZED-PLAN: Who knows your area or state better than you or the people who live there? Put together a plan that is going to reflect and appeal to the culture, habits and behaviors of your local citizens. What works in one place might fall flat in another. Take a look around and emulate events/activities/interests that reflect the personality of your citizens. Remember the old adages; “anything worth having does not come easily” and “getting started is 80% of any battle.” We respectfully ask all our supporters and friends to please take a few moments today to donate to WTP. There is much to be done as we go forward in 2010 with the appropriate next steps for the Free People, and we still have outstanding bills as a result of our sponsorship of the very successful Continental Congress 2009. We thank you for your passion for Liberty.

Donations of any size can be made through our PayPal account (no PayPal account is necessary, all major credit cards accepted).

WTP Fundraiser: The 2010 Freedom Calendar Packages

Please note our 2010 Freedom Calendar is now available as a fund raising premium. As with prior calendars, this year’s color calendar contains a wealth of historical tidbits, information about our Constitution and Individual Rights, and inspirational messages acknowledging the Divine source of Liberty. Available donation Packages include WTP C-SPAN DVDs, Solidarity Pins and other donation premiums… 2010 Freedom Calendars and Calendar Packages are now available through our on-line store.

Donors can receive a 2010 Freedom Calendar, a CC2009 .999 pure silver commemorative medallion or a CC2009 Solidarity pin as premiums for donations through our on-line store.

Use any major credit card, PayPal or you can mail in your donation: Mail-in Donate form

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Freedom in America: Is the Glass Half-full or Half-empty?
By George C. Leef • January/February 2010 • Volume: 60 • Issue: 1

It is an age-old question of perception. Show a person a glass with some liquid in it and ask, “Is it half-full or half-empty?”

The importance of the answer depends on the interests of the person asking the question. If you owned a restaurant and wanted to skimp on the wine, you would rather your customers focused on what they are getting and not on what they aren’t. You won’t get many complaints if your patrons think that half a glass of wine is normal.

We are facing exactly that problem in America with respect to freedom. “Half-empty” people notice that a lot of freedom is missing. They are aware that they’re prevented by force of law from doing many things they would like to do, and compelled by force of law to do many others that they would prefer not to do. Most of those people also know that in the past there were far fewer restrictions on freedom than today; they sense that with each passing year, the glasses contain less and less wine.

Looking on the Bright Side

“Half-full” people, in contrast, rarely think about the government’s innumerable laws and taxes as deprivations of their freedom. They focus on what freedom they still have and regard it as enough. Just as restaurateurs prefer customers who see half-full glasses and are content with that, so rulers prefer citizens who are content with whatever freedom they choose to permit. For that reason, crafty rulers­and the form of government doesn’t matter­try to condition the people to think that they are enjoying the best possible state of affairs. Rulers want the people to believe that all the state’s numerous mandates, prohibitions, and confiscations are actually good; they’re done not to take away freedom but only to improve society. If you can get your citizens to look at things that way, they will be as docile as sheep.

A survey by George Mason University economics professor Daniel Klein helped me (a half-empty person) to see what’s going on. Klein had written critically about minimum-wage legislation, mentioning that such laws not only have adverse economic consequences but also abridge freedom­namely, freedom of contract. Imposing a minimum wage commands employers: Either pay each employee at least the legal minimum or else face prosecution. To Klein’s surprise a number of economists responded that they did not think that law has any important impact on freedom. Klein subsequently conducted a poll asking economists if they felt that minimum-wage laws were an attack on freedom. A majority of those who responded said that they regarded them as having little or no impact on freedom.

So here is a government mandate­do this or you’ll be punished­yet a majority of economists see no loss of freedom. An obvious explanation is that the minimum wage simply has no effect on professors. They don’t hire low-wage workers and therefore feel no sting from the law. But even when people are directly affected by government actions that restrict their freedom, they’re apt to shrug it off as “just one of those things.” They still have a lot of other freedoms, after all. Why get upset over the part of the glass that’s empty? Enjoy the part that’s full.

Most people view taxation like that. For working, successful Americans, federal, state, and local taxes take about half their income. If it weren’t for those exactions, they would be able to spend, invest, and donate to charities much more than they now can. True, the tax system is cleverly designed to hide the impact of taxes through another piece of coercion­withholding. Nevertheless, intelligent people know that a great deal of their money is confiscated by the government. Few complain. In fact, many support political candidates who have pledged to increase their taxes. How do we explain that? The “half-full” mentality does it. The glass may be down to 49 percent, but that’s enough.

Freedom of contract gives us another illustration. Government has steadily whittled away at it over the last several decades but few people seem to care. The minimum wage is just one aspect of the attack on freedom of contract; there are many others. Employers may not “discriminate” when hiring workers, meaning that they are subject to legal action by the government if they allegedly decline to hire an applicant because of his race or some other immutable characteristic (“forbidden grounds,” as legal scholar Richard Epstein puts it). Do Americans regard “affirmative action” laws as an abridgement of freedom? Mostly, no. It’s not just that most of us don’t hire any workers, but also that freedom to choose with whom to contract has been tarred with the pejorative “discrimination,” and therefore laws taking away that freedom are actually applauded. Why should people be free to do something that’s bad?

Medicine is another part of life where our freedom has been trimmed. We are not allowed, for example, to purchase any medicine that hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. A concerted effort to overturn that law on constitutional grounds failed recently. This can be a matter of life and death for a few people, but the court held that the government was doing nothing wrong in making it illegal for sick people to use unapproved medicines. There was almost no protest. Apparently, Americans are so used to government agencies regulating their lives that freedom to decide which medicines to take is now in that unobserved empty part of the glass.

Too Much Freedom?

If a law or regulation seems to take away some freedom, “half-full” people think, “It’s not that we’re now less free but that we had too much freedom before. The government is giving us a better balance.”

Let’s look at a few more examples. The government punishes merchants if they increase prices “too much” following a natural disaster (“price gouging”). Hardly any Americans object that this deprives merchants (not to mention consumers) of freedom.

The government dictates that only certain kinds of light bulbs may be used in the future. Americans offer hardly a peep of protest.

The government makes it illegal to drive a car unless the driver and passengers are buckled in. Are any of the politicians who supported the law voted out of office? No.

The government forces banks to make mortgage loans to people who would not qualify for one under prudent lending standards. No complaints about that attack on freedom, although some Americans are now unhappy that it helped catalyze the mortgage crisis.

The government requires people to buy official stamps for all documents to make them legal. Do the people care? Well, this one’s a trick. It’s the Stamp Act, imposed in 1765 by the British government. The law sent a great many Americans into the streets to protest and threaten the officials charged with enforcing the law. Most Americans were not “half-full” people back then. If a similar law were passed today, people would meekly obey, saying to themselves, “Well, the government needs more money for all the good things it does.”

Skeptics may be thinking, “Okay, some peripheral bits of freedom may have been whittled away over the years, but the government would never deprive the people of any really important aspect of freedom.” Put aside the riposte that what one person thinks peripheral may be extremely important to another. I think that the “glass half-full” view most people apparently have puts all of our freedom at risk. Could we lose, say, freedom of the press the way we have lost other, “peripheral” freedoms? I think so. Here’s a hypothetical case to make my point.

Suppose that a new law were proposed, the “National Truth and Civility in Publishing Act.” It would establish a federal agency with authority to punish anyone who published a book, magazine, newspaper, blog, or anything else that was adjudged to be either false or potentially harmful to the feelings of a reader. Would Americans tolerate a law like that? It tears the heart out of the First Amendment. But I think most Americans would be assuaged if the political spin doctors said, “Look, people are still free to write what they want. The law merely tells them that they need to get their facts straight and not write in a way that could be demeaning or offensive. The government has a compelling interest in promoting truthful and respectful writing, doesn’t it? What good ever comes from lies or disrespectful writing? Freedom of the press has never been absolute and we are merely refining it a little to make life better.”

“Half-full” people would probably fall for that since they focus on the freedom that’s left, not that which has been taken away. They’d never give a thought to the consequences of putting federal officials in a position to harass those who write what the government does not want the public to read. With a law like that in place, the baseline concept of what freedom means would adjust downward again. No, the freedoms protected by the First Amendment are not secure. Nothing is if people only look at the freedom that’s left, not that which is being taken away.

Frédéric Bastiat taught that people’s thinking is usually influenced by what they see, not what they do not see. His point is at the root of the slow death of freedom in America.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/freedom-in-america-is-the-glass-half-full-or-half-empty/?utm_source=The+Freeman&utm_campaign=a100dddb68-Freeman_Jan2010_Issue&utm_medium=email #

The Bogus Anti-Terrorist Crackdown on Financial Freedom
by James Bovard, Posted January 15, 2010

This article originally appeared in the October 2009 edition of Freedom Daily.

In the post–9/11 era, federal officials are treating cash as they would a suspected weapon of mass destruction. They have created legions of new restrictions and reporting requirements for citizens’ money. But the new controls have done nothing to make Washington any more competent at protecting Americans from real threats.

Federal experts estimated that Mohamed Atta and the other 18 hijackers required only about half a million dollars in total financing to carry out their attacks on September 11, 2001. That is a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars’ worth of currency transactions that occur daily around the world. Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins observed, “Terrorism tends to be a low-budget item. The real resources are fervent young men who are willing to blow themselves to bits.”

But the feds seized upon the attacks to greatly expand intrusions into Americans’ financial affairs. The terrorist attacks instantly endowed George W. Bush with the right to micro-manage world financial institutions ­ or so the Bush administration apparently believed. And while Treasury Department officials portrayed their decrees as first strikes against “money that kills,” in reality it is almost impossible to determine which dollar bills have homicidal intent.

The USA PATRIOT Act gave the feds the right to financially strip-search every American. It created new financial “crimes without criminal intent” ­ empowering the Customs Service to confiscate the cash of American travelers who fail to fill out a government form.

Congress redefined the possession of cash to make it sound far more insidious. The PATRIOT Act created a new crime ­ “bulk cash smuggling” ­ to punish anyone who doesn’t notify the government of how much money he is taking out of or bringing into the United States (if he is carrying more than $10,000). The PATRIOT Act stated that “if the smuggling of bulk cash were itself an offense, the cash could be confiscated as the corpus delicti of the smuggling offense.” Congress rewrote the law to pretend that money travels by itself and that money commits the crime. And since a stack of cash has no constitutional rights, the government can do no wrong when it seizes the money. (This is based on a medieval legal doctrine known as an in rem proceeding ­ taking legal action “against the thing.”)

Anti-terrorism rhetoric bedecked the new confiscatory powers. In the PATRIOT Act’s “Findings,” Congress proclaimed that “the movement of large sums of cash is one of the most reliable warning signs of drug trafficking, terrorism, money laundering, racketeering, tax evasion and similar crimes.” Congress also ordained, “The intentional transportation into or out of the United States of large amounts of currency … is the equivalent of, and creates the same harm as, the smuggling of goods.” Congress did not explain how a person became a smuggler merely by transporting his own money.

The “bulk cash smuggling” provision states that the money cannot be confiscated unless it has been concealed. But “concealment” includes “concealment in any article of clothing worn by the individual or in any luggage, backpack, or other container worn or carried by such individual.” In other words, any traveler with a heap of bills not plopped openly on the airline seat when a G-man walks up to interrogate him is guilty of concealing the money. Violators of the reporting requirement are subject to five years in prison, as well as loss of all their money.

“A dream come true”

The PATRIOT Act contained an array of money-laundering financial-crackdown provisions. The act empowers the U.S. government to penalize anyone in the world who is accused of violating U.S. money-laundering laws. Money Laundering Alert, a pro-government newsletter, hailed the new law:

It is no exaggeration to say that, as a whole, the act has the ability to reach the assets of every financial institution and business in the world and to cripple their [sic] ability to function in a world in which the United States is the financial centerpiece.

If a foreign bank has a single dollar deposited or held in a U.S. bank, or wires a single dollar through the United States, the U.S. government can claim jurisdiction over that bank’s operations anywhere in the world.

And the information that is stockpiled will be shared far and wide. Money Laundering Alert described one financial provision of the PATRIOT Act as a “dream-come-true information gathering tool for U.S. agencies,” extending a “welcome mat to the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and other U.S. counterparts” to look at the new financial information on American citizens and others.

The PATRIOT Act greatly increased the feds’ power to investigate Americans’ financial affairs. As Newsweek reported,

Law-enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a “hit” ­ evidence that the person has an account ­ the financial in stitution is slapped with a subpoena for the person’s records.

Strippers and the Cuban embargo

Most of the warrantless financial searches the feds have ordered under the PATRIOT Act have had no connection to terrorism. Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation observed,

There is no probable cause here. There is no judicial oversight. Yet the government can immediately query financial institutions across the nation to find out where you have an account or who you’ve done business with. It’s not just if you have an account there, but any record of a financial transaction.

The feds used PATRIOT Act financial sweep-search powers in 2003 in “Operation G-String,” an investigation of bribes involving Las Vegas strip clubs. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) complained, “It was never my intent to have the PATRIOT Act used as a kitchen sink for all of the law-enforcement-tool goodies that the FBI has been trying to get for the last decades…. It is PATRIOT Act creep.” Berkley was especially indignant that the powers had been used in a tawdry public corruption case: “Never … did the FBI say we needed additional tools to keep this nation safe from strip-club operators.”

Though the PATRIOT Act vastly increased the feds’ financial surveillance powers, they are not concentrating their artillery on the gravest threats to American security. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has a lead role in tracking down supposedly dangerous money. Unfortunately, this office has ten times more agents assigned to track violators of the U.S. embargo on Cuba than it has tracking Osama Bin Laden’s money. Between 1994 and 2003, it collected almost a thousand times as much in fines for violations of the Cuban embargo as it has for terrorism financing violations ($8+ million versus $9,425).

Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) complained, “We’re chasing old ladies on bicycle trips in Cuba when we should be concentrating on using a significant tool against shadowy terrorist organizations.” Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise responded, “There is no question where the administration stands on Cuba policy. We are equally dedicated to fighting the financial terrorism network.” But to be equally dedicated to spiking Cuban bicycle tours and to thwarting an organization that knocks down American skyscrapers seems a bit demented. Millerwise stressed, “We do focus on Cuba. They are our nearest neighbor.” That raises questions of whether maps used by the Bush administration expunged both Mexico and Canada. However, neither Mexicans nor Canadians will be large voting blocs in elections in Florida.

The war on privacy

The financial war on terror rests on a heap of absurdities. Government crackdowns treat U.S. dollars like plutonium. The only reason for the fixation on absolute control is the notion that any money transfer not controlled by the U.S. government can become “magic beans” that cause terrorism to sprout anywhere in the world. This mindset breeds the presumption that the U.S. government is entitled to assume the worst of anything that it does not control.

It was obvious even before the PATRIOT Act was enacted that the new powers would not make Americans safe. On October 17, 2001, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) warned that legislation vesting new powers in the feds “has more to do with the ongoing war against financial privacy than with the war against international terrorism” and derided it as “a laundry list of dangerous, unconstitutional power grabs…. These measures will actually distract from the battle against terrorism by encouraging law-enforcement authorities to waste time snooping through the financial records of innocent Americans who simply happen to demonstrate an ‘unusual’ pattern in their financial dealings.”

Ron Paul was right, but almost no one in Washington is ready to admit that truth. If the U.S. government cannot catch enough real terrorists, at least it can use the PATRIOT Act to turn cash-heavy travelers into terrorist scarecrows. For every terrorist who might get caught laundering money, Congress crafted a law that empowers the government to punish thousands of people for breaking the regs. Treasury and Justice Department lawyers made sure the PATRIOT Act was written in a way to maximize seizures, regardless of a person’s guilt or innocence ­ and then political appointees have portrayed every seizure as a victory against terrorism. But maximizing political brownie points by making terrorist innuendoes is not the same as protecting the public.

There is no reason to expect the U.S. government to be more successful in tracking wads of cash than it has been in tracking bricks of cocaine or bales of marijuana. The end result is more federal control, more intrusions, less privacy ­ and little or no additional protection from terrorists.

Americans must not permit politicians to continually invoke government failures to justify destroying individual freedom. The financial provisions of the PATRIOT Act will continue haunting Americans until they put enough pressure on Congress to repeal such follies.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AHRC-STM-002-2010

January 5, 2010

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

PAKISTAN: The leadership of Sindh Nationalist Front should be prosecuted for disrespecting the right to freedom of expression

A journalist was attacked and seriously injured by office bearers of a political party, the Sindh Nationalist Front (SNF), on December 31, 2009, near the Hyderabad Press Club, Hyderabad City, Sindh province. A senior newspaper journalist, Mr. Mohammad Hussain Khan, was attacked and injured when he was on the way to the Press Club. He received injuries to his head and one of his fingers in the attack by two miscreants. They shouted abusive language at him as they thrashed him with an iron rod. The incident happened around midday.

This latest incident was the second attack on a journalist by the same party during 2009. The SNF is lead by Mr. Mumtaz Bhutto, a former chief minister and governor of Sindh province. The first attack was on January 1, 2009. Bhutto and his political party are notorious for violence against their opponents. They are particularly abusive towards freedom of expression.

In the first incident SNF party workers attacked the office of a local language newspaper, the Daily Awami Aawaz, of Karachi, Sindh. The attackers warned the staff of the newspaper that the attack was a ‘trailer’ and the ‘actual film’ will be shown later. According the First Information Report (FIR) filed they also threatened that if the newspaper writes anything against the leadership of the SNF they will face more serious attacks and further harm.

Different organisations, including those of journalists, protested against the attack on Mr. Mohammad Hussain Khan. Three accused persons were arrested but police have not completed their investigations into the case. It is suspected by many journalists that the delay in the investigation is because of the involvement of powerful feudal personalities of the province. It is indeed very shocking that a political-cum-feudal party is apparently more powerful than the law. That this party is able to undermine the right of freedom of expression and respect for the journalists in a country where a democratic government was restored after a long period of military rule is appalling. The police are using their old methods in the guise of an investigation to diffuse the anger of the journalists and different organisations who are protesting against the attacks on the media and journalists.

The delay in the investigation against the accused persons and the lack of proper inquiries in the case will only encourage the perpetrators, especially, the leadership of the accused political party to commit further crimes against the freedom of expression and the journalists.

The Asian Human Rights Commission urges the authorities of Sindh province to take strong action against the perpetrators and prosecute the leadership of the Sindh Nationalist Front (SNF) for disrespecting the right of freedom of expression by their attacks on media houses and journalists. The injured journalist, Mr. Mohammad Hussain Khan of Daily Dawn, must be provided with full medical treatment and compensation for his ordeal.

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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

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