Examples:

8 Character Randomized Password: T0u%p@s5
Time to crack: 14 minutes

17 Character Passphrase: rockwell is right
Time to crack: 4 Days

26 Character Passphrase: The Country Is Not The Government! 
Time to crack: centuries

Even with a passphrase take the extra security step and modify it with an algorithm you derive for every site. That way if a site is storing or transmitting passwords in cleartext (both big no-no’s but it happens), your password will not be known for all sites.

Example – apple.com starts with “a” the 1st letter in the alphabet, so my passphrase might become:
1The Country Is Not The Government! <- note that I pre-pended number 1 at the start of the passphrase. I’d recommend adding at least 2 characters via your algorithm.

Several readers of my blog post wrote to ask if the NSA doesn’t just have an end run around harder passwords for email. In short, they do, but mostly for US-based companies. The largest free email providers, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are known to collaborate with the NSA and/or FBI, which means Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail are insecure despite your best passphrase. Hushmail, once considered a secure alternative, caved to the Feds over alleged drug running taking place via Hushmail accounts. If your 35 character passphrase is the moat to keep the NSA out, Gmail has the key to the backdoor and lets the NSA right in to directly read your email.

The solution is to get an email account hosted outside the US. Here are several paid alternatives: NeoMailBox (Swiss Based), CounterMail (Swedish) MailVault (Norway), and an excellent article discussing the pros and cons of each. If this is too much hassle, at least adopt passphrases to avoid the non-government criminals from taking over your email and other accounts. Imagine the damage a hacker could do with access to monitor, send forged email, then lock you out of your email account. It wouldn’t take much effort to get your SSN, address and birthday – from there it’s off to the races. “Oh, you need those retirement funds wired where?” If you think this is far fetched, count the number of times a year you get a frantic message from a friend not to open an email because their account was taken over.

Bottom Line: Consider an offshore email, but definitely make your passwords longer by using a passphrase rather than a shorter but “harder” password. Most sites will allow you to enter very long passphrases. Think of the minor investment in time versus the risk of identity theft, account takeover, and the extra time and resources for the government to snoop on you.

As announced on the blog several times in recent days, Lewrockwell is moving the website and all its content to a new WordPress based format. Thanks to all those who looked at the beta site and provided feedback. Here are some of the main changes we’re looking at thanks to your comments:

• Overall the site looks clean, loads quickly, and is easy to use (not a change, I know)
• Keeping a serif font, instead of the sans-serif font on the beta site articles
• Tweaking the spacing and font sizing of article titles and the masthead
• Continuing with Google search for now, instead of the current WordPress search
• Tuning the background color and font colors slightly to reduce eye-strain while reading
• Final updates to Articles, Podcasts, and Blog posts – all will be updated before the move
• Other minor bug fixes

This is by no means an exhaustive list of version 1 tweaks or the features we’re looking at adding once we move to WordPress. Please hold your comments and requests for now if you haven’t already sent them in. We’ll have another open comment session once we launch the new site. Suggestions for version 2 include:

• Categories – the overall area of focus for an atricle (e.g. Economics, Foreign Policy, Domestic Policy, Anarcho-Capitalism, etc.)
• Tags – these are more specific than Categories and an article can have more than one (e.g. Drones, Gold, Ron Paul)
• Comments – no Facebook required, likely Disquus
• Ratings – 1 to 5 stars for an article, ala Amazon
• Search – incorporating the above metrics and keywords
• Potentially more items

Here’s how we need your help now. The site seems to load quickly, but we’ve only had about 2% of the overall readership go there. Today, Monday April 1^st (hold comments please!) please go and read the entire site over at Beta.LewRockwell.com. This will give us the opportunity to see how the entire site functions under the real load that we’ll see when we go live in a 2-3 weeks, and make adjustments so your load times stay as fast as possible. Click This Link to Go to Beta.Lewrockwell.com.

Recently by John Keller: Ron Paul's Support Is Much More Widespread Than Reported

As announced on the blog several times in recent days, Lewrockwell is moving the website and all its content to a new WordPress based format. Thanks to all those who looked at the beta site and provided feedback. Here are some of the main changes we're looking at thanks to your comments:

• Overall the site looks clean, loads quickly, and is easy to use (not a change, I know)
• Keeping a serif font, instead of the sans-serif font on the beta site articles
• Tweaking the spacing and font sizing of article titles and the masthead
• Continuing with Google search for now, instead of the current WordPress search
• Tuning the background color and font colors slightly to reduce eye-strain while reading
• Final updates to Articles, Podcasts, and Blog posts — all will be updated before the move
• Other minor bug fixes

This is by no means an exhaustive list of version 1 tweaks or the features we're looking at adding once we move to WordPress. Please hold your comments and requests for now if you haven't already sent them in. We'll have another open comment session once we launch the new site. Suggestions for version 2 include:

• Categories — the overall area of focus for an atricle (e.g. Economics, Foreign Policy, Domestic Policy, Anarcho-Capitalism, etc.)
• Tags — these are more specific than Categories and an article can have more than one (e.g. Drones, Gold, Ron Paul)
• Comments — no Facebook required, likely Disquus
• Ratings — 1 to 5 stars for an article, ala Amazon
• Search — incorporating the above metrics and keywords
• Potentially more items

Here's how we need your help now. The site seems to load quickly, but we've only had about 2% of the overall readership go there. Today, Monday April 1st (hold comments please!) please go and read the entire site over at Beta.LewRockwell.com. This will give us the opportunity to see how the entire site functions under the real load that we'll see when we go live in a 2-3 weeks, and make adjustments so your load times stay as fast as possible. Click This Link to Go to Beta.Lewrockwell.com.

John Keller [send him mail] writes from Atlanta, GA where he lives and works.

The Best of John Keller

Recently by John Keller: Open Letter to ‘The Republican Establishment’ — What the Military and Mainstream Knows About Ron Paul that You Should Learn

The establishment media and republicans are in a panic that Ron Paul is in a position to win the Iowa caucus, and is gaining momentum in New Hampshire. One of the main strawmen put forth is that Ron Paul has a small but fervent set of supporters, perhaps 1 Million, who take over online polls, and have now realized how to organize on the ground. In other words, the establishment argues that Ron Paul's apparent popularity is really driven by a small group of Ron Paul fans, rather than being reflective of the majority of voters, and in a real election Ron Paul will be unable to win. Let's use widely available Internet tools to examine this argument and draw our own conclusions.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and here's my favorite. It was created using Google Trends, and I invite you to use the tool to replicate what I've done here: http://www.google.com/trends (Enter Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney). I changed the default time range to 30 days.

Click for a larger version

This set of graphs shows 3 major things — I've added a big #1, #2, and #3 by each point. First, unless Ron Paul supporters are getting up and using Google every morning, search volume shows that Ron Paul is overwhelmingly the most searched about candidate. The top line references Ron Paul to 1, and compares the search volume for Newt and Mitt to Ron (see the big #1) — He has 2x times the search volume of Newt Gingrich, and 4 times the search volume of Mitt Romney. He has more Google searches than Mitt and Newt, combined. Bottom line: the general public has interest in Ron Paul — note that this does not tell us if the interest is positive or negative, but it is sustained and growing.

Second, the bottom graph is Google's index of news story mentions. See the big #2, and note that the Mainstream Media really is ignoring Ron Paul. See how it is only now, when Ron Paul has been polling #1 in Iowa and gaining momentum in New Hampshire that the news media are starting to run stories on him. No wonder they call them dead tree dailies. They are not serving the public the information they want to know about, they are serving up the establishment line. Note to entrepreneurs: the gap between search volume above and news story volume below has a name — "opportunity".

Third, the city by city breakout of interest is very telling — see the big #3. The beltway insiders in Washington DC are breathing their own exhaust. They are the only area where searches for Newt Gingrich approach those of Ron Paul. When I first pulled this graph a few days ago, Newt was actually ahead. The level of groupthink is truly amazing, and helps explain the utter befuddlement as the Washington desk chiefs, K street gang, assorted lobbyists, and political hacks try to understand how and why Ron Paul can actually win in Iowa and New Hampshire.

There are many other sources of information to confirm that Ron Paul is really the people's choice, and the most interesting candidate in the field. Note that I haven't cherry-picked these, as Mitt is clearly winning in some areas. I will point out that Gross Google Results includes news stories and cross postings of news, which is why I prefer actual search volume to represent interest. Similarly, Mitt is ahead on Facebook "likes", however, Ron is gaining ground after his fine debate performances and Tonight Show Appearance . The Youtube videos are especially telling. Ron Paul's results page has multiple videos with hundreds and thousands of views each, and no video on the first page with less than 25,000 views. Mitt Romney's results page has a clip with 42 views in the number 6 position.

Candidate

Ron Paul

Newt Gingrich

Mitt Romney

Gross Google Results

63.8 Million

9.7 Million

344 Million

Youtube Videos

352,000

29,700

41,800

Peak Twitter Mentions

.41%

.24%

.16%

Facebook Likes

660,000

221,000

1,237,000

Facebook Weekly Growth Rate

2.04%

1.32%

.64%

In summary, the mainstream media attempts to show Ron Paul as a fringe candidate to discourage undecided voters from aligning themselves with him. Don't be fooled, and don't be fooled by the "Ron Paul can't win" canard. The real world statistics and indicators show that the mainstream media has and is consistently underestimating the strength, depth, and breadth of Ron Paul's support.

John Keller [send him mail] writes from Atlanta, GA where he lives and works.

The Best of John Keller

Ron Paul's surge to the top of the polls in Iowa, and increasing likelihood that he will win is causing angst among many of you "Establishment Republicans". You are quick to try and dismiss a potential win as some sort of fluke, or owing to Independents registering to vote for him. Your typical argument against him is that "Ron Paul is too far out of the mainstream", and that his rise in the polls could be bad for Iowa's standing as the first caucus and bad for the Republican party. Let's address the idea that Ron Paul is out of the mainstream, and by implication, unelectable.

Divide Ron Paul's positions into domestic and foreign policy. Domestically, Ron Paul is Mr. Republican. As the ideological founder of the Tea Party movement, he has put forward a plan to cut $1 Trillion dollars from the Federal Budget year one, and he has the voting record to make it credible. He has never voted for a tax increase. He has never voted for a program not authorized in the Constitution. He names 5 agencies that he proposes be eliminated: Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education as well as the TSA. This sounds radical, but consider that in 1980 Ronald Reagan promised to eliminate the Department of Education if elected. As his plan points out, these cuts would return spending to 2006 levels. So his domestic policies, low and no tax plan, and budget plan should seem like a dream come true for you. Foreign Policy must be where Ron Paul is "out of the mainstream".

Ron Paul's domestic policies quickly tie into his foreign policy. He proposes to bring home US troops from all around the world. This he claims, rightly, would be his prerogative as Commander in Chief. Note that this is not a reduction in overall military force, although defense budgets would be cut too, but the immediate savings from eliminating the cost of stationing troops abroad, with all the attendant logistics issues, foreign rents, and base maintenance costs. This is where you "Establishment Republicans" disagree with him. The boogeyman of Iran is constantly floated in the debates, acting as a foreign policy litmus test .

It is here, dear Establishment Republican, that Ron Paul's position is in step with the rest of America as well as the rank and file in the military, while you are out of step. Consider that George W Bush won in 2000 largely due to the mainstream being tired of Clinton's police the world strategy. "A humble foreign policy" was a nice alternative to the Democratic nation building most perceived would continue under an Al Gore presidency. In 2008, 7 years post 9-11 with the Iraq war lies coming to light, the mainstream again voted for the peace candidate, Barack Obama, and against John "bomb Iran" McCain. For you Establishment Republicans reading this, I'll say it again.

The main reason McCain lost was because he represented Bush III — a continuation of the neo-con hijacking of American foreign policy. McCain was out of the mainstream on his foreign policy, so he lost. Fast forward to today and consider. In the debates you have Republican Establishment candidates Romney, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, and Santorum arguing to see who is more hawkish. The lone voice on the stage urging caution and diplomacy, the long voice advising that this sounds a lot like the Iraqi war propaganda, the lone voice warning that we can't afford another 8-year "cakewalk" like Iraq of Afghanistan – Ron Paul.

You Establishment Republicans argue that Iran really, really is a threat, no we mean it this time. The mainstream American, however, and most importantly, the rank and file in the military disagree. Few are in a better position to assess the risk posed by foreign powers than those actually deployed overseas. The active duty contributions to Ron Paul spell it out in dollars and cents who they want as their Commander in Chief and President. They want US Air Force Flight Surgeon and defender of the Constitution, Ron Paul. They know he won't risk their blood over non-existent or hypothetical threats from Iran. So unless you Establishment Republicans are ready to call active duty military personnel uninformed or cowardly, you would do well to pay attention to this fact, and consider that it is you who are out of the mainstream. Ignore the caucus results at your peril, because Mitt “Obama-lite” Romney and Newt “Freddie-Mac” Gingrich are unelectable against Obama.

John Keller [send him mail] writes from Atlanta, GA where he lives and works.

DIGG THIS

After four
terms as Senator from Arizona, John McCain has written or co-sponsored
enough legislation to give us a good idea of what he believes the
proper role of government to be without explicitly asking. Even
if we did ask, actions are what matters. Below is an analysis of
McCain's electability based on bills he's sponsored, most of it
in the last 8 years, and various speeches and op-ed pieces. I'll
spare you the suspense, and give you the summary up front; read
the rest for supporting details. McCain sees the federal government
as the solution to nearly every problem, and advocates creating
new bureaucracies and federal databases to track and monitor the
"solutions." His bills are laden with the veneer of free
market controls, tracking databases, and public-private information
exchange and R&D so popular when alleged Republicans expand
government; at the end of the day, he is expanding government in
nearly every conceivable way. He is a committed Clintonian interventionist,
often the lone Republican supporting Bill Clinton's interventions
of choice in Sudan, Somalia, Kosovo, and Bosnia.

McCain considers
himself capable of getting things done in Washington because many
of his bills are bipartisan efforts. The results however, leave
conservatives shaking their heads: Free Speech Control, Gun Control,
Unlimited Immigration, Support for a Greenhouse Gas Tax, and Woodrow
Wilson–Style International Gun-Barrel Democracy. McCain was
the Democrats' useful conservative idiot in each of these cases.
He was the lead sponsor of multiple bills no Democrat could have
pushed through Congress, but given that almost all the co-sponsors
of these bills are hard-core leftists we can see by his actions
this Senator is a big government Republican on matters domestic,
fiscal, and foreign.

McCain's
Stifles the First Amendment and Free Speech — The
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA)

Also known
as the McCain-Feingold
act, this little gem regulates political speech by erecting
limits to who can donate what, how soon before an election, as well
as who can talk about a politician, or make "political"
statements. The alleged intent of the act is to prevent influence
buying on the part of corporations, wealthy individuals or foreign
governments by limiting campaign donations, and "electioneering
speech." As usual, the act completely misses the real problem,
addressing only the symptoms. One probable intention of the act
is to tip the balance of power in favor of incumbents and the Republicrat
party by limiting political speech.

The real problem
is that Congress has too much power. Adhering strictly to the Constitution
would eliminate most of the regulatory agencies, favor granting,
and legislation that create the demand for political contributions
from well-connected businesses. Instead of addressing the problem
of government run amok, this law addresses the symptoms by attempting
to regulate donations and free speech.

A legal challenge
has already been heard by the Supreme Court, with
predictable results. While researching this point, I found the
following. It astounded me, but probably shouldn't. Take
a look at the lead plaintiff in the Constitutional challenge
heard at the Supreme Court. Dr. Paul continues to amaze me with
his consistent, principled, unwavering support of the Constitution.
Here he is leading the charge against tyranny in May of 2003. No
Presidential bid on the line, he was just doing what he does, defending
liberty by arguing in favor of the Constitution. Dr. Paul co-signed
a letter requesting a re-consideration of BCRA, including a
coherent summary of problems with the legislation:

The idea
behind regulating electioneering communication was to limit the
use of unregulated and unreported monies from being used to advocate
for or against a candidate. The problem with the provision is
two-fold. First, these regulations overstep the bounds of genuine
election-based communications by including non-election-related
advertisements. Second, they have additionally proved to be ineffective
and perhaps counterproductive in curbing the use of unreported
money used during election season broadcast advertisements. For
instance, groups which operate under the IRS tax code 527 have
bought a great deal of election-influencing broadcast advertisements
in the past couple of months and are unrestricted by BCRA provisions
and the FEC

…

We would
like to request that these hearings also include consideration
of ways in which BCRA provisions may have overstepped the bounds
of election-related regulation and be infringing upon the First
Amendment rights of literally millions of Americans by limiting
the rights of groups to band together to inform their fellow citizens
on issues of policy and legislation.

Senator McCain
is no friend of liberty, but it gets worse.

McCain's
Second Amendment Sellout — The
Gun Show "Loophole" Law

Senator McCain,
our Republican from Arizona, an open
carry state with average
crime rates wants to expand the Brady Bill to close a "loophole"
that allows private citizens to buy and sell guns to each other
at gun shows, fund new gun control programs, and expand the BATF.
Wouldn't a true conservative support the repeal of the awful Brady
Law? No. He's expanding it, which is especially weird since he
voted against it eight years earlier. Below is the Summary of
the Bill the "conservative" Senator sponsored. His co-sponsors
on the Bill include Senators Schumer, Clinton, Lieberman, and Carper
(all Democrats) and fellow Republican Mike DeWine.

I've edited
the Summary down, and added emphasis on the incredibly bad parts.
I should probably just bold the entire thing.

SUMMARY AS
OF: 5/15/2001
Gun Show Loophole Closing and Gun Law Enforcement Act of 2001
– Amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to provide
for regulation of firearms transfers at special firearms events
(events at which 75 or more firearms are offered or exhibited
for sale or exchange if one or more of the firearms has been shipped
or transported in, or otherwise affects, interstate or foreign
commerce, with an exception).

Prohibits
a special firearms events frequent operator from organizing, planning,
promoting, or operating a special firearms event without meeting
specified requirements. Provides an option for 24-hour background
checks at special firearms events for States with computerized
disqualifying records and programs to improve State databases.

Gun Law Enforcement
Act of 2001 – Authorizes appropriations for: (1) grants to States
and local governments to support prosecutions in high gun crime
areas; (2) establishment of up to 100 additional Project EXILE
programs; (3) additional Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
agents; (4) gun tracing and youth crime gun interdiction; and
(5) grants to research entities developing technologies that
limit the use of a gun to the owner.

So McCain isn't
using bipartisan give and take to strike down provisions of the
Brady law, he's the Conservative catspaw advancing more gun control
goodies than a lefty like Chuck Shumer could ever dream of sponsoring
himself. What's going on here?

McCain
Supports Defacto Amnesty – The
Kennedy-McCain Immigration Bill

The Daily
Kos has a summary of the major titles here for easy reference.
Senator McCain sponsored this bill. His
list of co-sponsors is telling. Barrack Obama, Teddy Kennedy,
his good pal Joe Lieberman (again), and John Kerry are the standouts
on this bill that amounts to an immediate amnesty, and an opening
of the floodgates for low-skill workers.

The 2005 McCain-Kennedy
immigration reform bill would add a low skill visa program known
as H4A visa, and allocate 400,000 "low skill" visas
a year, the first year, with provision to adjust the number
up or down based on demand. As if this isn't bad enough, Title VII
of the bill, creates and grants a new H5B visa to aliens, and I
quote: "not legally present in the United States on the date
on which the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was introduced."
Read it again, only illegal aliens can get the H5B visa. Poof, they
are now legal, can keep working, get in line for a Green Card, and
need only make a one-time trip home to present themselves at a US
Consulate and pay $500. Amnesty.

The remainder
of the bill continues to show McCain's belief that government has
all the answers, if only we add enough market-like mechanisms to
the bureaucracy, create Orwellian new people-tracking schemes, stand
up vast new government foundations, and broaden the authority of
existing agencies. Here are the rest of the highlights from the
Summary (emphasis mine):

Requires
the Commissioner of Social Security to create a new Employment
Eligibility Confirmation System.

Amends the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of
1996 to address the collection of arrival and departure information.

Broadens
the Department of Labor’s investigative authority under
INA.

Authorizes
the Secretary of State to enter into an agreement with foreign
governments whose citizens participate in the H-5A program to
establish a labor migration facilitation program.

Authorizes
the Secretary to establish the U.S. Citizenship Foundation.

McCain embraces
a Big Government Answer to Global Warming – The
McCain–Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act

Again, we see
McCain's worldview of the Federal Government as the answer to all
of humankind's problems, if we could just set it up to act like
the free market. This bill is very telling.

First, it funds
all sorts of bureaucratic R&D efforts that assume an implicit
hypothesis I will do my best to state: global warming is real, and
is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases mostly attributed
to human activity. So the chances for real research that validate
global warming, its causes, and humankinds' role in them are practically
zero, since any researchers submitting grant proposals will already
be vetted as Acolytes of the Church of Environmentalism.

Second, we
see the use of McCain's favorite liberty-chilling device, a database
to track things. In this case, the EPA is going to establish a Greenhouse
Gas Database to track emissions. Third, McCain again attempts to
insert free market controls into a social engineering scheme and
massive free market disruption. From the Summary: "Establishes
a program for market-driven reduction of greenhouse gases (GHGs)
through the use of tradeable allowances. Requires certain covered
entities that own or control a source of GHG emissions in the electric
power, industrial, and commercial sectors of the U.S. economy to
submit to the Administrator, beginning in 2010, one tradeable allowance
for every metric ton of GHGs emitted. Allows tradeable allowances
to be sold, exchanged, purchased, retired, or otherwise used as
permitted by this Act."

Fourth, the
bill would create a massive new energy bureaucracy to oversee the
ensuing economic debacle, and no doubt serve as clearinghouse for
favors to the politically connected. Again, from the summary: "Establishes
the Climate Change Credit Corporation to manage tradeable allowances."

This is conservatism?
Note that McCain is again advancing a leftist agenda; his co-sponsors
on this bill are Joe
Lieberman, Barack Obama, and Olympia Snowe. Why would any democrats
cross over and vote for a fake liberal like McCain, when they can
get the real thing on a Clinton or Obama ticket?

Senator
McCain's Economic Illiteracy
Here's a telling exchange from the
MSNBC October 9th debates. (emphasis mine)

BARTIROMO: 
Senator McCain, has Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cut interest
rates aggressively enough?  Has Ben Bernanke cut rates aggressively
enough?

MCCAIN: 
I don't have the kind of expertise to know exactly whether he has
cut interest rates sufficiently or not.  And that's why we
put that responsibility in the hands of the head of the Federal
Reserve.

MCCAIN: 
I do know that this nation has faced some pretty good blows in the
last month or so with the credit crunch and the subprime lending. 
I'm glad whenever they cut interest rates.  I wish interest
rates were zero.  But we leave those responsibilities to
the smartest people we can find, and I think that so far he's done
a good job.

That John McCain
claims to be a huge fiscal conservative, but fails to understand
one of the most important parameters of monetary policy is terrifying.

In this debate
clip, John McCain catalogs various government programs, and makes
nebulous claims about
using the veto pen to control spending. Let me see if I've got
this straight. McCain wants a massive new energy bureaucracy to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Yeah, that won't raise the cost
of energy, the single most important input into our economy other
than human labor. He doesn't understand how the Fed works to inflate
the currency and fund the grab bag of programs he favors. Every
bill referenced above has included the creation of a massive new
federal bureaucracy; where does he think the money will come from?

Senator
McCain — Clintonian Global Interventionist

McCain hasn't
met a war he doesn't like. When the Republicans were arguing for
restraint in Bosnia and Kosovo, McCain was there backing Clinton,
ready to intervene. In a recent speech, rather than catalog all
the many, many military actions and interventions
of which the Senator has been in favor, let's concentrate on the
current "Global War on Terror."

First, recall
that Senator McCain and other supporters of the war have been proven
completely, totally, and disastrously wrong in their basis for the
war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's Iraq did not possess weapons
of mass destruction. Iraq did not harbor the 9-11 terrorists. How
Senator McCain gets one shred of believability is beyond me, but
rest assured it will end as soon as the Republican debates are over.
In a general debate Obama or Clinton will destroy him on this issue,
correctly pointing out that he… is… and… was… completely… wrong…
The American people have seen through the rhetoric, and even if
a fragile "peace" persists, the war is a losing issue
for McCain.

Sometimes the
best way to understand a position is by contrast, so here is another
amazing video of Dr. Paul getting it right on Iraq, back in
2002. Not only does he denounce the war, since "Iraq poses
no threat to the United States," but notes that pre-emptive
war is an incredibly dangerous concept, and this aggression would
be unique in American history. Finally, he correctly notes that
Iraq is an impoverished third-world nation with no Air Force or
Navy, that hasn't hit a single one of our fighters enforcing the
UN no fly zone, even after thousands of sorties.

As you're considering
what man would be best Commander in Chief, recall that McCain has
been disastrously wrong, as have most of the Republicans, and only
Dr. Paul got it right at the outset. Rather than admit his error,
and get out of Iraq, McCain
is fine keeping US troops there for 100 years. Setting aside
the grievous moral error of invading Iraq, the American people are
war weary. The mid-term elections are a clear repudiation of the
war. Any candidate, but especially one like McCain whose support
of the invasion has been unwavering, has no chance in the general
election.

Summary
— A Big Government Republican Will Not Win the Presidency

The Democrats
are going to turn out the vote for Obama or Clinton, probably Obama.
To win a modern election, a Republican needs to carry most of these
constituencies: The Republican "base" in Red States, Evangelicals,
the Gun Lobby, libertarians, independents, and Blue Dog Democrats
in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio. Other than the straight Republican
ticket base, McCain has no ability to energize significant portions
of the remaining groups, and based on his legislative track record,
speeches, and debate performance has alienated significant portions
of them. A vote for McCain in the primaries is a vote for Hillary
in the general election.

January
16, 2008

John
Keller [send
him mail] writes
from Atlanta, GA where he lives and works.

In no particular
order:

Scandal #1
– Huckabee misrepresents his stand on illegal aliens –
He ran Arkansas as a safe haven state for illegal aliens, and favored
illegal aliens over US citizens for cut-rate in-state tuition. Now
he’s claiming he’s against amnesty when he refused to sign a bill
to start deporting illegals.

(Arkansas
Journal) (Washington
Times)

Scandal #2
– Huckabee lied about urging parole of a rapist who raped and
murdered again – He pardoned or commuted sentences on 1,033
criminals while governor. He urged the parole board to approve parole
of many more criminals that were politically difficult to pardon.
One example, Wayne DuMond, went on to kill and rape 2 women after
Huckabee personally pressured the parole board to release him 25
years early for a rape conviction. The Arkansas parole board forwarded
Huckabee a letter from one of DuMond’s prior rape victims urging
the governor not to pardon DuMond, and predicting that DuMond would
rape and kill again. Huckabee pushed for the pardon anyway. Huckabee
later denied receiving the letter, and tried to cover it up, according
to a former aid who provided the letters. 

(Huffington
Post) (ABC
News)

Scandal #3
– Huckabee’s non-stop abuse of Christianity as a political
gimmick – This
“phone call” will absolutely turn your stomach, as does his
oh-so-subtle floating
cross Christmas ad. Give me a break. It disgusts me as a Christian,
and no doubt frightens non-Christians to see this sort of thing.

Scandal #4
– Huckabee is a pro-war “Christian” – Here’s a chance
to actually put some of Christ’s sermons (Blessed are the warmongers?)
into action. Instead,
he supports continuing the war in Iraq to “save national honor”
rather than admitting it was a mistake (no WMD’s, no al Qaeda) and
withdrawing. How many more have to die before we “leave with
honor”? Is that the 11th Commandment? Maybe it’ll be as honorable
as Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan or Serbia… He
has absolutely no idea how foreign policy and militarism connects
with the dollar crisis, terrorism, and the coming recession. This
makes him identical to all but Ron Paul out of any of the candidates,
but is noteworthy given how bloodthirsty he is for a minister.

Read
More
Open Letters

Scandal #5
– Huckabee destroyed state files and equipment as he left the
Governor’s Office – He ordered the payment of $25,000 from
a state emergency fund to physically destroy the hard drives of
his office at the end of his term. That data belongs to the Office
of the Governor, not the man, and a public official should have
NO expectation of privacy when carrying out the duties of office
on government equipment. To turn one of the government’s favorite
phrases around “if you don’t have anything to hide…” So much for
rule of law over personal privilege. We could expect little return
to Constitutional guarantees of privacy and transparent government
under Huckabee. Allocating the funds from a state emergency fund
earmarked for floods, tornadoes, and natural disasters is fiscally
irresponsible, spendthrift, and perhaps illegal. We should not be
surprised if this scandal takes on wings of its own, given all the
possible angles.

(Arkansas
Democrat Gazette)

Scandal #6
– Ethicsgate – Governor Huckabee was sanctioned 5 times
for ethics violations, and had 9 other complaints, none dismissed
as frivolous.  He’s taken practically every gift or favor ever
given to him as Arkansas governor, and actively asked for gifts:
“some former Huckabee staff and appointees acknowledged … that
Huckabee’s chief of staff and a cabinet official solicited contributions
from staff and appointees for Christmas gifts for the governor.”
Shouldn’t it go the other way around? The boss buys a small gift
for the staff. What about that old Christian nugget: it’s better
to give than receive. There is also a very direct correlation between
his receipt of gifts and his political appointments. 

He even went
so far as to set up a wedding registry for him and his wife to receive
gifts to decorate their house after they left office. How completely
tacky. Clearly this guy thinks of public service as serving him,
not the other way around. 

(MSNBC)
(Guardian
UK)

Scandal #7
– Huckabee wanted to quarantine AIDS patients in 1992 –
He was in favor of rounding up AIDS patients for quarantine in 1992
– NOT 1985, but 1992, 7 years after it was well established
that AIDS was not transmitted by casual contact. This is either
a not so subtle “homos be damned” pander to the evangelical base,
or a display of ignorance so shocking it borders on unbelievable.

This was a
full year after Magic Johnson “mainstreamed” HIV/AIDS by admitting
that he had it.  He would probably have given Magic a pass
to play at the Olympics that year.

(CNN)
(USA
Today)

Scandal #8
– Huckabee refuses to admit when he’s mistaken or misinformed
about current events – Rather than get informed or admit
his lack of knowledge, he lies about his gaffes. A polite observer
will say he was misunderstood, but watch the video and judge for
yourself. See
these comments about Pakistan under marital law and the Pakistan
immigration “threat." How exactly does a former governor
who didn’t even have Secret Service protection get a CIA briefing?
Who briefed him? Where did those numbers come from? What? Then
there’s this 46-second gem.

Scandal #9
– Huckabee seriously misrepresents his record on cutting taxes
– He is not really a tax cutter, and in fact, is lined up to
be a bigger spender than, well, Bush II. “Right
now, we spend about 3.9 percent of our GDP on defense, compared
with about six percent in 1986, under President Ronald Reagan. We
need to return to that six percent level.” (Foreign Affairs)
Does he realize that’s $300 Billion in additional defense spending,
over the $500 Billion in on-budget Defense spending?

That last thing
we need is to waste an additional $300 Billion on planes and battleships
to fight guys with carbines and makeshift bombs. We need to get
out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and follow Ron Paul’s plan of granting
Letters of Marque for the capture of bin Laden. This sort of policy
ignorance is consistent with Huckabee’s generally misinformed worldview.

It gets better
though. Here is his record on taxes from National
Review and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

“According
to the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette, the average Arkansas tax burden increased
47% over Huckabee’s tenure. Huckabee supported (in chronological
order) a sales tax hike; gas and diesel fuel tax hikes; another
sales tax hike; a cigarette tax hike; a nursing home bed tax; another
sales tax hike; an income surcharge tax; a tobacco tax hike; taxes
on Internet access; and higher beer taxes. Huckabee also oversaw
a 50-percent increase in spending; happily signed a minimum wage
increase and encouraged national Republicans to do the same; favors
a national
smoking ban, farm
subsidies, and a federally mandated arts
and music curriculum; opposes private school choice; and employs
class-warfare and protectionist language on the campaign trail.”

(Foreign Affairs)
(National Review) (Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

Scandal #10
– Arkansans like Hillary Clinton better than Huckabee by nearly
4 to 1 – His home state rejects him as a left-leaning, tax
and spend, authoritarian Republican. There’s no way a leftist Republican
will beat a Democrat in the general election. Leftists will vote
for the Democrat offered, and other than some evangelicals and die-hards,
Republicans
and Independents will stay home. Huckabee versus any Democrat
would be an electoral beating to rival Reagan versus Mondale, except
it will be the Dems taking the White House. He is a Democrats’ dream
candidate to the point that they are calling him the “Glass Jaw”
because they will break him head to head. (Drudge
Report)

Here’s Hillary,
one of the most despised people in politics, absolutely killing
Huckabee in a late 2007 poll (35% to 8%) in Arkansas on the
heals of out-raising him for bucks in their “home” state. The final
word on Huckabee, and more in-depth reading of all his flip-flops,
pettiness, gaudiness, and scandalous behavior I leave to one who
knows him best. Max
Brantley of the Arkansas Gazette writes for Salon about the man
he’s covered for nearly 19 years.

(University
of Arkansas) (Salon)

January
7, 2008

John
Keller [send
him mail] writes
from Atlanta, GA where he lives and works.

DIGG THIS

I recently
sent a note to my email list in support of Ron Paul. One of the
more thoughtful replies from a friend questioned the advisability
of withdrawing our military from bases around the world. Here's
his concern:

"I typically
don’t get involved in political discussions, but your email got
me thinking (as it intended).  I like Ron Paul, and I agree
that he seems like a nice down-to-earth kind of guy.

However, I’m
very surprised that you think that pulling out of all 700+ US bases
around the world is a good idea.  Retracting all of our forces
seems like a very isolationist policy, and I can’t see that intentionally
significantly weakening our worldwide military capability is wise. 
Further, a great deal of our intelligence is gained from operations
that are only logistically possible with those bases in place. 
Is the hope that other countries would like us more if we just went
home and left them alone?  Or is the move solely based on economic
reasons?

There are other
issues that I would also question, but this one stands out the most."

Here is a more
in-depth analysis of what a policy of withdrawal would do in actual
fact.

The Fairness
Factor

I can tell
you first-hand that the only people in other countries that like
our US military presence on their soil are the pimps, madams, and
liquor store owners near the bases. Imagine the impact a Chinese
military base a block down the street from your house would have.
Armed young foreign men, even if they were angels, are not what
we’d like in the US. Every few years the US military kills a few
foreign civilians in training accidents alone. Think of the USS
Vincennes killing over 200 Iranian civilians, the USS Greenville
accidentally sinking
the Ehime Maru and US Airmen recklessly
killing 20 skiers in the Italian Alps. Imagine the outrage if
the Mexican Military killed 30 Texans in a border training exercise.
Still, the jingoist may retort "So what! We're Americans, and
I don't give a darn about fairness. The US is unique, and our government
should try to maximize our every advantage." Since this seems
to be the opinion of many Americans, let’s look at this from a US-centric
viewpoint.

Intelligence
Gathering

The vast majority
of our foreign intelligence has nothing to do with guys in uniform
stationed at bases. Information is gathered as Human Intelligence
and Signals Intelligence (HUMINT and SIGINT as the spooks call it).
HUMINT comes from “diplomats” in our embassies who are CIA operatives,
information exchange between friendly government intelligence agencies
(Mossad in Israel MI-6 in the UK, etc.), double agents, and all
the other tricks of the CIA. SIGINT, run mostly by the NSA, comes
from our spy satellites, and communications interception, warrantless
tapping of International phone calls, etc. Thinking through all
the various ways our government gathers intelligence, guys in uniform
on bases barely contribute.

Bases and people
in uniform are easily spotted, and are no deterrent to terrorist
plots. The 9/11 plot was practiced and carried out in the US, with
the FBI missing
warnings of the attack on several occasions. Military bases
around the world did not stop that attack, or contribute in any
meaningful way to intelligence gathering to stop the attack. In
fact, military bases around the world are one of the reasons for
the attack.

Isolationism

A call for
military withdrawal is commonly and incorrectly called isolationism.
Think through what would actually happen if our troops and equipment
were packed up in 2009, and brought home. It’s just the troops and
gear coming home. Among the Americans who would remain engaged and
on the ground in foreign countries are: diplomats, ambassadors,
aid workers, volunteers, ex-pat residents, dual citizens, businessmen,
missionaries, and tourists to name just a few. In short, it’s the
Americans who are most welcome that would remain, not the ones with
tanks and M-16′s. In the absence of a military presence on their
soil, foreigners would be more welcoming of Americans.

Some will claim
“how can we ensure Americans in foreign countries would be safe
without a military presence?” First, the US military is not a police
force, nor does it have police power, or routinely carry out police
duties. The lone exception of Iraq shows why this is a bad idea.
The military is designed to destroy other military forces, not rescue
kittens, arrest drunken brawlers, or keep the peace. Second, foreign
countries have their own police that are just as functionally dysfunctional
as our own gendarmes. Third, it’s the responsibility of an individual
to make informed decisions about the relative risks of traveling
abroad, and to take precautions while traveling. It's not the responsibility
of the US government to try and protect every US citizen everywhere,
at all times.

The Real
Purpose of Military Power

No state military
in the world is poised to invade or bomb the United States. The
myth of "Forward Deployment" is a fig leaf for the true
purposes of the military overseas: protect US business interests,
the foremost being oil; coerce countries like Libya and Syria to
get with the US program, run by the neocons; distract from domestic
issues by having news-ready wars of choice, such as Yugoslavia,
Gulf War I & II, and Afghanistan.

While bases
around the world do not protect the territory or citizens of the
United States, they provide three important negative consequences.
First, they are an irritant or outright provocation to those living
in that country. The 9/11 Commission points out that our bases in
Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Holy Land, provided the ideological justification,
however misguided, for the 9/11 attacks. Second, bases abroad are
a convenient target for militants and terrorists in foreign countries.
The suicide attack on the Marines in Lebanon in 1983, the near sinking
of the USS Cole, and the Kobar
Towers attacks were all possible because bases are conveniently
located in these countries. We were not at war with any of those
countries at the time of the attacks.

Third, our
military presence around the world negatively influences our own
foreign policy. By making a near immediate military response possible,
our politicians resort to it first, rather than as a last, defensive
resort. When the only tool you have is a hammer…. Consider that
Clinton ordered missile strikes on what turned out to be an aspirin
factory in Sudan during the Monica Lewinsky testimony and bombed
Serbia right after the failed impeachment trial.

Politicians
use the military to police the world, protect US business interests,
and distract from domestic issues, rather than engage in diplomacy.

The Effectiveness
of the Modern Military

Our military
is correctly assessed as being ready to fight the last war. In this
case, our military is ready to fight and win a World War II or Gulf
War I style of conflict against another state military. The military
is pretty good at blowing up tanks, planes, buildings, soldiers
in uniform, and unfortunately civilians in foreign countries. That
style of warfare is over. All the attacks I cited in the fairness
factor section were terrorist attacks. No state military would dare
challenge the United States. Instead we have entered what military
thinkers call “4th-Generation War." This is warfare by non-state
actors such as terrorists, secessionists, or ideologues against
a state. The war in Iraq continues not because the Iraqi army is
making a last stand against the United States military. Rather,
some Iraqi’s are furious over a foreign invasion, some are terrorists
who have come to harass and kill our conventional forces, and some
are fighting for control of the nascent government, eliminating
militia-style competition. In this context we not only see the failure
of war as an instrument of US policy, but the change in the terms
of victory. Perhaps the United States military hasn’t won a war
since World War II because the nature of war itself, as understood
by the people in it has changed. Read everything by the excellent
William
Lind for more insight on this topic.

The Final
Analysis

The United
States would not be undefended if our military was withdrawn from
around the world. Exactly the opposite would happen. By having our
military here in the United States, military forces could be used
to patrol and enforce our borders, and regain their proper place
defending the United States rather than policing the world. Our
intelligence gathering capability would not suffer. Overall, the
United States would be safer, US citizens would be more welcome
abroad, and military personnel would not be needlessly placed in
harm’s way. This is hardly an isolationist policy.

The warfare
Republicans in control of the executive branch are fighting this
tooth and nail, because it would mean an end to their ability to
wage wars of choice, and carry out the Likudnick policies of the
neocons. The feckless Democrats, swept into legislative power on
the high tide of anti-war sentiment, are also fighting it. One need
only examine the cruise missile diplomacy of Bill Clinton to see
that the supposed anti-war party is just as ready to kill foreigners
and sacrifice US troops to advance their pro-big government agenda.
In the final, grand analysis, that's what all those foreign bases
amount to: the tangible reminder to the world of the United States
Government's ability to enforce its will through bombs and bullets.

As we head
into a recession that Washington is loathe to admit exists, the
Federal budget must be cut. Reductions in expensive foreign military
bases are a vital first step. Ron Paul is right, bringing the troops
home will usher in peace, liberty and prosperity.

December
22, 2007

John
Keller [send
him mail] writes
from Atlanta, GA where he lives and works.

DIGG THIS

I managed to
catch only snippets of the previous Republican debates until this
past Wednesday. Usually, the highlights from YouTube provided better
insight than sitting through the actual live feed. Now I know why.
Here’s a snapshot of the first six questions, with some analysis.
Let’s see if we can pick out the missing subtext to each question,
and the overall theme of the debate. I’ve called out the media’s
deliberate use of various
tactics before, but Wednesday night’s showing is one for the
record books.

Question 1:
Schmaltzy Lead in rather than a question.

I
used to share your minarchist view. A small, limited government
seemed possible and pragmatic. That's changed since September
11th. Instead of rethinking the foreign policy that
contributed to the attacks, the government piled on more of the
same. Instead of firing the chiefs of the FAA, CIA, and FBI, those
agencies get more funding. The attacks on September 11th
have given the federal government an excuse to shear all but the
ghostly forms of any remaining constitutionally guaranteed liberties
from a sheep-like people. Torture, constant surveillance, seizure
upon suspicion, suspension of habeas corpus, abolishment of Posse
Comitatus, and warrant-less searches of your person and property
are either in effect or under serious debate. Imagine, torture
in the United States! The United States has become a police state,
all with our precious, written Constitution still moldering under
glass in Washington, D.C.

In
the span of less than 100 years communism peaked and collapsed
in the Soviet Union. Communism failed because it was based on
severely flawed assumptions about people, and what motivates them.
Mr. Sobran, I think it's time to admit that the idea of a Constitutionally
limited government has failed as well. It, too, is based on flawed
assumptions about people. Perhaps not as spectacularly wrong as
communism, but wrong, nonetheless. Since it has taken over 200
years to produce a country nearly as authoritarian as the Soviet
Union, and it has not yet collapsed, perhaps we can say constitutionally
limited republicanism is at least three times better than communism.
And we can always feel better about our revolutionaries than the
Russians do about the Bolsheviks; ours didn't purges millions
after winning the war.

The
men who founded this Republic by writing and ratifying the Constitution
understood the dangerous path they were taking. Students of antiquity,
they tried to avoid following the Roman path of Kingdom, then
Republic, then Empire, by writing everything down. It turns out
in practice that the "social contract" cannot bind the
politician or the entrenched bureaucrat, any more than the Soviet
Union could make the New Soviet Man.

When
things do change in this country, it will not be because the bureaucrats
come to work one day and say "Gee, we failed in our job.
The private market would be so much better at this." It will
be because the people have finally figured out that Ben Franklin
was right all along, liberty can't be traded for security.

Sir,
your sentimental attachment to the Constitution must go. Like
communism, it may sound like a good idea on paper, but it hasn't
worked in practice. It just took longer to fail. I've made the
journey from skeptical Republican to minarchist Libertarian to
anarcho-capitalist in a few short years. Thankfully I had the
Internet, to help me stand on the libertarian shoulders of free-market
and freedom minder thinkers. Your writings were and are among
those that cause me to question and revise my viewpoints. I hope
you will consider doing the same, and move from Joe Sobran, reactionary
utopian to Joe Sobran, radical anarcho-capitalist. We could use
your help imagining the future.

November
29, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

The
Truth Needs Your Support
Please
make a donation to help LewRockwell.com tell it,
no matter what nefarious plans Leviathan has.

The
order that facts are presented in an article is important. Most
people don't read anything but a headline to decide if they want
to read an article. Even if they don't continue, the person stores
away the headline as a summary of the whole story, filling in
the blanks. When reading, very few people read past the opening
couple of paragraphs. That and those capricious editors are why
journalism schools teach the inverted pyramid approach to writing.
Important paragraphs at the start, less important at the bottom,
and write so the editor can cut the story at the end of any sentence.
Take a look at the headline, and see what it immediately suggests:

Passenger
Prompts Landing At Dulles
Man Approached Cockpit Despite Ban

Suppose
you didn't even read beyond the headline, since you were only
flipping through the paper. You might think, "Hey, they caught
some guy doing something fishy around the cockpit on a flight
to DC. I wonder what he was up to. Probably no good." The
headline mentions the man in a negative light twice. We are immediately
suspicious of this furtive character loitering around the cockpit.
He did it "Despite (the) Ban", just who does he think
he is! Now that we've set the stage with the headline, look at
who is quoted and in what order:

(Unnamed
Government) Authorities, an FBI spokesman, a US-Air Spokesman,
a passenger, several passengers, an Airport Authority Spokesman,
the FBI Spokesman (again), an Airport Authority Spokesman (again),
a US-Air Spokesman (again), the FAA (who confirmed nothing, twice),
Authorities (again, who?), the arrested man's mother.

So
the tally runs: Government 7, Industry 2, Passengers 2, and Adversarial
Citizen 1, Accused 0. Government spokesmen who were not even first
hand witnesses get over half of the quotes, including the first
two slots. Passengers on the plane get two, the man's mother gets
the last word, which is unlikely to be read, and is unrelated
anyway, and its not even mentioned if the "suspect"
was contacted.

The
second paragraph is a prime example of the "free press"
acting as little more than scribes for government press flaks.
Read this through, and we'll dissect it.

The
passenger, Raho N. Ortiz, 33, refused to follow a new federal
rule requiring passengers to remain seated in the last half-hour
of an approach to National, said Chris Murray, an FBI spokesman.

Refusal
denotes a willful decision made in spite of knowing the consequences
of an action. It presupposes that Mr. Ortiz knew this special
rule in advance, and decided to get up anyway. Isn't that a loaded
word to use considering the circumstances, and the description
offered by the passengers that Mr. Ortiz complied immediately
and kept apologizing? Maybe he was asleep; maybe he was wearing
headphones; maybe he was typing on his laptop and didn't hear
the announcement; maybe he was daydreaming while staring out the
window. Let's rewrite that sentence, change just the word "refused",
and see how it changes our perception of the story:

The
passenger, Raho N. Ortiz, 33, forgot to follow a new federal rule
requiring passengers to remain seated in the last half-hour of
an approach to National, said Chris Murray, an FBI spokesman.

Pretty
different take on the events, eh? Our would-be terrorist looks
more like a normal person, instead of a pencil-thin mustachioed
bad guy. Post writers who cared about reporting should challenge
an FBI spokesman instead of just quoting him. It'd be easy. "Can
you really say refused, since the guy claims he forgot?"
If the FBI wants to assign motive anyway, it's the reporter's
job to think clearly enough to realize spin, and leave it out
of the story. An unbiased, factual statement would not assign
motive. It would look like this:

The
passenger, Raho N. Ortiz, 33, left his seat in violation of a
new federal rule requiring passengers to remain seated in the
last half-hour of an approach to National.

Just
facts, no motives. Let's trash the entire second paragraph and
re-writing it as a quote biased from the passenger's point of
view:

The
passenger, Raho N. Ortiz, 33, was arrested for leaving his seat
to use the restroom. "I guess they announced the rule along
with all the other stuff about putting up your seatback and tray
table, but I wasn't really paying attention. I got up to use the
restroom, and these guys started waving guns and yelling at me
to get down, so I did."

When
asked about the felony charges, Mr. Ortiz replied. "I couldn't
believe that they would arrest me for forgetting about a new rule
that only applies to this one airport."

Suddenly
we see ourselves as the passenger. Just an ordinary person worried
about getting our luggage, and meeting our ride at the curb. Get
up to pee, and WHAM! handcuffed in the aisle.

What
about the other passengers. They are all eye witnesses, with no
probable bias one way or the other. Why only two quotes from them?
Only one of the passengers was directly quoted in the article,
and then only about Ortiz. This little snippet gives us an idea
what the situation on the plane might have been like:

Some
said they briefly thought that the plane was being hijacked and
panicked.

Were
they afraid that Mr. Ortiz was hijacking the plane, and thank
goodness for those sky marshals, or were they afraid that two
plainclothes guys with guns ordering everyone to put their hands
on the seat were the hijackers. Were they thankful that the sky
marshals acted to stop Mr. Ortiz, since he practically sprinted
to the front of the plane (he walked briskly according to the
non-witness US-Air spokesman, remember), or was everyone miffed
at an overreaction since a simple reminder from a flight attendant
would have sufficed? This technique is called bias by omission.
Passengers should constitute the majority of the interviewees,
since they are the best source of unbiased information about the
whole affair. The one passenger interviewed and quoted by name
gives exculpatory evidence in favor of Mr. Ortiz. The other passengers
don't come off too favorably for the sky marshals.

Those
questions, and negative comments from the other passengers might
put the government, the sky marshals, and the special new rule
in a bad light, however, and Washington Post reports don't
appear to be in the business of doing that.

Finally,
at the very end of the article, Mr. Ortiz's mother gets her turn.
Getting the last word might seem like a good thing, but it's a
curse in the newspaper world. Hardy anyone reads the entire article,
so putting the quote at the bottom is a sure way to kill anyone
reading it or recalling it. This technique is called bias by position.
Mrs. Ortiz is not exactly the best person to act as an advocate
for her son. Her one quote is a PC-laden preferred minority defense.
No mention is made of an attempt to contact Mr. Ortiz, although
the Post tells us they tried to call the EPA. Why? Was he unavailable
for comment at press time? That's hard to believe since he was
released by 8:30 pm, and no less than 5 people at the Post worked
on this story. Maybe a lawyer would have a cogent defense for
himself, or scathing remarks for the government, or nothing to
say at all about his employer, in which case "Mr. Ortiz (was
not available for / refused to) comment." would be nice.

Now
that we've asked all the relevant questions in our role as watchdog
press, instead of lapdog media, let's change the headline to something
more appropriate:

Sky
Marshals Order Landing At Dulles
Man Forgot Ban, Headed for Head

Changes
the entire character of the story, doesn't it. Our immediate bias
is against the government's overreaction to a bathroom visit,
and Mr. Ortiz seems more like a Walter Mitty daydreamer than a
foiled terrorist. The interesting sub-plot to this entire affair
centers around 3 other facts: first, Mr. Ortiz had a bit of pot
with him, second, he's a Navajo Indian, and third, he's an EPA
lawyer.

The
felony charges have been dropped, and thank goodness. One is left
to wonder however, if a non-lawyer, non-government official, non-preferred
minority with a bag of pot would have been let off as well. I
can imagine a situation where a white bricklayer with a bag of
pot gets the book thrown at him. The felony "not sitting
on approach to DC" charge stays, and felony "Interstate
Drug Trafficking", "Possession with Intent to Distribute"
and other drug related charges are heaped on to a misdemeanor
charge of owning a restricted vegetable.

Hopefully
this entire affair will cause Mr. Ortiz to rethink his career
at the tyrannical EPA, now that he's briefly tasted the warped
justice of the FAA from the wrong end of the barrel. If only the
same could be said for the Washington Post writers who
use loaded words, don't question authority, use bias of position
and omission as well as leading headlines to warp our perception
of the news. The media is no longer an honorable 4th
estate, asking the tough questions to keep the government's employees
and actions under scrutiny. They now act more like a wire service
for a legion of government spokespeople, giving us little more
than we would get out of a government run newspaper.

November
15, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

The
Truth Needs Your Support
Please
make a donation to help us tell it,
no matter what nefarious plans Leviathan has.

The military employs multiple strategies (and a PR firm or two) to shape public perception of the news by controlling the information released to the media. Jared Israel wrote an excellent article describing how these techniques are used in print (and sometimes on TV). Words are chosen carefully based on the emotional response they elicit. Certain facts are referred to again and again, while others are completely ignored. Other “facts” are manufactured out of whole cloth, usually with the tag “unsubstantiated” attached to allow weasel room later. All events are scripted into a master storyline designed to paint the conflict as one of good against evil. The side of righteous America is pitted against the twisted Taliban, or Milosevic, or Iraq, or Noriega, etc.

Luckily (ha ha!), we have a very recent military engagement to compare to our current situation. The “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo gives us something to compare the selective use of images, interviews, and facts to understand how the military and the media shape opinion. Let me restate: the government and military use the media to shape your opinion, and they are very good at it. The current bombing of Afghanistan and the 1999 bombing of Kosovo have a common element that exposes the hypocrisy and selective reporting endemic to any war effort. In both situations, military activity caused a massive refugee crisis, but the way the refugees are portrayed is vastly different between the two wars.

Set aside whether the refugees were the result of ethnic cleansing or people fleeing a bombing zone. In Kosovo, close to two million refugees fled the province after the Nato bombing campaign started. The media broadcast the suffering of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the camps setup in neighboring Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro. Countless interviews, non-stop coverage of refugee columns, and an appeal to send food and money to help the innocents driven out by war were the common themes across all networks. Endless coverage of the refugees on TV made the war for “humanitarian intervention” seem like a noble goal. Americans were told that  Slobodan Milosevic was carrying out his “final solution” on Kosovo Albanians. Never mind that the refugees started leaving Kosovo AFTER the bombs started falling. During the bombing, the talking heads in the media hattered about how the evil Serbs had caused such misery. It was assumed that there was a deliberate program of ethnic cleansing. This was easy to do with CIA trained KLA fighters providing all the translation services, which invariably sounded like “They rounded us up and told us to leave. They took our papers.” These reports were taken at face value. So, blame for the refugee crisis was placed squarely on the Serbs. There’s plenty of evidence that the refugee crisis in Kosovo was the result of bombing, and scant little that it was an organized program. The Germans admitted as much when a top general came clean about how his spies faked “Operation Horseshoe”. That and the fact that the body count on all sides has amounted to 3,200 instead of the 100,000 that James Rubin claimed. That’s after the bombing, and includes military and civilian casualties on both sides. That’s a forensics debate for another day, however. For this article, we can even assume (for the sake of all the Serb haters out there) that there was a program of ethnic cleansing. Compare the non-stop coverage of the Kosovo refugee crisis to the coverage of Afghan refugees. It’s estimated that over 80,000 refugees have made it into Pakistan since the bombing started. The Red Cross states that over 2 million refugees are inside Afghanistan, mostly headed for friendly Pakistan, but many have been turned away. Two million Afghan refugees already live in Pakistani refugee camps. Where are the camera crews in Pakistani refugee camps? I had to dig to turn up this Reuters photo.

You won’t find the same kind of non-stop film coverage of an even larger refugee crisis in Pakistan than the Kosovo refugees. Where is the non-stop CNNBCBSMSNBCABC coverage, complete with clucking tongue commentary on the cruelty of war? When the families of the dead are interviewed, or give accounts of being bombed in their sleep, the Pentagon instructed media flacks are quick to chime in with “those numbers of civilian casualties can’t be independently verified,” a phrase seldom heard in the Kosovo conflict.

Let’s compare the government’s handling of refugees in the Kosovo war with the current bombing of Afghanistan. When the refugees started leaving Kosovo, the U.S. government asked Macedonia, Montenegro, and (obviously) Albania to allow them across the border. In this war, the U.S. has aided a willing Pakistani regime in keeping the borders closed, and the refugees out. If too many refugees enter Pakistan, the U.S. will be unable to convince the world, and more importantly, the Pakistani government will be unable to convince their people, that this is a war of  “targeted strikes against terrorists, and not a humanitarian catastrophe in the making. The war planners knew this and started dropping food packages early on. The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the UNHCR agree that the food is more for public relations than relieving hunger. We are scattering water drops on a raging inferno of starvation, while blocking the fire trucks. So, my question for the mass media is this. Where are the CNN camera crews, pressed in around the refugees? Where is Christiane Amanpore with her righteous indignation? Images are powerful things. Americans see people suffering on TV, and they don’t like it. The military knows this. When it suited their purpose in Kosovo, they made sure to pack the airwaves with images of the displaced and hungry. ”See. We’re fighting to help save these people from oppression.” When the story is obviously one of suffering CAUSED by our military, the story gets reported in print, if at all, and camera coverage is downplayed or outright spiked. No spin in the world can hide that fact that our military has caused a massive refugee crisis in Afghanistan. Will George W. Bush sit in the Hague kangaroo court with Slobodan Milosevic to answer charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing? Not very damn likely.

As I finish proofreading this article, CNN manages to illustrate my point perfectly by calling for more “balance” in reporting. Stop and think for a moment if you heard a call to limit the amount of coverage given to civilian casualties in the Kosovo war? Not for a second, because the Nato spin masters could pin it on the Hitler de Jour, Mr. Milosevic. This war isn’t going all that well. Americans are watching it while sitting in comfortable living rooms a few feet from the refrigerator. If they see enough images of  Afghan refugees fleeing U.S. cluster bombs or digging for dead relatives in the remains of a hospital hit by a “Bunker Buster” bomb, they might realize that this war is not just. Don’t be fooled by the media spin. Read for fact, verify facts, avoid the biased words, and draw your own conclusions.

The
FAA has yet to institute the security measures that would really
protect against hijacked planes being commandeered. Either arming
pilots or allowing concealed carry permit holders aboard would
provide better security than stopping curbside bag check and restricting
nail clippers. Armed air marshals may provide a deterrent against
a complete copycat box-cutter attack, but a terrorist cell with
a cleaning crew mole will be armed with several guns the next
time around. It's doubtful that a single air marshal could stop
them all. The enormity of the task required to check every single
high turnover security agent, airplane caterer, cleaning person,
baggage tosser, and ramp worker precludes this as a cost-effective
means of preventative security.

So
why hasn't the FAA taken the cheapest, most effective, measure
to stop and deter terrorism (allow guns aboard)? The answer is
obvious. To allow pilots to carry guns would be an admission that
the FAA has failed, and that it really can't protect us. Why else
would they put a weapon in the hands of a shiny new FAA air marshal,
but moan about the possibility of an armed pilot hitting a fuel
line? Note to FAA: The pilot knows how the airplane is built;
the air marshal does not. If we think the FAA can prevent determined
terrorists by adding one more stupid question to the litany of
"Did you pack your bag?", we're kidding ourselves. If
we think the "increased security presence" of cops directing
traffic outside our airports is going to stop an inside job, we're
kidding ourselves.

The
bombs rain down on Afghanistan, but they stop
on Friday out of respect for Islam. We keep trying to convince
Islamic countries that this is a war against terror, but some
don't seem
to believe
it. If the government policy wonks think they can expand the war
on terrorism to include Syria, Iraq, or Libya without creating
a jihad, they're kidding themselves. It looks like the Taliban
thinks that
300 civilian casualties matter. Sorry, fellas, you've got
5,700 to go before anyone in America starts counting.

Starving
Afghans don't count in that toll, since the U.S. military is dropping
food to avert criticism of causing a humanitarian disaster. As
noble as this sounds, it's
too little at best, and a cynical public relations ploy at worst.
Either way, we're kidding ourselves if we think a few thousand
food packages dropped from airplanes is going to make a difference
to the millions facing starvation on the ground.

As
Joe Sobran points out, it
appears the script is playing out exactly like bin Laden wanted.
He and his cronies (still assuming it's bin Laden, and not some
other US-hating terrorist organization), having anticipated our
bombing response have started phase two of their terror campaign:
Anthrax by mail. Why did they wait so long after 9-11? The message
seems straightforward. If you escalate, we will escalate.

Now
comes the news that terrorists may
have a “dirty” nuclear bomb. This is really nuclear waste
wrapped around a bunch of C-4, or some other conventional explosive.
The effect of this weapon is not a massive mushroom cloud, but
a silent rain of radioactive particles over a city, making it
unsafe to live in, and expensive if not impossible to clean up.
Did I mention the mass hysteria, rioting, and looting such a weapon
would create. Will we escalate again? What happens if we do kill
bin Laden? What happens if we capture him? Will we see New York
or Los Angeles turned into an uninhabitable “hot” zone?

None
of this will affect Dick Cheney, hunkered down in a (real) nuke
proof bunker, or George W. Bush, with his Flying
Fortress of Solitude. It will affect normal Americans. I hate
to think that another massive, successful terrorist attack is
about to happen, but recent events show that terrorists are here,
and have planned well ahead for a military response. If it comes,
I wonder if Americans, with thousands more dead and martial law
imposed, will be ready to get our 6,000 troops out of Saudi Arabia
and stop bombing Iraq.

It's
time to stop kidding ourselves. Our overseas adventures have come
back in the form of dead Americans, and waging another war overseas
is more of the same. The government in the form of the FAA, the
FBI, the CIA, and the Armed Forces failed to protect us against
terrorists in our midst, first from airplanes turned to missiles,
and now from Anthrax. What they are doing is bombing an Islamic
country instead
of securing the arrest of terrorists, and giving credibility
to the statements of radicals that we are more interested in killing
Muslims than serving justice. Thanks to the press corps bombardiers,
negotiating with the Taliban for bin Laden's release would be
seen as “surrender”, and is therefore politically inconvenient.
How many more Americans will be sacrificed on the Altar of Politics
to the False god of Soundbite Security before we realize we were
kidding ourselves.

Stop
bombing Afghanistan. Take the Taliban up on their offer to extradite
bin Laden (certainly to Pakistan). Stop bombing Iraq. Remove our
troops from Saudi Arabia. Restore our limited government, with
a militia army stationed here at home, rather than abroad. Stop
denying Americans their natural right to defend themselves, and
stop bombing abroad in the name of security at home. Friendship
with all and entangling alliances with none is the formula for
peace. If we think America can simultaneously have an overseas
empire, while remaining safe and free at home, we're kidding ourselves.

October
16, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

The
contemporary view of World War II is that it was the last really
good war, the last one with a clear moral mandate for the United
States to join. Hitler was evil incarnate. The Japanese attacked
us. Our Allies needed us to save democracy. Never mind that Stalin
killed more Ukranians
and Kulaks in the previous decade than Hitler killed in the
entire war. Never mind that the only thing separating Stalin's
gulags from Hitler's concentration camps was that the gulags killed
10 times the number of people the camps did. Never mind that Hitler
and Stalin divvied up Poland, and exterminated millions while
we sat and watched. Never mind that Americans killed around a
half million civilians ourselves by firebombing and atomic bombing
cities full of non-combatants.

I'm
sure the only moral predicaments in Band of Brothers will
be those on the small scale: an individual soldier's struggle
over killing other soldiers; coping with the horror of war from
the individual perspective. I have a suggestion for HBO and Mister
Spielberg. Why not do something more contemporary? The chance
to film in downtown Belgrade during NATO's "humanitarian
bombing" is gone, but with bombs falling on Iraq every few
days and the action revving up in Afghanistan, our intrepid filmmakers
have fantastic locations for some live action footage. With the
special effects supplied by the US military, this is one can be
realistic, without high production costs for the studio.

I
wonder what effect footage from Iraq would have on HBO's audience:
starving people, deformed children, a smashed country without
clean water, electricity, medicine, or hope. The only exposure
Iraqis have to the United States comes at the unfriendly end of
a Tomahawk missile with the Stars and Stripes painted on the tip.
It's funded by our tax dollars. It's carried on by our consent.

26
years ago we pulled out of Vietnam. Officially, we got in to fight
communism and contain the Soviet menace after “they fired first”
in the manufactured Gulf
of Tonkin incident. We left not because of the 3 million dead
Vietnamese, but because of the 60,000 dead Americans.

Apparently
the US Military learned from Vietnam. The lessons: when invading
another country, every US military casualty counts, but soldiers
on the other side do not. Civilians don't count much as long as
they are killed by bombs, or in small numbers by Navy SEALs who
later become Senators. Civilians killed by secondary effects like
disease and starvation don't count at all. So far, the military
has been right about us. As long as we're killing the other guy,
and not losing any Americans, everything's ok with the majority
of Americans. Killing a few thousand Iraqi POW's will get you
a post-military career as Drug Czar. Bombing a Yugoslav
civilian passenger train on its regular route might get you in
a bit of trouble. But, have some CIA functionary speed
up the footage so it looks unavoidable, and you won't even
get a reprimand for hitting it not one, but twice. Ditto for bombing
an open-air market, or a refugee column with those military-style
red tractors.

Psychologists,
Sociologists, and other pseudo-scientists have a legion of theories
to explain how a civilized, seemingly normal people like the Germans
could participate in a bloody Holocaust. One of them revolves
around our human ability to see things only in the light we want.
Get a few of the really evil Germans to do the concentration camp
dirty work, and the rest can pretend that the worst really isn't
happening as neighbors and friends are shipped off in the box
cars.

How
does this compare with our willful ignorance of the conditions
in Iraq. The greedy and soul-less in the military industrial complex
keep up the illegal patrols of Iraq and bomb anything that locks
on to them, in self-defense, of course. When bombing even gets
mentioned, the late night news shows an F-15 icon in the corner
as the anchor relates the latest sortie in our ten-year Iraqi
bombing campaign. I wonder if things would be different if they
showed the graves of half a million Iraqi children.

Maybe
things would be different if HBO made a miniseries with the visceral
effects of our contemporary war. Our latest in Afghanistan may
give them the chance to get some real “live action, uncut footage”.
Here's a link to some pictures of present day Afghanistan. The
people know they're screwed. Over a hundred thousand refugees
have been milling around Afghanistan after heading for the sealed
off borders with Pakistan and Iran. International aid, the only
thing heading off mass starvation, has picked up again. For now.
HBO
probably won’t show
any
of these.
Some things are too realistic even for them. As you click through
in your air conditioned room, with power and a computer, think
how long it's been since you were hungry for more than an hour;
think how awful it is to behold human misery. Think how much worse
it is to realize it can be prevented.

Bring
our soldiers home now, while they're alive, instead of later in
flag draped boxes. Remove our 26 "forward deployed"
bases from Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Korea,
Okinawa, and elsewhere. Get our troops out of the one hundred
plus countries they're in. Reap the benefit of instant world goodwill
and the economic benefit of hundreds of thousands of able-bodied
Americans contributing to the economy here instead of abroad.

Bin
Laden and the al-Qaeda can be brought to justice using letters
of marque and reprisal, as suggested by Congressman Ron Paul.
It won't be a Band of Brothers style fireworks show, but privateers
may be just the answer to our dual objectives of capturing or
killing bin Laden and al-Qaeda, without further radicalizing the
Muslim world. That's been bin Laden's plan all along, or so it
would seem based on his pre-taped call for jihad among all Islamic
nations. So far, only a minority of Muslims have heeded the call,
but escalating and widening this war with our conventional army
is a sure way to increase that number.

October
11, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

The
"why don't you leave" argument, as puerile as it is,
can be turned around, and I've found just the opportunity. I recently
pointed out that the three things that led to the WTC attacks
are: our 10 year assault on Iraq, our troops in Saudi Arabia,
and our financial support of Israel. Thank you very, much, that
is exactly the list Osama bin Laden released in his video taped
tirade yesterday. No, I don't write his speeches, as some of the
email I've been getting claims. The standard argument over Israel
and foreign aid goes something like this:

Libertarian:
Why do they take my tax money and give it away as foreign aid?

Neo-Conservative:
We have to do that, otherwise Israel would be wiped out by those
hateful Muslims.

Libertarian:
Didn't Israel win the 1967 six day war without our foreign aid,
and attacked one of our ships to boot?

Neo-Conservative:
We must defend Israel! They are our only ally in the Middle East.
(cue smoke from ears)

Libertarian:
I'm fine with individuals freely writing a check to the Israeli
government every year, just don't take my money at gunpoint and
give it to them. By the way, how much oil does Israel sell us
every year compared to those other countries?

Neo-Conservative:
YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. The hostile MUSLIMS that SURROUND ISRAEL
don't even RECOGNIZE its RIGHT TO EXIST!!! (Smoke billowing profusely
as dogma and learned rhetoric collide with fact, history, and
logic)

At
this point, the normal mild-mannered libertarian will sigh and
find some way to end the conversation without getting branded
an anti-Semitic black helicopter nutbag.

The
other crime libertarians get branded with is a lack of a proper
sense of rage over the attacks, and the ensuing lack of patriotism.
For daring to point out that we've had ominous warning that something
like this was going to happen, we're branded a know-it-all. For
daring to point out that the terrorists, while using mass murder
of civilians – a completely illegitimate means – have legitimate
problems with our euphemistically called "foreign policy"
of grab-the-oil in the middle east, libertarians are branded terrorists
sympathizers. Let me state for the record, once again, the now
standard libertarian disclaimer: The attacks on 9-11 were absolutely,
completely, 100% morally despicable. Killing innocent people is
never right. Now ask yourself. If killing 7,000 innocent people
in one fell swoop is wrong, what's killing more than a million
innocent people in 10 years? That works out to 274 people a day,
mostly the very young and the very old. That's a lot of blood
on the hands of the United States military, foreign policy planners,
and politicians.

Did
you know we've bombed Iraq several times between 9-11 and today,
10-7? Probably not. It barely even hits the wire. We've become
so inured to the killing in our name, it's not even newsworthy.
It made me laugh to watch a report on Afghanistan, and hear the
reporter talk about how the people have become so desensitized
to war and fighting. I wonder when was the last time he went to
a Rated R movie here in the US. But, there I go again, hating
America.

So,
fly the flag, and sing with Lee Greenwood, but also do a little
reading and realize that part of being a patriot is to know what
your country has been doing in your name; know your history. Part
of being a patriot is standing up and telling it like it is, good
and bad. Part of being a patriot is realizing that this is a great
country, but as citizens we have a responsibility to speak out
and act out against the illegitimate actions of our government.

October
9, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

After
our ritual humiliation in London, complete with underwear on the
check-in counter while fellow passengers looked on, my wife and
I saw exactly how effective the FAA's security proved. Perfectly
effective at humiliating, infuriating, and inconveniencing law-abiding
citizens.

On
May 11, 1996, ValueJet flight #592 from Miami to Atlanta crashed
in the Everglades, killing all aboard. The airline was nearly bankrupted
from the bad publicity, loss of fares, and FAA grounding. They eventually
merged with another discount carrier, AirTran, taking their name.
In the free market, consumers reward companies by purchasing goods
and services they want, and punish companies by avoiding them. I
like flying Continental, because the planes are new, the crews are
friendly, the flights are on time, and the tickets are competitively
priced. I didn't like TWA for the exact opposite reasons, and many
people shared my views, because TWA is now out of business. That's
the free market at work, harshly but effectively correcting businesses,
while providing customers more and more for their money.

On
September 11, 2001, the FAA security measures at 3 airports completely
failed. The FAA on-board security protocols, identically flawed
aboard two separate airlines, also failed. The hijackers were able
to take control of four aircraft. The FAA, if their security did
manage to interdict any of the hijackers, has yet to tell us about
it; leaving us fairly certain that the hijackers had a 100% success
rate against FAA security measures, on their first try. While the
FAA's flawed security did nothing to protect the thousands in the
World Trade Center, Pentagon, and on board, the story of United
Flight 93 is different. Conspiracy shootdown theories aside, it
seems that armed only with the grim knowledge that the other hijacked
jets had been used as flying bombs, private citizens rushed the
terrorists, and took care of business. And so we see the naked truth,
starkly illustrated by the fragmented remnants of the one plane
that did not find its target: a handful of brave private citizens
are more effective than the entire obstacle course of FAA faux security.

When
the airlines screw up by providing lousy service, by crashing, or
by losing bags, the consumers punish them, viz. TWA and ValueJet.
When the FAA screws up, it transfers the punishment to, that's right,
the companies that get the wonderful "security service"
and their passengers. Although the Fed-induced, post boom economic
slowdown is partially to blame, the FAA's incompetence and ham fisted
response has certainly helped destroy at least one company, and
put over 70,000 people out of work.

Announced
Layoffs to Date

Midway Bankrupt

1,700

Continental

12,000

United

20,000

U.S. Air

11,000

Boeing

30,000

These
are just the major cuts. This doesn't include the smaller regional
airlines, or the foreign airlines affected by the grounding. The
most infuriating characteristic of government bureaucracy is that
it functions in the exactly opposite manner from the free market.
If a private security consulting company had two of its airline
clients compromised, it would quickly be bankrupted, as its customers
took their business to the competition. In typical post-government-failure
fashion, the FAA has asked for more power and more “funding”. Especially
galling to those who are losing jobs, the
FAA has opened a web site to post job openings.

That
this pathetic failure of a government agency still exists after
demonstrating their complete incompetence is a travesty of justice.
The FAA provided only the thin, illusory veneer of security, while
guaranteeing that jetliners were targets for hijacking by disarming
all on board. Terrorists won't use the same tactics next time. It
won't be thanks to the FAA running us through metal detectors more
slowly, taking the steak knives off planes, putting an Air Marshall
on board, making us park further away, or stopping curb-side check-in.
It'll be thanks to the heroic example of the private citizens aboard
Flight 93.

If terrorists try to hijack an airplane, you can bet the people
on board will assume the worst, and do everything to stop it. The
old assumptions of "just do what they say and no one gets hurt"
or "let the experts negotiate this" are gone. The terrorists
know this. They are deterred from using the same tactics next time.
The FAA has exactly nothing to do with these facts of life. It is
private citizens with a normal concern for their safety and that
of others that will prevent a repeat of the 9-11 attacks. The airlines
are probably already meeting with Boeing, designing reinforced cockpit
bulkheads to retrofit their airplanes and protect their pilots.
No doubt the FAA will mandate this and other obvious safety measures
that the airlines are going to implement anyhow, however, they'll
continue to pile on ineffective, expensive measures like they already
have so it looks like they're "doing something."

The
FAA should be abolished, and every FAA "employee" should
be laid off. Some of the billions that Congress is ladling out to
the airlines could be used as capital investment in a private air
traffic control firm to take the place of the FAA. The airlines,
in conjunction with their insurance providers, should craft their
own security measures, and advertise them as competitive advantages.

I've
had quite enough of the "I just need to look in your bag"
harassment, added cost, and "did anyone give you a ticking
package" lost time that the FAA has heaped on me and other
law-abiding Americans for years. What's needed is more of what works:
private industry, and less of what has completely failed: government
regulation.

September
26, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

Now
try this thought experiment. How could terrorists create riots and
mass panic across America now that the airline industry is "safe"?
Easy. Steal a few eighteen-wheelers, pack on the ammonium nitrate
and fuel, and blast away at the beltway cloverleaves in Washington,
Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and pretty much any major city during
rush hour. Then leak a press release to AFP from "Mujahadeen
Liberation Front" claiming to have seeded the air with Anthrax
from small private planes on all those stranded motorists. Don't
even bother with the Anthrax, just put out the press release. Sound
far fetched? Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. This is just
a thought experiment to illustrate a simple point: an Internet hack
can come up with a plan to terrorize an entire country, shut down
the economy, create mass rioting and "price gouging" with
a few stolen rigs, some garden variety explosives, and some committed
individuals willing to carry it out. Before you get all worked up
and send nasty email thanking me for giving the terrorists new ideas,
read a little Tom Clancy and realize that I'm not all that creative.

Why
does the world work this way? In a word: Entropy. Physicists use
the term to describe the way things progress from order to disorder
under normal circumstances. This is why your room never cleaned
itself when you were a kid. This is why that broken VCR gathering
cobwebs in the garage doesn't just up and fix itself. This is why
in our previous thought experiment, we easily destroy a house it
took months of hard work to build. This is why a group of two-dozen
committed terrorists who thought out, planned, trained, and observed
could wreak mass destruction without a huge support network, fancy
equipment, foreign government support, or a lot of money. As an
aside, this is why a missile defense will never work.

After
World War I, the French built the Maginot Line. An impregnable set
of defense fortresses ready to fend off a World War I style German
invasion. Hitler and his generals blitzed around it via the Low
Countries, and the Panzers rolled into Paris June 14, 1940, just
over a month after the blitz started. The blitz was something different,
something unexpected. The USS Cole was fueling up in a Yemeni port.
Launch a multi-million dollar ship-killer missile at an American
warship like the USS Cole, and it has defense systems to knock it
out and retaliate against the launcher. Two guys in a rubber dinghy
packed with explosives motored up, saluted, and nearly sent it to
the bottom. That was something different. September 11, 2001. The
terrorists used knives and box cutters to take over the planes;
they probably could have used flint arrowheads. They knew the response
to a hijacking: give in to the demands, land where they tell you,
and let the professionals negotiate; you'll live. This time it was
different.

Security
is reactive by nature; it can only counter threats it has seen before.
There is no conceivable way to defend against every kind of attack
imaginable, so we try to deter the kinds that might happen based
on past experiences. Only problem is, the government is now busy
deterring an old attack. The terrorists knew that their jetliner
as bomb attack was most likely a one-time assault. They won't use
it again. From the World Trade Center to those tricky Greeks with
their wooden-horse gifts, new tactics work because we haven't seen
them before. Put extra safety precautions on every jetliner, triple
scan every package, strip search every passenger, and the terrorists
will throw a bomb with a GPS tracker into an empty boxcar, and let
it blow as it rolls by an oil refinery outside Philadelphia or Houston.
We won't protect against it until after it happens.

Increased
security will not prevent future terrorist attacks.

Here
at home, organized crime thrives. Criminal gangs import tons of
cocaine, heroin, and marijuana from abroad. They run Meth labs,
and make Ecstasy in basements. A literal army of domestic police
is losing the drug war one kilogram at a time. The United States
government can't stop drug use with a small army that all speaks
English, not even in its own prisons. These are the same people
who are going to setup intelligence gathering abroad aimed at finding
out who doesn't like us, what they plan to do, how, and why. I'm
sorry, but I don't have much faith in their ability to succeed.

It
takes massive amounts of time and training to obtain the fluency
needed to order a hotel room in Arabic without getting charged four
times the going rate, much less setup credible cover stories for
deep agents, or recruit informers in every potential terrorist country.
How many informers would end up duping us for years on end, taking
our money and leaving us with nothing? We would end up funding our
own enemies, or serving as hit men for inter-Arab conflicts. "Ya,
I heard that other gang from Iran is planning an attack. You should
take them out." How many countries that we're on friendly terms
with would allow our intelligence agencies access to spy on their
own citizens, much less Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Afghanistan?

Increased
intelligence spending will not prevent future terrorist attacks.

You're
probably thinking, so Mr. Smarty Pants, if we can't beat these guys
with added intelligence or increased domestic security, what's the
answer?

Yes,
we should bring the terrorists to justice. Publish the evidence,
and screw the classification game. What good are top secrets in
a world where an hour at an Internet terminal in a public library
and google.com can teach you how to make Mustard
Gas or an A-Bomb.
Robert Fisk makes
the convincing argument that the leaders of the Islamic world
are shocked and embarrassed by what happened. Use that, and the
court of public opinion to secure the handover of bin Laden and
his agents by the Islamic world. Where Tomahawks and English-only
CIA spooks fail, Muslims disgusted by murder can succeed. No, it's
not a fireworks show, but it will work. And it will avoid creating
a new generation of terrorists.

Then,
get out of the Middle East. Have any more Marines been killed in
Lebanon since Reagan pulled out? No. Are we still be fighting Vietnam?
No. Does anyone think less of Ronald Reagan for pulling troops out
of Lebanon? No. The right decision is always lauded as wise in hindsight,
not cowardly, or giving in to terrorism. Pulling our troops out
of Saudi Arabia would have prevented the deaths of 6,000 Americans
had it been done at the end of the Gulf War, 10 years ago. We haven't
started shooting yet. It's time to realize that extra money for
the government, extra "security", increased "intelligence"
and bombing Afghanistan or Iraq, will just create more of the problem.

September
25, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

“[...]Supporters
said opening the Arctic refuge for oil exploration was needed to
reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. [...]

Critics claimed the measure would damage one of the last great wilderness
areas on the continent, while providing only six months’ supply
of oil – and that would not be available for nearly 10 years.
[...]

Earlier Wednesday, the House voted 269-160 against raising fuel
mileage standards for sport-utility vehicles to 27.5 miles per gallon,
from the current fleet average of 20.7. ”

what is your stance on that?

Well,
here goes: In two words, my stance on this is – Private Property.

I
do not think bulldozing Caribou into a massive oil pit while dynamiting
nursing baby seals is a good thing. I am not in favor of standing
puddles of oil as long as I don’t have to see it. I think Industries,
LA, Galveston, TX and the East side of Philly, PA look like Hell.
So don’t mistake honest analysis of “green” arguments as some kind
of advocation for a paved Earth.

Most
of Alaska is a “park” or “preserve” of some kind. Private individuals
own a tiny fraction of the state. The political hullabaloo over
how to best use this “common” ground (parks or oil) is missing the
real point: What business does arguably the largest polluter on
the planet, the US Government, have owning most of the land in Alaska.
Furthermore, why
is Congress using the political processes of bribery, demagoguery,
graft, and special interests, instead of the market processes of
fair bidding, supply and demand, and private ownership, to figure
out what to do with it?

If
Big Oil companies actually owned the land, environmentalists could
point a finger at the ones who screw it up, and laud the ones who
keep it pristine. Kind of like “Dolphin friendly Tuna” incites fishing
companies to avoid killing Flipper, enviro-friendly gas at the local
BPAmoco would be in higher demand than Exxon Valdez Round II gas.
As it stands, Big Oil likes Big Government doling out rights to
drill on land that Big Oil doesn’t have to buy, maintain, or give
a damn about since they don’t have to bother reselling it. If the
Big Oil companies had to actually BUY the land and worry about reselling
it, and consequently preserve the local environment, all while avoiding
bad publicity from the environmentalists, we would be better off
than our current “public-private” socialist system. As it stands
now, Government has decided to drill. What oil company will get
to produce the oil? Transport it? Refine it? Besides Dick Chaney’s
Haliburton, I mean. If something goes wrong who will be blamed?
BPAmoco? ExxonMobil? No. “Big Oil” in general or “the Government
run Artic Oil Drilling operation.” Pretty neat PR coup if you’re
a big oil company not too keen on safety.

What
do we care how many months worth of oil might be produced, and how
do we expect the fiscal cretins in Congress to know. Let the oil
companies bid along with everyone else for the land. They take the
risk; they reap the reward.

Earlier Wednesday, the House voted 269-160 against raising fuel
mileage standards for sport-utility vehicles to 27.5 miles per gallon,
from the current fleet average of 20.7. ”

I’m
glad to know that we can safely legislate the laws of physics. Why
did they stop at 27.5 MPG? We could solve all our environmental
problems with the stroke of a congressional pen if they had only
mandated the auto industry create a 1,000 MPG engine. Or maybe a
salt-water fusion engine! Of course, this again misses the real
issue. What business does Congress have passing this kind of legislation?
Do they really think consumers are going to buy a car that gets
5-MPG? Some will. Most will opt for the more fuel-efficient 25-MPG
version. The unintended consequences of regulation are often worse
than the legislation itself. To whit: The SUV’s currently under
the EPA 20.7 MPG fleet rules are non-commercial vehicles. Those
wily capitalists knew the EPA rules about vehicles over 8,500 pounds
gross being considered “heavy-duty”. The result is the Ford Excursion,
weighing in at 8,600 pounds gross. Coincidence? It gets 12 or 13-MPG
city, depending on engine, and crushes Japanese economy cars with
the greatest of ease. If not for the EPA rules, Ford would have
undoubtedly taken some of that expensive and heavy steel out of
the Excursion. One has to wonder how many fewer might be dead if
we lifted the EPA rules and Ford made the Excursion a mere, say,
6,200 pounds. Luckily, the Boston Globe has the answer: 1 MPG extra
legislated fuel economy = 7,700 extra dead Americans each year.
The EPA
missed that in their benefit-cost analysis.

The
bickering between the Green lobby and the Big Oil lobby shows the
stupidity of both. They rely on the government to politically stick
it to the other group, and whine when things don’t go their way.
They could both have it mostly their way; instead they waste time
and money waging PR/media campaigns and bribing Congressmen. Do
you think Congress will change this anytime soon? “Well, I just
don’t know about drilling in Alaska, you better take us on another
multi-million dollar, Lear-jet junket up there to figure things
out…”

So,
wrapping up where we started: Private Property. My stance is that
we should have a massive auction of government property until the
Federal Gov’mint (and the states) owns only its Constitutionally
mandated 10 square miles of DC, along with the forts, magazines,
arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings to carry out its
Constitutional duties.

Then,
The Nature Conservancy, or Texaco, or both can buy chunks of the
Arctic Preserve. If Texaco got it, they would certainly be more
likely to keep it nice and pretty in order to sell it than they
are under our current system.

August
7, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

Finally,
people are starting to wake up. The apologists’ argument for this
system usually goes along the lines of “If you haven’t done anything
wrong, you don’t have any reason to object to it.” Sure. Why don’t
we let stalkers and Peeping Toms use the same argument in court?
Because it’s an invasion of privacy. The folks in the streets, the
ones who know Soviet-style thought control when they see it, understand
that this changes the dynamic completely. You aren’t considered
innocent until proven guilty under this system. You have no right
to privacy, not in public at least, and the
government is a master of making the steepest slippery slope arguments
look prophetic in hindsight. They put radio bracelets on half-way
house prisoners to track where they go. If
pending cell-phone and car GPS legislation makes it through,
what will be the difference between you and a collared criminal?
At least the criminal knows he’s not free. And the legislation will
make it through. Incremental control is the name of the game. The
lying scumbag politicos who voted for the Tampa system now claim
they didn’t know what they were voting for and would have voted
differently if only they had understood, but the system is still
in place. Ditto for the Georgia Driver’s License fingerprint program.

An
editorial in the Tampa Tribune is quoted as: "It is
all done for the purpose of crime prevention, crime solving and
law enforcement – not to create a Stalinist police state.”
Stalin didn’t promise a Stalinist police state either. Stalin promised
crime prevention, law enforcement, and a worker’s paradise. So it
always goes: government needs just a little more control. In the
USSR, after the revolution, control was used to “reform” the last
monarchists and capitalists into true comrades. As that failed,
it was used to crush political dissent. Can’t have the peasants
telling each other the Emperor has no clothes. In the USA, under
the Nanny state, control is used to make sure we’re all safe from
each other and ourselves. For now. As the welfare state inevitably
heads toward collapse, the last decent (?) politicos will be voted
out of office, and replaced with more ruthless ones. Stalin’s predecessors
laid the infrastructure of tyranny for him. Would Lenin have been
worse, had Stalin come first and given him the political and police
state foundations for the purges and gulags?

Soften
the Russians up by degree and they won’t complain when they can’t
criticize their leaders. Put cameras on every street corner of America,
and pretty soon the police can get a warrant to watch you over the
very x10 web cameras you’ve been
so busy installing all over the house. Then again, why bother with
a warrant, since your house is within 300 yards of public property.
We’ll just spy through the walls.

Just
to make it easy, here are a few ideas for the bricklayers of despotism:

Take
all those digital driver’s license photos you’ve got stored at the
DMV and run them through the recognition software. This will save
some time when you finally get around to watching everyone, instead
of just “known felons”.

Be
sure to keep the matching Social Security Number as the unique serf
identifier.

Add
DMV license plate numbers in to the mix, so you can track us while
we’re walking or driving.

Subpoena
the credit agencies for our credit records, matched against SSN.
You’ve already done it for banking, so the “know your customer”
precedent is set.

Subpoena
all our credit cards, airline, hotel, rental car, insurance and
grocery store records.

All
this subpoenaing is getting mighty inconvenient. Just get a blanket
writ to connect to the appropriate private industry databases in
real time. Make them pay for the cost of the connectivity, of course.
Aren’t relational databases connected via the Internet wonderful?

Match-up
the records for all GPS enabled devices with the appropriate SSN.
On second thought, why do all that work? Just require a SSN at time
of purchase for any GPS enabled device.

Match
up the medical records with the SSN. We need this since all those
graying baby boomers are straining Medicare with $Billions in potentially
fraudulent or unnecessary claims.

Now
that we’ve got all this wonderful technology in place, think of
the good we can do.

Create
criminal profiles based on behavior studies of felons. With a database
of who is buying what, where, and when, how they pay, where they
go, and who they do it with, a sociologist can get it right about
70% of the time. We’ll add in genetic profiling as that becomes
available.

Just
like DNA testing allowed forensic scientists to go back in the vault
and re-examine evidence, psychological profiling will allow us to
run all that video we’ve been archiving through our new behavior
profiling routines. We can round up potential trouble makers for
questioning, and prosecute or fine people we don’t like for crimes
committed years ago. Statute of Limitation, buh bye.

Heck,
why wait until some criminal commits a crime. Better lock them up
in advance, just to be safe. When we get genetics, maybe we can
eliminate potential future felons in the womb! We’ll use the remains
for stem cell research.

Since
the welfare state is involved in every aspect of the serfs’ lives,
why stop with criminal behavior. Let’s develop profiles for the
following and take preventative measures to curb behavior potentially
expensive to the strained finances of the socialist state: Reckless
drivers, overeaters, drug abusers, and school shooters. That way
we can instantly block purchases of certain items known to facilitate
these behaviors. Speeders get only a $10 per week gas allowance.
Overeaters, you’re on a diet; can’t have you clogging up the government
medical centers, now can we. And on and on.

Government
has a special treat for the aging baby boomers. As Medicare and
Medicaid strain the socialist economy for ever more resources, we’ll
have to follow the Dutch example and just start weeding out
you oldies. Not sure you want to go yet? Stop being such a resource
using pig, you greedy old fart.

This
is the great ongoing political struggle of our time. The struggle
between a vision of government as the benevolent all-providing nanny,
and the reality of such experiments always descending into liberty
devouring despotism. The United States’ experiment with collectivism
has been underway full-scale since 1913, the year the awful 16th
(income tax) and 17th (direct election of Senators) amendments were
ratified. Perhaps the cracks are starting to show. The fact is that
millions of dollars were spent to catch a few deadbeat dads and
any felon stupid enough to walk through a posted “Smart CCTV” area.
They did it by violating everyone’s basic right to privacy. The
people in the streets know that surveillance and tracking make them
more akin to prisoners than free people. Even
some police are leery of the idea of unlimited power to spy. Gentlemen,
I applaud you. Let’s turn back from the socialist policies
and all the police state tracking, numbering, surveillance, and
control that are used to enforce them. In the end, it’s not for
our own good.

August
2, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

In
a recent column, you
argue for granting amnesty to illegal aliens in this country.
I'm taking you to task specifically, because your argument for amnesty
appears in a conservative newsletter, and you betray nominally conservative
principles. No, I don't mean racial WASP principles, but fairness,
equality of opportunity, and equality before the law. That said,
your reasoning is flawed, and here's why.

First,
you argue that illegal immigrants should be granted legal status
based on their utility as cheap domestic labor, and our need to
overcome our (American) racism and hypocrisy. This is the worst
way to start off. Applying utilitarian "principles" quickly
has you deporting, say, Elbonians, because most of them are uneducated
criminals. How does your argument work when considering Indian and
Chinese computer programmers? They are highly skilled, highly paid,
speak English, and are not usually discriminated against, but they
"steal our jobs". Why not grant amnesty to them as well?
Second, you completely ignore the classical liberal tradition of
equality before the law. Why grant amnesty to Mexicans, but not
Columbians? Talk about racism. Granting amnesty to a specific group
smacks of the worst kind: politically motivated, vote buying racism.
Not that anyone notices real racism anymore. Third, you claim that
amnesty is the "moral" thing to do. Illegal immigrants
break our nations laws to get here, then trespass, trash private
property, and steal (albeit second hand) when they enroll children
in "public" education and other social services. How is
it "moral" to fleece me when illegal immigrants aren't
paying income tax?

Aspects
of the central part of your essay are correct. The IRCA is a failed
law. Illegal immigrants come here looking for better jobs. Lower
wages paid to immigrants are beneficial to those who buy their services:
lawn-care, nannies, wait-staff, construction, and maid service.
Then, you miss the core of the real problem. You are close when
you state:

"But
the fact is, the demand for labor in this country exceeds the
supply of U.S.-born and legal immigrants, which is why so many
illegal aliens come here to fill the gap."

The
"gap" you refer to is the artificial wage gap created
by the government mandated minimum wage. Businesses get in serious
trouble paying Social Security card carrying Americans less than
the minimum wage. It literally can't be done on the books. It's
cash under the table, but this is risky since an ex-employee can
turn in the business owner. Illegal immigrants are the perfect solution,
since squealing to the government over minimum wage will get you
deported. It's a mutual blackmail situation. Now, what do you suppose
will happen when 3 million workers suddenly find they can demand
"minimum" wage and full benefits without threat of deportation?
They will.

Now,
let's imagine an Amnesty Bill actually gets passed. Since the folks
are illegal aliens to begin with, they have no proof of when they
got here. They'll have to show up at some "Amnesty Office"
to grant "Amnesty Cards", probably setup at the already
overburdened Immigration and Naturalization Service offices, by
some date several months in the future. Folks in other countries
who never considered coming to the United States will be encouraged
to come here in the hopes of faking their way into the first round,
or waiting for the inevitable second round of amnesty. It will literally
be an invasion as people pour over the border to show up at the
INS office by whatever amnesty card deadline is set. Thousands will
die on the way. The black market in people smuggling will be immense.
The schemes, multiple amnesty cards, amnesty selling, and identity
stealing will be something out of Germany, 1940.

I
digress; let me get back to the original point: the supply and demand
of labor. On the demand side, government curbs demand for legal
labor and thereby encourages illegal immigration by artificially
driving up the price with the minimum
wage. When governments create a minimum price for labor, we
get the worst of both worlds: higher prices, and unemployment. It's
interesting to note that minimum wage laws were created by pressure
from the labor unions to keep recent legal immigrants from “stealing”
their jobs. The Law of Unintended Consequences is not without
a sense of irony, it seems. On the supply side of the equation,
we have two more labor union full employment schemes. These were
aided and abetted by their idiotic, Wilson Democrat, League of Nations,
world-builder masters: Compulsory Public Education and Retirement.
The labor unions have an understanding of supply and demand. Cut
off the supply of labor using the law to snip the young and the
old out of the market, and poof, you just voted yourself a raise
as the new supply and demand curves intersect at a higher price.
The final government stranglehold on the labor supply is the 1.3
million mostly young, able-bodied military personnel stationed around
the world, in addition to the millions
of overpaid, incompetent government bureaucrats.

Mrs.
Chavez, you are correct in your understanding of the illegal immigration
problem as part of the larger demand for inexpensive labor. The
market is nothing if not efficient. Create an artificially high
price for labor, and the market supplies a substitute. I'll present
the solution in small steps, so as not to scare you with my radical
libertarian agenda.

First,
repeal all minimum wage, maximum hour, retirement, child labor,
and compulsory education laws. Some will argue that 6 year old children
will be working 80 hours a week in sweatshop factories while hooked
to electrodes to keep them hopping. Please. Nike can't even employ
kids in Indonesia (at great rates for poor Indonesians, no less)
without private groups hounding them. Let watchdogs do their job.
Consumer Reports, Ralph Nader, Underwriters Laboratories, and Clark
Howard are better than all the government alphabet soup agencies.

Second,
bring home our military, and reduce force size. World War II is
over, but we're still in Okinawa and Japan. North Korea and South
Korea are warming, but we're still in South Korea. The Soviet Union
is no more, and the Reich collapsed long ago, but we still occupy
Germany with 60,000 Americans. Let's collect on that peace dividend
we've been waiting on since the end of the Cold War.

Third,
privatize, privatize, privatize. What are all these government functionaries,
potentates, and apparatchiks doing in the land of the free? It's
time to scrape the barnacles off our ship of state.

I
could go on, but I'd just end up parroting most of the libertarian
arguments for what a Constitutional government looks like, and
this essay is about illegal immigration.

So,
now that we've gotten the government out of the labor union full
employment scam, the new supply of legal, inexpensive labor will
displace some illegal immigrants. If it's legal to hire a young,
willing, English-speaking American for $3.00 an hour, why risk hiring
an illegal immigrant. With an oversupply of inexpensive labor, many
illegals will be incented to take their money, and go home. With
a new political party in office, and a sudden influx of cash carrying,
entrepreneurial, English-speaking laborers who have seen how it's
done in the land-of-the-relatively-free, might the repatriation
of a few million Mexicans and other illegal aliens be the medicine
needed for those countries to improve? That is the flip side of
the immigration coin. People in other countries want to live the
American Dream. Let's help redefine the American Dream to cover
all of North and South America.

There
will always be immigrants trying to come to the United States, yearning
to breath free. The solution above is not perfect. Contrasted with
the massive influx sure to accompany an Amnesty Bill, this solution
heads all of America in the right direction.

July
18, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

Once upon a time there was a mythical land called California. The
Kingdom was a lovely place to live, and had many loyal subjects.
Over time, the best artisans and craftsmen moved to Bay City in
California and created a wonder for the world. A marketplace filled
with inventions, creations, and contraptions to behold. They didn't
think of it that way at the time, but as more and more craftsmen
and artisans gathered, it became a font of ideas, exchange, and
innovation. It became the Golden Market. The Golden Market made
it possible for many of the peasants to make a fortune, all without
taxing anyone! And the rest of the world benefited from the Golden
Market as goods and services poured across the border of California
to Kingdoms far and wide. Other
Kingdoms looked at the Golden Market with envy, and those with
Wise
Kings encouraged their peasants to make their own. Several
did. Other cities in California made their own Golden Market,
but the original Golden Market in Bay City would stay the largest
in the world for a long time.

As the wise men said, "And This Too, Shall Pass".

One day, a terrible King became ruler of California. His name was
King Grayson Davos, and he ruled the land with an iron fist. From
his castle, he taxed the peasants far and wide. He was a shrewd
King, however, and had learned to take from the peasants second
hand in addition to their already high levy. He would create taxes
so difficult to understand that most of his serfs didn't even realize
they were being taxed. When the famine finally came, only a handful
of the peasants realized that it was actually the King who had caused
their misery. When they proclaimed it, they were derided as madmen.
"California is still the strongest of all the Kingdoms,"
the other peasants cried. "We have the best and biggest Golden
Market."

Angel City was the largest city in the Kingdom of California, but
had only a small Golden Market of their own. Even though Angel City
had barely enough food for the peasants who lived there, many more
came into the city from a neighboring Kingdom. The city coffers
were nearly empty in this time of need, and the stores of city bread
would soon begin to run out feeding all of Angel Cities peasants
and those from the other Kingdom. One day, nearly a year after the
famine had begun,
the Exchequer to the Baron of Angel City had an idea to fill the
city coffers again. He would tax the Golden Market for goods
in other places! He realized that the Golden Market made wondrous
baubles for world. While most Kingdoms placed a levy on them, some
did not. He could start by taxing the artisans for goods in the
no tax Kingdoms!

The craftsmen of the Golden Market cried out "You cannot levy
against our baubles in other Kingdoms!" But the stern judges
of Angel City drowned their cries "Yes, the Exchequer can."
And so it began.

The coffers of Angel City were filled again as the Golden Market
paid its heavy due. Then the Exchequer, emboldened by his success,
levied another tariff on the Golden Market, then another. Soon,
Bay City followed suite, for all the towns in the Kingdom of California
were suffering under the famine from the King. The craftsmen and
artisans of the Golden Market wailed and gnashed their teeth, but
to no avail. The judges had ruled. The peasants might have come
to the aid of the craftsmen if they had understood, but they were
too happy to get bread instead. The peasants had the power to tell
the judges no, but they didn't.

Then a strange thing happened. It didn't happen all at once. In
fact it was so gradual that most of the peasants didn't notice,
nor did the King, nor his Barons. The craftsmen and artisans started
to leave the Golden Market they had created. They
journeyed to other Kingdoms, and dispersed far and wide. They
made new Golden Markets in a hundred different cities in
dozens of different Kingdoms. The coffers of the Cities of California
that had been temporarily filled, went completely dry as the Golden
Market shriveled and died. The illusion of plenty gave way to the
reality of scarcity. The famine redoubled.

One day, King Davos heard a commotion and looked out over his castle
ramparts. He saw an army of peasants gathered.

"You killed the Golden Market," they cried. "You
have given us famine and grief."

"Guards. Guards!" he called. The guards were gone. The
peasants stormed the castle and killed the King, but it was too
late. The Golden Market was gone from California and would not return
for a hundred years.

July
12, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

The
Communist
Manifesto is one of those documents I was aware of, but had
never taken the time to actually read. As a woefully undereducated
product of the public education system, I somehow managed to slip
by the class that required reading of the old Marx and Engels classic.
So, in the course of continuing liberty self-education, I found
a translation on the web in order to better understand this failed
canon of anti-freedom. My reaction: wow. The Communist Manifesto,
written in 1848, looks a lot like the Democratic
Party Positions, written in 2000.

The
Pseudo-History of Class Warfare

The
first chapter of the Manifesto is a rambling pseudo-history that
rails against the bourgeois as the historically re-incarnated oppressors
vis-à-vis the continually oppressed proletariat. I was reminded
of the slave reparations, minority oppression, women oppression,
and other Democratic Party class based arguments. The second chapter
is a lengthy list of "Bourgeois" complaints against the
generally perceived Communist aims, and the communist response to
them. Among the Bourgeois complaints the manifesto defends are:
abolition of family, abolition of religion, socialization of education,
and abolition of nations. Does this remind us of current complaints
within the political system? Interestingly, the manifesto presents
the following observation regarding the abolition of nations:

National
differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more
vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom
of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production
and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

This
is a fairly prescient assessment, given the franchise-ization of
the world. As an aside, I spent 9 months in various cities as part
of my job in 1998. The thing that surprised me most in my tour of
30-odd medium and large American town was the uniformity. Like Edward
Norton in Fight
Club, I found the same hotel soaps in the same hotels, next
to the same Applebee's or Chili's. It was Generica, not America.
That, however, is a different article; one that addresses how government
zoning laws and tax schemes aide and abet big business in destroying
small, local competition. Back to the original point, however, I
wonder what Marx and Engels saw as the downside to the vanishing
of “antagonism between peoples” that bourgeoisie and freedom of
commerce had brought about. I suppose it was their follow-on predication,
which is wrong.

The
supremacy of the proletariat will cause them (national differences
and antagonism) to vanish still faster.

The
Tyranny of Democracy

Like
any wacko
manifesto, the Communist Manifesto has just enough facts, just
enough history, and just enough lucid observations to cover the
other 90% of it, which is utter crap. One of the lucid observations
in the Manifesto, is that the proletariat constitute the majority
of the population. The communists realized that by organizing the
proletariat politically, they could just vote themselves more power.
This is one of the two the real gems of chapter two. It explains
a great deal about the tyranny of democracy, and the modus operandi
of our current political parties.

The
Politics of Jealousy

The
other gem in chapter two immediately follows the observation that
the proletariat must first seize control of "political supremacy".
Once that is accomplished, well, Marx and Engels say it best: "The
proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree,
all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments
of production in the hands of the state…" The Democrats, like
the Communists, realize that by dividing people into groups, all
with a chip on their shoulder against the oppressor, they can vote
themselves chunks of the oppressors' property. Let's call this the
politics of jealousy and victimhood. I suppose this explains how
communism could organize itself, at least initially. There will
always be people of extraordinary talent running businesses, inventing
new things, and generally pushing the boundaries of science, technology,
and commerce. Let's use Bill Gates as an example of this natural
elite. For every Bill Gates, there are a thousand Joe Programmers
at Microsoft who are smart and talented. They are the second line
of the elite, in Marx's view, the bourgeois. For every Joe Programmer
at Microsoft, there are a thousand Mary Secretaries, a thousand
Bob Lawnmower, a thousand Doug Factoryworker, and Susie Governmentbureaucrat;
these are the proletariat in the Marxian view. None of them have
the combination of mental ability, circumstance, and determination
that Bill Gates has, and most of them know it. However, these thousands
have a lot more votes than Bill and his programmers. Those votes
are political power, and the Marxists know it.

The
10 Measures of Communism

And
how will the proletariat use their political clout to wrest capital
away from the capitalists? With the 10 measures Marx and Engels
laid out in 1848. As the master communists aver, the exact implementation
will vary slightly from county to country, but will follow the general
thrust of the measures.

Here
are the 10 measures the proletariat will use to bring about the
full realization of the communist utopian dream, once they have
the political power:

1. Abolition
   of property in land and application of all rents of land to
   public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition
   of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation
   of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization
   of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national
   bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization
   of the means of communication and transport in the hands of
   the state.
7. Extension
   of factories and instruments of production owned by the state;
   the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement
   of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal
   obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies,
   especially for agriculture.
9. Combination
   of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition
   of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable
   distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free
    education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s
    factory labor in its present form. Combination of education
    with industrial production, etc.

Take
a second to compare them with the Democratic Party Positions.
Note that the communists speak in terms of oppressed and oppressor,
guilty rich, and noble worker, just like the Democrats. Solely by
observing the title link of the various positions, you can see the
Democrats place no value on Americans in general, but play race
and class warfare by dividing people into ethnic, social, gender,
and special interest groups.

Observations
on The Communist Goals

Here
are the 10 points from the Communist Manifesto again, with a few
observations.

1. Abolition
   of property in land and application of all rents of land to
   public purposes.

The
communist revolution is about half successful here. Private property
rights are eroded daily in this country. Property Tax in most
areas goes directly to fund the “public purpose” of public education.
(confer #10). The
US government is the single largest land owner, but instead
of selling off “public” land, the government continues to acquire
more under the guide of “protecting wilderness” or some other
such nonsense. The land under direct federal control is not the
only property held by the government. The use of executive branch
regulatory edicts to put severe restrictions on private property
has the effect of putting much more property in the hands of the
government. Do you really own that South Florida beachfront property
if you can't build a beach house on it? As long as it's to save
the Red Mangrove, Loggerhead Turtle, and Brown Pelican, you see.

2. A
   heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Can
someone please explain how a flat tax RATE is not already graduated?
A truly flat tax would be something like $500 per person per year.
A graduated tax is 5% per person per year. A punitive tax on innovation
and achievement is our current manipulative system. When historians
look back at the United States, they will ask how, in this day
and age of instant access to information and history, a people
could fail to see the obvious parallels between the Gestapo, the
KGB, and the IRS. They all use fear, intimidation, spying, and
invasion of privacy to keep people in line. This awful agency
should be abolished and replaced with nothing. The tax code is
such an obvious tool of social manipulation that it absolutely
disgusts me. Do you think its any coincidence that the tax code
has a marriage penalty, and the number of unmarried couples living
together has gone up? Check off one of the previously stated goals
of the communists as partially achieved: abolition of the family.

3. Abolition
   of all rights of inheritance.

Well,
the current Estate Tax rate of 55% means we're just over half
way towards this one. Part of the communist goal of ultimate state
power is the destruction of the family (outlined in chapter 2
of the manifesto). One of the ties that bind families together,
as well as encourage parents to work for the betterment of their
children is the promise of leaving an estate or inheritance. By
legislating that the property owned and accumulated over a lifetime
can't be passed on, we help replace the idea of the parent and
family with the idea of a benevolent state. Further, the idea
of ownership of one's labor and the property earned by it is undermined.
One of the tests of ownership is the ability to grant a thing
to another person. If you aren't free to do that, you don't really
own something.

4. Confiscation
   of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

The
US has relatively few emigrants, but we have plenty of rebels.
While assorted tax resistors and government regulatory resistors
fall in the rebel category, the new favorite catch-all prosecutorial
group is "suspected" drug dealers. Suppose I sell my
1986 Honda CRX for $800 cash, then drive to the bank to deposit
it, get stopped on the way, searched (under duress, naturally),
and the cop decides the cash might be used for drugs. Buh-bye
cash. I just might be a drug dealer. I'm suspected, and suspicion
is all it takes. No need to worry about due process or anything,
kind of like Salem, circa 1692. This is the drug war. Police Forces
can confiscate your entire house if they find one pot leaf in
it. The same holds true for your car, or boat. Having a pile of
money that could be used to buy drugs is suspicious.

The
drug war has flown this one in under the Radar of most commie-fighting
Republicans who roundly support the new prohibition, but as Marx
and Engels noted "The forms these take will vary from country
to country". The Communists are ends-justify-the means kind
of folks.

5. Centralization
   of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national
   bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Done.
Don't think so? Quick, who's Chairman of the Federal Reserve?
That's right, our good friend, Alan Greenspan. He and the rest
of the board set the prime-lending rate, and control the money
supply. In my Keynesian slanted Macro Economic class, they called
this "fiscal and monetary policy". After a good dose
of Austrian economics, I now spot it as "Objective 5 of the
Communist Manifesto — Government Command Economy" or "taxation
via inflation". Control of the banking system by the fed
is so complete that Wall Street, the supposed paragon of free-market
capitalism, wags up and down to the mumblings of a single un-elected
bureaucrat.

6. Centralization
   of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the
   state.

AT&T
was a government sanctioned monopoly for 70 years. Thanks
to the heroic Carter Phone Company making a phone other than black,
and suing to break the government imposed monopoly, the communications
industry has been making spectacular progress after begin stifled
for three-quarters of a century, thanks to Uncle Stalin, errr,
Sam. Jeremy
Sapienza asks if we might not be online in 1950 if not for
Intellectual Property restrictions. Given that the telephone took
67 years to get to 50% of US households thanks to the strangling
effects of monopoly status, compared with 6 years for the World
Wide Web to hit 50%, Mr. Sapienza may be right.

While
the free market has broken the communications impasse electronically,
the real world still has only one choice for "first class"
mail, and the transportation system is still in the hands of the
state. Think about this the next time you're in traffic. When
was the last time you went to a grocery store where the checkout
lines were routinely so frustratingly long that the patrons started
shooting each other. I would love nothing better than for a private
company to start leasing tracts of land on the north side of Atlanta,
build an outer perimeter based on profit sharing of toll revenue
collected from wireless tags, and then watch the MARTA and highway
planning goofballs tear their hair. What kind of organization
actually plans 20 years down the road when traffic jams are driving
people bonkers today? A government agency of course. Back to the
communist aspects of this, the central planners love the idea
that everyone has the same kind of transportation. How dare we
express individuality, or class distinction based on the kind
of car we drive.

7. Extension
   of factories and instruments of production owned by the state;
   the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement
   of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Governor
Gray Davis of California has a few things to say about this: namely,
he's all for it. In fact, having wrecked havoc on California's
electric and utility companies through price controls, he's proposed
confiscating them and giving them to the state to run. Governor
Davis, welcome to the pantheon of fellow communist confiscators:
Mao, Stalin, and Castro.

8. Equal
   obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies,
   especially for agriculture.

Marx
and Engels knew that growing food in a collective commune would
require some of the very productivity advances brought about by
capitalism and the industrial revolution in order to supply anything
above a subsistence level. The solution for them was that everyone
would work, and agriculture would use industrial techniques. In
this analysis, they were correct: agriculture in the 21st
century is often referred to as agribusiness. It looks a lot more
like steel refining than the picturesque farmer of yore, tilling
his fields behind an ox, or the post Great Depression family farmer
on his tractor. Hurray for it. Getting food was the daily occupation
for most of humanity for as long as we've been on this planet.
In 1800, it's estimated that 80% of the American workforce was
involved in farming. In 1990, it's estimated that 3% of the American
workforce was involved in farming. 3% of the population provides
food for the other 97%, of their own free will, without hoarding,
price fixing, or the other bugga-bears of the free market.

The
modern form of the industrial army is undeniably the union. Just
like an army, unions use force to get their way. Sometimes its
physical force, other times political force. I fully support the
freedom of and freedom from association. If a group of workers
wants to form a club and bargain collectively, so be it. If their
employer wants to fire them all together, well, that's fine too.
Naturally, the unions, consisting of the democratic mob, have
passed legislation making it legal for them to organize, but illegal
for their employer to terminate them. Forward the communist army!

9. Combination
   of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition
   of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable
   distribution of the populace over the country.

The
original aim of this communist policy seems to be melding the
oppressor and oppressed classes: a mass of proletariat concentrated
in the city, a countryside of peasant farmers, and a few aristocracy
with massive tracts of hereditary land. Notice the reference to
"equable distribution" of the populace. This can only
be accomplished by land redistribution. The communists saw the
distinction between city dwellers, townies, and country folk.
They knew the city, filled with factory workers, was their natural
base from which to mount an assault on the property rights conscious
farmers and aristocratic landowners. While moving people into
the countryside seems antithetical to today's environmental movement,
the two are actually after the same goal: reduction of property
rights. The greens realize the communist goal by forcing the people
out of the country, and into the city and suburbs. Think Pol Pot
and the Khmer Rouge in reverse. Thus, the common thread in these
nihilistic, authoritarian political movements is revealed.

10. Free
    education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s
    factory labor in its present form. Combination of education
    with industrial production, etc.

Well,
we've certainly reached the education camp ideal espoused in the
communist manifesto. Instead of universal access to “free” education,
we now have universal compulsory indoctrination. Look
at the assault on home-schoolers for further proof. I asked
a friend of mine who recently graduated with an education degree
what she learned in her degree major classes. The response frightened
me; she had learned how to control classroom behavior. She told
me it usually “takes 3 or 4 years before children are broken in
to the idea of a teacher in charge”. She teaches 2nd graders. Stories
of public school officials promoting political agendas are legion.
Almost universally, that agenda takes its cues from the communist
manifesto, and its modern keepers.

Back
to point 10 of the Manifesto. The combination of education with
industrial production looks exactly like the work to school programs
that find such favor with our public education system. The abolition
of factory slave labor, and the preservation of third world "habitat"
are two verses in the same tribal chant of the neo-communist environmental
movement. This is all in the name of preventing the third world
country de jour in cahoots with Nike from wrecking the natural habitat
of their beautiful swamps and deserts while exploiting the children,
of course. The natural consequence that the now unemployed children
will have to beg or prostitute themselves to stay fed is ignored
by our enlightened watermelon (red with a thin green skin) protestors.

Conclusion

Am
I suggesting some massive conspiracy to infiltrate the Democratic
(and to a lesser degree the Republican) Party by the International
Commune? No. What I am suggesting is that communists gravitate towards
political parties that see no wrong in enforcing edicts via state
control. I am also suggesting that people with authoritarian tendencies
will never come out and directly say that they want to run your
life. They'll tell you to support some piece of legislation in the
name of fairness, or the environment, or safety, or the children,
or “our” future, or humanitarian intervention, or national security.
Those who oppose are branded heartless, or selfish, or sadistic,
or cowardly, or stupid, or greedy. The collectivists make the claim
to the moral high ground based on the false assumption that they
know what's best for someone else, and how dare you get in the way.
The worst part may be the fact that most Americans don't realize
the stated goals of communism, and the means to achieve those goals
are at work in our society today. I suppose most people assume the
communists will come out and say they want to run your life. No
one can be enslaved all at once; no one would volunteer for it.
But the incremental approach to control is insidious, and dishonest.
It doesn't speak its name, since detection would render people alert
to it, and ready to destroy it. Well, folks, here's your wakeup
call. You will know the authoritarians are attempting to gain control
by reading their Manifesto in their own words. It's
plain as day if you take the time to read it.

July
7, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

~
Pope John Paul II in his 2001 Easter Sermon

With
our US servicemen and women home safely from China, now is the time
to reflect on what spying on China portends for Americans in general,
and not just the Chinese or our military captives. The stats
on the EP-3 are well known. It's a four prop, specially modified
electronic surveillance plane designed to pick up radio, cell-phone
calls, telephone calls, emails, and the like. Folks, I'm sure the
Chinese had better physicists than I pretend to be, and since they
knew these flights were taking place (along with who knows how many
CIA double-agents), any hush-hush military strategy session would
be taking place in electronically shielded military facilities.
Can you imagine two Chinese generals discussing nuclear strike plans
on cell phones? Well, if their military keeps secrets like
ours, maybe that's a bad example.

So what is the purpose of our surveillance flights? In a word: Intimidation.
We aren't there to figure out if the Chinese are about to launch
a 6,300-mile amphibious invasion of the United States. With sateliliites
capable of
this, 10 years ago no less, we aren't even there to glean information
about an imminent invasion of Taiwan. We're there to show the Chinese
who's boss. We're there to “send a message” as the politicians love
to say. We're there because we have the “defense” budget to do it;
we have the equipment to do it; we have the personnel to do it;
and we have a fun house
full of generals and defense industry lobbyists (or do I repeat
myself) with a Cold War mentality who have always done it, and are
itching for Cold War II in order to keep doing it.

With
the flimsy justification of "We have to know what China's doing!"
as the official war party line, allow me to point out several reasons
why support for continued military harassment of China is a very
bad idea.

1. Escalation
   from Cold War II to World War III – The USS Kitty Hawk
   is sailing to the South China Sea, stocked with 70 fighters
   to escort our next EP-3. What better way to get into a shooting
   war with China than to start spying again within seconds of
   having our personnel returned? The "double sorry apology
   that wasn't" is still echoing in their ears, as the din
   of another EP-3 reverberates through Beijing. Only this time
   we have some escort fighters to shoot down any Chinese that
   dare to "aggressively intercept" our new spy plane.
   The best case scenario right now is that after a few weeks
   of showing China who's boss, the media in the United States
   of Amnesia will lose interest and the Kitty Hawk will be quietly
   re-deployed elsewhere. The worst case is another incident
   that leads to shooting, and then more shooting. Putting an
   aircraft carrier stocked full of fighters just off the coast
   of China is a provocation no matter how you look at it. When
   I visit relatives in Florida, we routinely go fishing more
   than twelve miles offshore. I can't imagine trolling along,
   and suddenly spotting a hulking gray mass coming ever closer
   and clearer only to make out a single red start amidst all
   the gray paint. But that's what Chinese fishermen will see
   when venturing out to make their catch, with the exception
   being the color of the star.

2. Loss
   of Liberty at Home — The relatively small invasion of
   privacy meted out to the handful of Chinese civilians who
   had phone calls tapped and emails read as part of the larger
   surveillance net designed to pick up Chinese military and
   government communications could be considered electronic collateral
   damage. The fact that our military see no problem with picking
   up a phone call or two of foreign civilians begs the question:
   Shouldn't our military and government recognize that the only
   difference between the natural civil rights of foreign civilians
   and American citizens is which government is supposed to protect
   them? After all, we don't just let our military go around
   doing things to other civilians they wouldn't do to us, right?
   Then again, maybe not. Viewed in this light, it's obvious
   why the CIA, FBI, NSA, and military have fewer and fewer reservations
   about trampling our liberties. They invade our privacy (Carnivore
   and Echelon) and watch us without our consent or knowledge
   (Superbowl face-cams, bank wire transfer tracking, highway
   traffic cameras, cameras in downtown areas, etc.). These people
   think the only reason we have civil rights at all is due to
   some artificial distinction called United States Citizenship,
   instead of natural rights or moral mandate. It's easy to ignore
   an artificial designation for convenience sake, compared to
   an educated government that realizes it's in place to protect
   our liberties. The Declaration of Independence and our heritage
   of rule of law does not limit natural rights to just Americans.
   Dusty old notions like universal humanity, innocence until
   proven guilty and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure
   should apply to the way the United States treats the Chinese
   and other citizens of the world. It is the height of hypocrisy
   for our politicians to lecture the Chinese about human rights
   after taking the life, violating the property, and invading
   the privacy of the Chinese people.

3. Economic
   Downturn becomes Economic Meltdown (China Syndrome) –
   The last thing you want during a recession is a sudden decrease
   in supply and an increase in prices for consumer goods. Refer
   to the Hawley-Smoot tariffs for a lesson in strangling trade
   known as the Great Depression. Naturally, the unions are on
   the side of the war-hawks for the imposition of economic sanctions,
   revocation of most-favored-nation trading status, and the
   resulting increase in demand for domestic union goods. The
   jingoistic tune in Washington D.C. is music to the ears of
   the defense industry and the labor unions that build the bombs,
   planes, and other "military hardware".

4. Increased
   Defense Spending – With national wealth destruction
   day, April 16th, so recently past, consider that about $1
   of every $3 you paid over the last year, and are paying even
   now, went to funding the “secret
   empire” of United States military personnel, bases and
   equipment stationed oversees. So, as the pundits
   foam and froth for war with a country an ocean away, remember
   who pays now in treasure, and who might pay later in blood.
   As usual, it won't be the laptop
   bombardiers.

China
is not the new Soviet Union. Jiang Zemin is not the new Adolph Hitler.
Stop the spying.

April
20, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

1. The
   incident occurred beyond the twelve-mile boundary, in International
   Waters, but within the 200 mile Economic Interest zone where
   China claims the right to intercept military vessels, exactly
   like the United States claims the right to intercept military
   (including reconnaissance) vessels within 200 miles of our shores.
2. Our
   plane is an EP-3, four prop, high-tech, electronic surveillance
   plane with a crew of 24. It's land based, not carrier based.
3. The
   Chinese sent two F-8 jets to intercept our spy plane.
4. This
   sort of spy and intercept game had been going on for months.
5. Our
   plane was damaged on the bottom of the nose, on the underside
   of the left wing, and on the left prop.
6. The
   Chinese fighter crashed into the South China Sea, the pilot
   is missing and presumed dead.
7. The
   other Chinese fighter requested his ground command grant him
   permission to fire, but was denied.
8. The
   US plane safely landed at a Chinese military base on the island
   of Hainan.
9. The
   Navy says the plane was on autopilot, and therefore should have
   been in a level, stable flight.
10. The
    Navy adds that since the plane was on autopilot, it may have
    reached a waypoint and made a sudden banked turn.

Here
are a few observations and leading questions that are up to you
to mull over.

• The
  terms "agile, quick, and smaller" are thrown around
  to describe the fighters, in order to make the EP-3 look like
  a freight train lumbering through the sky, as though its path
  is somehow immutable. The fact is that the plane is maneuverable,
  if not as fast as a fighter. This is not a 747. Keep that
  in mind, and redraw any cartoon images of gnats buzzing around
  a buffalo to proper perspective.

• If
  I were a Chinese military strategist, and knew the profile of
  this particular spy plane, as well as the routine, I would equip
  several interceptor-style military jets with jamming devices
  and send them right up next to the plane to blast bad Chinese
  pop music and "Paper Tiger" speeches by Chairman Mao
  across all frequencies, to generally make electronic eavesdropping
  difficult.

• If
  I were a pilot of one of the Chinese planes so equipped, I would
  fly as close as possible to the plane's antennae, and since
  the plane (in the air) is monitoring communications (on, and
  emanating from the ground), the best place to fly would be between
  the plane and the ground, coincidentally the location of the
  damage to the US plane. This leads to another question. Who
  is more likely to have rammed whom? a fighter with a glass canopy
  and clear visibility above, flying underneath a plane, or a
  low wing plane flying above said fighter. Position aside, why
  would a smaller Chinese jet intentionally ram a larger US twin
  prop? If they wanted to bring it down, certainly a missile or
  even guns would work better than a kamikaze mission with one
  of China's few fighters and best pilots. Then add in the announcement
  that the plane was on autopilot, and "may" have made
  a sudden turn; suddenly all our military brass denouncing the
  Chinese for ramming us "going on common sense" seems
  a little, well, suspect. (Besides the obvious gig about common
  sense in the military)

• If
  I were trying to force a plane to land somewhere, I would fly
  above, and in front of it, not below; from the latest reports,
  that's just what the other Chinese pilot did AFTER his comrade
  splashed down.

• Would
  a US spy plane keep all intercepted transmissions on board,
  or would it package everything up and feed it, encrypted in
  real time to a ship? The Chinese claim their pilot radioed permission
  to shoot the plane down. Wouldn't the most advanced US spy plane
  around have a channel or too dedicated to listening to the communications
  of their unfriendly military escorts less than 400 meters away?
  If so, do we have a recorded radio log of Chinese military communications
  intercepted by our spy plane, or our naval vessels in the area?
  Why don't we play it? Do you think that a damaged spy plane
  headed for hostile territory will have a shred of video, audio,
  or telemetry information left that might indicate that the spy
  plane was in the wrong? That stuff was burned faster than FBI
  forensics about Waco. The Chinese probably don't have any relevant
  cockpit video from their jet either, or we'd already be seeing
  an endless loop-back of Yankee aggression on CNN. So, barring
  recovery of anything interesting from the downed fighter, or
  a freedom of information act request thirty years from now for
  transcripts beamed to any nearby US surface vessels, we're reduced
  to relying on events as told in the sworn testimony of the two
  parties most compelled to lie.

Conspiracy
theories aside, this whole spy plane incident begs a larger question.
What is the reason for spying in the first place? What kind of information
could, should, and would be gathered? We already have satellites
that would alert us to a Chinese invasion fleet even preparing to
steam across the straits to Taiwan, much less the logically and
logistically impossible fleet needed to transport an invasion force
across the Pacific. The
pundits go on about how China might invade Taiwan. It would
be a shame to see another round in that particular civil war, but
let's not kid ourselves. With our current
aversion to casualties of any kind , we would sooner mount an
expedition to Mars then defend Taiwan from an invasion from mainland
China. Even if we were ready for another Southeast Asian adventure,
have we learned
nothing about the bloody price of fighting someone else's wars?
Those intent on rousing the specter of the Global Communist Threat
should take a deep breath and remember that another lesson we should
have learned over the last 50 years is that the communist command
economy, and therefore communism itself, doesn't work in the long
run. Maybe that's why China largely left Hong Kong alone when the
British lease was up. The ChiComms learned the lessons of the Great
Leap Forward far better than the socialist
morons in control of our government, probably because keeping
a nation of over a billion from starving, and therefore rioting,
is the first priority of the ruling regime. So, give our freedom
loving Taiwanese friends all the satellite pictures of Chinese port
cities and military preparations they want. They can defend their
shores from a mainland invasion that may or may not come. In the
mean time, they can continue to lead the rest of China towards free
markets and freedom by their example.

Setting
aside Taiwan, however, China, and every other nation on the planet
for that matter, is not a conventional military threat to the United
States. "We still need spy planes" and all the cold war
apparatus of government control, the shrill voices cry. "The
Chinese stole all our nuclear secrets, and we have to know what
they're doing!" Folks, the atomic bomb is over 50 years old;
take 10 Kilos of U235 in two separate masses, one shaped like a
pie wedge, one shaped like a sphere, TNT to slam it together to
achieve critical mass, and boom, Manhattan hits the Hudson in one
fell swoop of atomic Hell. So what's the big secret? The argument
over a 5 megaton versus 60 megaton design is so much hairsplitting.
If anything, the fact that the Chinese could walk into the Whitehouse
and buy the latest warhead design is all the more reason to stop
government research on these monstrous devices. Private industry
is much better prepared to guard what are basically trade secrets
than the corrupt pols in DC.

Just
what is China's
nuclear threat? It's credibly estimated at twenty to our thousands,
but what country would launch even one ICBM against the US? Retaliation
would be so severe as to guarantee destruction. So you always have
the possibility of a suicidal sociopath or two in the military getting
hold of a nuke, right? With a flight time of 30 minutes, and all
kinds of destruct and abort codes controlled by the central (presumably
sane, or at least self-preservationist) military, a “Spies Like
Us” movie scenario gets pretty unlikely.

What
are we left with? The major boogey-men of modern US military thinking
are:

• Backpack
  Nukes (A Tom Clancy specialty)
• Terrorist
  suicide bombings (Cole, Khobar Towers, World Trade Center, and
  many more)
• Domestic
  Terrorism (Tim McVeigh in Oklahoma City)
• Cyber-Terrorism
  (Mafia-boy takes down Yahoo)
• Biological
  Weapons (Anthrax from a Cessna over New York)
• Chemical
  Weapons (Nerve Gas, etc.)

Rather
than trying to rate the likelihood of these events happening or
recurring, lets ask the simple question of whether or not sticking
our troops, spy planes, CIA and FBI Agents, submarines, Jets, and
Tomahawk missiles all over the world increases or decreases the
chances of any one taking place. The answer is simple when you consider
that the Swiss don't have a problem with Islamic fundamentalists
blowing holes in their Destroyers. If you need more than thought
experiment evidence, Chalmers Johnson has dedicated an entire
book to the cause and effect relationship between our interventions
and the repercussions.

On
the cyber-terror front, we have hackers capable of the monstrous
terror of defacing a government
web site and taking down online services for a few hours before
backbone providers could react. Gasp, I can't check my stocks every
5 minutes! These annoyances are painted by our government into some
twisted Terminator-futurescape a few mouse-clicks away, with the
Yellow-Terror Chinese government capable of opening Hoover Dam's
flood gates or turning off power in California with the press of
a button in Nanking. Please, the Communists in California already
took care of the second. The “government must do something” crowd
crows for the Office
of Government Email Screening, Internet Strangulation, and Taxation
along with $5 Billion in funding.

Which
do you fear more: Some bored teenager doing the equivalent of a
graffiti job on your website, or being permanently added to a government
database thanks to the NSA intercepting your Lew Rockwell page views
and tagging you as a potential "trouble maker". For that
matter, are you more afraid of the threat of a terrorist poisoning
your drinking water, or an IRS audit?

So,
what are we spying for anyhow? Jude Wanniski puts it perfectly when
he describes “those
watchdogs who bark at any rustling in the trees”. What information
could be gleaned by these same cloak-and-dagger goofballs who missed
the impending collapse of the Soviet Union? Nothing.

Here's
all the information they need: The Chinese have not, are not preparing
to, and could not militarily invade the US. They are greatly deterred
from a nuclear war with us. When the Chinese government spies on
us, they get all the info the need from their
men at the top. Why not shoot the traitors in our midst, and
stop spying on the Chinese. Better yet, strip our government of
anything foreign governments would want, and avoid the problem altogether.

April
11, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

"It
is with a sincere heart that I send condolences to the widowed wife
and orphaned child of Wang Wei, the Chinese fighter pilot presumed
lost in the South China Sea. As commander in chief, I have ordered
our naval vessels in the area to assist in the search for the missing
pilot.

"The
loss of life in an avoidable accident is a regrettable tragedy,
and we are glad that our servicemen and women managed to land safely.
In order to avoid the foolish confrontations that needlessly endanger
the military personnel of both the United States and China, I am
hereby suspending all reconnaissance flights in the South China
Sea.

"While
we do not have access to our flight recordings, equipment, or people
to understand how this accident may have taken place, I apologize
for the intrusion of our plane and personnel in Sovereign Chinese
territory. I am grateful for the patience and understanding shown
by the Chinese people in the aftermath of this accident, and ask
for the quick and safe return of the Americans who made an emergency
landing.

"The
United States and China have become two of the largest two trading
partners on the planet. Our cultures, peoples, and mutual prosperity
are inextricable linked in this ever shrinking world. Even as The
United States and China have come to rely on each other more, two
schools of thought have recently emerged in government circles.

"One
is the Zero-Sum School that thinks one nation can only prosper at
the expense of others. The Zero-Sum School thinks that there are
a limited number of jobs, and puts up tariffs to "protect"
jobs from competition. The Zero-Sum School is interested in "Benevolent
Global Hegemony" as some in our former administration put it.
This is the school of arrogance and pride.

"The
other school is a Humble School. It believes that people in other
countries can innovate, create, and build, and by trading, the citizens
of all countries are better off. The Humble School believes that
one nation should not, indeed can not, dictate the terms of trade,
war, peace, and truth to the rest of the world. I follow the second
train of thought.

"The
Humble School puts American interests first, but it does not do
this by seeking to make others last. The Humble School is peaceful,
because it knows that governments should only protect the rights
and freedoms of their citizens, never force u2018freedom' on others
at the end of a gun. The Humble School stands for friendship, peace,
and prosperity.

"As
a sign of friendship, I ask the help of the Chinese in repairing
our plane in order to allow our crew a safe and expeditious journey
home."

…insert
thank you, platitudes, cue applause, etc. here….

OK,
so that went off into a foreign policy manifesto. Still, was the
apology so hard? Instead of a reasonable apology to justified anger
over a lost pilot and our spying, our leaders fume and posture like
four year olds on a playground. "Say you're sorry!" "No,
you!" All this while twenty-four Americans are locked up, and
a few words of sincere contrition could bring them home. A Chinese
widow and orphan mourn, and pompous Admiral Blair yammers "It's
pretty obvious who bumped into who."

April
7, 2001

John Keller
[send
him mail] owns a Technology
Consulting and a Real
Estate business in Atlanta, GA.

I
was an "ordinary" American conservative. I scratched my
head when we invaded Iraq, and since I was in high school, my main
concern was that my reservist Uncles make it home safely. I didn't
understand why my relatives should be in harm's way to fight someone
else's war in the Middle East, but went along with the "we
have to win it if we're in it" attitude. After high school,
I went to Georgia Tech. I knew the US was helping one side in some
"Bosnian War", and that the other side was supposedly
doing "really bad things". It sounded fishy, but I was
in school and didn't have the time to care.

I
graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree, and took a job
happily building the Internet infrastructure that makes email and
the web possible. I disliked being in the 30%+ tax bracket, but
compared to student poverty, 60+% of my pay seemed pretty good.
I met and married my beautiful Serbian bride a few months before
anyone had ever heard of Kosovo. I got quite a shock when I discovered
she was one of the "bad guys" but that her family had
been ethnically cleansed from Sarajevo by the Muslims. Here was
a side to the story I had never heard. She told me the US was going
to start another war over Kosovo and was helping the Albanians.
I nodded my head at the time, but still didn't quit believe that
the media would actually lie about something so dangerous as a war.

So,
when the claims of a genocide started, I was shocked. She had called
it correctly. CNNAOLTIMEWARNERNBCCBSABCMSNBC all spun into action.
The most ludicrous claims of Jamie Shea and James Rubin were parroted
without question. "100,000 rounded up in a Pristina soccer
stadium." Pictures of war refugees were shown as "proof"
of the genocide and ethnic cleansing, after the bombs started falling
of course. You probably think we were right to bomb.

You're
wrong. We armed the KLA while "brokering" the "peace
deal". We setup the massacre at Racak. We ripped up the Rambouilett
agreement that Yugoslavia signed but the KLA didn't. We drafted
a new one with an ammendment that turned Yugoslavia into a NATO
puppet state and bombed them when they didn't sign. In violation
of the NATO charter. In violation of the US Constitution. We bombed
hospitals, power grids, the Chinese Embassy, a market, civilian
factories, a commuter train, a TV station, an Albanian refugee column,
and countless civilians. We bombed within a kilometer of my in-laws
home in downtown Zemun outside Belgrade. We bombed past the 60 day
limit of the Unconstitutional "War Powers Act". We bombed
in spite of all norms of decency, morality, and common human kindness.

Somewhere
early on in that personal nightmare I realized that we have become
an Empire. Now, paying tribute to the government sickens me. I know
that my money went to fund an illegal, unethical war. As we approach
the two year anniversary of the bombing, I look back at my political
transformation: my joy at finding Antiwar.com, a site dedicated
to the truth; my sudden libertarian epiphany when Justin Raimondo's
links brought me to Lewrockwell.com.

So
now, as I read National Review (via links from Lewrockwell.com),
I ask myself. "How can anyone with a shred of morality advocate
aggressive war?" It's a question more and more Americans ask
themselves, and each other. Perhaps it's a question you should ask
yourself. Have you ever seen the Chinese Embassy with your own eyes?
Do you understand how shocked and ashamed I was to see bombed bridges,
buildings, power plants, and factories as I toured welcoming Yugoslavia
last summer? Probably, you do not. When you write about invading
Africa, policing Iraq, and peace-keeping in Bosnian and Kosovo,
you mean the abstract United States military to do it. You don't
mean my high school and college friends that went into ROTC, but
they'll be the ones who go. When you use your convienient abstration
skills to call me a hairsplitting, ideological kook you don't mean
me specifically. But, here I am, along with a lot of other ordinary
Americans.

We're
out here, Mr. Goldberg. And we'd rather read Lew Rockwell's sanely
written, informative, and funny essays than yours. We'd rather read
Justin Raimondo's conspiracy theories and "Follow the Money"
polemics, than your Imperial blather. We'd rather read Rothbard,
Sobran, Reese, (Walter) Williams, Sowell, Kantor, Dietman, Sapienza,
Calahan, and (gasp!) even Bob Murphy before delving into your "invade
the world" screed.

I'm
not anti-American for questioning the sanity of our current government.
I'm just an ordinary American, sick of being told to fork over my
money for politicians to buy votes and bomb my relatives.

Sincerely,
John Keller

March
10, 2001