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Darren Wolfe, otherwise known as The International Libertarian, is the former Eastern Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Puerto Rico and lived in Venezuela for seven years, including the first year of Chavez' rule. His articles have appeared in OpEdNews.com, the Libertarian Penn, and the Nolanchart.com. News services such as the New York Post.com and Rational Review have published links to his work. Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darrenlobo
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
--Thomas Jefferson
Friday, February 3, 2012 Leon Panetta's explicitly authoritarian decree
The DoD chief says clearly: once the president accuses a citizen of terrorism, execution without trial is permitted
Sunday, January 29, 2012 Florida Man Arrested On Wiretapping Charges For Recording Traffic Stop (2 comments)
The police are out of control arresting people for filming them. The North Port, Florida man who took the video was too far away to even record any audio! This has got to stop.
Sunday, January 1, 2012 The Burden Of The Soldier
Generally speaking, the soldier's role as provider of security is secondary to his role in propaganda. Regardless of an individual soldier's motivation in joining the military, his primary function is to serve as a rallying cry for the fellow subjects of his state.
The nefarious motives behind wars, the endless political treacheries, and the massive fortunes accumulated by military industries must all hide behind the image of the soldier. He is portrayed as the best reflection of a grateful society, and elevated to the shining status of a religious icon, in the hope of blinding everyone to the cesspool of narcissism, corruption, and corporatism behind every war.
Saturday, December 3, 2011 Cop Block Founder Charged With Wiretapping
Cop Block co-founder Adam "Ademo Freeman" Mueller was indicted Thursday on three counts of felony wiretapping stemming from phone conversations he recorded with police and public school officials in New Hampshire last October.
If convicted, the 29-year-old can serve up to 20 years in prison.
Friday, December 2, 2011 Heicklen Prosecutor: Jury nullification not First Amendment right (1 comments)
The government claims that advocating jury nullification isn't free speech. They want to deny a man charged with jury tampering the right to a trial by jury. The alleged tampering involved handing all passersby at a courthouse pamphlets about jury nullification.
Monday, November 14, 2011 James Madison's Warning: The Enemies to Public Liberty (4 comments)
The real threat, the US government, resides here among us. Despite the fact that many in our military think they're defending freedom by fighting they are in fact doing the opposite. Let's look at Madison's words on this subject.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit
US taxpayers now insuring trillions of dollars worth of derivatives. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. Bank of America's holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 "Shut that f*****g thing off before I slap you!"
The title is how the campus police shut down a citizen and student. They made terroristic threats to stop him from doing what he has every right to do, film the police. If threatening people like that is illegal for the rest of us it should be illegal for the police.
Sunday, September 11, 2011 The Legacy of 9/11: An Institutionalization of Terror at Home and Abroad (1 comments)
Responding to terror perpetrated by 19 men with box-cutters a decade ago, the US government has now put hundreds of millions of innocent Americans into countless military, intelligence, and law enforcement databases without suspecting them of any crime. The National Security Agency eavesdrops on over 1.7 billion pieces of our email, phone, and other communications each day. And the government has spent trillions of dollars on often worthless "homeland" security bureaucrats and technologies--not to mention the additional trillions spent on the various declared and undeclared wars associated with the ongoing "war on terror."
Sunday, September 4, 2011 Rochester Police To Undergo Training After Retaliatory Incidents
The Rochester Police Chief acknowledged that his officers acted in a retaliatory fashion by issuing petty tickets to citizens supporting Emily Good, the woman who was arrested in May for videotaping a traffic stop from her front yard.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 Taylorism, Progressivism, and Rule by Experts
The Progressive movement at the turn of the twentieth century--the doctrine from which the main current of modern liberalism developed--is sometimes erroneously viewed as an "anti-business" philosophy. It was anti-market to be sure, but by no means necessarily anti-business. Progressivism was, more than anything, managerialist.
Saturday, August 27, 2011 A Victory for Recording in Public!
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a resounding and unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public.
Friday, August 19, 2011 Revealed: Fake Facebook Identity Used By Military Contractors Plotting To Hack Progressive Organizations (1 comments)
Earlier this year, ThinkProgress obtained 75,000 private emails from the defense contractor HBGary Federal via the hacktivist group called Anonymous. The emails led to two shocking revelations. First, that an assortment of private military firms collectively called "Team Themis" had been tapped by Bank of America to conduct a cyber war against reporters sympathetically covering the Wikileaks revelations. And second, that late in 2010, the same set of firms began work separately for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Republican-aligned corporate lobbying group, to develop a similar campaign of sabotage against progressive organizations
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 When Do We Arrest the Tea Party?
"Empowering" and its underlying documents are a clear statement of the government's intention to step up ideological warfare against American communities down to the level of families. At the moment, those who merely state disagreement, either verbally or with their pocketbooks, seem to be targeted only for monitoring and discrediting. Yet law-enforcement agencies are viewed as an integral part of the propaganda campaign, and muscle always tends to flex.
The linguistically boring and bland "Empowering" is a hellaciously frightening document.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 The Higher-Education Bubble Has Popped
Students and their parents are investing in the higher-order good of a college degree, in the mistaken belief that plenty of jobs await college graduates at the end of four or six or seven years. However, time preferences haven't changed. The demand for consumer goods remains, and that's where the jobs are. The boom in demand for bankers, barristers, and bureaucrats is over.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 "Come Home America" Message Was Clear Winner at Iowa Straw Poll
The Des Moines news reporter who noted our anti-war message at the entrance of yesterday's Republican Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa, was not present with us long enough to see the real story. Our banners actually got an amazingly good reception! Our group of sign holders were all surprised how many of the thousands of straw poll attendees, even Pawlenty and Santorum t-shirted fans, were responding positively to the "Come Home America" message and banners warning that "Endless War = Endless Debt" and "War IS Taxing": The anti-war enthusiasm also manifested itself as people from all political (conservative, libertarian, and socially progressive) backgrounds stopped to talk, with many even giving up an hour or two to help us hold the banners.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 Re-Examining the Arab Spring | STRATFOR
No regime has fallen in the Arab world. Individuals such as Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak have been replaced, but the regimes themselves, which represent the manner of governing, have not changed. Some regimes have come under massive attack but have not fallen, as in Libya, Syria and Yemen. And in many countries, such as Jordan, the unrest never amounted to a real threat to the regime. The kind of rapid and complete collapse that we saw in Eastern Europe in 1989 with the fall of communism has not happened in the Arab world.
Sunday, August 7, 2011 Hiroshima Day Protest 2011 King of Prussia, PA (video)
The Brandywine Peace Community strikes again, this time protesting against Lockheed Martin building parts for nuclear missiles on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan during World War II. The protest went well with speeches, music, and the use of crime scene tape to block the entrance. The civil disobedience squad was arrested trying to deliver documents to Lockheed Martin.
After the protest I drove around to the spot where the Tea Partiers do their Saturday sign wave to share the message about Focus on Peace, the politically neutral peace movement. Some were receptive and some were hostile.
Saturday, August 6, 2011 Lemonade tyranny
On Aug. 20, over a hundred people have so far pledged to gather on the Capitol's west lawn to protest the petty bureaucracy that thinks threatening children with fines is a proper use of taxpayer resources. The organizers promise that they are ready to go to jail for the ultimate act of civil disobedience: offering a refreshing cup of lemonade on a sultry afternoon on the nation's front lawn for 10 cents.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 Understanding Obama's "War on Drugs" (1 comments)
Nobody should be fooled. The Obama administration's own drug control budgets show that it, like every recent one before it, is all-in with a punishment-oriented drug policy in which "victory" is impossible, "defeat" is unthinkable and evidence, science, common sense and compassion can take a hike.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 The Myth of the Voluntary Military (1 comments)
To leave once the war begins would amount to what the government calls desertion. This word sounds ominous, but in fact it merely describes what everyone in a civilized society takes for granted: the right to quit.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 Police Brutality Protest, West Chester, PA
Braving the 100-degree heat, and looking like Brave Heart, Michael Heise led a group that protested the brutal macing, arrest, and abuse of four young men on July 3 by the West Chester, PA police.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 Another ATF Arms Sales Scandal: "Operation Castaway"
While Operation Castaway was clearly a much smaller scale undertaking than Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF still managed to lose control of the firearms involved to the point that weapons were carried out of the United States and used in the commission of crimes.
Sunday, July 17, 2011 Dying for a Lie
There is no greater tragedy than someone laying down his life for a lie. And that is exactly what every soldier, of every country, who dies in battle, does.
Thursday, July 14, 2011 Is America still "My country, right or wrong"?
Is America still "My country, right or wrong"?
Or is it finally, truthfully, honestly, "My Country, My Ass."
With the police state entrenching itself ever deeper into American society, with the economy dragging us relentlessly down into a bottomless black hole, with government ignoring our onetime rights with sneers like the Patriot Act and legalized looting through eminent domain and asset forfeiture, with depraved contempt from TSA sexual groping, with wars of empire expanding around the globe, why would any self-respecting freedom-loving American want to sit back and mindlessly chant, "My country, right or wrong"?
Thursday, July 14, 2011 Breaking News: Source claims ATF's Tampa SAC walked guns to Honduras
Virginia O'Brien, Special Agent in Charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Tampa Field Division, ran a gun-running investigation that was walking guns to Honduras using the techniques and tactics identical to Fast and Furious
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 Justice Department Obstructing 'Fast and Furious' Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 Ademo's "Improper Influence" or Edward Burke's Abuse of Power? - You Decide
Since my arrest for "improper influence" I've been focused on getting back the footage taken from me and preparing for my probable cause hearing this Thursday. Despite the holiday weekend and usual bureaucratic trickery I was able to retrieve my footage today. I think three things played in a role in the success of this. One was the fact that I remained persistent with those holding the footage, often asking them to watch it themselves. The second reason was that I willingly signed a consent form allowing the police to access the footage. Meaning I didn't have to wait for a search warrant or court hearing before this took place. Finally, I think those who did watch the footage know that (judge) Burke abused his power when he ordered me arrested and, may have, felt bad for me -- for once. One officer even commented to me, during a jail visit, that, "You (Me -- Ademo) shouldn't be here."
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 Why the Left Fears Libertarianism by Anthony Gregory (2 comments)
Libertarianism, however weak its influence today, is a much greater long-term threat to the left than is any form of conservatism, and the leftist intellectuals sense this even if they can't articulate why. Leftism, whether they know it or not, is a distorted permutation of the classical liberal tradition. The statist left did their deal with the devil -- the nation-state, centralized authority of the most rapacious kind -- supposedly with the goal of expediting the liberation of the common man and leveling the playing field. More than a century since the progressives and socialists twisted liberalism into an anti-liberty, pro-state ideology, they see that they have made a huge mess of the world, that, as they themselves complain, social inequality persists, corporatism flourishes, and wars rage on.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 Send Me to Arizona to Free Arpaio's Political Prisoners
Imagine you're in prison for a victimless crime. You didn't hurt anyone, you just broke one of the government's rules. Maybe you drove after drinking alchohol, violated parole or got caught with cannabis. Now imagine you are in Phoenix, Arizona, the sixth largest city in the U.S. You're under the thumb of Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa county and administrator of a self-admitted concentration camp in the desert called Tent City. This is a place where the drug-sniffing dogs eat for $1 per day and the prisoners for just 50 cents.
Two days ago, the temperature in your tent hit 145 degrees Fahrenheit. As Brad Spangler at C4SS notes, roast beef is cooked at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This is torture. What is going on in Maricopa county?! Many of the prisoners are just awaiting trial. They haven't even been convicted yet. The bail is simply too high for them to get out.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 Republicans Bungle War-Powers Pushback
Although John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, laudably sent a recent letter to President Barack Obama suggesting the possibility of a violation of the War Powers Resolution in the attack on Libya, he was 90 days too late. Obama's violation did not occur this past weekend, but when the first American aircraft attacked Libya.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 Activist Emily Good stunned by fallout from video
Emily Good, of Rochester, talks about her arrest. She recounts the incident outside her home while she videotaped police during a traffic stop.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 At the Mercy of the State
In September 2002 a mild-mannered telecommunications engineer was flying home from family holiday when he was abducted by government agents and plunged into months of torture and abuse for information he did not possess.
It sounds like the plot of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. An innocent abroad caught up in an international conspiracy, which, try as he might, he cannot not make sense of. This actually happened to a Canadian citizen called Maher Arar.
Thursday, June 16, 2011 'You Can No Longer Think of Yourselves as Peace Officers': Militarizing 'Lockdown High'
The purpose of "active shooter drills" is not to refine protocols intended to protect inmates of government schools; instead, it is to habituate children to the presence of paramilitary operators in their midst. Parents should ponder that reality as millions of young Americans begin their welcome Summer parole from the government's hybrid school/prison system -- and they should likewise consider the wisdom of making that parole an unconditional pardon.
Monday, June 13, 2011 F.B.I. Giving Agents New Powers in Revised Manual (1 comments)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011 Dance Party at Thomas Jefferson's Memorial (video)
In the USA the imperial government desecrates the memory of Thomas Jefferson by insisting that all behave timidly in said place. Words like "solemn" and "reverent" flow from them to describe the atmosphere and behavior they expect at the memorial. Thomas Jefferson would have objected to this. He knew better than to call that liberty.
Thus, when we tried to protest their violently arresting people the week before for silently dancing at the memorial they moved in to stop us.
Saturday, May 28, 2011 Out of Business
The last few years as an executive in a manufacturing company gave me a frighteningly close look at the inner workings of regulators in our government. Maybe I'm just naïve, but what I discovered was shocking.
In the past, I realized our leaders were disingenuous when they spoke about "creating jobs" and "improving the economy." Now, I have a slightly different take. After my experiences this year, and after giving this a lot of thought, I am adamant that our leaders have no business in the first place "creating jobs," or "improving the economy," or even claiming they have the ability to do so.
Thursday, May 26, 2011 Abolish the Police (5 comments)
Can we really survive without government police? When we consider how much they do to disrupt civil society, it would seem obvious that we can. The police, on balance, are a force for decivilization and disorder. They commit massive violations of person and property. They enforce gun and drug laws that basically create organized crime and breed gang activity. Most of what they do encourages, rather than diminishes, violence. Despite all this, America remains a fairly civilized place. If we survived this long with the police, just imagine how much better off we'd be without them.
Sunday, May 22, 2011 Government Orders You Tube To Censor Protest Videos (3 comments)
Forget copyright infringement, You Tube is now complying with removal orders from governments to stop populist rage going viral
Saturday, May 21, 2011 FBI Performs Damage Control for Big Pharma (1 comments)
The FBI is being called in to do damage control for Big Pharma's Johnson & Johnson by carting out the Unabomber, and the media is happily complying.
Sunday, May 15, 2011 Why Did Police Kill My Dad? (1 comments)
"Mom, was my dad a bad guy?" four-year-old Joel Guerena plaintively asked his mother Vanessa after her husband, 26-year-old Jose, was killed in a withering barrage of gunfire during a SWAT invasion of their home. "They killed my dad! Police killed my dad! Why? What did my dad do?"
Sunday, May 15, 2011 Court: No right to resist illegal cop entry into home (3 comments)
Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
Thursday, April 28, 2011 Fedstock II (video)
Once again Philadelphia raised the bar for an End the Fed rally with Fedstock II. Jordan Page played his great music. Yours truly was the first speaker followed by a great line up, Scott Davis, Ernest Hancock, and Adam Kokesh.
Saturday, April 23, 2011 Tell Government and the Travel Industry: No More TSA Pat-Downs for Kids
Traveler advocate We Won't Fly is organizing a mass "Call Flood" campaign to force the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to stop touching children, as they did to 6-year-old Anna Drexel last week. The campaign is focused on TSA administrator John Pistole, President Barack Obama, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, Disneyland and other travel industry participants that serve families.
Thursday, April 21, 2011 Heicklen: judges are scamming jury rights activists
Julian Heicklen, the jury rights activist frequently featured in Libertarian News Examiner articles, has uncovered what he calls The Scam while handing out Fully Informed Jury Association literature in California.
As reported to his Tyranny Fighters email list, Heicklen actually identifies two different scams that judges and their law enforcers use to fraudulently threaten people who distribute pamphlets outside their courthouses.
Saturday, April 9, 2011 Heads Up, Mexico: You May be Next
It's shamefully narrow-minded of Washington to confer the blessings of humanitarian mass murder on distant Bedouins while ignoring our Mestizo neighbors to the South. McCaul, a former federal prosecutor who now chairs the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, is eager to help rectify that inequity by designating six Mexican drug syndicates -- including Los Zetas, which is led by U.S.-trained military personnel -- as "foreign terrorist organizations."
Friday, April 8, 2011 The Double Standard of The Nation on Impeachment (1 comments)
The Nation was in favor of impeachment when the war was Bush's and it was useful to win votes for Dems in the 2006 elections. The Nation's editor was delighted with Holtzmann's article featured on the cover. But The Nation and the same editor now stand mute when the war and the violation of the Constitution are Obama's. The words of those who place Party over principle merit considerable contempt, especially when it comes to issues of war, but they do not deserve to be taken seriously.
Monday, April 4, 2011 Why the Left Won't Stop the Wars (13 comments)
Here's a puzzle for you. Why hasn't the warmongering even slowed down with the left in power? Granted, according to Gallup a bare majority of Democrats support Obama's bombing of Libya. Most Republicans and Americans favor it too. It is based on propaganda somewhat different from the Bush-era appeals to fear of mushroom clouds. So perhaps we can understand why Democrats have not yet pressured their president to stop the bombing.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 Frank W. Buckles: American Witness Against War
Buckles appeared to be the quintessential American soldier. Brave and unsophisticated, largely indifferent to the causes of the conflict in which he served, and among the chief victims of Washington's promiscuously interventionist foreign policy.
Buckles lived his life well. He illustrates the need for a new approach to international affairs.
Saturday, March 26, 2011 Buy Two Wars, Get Another for Half Price
The bipartisan interventionist American foreign policy elites are in supreme denial, starting a third war when the U.S. Empire is already slogging along in two quagmires. With more than a trillion dollar annual budget deficit and a $14 trillion national debt, the empire is overextended.
Thursday, March 24, 2011 The War Machine on the East River
Conservative militarists invoke "National Security" to justify suspension of due process guarantees; progressive militarists appeal to "Collective Security" to sanctify aggressive war as a "multilateral" exercise. And of course, each of those collectivist factions will embrace the other's nostrums when convenient. The result of this depraved dialectic is a domestic garrison state on a permanent war footing, with the UN Security Council serving as an instrument of Washington's imperial ambitions.
Monday, March 21, 2011 Focus On Peace: Sign Wave for Peace on the Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq - March 19, 2011
Our first action was a success with five peace lovers coming out to mark the 8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. We stood on a very busy street corner in King of Prussia, PA. The Focus on Peace message seemed well received there compared to other places I've done this kind of peace advocacy at. There were many "honks for peace" and few insults.
Thursday, March 17, 2011 Saudi Intervention in Bahrain
These reports suggest foreign intervention in Bahrain, or at least the possibility that the Bahraini military is taking over the security reins. Such moves mean the regime is getting increasingly concerned with Shiite unrest.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 Rep. Dennis Kucinich on Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton
Rep. Dennis Kucinich discusses the runaround he's been getting from the Department of Defense after requesting a visit with Bradley Manning; why Manning's draconian pretrial treatment raises serious questions about the US criminal justice system and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; and the Kucinich-Walter Jones co-sponsored resolution requiring the president to get the troops out of Afghanistan by year's end.
Saturday, March 12, 2011 Retired professor defies no-pamphlet order outside Orange courthouse
Retired New Jersey Julian Heicklen is outside the Orange County Courthouse this afternoon wearing a "Jury Info" sign from his neck and holding jury information pamphlets.
But so far he's spent more time talking to reporters than trying to defy Chief Judge Belvin Perry's order against the distribution of the pamphlets.
"When you want to get arrested, it's not so easy," he explained.
His guess is that authorities will likely stay away and avoid enforcing the order as long as reporters and cameras are here
Friday, March 4, 2011 ACLU CHALLENGES COURTHOUSE BAN ON PROTECTED SPEECH
The ACLU of Florida today filed a legal challenge to an Administrative Order entered by Chief Judge Belvin Perry, Jr. of the Ninth Judicial Circuit. The Order bans protected speech on the Orange County and Osceola County Courthouse complexes. The ACLU's Petition for Writ of Certiorari asks the Fifth District Court of Appeal of Florida to review and overturn the Order.
Friday, March 4, 2011 Never Fight a Land War in Asia (1 comments)
The problem the United States has in the Eastern Hemisphere is that the size of the force needed to occupy a country initially is much smaller than the force needed to pacify the country. The force available for pacification is much smaller than needed because the force the United States can deploy demographically without committing to total war is simply too small to do the job -- and the size needed to do the job is unknown.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 Wisconsin Labor Brouhaha
We live in an economy where the market has, from the beginning, been fundamentally compromised by pro-business intervention at all levels of government. Under these circumstances, employees suffer disadvantages that would not exist in a freed market: among them, fewer firms bidding for their services and formidable (though not insurmountable) barriers to self-employment or worker-owned firms. On closer look, labor legislation looks far more like a program to tame worker organizations, bringing their leaders to the corporatist table as junior partners. The upshot is that repeal of labor legislation -- much to be desired -- wouldn't reduce workers' bargaining power but increase it.
Thursday, February 24, 2011 Ex-lawmakers find jobs at firms seeking to shape policy (4 comments)
The tough job market doesn't seem to be hurting many former members of Congress. Less than three months after leaving Capitol Hill, a dozen have found work so far with groups that seek to influence their former colleagues, despite rules that impose restrictions on lobbying once they leave office.
Monday, February 21, 2011 'Don't Resist': The Refrain of Rapists, Police, and Other Degenerates
In New Jersey -- as is the case elsewhere in the Soyuz -- even such minimal and reflexive attempts to protect one's self from State-sanctified violence is treated as a criminal offense.
Friday, February 18, 2011 Obama kowtows to military-industrial complex
The Libertarian Party criticizes the Obama administration's recent statement demanding more military spending from House Republicans.
The administration claims that the Republican spending bill currently under debate does not provide enough military funding. According to the administration, "The bill...would reduce funding for the Department of Defense to a level that would leave the Department without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements."
Friday, February 18, 2011 Bankruptcy of Borders Darkens "Recovery' Story
The Guvvamint's Ministry of Economic Propaganda spews "recovery" statistics that are an affront to every American struggling to stay afloat. Supposedly, and for better or worse, a little more than two-thirds of the nation's GDP comes from consumption. If the retail sector is dying, as anyone can see it is, how can there be this steady stream of news about a recovery? Maybe there's been a spurious recovery on Wall Street, courtesy of its deep-pocketed benefactor, the Federal Reserve, but no one we know views the good fortune of bankers, IPO scammers and other highly compensated paper-pushers as remotely reflecting a genuine, broad-based economic recovery.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 Egypt: The Distance Between Enthusiasm and Reality
What happened was not a revolution. The demonstrators never brought down Mubarak, let alone the regime. What happened was a military coup that used the cover of protests to force Mubarak out of office in order to preserve the regime. When it became clear Feb. 10 that Mubarak would not voluntarily step down, the military staged what amounted to a coup to force his resignation. Once he was forced out of office, the military took over the existing regime by creating a military council and taking control of critical ministries. The regime was always centered on the military. What happened on Feb. 11 was that the military took direct control.
Friday, February 11, 2011 How Will (Tea Party) Patriots Act? by John Tyner
Here's another story that isn't getting a lot of attention. Sections of the PATRIOT Act are up for renewal this month. A renewal was introduced in the Senate at the end of January by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to extend this unconstitutional legislation. Last week, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced a renewal to much the same effect, proving once again that statism is endemic to both parties.
Friday, February 11, 2011 Rumsfeld's "Defender of the Constitution" Award Has Few Defenders (1 comments)
This award may very well become the standard for dividing constitutionalists from those who, in Hunter's words, "allow their ideological faith to dictate their own facts." Those who applaud the award do indeed treat the Constitution as a prop -- good for whipping up a partisan frenzy, especially around election day, but something to be tossed aside once one gets down to the business of governing. Those who decry it see the words on that yellowed parchment as something to honor even when it is inconvenient or restrictive -- in fact, precisely because it is inconvenient and restrictive to the powers that be.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 Sheila Dean: stalking the ID stalkers -- Part I
Bureaucrats at every level of government are obsessed with our identities and stalk us like paparazzi.
But Sheila Dean has been stalking the stalkers since 2008 at BeatTheChip ("devoted to preserving US citizens from the progress of Real ID legislations") and at the 5-11 Campaign ("a grassroots effort against national identification and data surveillance").
Friday, February 4, 2011 Mubarak Tips Foes Toward Civil War
Unsurprisingly, coverage by the U.S. news media overlooked some of the specific reasons why Egyptians are so angry at Mubarak. Do they not know that his personal fortune is estimated to be somewhere in the range of $40 billion. Does anyone think he made all that money honestly? What that $40 billion really represents, from the perspective of most Egyptians, is plain-vanilla theft.
Monday, January 31, 2011 Failure to Doff Hat Lands Man in Jail (1 comments)
When law enforcement graduate Pete Eyre entered a Keene, New Hampshire courtroom last Monday, he didn't expect to be snatched from his chair and placed in a cage. But that's what happened. His crime? He wore a hat.
...Eyre is charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct by Keene police officer James Cemorelis under docket number 11-CR-311. But video of the incident, available on YouTube, shows Eyre sitting quietly in the unused courtroom. It also shows that while Eyre did not actively cooperate with Cemorelis and fellow officer Matt Griffin, he also did not actively resist.
"Wear a hat in court, get taken to the ground, a knee to the head, and dragged away. Welcome to the land of the free!" said spectator Ian Freeman, who witnessed the arrest.
Monday, January 31, 2011 Obama's Corporatist Big Plans
Obama's program is nothing more than a stepped-up corporatism, draped " as it so often is " in rah-rah red-white-and-blue, all the better to keep the public from looking too closely. If the people can be distracted by patriotic fanfare -- cheerleader chants about being No. 1 -- jingoist can-do-ism -- maybe they won't notice that the program is merely an updated state capitalism in which the government combines with well-connected business executives and anointed union leaders to manage the economy.
Monday, January 31, 2011 The Egypt Crisis in a Global Context: A Special Report
When we look at the political dynamic of Egypt, and try to imagine its connection to the international system, we can see that there are several scenarios under which certain political outcomes would have profound effects on the way the world works. That should not be surprising. When Egypt was a pro-Soviet Nasserite state, the world was a very different place than it had been before Nasser. When Sadat changed his foreign policy the world changed with it. If Sadat's foreign policy changes, the world changes again. Egypt is one of those countries whose internal politics matter to more than its own citizens.
Monday, January 31, 2011 We Won't Fly Billboard Campaign takes flight! (1 comments)
Taking its message beyond airports, We Won't Fly launched a nationwide billboard campaign to further raise awareness of and activism against the TSA's ineffective, dangerous and invasive air travel "scan and grope" procedures.
Saturday, January 29, 2011 Libertarian rights activist charged with jury tampering (2 comments)
"On January 11, 2011," veteran libertarian rights activist Julian Heicklen announced to his Tyranny Fighters email list, "I was notified by summons that I have been criminally charged with jury tampering."
Friday, January 14, 2011 Coalition of groups rallies outside White House for closure of Guantanamo Bay
A group of 173 human rights activists, each wearing an orange jumpsuit and a black hood and representing the remaining 173 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rallied in front of the White House on Tuesday to mark the ninth anniversary of the detention center's opening and to protest the Obama administration's inability to close it.
Sunday, December 19, 2010 Taking Stock of WikiLeaks | STRATFOR
Julian Assange has declared that geopolitics will be separated into pre-"Cablegate" and post-"Cablegate" eras. That was a bold claim. However, given the intense interest that the leaks produced, it is a claim that ought to be carefully considered.
Saturday, December 11, 2010 Falling T-Bond Threatens Illusion of Fed Control -- Rick's Picks
Things could get really ugly if the support fails, since that has the potential to send the futures plummeting all the way to 117 22/32. At that price, the long-term interest rate would be around 4.82%. Spread this asphyxiating rate over public borrowing, adjustable mortgages and revolving credit, and the extra tab would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars for taxpayers, homeowners and consumers.
Saturday, December 4, 2010 Libertarian Activist to Stand Trial for Videotaping Cops in Mississippi | Pixiq
Adam Mueller, who has been making headlines on Photography is Not a Crime lately, is on his way to Mississippi for a trial regarding his arrest last year for videotaping police.
The evidence, including statements from the arresting office as well as the sheriff of Jones County - not to mention the above video - should have cleared him long ago, but common sense never seems to apply in our legal system.
Saturday, December 4, 2010 Lockheedville 2010 Anti-war Protest
The Brandywine Peace Community held a protest on November 27, 2010 at the defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, property in King of Prussia, PA, outside of Philadelphia. About ten protesters attended.
Saturday, November 27, 2010 Libertarians Against the Regime (2 comments)
The Nation recently ran a piece by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, which determined that the anti-TSA movement is really a front for the Koch brothers, two formerly libertarian billionaires who have become the deus ex machina of clueless "progressive" commentators who cannot otherwise explain the explosion of anti-government anti-authoritarian populism currently upending politics.
Saturday, November 20, 2010 Whose Tea Party? by Butler Shaffer
Just as the 1994 Republicans "contract with America" quickly morphed into a "contract on America," the "Tea Party" episode will quickly be transformed into just another franchise by which the owners reinforce their established controls over the rest of us. In time, audiences will become dissatisfied with the new performance, sensing that the Tea Party has become just another conservative Republican trick
Saturday, November 20, 2010 Berkeley Students Want Police Off Campus | Cop Block
The students of Berkeley in California are outraged by a proposed 8% hike in tuition cost and decided to protest it. This is where the police come in. Not only were they refusing to allow people into the public meeting but they were using excessive force (pointing guns at unarmed people) as well. The students of Berkeley in California are outraged by a proposed 8% hike in tuition cost and decided to protest it.
Monday, November 15, 2010 TSA brings virtual strip searches to an airport near you - TECH.BLORGE.com
Procedures like these were commonplace (less the technology) in WWII Germany and Stalinist Russia, but we hoped that we had come at least a short ways from those sorts of indignities. It would appear that the U.S. TSA is regressing into those darker periods of human history.
Monday, November 15, 2010 Growing backlash against TSA body scanners, pat-downs - CNN.com
A growing pilot and passenger revolt over full-body scans and what many consider intrusive pat-downs couldn't have come at a worse time for the nation's air travel system.
Thanksgiving, the busiest travel time of the year, is less than two weeks away.
Grassroots groups are urging travelers to either not fly or to protest by opting out of the full-body scanners and undergo time-consuming pat-downs instead.
Saturday, November 13, 2010 Bradley Manning Support Activist Raided by FBI Antiwar.com Blog
Last week, David House, a developer working with the Bradley Manning Support Network, was detained and had his computer seized by the FBI when returning from a vacation in Mexico. He committed no crime, nor was he ever alleged to have committed a crime. He was questioned extensively about his support for alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned at Quantico for over 160 days.
Saturday, November 13, 2010 Getting Beyond "Left' and "Right' by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com (2 comments)
The aim of the antiwar movement should be to reach out to and convince the American people in their majority, and after our recent elections I don't think there's any question that Americans in their majority are quite conservative. To not try to convince them, in their own terms, that our current foreign policy is dangerous and counterproductive would be, in my estimation, a crime. A moral crime.
Thursday, November 11, 2010 John Boehners GobGop Plan to Sell Out the Tea Party in 2013. It Will Begin in January 2011.
Boehner is a GobGop: a Good Old Boy of the Grand Old Party. The GobGops' goal is to keep the present system funded by the Bigs: Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Banking. He will play to the Tea Party. He will gain their trust. He will throw down the gauntlet on health insurance from day one. The goal here is to get the Tea Party voters into his camp.
Thursday, November 11, 2010 The International Libertarian: "They're Democrats here!" (1 comments)
"They're Democrats here!". That's what a man said when he saw me standing on the anti war side of the street. This was last Saturday in West Chester, PA where there are pro war and anti war factions demonstrating opposite each other each weekend. What got him started was seeing me holding up my Gadsden flag and a sign that reads "End the Fed - End the Wars"
Monday, November 8, 2010 Pennsylvania Homeland Security office engaged in domestic surveillance, compared political groups to Al Qaeda | PennLive
It turns out the homeland security office or its private consultant were doing more than just monitoring law-abiding citizens. They were comparing environmental activists to Al Qaeda. They were tracking down protesters and grilling their parents.
They were seeking a network of citizen spies to combat the security threats they saw in virtually any legal political activity.
Sunday, November 7, 2010 Justice Dept. Renews Enforcement of Subpoenas for Antiwar Activists Targeted in FBI Raids | CommonDreams.org
We get an update on the fallout from the FBI raids in late September that targeted antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury were served on 13 people, but later withdrawn when the activists asserted their right to remain silent. But this week, the U.S. Department of Justice said it intends to enforce the subpoenas for some of them and require them to appear before a grand jury.
