BOVARD

Wednesday 10th March 2010

Kudos to Kucinich & 64 Other Courageous Congressmen on Afghanistan

11:04 pm | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | Ron Paul | Comments: 2

Dennis Kucinich deserves credit for forcing the House to formally debate the Afghan war.

His comments - and those of Ron Paul and the other 63 folks who voted against perpetuating this war - will be part of the honor roll of our time.

On the Republican side, Rep. Paul was joined in opposing the Afghan war by Rep. Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Rep. John Campbell of California.

As for the 356 members of Congress who voted for the war - I hope this vote sticks to them like a tar baby the rest of their lives.

Sunday 7th March 2010

My Brief State Department Career

8:19 pm | Bovard | Uncategorized | Comments: 3

It lasted about 60 minutes. 75 minutes, max.

The photo is from late 1988 or early 1989. The State Department had a program that brought in some outside speaker once a month. I was there to whup up on the World Bank, a favorite target of mine in those years.

The photo looks like I am waiting with a lawyer before going to make a plea bargain before a judge. The lawyer is practically rolling his eyes, wondering if the judge will swallow the line of bull I was preparing to proffer.

Friday 5th March 2010

FBI Bankrolling Bloggers Advocating Murder?

9:17 pm | FBI | Surveillance | wool | Comments: 8

The Associated Press story on the New Jersey guy who advocating killing federal judges reveals that the bloodthirsty blogger was apparently a paid FBI informant.

A right-wing New Jersey blogger charged with threatening federal judges told a
jury Thursday that his racist Internet rants were an FBI-sanctioned ruse to “flush out” dangerous neo-Nazi and white supremacist members of his audience.
“I’m not a white supremacist,” Hal Turner testified at a retrial in Brooklyn. “Never have been.”
Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., has used his testimony to detail his career as a paid informant for an FBI agent investigating extremists. Prosecutors haven’t disputed he was an informant, but say he acted on his own last year when he wrote that three federal judges in Chicago “deserve to be killed” for a decision on gun control and posted their photos and the courthouse.
Asked on cross-examination Thursday about another blog posting that lauded the 2005 slaying of the mother and husband of another federal judge in Chicago, Turner insisted that the FBI had encouraged him to do it to help identify the killer.
The missive was meant to “improve my anti-government image with the people we were trying to flush out,” he said.

I have not followed this trial, but it would be great if Turner’s lawyers could compel the FBI to open their files and reveal the feds’ ties with this guy.

This is reminiscent of the 1960s, when undercover federal agents dressed as protestors would destroy property or commit violent acts during antiwar demonstrations.

The Material Witness Ticket to Servitude

The Future of Freedom Foundation put online my article from the December Freedom Daily….

It’s amazing to see what kind of legal crap the government gets away with these days.

The Material Witness Charade Freedom Daily, December 2009
by James Bovard
Last September, a federal appeals court ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft could be personally sued for the unjustified incarceration of innocent people as “material witnesses” in the wake of 9/11.

The case involved a former college football star — Lavoni T. Kidd — who converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdullah al-Kidd, and was seized at Dulles Airport as he was preparing to travel to Saudi Arabia to pursue Islamic studies. Even though the feds had no evidence that al-Kidd — an American citizen — had done anything wrong, they locked him away for weeks as a “material witness.” The Washington Post noted,

He was detained for some two weeks, during which he was transferred to facilities in three states, subjected to multiple strip searches and held in cells that were lighted 24 hours a day. After his release, Mr. Kidd was required for more than a year to live with his wife and in-laws in Nevada while his travel was restricted to three adjacent states, and he had to report his whereabouts to a probation officer and consent to in-home visits.

The feds never charged al-Kidd or brought him forward as a witness for any trial. He sued in 2005, asserting that the detention violated his constitutional rights and that it had cost him both his marriage and his job.

The appeals court slammed the government hard:

The Fourth Amendment was written and ratified, in part, to deny the government of our then-new nation such an engine of potential tyranny. And yet, if the facts alleged in al-Kidd’s complaint are actually true, the government has recently exercised such a “dangerous engine of arbitrary government” against a significant number of its citizens, and given good reason for disfavored minorities (whoever they may be from time to time) to fear the application of such arbitrary power to them….

We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.

Not surprisingly, the Washington establishment is vigorously opposed to permitting courts to hold high-ranking government officials liable for trampling Americans’ constitutional rights. A Washington Post editorial fretted, “Officials should not have to fear personal lawsuits for performing their duties in good faith and in violation of no established legal precedent.”

In reality, the Bush-Ashcroft policy on material witnesses was brazenly unconstitutional from the start, as anyone who was not hopelessly kowtowing would have recognized.

After 9/11 the Justice Department locked up many people as material witnesses for potential testimony at some future date before a grand jury. On April 30, 2002, federal judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that policy to be unconstitutional: “Since 1789, no Congress has granted the government the authority to imprison an innocent person in order to guarantee that he will testify before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation.” Scheindlin warned that the Bush administration’s interpretation of federal law could make “detention the norm and liberty the exception.”

The Bush administration appealed the case and ignored the ruling. Federal Judge Michael Mukasey, whom Bush would later select as his final Attorney General, upheld the Bush administration’s policy.

Secrecy

Scheindlin’s decision, unlike most of the Bush Justice Department’s post–9/11 actions, was not reached behind closed doors and then hidden from the world. But the Bush team strutted forward, ignoring any judge who did not kowtow to its power grabs.

The Justice Department refused to disclose the number of people jailed under the federal witness statute. The Washington Post reported in November 2002 that “nearly half ” of the 44 people the Post confirmed jailed under this provision “have never been called to testify before a grand jury” and that “at least seven of the witnesses were U.S. citizens.”

Nationally acclaimed Miami defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Neal Sonnett noted that the fact that some material witnesses never testified “would tend to indicate that the use of the material witness statute was more of a ruse than an honest desire to record the testimony of that person.” The Post noted, “The material witness cases have been adjudicated in unusual secrecy. Most, if not all, are subject to judicial sealing orders, and there is confusion among defense attorneys across the nation about what information they can make public.” A Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review analysis concluded, “The government uses these [material witness] laws to round up people because of what it expects them to do, rather than what it can prove they have done.”

Steven Brill, author of After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era, noted that the material-witness hook was used in cases in which “not even minor crimes could be established, or where the government was worried that these people were so important that they did not want them to get lawyers quickly (as they would be entitled to if charged with any crime)…. Ashcroft’s team … would control when, if ever, that person might be asked to testify — meaning they would seek to hold the person indefinitely so as to coerce him to talk.” He also notes that detaining people as material witnesses meant that they “could be questioned without lawyers present because they were not being charged with any crime.”

High-profile cases

Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel was locked up for five months as a material witness largely because he might have served food to two of the 9/11 hijackers at the Delray Beach, Florida, restaurant where he worked. An FBI agent also asserted that a movie-theater ticket agent claimed to have seen Bellahouel go to the movies in the company of the hijackers. But as the Miami Daily Business Review noted, “The FBI didn’t identify the theater employee. Nor did government lawyers produce her for cross-examination at the bond hearing” where Bellahouel was finally set free. Bellahouel denied ever having gone to the movie theater. During his detention Justice Department prosecutors sought “to strip Bellahouel of the court-appointed lawyer to which he became entitled when the material witness warrant was issued at the end of December 2001,” according to immigration attorney David Silk, who explained that the feds “quashed the [material witness] warrant to keep him from being represented when the FBI talked to him.” Bellahouel, who was a veterinarian in Algeria before coming to America, was released on a $10,000 bond on March 1, 2002.

Even though Bellahouel is married to an American citizen, the Justice Department sought to deport him because he entered the United States on a student visa in 1996 and completed only one year at Florida Atlantic University. His case became public knowledge only because of an error by a clerk at the federal appeals court in Atlanta.

One of the best-known material-witness cases involved Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, whom the FBI arrested in 2004 for his alleged involvement in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 and left 2,000 wounded. A U.S. counterterrorism official told Newsweek that Mayfield’s fingerprint was an “absolutely incontrovertible match” to a copy of the fingerprint found on a bag of bomb detonators near the scene of the Madrid attack. News of Mayfield’s arrest provided alarming evidence that Americans were involved in international conspiracies to slaughter civilians around the globe, and he was informed that he could face the death penalty for his crimes.

Employing USA PATRIOT Act powers, the feds, prior to the arrest, conducted secret searches of Mayfield’s home and tapped his phone and email. After the arrest, they froze his bank accounts. The FBI’s arrest affidavit revealed that its agents had “observed Mayfield drive to the Bilal Mosque located at 415 160th Ave., Beaverton, Oregon, on several different occasions.” Another incriminating detail in the arrest warrant: he had advertised his legal service in the Muslim Yellow Pages. (Mayfield, a former Army lieutenant, converted to Islam and has an Egyptian wife.) In early April, the Spanish police described Mayfield “as a U.S. military veteran who was already under investigation by U.S. authorities for alleged ties to Islamic terrorism,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Yet the key to the case — the fingerprint — was as bogus as a politician’s campaign promise. The FBI quickly claimed to have achieved a match on the partial print, but, on April 13, Spanish government officials warned the FBI that their experts were “conclusively negative” that Mayfield’s print matched the print on the bomb detonator bag.

Mayfield was arrested as a “material witness,” thereby permitting the feds to hold him as long as they pleased without charging him with a specific crime. After he was arrested, FBI agents raided his home and office and carted off boxes of his papers and his family’s belongings. Among the items seized were “miscellaneous Spanish documents,” according to an FBI statement to the federal court. These supposedly incriminating papers turned out to be the Spanish homework of Mayfield’s son. Perhaps elite FBI investigators suspected that “Hola, Paco. Como estas?” was a secret code.

Though the FBI never possessed anything on Mayfield aside from a misidentified fingerprint, it did not hesitate to paint him in sinister colors. The FBI informed a federal judge, “It is believed that Mayfield may have traveled under a false or fictitious name.” But Mayfield, whose passport expired the previous year, insisted he had not left the country. The FBI apparently never bothered to check whether he had been absent from the United States before making one of the most high-profile terrorism arrests of the year.

The FBI’s evidence was a heap of unsubstantiated hokum and ludicrous inferences. But the Justice Department refused to release Mayfield until after the Spanish government announced that they had found a clean match to the fingerprints on the bomb-detonator bag.

America is still in the dark regarding many of the legal atrocities that occurred since 2001. It will be a bright day for American liberty if John Ashcroft is placed on the witness stand and forced to testify under oath, hour after hour, day after day, about the crimes that he and others committed against the Constitution.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Wednesday 3rd March 2010

Bush Lied Up & Down on the Iraq War

10:29 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 6

In Washington, politicians “regenerate” honesty like a salamander growing back a lost tail. And there is no statute of limitation on when a politician’s henchmen can magically restore his honor.

Karl Rove has a new book out claiming that Bush never lied about the Iraq war. Instead, there were some misstatesments with immaculate intent.

This is utter crap.

Bush told so many lies about Iraq that people forgot all except a few brazen highlights. Here’s a piece I did for USA Today in 2003 on why Bush’s entire case for the war was a damn lie.
****
USA TODAY August 14, 2003
By accident or design, Bush hyped case for war
By James Bovard

President Bush, in his July 30 press conference, declared: “I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely.” Bush made this declaration in response to a question about wrong information regarding Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium in Niger. He hoped it would end a controversy that is eating away like an acid drip on his administration’s credibility. But the “16 words” — as Bush defenders characterize his reference to the attempted uranium purchases in his State of the Union address — were not the most brazen example of trampling the truth on the road to war.

From January onward, Bush constantly portrayed the United States as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression. His repeated claims that war was being “forced upon us” was the biggest, most consistent scam Bush used to convince the American people that their government had no alternative but to invade another nation. Examples:

•Jan. 28, in his State of the Union address: “If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means, sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military, and we will prevail.”

•Feb. 10, in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville: “If war is forced upon us — and I say ‘forced upon us’ because use of the military is not my first choice — I hug the mothers and the widows of those who may have lost their life in the name of peace and freedom.”

•Feb. 20, at a Kennesaw, Ga., school: “If war is forced upon us, we will liberate the people of Iraq from a cruel and violent dictator.”

•Feb. 26, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington: “If war is forced upon us by Iraq’s refusal to disarm, we will meet an enemy who … is capable of any crime.”

The longer Bush continues warring, the more vital it is for Americans to learn the lessons of the Iraq war. Simply because Saddam was evil did not purify this war against Iraq. Certainly, a military victory does not automatically absolve the Bush administration of the falsehoods it told prior to launching an unprovoked and unnecessary war. If victory is justice’s only measure, then the U.S. government could lie about almost any other government and — after the U.S. military assaulted the country into submission — it would be another triumph for “the American way.”

Shortly after his inauguration, Bush joked to a crowd of Washington insiders: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you need to concentrate on.” It would be naive to assume that all of Bush’s false statements are accidents or oversights. White House senior policy adviser Karl Rove explained to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward how the war on terrorism would be judged by the American public: “Everything will be measured by results. The victor is always right. History ascribes to the victor qualities that may or may not actually have been there. And similarly to the defeated.”

Lies regarding the use of government power are almost never harmless errors. The more lies officials are allowed to tell, the less chance citizens have of controlling the government. And the more power a politician seeks, the more dangerous his lies become.

The fact that Bush went to war against Iraq based on false charges and a deceptive strategy is the key to knowing what to expect from the remainder of the Bush presidency. There is no reason to presume that Bush was more deceptive and manipulative on the war on Iraq than he is on the war on terrorism or other subjects. Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.

James Bovard is the author of the forthcoming Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil.

Sunday 28th February 2010

The Great Democratic Patriot Act Double-Cross

10:17 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

What’s the point of voting for Democrats if they are going to act like Bush-bots in rubberstamping FBI National Security Letters shredding the Fourth Amendment?

Good to see the left-wing websites hammering Obama, Leahy, and Rep. Nadler for sanctifying and perpetuating some of the worst abuses of the post 9/11 era.

Alternet’s whack is here.

Fire Dog Lake’s whack is here.

Life Story of a Federal Reserve Governor

9:47 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 1

… or of some poohbah bailed out by the Fed or by some other group of political racketeers.

Monday 22nd February 2010

Congratulations Thomas Szasz! The Preface to the 50th Anniversary Edition of THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS

11:22 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Szasz’s classic The Myth of Mental Illness.

Szasz has written a preface for the 50th anniversary edition. You can read it here on LewRockwell.com today. This essay deftly captures the controversies and changing battlefield over the past half century.

Szasz’s conclusion perfectly captures the transcendent issue:

Formerly, when Church and State were allied, people accepted theological justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. Today, when Medicine and the State are allied, people accept therapeutic justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. This is how, some two hundred years ago, psychiatry became an arm of the coercive apparatus of the state. And this is why today all of medicine threatens to become transformed from personal therapy into political tyranny.

I hope that many other publications and organizations turn their attention to Szasz’s work during the golden anniversary of his classic.

Sunday 21st February 2010

Conservative Political Action Conference Highlights

9:07 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 8

One of the heroes of the CPAC attendees:

John Bolton Harvests Young Souls:

Ann Coulter Bodyguard (Tonya Harding wasn’t hiring this month)

Full size photo available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bovard
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Saturday 20th February 2010

Podcast from CPAC Interview with Brian Wilson

10:26 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

I stopped by Brian Wilson’s radio booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday.

Click on brian-wilson-2-19-10-cpac-bovard to listen to the interview.

I doubt that the Tea Party folks will be coming to either Brian or I for a testimonial any time soon.

I continue my campaign to get “boarhawg” recognized as a legitimate verb by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Wednesday 17th February 2010

Frightening Voters Into Submission

From the November 2009 issue of the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily…

Frightening Voters Into Submission

by James Bovard

Former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge has a new book out that reveals that he almost resigned because the Bush administration was hustling bogus terror alerts before the 2004 election. Ridge’s revelation was not surprising to people who had closely followed the tactics Bush used to snare a second term.

During the 2004 campaign, residents of swing states were under constant bombardment by throat-grabbing political ads. In late September, the Bush campaign released a television ad titled “Peace and Security.” The New York Times described the ad: “A clock ticks menacingly as a young mother pulls a quart of milk out of a refrigerator in slow motion, a young father loads toddlers into a minivan and an announcer intones ominously, ‘Weakness invites those who would do us harm.’”

The most memorable Bush ad, released a few weeks before the election, opened in a thick forest, with shadows and hazy shots complementing the foreboding music. A female announcer ominously declared, “In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America’s intelligence operations by $6 billion — cuts so deep they would have weakened America’s defenses.” The ad then focused on a pack of wolves reclining in a clearing. The voiceover concluded, “And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm,” as the wolves began jumping up and running toward the camera. At the end of the ad, the president appeared and announced, “I’m George W. Bush and I approve this message.”

One liberal cynic suggested that the ad’s message was that voters would be eaten by wolves if Kerry won. A Bush advisor told ABC News that “the ad was produced and tested months ago. Voter reaction was so powerful that we decided to hold the ad to the end of the campaign and make it one of the closing spots.”

The theme

Since the 2004 election largely turned on who would be the best protector, the Bush campaign sought to make Americans view criticism of the president as if it were a weapon of mass destruction. Zell Miller, a Democratic senator and the keynote speaker for the Republican National Convention, delivered the angriest prime-time speech at a modern political convention. Watched by a national television audience of millions, Miller revealed that political opposition is treason: “Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’ manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.”

There was no evidence that such criticism of Bush’s foreign policy was ripping America asunder — but trumpeting the accusation made Bush critics appear a pox on the land. Miller denounced Kerry’s record on national defense and suggested that he would leave the military armed with only “spitballs.” When Miller was pressed for evidence of his charges in a post-speech interview, he angrily talked of challenging MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to a duel. Every word in Miller’s speech was preapproved by the Bush campaign. In the following weeks, Bush often appeared with Miller at campaign stops, signifying his embrace of Miller’s message.

The theme echoed

The Zell Miller “criticism-as-treason” theme permeated the campaign. New York City’s former police commissioner, Bernie Kerik, stumping around the nation for Bush, told audiences, “Political criticism is our enemy’s best friend.” The Washington Post noted on September 24, 2004, “President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq — a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.” When the United States’s handpicked leader of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, visited the White House, Bush declaimed that Kerry’s criticisms of his Iraq policy “can embolden an enemy.”

Other prominent Republicans jumped on the bandwagon. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned Democrats for “consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there.” John Thune, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in South Dakota, denounced Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle: “His words embolden the enemy.” Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman condemned the Kerry campaign for “parroting the rhetoric of terrorists” and warned, “The enemy listens. All listen to what the president said, and all listen to what Senator Kerry said.”

In the first two debates, Bush repeatedly implied that Kerry’s criticisms of his policies in Iraq proved Kerry was unfit to be president. Bush kept coming back to Kerry’s use of the phrase “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time” as if Kerry had greatly sinned against the American people by saying such a thing. Apparently, by definition, anyone who criticizes a ruler is unfit to correct that ruler’s mistakes.

Each time Kerry talked of Bush’s failures in Iraq, Bush claimed that Kerry was attacking U.S. troops, and many citizens believed him. Each Kerry criticism of a specific debacle became further proof of his lack of patriotism. Following media reports about the looting of an Iraqi ammo dump after its capture by American forces, Kerry criticized the Bush administration for neglecting to secure the explosives, some of which may have later been used to attack U.S. troops. Bush erupted: “Senator Kerry is again attacking the actions of our military in Iraq, with complete disregard for the facts. Senator Kerry will say anything to get elected.” Bush spokesmen condemned Kerry for criticizing before all the facts were out — at the same time the administration continued withholding facts. The Bush team wanted Americans to believe that anyone who criticized the Iraq war was opposed to defending America.

The theme expanded

The expanding concept of treason plugged the president’s growing credibility gap. It was as if the Democrats were not allowed to say anything critical about Iraq, and the Bush campaign was not obliged to say anything honest about it. Thus, Bush needed only to perpetuate his wars to perpetually silence his critics.

The demonization of criticism helped anger ill-informed voters, fostering intolerance that helped Bush win reelection. Apparently, criticism was inherently more dangerous than perpetuating disastrous policies. This would make sense only if blind obedience provides the equivalent to body armor for the entire nation.

The same “support Bush or betray America” paradigm had helped Republicans capture the Senate in the 2002 congressional elections. In mid 2002, when he was White House political director, Mehlman created a PowerPoint presentation for Republican candidates urging them to “highlight fears of future terrorist attacks.” (A copy of the disk with the project was dropped in a park near the White House.) In September 2002, after Democrats balked at some anti-union provisions in the administration’s legislation to create a Homeland Security Department, Bush declared his opponents are “not interested in the security of the American people.”

Treating voters like children

Bush’s tactics were aided by a coterie of talking heads who portrayed his campaign as much more lofty than it was. Republican pollster Frank Luntz asserted two days after the election, “Some will claim that Mr. Bush won on Tuesday because he waged a campaign of fear. The exact opposite was the case. Americans turned to him precisely because they saw him as the antidote to that fear.” But that was exactly the point of the Bush campaign strategy — to fan fear and portray Bush as the antidote. Luntz’s rewriting of history was perhaps inspired by his work for many Republican politicians and organizations. In a June 2004 confidential memo to Republican candidates, he urged them to remember, “‘9/11 changed everything’ is the context by which everything follows. No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a reference to 9/11.”

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, in a talk to Republican National Convention delegates in September 2004, praised Bush’s role as the protector of the nation and assured them that “this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child. I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children.” Card’s comment generated almost no controversy. Yet viewing Americans as young children needing protection makes a mockery of democracy. Is servility now the price of survival?

Fear-mongering subverts self-government. The more fears government fans, the fewer people will recall the danger of government itself. The more frightened people become, the more prone they will be to see their rulers as saviors rather than as potential oppressors. After promising freedom from fear, a politician can simply invoke polls showing widespread fears to justify seizing new power. The more government frightens people, the more legitimate its power grabs become.

We now have the Battered Citizen Syndrome: the more debacles, the more voters cling to faith in their rulers. Like a train engineer bonding with the survivors of a train wreck that happened on his watch, Bush constantly reminded Americans of 9/11 and his wars. The greater the government’s failure to protect, the greater the subsequent mass fear — and the easier it becomes to subjugate the populace. The craving for a protector drops an iron curtain around the mind, preventing a person from accepting evidence that would shred his political security blanket.

Unfortunately, few Americans seem to have learned the lessons of recent presidents. As a result, politicians can count on seizing new power after their next debacle. Nothing will change, except for the name of the oppressor.

Tuesday 16th February 2010

On Russian TV Talking About American Dictatorial Power

I was on Russian Television (the English language edition) last night talking about all the “emergency” declarations and power grabs by recent presidents. The interview on “The Alyona Show” starts about 6 minutes into this YouTube segment here.

It was ironic to be commenting on the danger of excessive presidential power on Russian TV….

Perhaps at some point the mainstream American media will also take this issue seriously.

Thursday 4th February 2010

My Early Optimism on the War on Terror & Civil Liberties

I had forgotten about the following riff until stumbling across it a few days ago.

In late September 2001, Reason magazine asked a handful of folks “to discuss which civil lliberties they thought were most at risk in what has been called America’s first 21st century war.” They published the responses in an article entitled, Guarding the Home Front: Will civil liberties be a casualty in the War on Terrorism?” in their December 2001 issue.

Here was my take a few weeks after 9/11:

Lessons Never Taught Jim Bovard

The blind glorification of government currently prevailing puts almost all liberties at grave risk. Most of the media and most of the poilticians are stampeding behind the notion that the greatest danger is any limit on federal power. The Justice Department wish list of remedies invokes the danger of terrorism to seek sweeping new powers to be used against all classes of alleged criminals.

The determination of some members of the Bush administration to use the terrorist attacks to wage wars against a laundry list of “rogue nations” could mean that aggressive military action continues indefinitely–along with the pretext to suppress Americans’ freedom of speech and movement. And if there is another successful terrorist attack that kills many Americans, the pressure for severe crackdowns will probably be irresistible–regardless of how badly government agencies screwed up in failing to prevent the attack. At least for the time being, people have lost any interest in government’s batting average–either for actually protecting citizens or for abusing power.

The best hope for the survival and defense of liberty is that enough Americans will recall the history lessons that public schools never teach.

Jim Bovard is the author, most recently, of Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion & Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St.Martin’s Press).

Tuesday 2nd February 2010

Washington Post: Subjugation as “Apple Pie”

1:53 pm | Obama | wool | Comments: 0

“How Can Apple Pie Suddenly Turn Bad?” reads the headline in the print edition of today’s Washington Post.

The article talks of the tragic development that Obama’s health care plan appears to be sinking.

The fact that Americans would object to increased political control over health care is so completely inconceivable to Washington Post reporters and editors — it is like opposing apple pie.

The online version of today’s Post put the following headline on the article: “Obama’s struggle with health-care reform echoes Clintons’ failure in 1994.”

Maybe somebody at the Post noticed that an article in their news section should not be so brazenly craven to the current administration.

Saturday 30th January 2010

Justice Department Bans Justice for Torturers

The Obama Justice Department has apparently decided that, since torture is not a crime (at least not anything deserving of prosecution), then concocting legal doctrines that unleashed torturers around the world is also no offense.

A Justice Department internal investigation has concluded that John Yoo and Jay Bybee were gulity only of “poor judgment” in their memos which brought the Middle Ages into the new Millennium.

The Washington Post notes: “The conclusion is likely to unsettle interest groups that have sought a reckoning for lawyers who made possible brutal interrogation, warrantless wiretapping and other Bush counterterrorism strategies.”

Perhaps the Washington Post believes that only special interests oppose torture????

Wednesday 27th January 2010

CIA Torture Success Claim Cast Overboard, Drowns

2:14 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 5

Jeff Stein has a great piece on how the most prominent CIA apologist for waterboarding has finally ‘fessed up that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Much of the news media treated this CIA “expert” like a hero back in 2007. I assume they will ignore his recantation.

Monday 25th January 2010

Only Six People on Earth do Not Hate Verizon

5:06 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

New York Times’ technology columnist David Pogue had a great post last month entitled: “Verizon’s New Motto: Why Not Be Evil?”

Pogue detailed an egregious Verizon bushwhacking of its customers - and then suggested the policy change was because “Verizon heard that there were six people left on Earth who didn’t have a reason to dislike it.”

My recollection was that the original version of Pogue’s blog said “hate,” not “dislike,” but my memory might be wrong on this.

I write this as I sit interminably on ‘hold’ for an operator to unscrew their latest snafu. And I hear this perky announcement: “As always, privacy of your acount is your right and our duty.”

Unless, of course, Verizon can profit from betraying its customers to Uncle Sam.

For the record, I am not one of those six people.

Dump Bernanke and Audit the Fed

12:21 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Obama | Ron Paul | Comments: 6

How much damage can one man inflict and still be treated like a saint and savior in Washington?

Ben Bernanke’s career answers that question. The Establishment media has rallied around the current Fed chairman as if his reign was the triumph of wisdom and goodness - instead of a debacle of bursting bubbles and ruined lives.

Even though the Federal Reserve is supposedly independent [insert guffaw here] - Bernanke will not be permitted to continue in his job unless the Senate votes this week to grant him another term.

Sen. Russell Feingold, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Sen. Byron Dorgan announced last week that they will vote against another term for Bernanke. Unfortunately, I doubt that most Republican senators will have the courage or gumption of these Democrats on this vote.

The Senate will be voting on Bernanke while having little or no idea what the Federal Reserve has done in recent years. That is why Congress must pass Ron Paul’s legislation to Audit the Fed.

These are only first steps, but they would be a giant leap back in the direction of fiscal sanity. The Federal Reserve has been bankrolling the war machine in this country for decades, and a loss for the Fed would make it more difficult to use a charge card for the current or next war.

Now Online: Antiwar.com interview on FBI Crime Wave

8:23 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

Scott Horton and I have fun with the latest revelations on FBI crimes. We bring in the subject of torture to lighten up the show.

Click on the highlighted to listen to it 10_01_22_bovard

Or you can listen to it at the Antiwar.com website here.

Thursday 21st January 2010

Fox News FreedomWatch Interview Now Online

12:32 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

Wednesday 20th January 2010

Podcast of Today’s Brian Wilson interview on FBI Crime Wave

6:28 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

WSPD’s Brian Wilson and I had a rollicking chat about the latest FBI crime wave and the latest torture coverup scandal today. You can download a podcast “>here.

Or you can listen to an MP3 right here:. - brian-wilson-show-1-20-2010

Brian is one of the top talk show hosts in the nation, and he will be coming to the Conservative Political Action Conference in DC next month. That will be a good chance for his fans to buttonhole him and find out his views on the latest Cabernet Sauvignon and the Toledo mayor he drove from office.

On Fox News FreedomWatch Today - on FBI Crime Wave

5:53 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Judge Napolitano and I talked about the latest FBI crime wave on Fox News’ Freedom Watch today.

I will post a link when the show is posted online. (I think it will be broadcast by Fox Radio this evening).

Monday 18th January 2010

Gitmo Murders & Pentagon Coverup?

Scott Horton of Harper’s has a great piece online on how three detainees at Gitmo were killed during interrogations. The military responded with an elaborate coverup that claimed the three men committed suicide as an “act of asymmetrical warfare.”

The military’s story has been blow to bits in large part by former Gitmo guards who have courageously put themselves at risk by coming forward with the truth.

Horton, a lawyer, has done some of the best and most courageous writing on the torture scandal. He is one of the most credible critics of Bush era abuses.

I assume there will be far more revelations coming out in the coming weeks and months on this case.

Friday 15th January 2010

Bogus Anti-Terrorist Crackdown on Financial Freedom

posted today by the Future of Freedom Foundation - from the October 2009 issue of Freedom Daily…

The Bogus Anti-Terrorist Crackdown on Financial Freedom
by James Bovard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A dream come true”

The PATRIOT Act contained an array of money-laundering financial-crackdown provisions. The act empowers the U.S. government to penalize anyone in the world who is accused of violating U.S. money-laundering laws. Money Laundering Alert, a pro-government newsletter, hailed the new law: “It is no exaggeration to say that, as a whole, the act has the ability to reach the assets of every financial institution and business in the world and to cripple their [sic] ability to function in a world in which the United States is the financial centerpiece.”

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

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

The PATRIOT Act greatly increased the feds’ power to investigate Americans’ financial affairs. As Newsweek reported, “Law-enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a “hit” — evidence that the person has an account — the financial in stitution is slapped with a subpoena for the person’s records.”

Strippers and the Cuban embargo

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

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

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

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

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

The war on privacy

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday 5th January 2010

Lying on the Benefits of Research

1:57 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Advocates of government spending on research often claim exorbitant benefits. This Dilbert cartoon nicely punctures their hokum.

And the closing line - about converting liars into thieves - that summarizes most of the government contractors in the Washington area.

Friday 1st January 2010

Thanks to All the Fine Commentors in 2009!

10:32 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | Comments: 11

I want to thank the folks who added so many excellent thoughts and flashes of wit to this blog over the past 12 months. I’ve gotten a heap of insights from y’all! And it is fun to share the revelry when bad guys crash and burn, or when some federal agency has a four-star pratfall.

And the Jim Beam photo-editing was also much appreciated, even though it did get me kicked out of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The one certainty of 2010: Ben Bernanke will not be Time magazine’s Man of the Year for a second year in a row.

Do folks have any thoughts on the political highlight of 2009 and/or predictions for 2010?

Tuesday 29th December 2009

The New Oxymoron: A Non-Sham Secretary of Education

1:28 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

The Washington Post today debunks the supposed stellar achievements of the Chicago schools system -the former domain of Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

Earlier in this century, the supposed triumphs of the Houston school system - the main bragging point of Bush’s Education Secretary Rod Paige - also collapsed like a house of cards.

It’s not surprising that presidents would continue nominating bogus saviors to be Secretary of Education.

But why in Hades would anyone expect people like Paige or Duncan to do anything different nationally than what they did locally?

Wednesday 23rd December 2009

On Michael Smerconish Program Today - Broadcast Time Varies

1:22 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Brian Wilson is guest hosting for Mike Smerconish on 40 stations around the country. Brian and I are chatting now until 2 pm Eastern time, paying tribute to America’s Dysfunctional Democracy.

The stations that carry the Smerconish show are listed here. The most popular station is WOR in New York City, which rebroadcasts the Smerconish show starting at 8 pm the same day. Many of the stations broadcast the program the next day, often at hours before I chew my first cigar. My interview with Brian is in the second hour of today’s Smerconish program.

Monday 21st December 2009

CANCELLED On with Brian Wilson Tuesday at 1 pm on SMERCONISH NETWORK

11:06 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

SCHEDULING GLITCH - CANCELLED

XXXX
Brian Wilson will be guest hosting for Mike Smerconish tomorrow on 40 stations around the country. Brian and I will chat from 1 pm to 2 pm Eastern time, paying tribute to America’s Dysfunctional Democracy.

The last time I talked to Brian, he disapproved of Obama. I’ll willing to bet all the beer in Brian’s house (2 bottles at most - Brian is a wine connoisseur) that he is still totally down on Obama and all his Chicago Political Gangsters.

The stations that carry the Smerconish show are listed here. The most popular station is WOR in New York City, which rebroadcasts the Smerconish show starting at 8 pm the same day.

Wednesday 16th December 2009

Dinkel Acker Abandons American Beer Drinkers?

9:53 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 4

I contacted Dinkel Acker’s German headquarters regarding the news that the beer would no longer be sold in the United States.

I received the following courteous email today from Dinkel Acker’s Export Director, Christian Liess:

It is indeed the case that our business partner in the USA discontinued the import of Dinkelacker into the USA and we are not planning to enter the market again for the time being.

Sorry about this. In case we start exporting again to the US market in the future, we will be pleased to let you know!

Ach Gott Du Lieber Himmel!, as they say in Stuttgart.

I don’t get the sense from his reply that Dinkel Acker is hellbent on re-entering the American market.

If there are other Dinkel Acker fans out there who want to encourage the company to find a way back into the American market, Mr. Liess’s email address is Christian.Liess@ds-kg.de

Battle of the Bulge Anniversary & Debacle: Unnecessary Carnage

4:06 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 6

This is the 65th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge. While most Americans who are aware of the battle learned of it through Hollywood movies that portrayed valiant U.S. resistance to the German Wehrmacht, the truth is far more embarrassing to the U.S. Supreme Commander.

The battle was completely unnecessary, and resulted from Gen. Eisenhower’s stifling of a U.S. Army group that was ready to cross the Rhine into Germany a month earlier.

As David Colley, author of Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944, recently noted:

The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.

Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.

The psychological impact on German forces and German society of U.S. troops racing across the Rhine would have been far greater than the impact caused by the pointless slaughter of German civilians in Allied air raids on German cities.

When I was growing up in Front Royal, Virginia, I met one of the few survivors of the Malmedy massacre (the slaughter of American prisoners by the SS during the Battle of the Bulge). A decade later, I lived in a group house with a retired CIA agent who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Frostbite, not a massacre, was his most vivid memory of that bitter time…

Monday 14th December 2009

Carbon Tromping with the Sierra Club

10:12 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 6

I did a couple hikes early last month with the Sierra Club.

Good folks, though there were theological tensions with some of ‘em.

Some lady was talking gravely about reducing her carbon footprint.

She got peeved when I suggested wearing tennis shoes instead of boots.

Sierra Club types are 100% pro-organic, but they seemed to make an exception for cigars. That’s why the people appeared to be about 20 yards away from where I was snapping pictures.

Here’s a few photos from the hikes; full sizes are available at my Flickr page here.

The Great Beer Massacre of 2009!

9:42 pm | Bovard | Uncategorized | Comments: 11

My all-time favorite beer is no longer being imported!

I have been a huge fan of Dinkel Acker, a wonderful German pilsner, for more than a decade. I would buy cases at a time, making it worthwhile to scamper across the Potomac to a state with civilized beer buying laws. (Montgomery County, Maryland, has a government monopoly over beer - it is akin to a Third World booze despotism).

I found out today that Spaten, which was the importer, has ceased distributing Dinkel Acker in the United States.

Dinkel Acker is a great beer - and it’s wholesome. Take a look at that advertisement I pasted into this blog. It’s almost the opposite image from St. Pauli Girl. You drink a Dinkel Acker, you feel like you are promoting virtue in the world.

But that’s history, at least on this side of the Atlantic - or so it seems.

I welcome suggestions for a good lagers or Pilsners……..

Friday 11th December 2009

How Bush Redefined American Freedom

Posted online today by the Future of Freedom Foundation - from the September issue of Freedom Daily…

HOW GEORGE W. BUSH REDEFINED AMERICAN FREEDOM

by James Bovard

George W. Bush is gone from Washington but his legacy, like an abandoned toxic waste dump, lingers on. Like President Franklin Roosevelt before him, President Bush helped redefine American freedom. And like Roosevelt’s, Bush’s changes were perversions of the clear vision the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.

What did freedom mean in the era of George Bush? In Iraq in September 2004, “Camp Liberty,” a tent compound to house Iraqi detainees, was constructed next to the Abu Ghraib prison. (The torture scandal and photos had been revealed in late April.) Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller declared that Camp Liberty and other changes in the treatment of Iraqi prisoners were “restoring the honor of America.”

“Camp Liberty” was typical of the rhetorical strategy of the Bush administration: empty words in lieu of basic decency and honest dealing.

From the beginning, President Bush invoked freedom to sanctify his war on terrorism. In his Oval Office address on the night of September 11, 2001, Bush declared, “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.” He pronounced authoritatively on the motives of the attackers even before the FBI and CIA knew their identities. He never offered evidence that that was al-Qaeda’s prime motivation.

Bush rarely missed a chance to proclaim that the war on terrorism was being fought to save freedom — either U.S. freedom, or world freedom, or the freedom of future generations. In 2002, he proclaimed, “We are resolved to rout out terror wherever it exists to save the world for freedom.” He contrasted freedom and terror as if they were the two ends of a seesaw. Because terror is the enemy of government, government necessarily becomes the champion of freedom. But this simple dichotomy made sense only if terrorists were the sole threat to freedom.

Once Bush proclaimed that freedom was his goal, then all opponents automatically became enemies of freedom. In the first presidential candidates’ debate with Sen. John Kerry in 2004, Bush explained away the fierce opposition to the U.S. military in Iraq: “They’re fighting us because they’re fighting freedom.”

In 1776, “Let Freedom Ring” was a response to the ringing of the Liberty Bell after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In contrast, those attending the 2004 Republican National Convention waved signs proclaiming, “Let Freedom Reign.” That was the phrase that Bush scrawled on a piece of paper in June 2004 when National Security Adviser Condi Rice informed him that sovereignty in Iraq had been transferred to Iyad Allawi, the former CIA operative Bush had chosen to head Iraq’s government. Supposedly, it took only a mere signing of a piece of paper by the U.S. occupation authority for Iraqis to have sovereignty — even though an American puppet remained at the head of the government, and even though U.S. military forces continued bombarding civilians in cities throughout the country.

Military power and freedom

For Bush, military power was practically freedom incarnate. He informed Congress in 2002 that the “Department of Defense has become the most powerful force for freedom the world has ever seen.” In his 2002 State of the Union address, after bragging about victories in Afghanistan, he proclaimed, “We have shown freedom’s power.” In an April 2003 speech to workers at the Army Tank Plant in Lima, Ohio, he declared, “You build the weapons you build here because we love freedom in this country.”

For Bush, the Pentagon budget was perhaps the clearest measure of America’s devotion to freedom. At an April 9, 2002, Republican fundraiser in Connecticut, he bragged that “my defense budget is the largest increase in 20 years. You know, the price of freedom is high, but for me it’s never too high because we fight for freedom.” And if the government seized all of every citizen’s paycheck — instead of only 38 percent of it — and used all the revenue to bankroll foreign military conquests, Americans would have absolute freedom.

Bush often spoke as if all he needed to do was pronounce the word “freedom” and all humanity was obliged to obey his commands. He declared in July 2003 that, because of U.S. military action in Iraq, people were “going to find out the word ‘freedom’ and ‘America’ are synonymous.” Freedom, Iraqi-style, apparently meant giving the U.S. military the right to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians and to obliterate the core of cities such as Fallujah. But the details of U.S. action in Iraq were irrelevant because of the transcendent goal Bush perennially proclaimed.

In his 2004 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Bush declared, “I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.” That was a formal renunciation of much of what America had once stood for. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, warned in 1795, “Of all enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” But, from Bush’s view, U.S. military aggression is as much a force for liberation as any political or religious ideology ever claimed in the past.

Limiting government power

Bush declared on the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that “there is a line in our time … between the defenders of human liberty, and those who seek to master the minds and souls of others.” But if the United States claims the right to attack the people of any foreign regime that refuses to swear allegiance to the latest U.S. definition of freedom or democracy, the world will see America as the aggressor shackling the minds and wills of people around the world.

The more nations that America attacks in the name of liberty, the more foreigners will perceive America as the greatest threat both to their peace and self-rule. Not surprisingly, Bush’s policies resulted in a collapse in the world’s respect for the United States.

In the 18th century, “The Restraint of Government is the True Liberty and Freedom of the People” was a common American saying.

But for President Bush, freedom had little or nothing to do with limits on government power. Bush told a high-school audience in 2002, “I will not let — your Government’s not going to let people destroy the freedoms that we love in America.” In a 2003 speech at the Bonaparte Auditorium at FBI headquarters in Washington, Bush declared, “For years the freedom of our people were [sic] really never in doubt because no one ever thought that the terrorists or anybody could come and hurt America. But that changed.” Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge reflected the attitude of the Bush administration when he announced, “Liberty is the most precious gift we offer our citizens.” If freedom is a gift from the government to the people, then government can take freedom away at its pleasure.

Respect for individual rights is the bulwark of freedom. Bush proudly declared in 2003, “No president has ever done more for human rights than I have.” But, in order to defeat terrorists, he claimed the right to destroy all rights by using the “enemy combatant” label. Justice Antonin Scalia rightly noted in 2004, “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive.” But this was a luxury that American could no longer afford, at least according to the administration. The Bush administration fought tooth and nail to preserve the president’s boundless power to strip people of all rights on the basis of his mere assertion. The administration continually dragged its feet with respect to obeying Supreme Court decisions that limited the president’s power.

The Founding Fathers sought to protect freedom by creating a government of laws, not of men. But Bush freedom required the president to rise above federal law. The Justice Department advised the White House that the president’s power to authorize torture was not constrained by the federal statute book because of “the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign against al-Qaeda and its allies.” Justice Department memos from Bush’s first term (released this past March) make it stark that the president’s brain trust believed that the Constitution was as archaic and irrelevant as a covered wagon.

On the home front, Bush freedom meant “free speech zones” where demonstrators were quarantined to avoid tainting presidential photo opportunities. Bush freedom meant allowing the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans’ email without a warrant. Bush freedom meant entitling the Justice Department to round up the names of book buyers and library users under the USA PATRIOT Act.

Bush freedom was based on boundless trust in the righteousness of the rulers and all their actions. Bush offered Americans the same type of freedom that paternalist kings offered their subjects in distant eras. But Bush’s supposedly lofty intentions were no substitute for the Constitution and the rule of law.

Freedom must not become simply another term for politicians to invoke to consecrate their power. Rather than stirring patriotic pride, Bush’s invocations of freedom should have set off Americans’ warning bells. It remains to be seen how much lasting damage he has done to Americans’ vocabulary and political understanding.

Wednesday 9th December 2009

The Jim Beam Corrected Version of Boy Scout Creek Crossing Photo

8:39 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 1

{click on photo for full-size version}
Tom Blanton emailed me: “I’ve discovered a new tool in Photoshop that reveals things in pictures that couldn’t be seen before. Check out this new version of your scout picture.”

Never expected to see this photo hit by a “truth squad.”

This helps explain why I failed the final exam for Temperance Merit Badge. *

On the other hand, it also explains why I did well some years later when required to walk a straight line… and didn’t have to carry along my buddy Jim Beam for the performance.

[* True story: My great-grandmother was a founding member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. I reckon the Bovard clan has mellowed since her time... or maybe "pickled" is a more accurate verb.]

Tuesday 8th December 2009

Boy Scouts & a Pro-Freedom Reaction

7:42 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | Uncategorized | Comments: 4

I appreciate the comments on the creek-crossing photo.

The Boy Scouts of America begin their 100th anniversary celebration on December 10, and I’m curious about the political impact of the Scouting experience.

I am wondering how many guys who were in the Scouts became more pro-freedom in response to the heavy-handed invocations of authority and obedience that some Boy Scout troops routinely used.

I had a lot of great experiences in the Scouts and I appreciated the adult volunteers who helped make the good times happen. And yet…

I recall reciting the Scout law - the pledge to “do my duty to God and country.” And who defines the duty to the country?

Richard Nixon was the honorary president of the Boy Scouts at that time, and the Boy Scouts of America gave them their highest honor - the Silver Buffalo - in 1971. I would have had more respect for the Scouts if they sent Nixon tar and feathers.

Thursday 3rd December 2009

My Pre-Anarchist Motif

10:24 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 20

Update #2: Tom Blanton, of the Project for the New American Revolution, also kindly did an upgrade of the photo. Here is Tom’s version:

UPDATE: “Black Bloke” and Wes Baker kindly sent improved versions of the photo, now inserted at the top of this post. I’m not sure if Wes’s version will open in some browsers.

[full-size photo is available here]

It was a good thing that I had not yet started drinking when I crossed that log back in ‘68.

And it was a blessing I wasn’t obliged to juggle any balls, as well as carry the pack and stick.

This was taken during a hike in the Shenandoah National Park; the photo appeared in Boys Life magazine.

This is a scan from an old slide. Would anyone have suggestions on how I can touch-up this 1968 photo?

Wednesday 2nd December 2009

John Brown: One Terrorist Who Deserved Hanging

8:38 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | Comments: 12

This is the 150th anniversary of the hanging of John Brown. When he attacked Harper’s Ferry with a handful of followers, the butcher of Kansas helped sow the seeds of the Civil War. Few things would have made Brown happier than the thought of hundreds of thousands of people dying for his own Scorched Earth method of moral salvation.

The New York Times op-ed page has a piece today touting Brown as an American hero. It seeks to vindicate him:

He was held in high esteem by many great men of his day. Ralph Waldo Emerson compared him to Jesus, declaring that Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.” Henry David Thoreau placed Brown above the freedom fighters of the American Revolution.

The fact that Emerson and Thoreau turned into cheerleaders for John Brown was among the worst failings for each of them. Both Emerson and Thoreau started out denouncing politics as a snare and a fraud. And both fell for Brown and his vision of progress via slaughtering innocent people.

Brown’s attempt to create a bloody uprising in Virginia helped close the final door to compromise between the North and the South. His name should be as odious today as those of other people whose violence sparked mass killing. +++

Update 12/03: There have been some excellent revisionist histories in the last 20 years on how the Civil War could have been averted and how slavery would have been phased out without a national bloodbath. While some of the deep South states saw slavery as their essence, upper South states like Virginia were not so mindlessly attached to the odious institution.

Those who believe that a war was necessary to end slavery often fail to realize that much of the dire plight of freed slaves was the result of northern armies relying on Scorched Earth tactics in the final year of the war. When almost everything has been destroyed, it is difficult for anyone (except Carpetbaggers) to survive.

UPDATE #2: I also posted this comment on the Antwar.com website here where it is evoking lots of denunciations and also some controversy.

Tuesday 1st December 2009

Will Obama Out-BS Bush?

Obama’s speech from West Point tonight may drive the final wooden stake into liberals’ hope that their guy would create a Brave New Order in Washington and the world.

The fact that Obama is following in Bush’s footsteps - talking to an audience of captive individuals who would be ruined for life by a single catcall - is a sign of how archaic hope for change and reform has become.

If Obama honestly admitted that he is sending American boys to die to help assure the profits of drug kingpins like Karzai’s brother, I could at least respect the president’s candor.

But the odds of truth breaking out during Obama’s visit to West Point are slim and none - and “Slim just left town,” as Dan Rather says.

Tuesday 24th November 2009

Mp3 of Today’s Ernie Hancock interview on Liberty, Obama, and Political Doom

10:04 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Ernie Hancock and I had a rowdy time on his radio show today talking about books, bad guys, and ‘Bama.

You can hear the show by clicking on this: 2009-11-24-ernie-a-pm

The Best Thumbnail Definition of Twittering

5:31 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

This is the best one-strip definition of Twittering I have seen.

Maybe Dogbert will take the plunge for Vitamin E tomorrow.

On the other hand, doing a blog mocking the superficiality of Twittering is a bit like the pot calling the kettle Lithuanian.

On the Radio at 5 pm Eastern Today - with Ernie Hancock

4:38 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

I will be on the Ernie Hancock show today (Tuesday) for an hour starting at 5 pm Eastern. Ernie is a legendary hellraiser and one of the most energetic freedom fighters out there.

I expect we’ll whack a wide variety of targets.

You can listen live here.

Sunday 22nd November 2009

Doonesbury: Torture Remains Prime-Time Entertainment

11:00 am | Attention Deficit Democracy | Torture | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

Three cheers for Doonesbury!

Unfortunately, prominent half-wits take their own values from this TV show. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an assembly of judges in the summer of 2007: ““Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives… Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?”

I would wager that many congressmen also rely on ‘24′ as their primary info source on torture.

This is Attention Deficit Democracy at its best.

Wednesday 18th November 2009

Dying for Crooks: US Troops in Afghanistan

10:37 pm | Afghanistan | Attention Deficit Democracy | Obama | Comments: 12

Transparency International reported yesterday that Afghanistan is the most corrupt nation in the world - except for Somalia.

Heckua achievement, if the only nation on earth that is more shady is one that is full of pirates… Karzai is making Marion Barry look like Mother Teresa.

The Washington Post reported today that one of Afghanistan’s top ministers took a $30 million bribe to give a special deal to a Chinese mining company.

The New York Times reported: “Everything seems to be for sale: public offices, access to government services, even a person’s freedom.”

So what do Army recruiters say these days? Why in Hades would any American agree to risk his neck to prop up this band of thieves?

Monday 16th November 2009

Freedom - the Scariest Tactic?

9:45 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 1

This cartoon from the current New Yorker is a hoot.

But I suspect that different people are laughing at it for mirror-image reasons…

Friday 13th November 2009

New Portuguese Translations Page at JimBovard.com

10:28 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme has kindly translated a bushel of my articles and epigrams into Portuguese. Some of the lines read better in translation than in the original.

The Portuguese translation page at my main website is here.

I greatly appreciate Murilo making my work accessible to legions of folks in Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique…. and points beyond.

Tuesday 10th November 2009

Most Venal-Looking Congressman?

I have seen plenty of smarmy looking congressmen over the decades, but this photo of Rep. Bob Filner (D-Cal) probably takes the cake.

Who would vote for someone who looks like he might mug you and steal your wallet before your leave the polling booth???

Or is there somebody I missed or forgot? What other member of Congress looks creepier?

Dollar Meltdown: Charles Goyette’s Excellent New Book

9:12 pm | Bailout | Comments: 0

Charles Goyette is one of the most courageous and penetrating talk show hosts in America. His new book, The Dollar Meltdown, provides plenty of hard punches and good advice. Buying his book is a whole lot cheaper than filing for bankruptcy.

Goyette explains economic realities far better than the vast majority of mainstream commentators. And he never pawned his soul to the Federal Reserve….

Monday 9th November 2009

Torture Update: Andy Worthington’s Excellent New Film

Andy Worthington, the author of The Guantanamo Files, is touring the U.S. with his excellent new film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” He will be in California later this week. Tour schedule is here.

“Outside the Law” does a fine job of blending the legal issues and personal details to burn home the human cost of subverting the Constitution.

I saw the film last night at a Future of Freedom Foundation event in Fairfax, VA. Worthington’s reputation drew some Pentagon folks to the event who don’t normally show up at libertarian think tank gigs…

The film will probably be offered for sale as a DVD in the coming months.

Thursday 5th November 2009

The Media as Enablers of Government Lies

Posted online today…

The Media as Enablers of Government Lies Freedom Daily August 2009
by James Bovard

Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive the public.

In 1936, New York Times White House correspondent Turner Catledge said that President Roosevelt’s “first instinct was always to lie.” But the Washington press corps covered up Roosevelt’s dishonesty almost as thoroughly as they hid his use of a wheelchair in daily life.

President Bill Clinton benefited from a press corps that often treated his falsehoods as nonevents — or even petty triumphs. Newsweek White House correspondent Howard Fineman commented that Clinton’s “great strength is his insincerity…. I’ve decided Bill Clinton is at his most genuine when he’s the most phony…. We know he doesn’t mean what he says.”

Flora Lewis, a New York Times columnist, writing three weeks before 9/11, commented in a review of a book on U.S. government lies on the Vietnam War, “There will probably never be a return to the discretion, really collusion, with which the media used to treat presidents, and it is just as well.” But within months of her comment, the media had proven itself as craven as ever. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who did some of the best exposés of George W. Bush’s falsehoods in his first term, noted that it was not until July 2002 that “the White House press corps showed its teeth” in response to administration deceptions. Even the exposés of FBI and CIA intelligence failures in May 2002 did not end the “phase of alliance” between the White House and the press, as political scientist Martha Kumar observed.

Deference to the government is now the trademark of the American media — at least at times when the truth could have the greatest impact. The media were grossly negligent in failing to question or examine Bush’s claims on the road to war. When journalists dug up the truth, editors sometimes ignored or buried their reports. Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained that, in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war; why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’” New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller explained the press’s conduct at a Bush press conference just before he invaded Iraq: “I think we were very deferential because … nobody wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”

After the war started, the falsehood of Bush’s claims was often treated as a one-day story, buried in the back of the front section or on the editorial page. Afterward, most papers quickly returned to printing the president’s proclamations as gospel. Eric Alterman, author of When Presidents Lie, observed,

Virtually every major news media outlet devoted more attention to the lies and dissimulations of one New York Times reporter, Jayson Blair, than to those of the president and vice president of the United States regarding Iraq. Given that these two deceptions took place virtually simultaneously, they demonstrate that while some forms of deliberate deception remain intolerable in public life, those of the U.S. commander in chief are not among them.

Docility

The media’s docility to the Bush administration repeated the pattern established during the first Gulf War (and during much of the Vietnam War). Chris Hedges, who covered the 1990-91 Gulf War for the New York Times, later explained, “The notion that the press was used in the war is incorrect. The press wanted to be used. It saw itself as part of the war effort.” Hedges noted that journalists were “eager to be of service to the State,” which “made it easier to do what governments do in wartime, indeed what governments do much of the time, and that is lie.”

Far from being irate about presidential lies, the media often enjoy sharing a laugh with the commander in chief over such technical inaccuracies. On March 24, 2004, President Bush performed a skit for those attending the Radio and Television Correspondents’ annual dinner in which he showed slides of himself crawling around his office peaking behind curtains while he quipped to the crowd, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere…. Nope, no weapons over there…. Maybe under here?”

Bush’s comic bit got one of the biggest laughs of the night. The Washington Post Style section hailed the evening’s performance with a headline — “George Bush, Entertainer in Chief.” The media dignitaries made no fuss over the comments — until a mini-firestorm erupted a few days later, spurred by criticism by Democrats and soldiers who had fought in Iraq. Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor and Publisher, labeled the press’s reaction as “one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media, and presidency.”

The character of the Washington press corps also shone bright in its nonresponse to the Downing Street Memo. On May 1, 2005, the London Times printed a memo from a British cabinet meeting on July 23, 2002, that reported the findings of the visit by Britain’s intelligence chief to Washington to confer with CIA chief George Tenet and other top Bush administration officials. The memo quoted the intelligence chief: “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The fact that the top level of the British government was aware that the Bush administration was fixing — i.e., manipulating and contriving — intelligence and facts to justify going to war was a bombshell in the United Kingdom. The decision to “fix” facts was illustrated by the torrent of false accusations and statements that Bush and his top officials made against Iraq in the following months. Throughout 2002, Bush continued to say that he had hoped to avoid going to war with Saddam. In his State of the Union address in late January 2003 and in his subsequent speeches, he talked about the United States as a victim, repeatedly asserting that “if war is forced upon us, we will fight.” Bush had long since decided to attack, regardless of how many UN weapons inspectors Saddam permitted to roam Iraq.

Yet the memo was almost completely ignored by the American mainstream media for the first month after its publication in Britain. As Salon columnist Joe Conason commented, “To judge by their responses, the leading lights of the Washington press corps are more embarrassed than the White House is by the revelations in the Downing Street memo.”

Deceit has become ritualized in U.S. foreign policy. From 2002 onwards, the White House Iraq Group spewed out false information that the New York Times and other prominent media outlets routinely accepted without criticism or verification. After many of the assertions were later discovered to be false, the White House and much of the media treated the falsehoods as irrelevant to the legitimacy of the U.S. invasion. The lack of attention paid to political lies is itself symptomatic of the bias in favor of submitting to rulers regardless of how much people are defrauded.

Katrina

Hurricane Katrina provided an opportunity for the media to ritually renounce their own servility. As the nonresponse and pervasive debacle became undeniable and the death count soared to more than a thousand, many talking heads pointed out the government’s “failures” and proudly showed their indignation. A New York Times headline summed up the broadcast media’s change in tone: “Reporters Turn From Deference to Outrage.” One BBC commentator observed, “Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina,” which he suggested could provide an antidote to the “timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams explained, “By dint of the fact that our country was hit [in 2001] we’ve offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt [to the government] over the past couple [sic] of years. Perhaps … this is the story that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it.” But such periodic affirmations of independence are as credible as an alcoholic who, regaining consciousness after tumbling down the stairs, piously announces the end of his boozing days. There will be other bottles — and other stairs.

The pursuit of respectability in Washington usually entails acquiescing to government lies. Many if not most members of the Washington press corps are government dependents. Few Washington journalists have the will to expose government lies. That would require placing one in an explicitly adversarial position to the government. It is not that the typical journalist is intentionally covering up government lies, but that his radar is not set to detect such occurrences. Lies rarely register in Washington journalists’ minds because they are usually supplicants for government information, not dogged pursuers of the truth. Raising troublesome questions will not help you get any “silver platter” stories.

The vast majority of the media docilely repeated Bush’s claims through most of his presidency. Television networks very likely devoted a hundred times as much air time to peddling government falsehoods as they did to exposing them. The constant barrage of falsehood drowns out the occasional blips of truth. The government only needs the number of people who recognize its lies to be small enough that its latest power play will not be thwarted. The goal is not to prevent well-informed citizens from being nauseated or disgusted by the president’s lies. Instead, it is to neutralize the mass reaction to presidential falsehoods, even those that have catastrophic consequences.

If Americans wish to retain the remnants of their liberty, they cannot trust the media to warn them about government tyranny. In order to recognize government deceit, there is no substitute for more citizens to make more effort to find the truth for themselves.

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