- Top Secret: DoD Building $110 Million Drone Base In Niger
If you thought America’s overseas wars had reached their limit – think again.
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is building a new $110 million drone base in Niger, adding to its existing footprint of more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
Recent satellite image of the new drone base in Agadez, Niger. (Source: Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times)
On Monday, the AP detailed in a report that the U.S. Air Force is constructing a base for weaponized drones, the newest front in America’s expanding foreign wars “against the growing extremist threat in Africa’s vast Sahel region.”
The drone base dubbed “Niger Air Base 201” resides a few miles outside the perimeter of Agadez, the largest city in central Niger, which was built at the request of Niger’s government. Three drone hangers and a leveled strip of smooth ground along which aircraft take off and land command a sandy, barren field, said AP. The base is expected to be functional early next year with fighter jets and General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones transferred from another base 590 miles away in Niamey.
Construction of a hangar on the new drone base last week in Agadez, Niger. (Source: Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times)
Airmen work in the unmanned aerial device apron in Agadez, Niger, where drones will be parked when they are not in operation. (Source: John VanDiver for Stars And Stripes)
AP writes, the MQ-9 Reaper is one of the most advanced drones in the U.S. arsenal. Its surveillance and striking capabilities are second to none, with a range of 1,150 miles; the drone will have the ability to reach most West and North African countries.
“The $110 million project is the largest troop labor construction project in U.S. history, said Air Force officials. It will cost $15 million annually to operate.”
U.S. defense officials did not disclose how many drones the new base will store, but there was mention that this base would be the second largest in Africa. Further, officials stated the drones would target al-Qaida and Islamic State-affiliated groups in the region.
“Citing security reasons, no official will say how many drones will be housed at the base or whether more U.S. personnel will be brought to the region. Already the U.S. military presence here is the second largest in Africa behind the sole permanent U.S. base on the continent, in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. The drones at the base are expected to target several different al-Qaida and Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in countries throughout the Sahel, a sprawling region just south of the Sahara, including the area around Lake Chad, where the Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency has spread.”
While the U.S. Air Force is expected to launch its first drone counterterrorism mission sometime in 2019, local civic leaders have expressed concerns about foreign drones bombing civilians.
“The presence of foreign bases in general and American in particular is a serious surrender of our sovereignty and a serious attack on the morale of the Nigerien military,” said civic leader Nouhou Mahamadou.
However, U.S. Africa Command spokeswoman Samantha Reho said, ” intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance” are the critical tools in the fight against terrorism.
“The location in Agadez will improve U.S. Africa Command’s capability to facilitate intelligence-sharing that better supports Niger and other partner nations, such as Nigeria, Chad, Mali and other neighbors in the region and will improve our capability to respond to regional security issues,” Reho added.
Commander Brad Harbaugh, who is in charge of the new base told AP that some residents in Niger are welcoming the growing U.S. military presence, due to overwhelming threat of extremist in the region.
“Northern Mali has become a no man’s land, southern Libya is an incubator for terrorists and northeastern Nigeria is fertile ground for Boko Haram’s activities … Can Niger alone ensure its own security? I think not. No country in the world can today alone fight terrorism,” said Souleymane Abdourahmane, a restaurant promoter in the capital, Niamey.
The expansion of drones in the desperately poor, remote West African country comes as U.S. special forces retreat from the front lines. Last October, an Islamic State linked-group of extremist ambushed four U.S. soldiers and five Africans. Until then, few knew the DoD’s presence in the region, nevertheless, the construction of the drone base.
As the disastrous legacy of U.S. military failure is more than evident today in the Middle East, it seems as America’s military leaders are about to test their luck, in perhaps, the next round of wars in West and North African countries. How is this “Making America Great Again”?
- A Furtive Glance At Washington's Ongoing War Preparations Against Russia
Authored by Arkady Savitsky via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
While the world’s attention is riveted on Syria, the US is significantly boosting its forces in Europe. And these are not just divisions streaming in to take part in some exercises that will leave once those are over. This is a serious buildup to create a potentially offensive posture. The beefing up of the US forces is taking place amid preparations for a Russia-US summit. That’s a rather peculiar background for the event, to put it mildly!
The 4th Combat Aviation Brigade and the 4th Infantry Division will deploy to Europe as part of its Operation Atlantic Resolve. Based in Germany, the forces will participate in multiple exercises, most of which will be held very near the Russian border in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the Baltic States. The Army is considering deploying an entire division in a Reforger type of exercise, with troops coming over to use the pre-positioned hardware. Those forces could potentially see a surge, with a division-level deployment in late 2018 or 2019.
The plans include the creation of a rear-area operations command to be hosted by Germany. Another command is planned that will ensure mobility in the North Atlantic shipping lanes. A “military Schengen” to allow easy movement across borders is under consideration. NATO is rotating four battalion-size, combat-ready, air-power-supported battle groups throughout Poland — which is hosting 800 American troops — and the Baltic States.
In February, the US Army held the largest artillery exercise in Europe since the Cold War. The event was dubbed Dynamic Front 18 and involved seven rocket-launching systems, 94 artillery pieces, including eight German Panzerhaubitze 2000 armored howitzers, 14 British L118 light guns, and 18 US M777 155 mm howitzers.
The US military command is weighing the option of keeping the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group in the Mediterranean, the European command’s area of responsibility, instead of deploying it to the Middle East, which is under the control of Central Command. The group left Norfolk on April 11. This move would be intended to “check Russia,” freeing other American naval assets to carry out missions in the Baltic and the Black Sea. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee on April 12 that he was studying the possibility of shaking up his department’s employment of carrier groups. The rotational deployments have been increased from the traditional six to ten months. A large number of US ships are concentrated in the vicinity of Syria.
Poland will host Anakonda 2018, the largest ever NATO military exercise, the scale of which is truly exceptional this year. It will involve about 100,000 troops, 5,000 vehicles, 150 aircraft, and 45 warships. The event was much smaller two years ago. The scenario is based on the premise of a surprise attack against Russia. Obviously this huge force will be assembled for offensive, not defensive operations. One hundred thousand troops, just imagine! This is the most flagrant violation of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, signed between NATO and Russia in 1997, which contains a passage about NATO refraining from the “stationing of substantial combat forces.”
Meanwhile, around 3,600 American soldiers have landed in Jordan. They are participating in the two-week US-Jordanian exercise, Eager Lion, which kicked off on April 15. The training event is a drill for AV-8B Harriers, MV-22 Ospreys, and attack helicopters. It follows the US, UK, and French air strikes on Syria. The situation in southern Syria is fraught with conflict, which might easily pull in US and Russian armed forces.
In his remarks about a possible Russia-US summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that he is confident Russian and American military leaders will prevent an armed conflict. US officials have said many times they are ready to do anything to keep hostilities from erupting. Well, that’s what they say, but actions speak louder than words. Forces are amassing that are poised for attack. The US deployments cannot be seen as anything other than war preparations that are already well underway, and Moscow has to be doubly vigilant.
The two nations’ leaders will have a host of urgent issues to discuss, but moving to tame the heightened tensions would be a step in the right direction. Some things could be done without delay, reviving some existing agreements that have been undeservedly forgotten for instance, such as the 1989 Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities Agreement or the Incidents at Sea (INCSEA) agreement of 1972. The INCSEA stood both parties in good stead, preventing a military clash between the Soviet and US navies during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It can do so again in the same region.
Provocative military deployments in Europe are hardly the way to create a propitious environment for a summit. Nor do they enhance the security of the United States. But they are taking place, poisoning the atmosphere and creating a big problem.
- Visualizing The Prolific Plastic Problem In Our Oceans
In February of 2018, a dead sperm whale washed up on along the picturesque shoreline of Cabo de Palos in Spain.
Officials noted that the whale was unusually thin, and a necropsy confirmed that the whale died from an acute abdominal infection. Put simply, the whale ingested so much plastic debris – 67 lbs worth – that its digestive system ruptured.
THE PLASTIC PROBLEM, VISUALIZED
Today’s infographic comes to us from Custom Made, and it helps put the growing marine debris problem in perspective.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
A SPIRALING PROBLEM
The equivalent of one garbage truck full of plastic enters the sea every minute and the volume of ocean plastic is expected to triple within a decade.
Every stray bit of trash that enters the ocean, from a frayed fishing net off the coast of the Philippines to a plastic bottle cap from an Oakland storm drain, all end up circulating in rotating ocean currents called gyres.
For this reason, the Pacific Gyre is now better known by another name: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
THE SUM OF MANY PLASTIC PARTS
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is often misrepresented online as a literal raft of floating trash stretching as far as the eye can see. The real situation is less visually dramatic, but it’s what we can’t see – microplastic – that’s the biggest problem. Tiny fragments of plastic pose the biggest risks to humans because it’s easy for them to enter the food chain after being ingested by marine life.
While derelict fishing gear such as nets and floats are a contributor to the problem, land-based activity accounts for the majority of the garbage circulating in the ocean. Most of the world’s countries have ocean coastlines, and with so many jurisdictions and varying degrees of environmental scrutiny, truly curbing the flow of plastic isn’t realistic in the near term.
NO SOLUTION ON THE HORIZON
Garbage patches have formed deep in the middle of international waters, so there is no clear cut way to decide who is responsible for cleaning up the mess. Organizations like The Ocean Cleanup are researching ocean gyres and providing better insight into the extent of the plastic problem. The Ocean Cleanup is best positioned to make a real impact, though executing on their vision will require vast resources and substantial funding.
Nobody likes seeing whales wash up on shore, but for now, a fully-scaled solution may still far out on the horizon.
- John Whitehead: "Is The US Government Evil?"
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Is the U.S. government evil?
You tell me.
This is a government that treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, tracked, tortured, and eventually eliminated once they’ve outgrown their usefulness.
This is a government that treats human beings like lab rats to be caged, branded, experimented upon, and then discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.
This is a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn.
This is a government that wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and then turns a blind eye and a deaf ear while its henchmen rape and kill and pillage.
No, this is not a government that can be trusted to do what is right or moral or humane or honorable but instead seems to gravitate towards corruption, malevolence, misconduct, greed, cruelty, brutality and injustice.
This is not a government you should trust with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.
This is the face of evil, disguised as a democracy, sold to the people as an institution that has their best interests at heart.
Don’t fall for the lie.
The government has never had our best interests at heart.
Endless wars. The government didn’t have our best interests at heart when it propelled us into endless oil-fueled wars and military occupations in the Middle East that wreaked havoc on our economy, stretched thin our military resources and subjected us to horrific blowback.
A police state. There is no way the government had our best interests at heart when it passed laws subjecting us to all manner of invasive searches and surveillance, censoring our speech and stifling our expression, rendering us anti-government extremists for daring to disagree with its dictates, locking us up for criticizing government policies on social media, encouraging Americans to spy and snitch on their fellow citizens, and allowing government agents to grope, strip, search, taser, shoot and kill us.
Battlefield America. Certainly the government did not have our best interests at heart when it turned America into a battlefield, transforming law enforcement agencies into extensions of the military, conducting military drills on domestic soil, distributing “free” military equipment and weaponry to local police, and desensitizing Americans to the menace of the police state with active shooter drills, color-coded terror alerts, and randomly conducted security checkpoints at “soft” targets such as shopping malls and sports arenas.
Secret human experimentation. One would also be hard-pressed to suggest that the American government had our best interests at heart when it conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. The government reasoned that it was legitimate (and cheaper) to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as prisoners, mental patients, and poor blacks.
For instance, there was the CIA’s Cold War-era program, MKULTRA, in which the government began secretly experimenting on hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel by dosing them with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug secretly slipped into their drinks, so that the government could explore its uses in brainwashing and controlling targets. The CIA spent nearly $20 million on its MKULTRA program, reportedly as a means of programming people to carry out assassinations and, to a lesser degree, inducing anxieties and erasing memories, before it was supposedly shut down.
Sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theorists, I know, but the government’s track record of treating Americans like lab rats has been well-documented, including its attempts to expose whole communities to various toxins as part of its efforts to develop lethal biological weapons and study their impact and delivery methods on unsuspecting populations.
John Lennon was right: “We’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends.”
Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Just recently, for example, a Fusion Center in Washington State (a Dept. of Homeland Security-linked data collection clearinghouse that shares information between state, local and federal agencies) inadvertently released records on remote mind control tactics (the use of “psycho-electronic” weapons to control people from a distance or subject them to varying degrees of pain).
Mind you, there is no clear evidence to suggest that these particular documents were created by a government agency. Then again, the government—no stranger to diabolical deeds or shady experiments carried out an unsuspecting populace—has done it before.
After all, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
For too long now, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the American people have been persuaded to barter their freedoms for phantom promises of security and, in the process, have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.
No matter how you rationalize it, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
So how do you fight back?
How do you fight injustice? How do you push back against tyranny? How do you vanquish evil?
You don’t fight it by hiding your head in the sand.
Stop being apathetic. Stop being neutral. Stop being accomplices.
Start recognizing evil and injustice and tyranny for what they are. Demand government transparency. Vote with your feet (i.e., engage in activism, not just politics). Refuse to play politics with your principles. Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils.
As British statesman Edmund Burke warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.”
It’s time for good men and women to do something. And soon.
- 100 Migrants From Infamous "Caravan" Prepare For Border Crossing After Arriving In Mexicali
Despite President Trump’s threat to make stopping migrants from Central America a condition of a revised NAFTA agreement, the second part of a caravan of migrants arrived Tuesday afternoon in the border state of Mexicali, Buzzfeed reported, after refusing the Mexican government’s offer to let them stay in Mexico.
Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people from going through Mexico and into the U.S. We may make this a condition of the new NAFTA Agreement. Our Country cannot accept what is happening! Also, we must get Wall funding fast.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2018
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The migrants, who arrived following a bus trip from the city of Hermosillo, located in the Mexican state of Sonora, are expected to be followed by as many as 500 more Tuesday night and Wednesday – setting them up for a showdown with national guard soldiers and ICE agents who have been instructed to stop them from entering the country.
While media attention to the caravan has dropped in recent weeks, the Trump administration has been keeping a watchful eye on the caravan’s progress. Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said Monday that her agency was monitoring “the remnants” of the caravan.
“If members of the ‘caravan’ enter the country illegally, they will be referred for prosecution for illegal entry in accordance with existing law,” Nielsen said in a statement. “For those seeking asylum, all individuals may be detained while their claims are adjudicated efficiently and expeditiously, and those found not to have a claim will be promptly removed from the United States.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions also issued a statement Monday, saying the migrants and “their smugglers” had ignored the willingness of the Mexican government to allow them to stay in Mexico.
“Our nation has the most generous immigration system in the world, but this is a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system. There is no right to demand entry without justification,” Sessions said in a statement. “Promoting and enforcing the rule of law is essential to protecting a nation, its borders, and its citizens. But, as President Trump has warned, the need to fix these loopholes and weaknesses in our immigration system is critical and overdue.”
Unsurprisingly, the expanded federal border enforcement has drawn the ire of immigrants rights groups, who are accusing the federal government of ignoring asylum laws.
“The efforts of US officials to tarnish asylum seekers as criminals are cynical fabrications that ring hollow,” the statement said, attributing the comment to Erika Guevara Rosas, the group’s Americas director.
Officials of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, the volunteer group that organized the caravan, have said throughout the journey that migrants have the right to ask the US for asylum and that the United States must grant them the opportunity to do so.
Tristan Call, an organizer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, said the US is trying to punish people who have a right to ask for asylum.
“The United States is punishing them so they won’t be able to get asylum,” Call told reporters outside Hotel del Migrante, a migrant shelter in Mexicali. “They’re punishing the most vulnerable people. These are people who the last thing they saw was their home in ashes. The last thing they saw was a funeral.”
Alex Mensing, an organizer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, said the right to refuge is established in US law.
Some in the migrant caravan have already moved on to Tijuana, their final destination in Mexico before they attempt the treacherous crossing. Nearly all of the caravan’s members – who once numbered more than 1,000 – are fleeing violence in Central America. Many are from Honduras, where gangs control virtually every aspect of daily life.
Despite the long journey, one family beamed with excitement while speaking with a New York Times reporter, expressing their excitement that the US border fence was only miles away.
“Well, this is incredible,” said Bryan Claros, 20, a migrant from El Salvador who was traveling with his younger brother, Luis, and their stepfather, Andres Rodríguez.
From where they were standing, on the broken sidewalk outside the Hotel del Migrantes shelter, they could see the steel border fence two blocks away and the tops of lamp posts and buildings on the other side, in Calexico, Calif.
They had fled El Salvador because of a gang’s death threats, they said, and were planning to apply for asylum when they crossed into the United States from Tijuana. Organizers had encouraged participants to seek asylum at Tijuana rather than Mexicali because it was easier to arrange for volunteer lawyers.
“We’ve almost arrived in the United States,” Mr. Claros said, smiling broadly at his brother. But then he considered the legal road ahead, and his smile faded.
The group of migrants set off from Tapachula, Mexico on March 25 and moved north en masse by foot, or by hopping on buses or stowing away on trains.
In its early days, the group was the largest migrant caravan on record, according to NYT. Of the ones that remain, organizers of the caravan expect between 100 and 300 to petition for asylum.
- Dershowitz: "Should Robert Mueller Be Investigated For Violating Civil Liberties?"
Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,
Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so, too, the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is civil liberties.
Many traditional civil libertarians have allowed their strong anti-Trump sentiments to erase their long-standing commitment to neutral civil liberties. They are now so desperate to get Trump that they are prepared to compromise the most basic due process rights. They forget the lesson of history that such compromises made against one’s enemy are often used as precedents against one’s friends. As Robert Bolt put it in the play and movie A Man for all Seasons:
Roper: So now you would give the Devil benefit of Law!
Thomas Moore: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that?
Thomas Moore: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
But today’s fair weather civil libertarians are unwilling to give President Trump – who they regard as the devil — the “benefit of law” and civil liberties.
Consider the issue of criticizing Robert Mueller, the Special counsel. Any criticism or even skepticism regarding Mueller’s history is seen as motivated by a desire to help Trump. Mueller was an Assistant US attorney in Boston, the head of its criminal division, the head of the criminal division in Main Justice and the Director of the FBI during the most scandalous miscarriage of justice in the modern history of the FBI. Four innocent people were framed by the FBI in order to protect mass murdering gangsters who were working as FBI informers while they were killing innocent people. An FBI agent, who is now in prison, was tipping off Whitey Bulger as to who might testify against him so that these individuals could be killed. He also tipped off Bulger allowing him to escape and remain on the lam for 16 years.
What responsibility, if any, did Robert Mueller, who was in key positions of authority and capable of preventing these horrible miscarriages, have in this sordid incident?
A former member of the parole board – a liberal Democrat who also served as mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts – swears that he saw a letter from Robert Mueller urging the denial of release for at least one of these wrongfully convicted defendants. When he went back to retrieve the letter, it was not in the file. This should surprise no one since Judge Mark Wolf (himself a former prosecutor), who conducted extensive hearings about this entire mess, made the following findings:
“The files relating to the Wheeler murder, and the FBI’s handling of them, exemplify recurring irregularities with regard to the preparation, maintenance, and production in this case of documents damaging to Flemmi and Bulger. First, there appears to be a pattern of false statements placed in Flemmi’s informant file to divert attention from his possible crimes and/or FBI misconduct….
Second, contrary to the FBI’s usual policy and practice, all but one of the reports containing Halloran’s allegations against Bulger and Flemmi were not indexed and placed in an investigative file referencing their names. Thus, those documents were not discoverable by a standard search of the FBI’s indices. Similar irregularities in indexing and, therefore, access occurred with regard to information that the FBI received concerning an extortion by Bulger of Hobart Willis and from Joseph Murray concerning the murder of Brian Halloran, among other things.
Third, when documents damaging to the FBI were found by the Bureau, they were in some instances not produced to the defendants or the court at the time required by the court’s Orders.”
Judge Wolf also made a finding that directly references Mueller’s state of knowledge regarding the “history”:
“The source also claimed to have information that Bulger and Pat Nee had murdered Halloran and Bucky Barrett. The source subsequently said that there was an eyewitness to the Halloran shooting who might come forward, and elaborated that: “there is a person named John, who claims he talked to Whitey and Nee as they sat in the car waiting for Halloran on Northern Avenue. He sits in a bar and talks about it. He saw the whole operation”. The source added that the person providing the information to the source “will be willing to talk to you (authorities) soon.” On February 3, 1988, Weld directed Keeney to have the information that he had received sent to the United States Attorney in Boston, Frank McNamara, and to the Strike Force Chief, O’Sullivan. Weld added that: “Both O’Sullivan and [Assistant United States Attorney] Bob Mueller are well aware of the history, and the information sounds good.”
It is not the beyond the realm of possibility therefore that Mueller wrote this letter, even if it is no longer in the files. If in fact Mueller wrote such a letter, without thoroughly investigating the circumstances, he surely bears some responsibility. Moreover, it is widely believed among Boston law enforcement observers that the FBI was not really looking for Whitey Bulger during the years that Mueller was its Director. It is believed that the FBI was fearful about what Bulger would disclose about his relationship with agents over the years. It took a member of the US Marshall’s office to find Bulger who was hiding in plain view in Santa Monica, California.
Recently, a former federal judge, who used to be a civil libertarian, rushed to Mueller’s defense, declaring “without equivocation” that Mueller “had no involvement” in the massive miscarriage of justice. Her evidence is the lack of evidence in the files. But no civil libertarian should place such great trust in government files, especially in light of Judge Wolf’s findings. They should join my call for an objective investigation by the Inspector General of the Justice Department before they assure the public “without equivocation” that Mueller had absolutely “no involvement.” But these “Get Trump At Any Cost” partisans have rejected my call for an investigation, out of fear that it may turn up information that might tarnish the image of the Special Counsel who is investigating Trump. Instead they criticize those of us who point out that Mueller was “at the center” of the Justice Department and FBI, while this miscarriage of justice occurred. All civil libertarians should want the truth about this sordid episode — and Mueller’s possible role in it — regardless of its impact, if any, on the Trump investigation. Mueller too should welcome an objective investigation, which might eliminate any doubt about his role in this travesty. But too many former civil libertarians are prepared to sacrifice civil liberties and the quest for truth on the altar of “Get Trump.”
Robert Mueller. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
This is all too typical of the about-face many civil libertarians have taken since Trump became president. I have previously written about the ACLU’s abdication of its traditional role in challenging governmental overreaching. For the new ACLU getting Trump trumps civil liberties.
It is ironic to see many right-wingers being the ones to criticize overreach by law enforcement, while many left-wingers now defend such overreaching. Hypocrisy and selective outrage abounds, as neutral principles take a back seat. Conservatives used to say that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.” I would respond that “a liberal is a conservative who is being audited or whose kid was busted for pot.” Today a civil libertarian is a conservative whose candidate is being investigated, while a law-and-order type is a liberal who wants to see Trump charged or impeached.
I am a liberal who voted against Trump but who insists that his civil liberties must be respected for all of our sake.
- British Politicians Declare War On Knives
For proof of the expression that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” look no further than Britain, where families may have to start practicing cutting their dinner with a spoon. This is because Britain’s politicians have now made the absurdly ridiculous move to call for the banning of what Reason magazine called “the most useful tool ever invented” – the knife.
Julia Child: preparing beef stew or about to kill someone? According to Reason, British politicians have “declared war on knives” and are swiftly moving with an attempt to ban them, as gun bans have amazingly failed to stop crime altogether:
Having failed to disarm criminals with gun controls that they defy, British politicians are now turning their attention to implementing something new and different: knife control. Because criminals will be much more respectful of knife laws than of those targeted at firearms, I guess.
“No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law,” London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted on April 8.
Not to be outdone, his predecessor, Boris Johnson, currently Foreign Secretary, called for increased use of stop-and-search powers by police. “You have got to stop them, you have got to search them and you have got to take the knives out of their possession.”
Poundland (the British equivalent of a dollar store) announced last week that it will no longer sell kitchen knives in any of its 850 stores. Similar stores are being slapped with fines for selling knives to minors.
This latest regulatory insanity get worse:
British politicians propose banning home delivery of knives and police promote street-corner bins for the surrender of knives while also conducting stings against knife vendors. Their goal is to “target not only those who carry and use knives, but also the supply, access and importation of weapons.”
It all sounds all so familiar, doesn’t it? And yet so utterly pointless. If British authorities have been unable to block criminals’ access to firearms—mechanical devices that require some basic mechanical skill to manufacture, or at least a 3D printer—how are they going to cut off the flow of knives, which require nothing more than a piece of hard material that can take an edge?
There are also practical downsides to discouraging the public from possessing knives—one of the oldest and most useful tools ever invented. Poundland, after all, isn’t dropping the sale of combat blades; the company’s move applies specifically to the tools people use to make their meals. The law looks much more likely to inconvenience peaceful people planning to carve a roast than to put off thugs who, push comes to shove, can find a way to sharpen a piece of rebar against a rock.
This hyperbolic response by politicians who desperately need to be seen as doing something, comes in the wake of a growing number of stabbings since Britain outlawed guns altogether. While Britain can now boast, as Piers Morgan famously did in his interview with Alex Jones, that they were only about 30 gun murders in Britain in the year prior, British politicians failed to notice that crime continues to happen, just through different means. It became clear when Britain’s crime stats were put up against those of gun toting New Yorkers.
As we recent reported, London now has a higher murder rate than New York City, a metropolis of nearly identical population and one long considered more vulnerable to crime. “London police investigated more murders than their New York counterparts did over the last two months,” Reuters reported earlier this month. “In the latest bloodshed, a 17-year-old girl died on Monday after she was found with gunshot wounds in Tottenham, north London, a day after a man was fatally stabbed in south London.”
Commentators note that this may be a blip and that New York City’s murder rate for 2017 stood at more than double that for London. In fact, London’s murder rate really hasn’t risen much—instead, New York’s has dropped dramatically. But that still represents a big shift. In her 2002 Guns and Violence: The English Experience, historian Joyce Lee Malcolm noted that “New York City’s homicide rate has been at least five times higher than London’s for two hundred years. For most of that time, there were no serious firearm restrictions in either city.”
New Yorkers didn’t need firearms to exceed the bloodlust of their trans-Atlantic rivals. Even if you removed crimes committed with guns from the comparison, “New Yorkers still managed to outstab and outkick Liverpudlians by a multiple of 3 and Londoners by a multiple of 5.6″ over those two centuries,” wrote the late Eric H. Monkkonen in Murder in New York City, published in 2000.
Shortly after London Mayor Sadiq Kahn’s city-wide ban on knives, The Express had reported that one of Scotland’s leading doctors has called for a ban on “killer” kitchen knives.
Dr John Crichton, the new chairman of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, wants the sale of pointed kitchen knives to be banned to help reduce the number of fatal stabbings.
Crichton, who took on the role of chairman in June this year, is championing a switch to so-called “R”-bladed knives, which have rounded points and are far less effective as weapons.
As The Express adds, the doctor noted that research shows many attacks, particularly in households where there has been a history of violence, involve kitchen knives because they are so easily accessible. Dr Crichton believes a switch from sharp-pointed, long-bladed knives to the new design could save lives.
“This is a public health measure and public health measures are always about society deciding on a self-imposed restriction for the public good.”
As bizarre as the idea of the banning kitchen knives sounds – why not ban truck rentals too while you’re at it, after all that’s what a terrorist used in the deadly March 2017 attack on London Bridge and again yesterday in Toronto – it hasn’t stopped its advocates from beating the drum even harder over recent weeks. However, politicians may be shocked to learn that the knife ban will lead to the same outcome as the attempted gun ban: criminals will find different methods to commit violent crimes as those who don’t obey the law will hardly be bothered by even more regulation.
Meanwhile, law-abiding British citizens hoping to prepare dinner from scratch inside the comfort of their own kitchen, well, they may be stuck ordering in… indefinitely.
- Did McCabe Order FBI Agents To "Stand Down" On Early Clinton Email Investigation?
Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe reportedly gave a “stand-down” order to FBI agents who began probing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for official government business following a report in the New York Times, reports journalist Sara Carter, citing “multiple former FBI officials, along with a Congressional official.”
After The New York Times publication, the FBI Washington Field Office began investigating Clinton’s use of private emails and whether she was using her personal email account to transmit classified information. According to sources, McCabe was overseas when he became aware of the investigation and sent electronic communications voicing his displeasure with the agents. –Sara Carter
“Electronic communications” you say? Sounds like McCabe picked the right time to relaunch his new legal defense fund.
McCabe’s reported March 2015 “stand down” order to agents investigating the New York Times report may have broken FBI rules, to say the least. The official DOJ request to investigate Clinton would not be issued until the end of July 2015, four months later.
Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, Jill McCabe “McCabe tried to steer people off the private email investigation and that appears to be obstruction and should be investigated,” said one former FBI official with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the investigation. “Now if the information on the ‘stand-down’ order is obtained by the IG that could bring a whole lot of other troubles to McCabe.”
Last week, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released an internal report which revealed that McCabe had lied four times to investigators, including twice while under oath, about authorizing an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal, just days before the 2016 election, that he had not issued a similar “stand-down” order on the reported FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation – right around the time McCabe was coming under fire for his wife Jill taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton
proxypal, Terry McAuliffe.So McCabe was accused of a “stand-down” order during the 2016 election, for which he authorized the leak that got him fired – and he now stands accused of a separate, previous “stand-down” order as agents began to follow up on a March 2 2015 New York Times report into Clinton’s use of a private server.
Horowitz and his team of investigators at the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) have been sifting through more than 1.2 million documents, of which Sara Carter‘s sources say 46,000 are connected to ongoing investigations. “Of those documents, Congress has received a tiny fraction of the emails pertaining to their oversight investigations.”
Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in September 2017 against the FBI for the communications on behalf of retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeff Danik, as previously reported. Danik spent more than 28 years with the bureau as a supervisor in the counter-terrorism division and special overseas advisor. Thus far, the FBI has failed to abide by a judge’s order to turn over all of former McCabe’s text messages, emails and SMS phone messages. –Sara Carter
According to the OIG report on McCabe, the Wall Street Journal article which used McCabe’s leak “discussed not only the FBI’s handling of the Clinton E-mail Investigation but ‘internal disagreements within the Bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy.’” It stated that “McCabe, in particular, was caught . . . [in] an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.”
The former law enforcement sources who spoke to this reporter said a possible stand-down order on the Clinton Foundation investigation doesn’t preclude another stand-down order from McCabe on the Clinton email server investigation. They noted that it appears from the IG’s report that the Justice Department was attempting to dissuade McCabe from moving forward with the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe said he authorized the disclosure to The Wall Street Journal of his conversation with the DOJ’s Principal Assistant Attorney General (PADAG) in an effort to counter the narrative that he had given a stand-down order on the Bureau’s Clinton Foundation investigation. –Sara Carter
Meanwhile, ol’ Andy has received two referrals seeking criminal prosecution – the first sent last week by 11 GOP Congressional legislators, and the second coming from Inspector General Horowitz. As Carter notes, evidence collected by the Inspector General has raised new questions over McCabe’s role in the FBI’s investigations of Clinton and Trump – as well as what role President Obama’s DOJ (and State Department) may have played in both.
- The Latest Ridiculous Lawsuit In The Sue-nited States
Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
On June 6, 1991, Richard Overton finally hit his breaking point.
Apparently, Mr. Overton had been spending quite a lot of time in front of his television, watching a flurry of beer commercials featuring scantily clad women falling all over themselves for average looking men.
Overton realized immediately that drinking Anheuser-Busch’s magical products would be the solution to all of his problems.
So he hurtled to his nearest liquor store for a case of beer.
Except… nothing happened. No tropical islands. No Clydesdale horses. No Swedish bikini team.
Moreover, Overton found out that alcohol can actually have negative effects on the mind and body.
Overton was shocked and dismayed. He felt that, by buying and drinking beer, he was entitled to the fantasy lifestyle in the commercials… without any of the downside.
Anheuser-Busch had betrayed him. And he wasn’t going to take it lying down.
So, in the name of beer drinkers everywhere, Overton sued on grounds of false advertising, claiming that Anheuser-Busch’s TV commercials “involving tropical settings, and beautiful women. . . had caused him physical and mental injury, emotional distress, and financial loss.”
Sadly this is a true story – just one example of the countless absurd, frivolous lawsuits that get filed in the Sue-nited States of America every year.
Here’s a more recent one:
Late last week, the Democratic National Committee (the headquarters for one of the two major political parties in the Land of the Free) launched a suit against everyone they could think of.
The DNC believes a carefully coordinated conspiracy between Russia and the Presidential campaign of Donald Trump hijacked the 2016 US Presidential Election.
So they filed a federal lawsuit in Southern District of New York (Manhattan) against more than two dozen defendants, including:
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– Russia
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– Wikileaks
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– The Trump Campaign
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– The GRU (the successor to the KGB)
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– Ten unknown, unnamed individuals, cited in the lawsuit as John Doe #1 through #10.
The DNC alleges in the complaint that these defendants violated a multitude of laws, from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to the State of Virginia’s common law prohibiting ‘Conspiracy to Commit Trespass to Chattels’.
Now, I won’t bother to comment on the grounds of the lawsuit. That’s not relevant here.
However you feel about this Trump/Russia issue, it’s important to step back for a moment and take note of the absurdity of this lawsuit.
How in the world is it even possible to sue “Russia?”
“Russia” is not even a legal entity. It’s just the name given to a giant piece of land on a map.
In theory you could sue the Russian president. Or even the Russian government.
But suing “Russia” is about as ridiculous as suing “Rap Music.” Yet in the Sue-nited States, you’re free to sue anyone or anything.
Perhaps more importantly, the DNC is suing ten different “John Doe’s,” i.e. people who are entirely unknown.
But again, in the Sue-nited States, you’re even free to sue people who might not exist.
One of the truly bizarre things I find about this lawsuit is that the defendants are alleged to have violated an obscure Virginia state law… even though the lawsuit was filed in New York City.
But in the Sue-nited States, you’re free to sue for any reason whatsoever.
This is an incredibly important reminder. Whether you’re living in the US, or you just do business or invest in the US– this is the most litigious country that’s ever existed in the history of the world.
And you can either hope that it never happens to you… or you can do something to prevent it.
Frivolous litigators are trolls that are always scavenging for easy targets– businesses or people with wealth that’s completely exposed.
Cash in your bank account. A profitable, healthy business. A home where the primary mortgage balance has been paid down. Even cryptocurrency.
If you ever get sued, you’ll quickly end up going through a ‘discovery’ process, whereby the opposing legal counsel will obtain access to EVERYTHING in your entire life– financial records, bank statements, phone records, Facebook messages, and emails.
Their job isn’t to prove that you actually wronged their client.
All they need to do is demonstrate to the jury that you’re a bad person.
And, chances are, there’s probably something in the last 20 years of your email records– a crass joke, a naughty email that you forwarded, etc. that presents you in an unfavorable light.
In a lawsuit, all of your assets are on the table. The judge has the power to freeze your bank account, put a lien on your home, liquidate your business, whatever he/she wants.
And of course, even if you win, you lose. The mere pain of having to go through a lawsuit can be incredibly expensive and emotionally draining.
Litigators are betting on this… that you don’t have the financial resources or emotional wherewithal to go to court. So they’ll push you into a costly out-of-court settlement.
The central idea behind asset protection is to make yourself a less attractive target.
First and foremost, that means not flaunting your wealth. The more people who know about your finances, the higher the chances are that someone will want to sue you.
Second, don’t keep all of your eggs in one basket. If you own your home, your business, your bank account, investments, etc. all in the same place, you’re really taking on a lot of risk.
Your entire life and livelihood can be frozen with the stroke of a judge’s pen. And it’s just never worth taking that kind of chance.
One option is to consider moving certain assets abroad, to a jurisdiction that’s not under the control of your home country’s government, particularly a place with strong asset protection laws. (Nevis is a good example.)
When structured properly, this approach makes it difficult for litigators to attack your assets, which is a huge disincentive for anyone to file suit against you.
And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.
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