Armed federal agents at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada, April 2014. (Natural News)Posted on 04/20/2014 1:07:11 PM PDT by DanMiller
As the United States of Obama allows less individual freedom, we need to reaffirm that democracy without individual freedom is tyranny. Until we reaffirm that, and refuse to accept tyranny, our "leaders" will continue to demand not only more of the same from us but also that more world "leaders" emulate them.
Overview -- Our foreign and domestic problems are intertwined.
The phrase "salami tactics" is well explained in the following video. When watching it, please consider that salami tactics can be used not only by international aggressors but by domestic aggressors as well -- by governments that want to destroy individual freedoms over the objections of their subjects who insist, "subversively," on keeping and even expanding their freedoms. Salami tactics, a few small steps, followed by more similarly small steps, seem unlikely to provoke hostile responses.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE]
Bad things have often happened slowly and incrementally. In the aggregate they have been and continue to be disastrous.
The will of the United States of Obama to oppose tyranny abroad has already disappeared or is at least doing so according to Caroline Glick, with whose analysis I substantially agree.
The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US’s indifferent response to it. [Emphasis added.]
In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, the America’s most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades.. . . .
The administration has staked its reputation on its radical policy of engaging Iran on its nuclear weapons program. The administration claims that by permitting Iran to undertake some nuclear activities it can convince the mullahs to shelve their plan to develop nuclear weapons.
This week brought further evidence of the policy’s complete failure. It also brought further proof that the administration is unperturbed by evidence of failure.
In a televised interview Sunday, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akhbar Salehi insisted that Iran has the right to enrich uranium to 90 percent. In other words, he said that Iran is building nuclear bombs.
And thanks to the US and its interim nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranian economy is on the mend.
The interim nuclear deal the Obama administration signed with Iran last November was supposed to limit its oil exports to a million barrels a day. But according to the International Energy Agency, in February, Iran’s daily oil exports rose to 1.65 million barrels a day, the highest level since June 2012.
Rather than accept that its efforts have failed, the Obama administration is redefining what success means.
As Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz noted, in recent months US officials claimed the goal of the nuclear talks was to ensure that Iran would remain years away from acquiring nuclear weapons. In recent remarks, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the US would suffice with a situation in which Iran is but six months away from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In other words, the US has now defined failure as success. [Emphasis added.]
Ms. Glick cites many additional examples; the few noted above are merely illustrative. She might also have mentioned that Iran has defined deceit as candor and has defined P5+1 failures induced by purposeful blindness as success. Following Iran's lead, so apparently have the P5+1 negotiators.
We need to understand why all this is happening. More than the calf wants to suckle, the cow wants to give milk. In other words, more than Iran wants a deal — and it wants a deal — the world wants to give Iran one so it won’t have to do any dirty work. Iran wants to rehabilitate its economy, Iran wants to end its isolation, it wants cooperation with the West. [Emphasis added.]
But along the way Iran also wants a bomb. Iran does not miss an opportunity to lie, as it did recently pertaining to its oil exports, but who is really bothered by this?
See also Iran's Exercise in Deceit.
Mark Steyn agrees substantially with Ms. Glick's arguments and elaborates by showing how facially unrelated U.S. foreign and domestic policies and problems are intertwined. The principal purpose of my current article is to expand as best I can upon Mr. Steyn's thesis.
If Putin closes down a transgender nightclub a week before the Special Olympics, he can get America's attention. When he annexes neighboring states, not so much. Under Nato, the US has collective-security treaty obligations to the Baltic States, but if I were Estonian I wouldn't bet on them. Not unless the Russians make the mistake of bombing a gay wedding in Tallinn.
Only Islamists can jail and murder gays and heretics without objection. Ditto "honor killings." Perhaps President Obama's love of Islam is pertinent:
The president made this really quite remarkable statement in his Cairo speech: “I consider it as part of my responsibility as president of the United States is to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” [Emphasis added.]
Many "stereotypes" are accurate, Mr. President.
Back to Mr. Steyn's linked article,
David Goldman, meanwhile, is weary of the admiring line that that Putin guy is some kind of genius. He doesn't have to be when we're idiots.
. . . .
~Perhaps Americans will get the quiet life they long for if they let the world go its own way. But oddly the less power the United States projects around the planet the more it turns on its hapless citizens right here at home. I write often about the utterly repulsive paramilitarization of the American bureaucracy, most recently with regard to the snipers deployed by the Bureau of Land Management in a cattle-grazing dispute. [Emphasis added.]
In 2009, President Obama promised us a civilian national security force.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2yGzHfy7s] That is one promise that He seems to be trying to keep.
Today in America there are over 120,000 armed federal agents who work for 40 different agencies. FOX News reported:
The recent uproar over armed EPA agents descending on a tiny Alaska mining town is shedding light on the fact that 40 federal agencies – including nearly a dozen typically not associated with law enforcement — have armed divisions.
The agencies employ about 120,000 full-time officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests, according to a June 2012 Justice Department report.
Though most Americans know agents within the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons carry guns, agencies such as the Library of Congress and Federal Reserve Board employing armed officers might come as a surprise.
The incident that sparked the renewed interest and concern occurred in late August when a team of armed federal and state officials descended on the tiny Alaska gold mining town of Chicken, Alaska.
The Environmental Protection Agency, whose armed agents in full body armor participated, acknowledged taking part in the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force investigation, which it said was conducted to look for possible violations of the Clean Water Act.
Armed federal agents at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada, April 2014. (Natural News)
That article is mainly about the Feds, but the militarized Federal attack on Mr. Bundy's ranch was hardly unique in other respects. According to John Fund, writing an article titled The United States of SWAT at the National Review Organization,
“Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” journalist Radley Balko writes in his 2013 book Rise of the Warrior Cop. “The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.” [Emphasis added.] The proliferation of paramilitary federal SWAT teams inevitably brings abuses that have nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism. Many of the raids they conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations. [Emphasis added.] . . . . Since 9/11, the feds have issued a plethora of homeland-security grants that encourage local police departments to buy surplus military hardware and form their own SWAT units. By 2005, at least 80 percent of towns with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 people had their own SWAT team. The number of raids conducted by local police SWAT teams has gone from 3,000 a year in the 1980s to over 50,000 a year today. [Emphasis added.] Once SWAT teams are created, they will be used. Nationwide, they are used for standoffs, often serious ones, with bad guys. But at other times they’ve been used for crimes that hardly warrant military-style raids. Examples include angry dogs, domestic disputes, and misdemeanor marijuana possession. In 2010, a Phoenix, Ariz., sheriff’s SWAT team that included a tank and several armored vehicles raided the home of Jesus Llovera. The tank, driven by the newly deputized action-film star Steven Seagal, plowed right into Llovera’s house. The incident was filmed and, together with footage of Seagal-accompanied immigration raids, was later used for Seagal’s A&E TV law-enforcement reality show. [Emphasis added.]
The Washington Establishment treats "domestic terrorists" -- those who responded to grossly excessive Federal Bureau of Land Management force at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada -- as no less dangerous than Islamist Jihadists. Perhaps they and their kind are viewed as even more dangerous to the Washington Establishment, few members of which acknowledge Islamists as our common enemy. That may explain the contempt the Establishment has for the Bundy Ranch "domestic terrorists" and everything for which they stand.
Is more of the same coming? Courtesy of the Forest Service in New Mexico? Perhaps not until Federal overreaches at the Bundy Ranch have been forgotten sufficiently for salami tactics to work. Will all be well when the United Nations authorizes and supports continuing land grabs pursuant to Agenda 21 "environmental" dictates? If the International Community demands "it," whatever "it" is must be good. After all, it's the International Community -- not a bunch of rabidly violent conservative terrorists.
Russia
A perceptive article at PJ Tatler summarizes President Obama's current relations with Russia's Putin. It begins,
Oh yes, they’re the great pretenders! Though seemingly at odds, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have much more in common than it appears, both having become lost in a world of self-delusion. Putin pretends he hasn’t alienated the entire civilized world with his barbaric aggression against smaller neighbors, and Obama pretends his failed policies haven’t been key in giving Putin the chance to do so. [Emphasis added.]
A remarkable report in the New York Times reveals that Obama has now decided to “write off” America’s relationship with Russia and embark upon a new cold war, focusing on the time-honored principle of containment to guide it.
The article ends,
Putin has total control over Russian TV news, and with no opposition from Obama he is rapidly creating a neo-Soviet surveillance state he can use to control every aspect of Russian society. As a result, even though the Putin economy is headed for disaster and the nation is increasingly isolated from the civilized world, Putin’s poll numbers remain lofty.
Putin may have "total control" over the Russian media. However, the "legitimate" media in the United States of Obama have relinquished very substantial control to President Obama and He seems to be getting more. The thoughts expressed between the beginning and end of the PJ Tatler article are also well worth considering -- and not only in the context of Russia.
Israel
The United States of Obama tries very hard, and often successfully, to dictate what Israel must do internally through the Obama-Kerry "peace process." It demands that Israel appease her Palestinian enemies by making major concessions merely to have the process continue. "Peace process" appeasements by Israel, like Iran nuke process appeasements by P5+1, have themselves become goals rather than ways to achieve their ostensible goals.
Appeasement is an old story but we tend to ignore history. As we do so, the Gathering Storm intensifies; it does not ignore us, no matter how blissfully we try to ignore it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQtJVjVtVLM?feature=player_detailpage]
Largely because of demands made by President Obama and Secretary Kerry that she support the "peace process" by appeasing those who desire only her death, Israel has already released many convicted Palestinian terrorists. Unlike the Bundy Ranch Bunch, they are real terrorists, who murder others to achieve their religious/ideological goals. They have concealed neither their motivations nor their goals; they are proud of them and will persist until their dream of a Palestine including all of Israel, sans Jews, Christians and all other heretics, has been achieved.
Remember the Fogel Family? Most Israelis do and non-Israelis who reject tyranny should as well.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Xs-sB0P4k]
The Palestinians who bravely slaughtered the Fogel family were considered great heroes.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cotwZxJdaeg]
Here's a link to an article about another Palestinian hero, Issa Abd Rabbo, who was convicted of murdering two Israelis, about which he bragged in this video.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFSW9A5ll1c]
A "political prisoner," beloved of his fellow Palestinian "peace loving" heroes and their many admirers, he was unjustly deprived while in jail of his human right to collect postage stamps efficiently -- clearly a disproportionate penalty for merely murdering a couple of Israelis. According to a Palestinian Media Watch translation,
he Al Hayat al Jadida, a PA daily newspaper, in an April 8 interview, ‘I’m proud of the stamps I collected in prison, but it was difficult for me to pursue [my] hobby in prison, because there were many restrictions, few letters arrived, and the quality of the stamps. Prison also affects our hobbies, and I had no special albums to put the stamps in properly, so I put them in an envelope — the same one that left prison with me.’”
“I have resumed my hobby of stamp collecting with enthusiasm, to make up for what I lost during my time in prison…” Abd Rabbo continued.
“I asked each prisoner to save the envelope for me so I could cut out the stamp or stamps attached to it. During my long time in prison, I collected 100 stamps, which accompanied me whenever I moved between nearly all of the occupation’s prisons…”
Abd Rabbo and other released murderers were welcomed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as “heroes.” [Emphasis added.]
In an article titled Peace without normalization is not peace, Anne writes from Israel,
Well-meaning do-gooders (and plenty of not-so-well-meaning meddlers) constantly prod Israel to talk to the Palestinians and concede huge tangible assets for the sake of a
peacepiece of paper. They try to encourage Israel by saying that “you make peace with your enemies, not with your friends”. But this is not true. You make peace with your enemies after they have decided to stop being your enemies, after they have given up attempting to destroy you, and after they accept your right to exist as a free and independent nation, and not while they are still trying to delegitimize you. [Emphasis in original.]These are just two small examples of all that is wrong with the lopsided “peace” negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. These are besides the preposterous demands made by Abbas for him to agree to continue talking.
There is lots more to cover: Britain and multiculturalism for example:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FXH2sIEF6I]
The Muslim Brotherhood in American politics? Seems like a great idea.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86szJ7mDYUI]
New "hate speech" bills pending in both houses of the Congress -- why not? And, of course, the politics of race.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZGfKbA2oBY]
This article is already too long so I'll stop after one more video:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2eh6f5Go0?feature=player_detailpage]
"Our" Government can and will do whatever pleases it, unless we stop it from transforming "our" country -- and others -- to conform to President Obama's warped notions of "fairness" and "social justice." We, and to the extent that they are able like-minded citizens of other nations, had better try very hard to make it stop, soon. It will become increasingly difficult later, until it eventually becomes impossible. Doing anything important on November 4th? There might be something helpful to do on that day. It should at least be worth trying. If not now, When? If not us, who?
I think you've put your finger on it, and it was the genius of our founding fathers and our ancestors before them to recognize this.
There can be democracy without individual rights, classical Athens being a prime example. The individual citizen there had no rights that couldn't be overridden by a vote of the assembly.
The genius of our forefathers was to combine democracy (government by the people) with a limitation on gov't power, that limitation being individual rights.
Obama and Harry Reid's gov't can still be called a representative democracy, since we still have the vote. But Obama and Harry Reid want no limits on that gov't's power, so that the people's vote has become merely a choosing of masters, as our former system of limited gov't/ individual rights is replaced by a system of unlimited gov't.
I don’t think we have a democracy... more of a malfunctioning giant government system with occasional voting inputs which shuffle the chairs on the Titanic’s deck, so to speak.
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