Tag Archives: Tyranny

Battlefield America: The Ongoing War on the American People, John W. Whitehead

Posted on August 21, 2018 | 1 comment

John W. Whitehead has been a stalwart, nonpartisan chronicler of our government’s descent into tyranny. From Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.”—John Salter

Police in a small Georgia town tasered a 5-foot-2, 87-year-old woman who was using a kitchen knife to cut dandelions for use in a recipe. Police claim they had no choice but to taser the old woman, who does not speak English but was smiling at police to indicate she was friendly, because she failed to comply with orders to put down the knife.

Police in California are being sued for using excessive force against a deaf 76-year-old woman who was allegedly jaywalking and failed to halt when police yelled at her. According to the lawsuit, police searched the woman and her grocery bags. She was then slammed to the ground, had a foot or knee placed behind her neck or back, handcuffed, arrested and cited for jaywalking and resisting arrest.

In Alabama, police first tasered then shot and killed an unarmed man who refused to show his driver’s license after attempting to turn in a stray dog he’d found to the local dog shelter. The man’s girlfriend and their three children, all under the age of 10, witnessed the shooting.

In New York, Customs and Border Protection officers have come under fire for subjecting female travelers (including minors) to random body searches that include strip searches while menstruating, genital probing, and forced pelvic exams, X-rays and intravenous drugs at area hospitals.

At a California gas station, ICE agents surrounded a man who was taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their baby, demanding that he show identification. Having forgotten his documents at home in the rush to get to the hospital, the husband offered to go get them. Refusing to allow him to do so, ICE agents handcuffed and arrested the man for not having an ID with him, leaving his wife to find her way alone to the hospital. The father of five, including the newborn, has lived and worked in the U.S. for 12 years with his wife.

These are not isolated incidents.

These cases are legion.

To continue reading: Battlefield America: The Ongoing War on the American People

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Government, Law, Military, Surveillance, Technology

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A Terrorist by Any Other Name, by L. Reichard White

Posted on March 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

Governments are by far the deadliest institution on the planet. So why does nobody label them terrorists? from L. Reichard White at lewrockwell.com:

Newspapers and other publications keep what they call “stylebooks” to let the folks who write for them know what’s acceptable to the publication and what isn’t. Many factors determine the rules that are included in a stylebook, many, but not all of them, economic.

What these stylebooks reveal, however, is much more than just preferences and economics. What is a “terrorist” for example – – –

For the record, here’s the [Minnesota] Star Tribune style entry, word for word: “The Star Tribune permits the use of the word ‘terrorist’ to describe nongovernmental groups that carry out attacks on civilians. Other words –‘gunmen,’ ‘separatist,’ ‘rebel’ and ‘suicide bomber,’ for example –usually are more precise and therefore are generally preferred. In the case of Al-Qaida, the use of ‘terrorist network’ or similar terms is permitted. Also, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks as ‘terrorist attacks’ is permitted.” –from Minnesota startribune

So, “In the case of Al-Qaida, the use of ‘terrorist network’ or similar terms is permitted.” But, in the case of governments, apparently, the use of “terrorist,” etc. isn’t permitted.

It seems that if a “governmental group/network” does exactly what a non-governmental “terrorist group/network” does — “carrying out attacks on civilians,” etc. — it isn’t called “terrorist.”

Can you think of any “governmental group/network” currently carrying out attacks on civilians?

Thought so. Me too.

So, we know that governments attack civilians – – – regularly. And the results are predictable and the magnitude horrendous. Just to start with – – –

New York, NY – An early July column in the Wall Street Journal by R.J. Rummel confirmed what most libertarians already know: that government is the biggest scourge of mankind. According to Rummel’s research, governments of all kinds … have killed 119 million people in the twentieth century. The second runner up, war (also sponsored by governments, usually) has killed “only” 35.7 million. –AMERICAN LIBERTARIAN Aug. 1986

This record (154.7 million) has been substantially “improved” since Rummel’s 1986 research —- in Afghanistan (by Russian Government), Nicaragua, Bosnia, Iraq 1991 (200,000+ by U.S. Coalition), Guatemala, Chechnya (100,000+), Somalia (by U.S. Government), Rowanda, Grenada (by U.S. Government), East Timor, Panama (by U.S. Government), Kosovo 1999 (by U.S-NATO Coalition & Yugoslav Government), Yugoslavia 1999 (7000+ by U.S.-NATO Coalition), Waco, Texas (60+ including 23 children by U.S. Government), Afghanistan 2002 (4000+ by American Government), Palestine (Israeli Government), Iraq 2003-05 (100,000+ by U.S. led “Coalition”), etc.

To continue reading: A Terrorist by Any Other Name

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From Over The Transom, by a WRSA reader

Posted on March 25, 2018 | 1 comment

This is why we have the Second Amendment. If you read one SLL article tonight, make it this one. From a Western Rifle Shooters Association reader:

A reader sends:

I have little medical training as it is not my field, however I have probably seen more human anatomy than most doctors… not less than multiple thousands of bodies on the ground and parts of them hanging from bushes, on rocks and lodged in tree limbs. Images of 206 dead lining both sides of a makeshift airstrip in the middle of nowhere once… most killed in about 45 minutes by a tribe with weapons, against a tribe without.

I know there were that many because I walked the airstrip drinking a beer and smoking cigarettes counting them. So many bodies, some ripped to pieces by automatic weapons fire, that there was a separate pile for arms and legs not matched to the dead. The elderly… men, women, children… babies. Maddening.

Firearms and 2nd Amendment rights are a contentious and volatile issue in America… but unknown to most Americans it is a pressing issue in other countries. I have lived in and spent extended periods of time in many countries. Usually covertly in the back bush illegally in countries.

The firearm is an issue overseas, not because of the many weapons there and carnage from, but who does have them, and the general populace not having them. Denial of a basic human right… that of effective self-defense… usually against government.

“No one needs an ‘assault rifle’!” so the saying goes. “No one needs ‘large capacity ammunition magazines’!” is the mantra. “Evaluate owners, legislate, restrict… confiscate!” …is the rallying cry of ‘progressives.’ But, I have witnessed first-hand how the initial simple registration and required legal permissions gave birth to total confiscation and allowed another… in a never-ending line of corrupt, violent, brutal and repressive police states in the world… to come to fruition.

White and black living in terror daily of being arrested with impunity, jailed, starved, tortured to death and flat out killed. Children tortured and mutilated in front of their helpless parents by governments the outside world supports… in prisons built with foreign aid by countries that loathe most of the donors. If the souls of those people could speak.

When a veteran BBC cameraman, accustomed to the carnage of battle zones, vomits while filming the remains of a tortured political opponent found in a ditch, it gives you an idea of the degree of barbarism that exists there. It gives new meaning to the term “get medieval on them.”

To continue reading: From Over The Transom

 

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Morality

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The Sandcastle, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on September 12, 2017 | Leave a comment

Democracies deteriorate to repression, tyranny, and dictatorship. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

The decline from democracy to tyranny is both a natural and inevitable one.

That’s not a pleasant thought to have to consider, but it’s a fact, nonetheless. In every case, a democracy will deteriorate as the result of the electorate accepting the loss of freedom in trade for largesse from their government. This process may be fascism, socialism, communism, or a basket of “isms,” but tyranny is the inevitable endgame of democracy. Like the destruction of a sandcastle by the incoming tide, it requires time to transpire, but in time, the democracy, like the sandcastle, will be washed away in its entirety.

Why should this be so? Well, as I commented some years ago,

The concept of government is that the people grant to a small group of individuals the ability to establish and maintain controls over them. The inherent flaw in such a concept is that any government will invariably and continually expand upon its controls, resulting in the ever-diminishing freedom of those who granted them the power.

Unfortunately, there will always be those who wish to rule, and there will always be a majority of voters who are complacent enough and naïve enough to allow their freedoms to be slowly removed. This adverb “slowly” is the key by which the removal of freedoms is achieved.

The old adage of “boiling a frog” is that the frog will jump out of the pot if it’s filled with hot water, but if the water is lukewarm and the temperature is slowly raised, he’ll grow accustomed to the temperature change and will inadvertently allow himself to be boiled.

Let’s have a look at Thomas Jefferson’s assessment of this technique:

Even under the best forms of Government, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Mister Jefferson was a true visionary. He knew, even as he was penning the Declaration of Independence and portions of the Constitution, that his proclamations, even if they were accepted by his fellow founding fathers, would not last. He recommended repeated revolutions to counter the inevitable tendency by political leaders to continually vie for the removal of the freedoms from their constituents.

To continue reading: The Sandcastle

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He Said That? 6/7/16

Posted on June 7, 2016 | 1 comment

From Eugene Debs (1855–1926), American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States, Canton, OH, Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918:

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.

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He Said That? 5/15/16

Posted on May 15, 2016 | 1 comment

From C.S. Lewis,  (1898-1963), Irish author, scholar of medieval literature, and Christian apologist, God in the Dock (1948):

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

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He Said That? 4/28/16

Posted on April 28, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), French political thinker and historian, Democracy in America, Volume II, Book 4 (1840):

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

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New Eye-Opening Documentary Completely Exposes Barbaric Saudi Regime, by Michaela Whitton

Posted on March 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

SLL recently posted “A woman beheaded in the road. Five headless corpses hanging from cranes.” The story was about a new documentary, Exposure: Saudi Arabia Uncovered that exposes the day-to-day horrors and terrors of life in Saudi Arabia. The following article from Michaela Whitton at the theantimedia.org discusses the documentary and how it was filmed using hidden cameras in Saudi Arabia. Here is the documentary on YouTube, followed by the Anti Media article.

(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — A British television crew recently filmed an undercover documentary in Saudi Arabia in an attempt to penetrate the world’s most secretive and murderous regime. Working with a team of undercover Saudi cameramen, the one hour eye-opener, Exposure: Saudi Arabia Uncovered, was broadcast by ITV on March 22. It reveals the hidden side of the regime, which buys billions of pounds worth of British arms, accepts training from British security forces, sells oil back to the U.K., and enjoys nothing less than red carpet treatment from the British royal family.

After setting up a fake company, the crew flew into Riyadh posing as businessmen, wielding carefully concealed hidden cameras. For cover, they said they were in the country to attend a business conference on cyber-security. What they discovered was a state that beheads — and even crucifies — its citizens; where women lack basic human rights and its children are indoctrinated. Patrolled by religious police, citizens are tortured, imprisoned, and sentenced to death for writing blogs and questioning authority. It sounds like the Islamic State, but it’s not — it’s the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And it is fully propped up by Europe and the United States.

The mind-boggling documentary reveals how Saudi Arabia’s money and Wahhabi ideology has helped drive terrorism around the world. Shining a light on Britain’s shoulder-rubbing with the ruling royals, the production has pushed the U.K. government to admit they have provided more than 300 Saudi police officers with training since 2012.

“A necessary evil”

In January 2015, the Union Jack flew at half-mast at Westminster as a mark of respect for the death of Saudi ruler, King Abdullah. During the same month, young Saudi blogger Raif Badawi received 50 lashes in public. Convicted of insulting Islam after blogging about his government and religion, quoting Albert Camus, he wrote:

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Comments like this earned the father of three 1,000 total lashes and ten years in prison.

“We don’t approve of what Saudi Arabia does, we don’t like what they do, but they are a necessary evil in combating other regimes,” former Head of International Terrorism, Colonel Richard Kemp, told ITV.
“And of course, ultimately they have a lot of oil,” he added.

Undercover cameraman Yasser is from an underground network of Saudi activists. He risked life and limb to provide a window into the brutal and secretive country where the King is all powerful, journalists cannot operate without a minder, and dissent is a cardinal sin. In the country, which is home of some of Islam’s holiest sites, the Saudi state oil company is worth £7 trillion. The royal family is worth billions. In contrast, an estimated quarter of the population lives in poverty, and numerous women were filmed begging and being beaten in the streets.

To continue reading: New Eye-Opening Documentary Completely Exposes Barbaric Saudi Regime

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Enough Already! It’s Time To Send The Despicable House Of Saud To The Dustbin Of History, by David Stockman

Posted on January 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

The attached column by Pat Buchanan could not be more spot on. It slices through the misbegotten assumption that Saudi Arabia is our ally and that the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE, Spokane WA and Springfield MA have anything to do with the religious and political machinations of Riyadh and its conflicts with Iran and the rest of the Shiite world.

Nor is this only a recent development. In fact, for more than four decades Washington’s middle eastern policy has been dead wrong and increasingly counter-productive and destructive. The crisis provoked this past weekend by the 30-year old hot-headed Saudi prince, who is son of the King and heir to the throne, only clarified what has long been true.

That is, Washington’s Mideast policy is predicated on the assumption that the answer to high oil prices and energy security is deployment of the Fifth Fleet to the Persian Gulf. And that an associated alliance with one of the most corrupt, despotic, avaricious and benighted tyrannies in the modern world is the lynch pin to regional stability and US national security.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The House of Saud is a scourge on mankind that would have been eliminated decades ago, save for Imperial Washington’s deplorable coddling and massive transfer of arms and political support.

To continue reading: It’s Time To Send The Despicable House Of Saud To The Dustbin Of History

See also “With Friends Like These...” and “Who Needs Enemies?“

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, War

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Read the Powerful Saudi Arabia Article Censored by Al-Jazeera, by Michael Krieger

Posted on January 5, 2016 | 1 comment

From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

On December 3rd, a month before Saudi Arabia carried out it largest mass execution since 1980 — subsequently setting the region on fire — Arjun Sethi wrote an article for Al-Jazeera titled: Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As An Excuse for Human Rights Abuses. According to Cora Currier at the Intercept:

Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar appear to have blocked the article outside of the United States because it is critical of an ally of Qatar.

Naturally, this makes you want to drop everything and read it. So here are some excerpts courtesy of the Intercept:

Reports emerged last week that Saudi Arabia intends to imminently execute more than 50 people on a single day for alleged terrorist crimes.

All the convictions were obtained through unfair trials marred by human and civil rights violations, including in some cases torture, forced confessions and lack of access to counsel. Each defendant was tried before the Specialized Criminal Court, a counterterrorism tribunal controlled by the Ministry of Interior that has few procedural safeguards and is often used to persecute political dissidents. Lawyers are generally prohibited from counseling their clients during interrogation and have limited participatory rights at trial. Prosecutors aren’t even required to disclose the charges and relevant evidence to defendants.

The problems aren’t just procedural. Saudi law criminalizes dissent and the expression of fundamental civil rights. Under an anti-terrorism law passed in 2014, for example, individuals may be executed for vague acts such as participating in or inciting protests, “contact or correspondence with any groups … or individuals hostile to the kingdom” or “calling for atheist thought.”

One of the defendants, Ali al-Nimr, was convicted of crimes such as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” and “going out to a number of marches, demonstrations and gathering against the state and repeating some chants against the state.” For these offenses, he has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion, with his beheaded body to be put on public display as a warning to others.

Because of these procedural and legal abominations, the planned executions for these Shia activists must not proceed. They should be retried in public proceedings and afforded due process protections consistent with international law, which includes a ban on the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18.

This deafening silence is not lost on Saudi Arabia and has emboldened its impunity. In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the kingdom’s brutal campaign against its Shia minority and political opposition has deepened. Shias have limited access to government employment and public education, few rights under the criminal justice system and diminished religious rights. Those who protest this discrimination face arbitrary trial and the prospect of execution for terrorism. Consider that Saudi Arabia has not carried out a mass execution for terrorism-related offenses since 1980, a year after an armed group occupied the Grand Mosque of Mecca.

Despite its appalling human rights record, Saudi Arabia was awarded a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council last year and this summer was selected to oversee an influential committee within the council that appoints officials to report on country-specific and thematic human rights challenges. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia has used its newfound power to thwart an international inquiry into allegations that it committed war crimes in Yemen.

To continue reading: Saudi Arabia Article Censored by Al-Jazeera

See also “With Friends Like These…” and “Who Needs Ememies“

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