Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 14, 2008

The proliferation of no-knock police raids does nothing to improve the safety of law-abiding citizens. But it is making matters easier for criminals.

In early February, two men identifying themselves as narcotics agents raided a home in Gadsen, Alabama, confiscating two guns and seizing 40 pain pills. When residents called the police the following day, they learned that the men were robbers posing as police and carefully mimicking the increasingly common tactics used in no-knock raids.

Radley Balko, an analyst for the Cato Institute, has documented ?dozens of examples of crooks pretending to be cops? in order to gain access to the homes of their victims.

The Gadsen police told citizens to ?contact a local police department? if they doubt the identity of someone claiming to be an officer. But it's difficult to do this when the armed men in question have forced their way into your home and are holding you at gunpoint.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 13, 2008

In 1999, Russia's secret police, successors to the notorious KGB, created a program to carry out the real-time surveillance of electronic communications without a warrant.

Russian privacy activist Anatoly Levenchuk explains that agreements were made between the KGB and telecommunications companies permitting the installation of monitoring devices; this way, Levenchuk noted, ?the [KGB] can insist that it is receiving `voluntary' cooperation ... and ... merely assisting [companies] in their efforts at `self-regulation.'?

When the Russian press revealed the surveillance program, the KGB defended it as a means of protecting the country from terrorists and international gangsters.

The Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping initiative is a near-duplicate of the KGB program. Like its Russian counterpart, the Bush surveillance program depends on cooperation of telecom companies to get around existing laws and constitutional safeguards.

The administration wants Congress to grant immunity to the cooperating telecom firms, and to make the eavesdropping system permanent. The KGB would certainly approve.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 12, 2008

The most destructive natural force known to man is the cosmic phenomenon called a black hole -- a gravity well so powerful that nothing can escape. Its boundary ? a point of no return -- is called the ?event horizon.?

We may have already passed the event horizon of a world banking collapse that may create a global economic black hole.

In January, world stock markets lost a total of $5.2 trillion, largely due to the unwinding of the US mortgage bond market.

On January 14, the FDIC published updated rules for reimbursing depositors in the event of a bank failure. Financial analyst Mike Whitney observes that ?the FDIC has begun the `death watch' on the many banks ... currently drowning in their own red ink.?

Gerard Cassidy of the RBC Capital Markets group predicts that as many as one in 57 US banks could fail by 2010.

What's it like to fall into an economic black hole? We may soon find out.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 11, 2008

In recent years, public-private partnerships have proliferated in the realm of national security.

Blackwater, a private security firm, has deployed tens of thousands of mercenaries to Iraq, as well as post-Katrina New Orleans. Blackwater mercenaries are effectively immune to criminal or civil prosecution.

A Halliburton Corporation subsidiary called KBR has been entrusted with many logistical tasks in support of the Iraq occupation. Two women employed by KBR have come forward with corroborated accounts of being sexually assaulted by company officials. But KBR, like Blackwater, is insulated from criminal and civil liability.

In recent days we've learned that the FBI has a 23,000-member private subsidiary called InfraGard. Its members are encouraged to act as the eyes and ears of the government, and have been told that they would be authorized to shoot to kill in the event of martial law.

What we're seeing is not privatization, but the entrenchment of what Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini called the ?corporate state.?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 8, 2008

FBI Special Agent Mark Lundgren explains that each of the Bureau's 102 Joint Terrorism Task Forces is governed by Dick Cheney's ?One Percent Doctrine? -- that is, if there is just a one percent chance that a terrorist attack might occur, ?then we have to treat our response as if there were a 100 percent chance.?

But the FBI manipulates the odds somewhat by keeping more than 4,000 paid informants on its payroll, many of whom act as provocateurs. One suitable example is William Chrisman, whose career as an FBI informant-provocateur is profiled in the current issue of Rolling Stone.

The same article describes the recent acquittal of the ?Liberty City Seven? on charges they plotted to bomb Sears Tower in Chicago. The jury agreed with the defense argument that the supposed terrorist conspiracy was ?written, produced, directed, choreographed and stage-designed by the United States government.?

To some extent, the Joint Terrorism Task Forces aren't fighting terrorism, so much as manufacturing it.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 7, 2008

Speaking at the 1980 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan condemned a common form of political idolatry he called ?`Trust Me' Government?:

?`Trust me' government is government that asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what?s best for us.?

In his keynote address to the 2004 Republican Convention, former Georgia Governor Zell Miller, after describing his hopes for his great-grandchildren, declared: ?There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George W. Bush.?

This wasn't facile campaign rhetoric. The Bush administration and its congressional allies have fitted the presidency with numerous powers more suitable to a dictator ? such as the power to order warrantless wiretaps, to detain individuals indefinitely without trial, to order torture, and to nullify provisions of laws he finds inconvenient.

This is precisely the kind of ?`Trust Me' Government? Reagan condemned.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 6, 2008

Seven years ago, George W. Bush became the first US president to propose a two trillion dollar federal budget. This week he became the first to present a three trillion dollar budget.

During that same period, notes the January 24 issue of Manufacturing & Technology News, US household debt nearly doubled, and federal debt increased by more than two-thirds. Combined public and private debt now stand at 168 percent of our Gross Domestic Product.

Median household incomes fell by two percent, and the savings rate went negative for the first time since before the Great Depression. Job growth has been stagnant, and more than one-quarter of the new jobs created since 2001 are in the government sector, where hiring has been particularly brisk for prison guards and long-term health care workers.

Until recently, cheap credit masked these dismal realities.

We must regain control over the government that is spending us into oblivion, and take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 5, 2008

In ways too numerous to count and too common for most people to notice, the government that rules us acts on assumptions derived directly from the Communist Manifesto.

Sure, we grumble occasionally about the burdens imposed by the income tax, or puzzle over the bizarre injustice of the inheritance tax, or complain about problems with the government-run school system.
But we rarely, if ever, stop to think that these and many other policies woven into our daily lives are crimson threads of the same kind used by Marx and Engels to weave their own totalitarian tapestry.

Recently, presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton casually explained that her health care plan would involve ?going after people's wages [and] automatic enrollment? in order to bring about universal insurance coverage. Garishment of wages to pay for socialized medicine would be overtly totalitarian, but it wouldn't be a significant departure from many impositions of the sort we currently endure.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1yUsYIk2EM

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 4, 2008

If you're the victim of an assault, it might be best not to call the police. You could be assaulted a second time by the police, arrested, strip-searched, and left naked in a holding cell for six hours. This is what happened to Salem, Ohio resident Hope Steffey.

When the police arrived, they asked to see Hope's driver's license. She mistakenly handed them the license that belonged to her late sister, which Hope keeps as a memento. The deputy refused to return the license when Hope realized her mistake. She was arrested for ?disorderly conduct? and ?resisting arrest.? At the jail, seven deputies of both sexes violently disrobed her as she shrieked in horror. She suffered a cracked tooth, bruises, and a back injury.

Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson insists that the sexual assault on the slender, terrified 46-year-old woman was necessary in order to protect his officers and other prisoners.

When the police become predatory assailants, what number do we call for help?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 1, 2008

Last July, Dibor Roberts, a 47-year-old nurse from Sedona, Arizona, was driving home on a deserted rural road when what appeared to be a police car pulled behind her with running lights flashing.

Worried about being waylaid in a desolate area by a criminal posing as a cop, Roberts slowed down but didn't stop, looking for a well-lighted place. She also took out her cell phone to call the local police. This is the conduct recommended by many police departments in such circumstances.

However, Deputy Jeff Neunum forced Roberts off the road, shattered her car window, seized her cellphone, threw her to the ground and cuffed her behind the back. Roberts was charged with unlawfully fleeing a police officer ? despite the fact that she had slowed down ? and resisting arrest, both felonies. She was in jail for six days.

Sheriff Steven Waugh insists that the Deputy's needless violence was ?by the book.? Which makes perfect sense, assuming that the book in question is Mein Kampf.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.