Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 18, 2011

Before retiring, former Lt. Col. John Nagle collaborated with Gen. David Petraeus, the incoming CIA Director, in creating the U.S. Army?s current counter-insurgency doctrine. That doctrine, as the London Sunday Times reported last year, includes deployment of tens of thousands of special operations troops ? including 7,000 assigned to hit teams ? as well as the use of remote controlled drones to carry out targeted assassination in at least six countries.

Nagle has proudly described his handiwork as ?an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.? As national security affairs commentator Fred Branfman observes, this campaign has actually led to expanded violence and terrorism, and planted seeds from which a new crop of anti-American terrorism will sprout.

The immediate impact, Branfman continues, is the institutionalization of ?extrajudicial state killing formerly associated ? only with the Gestapo and KGB.? It is also cultivating a generation of state-licensed assassins who kill distant, anonymous people through drone strikes. ?It?s like a video game,? one drone pilot told a reporter. ?It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it?s so [blanking] cool.?

America can survive the threat of foreign terrorism ? but the home-grown ?industrial killing machine? may very well destroy us.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 15, 2011

Anyone who has dealt with common kitchen mishaps will understand that the only way to extinguish a grease fire is to smother it. In similar fashion, the only way to deal with the incendiary situation in the nation of Greece is to cut off the funding that fuels that country?s immensely corrupt welfare system.

Rather than doing so, the International Monetary Fund ? acting on behalf of the banking clique that makes huge profits on the creation and servicing of sovereign debt ? recently lavished $4.6 billion on a stopgap bailout loan to Greece. Of that amount, American tax victims paid at least $780 million ? none of which was appropriated by anyone accountable to the citizenry. This makes as much sense as using gasoline to fight a grease fire.

This variety of taxation without representation in the interest of foreign political elites and the bankers who profit from them is now routine. On June 30, the Federal Reserve ended its second round of so-called ?Quantitative Easing? ? a huge boost in the money supply supposedly intended to stimulate the economy. In fact, as financial analyst Ellen Brown points out, the entire $600 billion created by the Fed wound up in foreign banks.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 14, 2011

For a decade, we?ve been told that America s is engaged in a ?generational conflict? with Islamic terrorism.

In a sense, this is partially true. The loose aggregation of Islamic radicals conventionally referred to as ?al-Qaeda? has existed for more than a generation. However, it began its existence as an asset of the CIA, rather than an acknowledged enemy of America. What we call ?al-Qaeda? was created as a result of the CIA?s July 1979 intervention in Afghanistan, which fomented a coup intended to bring about a Soviet invasion of that country. This was proudly admitted by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in a 1998 newspaper interview.

At present, according to newly appointed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, al-Qaeda consists of ?10 or 20 remaining leaders,? and ?fewer than two dozen key operatives? scattered across Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

As commentator Glenn Greenwald points out, terrorism kills fewer Americans each year than intestinal ailments. Rather than dealing with it on a rational basis, Greenwald observes, Washington ?is doing everything possible to ensure that Terrorism remains as large a threat as possible? ? by, among other things, exaggerating it by several orders of magnitude.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 13, 2011

Palm Beach, Florida resident Commodore Bradford richly deserves to be called a pig. For several years, Bradford would visit the Hurricane Grill and Wings restaurant and assail the waitresses with the crudest sexual overtures imaginable.

On several occasions, this porcine specimen followed various waitresses around with his cell phone camera, attempting to take photos of their cleavage. He invited one waitress to have a ?threesome? with his wife. Finally, he humiliated a waitress named Stacy Sorenson by loudly asking her, in front of the customers and staff, when the two of them would have sex.

Miss Sorenson complained to the management, who did nothing to help. Finally, she prepared to file a lawsuit. The management fired the waitress, rather than banning the bully. This precipitated a lawsuit by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which accuses the restaurant of permitting Commodore Bradford to harass the waitresses.

The problem here is that Mr. Bradford is no typical bully. The 57-year-old adolescent is a deputy with the Palm Beach County Sheriff?s Office ? which would be the proper target for the EEOC?s lawsuit, were that agency actually interested in defending the weak, rather than destroying private enterprise.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 12, 2011

Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei was one of hundreds of Syrians swept up by authorities during street protests against the regime last March. Like many others, Tamer was imprisoned in a dungeon and tortured at length by the secret police.

On July 7, a former prisoner named Ibrahim Jamal al-Jahmani, who had fled to the Jordanian border, told the Associated Press that he had witnessed the torture inflicted on Tamer. Ibrahim, who was able to document his imprisonment, recounted how the victim?s body was covered in blood and contusions, as his interrogators beat him pitilessly with fists and heavy electrical cable. The assailants weren?t seeking information or even a confession; they were simply trying to force the indomitable prisoner to submit.

As they struck his head, back, feet, and genitals, the thugs in the employ of the Syrian government demanded that Tamer acknowledge Bashar Assad as his ?beloved? leader. Instead, he defiantly chanted a slogan extolling ?freedom and the love of God and our country.? Although he cried out to God and for his parents, Tamer never surrendered.

Tamer was fifteen years old. He was a man, in full.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 11, 2011

When Karin Hasemann was 16, she underwent surgery to remove a benign tumor from her brain. No discernible complications resulted from that procedure ? until six years ago, when the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (or DCF) cited that childhood trauma to justify seizing Karin?s children.

Each of Karin?s two youngest children was taken into state custody shortly after birth. Their parents haven?t seen them since 2008. To justify this abduction, the DCF has cited what it calls the doctrine of ?predictive neglect? ? which supposedly authorizes termination of parental rights on the basis of anticipated harm that may someday come to a child. Karin?s surgery was depicted as evidence of unspecified mental ?deficits.?

The father of those children was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation that resulted in a diagnosis of ?personality disorder not otherwise specified.? Since no specific affliction has been identified, he cannot be rehabilitated.

The court system terminated the couple?s parental rights, claiming that they cannot challenge the finding of neglect because they have never been custodial parents.

As long as the child-grabber bureaucracy exists, all parents and children risk falling prey to this kind of immaculate abduction under the color of supposed law.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 8, 2011

An appetite for vicarious revenge is a leading symptom of a society?s terminal descent into collectivist savagery. That appetite has been displayed by public outrage over the acquittal of Casey Anthony, who had been accused of murdering her beautiful two-year-old daughter Caylee.

As has become the custom, Casey Anthony?s trial became a ?reality TV? program. Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor turned cable news personality, skillfully manipulated public sentiment to exploit the trial for ratings. Grace is a real-life incarnation of the Dickens character Madame DeFarge, who knitted at the foot of the guillotine during the French Revolution?s reign of terror.

When Miss Anthony was acquitted, Grace took to the airwaves to assail the verdict and the jury ? rather than assailing the prosecution for failing to make its case, as Anglo-Saxon legal principles require. One syndicated conservative columnist insistedthat the Casey Anthony verdict underscores the supposed need to abolish the jury system.

America has become a country in which we permit the government to wage undeclared wars, assassinate official enemies on the president?s whim, and ignore the Constitution. Why wouldn?t a nation so inured to official lawlessness discard the jury system, as well?

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 7, 2011

Until a few years ago, Houston resident Price Leonard, a father of six children, was employed as a welder. Leonard lost his well-paid job in the economic collapse. He was able to find a position as a maintenance worker, but that job apparently pays only a fraction of what he had previously earned.

After losing their apartment, Leonard moved his family into a storage shed, which they could rent for a fraction of the cost. It has no running water, but the family was able to fit furniture, an air conditioner, a refrigerator, and two computers into their living space. Most importantly, the area was safe ? unlike the homeless shelter where the family had lived until recently.

A few days ago, a passerby saw Leonard?s children playing outdoors. Despite the fact that the youngsters appeared to be happy and well-adjusted to their circumstances, the stranger was concerned for their welfare. Rather than offering to help, the dutiful collectivist drone phoned the so-called Child Protective Services,which abducted the children from their poor -- but honest and hardworking -- parents.

The indecent eagerness of Americans to act as informants displays the ripening totalitarianism of our society.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 6, 2011

Jacob Miller, a 25-year-old resident of Pacific Grove, California, was arrested on narcotics charges on June 28. Miller lived in an apartment above his mother?s home.

When the narcotics team from the Monterey County Sheriff?s Office arrived, they were disguised as employees of the Pacific Gas and Electric utility. As the raiding party climbed the stairs, his mother received a phone call from her husband, Scott Miller. As it happens, Mr. Miller is the County Sheriff. He had been informed about the raid by Chuck Monarque, the commander of the county narcotics enforcement team.

Sheriff Miller later explained that he made the phone call ?so that if she heard them breaking in the door, she wouldn?t have a heart attack.?

Jacob Miller, once again, was arrested and charged. Yet Sheriff Miller has been accused of obstruction of justice ? presumably because he spoiled the surprise planned by the raiding party, which could have resulted in potentially fatal consequences for his wife if she had confronted them.

The scandal isn?t that Miller warned his wife; it?s that thousands of innocent people have been needlessly harmed ? or killed -- in gratuitous no-knock raids because they didn?t get a similar warning.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 5, 2011

Sergio Reyes admitted that he fatally shot Los Angeles resident Avery Cody, Jr. two years ago today. Reyes, who claimed Cody was armed, supposedly took cover behind a newspaper rack and fired his own weapon in self-defense. Reyes also claimed he never had any contact with the body.

Unfortunately Reyes?s story was contradicted by other evidence. Witnesses insist that Cody didn?t have a gun. Security video of the episode proves that Reyes did not take cover, and that he did have contact with Cody?s body. That last point is critical because it might explain the presence of a .38-cal. Revolver, which was most likely planted at the scene.

Reyes, of course, was a police officer. Cody was a 16-year-old Compton resident who was shot in the back as he fled from Reyes. Cody was never accused of a crime. After a perfunctory inquiry, the LA Sheriff?s Office found the shooting justified. Now it has offered a $500,000 taxpayer-subsidized settlement to buy off Cody?s family.

This case is just one of many illustrating the need to hold law enforcement officers to exactly the same standards of criminal and civil liability that apply to all other citizens who use deadly force.

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