Who is my brothers keeper? , in the same boat?

Another thoughtful article written by J. Vanne.

http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2013/04/are-preppers-selfish.html

Selfishness and Preparedness

Recently, a small firestorm was ignited by Valerie Lucus-McEwen, a government Emergency Management employee,  who had the temerity to accuse preparedness types of “selfishness.” While your immediate reaction may be – as mine certainly was – “Are people really and truly this thoughtless?” – this question does deserve a proper answer, particularly as those who are easily influenced by the leftist media, or who believe the state really and actually is the omniscient, omnipotent savior of  our personal and corporate lives, are actually asking this question. So, let’s examine the issue:

  

First, many preparedness types have, as part of their goal, the intent of helping neighbors and family who were unable – or unwilling – to prepare. In my own case, part of what I have in mind is assisting a large group of mentally retarded and Down’s syndrome children that my church has taken under its wing. (A group the state would do no more than “warehouse” if it were under their direction!). Not all preppers feel this way, but I would bet my bottom can of stored tuna fish there is an exceedingly large percentage of preparedness types who feel similarly.

The non-prepper is, in my experience, generally of socialist orientation. The results of this approach was tried – and found wanting - all the way back in the Pilgrim era. Many of you are aware that when the Pilgrims first arrived, they worked out of a communal system. The result was starvation and death. As this approach did not work, they then “privatized” their system – and of course flourished. You can easily research this history yourself, but if one has any experience with human nature, it is immediately apparent why this didn’t – and has never in history – worked. The issue is that human nature is imperfect and selfish, just as Adam Smith wrote about in the Wealth of Nations. A simple recognition of this basic aspect of human nature – and finding a way to work with this reality, rather than against it, provides the most good for the largest number of people – exactly as Smith wrote, and exactly as history has shown for anyone who has eyes to see. And for those of you with Judeo-Christian worldviews, this issue is why Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called Communism “a Christian heresy.” Long story short, the question is: Is man perfectible (particularly with the best and brightest, such as Hilary, George Soros, Al Gore and Obama telling – nay,forcing – us what to do!), or are all men fallible, and the dictum of Lord Acton correct that absolute power corrupts absolutely correct. There is an unbridgeable divide between these two assumptions, and this divide makes itself manifest in the Hamlet-like “to prep or not to prep” debate.

The Fleet Street Letter put this matter perspicaciously a number of years ago, and is worth quoting at length: “There are two major traditions in Western political thought. The first is Aristotelian, logical, rational, centrist, mechanistic. You concentrate power and truth in the centre and apply it outward, shaping the world according to plan. This was the guiding principle of the Roman Empire. It evolved into the Holy Roman Empire and the Church of Rome. Except for Switzerland, it has dominated politics on the continent ever since. Most recently, it has morphed into the European Union. The principle is simple – smart people can figure out how to run things, and should be allowed to do so. This was the idea behind Hillary Clinton’s health care task force (and now ObamaCare), as well as Japan, Inc. and even Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist Germany. It has animated nearly every politician (each one  of whom, as Garrison Keilor notes about Lake Woebegone children, are above average) in this century. But there is another tradition that is much less well understood. It is the tradition of the Roman Republic… of English common law… of Adam Smith and Emmanuel Kant… of Austrian School economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek and of pre-Rooseveltian American. It is organic, rather than mechanistic – the tradition of tradition, based on the recognition that people, no matter how smart, cannot replace thousands of years of accumulated experience. Experience is embodied in the evolved systems of values, customs, rules and traditions that people use to order and give meaning to their lives. A free market and a free society allow people to express these preferences, as well as allowing the process of social and civil evolution to continue. This tradition, in other words, is neither liberal nor conservative in the modern sense, but anti-political. Indeed, it is often seen as “anti-intellectual” because it denies the authority of intellectuals to tell the rest of us what to do (through the political process).”

Perhaps you, like I do, remember the “best and the brightest” who led the Vietnam war? How did that one work out? Or, if that news is too stale, perhaps you care to visit present day Detroit – which was the first city to adopt the socialist “Model Cities Program” in under Mayor Coleman Young a number of decades ago. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” was a quasi- socialist endeavor, which was intended to end poverty. You can judge for yourself what all those $9 trillion dollars spent on this “war” resulted in

Monitored all over the world

The Rest Of The World Is Absolutely Disgusted With Our Big Brother Spying Methods

 By Michael, on June 11th, 2013 

 

  

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-rest-of-the-world-is-absolutely-disgusted-with-our-big-brother-spying-methods

The rest of the world has found out that the U.S. government has been listening to their phone calls and watching what they do on the Internet and they do not like it one bit.  Outrage has been pouring in from all over the planet, and one member of the European Parliament is even comparing the NSA to the Stasi.  But instead of stepping back and reevaluating our Big Brother spying methods now that they have been revealed, Barack Obama and other leading members of Congress are defiantly declaring that there is nothing wrong with these methods and that no changes will be made.  The U.S. government is going to continue to invade the privacy of the citizens of the rest of the world as much as it possibly can, and our leaders don't seem to really care what the international response is.  And make no mistake - the goal of the U.S. intelligence community is to literally know everything about everyone.  The chief technology officer of the CIA, Gus Hunt, made the following shocking admission back in March: "We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever."  He followed that statement upwith this gem: "It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human-generated information."  In other words, they want it all, and they nearly have the capacity to gather it all already.  So where does this end?  Will the U.S. intelligence community ever be happy until they have every piece of data on every single person on the entire planet?  Do we really want a government that collects "everything" and hangs on to it "forever"?

Thanks to Edward Snowden, the rest of the globe is starting to understand the extent to which the U.S. government has been spying on them.  Needless to say, a lot of people are extremely upset about this.

In Germany (a country that knows a thing or two about Big Brother tactics), some prominent politicians are publicly denouncing the surveillance that the U.S. government has been doing on their citizens.  In fact, one German politician has accused the U.S. of employing"American-style Stasi methods"...

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially dangerous.

"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.

"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table."

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel's Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using "American-style Stasi methods".

In Italy, the government official in charge of data protection, Antonello Soro, said that the surveillance that the NSA is doing "would not be legal in Italy" and would be "contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation".

In Russia (another country with a long history of using Big Brother tactics), President Vladimir Putin has expressed significant concern about the NSA spying program and there are even rumors that Russia will be offering asylum to Edward Snowden...

Alexey Pushkov, head of the Duma's international affairs committee and a vocal US critic, said on Twitter: "By promising asylum to Snowden, Moscow has taken upon itself the protection of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysterics in the US. They only recognise this right for themselves."

He continued: "Listening to telephones and tracking the internet, the US special services broke the laws of their country. In this case, Snowden, like Assange, is a human rights activist."

But even more important than what foreign politicians think about the NSA spying scandal is what average people all over the globe think.  This scandal is causing millions of average people all over the planet to look at the United States

Constitution or State

Have we reached a point where the Constitution is optional, not just in the eyes of the government, but also the average American?

The NSA Data Mining Matters

By Tim Dunkin (Bio and Archives)  Wednesday, June 12, 2013  Comments | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us 9

It’s starting to seem that with every news cycle, a new Obama scandal is unearthed and brought to the light of day. Any one of the many scandals that have been revealed would be disturbing to anybody with any sense of fair play or desire for good government.

All of them together are making it apparent to the American people that our government is no longer merely corrupt, unethical, and of questionable constitutionality, but has crossed the line into blatant lawlessness, a frank disregard for the rule of law and open contempt for our organic and foundational law.

But it’s not just the Obama administration that we’re talking about here. Much of this current scandal is also applicable to, and indeed finds its root within, the Bush administration as well. What’s ironic is that this lawlessness has been made possible, in part, by all these “law and order conservatives” out there. You know the type I’m talking about: the people who think that talking about constitutional rights is a codeword for “supporting terrorism;” the folks who automatically trust that everything the government does is right, and who think that there could never, ever possibly be a conspiracy against the liberties of the American people. In short, the Right’s own version of the “low information voter,” the type of “conservative” that the Founding Fathers warned us about as a threat to our liberties. Thanks to them, our government has been enabled to go beyond its legitimate, constitutionally granted powers and into the realm of the panopticon state, all for the supposed purpose of “keeping us safe.”

I am all for using the technology that we have to do the job of keeping America safe—by which I mean, applying it to hostile foreigners and their contacts and/or compatriots in America for whom we have reasonable cause to be suspicious. But again, foreigners residing in other countries don’t have American constitutional rights to begin with, and Americans who are potentially collaborating with them can be dealt with via entirely constitutional means—the 4^th amendment does not prohibit all wiretapping, searching, and seizure, it merely requires that these activities be conducted under specific, relevant circumstances. Police agencies have to have a reasonable cause for suspecting that someone is engaged in illegal activity and need to be able to convince a disinterested judge to allow them to search and seize what they say they need to so as to find the specific evidence they believe will exist. If the police and other security agencies are competent at their jobs, they should be able to do this without recourse to unconstitutional “fishing expeditions” into everyone else’s private information. The problem comes when they do this, and then try to justify it with nebulous “safety” arguments.

Frankly, if I have to choose between the Constitution or the “safety” that comes from an omniscient, omnipotent state—I choose the Constitution. This should be a false dichotomy between which we should not have to choose, since we should be able to find a middle ground where security agencies can operate within the Constitution and still protect us from foreign and domestic threats.  But if we’re going to be placed in such a situation, I’m willing to take my chances with the Constitution.

Of course, the NSA surveillance scandal has provided ample opportunities for partisan hacks in both parties to distract from the real issue—that of the federal government violating the 4^th amendment and treating every single person in America as if they were potential terrorist threats who need to be recorded, tracked, and watched “for our own good”—and to use this revelation as an excuse to score some points on the other guys. “Obama did it!” “Bush did it too!” “Nyah nyah!” “Waaah!” In fact, we’re finding out that those on the Left,

Prism for the elites

MORE: NSA PRISM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/10/The-Fuse-Has-Been-Lit-Seven-Critical-Points-on-Uncle-Sam-s-Spying-Program
The sordid revelations from the Obama administration are coming at a pace that can only be described as, well, fast and furious. So let’s lay down some markers here, as a sort of road map for the months and years ahead:

First, if the PRISM program and all the rest of the government’s surveillance programs were so good and necessary, then why didn’t the feds catch the Tsarnaev brothers, who earlier this year blew up the Boston Marathon?  Or Major Hassan, the 2009 Fort Hood mass-murderer?  Or the “underwear bomber,” also from 2009, who nearly succeeded in blowing up the passenger jet flying into Detroit?  

Second, if and when everything is revealed about PRISM and all the rest, it’s likely that we will learn of important and inculpating connections between the National Security Agency (NSA), on the one hand, and many civilian agencies, on the other.  
I am not just referring to Eric Holder’s Justice Department; I am also referring to the gleefully gushing leakers and win-at-any-cost politicos in the White House.  And oh yes, let’s not forget the Obama administration’s partisan allies at the IRS, as well as the Obamacare overseers at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Moreover, since we know that the IRS was eagerly willing to share secret tax information with favored private groups, we shouldn’t be surprised, in the end, to learn that NSA/PRISM material ended up in the hands of Obama friends and allies outside of the government.

Third, we now know that Silicon Valley, and the telecommunications industry, are the key

Did things change for the Better?

http://financialsense.com/contributors/jr-nyquist/the-implacable-enemy
The Implacable Enemy
Submitted by JR Nyquist on Fri, 10 Dec 2010
We don't want to believe in enemies, and if we grudgingly allow that they exist, we certainly will not admit they are implacable. It is odd, perhaps, but we live at a time in history when people believe in solutions to everything. In fact, men have solved so many problems in the last 200 years that we imagine all problems have solutions. Unfortunately, this is an error we must guard against. It is, in fact, an all-pervasive error which has serious consequences for our time.

Related to this subject, the Jerusalem Post recently published a column titled Editor's Notes: The Bleak Logic of Bennie Begin. The piece includes an interview with an Israeli politician who is unwilling to delude himself about Israel's present situation. The peace process is not going to work, Begin says. It does not take proper account of the Palestinian leadership. These sorry folk want to eradicate Israel, and the peace process is merely a cynical ploy on the part of a cynical foe. Grasping these fundamental points, Begin is a man of logic, a man of simple truth. He is not an ideologue, because ideology properly belongs to those who believe in dangerous fairy tales.

A few structural points stand out in Begin's discourse. First, people don't usually change, and that includes enemies; second, a peaceful solution is not always workable; and third, the aim of an implacable enemy is to eliminate you, and this is not merely a "problem" open to endless discussion. War is a reality, and you simply have to fight. In this situation talking to your enemy is always an exercise in self-deception. This last point has come to be universally rejected by Western politicians. They do not see how discussions of this kind effectively hypnotize the masses, and fill people's heads with false expectations. In reality, the only solution is the military solution. But those who dream of peace see military conflict as the problem.

It is no wonder that Begin was against the Oslo peace process, saying that the PLO leadership "will never change." In fact, they never have. The Palestinian leaders are implacable enemies of Israel. This is not so difficult to see, though it is difficult to admit for those who believe in peace. It is sad to say, but there cannot be a successful peace process with such an enemy. For such an enemy, peace is merely an interlude of talking, useful for setting up a future attack. And what makes the PLO implacable? The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 by a body of Palestinian representatives handpicked by the Soviet KGB. The first PLO chairman, Ahmad Shukeiri, was a KGB agent. The Soviet Bloc trained the PLO cadre, providing them with weapons and strategic guidance. The current head of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas, received his Ph.D. from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.

Sharing?: Blackmail: Reciprocity?

Fascinating. "Israel's Conflict as Game Theory," by Yisrael Aumann, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2005 for his work on analyzing conflicts using game theory. This piece was posted at Israel Defender on October 23:
 http://israeldefender.com/?p=1492
Plus comments and thoughts from other blogs


Two men--let us call them Rick and Steve-- are put in a small room containing a suitcase filled with bills totaling $100,000. The owner of the suitcase announces the following:
"I will give you the money in the suitcase under one condition...you have to negotiate an agreement on how to divide it. That is the only way I will agree to give you the money."

Rick is a rational person and realizes the golden opportunity that has fallen his way. He turns to Steve with the obvious suggestion: "You take half and I'll take half, that way each of us will have $50,000."

To his surprise, Steve frowns at him and says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt: "Look here, I don't know what your plans are for the money, but I don't intend to leave this room with less than $90,000. If you accept that, fine. If not, we can both go home without any of the money."

No Country for Silly Men

No Country for Silly Men
Submitted by JR Nyquist on Fri, 6 Aug 2010
In Cormac McCarthy's book, No Country for Old Men, a hunter stumbles across dead bodies, a stash of heroin and $2.4 million near the Mexican border. He takes the money and is ruthlessly pursued by Anton Chigurh, an expert killer with East European finesse. A local sheriff who attempts to intervene makes the following observation: "If you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics." The sheriff is troubled by America's abandonment of Christian folkways, sensing a total collapse of moral order. The storyteller knows that the world is coming to an end, and it isn't pretty.

Internal disorder is the key, but the order we are talking about isn't simply moral. It is chiefly intellectual. And we may observe the immediate result in politics. At the same time, those who would make all this about politics have failed to see that the socialist and conservative are cut from the same cloth. The conservative has nothing left to conserve. What he ultimately defends is a culture steeped in entertainment, distraction and consumption. That is what remains to him, and what effectively operates overall. One does not look back to one's ancestors, or ahead to one's posterity. We dwell in the twilight of an eternal present, which is obsessed with up-to-date news (which descends into yet another form of entertainment). Politics has become a sport where you cheer for a team, where critical sense has been supplanted by emotional affiliation. It doesn't matter that the minions of both parties are clueless, that statecraft accommodates the absurdities of Madison Avenue. When all your energy is focused on projecting an image that will impress millions of people, there is no energy left for the reality within and the danger without. The result is a hollow shell, or even worse, a human pastry filled with the spiritual equivalent of rotten custard.

A few days ago a Pentagon specialist, Keith B. Payne, testified before a U.S. Senate committee that the administration's Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty offers numerous loopholes to the Russian side. This is especially alarming because existing U.S. nuclear forces are improperly positioned. Meanwhile, Russia is bolstering its road mobile ICBM forces, developing a new strategic bomber, new ICBM forces, and a cruise missile with a 3,000+ mile range. The U.S. doesn't even possess a road mobile ICBM, and has no plans to develop new strategic forces. How can this happen? Is it the stupidity of one party over another? Here is a reminder, however, that should be noted: Both parties share the same mentality, which was molded by television instead of books, and by the experience of shopping instead of war.

The logic of going downhill, the logic of decline, entails an absolute failure to bite through. It signifies a softening. It is known, as well, that soft people no longer have the stomach for what is necessary. They are focused on shopping. What occurs is a form of denial, in which the realities of politics and war are cast aside in favor of fantasy substitutes, heavily laced with ideological logos of the kind that paralyze all thought. This intellectual failure, born out of spiritual collapse, heralds the end of rational calculation and grand strategy. One does not need strategy to win. Merely, the right kind of publicity is all-in-all sufficient. When something tangible occurs, which may be strategically fatal, the answer is to revile the opposition. There is no analysis, no judgment, no genuine fright at the prospect of death and destruction. Few are those who believe that real destruction is possible. Few suspect that weapons of mass destruction can and will be used against people who are too silly to know, and too careless to consider, who is preparing these weapons against them. Soft people imagine that such weapons cannot be used because the world would end. And nobody wants that. Here is a failure of imagination alongside a dismissal of the concept "enemy," done without any hesitation, with the survival instinct overridden by the daily corruption that attends absolute comfort. Those who are soft cannot see into an enemy that emerges from totally different conditions of life.

Grit is a requirement of attaining good, and where everything has gone soft, goodness is nowhere at hand. What vouchsafes to us something akin to Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic vision in The Road, which is nothing short of a world destroyed, is the fact that the culture -- from Left to Right -- refuses to contemplate that an impulse of self-disregard and self-annihilation (i.e., nihilism) has taken the upper hand, and under the neurotic banners of various celebrated causes, has become a cudgel in the hands of foreign strategists of whom we know almost nothing.

JR Nyquist
jrnyquist @ aol.com http://www.jrnyquist.com
Other Articles by JR Nyquist
•Clouds In My Coffee
•The Peace Fairy
•Standing Up When It's Too Late

Standing Up When It's Too Late or ? ?

Standing Up When It's Too Late
Submitted by JR Nyquist on Fri, 20 Aug 2010
There is a letter by Marcus Tullius Cicero, dated 18 December 50 B.C. This letter was written to his friend Atticus on the eve of the Roman Civil War. He wrote as follows: "The political situation alarms me deeply, and so far I have found scarcely anybody who is not for giving Caesar what he demands rather than fighting it out." To explain the situation in brief, G. Julius Caesar had demanded the right to circumvent the Roman constitution, to break laws with impunity, to extend his command over a large army by using that army to threaten the Senate of Rome. "And why should we start standing up to him now?" asked Cicero. The next day he wrote to Atticus: "We should have stood up to him [Caesar] when he was weak, and that would have been easy. Now we have to deal with eleven legions...." Though he hated the idea of civil war, the only course, said Cicero, was to follow "the honest men or whoever may be called such, even if they plunge."

And who were these "honest men"? "I don't know of any," wrote Cicero in the same letter. "There are honest individuals, but [there are no honest groups]." Then he asked rhetorically if the Senate was honest, or the tax farmers, or the capitalists. None were frightened of living under an autocracy, he lamented. The capitalists, especially, "never have objected to that, so long as they were left in peace." But civil war occurred nonetheless, because people are not free to be dishonest forever. They must admit to certain responsibilities, and oppose the advance of evil. The previous inclination to look away, to do nothing, to shrug off responsibility, proves in the end to be no more than a delaying tactic. They attempted to put off calamity, Cicero suggested, and made it all the more calamitous. That is all.

Why did the Roman Senate suddenly stand up to Caesar? What triggered their resistance? As with all free people, they began with policies of procrastination and appeasement. They hoped that the problem (i.e., Caesar) would go away. In the end, however, they discovered their mistake. Everyone still hoped for peace, though none believed it was possible. Everyone wanted to avoid war, but nobody saw a way out. Pompey stood before the Senate and gave voice to what everyone thought. "If we give Caesar the consulship, it will mean the subversion of the constitution." In other words, it would mean the end of Rome, the end of the republic, the destruction of their country.

In a fitting preface to John Dickinson's Death of a Republic, George L. Haskins wrote, "that the history of Rome is ... the history of the world, that, as all roads lead to Rome, so all history ends or begins with Rome." Why do free people fall into complacency? Why are threats ignored until the eleventh hour?

"Surely," wrote Cicero at the end of Caesar's dictatorship, "our present sufferings are all too well deserved. For had we not allowed outrages to go unpunished on all sides, it would never have been possible for a single individual to seize tyrannical power." Caesar's cause was not right, but evil, Cicero explained. "Mere confiscations of the property of individual citizens were far from enough to satisfy him. Whole provinces and countries succumbed to his onslaught, in one comprehensive universal catastrophe.." As for the city of Rome, Cicero lamented, "nothing is left -- only the lifeless walls of houses. And even they look afraid that some further terrifying attack may be imminent. The real Rome is gone forever."

Republics are slow to defend themselves against enemies that advance, like Caesar, under camouflage. But make no mistake, republics always defend. Groups and categories of men may not be honest or brave, but when they are finally confronted with the truth -- as individuals -- they see no other course. They stand up and fight. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Caesar was struck down in the Senate and killed by thrusting daggers.



"The Death of Julius Caesar," by Vincenzo Camuccini, 1798

It is all too true, of course. "We should have stood up to him when he was weak," Cicero lamented. The problem with republican government is its tardiness; or rather, tardiness in the face of danger. As Machiavelli wrote,

The institutions normally used by republics are slow in functioning. No assembly or magistrate can do everything alone. In many cases, they have to consult with one another, and to reconcile their diverse views takes time. Where there is a question of remedying a situation that will not brook delay, such a procedure is dangerous.
Machiavelli concluded, therefore, "that republics in imminent danger, having no recourse to dictatorship ... will always be ruined when some grave misfortune befalls them." This is the weakness of republican government. Here is the ground on which it dies. An obvious threat, like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor is not the greatest danger. It is the subtle, camouflaged threat, that creeps up from behind. It is this camouflage that gives reluctant men a way out. "We need not fight. We need not make a fuss. There is nothing to fear."

When this is the prevailing view, people who understand a given threat may ask: "What is to be done?"

As long as we are isolated individuals, there is nothing to do. The individual may be honest with himself, but groups are not honest. What prevails overall is an optimistic dismissal. "The threat isn't real." This is how Hitler got so far. This is how Communism took over so many countries, and continues today under camouflage. There is nothing the individual can do that will sway the crowd. And as we are a republic, our political system operates according to the psychology of a crowd. The majority are caught up in the fads and media trends of the moment. Cynical and empty publicity characterizes much of our public discourse.

Are the Russians and Chinese arming themselves against us? Is Venezuela becoming a military bulwark for Communism in Latin America? Is Mexico being destabilized by the Russian mafia (via the Mexican mafia)? Has Canada been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence allied with Chinese organized crime? Are socialist revolutionaries inside the U.S. government subverting the nation's nuclear deterrent, foreign policy, and border security?

The crowd says "no" because that is what they want to believe. But one day the country will awaken. Then, and only then, Americans will stop going along as if nothing serious hangs over them. Will it be too late? Perhaps it will be too late to save the republic. But it will not be too late to save the country.

JR Nyquist
jrnyquist @ aol.com http://www.jrnyquist.com
Other Articles by JR Nyquist
•Clouds In My Coffee
•The Peace Fairy
•No Country for Silly Men

Clouds in My Coffee, Fear to Fear

Clouds In My Coffee
Submitted by JR Nyquist on Fri, 1 Oct 2010
The leading hit song in 1973 was Carly Simon's You're So Vain. It's about disappointed love, and contains the following line at the heart of the song: "I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee...." Last month the Center for Security Policy presented the political equivalent of Simon's song to the national security establishment, titled Shariah, the Threat to America; An Exercise in Competitive Analysis, report of Team 'B' II, which touches many a cloud in our national coffee.

The Team B Report doesn't walk into the party as if onto a yacht, with its hat strategically dipped below one eye; and there isn't an apricot scarf. In fact, there's no concern for fashion of any kind. The vanities of political correctness, multiculturalism, and the lingua franca of self-abnegating tolerance do not appear. We are in a war for our existence, says Team B. We are fighting a subversive and well-organized subset of Muslims. "In keeping with Article VI of the Constitution, [we need to] extend bans currently in effect that bar members of hate groups ... from holding positions of trust in [government]."

But the national security establishment couldn't possibly agree with this. For them, it is unacceptable to identify America's enemies or to deny Muslims coveted posts. Opinion leaders like journalist Fareed Zakaria, as well as President Barack Obama, would rather talk about tolerance and inclusion. After all, if we don't embrace Muslims we will offend them. In that event, the next terrorist attack really will be our fault. And besides, a xenophobic display would damage our position overseas. Here is the main and immediate objection to Team B. As Zakaria explained in The Post-American World: America lacks legitimacy, unlike the rock singer Bono who excels because he is able to "capture the intellectual and moral high ground."

Instead of bogus national power based on military capabilities, we can found our security on the moral high ground, on vanity. Who needs to think of enemies, or the kind of vigilance required in preparing for war? We can do what Denmark, Luxembourg and the Baltic States did in 1940. And to do this all-the-better, we must follow Zakaria's suggestions. We must avoid publicly naming our enemies since this will only serve to unite them into a more compact mass. "Stop cowering in fear," warned Zakaria. Fear is the enemy. There is nothing to fear but fear itself, said FDR. There is nothing to fear because, as President Barack Obama recently told Bob Woodward, "We can absorb [another] terrorist attack...." If thousands die, if skyscrapers fall, if the Pentagon burns -- absorb it! Get over it! Grow up! America's strength is found in its tolerance, not in its ability to strike back.

But before Zakaria and Obama can fly off to Nova Scotia for a total eclipse of the sun, we should consider Team B's comeback. First, the issue at hand is not a matter of a few thousand dead or a few tumbled skyscrapers. It is a matter of life and death for an entire nation; because the United States is in a struggle for its existence. The enemy adheres to an "all encompassing Islamic political-military-legal doctrine known as shariah" which aims at global Islamic supremacy. Of course, a large number of Muslims don't follow the directives of shariah. On the other hand, a large number agree that they ought to. This nuance shouldn't be passed over in silence. Furthermore, as Muslims flood into the United States to live and work, we find ourselves unable to distinguish the moderates from the radicals. According to Team B: "the most difficult attack to defend against is the one that comes from inside the defensive perimeter...." The Report continues, "That is the situation of America today. We have an enemy inside our perimeter." Millions of Muslims live and work in America today. Which of these are enemies, and which are friends? The President says it doesn't matter because we can absorb an attack. Zakaria says it doesn't matter, because our best defense is to let everyone in (and include everyone). But is this really a defense? Or is it clouds in our coffee?

Defectors from the Muslim Brotherhood have already attempted to warn the American people that the Brotherhood seeks to destroy the United States Constitution and replace it with shariah. "These brave men," says the Team B report, "are helping to define the enemy." But the American establishment doesn't want to listen. They do not want definitions. They want inclusion, tolerance, and a blurring of every line of demarcation. They don't want to identify Islam with the cause of the enemy. They don't want to address the issue of forced marriages, honor killings, female genital mutilation, polygamy and domestic abuse. The Team B report says, "Evidence of the extent to which shariah is being insinuated into the fabric of American society abounds, if one is willing to see it."

Does Team B exaggerate the Islamic threat? If you read the Report you'll find that it discusses long-term Islamic subversion, stretching to the end of the present century. The main issues are cultural rather than military. The Report discusses our "national lack of moral certitude." It suggests that a failure to side with one's own society, customs and folkways is tantamount to taking the "other" side in a long-term struggle over values (theirs versus ours). Diversity, under these circumstances, is not automatically good. "Under sway of the multicultural credo, notions of the superiority of Western culture are heretical, an imminent threat to the leveling arrangement that makes the European Union's so-called 'meeting of different civilizations' possible."

But are such things truly possible? In real life, as opposed to childish dreams about life, you have to stand up for yourself. This doesn't mean that you have to be a bully. It means that if you aren't for yourself, then who is? In place of this sort of advice, our president gives the counsel of vanity, attempting to win approval overseas. Should we reconcile ourselves to absorbing a massive terrorist assault for the sake of maintaining what Zakaria calls "legitimacy" (which otherwise belongs to rock stars, and to Luxembourg)? Is national survival and persistence our goal, or do we crave international applause? Should America take a rock star as its model? Or should we sing the words set down by Carly Simon?

JR Nyquist
jrnyquist @ aol.com http://www.jrnyquist.com
Other Articles by JR Nyquist
•The Peace Fairy
•Standing Up When It's Too Late
•No Country for Silly Men

Security

B replied to comment from undaunted | October 1, 2010 12:20 PM | Reply
Undaunted,

I was looking for more of a place of info that makes people posting online to be aware and beware some of the dangers. Despite the fact that we have freedom of speech in this country, that still won't protect us against fatwas from Imams or Muslims like IE or DOI who might decide to "take one of us out".

Here's my list so far
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Protecting yourself online and in real life

Easy-Hide-IP – $29.95 - bypass virtually any form of censorship or internet traffic blocking imposed on you by your ISP, by your company, or by some other third parties. All your internet traffic is routed through remote servers. On your ISP’s log file, only the IPs of the remote servers will be shown, not the sites you have visited.

Keyscrambler Personal – Free – Add on for various browsers like Firefox and IE. Scrambles what you type so keyloggers can't capture the data.

Iobit Random Password Generator – Free - create hard to guess passwords for your accounts.

PGP – encrypt your emails and digitally sign emails to known and trusted people. Prevents interception of emails by anyone. Also method to establish that it was really you who sent an email to someone else you know.

SSH – applications like Putty (freeware), WinSCP (freeware), FileZilla (FTP prog that supports SFTP, freeware.

Antivirus Software – AVG Antivirus (Free), Avast! (Free) - Use AV software to protect your computer from malware, spyware and trojans which can compromise your PC security.

No Script – Free addon for Firefox – Prevents potentially malicious javascripts or code from activating on web pages. It's can be a pain since it will disable most of the content on web pages until you allow it. Once you allow the page, it will allow most of the content except third site information.

Firewalls – You can use both a router firewall (preferred method with incoming and outgoing controls on the firewall, or a personal software firewall like Zonealarm (free version). Firewalls protect intrusions from the internet.

Malware Software – very similar to AV software. They scan for virus, trojans and malicious apps that come through web pages and cookies. Malware is also installed via applications you may actually want. You should always monitor the installation process so you can opt out of some extra software installs you don't need like the yahoo toolbar.

Put Passwords on all your accounts – This includes your credit card account, bank account, phone account, power company accounts, etc. Avoid using easily available information – like your mother's maiden name, your birth date, last four digits of your SSN, or your phone number – or obvious choices like a series of consecutive numbers or your hometown football team. You should do this now before any threats arise. By the time you know something is happening, it will be too late. Politicians or anyone seeking political office are encourage to do this. News reporters go snooping for dirt and if you leave this unaddressed it may hurt you politically.

Paper shredder – Use one of these to shred any personal information that an identity thief may be able to find by picking through your trash. When you discard receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, physician statements, bank checks and statements, expired charge cards, credit offers you get in the mail, and mailing labels from magazines, tear or shred them.

Online guides to protecting your personal information

EFF's Top 12 ways to Protect Your Online Privacy - http://www.eff.org/wp/effs-top-12-ways-protect-your-online-privacy