Author Archives: Lila

Why Libertarians Defend The Rights Of Muslims In The US

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Anthony Gregory, one of my favorite libertarian writers, at LRC blog:

“In response to my recent post, I was asked cordially by a reader why LRC seems to have a “pro-Islam bias.” Others have genuinely wondered whether radical libertarians have been going too far in their defense of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque,’ opposition to war, and so forth, and whether such principled stands risk the neglect of the Koran’s alleged propensity to violence. The reader asks, “Can you explain to me why you, Lew, and others find nothing offensive in Islam? Or, if you do, why no one speaks out about it?”

I can’t speak for Lew, but I’ll say, up front, that I don’t agree with many tenets of Islam, that personally I do favor Christianity over Islam, and that I see nothing wrong with criticizing or questioning religious doctrines, including those of the Koran.

But I also believe in religious toleration, and in America, Muslims are a persecuted minority.

I wrote to the reader:

Since 9/11, there has been a real threat to [Muslims], as well as a general war hysteria whooped up against them. It’s not as bad as it could have been, but look at the hysteria toward the mosque. As bad as the secular state can be against Christians, I think Christians feel safer than Muslims in this country. Now, there are certainly exceptions among what are considered the fringes — some even dispute the legitimacy of calling them Christians — such as Branch Davidians and fundamentalist Mormons. But of course, I stick up for them too. And I and others at LRC have always stood up for Christians and all other groups against smears and demonization.

We don’t all agree on religion around here. I have problems with the Koran, as well as the Old Testament, which is at the core of what many conservative Jews and Christians believe. Some of them might have a problem with what I believe. But I do not personally believe in demonizing Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, pagans, Hindus or any other religious group. I don’t believe in casting wide nets or judging people harshly for peaceful behavior, especially as it concerns intimate questions of spirituality and worship. And when the state and its partisans are calling for the blood or trampling on the liberty of any of these groups, when the grand liberal tradition of religious tolerance and freedom is under attack, it is our ethical duty to stand up against the hysteria, propaganda and lynch mobs. This, I think it’s safe to say, is the LRC way, the libertarian way. It should also be the American way.”

Assassinations ‘R Us

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Alternet:

“[General McChrystal says that] for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.” — “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, 6/22/10

The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America’s military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people. Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more “enemies,” as Gen. McChrystal suggests — posing a major long-term threat to U.S. national security. This mass assassination program, sold as defending Americans, is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come. General Petraeus must be replaced, and the U.S. military’s policy of direct and mass assassination of Muslims ended.

The U.S. has conducted assassination programs in the Third World for decades, but the actual killing — though directed and financed by the C.I.A. –– has been largely left to local paramilitary and police forces. This has now has changed dramatically.

What is unprecedented today is the vast number of Americans directly assassinating Muslims — through greatly expanded U.S. military Special Operations teams, U.S. drone strikes and private espionage networks run by former CIA assassins and torturers. Most significant is the expanding geographic scope of their killing. While CENTCOM Commander from October 2008 until July 2010, General Petraeus received secret and unprecedented permission to unilaterally engage in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, former Russian Republics, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else he deems necessary.

Never before has a nation unleashed so many assassins in so many foreign nations around the world (9,000 Special Operations soldiers are based in Iraq and Afghanistan alone) as well as implemented a policy that can be best described as unprecedented, remote-control, large-scale “mechanized assassination.” As the N.Y. Times noted in December 2009: “For the first time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for killing in a country where the United States is not officially at war.”

This combination of human and technological murder amounts to a worldwide “Assassination Inc.” that is unique in human affairs.

The increasing shift to direct U.S. assassination began on Petraeus’s watch in Iraq,where targeted assassination was considered by many within the military to be more important than the “surge.” The killing of Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was considered a major triumph that significantly reduced the level of violence. As Bob Woodward reported in The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008:

“Beginning in about May 2006, the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence agencies launched a series of top secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in extremist groups. A number of authoritative sources say these covert activities had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it. Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al Qaeda in Iraq, (conducted) lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent operations When I later asked the president (Bush) about this, he offered a simple answer: ‘JSOC is awesome.'” [Emphasis added.]

Woodward’s finding that many “authoritative sources” believed assassination more important than the surge is buttressed by Petraeus’ appointment of McChrystal to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s major qualification for the post was clearly his perceived expertise in assassination while heading JSOC from 2003-’08 (where he also conducted extensive torture at “Camp Nama” at Baghdad International Airport, successfully excluding even the Red Cross).

Another key reason for the increased reliance on assassination is that Petraeus’ announced counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan obviously cannot work. It is absurd to believe that the corrupt warlords and cronies who make up the “Afghan government” can be transformed into the viable entity upon which his strategy publicly claims to depend — particularly within the next year which President Obama has set as a deadline before beginning to withdraw U.S. troops. Petraeus is instead largely relying on mass assassination to try and eliminate the Taliban, both within Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The centrality of assassination to U.S. war plans is revealed by the fact that it was at the heart of the Obama review of Afghan policy last fall. The dovish Biden position called for relying primarily on assassination, while the hawkish McChrystal stance embraced both assassination and more troops. No other options were seriously considered.

A third factor behind the shift to mass assassination is that Petraeus and the U.S. military are also determined to attack jihadi forces in nations where the U.S. is not at war, and which are not prepared to openly invite in U.S. forces. As the N.Y. Times reported on May 24, “General Petraeus (has argued) that troops need to operate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to better fight militant groups.”

The most significant aspect of this new and expanded assassination policy is President Obama’s authorizing clandestine U.S. military personnel to conduct it. The N.Y. Times has also reported:

In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists (Military) Special Operations troops under secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies.

Particularly extraordinary is the fact that these vastly expanded military assassination teams are not subject to serious civilian control. As the N.Y. Times has also reported, Petraeus in September 2009 secretly expanded a worldwide force of assassins answerable only to the military, without oversight by not only Congress but the president himself:

The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents. The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. Unlike covert actions undertaken by the C.I.A., such clandestine activity does not require the president’s approval or regular reports to Congress. [Emphasis added]

Although sold to the American public and Congress as targeted, selective assassination aimed only at a handful of “high value” insurgent leaders, the program has in fact already expanded far beyond that. As personnel and aircraft devoted to assassination exponentially increase, so too do the numbers of people they murder, both “insurgents” and civilians.

While it is reasonable to assume that expanding the number of Special Operations commandos to its present worldwide level of 13,000 will result in increasing assassinations, the secrecy of their operations makes it impossible to know how many they have murdered, how many of those are civilians, and the effectiveness of their operations. It is not known, for example, how many people U.S. military assassins murder directly, and how many they kill indirectly by identifying them for drone strikes. Much of their activity is conducted, for example, in North Waziristan in northwest Pakistan which, as the N.Y. Times reported on April 4 “is virtually sealed from the outside world.”

More information, however, has emerged about the parallel and unprecedented mass mechanized assassinations being carried out by the C.I.A. drone programs. It is clear that they have already expanded far beyond the official cover story of targeting only “high-level insurgent leaders,” and are killing increasing numbers of people.

The CIA, of course, is no novice at assassination. Future CIA Director William Colby’s Operation Phoenix program in South Vietnam gave South Vietnamese police quotas of the number of civilians to be murdered on a weekly and monthly basis, eventually killing 20-50,000 people. CIA operatives such as Latin American Station Chef Duane “Dewey” Clarridge also established, trained and operated local paramilitary and death squads throughout Central and Latin America that brutally tortured and murdered tens of thousands of civilians, most notably in El Salvador where CIA-trained and -directed killers murdered Archbishop Romero and countless other Salvadorans.

But the present CIA assassination program in Pakistan and elsewhere is different not only because it is Americans who are themselves the assassins, but because of the unprecedented act of conducting mechanized mass assassination from the air. The CIA, as Nick Turse has reported for TomDispatch.com, is exponentially increasing its drone assassination program:

“(Drone) Reapers flew 25,391 hours (in 2009). This year, the air force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones will exceed 250,000 hours. More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing.”

There were already signs in 2009, when drone strikes were a fraction of what they are now, that they were striking large numbers of civilians and proving militarily and politically counterproductive. Most Pakistanis believe it is largely civilians who are being killed, and anti-American hatred is growing accordingly. A Gallup poll conducted in July 2009, based on 2,500 face-to-face interviews, found that “only 9 percent of Pakistanis supported the drone strikes.” A Global Research study documented the drone murder of 123 civilians in January 2010 alone.

A particularly significant indication of the drone strikes’ military ineffectiveness has come from Colonel David Kilcullen, a key Petraeus advisor in Iraq, who testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 23, 2009, that, “Since 2006, we’ve killed 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders using drone strikes; in the same time period, we’ve killed 700 Pakistani civilians in the same area. We need to call off the drones.”

Kilcullen’s testimony was ignored, however, and as drone strikes have not only been continued but exponentially increased, there are increasing signs that they have vastly increased the scope of the killing far beyond the claimed “high-level insurgent leaders.” The N.Y. Times reported on Aug. 14:

[The CIA has] broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.

Reuters reported on May 5 that:

The CIA received approval to target a wider range of targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including low-level fighters whose identities may not be known, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Former intelligence officials acknowledged that in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about the foot soldiers killed in the strikes.

What this means is clear: the CIA is assassinating an expanding number of “low-level” people, labeling them as “fighters,” but has little if any idea of who they really are. The history of such mechanized campaigns from the air, such as Laos where I have studied the U.S. 1964-’73 air war intensively, is that increased warfare from the air inevitably becomes increasingly indiscriminate, destroying civilian and military targets alike. As the drone program continues to expand, it will inevitably wind up killing more civilians — and, if McChrystal is right, exponentially create more people committed to killing Americans.

Numerous moral, legal and ethical objections have been raised to this program of mass assassination. Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, has stated that “this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.”

 

The notion that a handful of U.S. military and CIA officials have the right to unilaterally and secretly murder anyone they choose in any nation on earth, without even outside knowledge let alone oversight, is deeply troubling to anyone with a conscience, belief in democracy, or respect for international law. It was precisely such behavior that made the Gestapo and Soviet secret police symbols of evil. Since the U.S. Congress has never reined in an Executive Branch that has routinely ignored international law since 1945, however, it is likely that the question of whether this program will be continued will be determined by its perceived effectiveness, not its morality.

The evidence is mounting that U.S. assassinations are so ineffective they are actually strengthening anti-American forces in Pakistan. Bruce Reidel, a counterinsurgency expert who coordinated the Afghan review for President Obama, said: “The pressure we’ve put on (jihadist forces) in the past year has also drawn them together, meaning that the network of alliances is growing stronger not weaker.”

Reidel’s striking conclusion that jihadi forces in Pakistan are stronger after six years of drone airstrikes the CIA claims are weakening them, is echoed by numerous other reports indicating that General Petraeus’ strategy of using military force against Al Qaeda, Afghan and local insurgent forces in Pakistan has pushed them further east from isolated northwest areas into major cities like Karachi, where they operate freely and work together far more closely than before. The general’s miscalculations regarding Pakistan are reason enough for him to be replaced.

In the long run, General Petraeus’ strategy of expanding both ground and mechanized assassination throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world is likely to do the greatest disservice to his country’s interests. It is true that U.S. leaders have used local forces to assassinate tens of thousands since 1945 and that while these programs were largely ineffectual, they did not lead to attacks on American soil.

But 9/11 has changed the calculus. It is clear that in today’s wired and globalized world, marked by large-scale immigration, cheap telecommunications and airline travel, where crude technologies like car bombs or IEDs can be as easily detonated in New York as in Kandahar, and where America’s enemies are growing increasingly technologically sophisticated even as nuclear weapons proliferate and become miniaturized, it is the height of folly to foment geometrically growing anti-American hatred in the volatile Muslim world.

A growing number of military and counterinsurgency experts support Colonel Kilcullen’s belief that these assassination programs abroad are not protecting Americans at home. Both the “Underwear” and the “Times Square” bombers attributed their attempts to blow up Americans to their anger at the drone strikes. While Americans were saved by their incompetence, the U.S. may not be so lucky the next time, and the time after that. One thing is crystal clear: inflaming anti-American hatred throughout the Muslim world can only exponentially increase the numbers of those committed to killing Americans.

Such fears are increasing in Washington, as the N.Y. Times reported in the wake of the Times Square bombing:

A new, and disturbing, question is being raised in Washington: Have the stepped-up attacks in Pakistan — notably the Predator drone strikes — actually made Americans less safe? Are they inspiring more attacks on America than they prevent? As one American intelligence official said, “Those attacks (on two Pakistani Taliban leaders) have made it personal for the Pakistani Taliban — so it’s no wonder they are beginning to think about how they can strike back at targets here.”

As General Petraeus and the U.S. military “make it personal” to increasing number of people throughout the Muslim world, they are recklessly sowing a whirlwind for which many of us, our children and grandchildren may well pay with our lives for decades to come.

It is difficult for most Americans to grasp the fact that their leaders’ incompetence — Republican and Democrat, civilian and military — poses one of the single greatest threats to their own safety. But only when Americans do so will there be any hope of making America more secure in the dangerous years to come.

A clear place to begin protecting America is to abandon the assassination approach to war, ditch General Petraeus, end the military and CIA’s focus on worldwide and mechanized mass assassination, and halt its reckless expansion of U.S. war-making into nuclear-armed Pakistan and so much more of the Muslim world.

Final Note: Duane ‘Dewey’ Clarridge: The True Face of U.S. Policy Toward the Muslim World

We’ll intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interest. And if you don’t like it, lump it. Get used to it, world!” –– Duane Clarridge, interviewed by John Pilger in “The War on  Democracy”

As the N.Y. Times reported, Clarridge is presently advising CIA assassination efforts in Pakistan. (“Duane R. Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying operation in Pakistan.”) Watch an extraordinary three-minute video interview with Clarridge that reveals the true face of U.S. policy in the Muslim world.

The US Government Would Never Commit False-Flags?

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From GeorgeWashington.blogpost.com:

“Has the U.S. Government ever carried out false flag terror attacks?

Well, as shown by this BBC special (which contains interviews with some of the key players), it is probable that America knew of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor — down to the exact date of the attack — and allowed it to happen to justify America’s entry into World War II. See also this short essay by a highly-praised historian summarizing some of the key points (the historian, a World War II veteran, actually agreed with this strategy for getting America into the war, and so does not have any axe to grind). The Pearl Harbor conspiracy involved hundreds of military personnel. Moreover, the White House apparently had, a year earlier, launched an 8-point plan to provoke Japan into war against the U.S. (including, for example, an oil embargo). And — most stunning — the FDR administration took numerous affirmative steps to ensure that the Japanese attack would be successful.

And the New York Times has documented that Iranians working for the C.I.A. in the 1950’s posed as Communists and staged bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected president (see also this essay).

And, as confirmed by a former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence, NATO, with the help of U.S. and foreign special forces, carried out terror bombings in Italy and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

Moreover, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960’s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. If you view no other links in this article, please read the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

In addition, the FBI had penetrated the cell which carried out the 1993 world trade center bombing, but had — at the last minute — cancelled the plan to have its FBI infiltrator substitute fake power for real explosives, against the infiltrator’s strong wishes (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view).

And the CIA is alleged to have met with Bin Laden two months before 9/11.

And the anthrax attacks — which were sent along with notes purportedly written by Islamic terrorists — used a weaponized anthrax strain from the top U.S. bioweapons facility, the Fort Detrick military base. Indeed, top bioweapons experts have stated that the anthrax attack may have been a CIA test “gone wrong”; and see this article by a former NSA and naval intelligence officer. It is also interesting that the only congress people mailed anthrax-containing letters were key democrats, and that the attacks occurred one week before passage of the freedom-curtailing Patriot Act, which seems to have scared them and the rest of congress into passing that act without even reading it. And it might be coincidence, but White House staff began taking the anti-anthrax medicine before the Anthrax attacks occurred.

Even the former director of the National Security Agency said “By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation”(the audio is here).

Then, of course, there is 9/11…”

General Smedley Butler On War As A Racket

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“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

(Lila: Which is mercantalism, not free markets)

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

— General Smedley Butler

The Mosque Meme…

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A comment I posted at The Daily Bell, recently:

Dear war-mongers:

I’ve seen the light. I was so dumb, bigoted, anti-American, anti-Semitic, ungrateful, and downright all-round stupid (put it down to being from an inferior culture) that I really, really thought that ratcheting up tensions with over one billion Muslims was a bad idea. Might lead to real war. How idiotic of me.

(Slap on forehead).

Now I see. Real war is JUST what we need.

All this back and forth is simply a waste of time. Get a move on it, folks. Quit talking. Get to bombing.

Lookit. I’ve done the math.

We have so many unemployed people – at least 10% of the population, 15-20% if you believe John Williams at Shadowstats.

Imagine how much better the job market would be if we could bundle a fifth of the population off to Kabul or Samarkhand or Whogivesaflyingheckistan? Less supply, more demand – didn’t Keynes say something about demand?

And yeah, we’re all Keynesians now, because, of course, Keynesians were the guys who called this way, way, way back in 2002…weren’t they?

(Another slap on forehead)

Comes right back to me, now. I remember one of them – guy by the name of Crockman. er…Krugman..telling us we needed to buy, buy, buy…houses, I think it was. (but no reason why we can’t just cross out houses on the loan form and put in daisy-cutters, instead)

So let’s pay attention to Keynesians when they speak.

And lo, they’ve come down from Mount New York Times and spoken:

Let there be demand.

What’s better for demand than war?
Especially war with a billion plus Muslims.

And remember, we have all that budget-surplus floating around.

And our creditors love us too. Companies are picking up from China and moving here. Woo-hoo. Look at all the factories going up in Florida.

We can afford it. We’re worth it…
Actually, we don’t spend near enough on defense. 30% of the budget, you say? 40%? More?

Wa–aay too little. Make it 80%. No, make it 100%.

That’s it. 100% of what we have should go to preemptive…er..defense.

That’s how they do it in North Korea – and you know, they tell me it’s not such a bad place….

Scroogle V. Google

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An interesting development.

My webstalker’s post (Chicago Indymedia) had disappeared into about the third-fourth page of a google search of my name. Recently I posted negative pieces about google. I noticed that the webstalker post trashing me suddenly popped back onto my first page.

Wondering why that was, I did a search with Scroogle, which is just google, scraped. You’d think the results would be the same. But the trash post was at about 35 in the list of results, rather than 3rd or 4th, as it was on google.

Imagination?

Several up and coming bloggers have told me that they’ve noticed google manipulation of their results. I won’t specify how the search results were manipulated, though both had a good idea. They didn’t openly voice their findings on their blogs, though.

I’ll be more forthcoming.  Whenever I post a criticism of google or wikipedia, I tend to find the old trash post resurfacing to the front page. Criticism of certain elites also tends to produce the same result.

Shouldn’t I be more circumspect about criticizing Brin, Wales, and their merry men?

Probably. But circumspection has never been my strong point. Why start now…

Why You Should Support Scroogle

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I took this from the Scroogle site and urge everyone to use their service as much as possible. For Net newbies, if you run Mozilla Firefox (and it’s hoped that you use that or Linux in preference to Microsoft, another privacy offender), click on Tools, go to Options, and then set your homepage to http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm, which will take you directly to the search box. You won’t get Google’s ads, junk sites, or page counts and the like, but the results are more than enough for most everyday searches. If you have the money, please VISIT THE SCROOGLE SITE AT SCROOGLE.ORG (http://www.scroogle.org/donatesc.html) AND MAKE YOUR DONATION THERE.

“There are two reasons why an ad-free scraper of Google’s main search results is important. One reason is personal, and the other is political.

On a personal level, your support for Scroogle says that search engines should not be tracking you and retaining this information indefinitely. Not only does Google scrape much of the web, but they keep records of who searches for what. If information about your searching is accessible by cookie ID or by your IP address, it is subject to subpoena. This is a violation of your privacy. Someday Google’s data retention practices will be regulated, because Google is too arrogant to do the right thing voluntarily. In the meantime, you should not be leaving your fingerprints in Google’s databases.

There are other proxies that can protect your privacy on the web. Almost all are general-purpose proxies that cloak all of your web activity behind an IP address that is not easily traced to your service provider. One is Anonymizer.com. A possible problem with this one is that the founder, Lance Cottrell, has connections with the FBI and the Voice of America. It also costs money for a reasonable level of service. Another is Tor, which is much more secure. But it is also slow, because Tor is a complicated system that needs networks of volunteers to run server software. Juvenile surfers from video pirates to rogue Wikipedia editors tend to clog free services such as Tor, which slows them down even more.

Since Scroogle does just one thing, it is fairly fast and simple. But because it does only one thing, it is vulnerable to action by Google. They could block our IP address, which would require that we relay requests to other servers that are more difficult for them to locate. They could also centralize their system more in order to better detect and throttle any outside address that does too many searches per minute. Finally, they could make minor changes in their output format on a regular basis, which would break our scraper and require frequent reprogramming. Any of the above might quickly get too complex and expensive for us, and that would be the end of Scroogle.

One action that Google is less likely to take is to serve Scroogle with a cease and desist letter. This introduces the second reason why Scroogle deserves support. As a nonprofit with a history of activism on privacy issues, it would be difficult for Google to sue us on the grounds that their search results and rankings are copyrighted. The main reason for this is that we are noncommercial. None of our sites has ever carried ads, we have zero employees, and our gross annual income is about $10,000. Our lack of commercial intent strengthens our claim that we have the right to scrape Google. It’s obvious that we are doing it in the public interest.

Goobage in, Goobage out Showing Google’s results without their ads is another political statement. About 99 percent of Google’s total revenue comes from ads, and these are ruining the web. Thousands of “Made for AdSense” domains are spewing garbage. Since these sites need content to trigger Google’s ads, they steal it by scraping legitimate sites, or generate their own by purchasing junk from bulk writers. Meanwhile, click fraud is rampant. Zombie botnets are used to click on ads. If you cannot afford to buy a botnet from some shady character, then you can contract with someone in a country where labor is cheap. They will hire people to click on ads all day at below-minimum wage.

It’s time to stop pretending that Google’s revenue model is anything more than a temporary bubble, and it’s time for Google to start developing more socially-responsible sources of income. Showing Google’s results without the ads amounts to more public-interest advocacy. It says that the web spam situation is intolerable.

We remain vulnerable to blocking, throttling, or breaking by Google, which unfortunately is legal if they decide to stop us. But the longer Scroogle exists and the more our traffic grows, the stronger our statements become. We cannot survive many more months without at least one more server, even if Google leaves us alone. While we could apply for foundation grants, our experience tells us that foundations are about ten years behind on Internet and other high-tech issues. Any funding proposals we send out would strike them as bizarre and incomprehensible. It’s not worth our time to send out proposals to foundations.

That leaves us asking lots of Scroogle users for small contributions. Searchers who prefer Scroogle are making a unique statement about important issues. Nothing else we know of is making the same points as effectively. “

The Real US Border Fence

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MBP reader Clark posted this at Argentine survivalist Ferfal’s forum. I thought it worth republishing on the blog:

The Real US Border Fence

People seem to be focused on shoo-ing away the hands that reach out for free services rather than questioning the re-distributionist idea itself –  the idea of forcibly taking from one group and giving to another that started and still maintains the whole illegal immigration fiasco (not to mention the Al Capone-like environment created by bad laws).

What do people think happens when a store gives out free steak? Do they think people won’t show up in numbers and come back for seconds and thirds and hang around for more?

Rather than complain about (and take positive steps to end) the Free Steak Give-Away provided by the taxpayer, people focus on those who reach for the steak and the way they reach for it. Don’t get me wrong. People need to get mad as hell. But they need to focus on the true cause of the illegal immigration problem.

There’s a huge lack of clarity about this that needs to end. Does having a driver’s license mean a person knows how to drive? No. Obviously not. The same holds for immigration too. Documentation means nothing in the big scheme of things. Just look at the behavior of the fully legal American banksters who continue to do what everyone finds so repulsive. Obviously, it’s not legality that defines the morality or justice of anyone’s behavior.

On top of everything else, lawmakers are now talking about making a separate helot caste through Florida law. Don’t people realize that these sort of things have a tendency to expand and include everyone except the ruling class?

We don’t need an increase in tyrannical laws. We don’t need the the Berlin wall on America’s borders.

The notion that crime rates are specific to certain groups is misleading too. It’s not any particular group that’s the root cause of the problem. Just as an example, look at the black community in the U.S.A., prior to “goberment” stepping in and taking the place of the head of the household.  Before “goberment” assumed total responsibility for it (and, eventually, for all of us), the black community, especially in the DC area, was made up of  highly literate, low-crime, tightly-knit strong family units with a religious foundation –  just the kind people like Rush Limbaugh long for.

Forgotten history, I suppose, and perhaps the result of the Soviet-style subversion of education in America via “goberment” schooling.

So sure, people need to get mad as hell about illegal immigration.

But let’s also get mad at what’s really behind it.