Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Death of Dissent Act, S. 1959

Does anyone have any idea how testimony on this attack on the First Amendment is going?

Also, why do I have to go to Deep Blue or Paulian websites to find anything out about the bills (HR 1955, the House version, was passed back in October)? Where are the cries of outrage from the Right? The War on Terror is only an excuse for this nightmare, it will soon fade (starting 1/20/09), but the nightmare will then, not so strangely, morph into a de-facto cancellation of the First Amendment.

This bill is a super-major attack on the First Amendment far worse than McCain-Feingold. If it passes (Bush WILL sign it), all I have to do is mention that the Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights for the purpose of enforcing the First, by allowing citizens to arm themselves as Militias and force a tyrannical Government out of power, and I'm toast (I've already done that about 49 times, so I guess I need to pack a toothbrush). That's "advocacy" of "armed terrorism" against the peaceful Government (Waco, Ruby Ridge, grandma in Atlanta, etc), so I would AT LEAST be hauled before the "special panel" to explain why I wasn't a terrorist for saying go to the range and practice, practice, practice.

When you read the above link, read just how loosely the operative language is constructed. Now, I'll wager that most of the congressional Reps, all 404 of them, who signed the House version, were under the impression that they were advocating for the suppression of wannabe Jihadis, but in fact, the "special panel" gets to decide the flavor of the "homegrown radical" who they want to persecute, and I have NO DOUBT that any of us who advocate strongly for the original intent of the Second Amendment will make their list.

I happen to be writing a novel about government abusing it's power and subsequently being overthrown, which this "special panel" would likely decide is a manifesto for "homegrown radicalism". If and when I publish it, I now realize that, in the event this Bill becomes law, I will have just made myself into an outlaw. Probably a goodly number of my readers will also be on that list. All I am really doing in the novel is putting real characters and their words and actions into the Second Amendment. The novel gets quite specific, and is technologically correct, in that it shows how determined men and women, armed only with small arms, managed to disrupt and then overcome the police power of the most powerful government on the planet.

My Editor just emailed me and said that if the dot-gov was being fair, half the Hollywood writers would be outlaws right along with me. That may be true, but they wouldn't be persecuted, because the dumbed-down third of the citizenry Hollywood writes for craves the mindless violence they get from Tinsel Town, and Big Government supports that.

My depictions of violence are not mindless. Each one forces the reader to see small-unit combat for what it is: close-up Hell. It forces the reader to see that the only way one can be a master of this environment is to think past the violence and the casualties to the objectives, and look at each little victory as the one which won the war. It's really a novel about humans in conflict, what makes them and what breaks them. Unfortunately, the Government won't see it that way, they will say I have taken that fateful "substantial step" (towards Treason, towards whatever they trump up), and they will come after me.

My decision then, should this outrage become law, is whether to publish AND perish, on a field of honor, or live out my years in a garden of dishonor with the infamy of a government gone bad, a government that has just torn up the Bill of Rights.

Fairly bad choices, eh?

You gunbloggers out there heed this warning: you will be NEXT.

Bhutto a martyr?

UPDATED! SEE BOTTOM OF POST.

***************************************************************************

I don't think she is a martyr, but by way of coming to that conclusion, we have to review our International Relations 101, which I took as a freshman at Mizzou in '61.

In those days, the realpolitik of the post-war (WW2) years were still in vogue, and were only starting to change to the New World Order way of thinking. My instruction was in that realpolitik.

Realpolitik is largely gone from the practice of international relations now, even though our friends on the Left constantly accuse GW Bush of practicing it.

International politics is now practiced from a variety of ethics-based viewpoints, ranging from Socialism to eco-Socialism.

That gives us problems where it concerns relations with nations like Pakistan.

Pakistan is a nation which has armed itself well, and therefore plays somewhat of a leadership role among the Islamic states in it's neighborhood.

The first rule of realpolitik is that you play by the rules of the group you are in.

That means that we need to recognize that Pakistan is always going to be a turbulent, unsettled nation, not really amenable to the blandishments of a representative democratic Republic such as this nation is. Islam has something to do with that, since, as a religion, it encourages the settling of conflict by dedication to the use of force (in the name of Allah, of course).

After he seized power, we left General Pervez Musharraf alone at first, following the First Rule, but lately, we had begun to pressure him to allow "democratic elections" with all the possible political leaders as candidates, and we insisted that he give up one of his twin mantles of power, either his control of the Pak Army, or his leadership of the civil government. This was mistaken policy, as events of last night amply illustrate. Realpolitik tells us that sometimes, the best government an unsettled nation can have is a "benevolent dictatorship", and Musharraf was the best example of a benevolent dictator we currently have in the panoply of nations.

Benazir Bhutto was no saint, even though you will now see her portrayed as one in all the media, who know an opportunity to defeat Realpolitik and advance the New World Order when they see one. Bhutto had formed two governments in the past, and both of them were rife with political corruption that led directly to her office door.

In other words, she played by Pak rules. She was no Indira Ghandi (if you assume Ghandi was squeaky-clean, which might very well be a false assumption). She was involved in the hurly-burly of dirty politics all the way. We and the Euros pressured Musharraf to let her back into the country from exile, following the New World Order belief that any Pak election held without her would be corrupt. Actually, given her past record of corruption, had she actually ran in the election, it wouldn't have cleaned it up a bit, because they just don't do clean elections in that part of the world (even when they have 130,000 US troops in the country to guarantee it).

Politics is a dirty business. Islamic politics redefines dirty downwards.

Take it to the bank.

****************************************************************************

UPDATE: 122807 0955 PST: Now this article coming out of Pak-land says that Bhutto died from bumping her head on the sunroof lever in an attempt to get out of her car? Major red flag here for me. It is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for a person to put enough force on any part of the skull with an accidental bump to cause death by depressed skull fracture. I raise the BS Flag on that one. I'll bet you that the pathologist who made that finding is "unavailable" for further comment, permanently. One thing I find strange is that as a hunted figure, Bhutto should have known to stay in her (presumably) armored limo during an attack, as escaping to the outside is almost certain death in those types of ambushes. Where were her bodyguards? There should have been at least one in the car with her, and his duty would have been to expend his life to save hers, so he should have never let her open the sunroof to get out. Too many question here, so I refuse to accept any of the current explanations of her death that come from Musharraf's people.

****************************************************************************

What if....

What if...

We are only a couple of phone calls away from winning this war with Islam.

Those phone calls would be from the President to the Pentagon.

It would happen on a Friday night, all over the Middle East. On Friday evenings, all the Main Mad Mullahs sit at their ornately carved desks in their ornate mosques, and spew their hatred for the faithful.

We can do time-on-target strikes with cruise missiles, have been able to for 20 years. We fire a barrage of three missiles each at the ornate desk in each of the Main Mad Mullahs' mosques. Those AGMs and SLCMs can hit those desks…..

At exactly that calculated time, the White House interrupts TV with the following statement by the POTUS:

"Fellow Americans, the forces of the US Military have just completed a retaliatory air strike aimed at eliminating the leadership of our enemy. Since this leadership was scattered, our air strike has hit in several nations with which we previously had no direct hostilities, such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. We have also hit enemy leadership in Iraq.

Citizens, our enemy, all along, has been radical and extreme Islamic leadership and it's immediate followers. Today we have struck a hard blow to that leadership and those followers, but it is not the final blow. The weapons used today were all conventional, but, as other leadership targets present opportunities for their use, we may use heavier weapons on them.

Additionally, the FBI, aided by military police, have made several high-profile war-related arrests here in the US, and friendly coalition partners have done the same thing in other nations. These arrested persons, all leaders of radical Islam, are charged with the military equivalent of Treason, a capital crime, and are being held in undisclosed military locations to await military tribunals.

Fellow Americans, I blame myself for picking as advisors people who previously told me that we could only react to the atrocities of Islam, we did not and could not wage total war, including waging that war at the seat of the enemy as I have just done. I have corrected that error and will win the war on Islamic Terror in my term of office.

I have asked certain, more realistic Islamic leaders to call an immediate conference for the purpose of taking back their religion and way of life that has been so obviously hijacked by these extremists, taking it back so that we all may live in peace as brothers and sisters, and not at war as believers and infidels.

Those enemies that we didn’t kill today are going to be hunted until they are killed. We will continue killing off the leadership of Radical Islam until that snake has no head left to direct it's mortal body, then we will cut that mortal body in pieces so small that the puniest jackal would not choke on them.

Today, the world is measurably safer as a result of our action. When the world comes to realize that, those various peoples may thank us and they may not. That does not matter to me, as the prize all along has been the advancement of human civilization, which would have been impossible had the enemy prevailed, but is again achievable.

We shall prevail.

Thank you."

You see, it's really that easy. It's really that necessary. It's really the only thing left to do.

Five Years

For the sake of brevity, not exactly a requirement for much of the Fifth Anniversary of 9-11-01 hype seen recently, let's assume for a moment that Islamist extremism started on 9-11-01. It's actually been going for almost 1400 years, but let's say it started on that day.

Is five years enough time to have given the Church of Islam, in all it's manifestations, to take back their religion from the extremists and make it into one which can and will co-exist with the rest of the non-Islamic world?

Yes or No?

If No, how much more time must we give Islam to come to that position of cleansing their "peaceful religion" of the Jihadists?

STATE A TIME INTERVAL, ANYONE OF THE ISLAMIC FAITH!

If Yes, then we must come to the conclusion that the vast religion known as Islam is led by bloodthirsty killers and is the blood enemy of all other creeds and followers of those creeds on this planet. War is not only justified against the creed of Islam AND all it's adherents, but such war is OBLIGATORY.

Yes, THE RELIGION ITSELF IS THE ENEMY!

In World War Two, we went to war against two ideologies, Bushido (Japan) and Fascism (Germany and Italy). For all of you who say we can't war against an ideology, I say, check your history books. Also know that said war was prosecuted by a Progressive Democrat, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

IN WORLD WAR TWO, WE MADE THE PERFECTLY APPROPRIATE ASSUMPTION THAT ALL WHO FOLLOWED THOSE TWO IDEOLOGIES WERE OUR ENEMIES ALSO, CIVILIAN AND MILITARY ALIKE.

Why is it wrong to use the same set of logic today?

On this day of somber reflection, I call upon all who read this blog to ask themselves the questions which I have posed here.

If your answers differ from mine, please state them responsibly and civilly in the comments.

Passport security

The Feds did it: ordered that all passports from now on have an RFID chip in them.

RFID of course, means Radio Frequency Identification Device, and it is a little chip, smaller than a grain of rice, imbedded in a little plastic sleeve which is then inbedded in a page of the passport.

What it will do is make passports more difficult to forge, and it will make it guaranteed that all people entering this country get entered into a database. All that will happen when everyone has the new passports, which are going to be phased in when the old ones expire, or new applications are made.

If you are in one of the ten states that currently flunks the provisions of the Real ID Act which specifies proper documentation for obtaining state-issued ID's like Driver Licences (I live in such a state, OR), you will have to get a passport soon, unless you have a different Federal ID, such as a military identification card.

So, what's wrong with the RFID chip in the passport?

One thing.

One BIG thing.

An RFID chip is an emitting device. When it is stimulated by a radio transmission from an RFID reader, it responds with a radio transmission of it's own which holds a data stream with the imbedded data.

The data will be encrypted, but there is no encryption generated by a computer that can't be broken by a computer, so it means that you will never be anonymous again when carrying one of these passports. No one even has to speak to you, all they have to do is photograph you with a surveillance camera (which are everywhere these days), and stimulate the little chip when next to you, and your passport will give up it's data. Depending on how fast that data stream encryption is broken, there might or might not be a delay in putting your name to your picture taken by the surveillance camera.

There's a corollary worry: that the presence of US passport-holders might be detectable at a distance, just by triggering the chips' data stream. A terrorist, say, walks into a hotel in a foreign nation where you are doing your best to NOT look touristy, and equipment in his pocket, connected to an earbud, tells him you are US. If said terrorist wants to, he can kill you then with good assurance that he has bagged a hated American Devil. It makes no difference that he can't SEE your passport, or that you are chatting fluently in that nation's language, you will be identified without your knowledge by the damn RFID chip.

As for curbing illegal entry into the US, this technology won't scratch the surface of that problem. How many of the violators of our Southern border have passports?

If ICE wants to record who comes and goes, how about just scanning the ID page of the passport into a database? OCR readers can then input the name and passport number.

This technology now makes it far less safe to be a US citizen in a foreign nation. There will eventually be a case where the RFID data was abused and led to the death of a citizen, and when that happens, I hope the resulting lawsuit both hammers the Feds flat financially, AND ends this intrusive and un-necessary practice.

Blair's getting it right...

Tony Blair's government is getting it right, cutting off the Jihadis at the mouth. Great Britain has as much a committment to free speech as we do here in the US of A, but they are more vigorous in denying people the right or ability to "shout fire in a crowded theater".

We used to do that. We don't anymore, and the Muslim extremists have seized upon this weakness in our society to foment hatred and try to overthrow our civilization by force.

Let's give the ACLU something to sink it's teeth into. Let's revive the Sedition laws and start cutting the terrorists off at the mouth like Blair just did. Maybe, just maybe, the ACLU will beat itself to death tilting against the windmill of public opinion. I've got the shovel, and I'll help dig their grave. Could be that if we DID reinstate the sedition laws, the ACLU's top management might be the first prosecuted under them? HOO-AH!

ABC gets Russ boot up the hoohoo

About time! ABC did an interview with Shamil Basayev, the notorious, Glorious Leader of the islamist Chechen rebels that Russia fights (on their own soil) on a daily basis.

I haven't read the transcript of the interview, but it apparently included recitation of Basayev's usual talking points, the spreading of which are forbidden in Russia.

ABC broke the law there, and they paid the price. Their people are personnae non grata after their current permission to operate expires.

I wonder if the Russ would consider some other examples of such violations by other elements of our MSM? If we managed to get the entire MSM excluded from there, the Russ WOT might be the most-accurately reported sector of this fight.

Hat tip to SondraK

I could cut those toenails...

So, Abu Hamza al-Masri, a known Jihadist advocate, in jail in London, failed to show for his TV court appearance because his toenails were too long, as reliably reported by Yahoo! News.

Lemme see here, do 'ya 'spose the Black Rose View this photo has minute-of-toenail accuracy?

One way to find out....

Islamofascist, meet Don Corleone

This is a hoot!

Via Rantburg, the only nose for news!

Rant of War

OK, they've done it, the WFW (War Fearing Wussies) people, some of whom reside in Bush's palace, too.

They've pissed off this old veteran, and from now on, the chief purpose of this blog will be to expose the absurdity and danger of the WFW position.

War is terrible, but when you have it forced on you like we did, with a series of Islamic Fundamentalist terror strikes, culminating in 9-11, you fight the god-damned war, and you fight it to win. You take no prisoners.

We now have brave soldiers coming home, not in triumph, nor in caskets, but in chains to be tried and imprisoned for fighting the war with strength and an eye towards protecting their fellows.

I'm pissed off, and I'm on the hunt, for now just with my blog, but if this gets much worse, I'm going to kick some ass for real.