Friday, August 31, 2012

WTF?

August 31, 2012

Guatemala Drug War: 200 U.S. Marines Join Anti-Drug Effort

By ROMINA RUIZ-GOIRIENA and MARTHA MENDOZA 08/29/12 08:28 PM ET

Soldiers patrol the streets of Guatemala City, Sunday Nov. 6, 2011. (Photo/Moises Castillo)

GUATEMALA CITY — A team of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala's western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.
The Marines are deployed as part of Operation Martillo, a broader effort started last Jan. 15 to stop drug trafficking along the Central American coast. Focused exclusively on drug dealers in airplanes or boats, the U.S.-led operation involves troops or law enforcement agents from Belize, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama and Spain.
"This is the first Marine deployment that directly supports countering transnational crime in this area, and it's certainly the largest footprint we've had in that area in quite some time," said Marine Staff Sgt. Earnest Barnes at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami.
It was 50 years ago when the U.S. military last sent any significant aid and equipment into Guatemala, establishing a base to support counter-insurgency efforts during a guerrilla uprising. That movement led to 36 years of war that left 200,000 dead, mostly indigent Maya farmers. The U.S. pulled out in 1978.
Guatemalan authorities say they signed a treaty allowing the U.S. military to conduct the operations on July 16. Less than a month later an Air Force C-5 transport plane flew into Guatemala City from North Carolina loaded with the Marines and four UH-1 "Huey" helicopters.
After two weeks of setting up camp, establishing computer connections and training at the Guatemalan air base at Retalhuleu, the Marines ran through rehearsal exercises, Barnes said. Last week, their commander "gave us the thumbs up" to begin active operations, he said.
This week the Marines have been patrolling waterways and the coastline, looking for fast power boats and self-propelled "narco-submarines" used to smuggle drugs along Central America's Pacific Coast. U.S. officials say the "drug subs" can carry up to 11 tons of illegal cargo up to 5,000 miles.
Col. Erick Escobedo, spokesman for Guatemalan Military Forces and Defense Ministry, said that so far the Marines have brought about the seizure of one small-engine aircraft and a car, but made no arrests. He said he expected the Marines to in Guatemala for about two months.
If the Marines find suspected boats, Barnes said, they will contact their Guatemalan counterparts in a special operations unit from the Guatemalan navy that will move in for the bust. Barnes said the Marines will not go along on arrest missions, but they do have the right to defend themselves if fired on.
Eighty percent of cocaine smoked, snorted and swallowed in the U.S. passes through Central America, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Eight out of every 10 tons of that cocaine are loaded on vessels known as "go fasts," which are open hulled boats 20 to 50 feet long with as many as four engines, according to the Defense Department.
In a recent congressional briefing in Washington, Rear Adm. Charles Michel said the boats, carrying anywhere from 300 kilograms to 3.5 metric tons of cocaine, typically leave Colombia and follow the western Caribbean coastline of Central America to make landfall, principally in Honduras. In the Pacific, the same type of vessels will leave Colombia or Ecuador and travel to Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica or Mexico, Michel said.
"We fight a highly mobile, disciplined and well-funded adversary that threatens democratic governments, terrorizes populations, impedes economic development and creates regional instability," he said, noting that authorities are able to stop only one out of every four suspected traffickers they spot.
Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Jeffrey Todd Scott said that although the agency has supported Operation Martillo, it has no agents working in Guatemala beyond its normal in-country presence.
This month's Guatemala operation by the Marines comes soon after raids under an aggressive enforcement strategy that has sharply increased the interception of illegal drug flights in Honduras resulted in the death of one person in June and four in May.
U.S. officials said a DEA agent fatally shot a suspected drug trafficker in late June as he reached for his gun in a holster during a raid in a remote northern part of Honduras. That operation resulted in the seizure of 792 pounds (360 kilograms) of cocaine, the officials said.
A raid on May 11 killed four people, whom locals claimed were innocent civilians traveling a river in Honduras at night. Honduran police said the victims were in a boat that fired on authorities. The DEA said none of its agents fired their guns in that incident.
Both Honduras and Guatemala are struggling with widespread corruption that weakens their rule of law, according to recent State Department reports.
"We're concerned about the impact on Guatemalan civilians, many indigent, who are stuck in the middle of this conflict between drug traffickers and a Guatemalan military known to associate with criminals," said Kelsey Alford-Jones, director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA in Washington.
Guatemala has widespread institutional corruption, "including unlawful killings, drug trafficking, and extortion; and widespread societal violence, including violence against women and numerous killings, many related to drug trafficking," according to a recent State Department report.
The Marine operation is the largest in Guatemala since U.S. military aid was first eliminated in 1978, halfway through the civil war. Over the years, the U.S. Congress has approved limited funding for training Guatemala's military response team for natural disasters.
U.S. law says Guatemala can regain aid once Secretary of State Hillary Clinton certifies Guatemala's military is "respecting internationally recognized human rights" and cooperating with judicial investigations of former military personnel and with the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.
___
Associated Press writer Romina Ruiz-Goiriena reported this story in Guatemala City and Martha Mendoza reported from Santa Cruz, Calif.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Does Not Surprise Me A Bit!

NYPD: Empire State victims hit by police gunfire

By TOM HAYS and VERENA DOBNIK | Associated Press – 19 hrs ago

The veteran patrolmen who opened fire on the suit-clad gunman, Jeffrey Johnson, had only an instant to react when he whirled around and pointed a .45-caliber pistol at them as they approached him from behind on a busy sidewalk.
Officer Craig Matthews shot seven times, and Officer Robert Sinishtaj fired nine times, police said. Neither had ever fired their weapons before on a patrol.
The volley of gunfire felled Johnson in just a few seconds and left nine other people bleeding on the sidewalk.

In the initial chaos Friday, it wasn't clear whether Johnson or the officers were responsible for the trail of the wounded, but based on ballistic and other evidence, "it appears that all nine of the victims were struck either by fragments or by bullets fired by police," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters Saturday at a community event in Harlem.

Police officials have said the officers appeared to have no choice but to shoot Johnson, whose body had 10 bullet wounds in the chest, arms and legs.
The officers confronted Johnson as he walked, casually, down the street after gunning down a former co-worker on the sidewalk outside the office they once shared. The shooting happened at 9 a.m., as the neighborhood bustled with people arriving for work.
The gunman and his victim, Steve Ercolino, had a history of workplace squabbles before Johnson was laid off from their company, Hazan Import Corp., a year ago. At one point, the two men had grappled physically in an elevator.
John Koch, the property manager at the office building where the men worked, said security camera footage showed the two pushing and shoving. The tussle ended when Ercolino, a much larger man, pinned Johnson against the wall of the elevator by the throat, Koch said. Ercolino let him go after a few moments, and the two men went their separate ways.
"They didn't like each other," Koch said.
After shooting Ercolino, Johnson, an eccentric T-shirt designer and avid bird-watcher who wore a suit every day, even when photographing hawks in Central Park, walked away as if nothing had happened.
Alerted by a construction worker, officers Matthews and Sinishtaj gave chase as Johnson rounded a corner and walked along Fifth Avenue in front of the landmark skyscraper.
A security videotape from the scene shows several civilians — including three sitting on a bench only a few feet away — scattering as the officers opened fire.
Police have determined that three people were struck by whole bullets — two of which were removed from victims at the hospital — and the rest were grazed "by fragments of some sort," Kelly said.
Two women with leg wounds and a man with a wound to his buttocks required surgery and remained hospitalized Saturday. They were listed in stable condition.
Both Matthews, 39, and Sinishtaj, 40, joined the nation's largest police department 15 years ago.

Matthews had drawn attention this year by suing the New York Police Department, accusing his superiors of unfairly punishing him for not meeting arrest quotas. A judge threw out the complaint.

The union representing the two officers didn't immediately respond to a message left seeking comment.
The shooting didn't deter tourists from flocking to the Empire State Building as usual on Saturday.
Patricia Flynn, 57, a retired schoolteacher, visited the building's peak with her elderly mother, who once worked in the skyscraper as a secretary.
"But I didn't tell her what happened," said Flynn, adding that her mother was unaware of Friday's shooting. "And she really enjoyed the view."
A group of 31 tourists from France held a meeting Friday night at their nearby hotel to decide whether to cancel their planned Empire State Building visit.
"We were scared, and we thought it was a risk," said Catherine Krukar, 38, a teacher.
But in the end, they went ahead with the visit, she said after descending from the observation tower,
"We know it can happen anywhere, and we wanted to see the Empire State Building," Krukar said. "It was beautiful!"
___

Contributing to this report from New York were David B. Caruso, Colleen Long and the AP News Research Center.

How the GOP Establishment Stole the Nomination From Ron Paul

by Jaret Glenn
OpEd News

If you follow mainstream election coverage, you might think Mitt Romney has coasted to an honest, easy, well-deserved Republican nomination. Unfortunately for Republican voters, nothing could be further from the truth. The primary process has been an all-out slugfest and many of the delegates Romney has won may be the result of dirty tricks and even election fraud. The following narrative includes links to reports, first-hand testimonials, and video evidence highlighting actions taken by the GOP to ensure a Romney victory, at the expense of fracturing the party just prior to the general election. Party leaders at the county and state level have changed or violated party rules, cancelled caucuses, changed vote counts, thrown out entire counties of votes, counted public votes privately, called-in the SWAT team, and inexplicably replaced Paul delegates with Romney delegates to block Ron Paul from winning the nomination.
Iowa: Days before the caucuses, Paul held a commanding lead in the polls and all the momentum, with every other candidate having peaked from favorable media coverage and then collapsed under the ensuing scrutiny. Establishment Republicans, like Iowa's Representative Steve King (R), attempted to sabotage Paul's campaign by spreading rumors he would lose to Obama if nominated. Even though the Iowa GOP platform reads like a Ron Paul speech, shortly before the caucuses, Iowa Governor Terry Barnstad told Politico , "[If Paul wins] people are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third. If Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire". The message from the Governor to voters of his state was: a vote for Ron Paul was a wasted vote.
Huffington Post reported that Paul was ahead by one point over Romney and Rick Santorum in entrance polls conducted by Edison Media Research for the AP before the caucuses. For the first time ever, the Iowa GOP changed the final vote count to a secret location . After the caucus, results from 8 precincts (including those with colleges, in a state where Paul won 48% of the youth vote) went missing. Interestingly, these were all precincts Romney lost in 2008. In addition, GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts. Though polling in a comfortable first place, Paul finished third in this non-binding straw poll, behind Romney and Santorum.
Iowa originally reported Romney in first, Santorum in a close second, and Paul third. After the recount, Santorum was named the winner with Romney in second. No mention was given to how the recount affected Paul's vote count. Iowa GOP chairman, Matt Strawn, later resigned and was replaced by Paul supporter, A.J. Spiker and Paul went on to win the majority of delegates.
Florida: The Florida GOP broke party rules by switching to a winner-take-all state before the date allowed, which favors the candidate with the most money for advertising and attack ads. Senior Advisor to the Ron Paul campaign, Doug Wead, claims this was done specifically to favor Romney.
Nevada: There is bad blood between Paul's supporters and establishment Republicans in Nevada. This dates back to 2008, when Convention Chair, Sue Lowden and her enlisted delegates got up and walked out of the convention when it became apparent Paul's supporters would claim a majority of the delegates. She claimed she would reconvene at a later time, but instead approved the McCain slate of delegates. This year, Paul supporters expected shenanigans; so his State Chairman, Carl Bunce, planned to win by outworking Romney. Just before the caucuses, he claimed to have "more IDs than Romney had votes in '08". This means through canvassing door-to-door and phoning voters, he had identified about 25,000 voters committed to show up and vote for Paul.
On caucus day, the media was denied access to most caucus sites and the few that were permitted were not allowed to take photos. Others were even ejected from sites. This CNN clip shows GOP staff preventing a Paul supporter from entering the premises to vote at a special caucus that was set up at the last minute for Newt Gingrich backer, Sheldon Adelson. Here, participants were asked to sign an affidavit (under penalty of perjury) stating they were Jewish and couldn't vote earlier in the day due to "religious reasons". CNN showed live coverage of votes being counted at this event, with Paul amassing nearly 60% of the votes. In some precincts in Clark County, the largest in Nevada, the number of ballots did not match the number of voters signed in at the caucus. Though votes were to be counted publicly, they were largely counted in private. The vote count was also inexplicably dragged out for several days, leading to a victory for Romney. Nevada State GOP Chairwoman, Amy Tarkanian resigned the day after the caucuses.
Another interesting note is that Paul's 2012 votes had doubled, tripled, and more than quadrupled his 2008 votes in every state leading up to the Nevada caucuses, yet Paul received only 88 more votes there. Of all the places for this to occur, Nevada, the country's most libertarian state; is the last in which anyone would expect this.
In spite of these irregularities , Paul won 22 of 25 state delegates and replaced state party officials with Paul supporters. Romney supporters then formed their own state party, called "Team Nevada". The RNC then bypassed the official state party in order to organize for Romney and send all funds to Team Nevada.
Colorado: Romney supporters were caught passing out fake Ron Paul slates at the state convention. The RNC has not investigated or even commented on the matter.
Minnesota: Doug Wead, claims the state party instructed members not to vote for any delegates under age fifty because most young delegates support Paul.
Missouri: WXIX Cincinnati's Ben Swann covered the fiasco in St. Charles County. Temporary Chairman, Eugene Dokes, started the meeting by banning video recording devices, a first for this event. Robert's Rules of Order require the temporary chairman to accept nominations and elect a convention chairman to run the event. Instead, he appointed a chair of his choice. The crowd immediately erupted with booing. Shortly after, Dokes adjourned the meeting without the required two-thirds majority, called the police on attendees, and left. In adherence to state rules, Paul supporter, Brent Stafford, along with one of the top parliamentarians in the state, reconvened in the parking lot and attempted to resume the event. Shortly after, the SWAT team arrived and arrested Stafford, who was following state party rules. Dokes later admitted on talk radio that he and other state party officials deliberately broke the rules to prevent Paul from winning.
Maine: Ben Swann reported on shenanigans in Maine . Even though only 84% of votes had been counted; State GOP Chairman, Charlie Webster, declared Romney the winner over Paul by less than 200 votes. Hancock and Washington Counties hadn't voted yet because Webster cancelled the caucuses due to an impending snowstorm, promising they could vote later and their votes would be counted. The snowstorm never occurred and he later reneged on his promise, telling voters in those counties their votes would not be counted after all. Washington County was Paul's strongest in the state in 2008. Though other states with close outcomes held recounts, this was never a consideration for Maine.
At least one of the counties that did vote claims the state party recorded its tallies incorrectly. Matt McDonald, pastor of a small community church in Belfast, was nominated as the chairman of his caucus. He says the state instructed the caucus chairmen not to read any of the vote totals aloud, but rather to send the results straight to Augusta without a public reading. McDonald made a motion to change this rule, and it was approved unanimously. McDonald says 22 voters showed up, resulting in 8 votes for Paul, 7 for Santorum, 5 for Romney, and 2 undecided. When he called the votes into Augusta, he was told they already had the results and the totals read 9 for Romney, 5 or Santorum, and 2 for Paul. When McDonald told her the tally had been counted publicly, he says "her voice changed and she said"we'll record this". Doug Wead claims, "On every occasion, the votes that were lost were Ron Paul votes and the person responsible for reporting them were Mitt Romney supporters"in one case the votes were actually transferred from paper to"a computer and the lady doing the transfer was a Mitt Romney person". To date, these tallies have not been corrected and Romney is still credited with the straw vote win while the media continues to report that Paul never won a state contest.
Arizona: The Examiner's Kevin Kervick reports "ballot stuffing, rule violations, and improper vote counting that occurred behind closed doors" at the convention. In addition, Paul supporters allege threats of physical violence from Romney supporters.
Michigan: Doug Wead reports, " Michigan, unlike any other state"had a special party rule forbidding any precinct delegate vacancies from being filled at county conventions until after the state delegates and alternates were chosen. In other words, countless Ron Paul supporters attending county convention were forcibly blocked"because they weren't elected precinct delegates in 2010-long before the Ron Paul 2012 campaign began". Wead also claims "documented instances in multiple counties where county party officials "edited" the state delegation lists after the county conventions adjourned".
Wyoming: A commenter on Paul supporter website, DailyPaul.com, explains how members of the Republican Executive Committee (all Romney supporters) illegally cast votes in the delegate selection vote.
Washington: At the state convention , a Ron Paul delegate claimed bubble ballot sheets were withheld in King County's district 36. He also claims the 37 ^th district caucus was forced to conduct the meeting outside because Chairwoman, Lori Sotelo, was irritated when a Ron Paul supporter was elected to run the caucus, instead of her choice.
Ben Swann interviewed a voter in Pierce County, Washington; who claims the local Republican leadership passed out what they called a "unity slate" to voters and said it represented an equal distribution of delegates committed to Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich. The plan was to organize to block Ron Paul supporters, who outnumbered the other candidates' supporters, from receiving the lion's share of the delegates. The Republican leadership prevailed.
Alaska: In spite of last-minute rule changes and violations of party rules, Paul supporters ousted longtime state chairman, Randy Ruedrich, and voted-in Paul supporter, Russ Millette. Ruedrich then tried to sabotage the state convention and transferred all of the state party's $100,000 to the local Capital City Republicans in Juneau, effectively bankrupting the party now controlled by Paul supporters.
Georgia: This video shows GOP Chairwoman, Sue Everhart, at the Athens Clarke County GOP meeting admitting "shoddy treatment of the Ron Paul people at that [2008] convention" and publicly apologizing. She presents the rule book that she helped to write and claims it won't happen again. The video then shows the actual convention and party leaders breaking those rules to force their pre-selected slate of delegates and prevent Paul's supporters from electing their own. Party leaders then adjourned the meeting illegally and ran out of the meeting.
Massachusetts: Paul won 16 of the 27 delegates selected so far in Romney's home state. In addition, he swept all 6 from Romney's home county. As a result (for the first time ever in the state), delegates were asked to sign an affidavit stating " I certify under the pain and penalty of perjury, that on the first ballot at the 2012 Republican National Convention, I will affirmatively Vote for Mitt Romney, the winner of the 2012 Massachusetts Presidential Primary." The state GOP then covered up Romney's embarrassing loss by invalidating ballots and ousting the Paul delegates.
North Dakota: Ben Swann reports the selection of delegates was unfair: the GOP handed out pre-printed ballots with a slate of delegates with 60% of them being Mitt Romney supporters in a state where he won only 26% of the vote.
Oklahoma: Kevin Kervick of The Examiner reports that the Oklahoma convention had to be moved to the parking lot because Robert's Rules were ignored, delegate credentials were not verified, a convention chair was never appointed, motions made from the floor were ignored, the Chairman illegally elected a slate of Romney delegates, and the convention was closed without a two-thirds majority vote. Consistent with Robert's Rules, Paul supporters reconvened in the parking lot to elect delegates. Paul supporters have now filed a law suit to ensure their delegates will be seated.
Virginia: Doug Wead claims "at a district convention, they coaxed the Ron Paul delegation outside and then locked the door. The pastor of the church that was hosting the event was, himself, locked out".
U.S. Virgin Islands: Ron Paul won his first caucus, only to have the GOP take down the straw vote results from their website showing Paul the victor with 29% over Romney's 26% and replaced with a note from the party claiming Romney won because he won more delegates. Paul's Official Campaign Blogger, Jack Hunter, explains how every other contest determined the victor by the straw vote, except the one straw vote Paul won.
Alabama: An inexplicable gap exists between Paul's popular vote count and his delegate vote count. This is odd because voters choose both on the same day and on the same ballot. Alabama Republican Party rules state that voters can only vote for one candidate and then must choose between his delegates. Statewide, Paul received only about one-third as many votes as his delegates. This means voters chose another candidate, but selected Paul's delegates. No other candidate's totals showed a similar pattern.
Louisiana: Ben Swann reports a clash between the old Louisiana State GOP leadership and newly-elected leaders who support Paul. Old Chairman, Roger Villere, angered attendees with last-minute rule changes the night before the convention. At the start of the convention, Villere attempted to recognize the former Chair of the Rules Committee, who had been voted out the night before. When new Chair, Alex Helwig, rose to address the delegation; Villere instructed security (comprised of off-duty Shreveport Police) to remove him . They arrested him for trespassing and broke several of his fingers. Next, an overwhelming majority elected a new Convention Chair, Paul supporter Alex Helwig. Members then turned their chairs to face Helwig, with their backs to Villere. In desperation, Villere instructed the police officers to remove the duly-elected Herford. They did so and dislocated his hip in the process, sending him to the emergency room. The reconvened group followed state party rules and went on to elect a majority of Paul delegates, which the state party later replaced with its own slate of Romney delegates. The Paul campaign has appealed to the RNC, but it is unlikely that the RNC will reinstate the Paul delegates.
Oregon: This YouTube video shows establishment Republicans in Congressional District 4 attempting to steal the ballot box and leave the premises when it became apparent the Ron Paul supporters were in the majority. A Paul supporter is chased away from the ballots and claims he was accosted by an establishment party member.
Wisconsin: MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell reports Romney violated state campaign laws by bribing voters with free subs.
In other states, Paul supporters claim vote-flipping occurred with electronic voting machines. Once about 40% of votes are reported, there is typically little variation in the final numbers. However on several occasions, at about 40% Romney's trajectory "flipped" with the leader, which was often Paul. Austin Election Judge, Anne Beckett, has come forth publicly to claim she witnessed this firsthand.
Baseless allegations or a few isolated incidents may not be cause for concern, but there is enough video evidence in this report to disturb anyone who cares about fair elections. Rule changes, disregard for existing rules, cancelling elections, running off with ballots, secret vote counts, throwing out votes, threats, physical violence, and arbitrary replacement of delegates are activities unbecoming of a democratic society. Whether you're a Ron Paul supporter, or even a Republican, is irrelevant. That the Republican Party will seemingly stop at nothing to ensure their selected candidate is the nominee should be deeply troubling for all Americans.
Reprinted with permission from OpEd News.

August 8, 2012

Jaret Glenn is a Central Florida native and a graduate of FSU and Nova Southeastern university. He's a freelance political writer and activist. Visit his website.

Julian Is A Seeker Of Truth!

The Pursuit of Julian Assange Is an Assault on Freedom and a Mockery of Journalism

Posted By John Pilger

On August 23, 2012 @ 11:00 pm In Uncategorized | 6 Comments

The British government’s threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonor international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorism in London on July 7, 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have compromised the safety of British representatives across the world.
Threatening to abuse a law designed to expel murderers from foreign embassies, while defaming an innocent man as an “alleged criminal,” Hague has made a laughing stock of Britain across the world, though this view is mostly suppressed in Britain. The same brave newspapers and broadcasters that have supported Britain’s part in epic bloody crimes, from the genocide in Indonesia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, now attack the “human rights record” of Ecuador, whose real crime is to stand up to the bullies in London and Washington.
It is as if the Olympics happy-clappery has been subverted overnight by a revealing display of colonial thuggery. Witness the British army officer-cum-BBC reporter Mark Urban “interviewing” a braying Sir Christopher Meyer, Blair’s former apologist in Washington, outside the Ecuadorean embassy, the pair of them erupting with Blimpish indignation that the unclubbable Assange and the uncowed Rafael Correa should expose the western system of rapacious power. Similar affront is vivid in the pages of the Guardian, which has counseled Hague to be “patient” and that storming the embassy would be “more trouble than it is worth.” Assange was not a political refugee, the Guardian declared, because “neither Sweden nor the U.K. would in any case deport someone who might face torture or the death penalty.”
The irresponsibility of this statement matches the Guardian’s perfidious role in the whole Assange affair. The paper knows full well that documents released by WikiLeaks indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters of civil rights. In December 2001, the Swedish government abruptly revoked the political refugee status of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed el-Zari, who were handed to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport and “rendered” to Egypt, where they were tortured. An investigation by the Swedish ombudsman for justice found that the government had “seriously violated” the two men’s human rights. In a 2009 U.S. embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, entitled “WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History,” the Swedish elite’s vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as a sham. Another U.S. cable reveals that “the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] cooperation [with NATO] is not widely known” and unless kept secret “would open the government to domestic criticism.”
The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, played a notorious leading role in George W. Bush’s Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and retains close ties to the Republican Party’s extreme right. According to the former Swedish director of public prosecutions Sven-Erik Alhem, Sweden’s decision to seek the extradition of Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct is “unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate.” Having offered himself for questioning, Assange was given permission to leave Sweden for London where, again, he offered to be questioned. In May, in a final appeal judgment on the extradition, Britain’s Supreme Court introduced more farce by referring to nonexistent “charges.”
Accompanying this has been a vituperative personal campaign against Assange. Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover,has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal.The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous.” They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy cables. On Aug. 20, Harding was outside the Ecuadorean embassy, gloating on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.” It is ironic, if entirely appropriate, that a Guardian editorial putting the paper’s latest boot into Assange bears an uncanny likeness to the Murdoch press’s predictable augmented bigotry on the same subject. How the glory of Leveson, Hackgate, and honorable, independent journalism doth fade.
His tormentors make the point of Assange’s persecution. Charged with no crime, he is not a fugitive from justice. Swedish case documents, including the text messages of the women involved, demonstrate to any fair-minded person the absurdity of the sex allegations — allegations almost entirely promptly dismissed by the senior prosecutor in Stockholm, Eva Finne, before the intervention of a politician, Claes Borgstr?At the pre-trial of Bradley Manning, a U.S. army investigator confirmed that the FBI was secretly targeting the “founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks” for espionage.
Four years ago, a barely noticed Pentagon document, leaked by WikiLeaks, described how WikiLeaks and Assange would be destroyed with a smear campaign leading to “criminal prosecution.” On Aug. 18, the Sydney Morning Herald disclosed, in a Freedom of Information release of official files, that the Australian government had repeatedly received confirmation that the U.S. was conducting an “unprecedented” pursuit of Assange and had raised no objections. Among Ecuador’s reasons for granting asylum is Assange’s abandonment “by the state of which he is a citizen.” In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Assange and WikiLeaks had committed no crime. His persecution is an assault on us all and on freedom.

www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0823-chapman-20120823,0,5395721.column

chicagotribune.com

The candidates vs. the Bill of Rights

Civil liberties have no champion in the presidential race

Steve Chapman
August 23, 2012

Back in the early days of the Republic, the framers went to great trouble to draft and ratify the Bill of Rights. And every four years, our leaders pay homage to the framers by neglecting or disparaging that creation.
Not all of it, of course. Americans generally favor religious freedom (the First Amendment) and the right to own guns (Second). But the ban on any establishment of religion (First) is a favorite target of believers who think the government has a sacred duty to promote Christianity.
Then there are the Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable searches, and the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees the right against self-incrimination. These are often seen as obstructions erected for the perverse benefit of bad people, who would not be so bad if they had read more Bible stories in school.
So politicians rarely rise to defend these provisions or the rights they safeguard. Civil liberties are the Penn State Nittany Lions of our political realm: They have many enemies, and their friends often look embarrassed.
When George W. Bushwas president, Democrats often decried his habit of trampling on freedoms in his zeal to stamp out terrorism at any cost. Running in 2008, Barack Obama decried Bush's aggressive use of presidential power in the name of national security.
But Democrats usually worry about civil liberties only when the other party is violating them. Obama is not always recognizable as the same person now that he is president. He has maintained the prison camp at Guantanamo, continued warrantless surveillance of Americans and carried out lethal drone attacks on U.S. citizens abroad without making public the evidence.
His White House counsel admits Obama takes a, well, different view of presidential power than he did in 2008. "Until one experiences that first hand, it is difficult to appreciate fully how you need flexibility in a lot of circumstances," Kathy Ruemmler told The Wall Street Journal.
Midway through his term, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero pronounced himself "disgusted" with Obama's record. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley regards the president as a "disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States."
But not all the failings are Obama's. He tried to close Guantanamo and move detainees to U.S. soil, only to face overwhelming opposition from Congress, including many Democrats.
In some ways he has rejected Bush's approach. He ended the use of torture (notably waterboarding) on enemy captives and closed the CIA's secret prisons. In other matters related to personal freedom, he's been a welcome contrast to Republicans — endorsing the mosque near ground zero, abolishing the military's ban on openly gay members and supporting same-sex marriage.
If you're looking for an opponent willing to call Obama out for his disappointing efforts in this realm, Mitt Romney is not the candidate for you. When it comes to civil liberties, he gives every appearance of being Dick Cheney without the charm.
Close Guantanamo and transfer the inmates? Not a chance. In 2007, Romney said, "I want them on Guantanamo, where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. … My view is we ought to double Guantanamo."
When it comes to torture, the only time he says "no" is when he's asked if he's had enough. Last year, his campaign spokeswoman said Romney does not regard waterboarding as torture and declined to say he would not use it.
Another difference between the two candidates involves the Supreme Court, where neither would be ideal. Obama bitterly rejects the court's view that corporations have a free speech right to spend money on elections. His Supreme Court appointee Sonia Sotomayor signed a dissent concluding that despite the Second Amendment, "the use of arms for private self-defense does not warrant federal constitutional protection from state regulation."
The person Romney chose to head his Justice Advisory Committee is Robert Bork, whose 1987 Supreme Court nomination was rejected largely because of his evident contempt for judicial enforcement of the Bill of Rights. After President Bush's administration was criticized by the ACLU and others for his aggressive post-9/11anti-terrorism measures, Bork said Bush deserved criticism — "for not going far enough."
That's the sort of sentiment that rarely gets any candidate defeated. Right now, we don't know whether Obama or Romney will come out on top in the election. But it's a safe bet that civil liberties will not.
Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman.
schapman@tribune.com
Twitter @SteveChapman13

My Take: I am in complete agreement with Mr. Chapman but he believes that there are only TWO choices on the ballot for POTUS! He is forgetting THE civil liberties candidate Libertarian Gary Johnson. Don't vote for the lesser of two great evils, vote for good, VOTE LIBERTARIAN IN NOVEMBER!!!

Friday, August 24, 2012

Constitutional Conservative or Libertarian?
by Laurence M. Vance

, Posted August 23, 2012

Libertarians — those who believe that violence is proper only in the defense of person or property and who believe that people have the fundamental right to do anything that’s peaceful — have an image problem, according to some “libertarian-leaning” conservatives. Although those conservatives claim to espouse many libertarian viewpoints, they prefer to shy away from the term “libertarian” and instead call themselves “constitutional conservatives.”
Now, the issue here is plainly a philosophical one, and not a matter of linguistics. Although the specific adjectives one uses to describe his political philosophy are irrelevant alongside what he actually believes, they do make a philosophical statement about one’s political views.
Consider, first of all, conservatism. Although some libertarians may have said and done some things in the name of libertarianism that they had no business doing, I think it is conservatives who have not only an image problem, but a real philosophical problem as well.
I have written a few times that the very heart and soul of conservatism is war. Patriotism, Americanism, and being a real conservative are now equated with support for war, torture, and militarism. I stand by my assertion.
An amendment (no. 232) last year to H.R. 1, an appropriations bill that included spending for the Department of Defense, would have limited the use of funds for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan to $10 billion “to reduce the funding for Afghanistan sufficiently to leave enough funds to provide for the safe and orderly withdrawal of our troops but not funding for ongoing combat operations.” Only 7 of 239 Republicans in the House voted for it. The ones who voted against the amendment are the same Republicans in the House who boast how conservative they are.
But it’s not just Republicans in Congress who are war-crazy. The conservative faithful who listen to conservative talk-show hosts such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, read conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard, support conservative institutions such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, attend conservative meetings such as CPAC’s in Washington, D.C., and generally support anything the Republicans in Congress do that is pro-war, pro-empire, or pro-militarism.
But the trouble with conservatism goes much deeper. As Lew Rockwell, chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, has written,

The problem with American conservatism is that it hates the left more than the state, loves the past more than liberty, feels a greater attachment to nationalism than to the idea of self-determination, believes brute force is the answer to all social problems, and thinks it is better to impose truth rather than [sic] risk losing one soul to heresy. It has never understood the idea of freedom as a self-ordering principle of society. It has never seen the state as the enemy of what conservatives purport to favor. It has always looked to presidential power as the saving grace of what is right and true about America.

It is indeed strange that “libertarian-leaning” conservatives think it is libertarians who have the image problem.
I recognize that there are some conservatives who love liberty, loathe Republicans such as George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich, and oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of them call themselves “constitutional conservatives” because they are realize that mainstream conservatives have departed in great measure from the Constitution. Some might also say that they are “libertarian leaning,” but — for whatever reason — shy away from the term “libertarian.”

Unlibertarian Constitution
I’m all in favor of following the Constitution, but definitely not in every respect. There are some things in the Constitution that, while obviously constitutional, are certainly not libertarian. There have been things in the Constitution that were decidedly unlibertarian but have since been changed by an amendment, such as the protection of slavery and Prohibition. Those changes are a good thing. However, there yet remains the power of the federal government to tax with or without the Sixteenth Amendment, as Sheldon Richman has shown in a series of articles in Freedom Daily (August–October, 2006). The federal government, in the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution (“nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”), assumes that it has the legitimate power to take Americans’ private property. The purpose of the taking and the payment for the taking are irrelevant if the owner doesn’t want to sell.
Conservatives sometimes, and rightly so, criticize Congress and the president for going to war, as the United States has done many times since World War II, without a constitutionally required declaration of war. But would a declaration of war against Iraq and Afghanistan have made those unjust and unnecessary wars more just or more necessary?
And then there are the ambiguous clauses in the Constitution such as the “general welfare” clause, the “commerce” clause, and the “necessary and proper” clause. In the early years of American history, a national bank was said by some in Congress and by the Supreme Court to be justified because of the “necessary and proper” clause. And most recently, in 2009, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that the constitutional justification for Obamacare was the “commerce” clause.
A major problem with conservatives is that most of their talk about the Constitution is just a lot of hot air. Just look at the empty promises, grandiose claims, vain assurances, and blatant lies in the House Republican “Pledge to America.” Does anyone actually take seriously anything the Republicans say about the Constitution in their pledge? Does anyone think for a minute that the statement in the pledge about requiring “each bill moving through Congress to include a clause citing specific constitutional authority upon which the bill is justified” will actually prevent any unconstitutional legislation from being passed? And who received the “Defender of the Constitution Award” at last year’s CPAC conference? It was former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Still another problem is that conservatives who claim to revere the Constitution generally hold not only to some nonlibertarian opinions, but to some unconstitutional ones as well. Constitutional conservatives should unequivocally oppose the war on drugs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to or control of education, all welfare programs, all federal regulations, and most federal departments and agencies. That would include not just the “liberal” CPB and NEA, but the whole alphabet soup of federal departments, agencies, commissions, corporations, administrations, and bureaus such as the EPA, NASA, CPSC, ATF, SEC, TVA, FEMA, and FCC. When was the last time a conservative congressman, politician, talk- show host, pundit, think-tank, magazine, or writer called for the wholesale elimination of any of those bureaucracies because it is unconstitutional?
Constitutional conservative or libertarian? When it comes to the questions of individual liberty, peace and nonintervention, free markets, personal freedom and responsibility, and limited government, only one philosophy really measures up.
Laurence M. Vance is a policy adviser to The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is the author of The Revolution That Wasn’t. Visit his website: www.vancepublications.com. Send him email.
This article originally appeared in the May 2012 edition of Future of Freedom. Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.

The Corporate Surveillance State: How the Thought Police Use Your Cell Phone to Track Your Every Move

By John W. Whitehead
August 20, 2012

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

Advanced technology now provides government agents and police officers with the ability to track our every move. The surveillance state is our new society. It is here, and it is spying on you, your family and your friends every day. Worse yet, those in control are using life’s little conveniences, namely cell phones, to do much of the spying. And worst of all, the corporations who produce these little conveniences are happy to hand your personal information over to the police so long as their profit margins increase. To put it simply, the corporate-surveillance state is in full effect, and there is nowhere to hide.
Using the data transferred from, received by, and stored in your cell phone, police are now able to track your every move. Your texts, web browsing, and geographic location are all up for grabs. Using “stingray” devices, often housed in mobile surveillance vans, federal agents track the cell phones of unsuspecting people. By triangulating the source of a cell phone signal, agents are able to track down the whereabouts of the person holding it. These surveillance sweeps target all cell phone signals, not just those of criminal suspects. Examples of extralegal police surveillance in the years since 9/11 are numerous, from the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program to the NYPD’s spy network that targeted Muslims in the New York area.
Unfortunately, the now widespread tactic of spying on people via their cell phones resides in a legal grey area, which has allowed police agencies to take drastic steps to record the daily activity of all Americans. Whereas cell phone tracking once fell only in the purview of federal agents, local police departments, big and small, are beginning to engage in cell phone tracking with little to no oversight. Small police agencies are shelling out upwards of $244,000 to get the technology necessary to track cell phones. And as you might expect, most police departments have attempted to keep knowledge of their cell phone tracking programs secret, fearing (as they should) a public backlash.
Federal courts are divided on the issue, some saying that a warrant is necessary before executing a cell phone search. However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled that tracking the location of a cell phone without a warrant is legal and, thus, not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This lack of concern for the Fourth Amendment—which requires reasonable suspicion that you’re up to something illegal before the police conduct surveillance on you—is widely shared among the federal and state courts. In fact, courts issue tens of thousands of cell tracking orders a year, allowing police agencies to accurately pinpoint people’s locations within meters. Unless they’re charged with a crime, most people remain unaware that their cell data has been tracked.
Although government agencies are increasingly acquiring the technology to track cell phones themselves, most rely on cell phone companies to provide them with the user data. In July 2012, it was revealed that cell phone carriers had responded to an astonishing 1.3 million requests from police agencies for personal information taken from people’s cell phones. One of the larger carriers, AT&T, responds to roughly 700 requests a day, 230 of which are so-called “emergencies,” exempting them from standard court orders. This number has tripled since 2007. A relatively small carrier, C Spire Wireless, said that it received 12,500 requests in 2011. Sprint received the most requests, averaging 1,500 per day. The number of requests is almost certainly higher than 1.3 million, and the number of people affected much higher, because a single request often involves targeting multiple people.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the telecommunications companies which produce cell phone technology are more than happy to comply with government requests for personal information. They even make a handsome profit from selling the details of your private life to the government. Indeed, cell phone carriers are making a killing charging police agencies “surveillance fees”—from a few hundred to a few thousands dollars per request—to share information on a person’s location and activities. AT&T collected $8.3 million in 2011 for their surveillance activities, up from $2.8 million in 2007.
Telecommunications providers have also come up with price lists for easy reference for police agencies. For example, “Sprint charged $120 per target number for ‘Pictures and Video,’ $60 for ‘E-Mail,’ $60 for ‘Voicemail,’ and $30 for ‘SMS Content.’” Sprint actually has 110 employees who work solely on responding to information requests from the government. And government agents need not worry about maximizing resources by seeking only high priority targets. One agent can track 200 or 300 people at a time.
On the rare occasion that a telecom corporation resists a police effort to spy on a particular cell phone customer, there are methods by which companies are coerced to comply with the data requests. Telecoms are frequently harassed by the FBI with National Security Letters (NSL), which are demands for user information without warrant or judicial oversight. These include a gag order, which prevents the recipient from discussing the demand with others, including the media. Roughly 300,000 of these NSLs have been sent out since 2000, implying a massive spying effort on the part of the federal government. One telecom is currently in a battle with the federal government over an NSL demanding user data. The telecom refused to abide by the NSL, and in response the federal government has sued the telecom, insisting that their refusal jeopardizes national security. The end logic of this is that our private data is actually not private. The federal government claims that knowing our personal information is critical to preserving national security, and thus neither telecoms nor users may resist the sharing of that information.
Of course, corporations are just as interested in tracking people’s daily activities as the government. Cell phone companies and the software companies that create applications for their devices track your personal information so that they can market their services to you. Unfortunately, this leads to mass aggregation of user data which is then used by government agents to spy on and track all cell phone users. For example, Carrier IQ, a software company, and cell phone manufacturers HTC and Samsung are currently in the midst of a class-action lawsuit brought by Android phone users whose phone activities are recorded by a “rootkit,” a piece of software surreptitiously installed on cell phones that records the keystrokes of phone users. The FBI denied a December 2011 FOIA request to determine how the government was utilizing Carrier IQ’s software, as it could have an adverse impact on ongoing investigations. The agency’s refusal suggests that not only is Carrier IQ spying on cell phone users for their corporate purposes, but that federal agents are utilizing the software to conduct their own spying campaigns.
Unfortunately, with intelligence gathering and surveillance doing booming business, and corporations rolling out technologies capable of filtering through vast reams of data, tapping into underseas communication cables, and blocking websites for entire countries, life as we know it will only get worse. As journalist Pratap Chatterjee has noted, “[T]hese tools have the potential to make computer cables as dangerous as police batons.” Telecoms hold on to user data, including text messages and Internet browsing history, for months to years at a time. This, of course, has some ominous implications. For example, British researchers have created an algorithm that accurately predicts someone’s future whereabouts at a certain time based upon where she and her friends have been in the past.
So where does this leave us? As George Orwell warned, you have to live with the assumption that everything you do, say and see is being tracked by those who run the corporate surveillance state.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Libertarian and Conservative Case for the Abolition of Marriage Laws

by Peter S. Rieth

Amidst the ever louder public debate over the question of "gay marriage" or civil unions for same-sex couples, one view which seems to have gained little public exposure is the position in favor of abolishing all marriage laws everywhere and leaving the issue of marriage to be regulated by the private market place. I propose to examine this view in detail, demonstrating along the way how this libertarian methodology of dealing with the problem of marriage policy would eventually lead to the realization of the conservative goals of strengthening family, faith and patriotism.
The Left and Marriage
American Liberals and members of the political Left would likely reject this position because the prime reason why they favor "gay marriage" or civil unions for same-sex couples is that they believe all people should have equal access to government regulation of personal and social life. They would not put it quite this way, but it is essentially their position. To abolish marriage laws would, in the liberal left’s view, deprive all people of the "right" to file joint tax returns, or a number of other "rights" that the state has imagined for us over the years. All of these imagined "rights" granted by the state are not, of course, natural rights, but rather positive rights akin to the New Deal’s "Four Freedoms" – freedom from fear, want, and so forth and so on – invented rights that, politically, are fit for demagogues in a populist regime and that are intellectually groundless.
The political Left would never consider the viewpoint that many "rights" which they champion for homosexual couples – such as visitation rights – might be achieved in a free society via contracts between consenting adults. Far better, the Left generally believes, to let "experts" in public administration regulate things for us – we mere plebians are left to simply fill out all the paper work.
There is, of course, another reason why the political left favors same-sex marriage or civil unions, and that is a more insidious reason. Although they would never agree with the likes of conservatives like Harry Jaffa on the principle that since the law molds the customs and habits of citizens, thus the law must itself be molded by moral customs and habits; the left would concur that the law molds customs and habits. It is the fervent desire of the social engineers of the political left to enhance their power and prestige by forming men into the type of citizens who need the state to control and command their daily lives. There is, as every good conservative understands, no faster way to achieve this general dependency of citizens on the state than to undermine the one private social institution that we might call a fully functional voluntary polis – the family. I have no doubt, from my observation of both the practice and theory of the political left over the years, that many of them hate the family and wish to "liberate" us from this old institution.
The Right and Marriage
Nietzsche noted in one or another of his writings that as cultures decline, so too the number of laws meant to preserve them seem to multiply. Thus things that at one time did not seem to need legal mandates are being proposes as new laws by conservatives. There is perhaps no more direct example of this than the proposals to create a Constitutional Amendment in the United States that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. One almost wants to consider whether, at this rate, we shall not next be amending the constitution to say that "a father is understood to be a man" or that "dogs are not cats." As moral relativism and multiculturalism progress in or schools and in our culture, the notion that words can be used to signify things, and that language is a tool for communication rather than confusion becomes out of date and old fashioned. In light of this, conservatives often feel that they must rescue common sense by using the full force of the state apparatus to do so. The most extreme example of this was William F Buckley’s call to tolerate a totalitarian bureaucracy in the United States as a necessary price to pay in order to halt communism (predictably, communism is long halted; the bureaucracy remains and grows). The impulse to use the state as a means to coerce virtue, or even the recognition of common sense, is a powerful temptation – and is perhaps the a particularly fatal temptation for conservatives who should know better.
How Civil Marriage Laws actually operate
Before getting carried away with the notion that the political question before us is one of conservative traditionalism versus the liberal enthusiasm for social engineering and the universality of "social" justice, let us explore for a moment how contemporary civil marriage laws actually operate.
It should be noted from the outset that it is illegal in all states, and in all member states of the European Union (thus in the West) to get married in a Church without concurrently being "married" by the civil authorities. I begin with this observation because this fact should be alarming for all of us, but seems rather to be "quite normal" and non-controversial. "Why," someone might ask, "would anyone wish to get married without also having their marriage valid in the eyes of the law?"
This viewpoint presumes, of course, that the law is there to protect the marriage that we have consecrated in Church. It is not an uncommon viewpoint, in fact, to regard the law as generally being there to protect any number of given rights we have as individuals or to guarantee the fulfillment of obligations that we have contracted out to others.
This viewpoint of the law as beneficial protector of rights is, in fact, the cornerstone of modern democratic society (whether socialist democrat, liberal democrat or even Christian democrat). But libertarianism, and particularly public choice theory as well as the general political economy of "unintended consequences" teaches us to be wary of the law as a protector of anything.
This is something that any man or woman who has gone through a divorce will surely attest to. In a divorce, the parties to a civil marriage turn to the law to redress their grievances. Suddenly, in most cases, they realize that the civil law is not concerned with the just redress of grievances, but rather only with the application of a law that is all too often predicated on the notion that – far from being a binding contract to love and care for spouses, marriage was more like a "lifestyle choice", made for temporary gratification of whims. Divorce courts rarely end up satisfying both parties. They compound the damage by usually taking a very long time to come to a decision, thus prolonging the anguish of the disillusion of a civil union.
In short – just like a government post office doesn’t deliver mail on time and a government train doesn’t run on time – so to the lack of a price mechanism and any real pressure from market forces of supply and demand leads government courts to fail in the delivery of their promised goods: justice.
Why, you might ask, did people not think about this before getting married? Why not sign a prenuptial agreement or a separate civil agreement? The standard answer, if ever this question is asked, is usually that to do so would be unromantic and somehow introduce some element of doubt into what ought to be a firm and serious desire to form a lasting union.
Libertarian political economy leads me, however, to suggest another answer: whenever the government takes it upon itself to craft fiat laws of inter-personal conduct and impose them on humans, humans tend not to think independently about said aspects of interpersonal conduct, and by force of habit cede their responsibilities to the government that has in effect taken them away from the individual. In other words – moral hazard functions in the realm of marriage no less than in the realm of government flood insurance. Since government promises the redress grievances justly in an eventual divorce case, and since marriage laws promise a plethora of rights to spouses and promise the execution of duties from spouses – potential spouses do not think at all about what marriage entails – they have been conditioned to focus on the proverbial ceremony and not on the nature of the relationship.
Imagine if business were expected to run this way? Imagine if government regulated the terms of employment contracts or set the rules of trade? Isn’t it likely that traders and businessmen would become more and more careless – since the issue is out of their hands by fiat anyways? Isn’t this, in fact, what happened on Wall Street or in the Banking Sector, where government control and regulation reached such grotesque heights, that all traders were left with was the option of buying high, and all bankers were left with was the option of selling credit at low interest rates? Once the government introduces top down command and control – it conditions the market to act within an unnatural, mandated framework. Why would it be any different with government command and control of marriage?
Catholicism, Marriage and Civil Marriage
I wish to speak here of one specific example, because it is an example I am familiar with – namely the issue of Catholic Marriage and Civil Marriage laws. I do not mean to suggest here that the Catholic Church is somehow more deserving of attention than other Churches, institutions or individuals, but rather – alongside what I hope is slowly becoming a logical argument in favor of the abolition of marriage laws – I would like to demonstrate my argument by way of a practical example.
I am a practicing Catholic, having been through one year of preparation for Communion and Confirmation within a Jesuit Order (something I am very proud of), and have given much thought to the following conundrum:
Catholics define marriage as a sacred union of a man and a woman before God. Because it is sacred, it is also a sacrament, which in the Catholic religion is perhaps the most intimate relationship imaginable between a man and God. As such, Catholics naturally believe that marriage cannot be dissolved. To suggest that it can would be akin to suggesting that the sun didn’t shine yesterday when clearly we saw that it did.
It is, however, possible – to continue the metaphor – that having violated some precepts of our religion (let’s say we gluttonously drank too much) – we found ourselves staring into a Police flashlight, thinking that this very shiny thing was actually the sun. For anyone who has ever experienced excessive intoxication, you will understand this metaphor quite well. In such a case, no matter how convinced we might be that what we saw was the sun – no matter. Witnesses will testify otherwise, and it will turn out that we did not, in fact, see the sun – but only a bright flashlight dimly thought to be the sun in our state of mindless intoxication.
In its’ wisdom – the Catholic Church recognizes that this unfortunate metaphorical scenario could well be a true event in the case of marriage. That is to say, Cannon law recognizes that it is possible that, under certain very specific circumstances, a Catholic Wedding ceremony – in spite of having nominally been performed – was actually never in fact performed. Thus Catholic Cannon allows for the Church to declare something that once was thought to have been a wedding null and void – as never having actually taken place.
Contrary to what many people might think, the Catholic Church’s private court system deals with thousands of such annulment cases on a yearly basis. In the majority of instances, these cases are brought to the attention of the Church by a devote Catholic who was betrayed by their spouce (by "betrayed" I mean in the full sense, not the narrow sense of sexual betrayal – I mean that someone betrayed their wedding vows and left the other person). The Church must then determine whether or not this marriage was ever valid in the first place. In the majority of cases where annulment is granted, it is on the basis of psychological immaturity of one or more of the parties participating in the wedding ceremony.
The Church is very thorough in its’ investigations. Unlike civil divorce courts, the Church is interested in truth and justice – and not in the satisfaction of the desires of the participants to the court case. It does not matter what people "want" – all that matters is what they have done, and what it means.
Those who do not agree with this system are, of course, free to simply ignore it. The Catholic Church does not have and does not seek to have any state sanctioned legal powers of coercion towards anyone. Yet Catholic Courts function with a power greater than most government courts precisely because it is the voluntary consent of Catholic parishioners which fuels them. So many Catholics wish to live virtuous lives that they insist on clearing up what has developed into a bad situation rather than remaining outcasts in the eyes of the Church. The Church has thus set up these private courts to deal with the matter.
Now – consider this for a moment: an entire system of private courts, run by a Church, on a purely voluntary basis – all dealing with a problem that the majority of people think cannot be dealt with except by the government. Naturally, all of this costs less than what government divorce courts cost as well. The Catholic Church generally charges the equivalent of the monthly salary of a parishioner who wishes to have his case heard. Thus, if you make 1,000 USD per month – that is what you pay. I f you make 1,000,000 USD per month – that is what you pay. Hence the wealthy pay more and the poor pay less, but both pay what is proportionally just in lieu of their income. In practice of course, this means that the wealthy subsidize the poor (voluntarily), but the poor do not become corrupted by this because they must pay a sum which, proportionally for them, is nevertheless high enough to be felt in their households budgets. It is, from the point of view of ethics, a wonderful situation that promotes virtue. Not surprisingly – at the core of this system is the principle of liberty, or faith – which is in effect the same thing, since it is impossible to have true faith except freely.
Now imagine for a moment if two Catholics wish to be married and protest against civil marriage under the pretext that the civil marriage laws violate their religious convictions. What religious convictions, you ask? The religious conviction that marriage cannot be dissolved. The majority of civil laws in the world allow for divorce, and the path towards divorce is ever easier. Why should I, as a Catholic, be forced to marry someone who might receive legal sanction one day if they wish to leave me? What if I am not satisfied with the notion of possibly signing a prenuptial agreement because a long train of abuses at the hand of government agencies has taught me not to trust them – including not to trust their courts or their capacity to uphold contracts? What if my would-be spouse feels the same way?
If we declared ourselves leaders of a new church – let’s call it the "unregistered, informal church of God" – we could go off to the forest, perform our wedding vows, and be done with it. We, however, being Catholics, have made a free choice – to entrust our marriage to the Catholic Church. What now? Why can we not have a Catholic wedding without a Civil Ceremony?
This problem is actually not as abstract as you might think. The Catholic Church is often forced to break the civil law and grant Catholic Weddings without civil ceremonies to people who, due to prior civil divorces, might lose their social security benefits, alimony payments and other hard one legal compensations. Now you might say that they should lose them, because if someone remarries, then they do not "need" them. But this is all predicated on the state’s notion of justice, which is to say – injustice.
If a person enters into a contract that stipulates that a) there is a God, and b) we are vowing before this supreme God to be together forever – then you would think that the breaking of this contract by one of the parties ought to carry with it a very hefty punishment. Catholics believe it does – but only in the court of the Final Judge. Here on Earth, civil courts often reward people who turn out to have been irresponsible husbands or wives who have left their loyal spouse. The least that the injured party can expect is to collect compensations and not have to be put in the agonizing situation of choosing between recovering some of their costs or marrying again.
These kinds of situations exist, of course, because the civil law considers marriage a mere "life style choice" – one that can be reversed essentially whenever one party to the wedding wants. If a Catholic argued in civil court that he or she had been cheated, that they entered into a life-long contract, the government court would tell them that the only contract the law recognizes is the civil marriage contract – and that one clearly stipulates that you can divorce whenever you feel like it. Ergo – there is no possibility for a Catholic to gain justice through government divorce courts. In fact, the existence of these courts precludes it – since Catholics do not believe in divorce, and the nature of the marriage contract inherent in the sacrament of Catholic marriage precludes it.
This is one – only one – example of how civil marriage laws violate the individual rights of citizens to practice their religion. It is also an example of how a voluntary religious order (in this case the Catholic church) regulates matters pertaining to marriage with the full consent of parishoners. It is an example which should make conservatives pause whenever they consider advocating for more government control over marriage.
A Libertarian Method towards the Conservative Goal of preserving Family, Faith and Patriotism
Conservatives ought to advocate for the abolition of marriage laws for essentially the same reasons they advocate for the abolition of gun regulation, business regulation or a number of other command-and-control regulations and laws. They ought to do this not for the morally relativistic purpose of "tolerating" whatever individuals want to do, but for the thoroughly morally objective reason of ensuring the conditions for virtue in a political community. The condition for virtue in a political community is, of course, freedom.
Marriages and families, as well as faith and patriotism, are only true and good when they are freely chosen. I hope that this is not a controversial argument. Conservatives often say that it is in the nature of man to wish to find happiness in the community of his fellows. Nature has given us a variety of instincts, sexual, psychological, emotional – for the satisfaction of which we require a spouse, children, good neighbors, a meaningful life of labor, and numerous other activities which are the traditional realm of republican citizenship. Independent of whether or not we are more or less optimistic about the nature of man, I think it is impossible to disagree with the proposition as it stands above that all that is arguably good and virtuous ceases to be so if men do it out of fear or through coercion rather than out of a true faith or rational, free choice.
Marriage is perhaps the most intimately private and personal of all social institutions because unlike governments, schools, factories, universities, corporations and other social bodies – marriage is made up of only two people; and they must have not merely consensus or mutual self-interest to function – they must nurture a true, deep, and ever- lasting love. (I admit, of course, that "marriage" – according to some, might be defined as short-lived, consisting of three individuals and a dog, and requiring nothing but whim – and if there are people who wish to define it so for their own purposes; or in whatever other way – they may have the freedom to do it; though I do not speak of them here because I presume that it is not the goal of conservative social policy to promote such relationships).
If there were no laws on the books regarding marriage – and ever man who wished to marry a woman had to either create their own institution for doing it, redefine marriage to mean something arbitrary or marry in an established religious institution – I submit to you that the following would happen:

Those who created their own institutions in order to marry themselves would either create new, long lived churches rooted in their deep love and virtue which would – by the power of their example nurture more such marriages or they would create a short-lived sham which would give shape to their childish folly and have no further impact beyond their separation in not too long a time after. The former situation is a conservative ideal – the latter situation, while deplorable, is a limited harm done to two individuals by one another – and they bear the psychological and emotional costs of this harm.
Redefine marriage in such a way as to make it immaterial to this essay.
Marry in established religious orders with their own body of private church, synagogue or mosque laws governing marriage – thereby making it extremely difficult to actually lead to a situation wherein people would marry who had no intention of staying married, or who thought that the civil laws would somehow sanction their later change of hearts. Would we still have people leaving their spouses? Yes. Would they be able to benefit financially and otherwise from this immoral decision on the basis of civil laws which protect the right to divorce? No. They would, in fact, if ever their vows turned out to be worthless, lose all credibility in said religious community – which would be strengthened by the loss of such elements form their midst.

Thus, by restoring full responsibilities for the regulation of marriage to individuals and churches, we would restore the grand sense of overwhelming obligation that a man and woman ought to feel before what is supposed to be a mighty institution. Surely this serves the development of strong families, secures faith, and ultimately leads to the patriotism of a people who love their country because it gives them the means to be self-governing men and women?
It is not, you will note, my contention that the abolition of marriage laws will lead to perfect marriages. Rather, it is to show that private regulation of marriage is a fact and a tradition (at least in the Catholic church, and I expect in many others), that this is a matter that individuals have been dealing with well for ages – and that to take away the powers and responsibilities of the individuals and their churches for marriage is to mold dependents rather than independent citizens.

August 3, 2011

Peter S Rieth [send him mail] is an American citizen, born in Poland and educated at Hillsdale College, Michigan.