POST SCRIPT TO TERROR

              In my last post I described how the United States Intelligence community is ignoring the Islamic terrorist threat within the United States and instead is using its new found anti terror surveillance  powers to monitor political opponents.  As proof, I discuss how there have been a string of Radical Islamic Terrorist Attacks in the US by Jihadists who made no real effort to hide their intent to commit terrorist attacks yet who were not monitored by the US intelligence community before their acts and whose terrorist intentions were downplayed by Federal authorities after the fact.  I argue that the evidence clearly shows these to be acts of Islamic terror and that The Justice Department is falsely claiming there is no evidence of terrorism.  I conclude by claiming.  the US government is ignoring real terror within the US while using the tools provided to combat Islamic terrorism to illegally monitor political opponents within the US. 

            Well, my loyal listeners, the government just proved my point.   Eric Frein, the alleged cop killer in Pennsylvania , was just charged with terrorism related crimes.   Frein appears not to be associated, loosely or otherwise, with any overarching group or ideology.  He was, however, politically motivated; apparently writing in his personal papers that his actions were intended to spark a revolution to change the government.  This alone was enough for Frein to be charged with terrorism related charges in addition to first degree murder.

            As I argued in my prior post, all of the recent Islamic extremist perpetrators left copious open and public evidence of intent to commit acts of violence against the United States in an effort to overthrow the government and to establish an Islamic state or sharia law or the like within the United States.    This evidence I argue, was perfectly adequate to bring terrorism charges against all of these perpetrators yet the government has steadfastly argued there is no evidence in any of these cases of terrorism.  The charging of Frein proves that a criminal act such as murder coupled with evidence of a political intent is grounds for terrorism related charges.  Why then we must ask is the Justice Department vigorously denying any basis to bring terrorism charges against the numerous Islamic Jihadists who have carried out attacks with in the US with admitted intent to overthrow the US government and other political motivations?  These Jihadists are carrying out their acts as part of a world wide anti American movement, yet they are not considered terrorists, while Frein, a true lone wolf actor, is charged with terror related crimes.

     Clearly, and sadly,  this government has no intention of rooting out Jihadist terrors in the US; thus we have to ask the question how the anti terrorist tools we gave them to protect us are in reality being used?

TERRORISM DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT OF VIEW

            The latest terrorist attacks raise serious doubt about the Government’s ability or even the will to combat terrorism in the USA.    What may not be as obvious is that they also tell us a lot about government-sponsored suppression of free speech and invasion of privacy of the people.

            Some commentators have suggested that the disclosures of Edward Snowden have caused the Government to be more cautious and as a result not as aggressively pursuing potential terrorists as it may otherwise have been.  This, they opine, is the reason why authorities missed recent terrorist attacks by knife wielding decapitator Alton Nolan and hatchet wielding attempted be-header Zale Thompson.    This is demonstrably untrue on the widely reported known facts, which, quite to the contrary, show that the government is not attempting to root out terrorism and, to the contrary, may be  actively engaged in covering it up.  Let’s look at what we know.

            Zale Thompson was a recent convert to Islam, renaming himself with a Muslim name and posting a public face book page with this information and openly encouraging war against the people of the United States within our own borders in the name of Islam.   Well after making these posts, On October 22, 2014, Zale attacked four New York police officers who were distracted by someone allegedly taking their picture.  The hatchet wielding Zale managed to plant the hatchet in the head of one of the officers and wounding the other who attempted to stop him before the other two shot Zale dead.

           The White House failed to identify this as a terrorist attack and government agencies have admitted that Thompson was not under surveillance nor was he the subject of any FISA or other wire-tap warrant.  Why not?  The publically available posts of Thompson would have been enough to obtain a lawful wire tap under traditional law and certainly should have triggered an electronic surveillance warrant if the government had been actually interested in stopping terrorist attacks.

            Alton Nolan decapitated a woman and was in the process of trying to do the same to another when he was shot by his boss (who fortunately happened to have a gun).  Similar to Thompson, Nolan had a public jihadist face book page praising Osama Ben laden, showing a photo of a beheading and showing the twin towers with the by line, “we did this because…“; self reported himself as a Muslim convert and quoted passages from the Quran about beheading infidels.    Among all the other incriminating evidence, of particular note on Nolan’s Facebook page is a picture of a beheading and the following lines:

            "Thus, do we find the clear precedent that explains the peculiar penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims: it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet." Just below the image is a citation from the Quran, "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off of them."

  

            Even though this quote (under a picture of a person who had been beheaded) may have been clipped from another site and the quote is from the Quran; nevertheless, the fact that Nolan chose to post this on his personal site along with other Anti-American and jihadist material strongly evidenced his intent to commit a terrorist act, in particular, a beheading. 

            Instead, with all this evidence, after the beheading and the resulting ability to review any past e-mails, phone records, phone calls stored on its super computers in Utah, the Face book page with admissions, instant messaging and the like; the Justice Department is unable to find any indication of terrorism.  How is it possible the Justice Department could have found Nolan to be a terrorist before the crime, when it cannot find terrorism even after the terrorist act?     

            The same thing happed after the shooting by major Hassan at Fort Hood well before the Snowden disclosures.  In that case, Hassan was in the military and under constant observation by co-workers and commanding officers.  We now know virtually everyone around him knew for years he was a radical Islamist advocating violence against the military; yet, nothing was done, including no surveillance or warrant for electronic monitoring.  Instead, to this day, the FBI and the Justice Department insist he was not a terrorist, but, rather, a disgruntled employee.  He recently made the news again for writing a threatening letter to the Pope essentially admitting he is a terrorist on a mission of Jihad and claiming the mission is to wipe out Christianity.

            Again in the case of the Tsarneyev brothers bombing at the Boston Marathon, the elder Tsarneyev had jihadist rants publicly posted on UTube for at least a month before the bombing.  In addition, Russian intelligence warned the FBI on two occasions that the he had traveled to Chechnya and was believed to be meeting with Chechnya Muslim terrorist groups; and he was attending a Boston Mosque known to be preaching radical Jihad; yet no surveillance or electronic eavesdropping was opened prior to the bombing.  The FBI claims they interviewed the older Tsarneyev and he seemed like a nice guy so they dropped it.

            The charge of terrorism is an aggravating factor to be added to an act that would already be a crime.  It is similar to the designation” of a “hate crime”.   If someone commits a murder, lets say, for one of the typical reasons:  jealousy or money, then its just an ordinary murder.  But if there was a motivation of hatred, lets say because of racial or homophobic animus, then there is the added aggravation of a “hate crime.”   Terrorism therefore is a crime that is an aggravating charge in addition to an underlying standard charge such as murder.    Terrorism should be differentiated from conspiracy to commit terrorism.  Terrorism alone is simply the intent to commit a terrorist act, not necessarily conspiring with others to do so.

            The charge of terrorism is therefore important to the conclusion that the government is diligently looking for terrorists.  Obviously they are not; since,  they refuse to charge terrorism in obvious cases, how can we credibly believe they are seriously looking for suspects.  Note, for example, that the FBI has initiated an investigation of a potentially racially motivated killing in Ferguson, Missouri based solely on the fact that the cop was white and the victim was black and the victim had no gun.  There was no racist web site.  The circumstances of the shooting alone was enough to suggest to the Justice Department of a racial motivation.  Yet a Jihadist radical Muslim, anti American threatening face book page plus a beheading with a knife suggests nothing to our justice Department in the Nolan case suggesting terrorism.   

            The Obama administration has purged all references to terrorism and extremist Islam from all documents, procedures, training manuals and texts in the Justice Department and the military and all other federal law enforcement.  The Justice Department is coincidentally preparing and soon to issue directives to prohibit any reference to Islam as a possible factor in any crime.  Coupled with the consistent refusal to identify terrorism, it can only be concluded that the failure of the government to prevent terrorism has nothing to do with curtailment of the illegal NSA spying program.  In each of the recent cases of terrorism, there was ample publicly available warning of the intent to commit acts of terror before the fact.  It appears the government did not want to find it.

            At the same time, we know from Snowden’s document releases, since his documents are admitted by the government to be authentic, that the NSA is monitoring the private e-mails, phone calls, and web activity of millions of Americans.  They are building hundreds of thousands of square feet of nondescript buildings in Utah to house their super computers and data base of millions upon millions of American’s private communications and internet activity allegedly directed at finding terrorist activity.  The government claims even the slightest connection with a suspected terrorist justifies electronic surveillance of American citizens, thus justifying the millions being monitored    We now know conclusively from the recent terrorist attacks that these massive spying operations are not monitoring the people who openly post public information admitting they are jihadists advocating terrorists attacks within the United States. Let’s face it;  the FBI or the NSA could have found all of the terrorists we have discussed who actually committed terrorist acts in the USA with a couple of geeks in their mothers’ basement with a relatively good Dell.  If not potential terrorists, then who is the government monitoring with these billions of dollars and massive Crell computers?   We, unfortuanatley, know the answer to this as well. 

            The people being monitored are not “terrorists” as you and I understand the term. The word terrorism depends on your point of view.   To you and me it means someone who is intent on committing murderous acts against helpless civilians for some extreme political cause.  To the government, however, it means something totally different.  A terrorist to the government is a citizen so outraged over the government wasting their tax money that they actually have the audacity to try to create a citizen political action group. The evidence sadly shows that the true object of government spying operations are law abiding citizens like you and me who believe the government is spending too much money, violating the constitution by spying on its citizens without probable cause; or, even worse, who have the audacity to start political groups opposing big government with words like “patriot” or “tea party” in the name.   That’s what strikes terror in the heart of a government beaurcrat.

     

PUBLIC SCHOOLS BAN FREE EXERCISE

     The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,   nor the free exercise thereof.” 

 Modern courts have interpreted the Establishment    Clause to mean that the Congress shall make no law establishing an official religion.  The prevailing thinking of Progressives in general and judges in particular regarding public schools is that no reference to religion can be made in a school setting because it might infringe on the Establishment Clause.  That is that any such reference allegedly tends to “establish” an official state religion.  This interpretation ignores the words  “respecting an”.   The more logical and plain meaning of the language would be that Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.   Thus the Constitution actually requires that the Congress make no law that attempts to regulate legitimate religious establishments.

The meaning of the second phrase is self-evident: Congress shall make no law respecting the free exercise of religion.  Note that the Constitutional protection of free exercise extends only to the free exercise of “religion”.  It offers no protection to atheists or anti-religious organizations. Courts today, however, routinely misinterpret this clause as well to give standing to atheists to oppose free exercise of religion by others.  As can be plainly seen by the actual language of the constitution, these people have no standing.  Their beliefs are not protected.  In fact, the Constitution protects practitioners from harassment by just these kind of folks, atheists who claim to be offended by the free exercise of religion by others.  

The “right” to an education does not appear in the constitution; yet progressives regularly speak of education as a “right”.  The right to an education, they assert, is paramount and the Free Exercise clause must yield to this overriding public policy of free public education.   Actually this right appears in the communist manifesto, not the U.S. Constitution.  On the other hand, the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses are in the constitution and they guarantee that the government will pass no law, which interferes with the individual’s free exercise of their religious beliefs or in respect to a religious establishment.  Nevertheless, the problem we have today is that the invented “right” to an education is given precedence over the actual express “right” of religious freedom.

Consider the public school system in this light.  Public schools teach the theory of evolution and prohibit teaching the theory of divine creation.  In fact, the creationist theory is not only not taught, it is ridiculed as a standard part of all public school curriculum; even though creationism is a fundamental belief of all major religions in the United States, Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  This is so because the “right “ to an education of what the government believes is the truth is held by progressive courts to be paramount to the expressed right in the Constitution of Free Exercise.   Following this line of reasoning, the Ten Commandments are prohibited, but moral-relativism may be freely taught in its place.  The big bang theory and the resultant conclusion that there is no God are  taught by public schools.  Extra-marital sex is promoted through sex education and by the distribution of birth control and promotion of abortion regardless of the religious beliefs of the parents.  Religious thought in general is characterized as backward, ignorant, anti-science and on the wrong side of history.  Religious displays are prohibited including group prayer, mention of god in speeches, assemblies, sporting events and the like.   The pledge of allegiance is prohibited because it references “one nation under God;” (except in Barack Obama’s version).

Any child forced to go to public schools gets the very clear message that religion is out of date, square and just plain dumb.  This is so because the Courts have created a legal construct whereby public schools, which are government institutions, are entitled to teach anything as long as it is not affirming religion or fostering religion.  Thus, under the progressive view, public schools are freely entitled to teach things that contradict and even ridicule religious thought and religious practices, but may not in any way affirm religious beliefs.

I do not here attempt to argue that Creationism or Darwinism is correct or not.  I simply argue that these are all matters that are the subjects of religious beliefs and, as such, the government is prohibited from forcing its opinion on these subjects on the children of its citizens.  The Establishment and Free Exercise clauses specifically prohibit this.

The excuse of progressives for this overt repression of free exercise is that the religious can go to private schools if they like.  But, of course, by in large, only the wealthy can afford private education.  The law requires parents to provide an education to their children; and, as a result, most Americans are forced to send their children to a government run school where religious ideas are routinely and consistently denigrated as wrong.  The other excuse is that public schools are locally run; and, therefore, local ideas of what should be taught prevail.  As we have seen, this argument is and always has been, just Sophistry.  Through Court challenges to local curriculum, increasing state and federal control (No Child Left Behind, Common Core, etc.) the local control idea has become nothing more that window dressing.  Note that, by in large, the attacks on local control have been initiated by progressives who made the argument for local control in the first instance when they were pitching public education back at the turn of the 20^th century.  Progressive Courts, National organizations and unions now control the pubic school agenda and it is overtly hostile to religion and moral based thinking.

We have been so convinced by the secular progressives that public education is a necessity that we have accepted the routine persecution of religion and the resultant violation of the Free Exercise clause by public schools.   In fact, the very concept of the government requiring the people to attend its schools is antithetical to the constitution.  Although perhaps a noble idea in the first instance, history has shown that public mandated education is unconstitutional as applied in actual practice.

WATCH WHAT YOU SAY

NSA data storage facility under construction in Utah

Since my last article, the government has continued its cover-up of the extent of the NSA spying.  Attacking the messenger in politics is always a first line of defense.  To this end, the authorities have suggested that Snowden, was working with the Russians all along.  Admittedly, Snowden’s intention and purpose is an important issue, but it is irrelevant to the issue of whether the government is illegally spying on its citizens.  The N.S.A. admits that the Snowden documents are authentic (when prior to the release N.S.A. denied any such program existed).  The intentions of Snowden are beside the point.  Assume the documents were released by Putin himself.  If they are authentic, would that change the issue of whether the N.S.A. obtained them illegally in the first place?

            Snowden’s documents show that the NSA is collecting metadata on the phone calls of most Americans, both abroad and inside the USA.  Prior to the disclosures the N.S.A denied this to Congress on the record.  Thus, we know as a matter of fact, that the government lacks credibility here, and that to some extent Snowden is telling the truth.   Snowden’s documents also show that the data has in fact been misused, although, after initially denying it, the government now admits there has been abuse, but in only a few cases. 

            Snowden’s documents also show that there is a clandestine government program to install spying devices in computers prior to their delivery to recipients; a program to collect Americans personal data through Trojan horses hidden in popular apps like “Angry Birds”, and a Program called PRISM to tap directly into the servers of the major internet providers including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and a host of others.  This provides direct government access to all e-mail content and internet searches of most Americans without a warrant.  The N.S.A. is building a massive complex in Utah to house the data mined through these and other mass data collection programs.   It claims it can then access the data later, through a secret F.I.S.A. warrant, if anyone does anything suspicious in the opinion of N.S.A.; like, say criticizing the government just a little too much?

            The government argues these programs are collecting data that is not private because it is voluntarily put out into the public domain by virtue of using the internet and cell phones services in the first place.  But these arguments do not hold up to scrutiny.  The cell phone is the modern equivalent of the telephone and the net, the equivalent of the mail.   We even call it “e-mail” and cell phones are called just ”phones”.  Under traditional law telephone bills are private papers requiring a warrant to produce even though the phone company had the data.  A warrant was required to “tap” a phone call even though the phone company could listen in at any time. Similarly, traditional mail was considered private even though it traveled through the post office on its way to another person.  The constitution protects the “papers” of the individual from being searched or seized without a warrant based on probable cause.  The net did not exist then, but the principal is just the same.  What is meant by “papers,” if not communications between the people?  Internet traffic is private and not subject to mass collection by the government just because the government can.

            The government has justified its mass spying programs on national security grounds; and, as proof, it claims to have “broken up” over fifty plots by collection and analysis of the data; however in one lawsuit over the constitutionality of the program, the Judge wrote in his opinion that the government was unable to produce any proof of even one plot broken up as a result of the NSA mass surveillance program.    

            Other than sending a nasty letter demanding terrorists to stop plotting bombings, the government has no authority under the constitution, to “break up” plots except to arrest and charge the suspects with a crime. Such proceedings are required by the sixth amendment to be public. Why then can’t the government prove its claimed 50 plots?  Where are the warrants, the arrests, indictments and public trials?  I understand that there could be terrorists using cell phones in Yemen, Afghanistan, etc. and that their phone calls could and should be monitored, but what does this have to do with collecting data on US citizens inside the United States?  The only point of collecting such data would be to stop plots inside the United States.  These acts would be subject to the constitutional protections of the 4^th through 6^th amendments and would be publically known.

            There are only two conclusions -- There are either no plots being broken up inside the US or our government is engaging in secret arrests, detentions, trials convictions of individuals without public disclosure. In either case, the implications are not good.

 

            I prefer to believe that the government cannot show proof, because there are no such plots broken up. (Don’t get me wrong here; I believe the secret detentions are coming. I just don’t think we’re there yet).  This begs the obvious question: why then have the programs?  The answer of course is just as obvious; the real purpose of the NSA domestic spying programs is to repress domestic political dissent, in particular those that believe the government needs to be smaller, less powerful, less intrusive or more frugal.  After all, the political class is not likely to get blown up by jihadists; but if this limited government idea gets out of hand, the politicrats could be out of a job!

            But let’s go beyond the point that the Government cannot deny the existence of the programs or prove that the programs have been effective. There is other corroborative evidence that the programs are really aimed at repressing legitimate political dissent from the right.  Early on in the Obama administration, leaked Homeland Security documents generated by his administration, claimed that the greatest threat to the United States is not international terrorism but rather right wing extremism. As examples of the mind set, the Obama administration has refused to label obvious jihadist terrorist attacks as such, witness, Major Hassan; while, in case after case leftist government operatives have characterized other random violent acts as those of right wing extremists, only to be proven wrong as facts develop, witness the shooting of Gabrielle Gifford or the nut who flew his plane into the IRS office building.  

            The IRS internal Inspector General found that Tea Party groups had been segregated out for special scrutiny and denial of legal rights not required of similar liberal groups. NY Senator Chuck Schumer recently said that Tea Party group's false claims of government overspending have to be stopped by the IRS. An internal military policy to repress Christian chaplains’ rights to minister to service persons and prohibiting open displays of Christian symbols within the military was recently disclosed. Dinesh Disousa, who produced a documentary of Obama’s life before election showing his anticolonial, anti western communist roots, has been indicted for alleged campaign contribution violations, of a type virtually routine on the left, but just as routinely ignored. On and on go the examples of government vilification, misrepresentation and outright repression of any and all advocates of individual freedom, traditional morality and fiscal conservatism.

            Many believe the news media, the Courts or Congress will fix the illegalities in the spying operations, but there is little hope for more than window dressing here. Congress passed the laws that are the basis of the programs and most ranking members have known about all of it and approved; the F.I.S.A. Court, made up of sitting Federal Judges, approved the NSA spying programs in the first place.  The corporate giants whose records were subpoenaed, Google, Verizon, ATT, Yahoo, etc. were all threatened by the DOJ with prosecution under F.I.S.A. if they revealed anything about the secret subpoenas and they complied.  The main stream media is unlikely to be of any help,  they have been the lap dog of big government for a long time now and have no intention of changing course any time soon.  So who really thinks any of these institutions is going step in to stop the abuse, without a major overturn of the current parties in powers?