The House today voted to pass CAFTA, the “Central American Free Trade Agreement”.

This bill is unconstitutional and has absolutely nothing to do with “Free Trade”, in fact it is just the opposite. It is a classic example of doublespeak to call it “free trade” when it is actually hundreds of pages of trade regulations.

I’m not going to go into much more detail on this one, but I do suggest you read Ron Paul’s article on CAFTA. As always, he does a great job of describing how this bill threatens our liberty, and in this case our nation’s sovereignty.

It’s a sad day for liberty and freedom. The House voted last night to extend or make permanent the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. House Republicans mentioned the recent London attacks as evidence that the act is necessary.

In a classic case of doublespeak, Representative Sensenbrenner (R-Wis) said:

“The Patriot Act has proven itself over the past three and a half years as an invaluable tool against terrorists while remaining true to our strong civil liberty protections.”

Funny. Has the Patriot Act helped at all in capturing terrorists? From what I can find, there have only been 39 terrorism related arrests due to the Patriot Act, and most of those were for crimes such as passport violations, fraud, false statements, and conspiracy.

Can you believe the nerve of this guy to actually imply that this legislation offers civil liberty protections?? Maybe someone should tell him that the Patriot Act actually allows law enforcement to demand the production of financial records, credit reports, telephone, internet, and other communications or transactional records — all without a true warrant.

The good news is that, so far, it looks like the Senate is headed towards a much better version of the bill. This version actually requires that you be notified within 7 days if you were subject to a secret search, and tightens some other requirements. Let’s hope the final bill is closer to the Senate version.

In light of the recent attacks in London, it seems that some people are finally asking tough questions about suicide attacks. People are wanting to know what motivates the attackers, and how the attacks can be stopped.

On July 14th, in a speech on the floor of the House, Ron Paul cited research from the book Dying to Win by Robert Pape. Pape’s exhaustive research shows that our intervention in the Middle East leads to these attacks. Here’s a great quote from Paul’s speech:

The clincher is this: the strongest motivation, according to Pape, is not religion but rather a desire “to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland.”

The best news is that if stopping suicide terrorism is a goal we seek, a solution is available to us. Cease the occupation of foreign lands and the suicide missions will cease. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S., the French, and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more attacks. The reason the attacks stop, according to Pape, is that the Osama bin Ladens of the world no longer can inspire potential suicide terrorists despite their continued fanatical religious beliefs.

The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, provides another example. He recently said that intervention in the Middle East by Western nations, motivated by oil, along with oppression has caused spawned suicide attacks. Here’s a quote:

“I think we have just had 80 years of Western intervention in predominantly Arab lands because of the Western need for oil.”

“We have propped up unsavoury governments, we have overthrown ones that we didn’t consider sympathetic.”

“And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs and sent him off to kill the Russians in Afghanistan and they didn’t give any thought to the fact that once he had done that, he might turn on his creators.”

The London attacks were truly a tragic event. I am amazed to see someone as close to those events as the mayor of London mentioning that Britain may have actually had a hand in causing them. I can’t imagine that the public want’s to hear that right now, so it seems pretty courageous for Mr. Livingstone to come out and say it.

Can you imagine if Rudolph Giuliani had said something like this after 9/11?

I just finished reading 1776, by David McCullough. It follows George Washington and the Continental Army through the years 1775 and 1776, up to the battle of Trenton.

I am a big history buff, and am especially interested in the founding fathers and the revolutionary period, so I was very excited about this book. McCullough must have done an extraordinary amount of research to put together the details that he presents here. The story is presented very well, is an excellent read, and kept me entertained.

1776 covers all of the battles and skirmishes of these first years of the war. Everyone is probably familiar with Bunker Hill and Trenton, but the information provided on the lesser known aspects of the war, such as the siege of Dorchester Heights, helps put Washington’s strategy and the troop’s moral in perspective.

Also intriguing is the attention given to the British perspective. We get to read excerpts of King George III’s speech to parliament declaring the colonies in rebellion, along with the opinions of members of parliament who were opposed to the war.

Lots of coverage is given to Washington, and his generals Nathanial Greene and Henry Knox. Along with Washington’s brilliance, we also see several of his mistakes and instances of indecisiveness.

I am sure that anyone who, like me, takes an interest in the Revolution would love 1776. If you’ve read it, leave a comment and let me know what you thought!

The US government detained innocent filmmaker, Cyrus Kar, from Los Angeles in an Iraqi prison for 54 days. Mr. Kar and his cameraman were in Iraq filming a documentary on Cyrus the Great. They were detained after a taxi in which they were riding passed through a check point, and was found to contain around 35 washing machine timers. These timers could be used by insurgents to make bombs.

The driver of the taxi, who was also detained, admitted that the timers were his, but Kar and his cameraman were still detained. Kar, who happens to be a US veteran, was left in solitary confinement for 54 days and released Sunday, after the ACLU threatened a lawsuit.

Kar seems to have taken it well, saying he has “the highest regard for our men in uniform,” but he also says that “they knew from the get-go that we were nothing more than filmmakers.” He alleges that “they put us in a cell and forgot us.”

I don’t believe that this innocent citizen was intentionally left in prison for almost two months. This is just an example of one unacceptable side effect that occurs due to inefficiencies that naturally happen with huge bureaucracies, like our government. Every soldier stationed at this prison probably knew that Mr. Kar was innocent, yet he wasn’t released. Why? There is certainly paperwork involved, approvals from higher ranking officials required, and numerous other bottlenecks in the process.

This instance proves that the system for processing detainees does not work, or at the very least that processing and releasing the innocent is not a priority. This gentleman was only released Sunday because the ACLU and newspapers started talking about it. How many Iraqi’s, who are known to be innocent, have been detained for longer than this?

This process is clearly broken and has got to be fixed. There is simply no excuse for holding a person for one minute after his innocence has been proven. I’m sure anyone would agree with that statement, regardless of their party affiliation.

Why, then, do we not see a priority being placed on fixing it? This has been an ongoing problem, in Iraq as well as in Guantanamo. Again, I fear the answer lies in bureaucracy. How many people have to discuss what needs to be changed? Who has to approve the changes? How many people have to be involved to discuss how to implement the changes? Because of the sheer size of this government, it could take years to put in place a change that everyone agrees should happen.

It’s important to note that this is not just a problem with Iraq and the defense department, it is a problem throughout our government. During the Jefferson admistration, secretary of state James Madison negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with a core of less than a dozen employees in the state department. How long would it have taken them to fix this problem?

I apologize for the lack of posts over the last few days. I’ve been in Orlando on vacation with my family, and didn’t have as much free time as I expected. I’m leaving again tomorrow for the Virgin Islands, but as that will be a more relaxing (and hopefully hurricane free) vacation, I expect to have more time to update the site.

This seems like a good time to mention that I am looking for more contributors to LibertyNow.com. If you are pro-Liberty and would be interested in contributing articles or just general posts to this site, I would love to hear from you. If you are interested, please email me directly at danny[at]libertynow.com.

Steve at BachTalk.net makes a great point in this recent post from his blog.

I heard the director of public relations at the Saudi Arabian Embassy speak today.
…
He then pointed out that there are/were only two countries in the world in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions: Iraq and Israel. The U.S. invaded Iraq for being in violation of 16 Security Council resolutions, yet we provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and relentless support for Israel.

You know, I really wish more people would listen to what Arabs from the middle east, or even the terrorists themselves list as the reasons that they hate us. Our unrelenting support for Israel, their not-so-innocent mortal enemy, always seems to be at the top of the list. Other reasons, provided by Bin Laden, include US troops being stationed on their holy soil, and UN sanctions that had been imposed on Iraq, resulting in the death of thousands.

Funny, “our freedoms” never even make the top 10.

The foreign policy decisions of the United States government for the past 30+ years is the reason that we are losing our freedoms to this “war on terrorism” today. Every time we provide foreign or military aid, we are choosing a side, potentially creating an enemy. Every time our military kills an innocent Arab, we are creating new terrorists.

Our foreign policy of interventionalism is fueling this worldwide hatred of our country! How many terrorist attacks occur in Switzerland??

Stopping our aid to Israel would be a great start to reducing terrorism. Fighting terror with war only plays into the hands of our enemies, delivering them more recruits and guaranteeing that this “war on terror” will never end.

Ahead of the G8 summit, which kicks off Wednesday in Scotland, several organizations dedicated to ending worldwide poverty have been getting lots of attention. These organizations, which include Live8, One, and more, hope the recent outpouring of support for their cause will pressure the world leaders at the G8 to appropriate funds to ending poverty, particularly in African countries.

If the statistics can be believed, they are staggering. Over a billion people worldwide live on less than $1 per day and every day, 30,000 children die due to extreme poverty.

There are obviously millions of people who are rightfully sickened by these statistics, to the point that they’re driven to do something about it. It is just unfortunate that they are spending so much effort lobbying politicians, instead of devoting their time to methods that could actually help achieve their goals.

As you would probably guess, I am not in favor of the government taxing its citizens and redistributing the money to other countries, but in this case that is beside the point. This is a lost cause from the beginning. Government is no more capable of ending world poverty than it is capable of ending domestic poverty, drug use, or terrorism.

First of all, this is really an uphill battle because they are trying to get eight governments to agree to do something. Even if that happens over this three day summit, it will take years before each of those governments appropriates all of the aid money they promise.

Once the money is appropriated, like all government programs, they’ll find out they need more than expected. Much more than necessary will go to bureaucracy, leaving less for the poor. With such a huge budget, it will be difficult to track where all the money goes. This creates huge holes for corrupt government officials. We need to look no further than the recent Iraq Oil-for-food scandal, or the squandering of previous African aid money for examples.

For a solution that will work, these activists should look towards the free market. The governments should only be asked to reduce or eliminate current tariffs or trade restrictions to these countries.

With apparently millions of activists waiting to be mobilized, just imagine the amount of money that could be raised privately, or the number of new volunteers that could be recruited into such a noble cause. Private organizations are notoriously more efficient with money, and can no doubt do more-with-less.

If the US government would stop subsidizing domestic farms and end all tariffs and trade restrictions to these countries, the benefits would be huge. Companies would have an incentive to move into these countries to take advantage of the cheap labor and overall low manufacturing costs. This would provide jobs to the citizens and would improve the overall quality of life. One needs to only look at China to see how an economy in a similar position can thrive.

I am truly saddened by the extent of poverty that exists in Africa today, but it is just depressing to know that so many people are putting their faith in government, an institution with an absolutely pitiful track record, to solve this crisis.

UPDATE: Just found this article by Alister Heath through the Free Market News Network. He makes my point much more eloquently than I ever could.

I’ve spent some time over the last couple of days reading web sites and blogs that are dedicated to reforming the Libertarian party. I am not entirely sure yet which side of the fence I fall on, so I want to discuss the advantages and disadvantages that I see with each approach.

The Libertarian party currently has the reputation of being extreme and non-compromising. If a moderate Democrat or Republican looks at the Libertarian platform, which states that all drugs should be legal and Social Security should be terminated, they would consider the word “extreme” to be a major understatement. There is also a perception, which I don’t feel is entirely accurate, that party members are not willing to accept any compromised solution that results in more government than the goals set forth in platform would allow.

The reformers believe that the party is too radical, and would like to bring it more into the mainstream. They would accomplish this by basically taking the “smaller government” side of current political issues, reducing the size of government over time in small steps. For example, they would campaign for medical marijuana, private accounts for Social Security, and eliminating pork spending.

In theory, this would expand the party’s base, making room for new members and politicians who would be willing to cut spending and legalize marijuana, but perhaps would not be ready to repeal the income tax and eliminate the FDA.

Read the rest of this entry…