Rezwan Ferdaus of Massachusetts was arrested this morning. He was accused of plotting to blow up the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol using remote-controlled aircraft armed with explosives.

According to the FBI, they’ve thwarted another dastardly plot. Except that once again it seems to be a plot they themselves helped hatch…

The public was never in danger from any of the explosives, various news sources tell us, because the explosives were at all times under the control of the FBI. It was the bureau who delivered the explosives to Ferdaus…or at least what the patsy believed to be C-4 plastic explosives, six fully automatic AK-47 machine guns and grenades.

It was (once again) the FBI that through one of its 15,000 or so informants goaded Ferdaus along, essentially double-daring him to blow something up.

The FBI has led another Muslim into making the bureau look like it’s effectively stopping terrorist acts.

Are we mad? Are we protesting the arrest of a man who clearly wanted to harm innocents?

Far from it. We merely question how dangerous this man would have been considered if he hadn’t been prodded along and supplied by federal cops trying to look useful in the war on terrorism.

This is what the FBI has been doing since Sept. 11. “Pre-emption,” “prevention” and “disruption” have been the watchwords in the bureau’s counterterrorism efforts. In practice, this has meant using spies in the Muslim community to find terrorist sympathizers and grow them into potential terrorists under the FBI’s expert guidance.

FBI agents assign an undercover operative to pose as an extremist and approach the targeted patsy. The FBI then provides the plots, the means and the materiel. Then they make their arrest. Then they tell us what a fantastic job they’re doing protecting our freedoms.

We suppose you could argue that these patsies could have been goaded into action by actual terrorists if only the terrorists had found them first. But that’s not what happened. The FBI found them and sent them on their way. We suppose if we’re arguing what-ifs, we could also point out that these patsies wouldn’t want to do harm to the U.S. government or its subjects if the U.S. would cease invading other countries in a shameless display of imperial overreach.

So here’s how it works. Fear is used as an instrument by the state to control its population — through legally approved wiretaps and other listening devices — and to create a basis for the argument that we need to continue the war on terror.

As Addison put it yesterday in the 5 Min. Forecast:

“In a perverse development, this will have the effect of padding Pentagon budgets and contractors’ bottom lines, as Washington creates more enemies it then has to knock down.”

What this ultimately achieves is continued monetary support for friends in high places — like defense contractors, in this case.

But today’s battlefield looks different from even the one we knew just 10 years ago. And this shift is creating new winners and losers in the race for DOD dollars. The MQ-1 predator program has cost the Defense Department almost $2.4 billion to develop. And each new predator costs about $4.5 million.

Capturing terrorists leads to more fear about finding terrorists in our midst. The governments response is…more wars, more money spent and new innovations created to kill terrorists.

Again Addison:

“This is the logic behind the staggering growth in the use of pilotless drone aircraft. To date, the U.S. government has used them to carry out attacks in six countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

“Now the Pentagon is building what The Washington Post describes as a ‘constellation of bases’ to support routine drone strikes in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The aim? ‘To create overlapping circles of surveillance in a region where al-Qaida offshoots could emerge for years to come,’ U.S. officials said.

“The number of U.S. drones has exploded 100-fold in a decade. They number more than 6,000 today. Drone strikes that numbered in the single digits in 2007 numbered 118 last year.”

We here at the Whiskey Bar are not happy with our government’s heavy-handed response to these external threats — real or fabricated. Given the increase in the number of drones, strikes and target-rich environments, this is a trend that isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Sincerely,

Gary Gibson

More Terrorism Theatre From the FBI was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

A suicide bomber has caused the death of nearly three dozen people in Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport by attacking a crowded area not subject to rigorous security measures.

Mr. Greenwald expected the next terrorist bombing to take place in the crowded lines just before the security checkpoint. Instead, they went for a soft target just outside of the hard target, but it wasn’t quite the soft target Mr. Greenwald expected…

The suicide bomber went to the back door instead of the front. The other unguarded end of the airport was attacked: the part just beyond the security line where passengers crowd together to pick up their bags and find ground transportation or meet relatives and friends.

“Medvedev Orders Bomb Probe, Threatens Sackings,” reads an Associated Press headline this morning. The article continues…

“Medvedev lashed out at law enforcement and airport authorities over the attack at Domodedovo, an international hub and major gateway to Russia, which killed at least eight foreigners…

“‘It is clear that there is a systemic failure to provide security for people’ at Domodedovo, said Medvedev.

“He ordered the Interior Ministry to recommend transport security officials for dismissal and said authorities found culpable would be held responsible, suggesting they could face prosecution.”

Exactly what were security officials supposed to do?:

“Domodedovo Airport said it was not responsible for the blast. ‘We fully met all the requirements in the sphere of air transport security for which we are responsible,’ spokeswoman Yelena Galanova said in televised comments.”

Domodedovo Airport is like just about every other airport in the world. That is to say, there is no protocol to stop random people from wandering into the baggage claim area. Now I suppose there may be. But I’m not sure it will help.

You can “harden” one target all you want; there will still be an unprotect zone just beyond your securest point. Medvedev doesn’t want to accept that…

“He urged officials to develop a system that would provide for ‘total checks’ on people and bags at airports.”

I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. Wherever these “total checks” start, there will be people congregating somewhere prior to being totally checked. These people will be vulnerable to terrorist bombings. We will be back to square one.

From a follow-up article from AP…

“Most airports in the West don’t restrict access to the terminals, which are considered public areas. Security screening only takes place once the passengers enter the departure areas.

“But in some countries, like Israel, Jordan, or Pakistan, police roadblocks situated several kilometers from the airport parking lots prescreen arriving passengers and others, before allowing them to proceed.

“Analysts said the Domodedovo attack appeared to be the first time terrorists have tried to exploit unrestricted public access to the terminals since the failed bombing of the airport in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2007. Attackers there tried to crash a Jeep loaded with explosives through the entrance doors, but the bomb did not go off.

“Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, a London-based publication dedicated to security issues, said expanding the airport’s security perimeter as in Tel Aviv was desirable but would be difficult to replicate in Europe or America.”

The West would have a hard time adopting those kind of extreme security measures. Airports are commercial centers, open to the public and concerned with maximizing profits.

But even if we turned our airports into terrorist-proof lockdown zones a la Israel, that leaves several million more acres of crowded commercial areas that will ever be easy pickings for suicide bombers.

You don’t really stop terrorists by screening or with security. You just displace them. They just find something else to attack where security isn’t as big a problem.

You can’t secure everywhere, only a few concentrated spots — like airports or special buildings. That leaves everything in between wide open. And there is a lot of in between.

A terrorist doesn’t have to actually enter an airport or a building to do harm. Anywhere on the street in a crowd will do.

In fact, suicide bombers in Israel have indeed blown themselves up just outside of mall entrances where security might have proven too troublesome. They wind up killing at least as many innocents in the street as they would have inside the mall, often more.

We can’t stop terrorists. But could we stop terrorism?

How you answer that will depend on where you think terrorism comes from. After all, you treat a disease differently depending on whether you think it comes from microbes or from a witch’s curse.

Senior fellow at the Cato Institute Doug Bandow reminds us…

“Terrorism is not new. It was used against Russian tsars, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and British colonial officials. Algerians employed terrorism against the French and later Algerian governments. Basque and Irish separatists freely relied on terrorism. Until Iraq, the most promiscuous suicide bombers were Tamils in Sri Lanka. In none of these cases did the killing occur in response to freedom, whether in America or elsewhere.

In an interview with The American Conservative, Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor of terrorism says:

“Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

“This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.”

But it’s the Muslims who are monopolizing the terrorist biz these days. It’s awfully conspicuous. The U.S. is used to hearing about how brown Islamists in the Middle East regularly blow people up. But it’s happening with yellowish people in the Philippines with Muslim terrorists too. In Russia, it’s white Muslim separatists from the Northern Caucasus. All over the world, Muslims are blowing themselves up in order to blow up as many non-Muslims as possible.

There are those who like to ignore history while believing fervently what their politicians tell them. I often get emails from these people whenever the subject of terrorism comes up.

“It’s Islam itself,” they helpfully inform me. “The very religion is one of subjugation and eradication. They want to destroy all those who won’t subject themselves to the rule of Islam. In fact, Islam is a political ideology, not a religion in any true sense.”

Funny. Indigenous pundits from all over the Americas might have written the same thing of Christians from the late 15th century on.

“But look at the Quran…it’s full of exhortations to do awful things to nonbelievers.”

But so is the Old Testament. God’s Chosen People subjected any number of non-Hebrew cities to horrible violence at God’s command. No one calls Judaism or Christianity out on that.

And well they shouldn’t. (Granted Christianity has a hall pass in the form of the New Testament.) In less-troubled times, we tend not to hold people to the fire about the glorification of religious violence and ethnic cleansing that forms a good chunk of their holy books.

But after Chinese troops start putting boots on U.S. soil, some radicalized Christian movement may start taking that “eye for an eye” stuff very seriously again when it comes to repelling the Huns. And become martyred heroes in the process.

Then the Chinese civilian population would likely be aghast to hear about the gweilo suicide bombings that kill Chinese national settlers in the Far Western Colonial Province (formerly the United States).

Violently themed fundamentalism may serve as the tie that binds when it comes time to expel invaders from the homeland, but it’s not really about religion then, is it?

But maybe you’re still convinced it is…

Either you honestly believe that Muslims want all infidels dead, that they hate us for being free Christians, Jews, and other assorted non-Muslim types…that that is the simple reason behind all the bombs…

Or you believe that Islamists are merely reacting to the bombs the U.S. has dropped, to the children who have died because of U.S. sanctions, and especially to the big ones: U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan along with Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Terrorism is either the means to expand a maniacal empire…or it’s the reaction to imperial expansion. Take your pick.

Again, Robert Pape:

“The central fact is that overwhelmingly, suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign — over 95% of all the incidents — has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.”

No matter how much data support that view, and no matter how often the painfully obvious point is made, much of the popular imagination still clings to the notion that “they hate us because of who we are,” and not because of what “we” (our government) is doing in our name.

Our government gives comfort to Islam’s enemies…starves their children and occasionally blows those children up by accident…pregnant women, wives, daughters, sons, etc., are all collaterally damaged regularly too.

And then there’s the very presence of foreign troops on their soil. How would you react to that situation? What might you do?

But it’s not you or anyone you know. It’s the foreign enemy, and your trusty political leaders tell you that this enemy is shooting first.

Except the evidence strongly suggests that they’re not shooting first, just shooting back. History also tells us that the violence won’t stop till the interloper packs up and goes home.

Regards,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder and Laissez Faire Books

January 26, 2011

How Not to Stop a Terrorist was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Terrorists seek to kill people and/or destroy property in pursuit of a political goal. They may exercise some discrimination in selecting targets, but because people and vulnerable property are everywhere in the United States, they have a wealth of potential targets—there are about 5 million commercial buildings alone. Nothing can be done to change this fundamental condition. Indeed, it is difficult to think of something that couldn’t be a target. Even a tree in the woods, after all, could be ignited to start a forest fire.

The Number of Terrorists Appears to Be Exceedingly Small
and Their Efforts and Competence Rather Limited

Since terrorism of a considerably destructive nature can be perpetrated by a small group, or even by a single individual, the fact that terrorists are few does not mean there is no problem. However, many homeland security policies were established when the threat seemed far larger, and those perceptions may still be fueling, and distorting, current policy.

In 2002, intelligence reports asserted that the number of trained al Qaeda operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000. And on February 11, 2003, Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, assured a Senate committee that al Qaeda had “developed a support infrastructure” in the country and had achieved “the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the US with little warning.” By 2005, however, after years of well funded sleuthing, the FBI and other investigative agencies concluded in a secret report that they had been unable to uncover a single true al Qaeda sleeper cell anywhere in the United States, a finding (or nonfinding) publicly acknowledged two years later.

[The FBI has subsequently seemed to resort to cultivating their own terrorists with questionable set ups and stings; — Ed.]

The lack of true al Qaeda attacks inside the United States combined with the inability of the FBI to find any potential attackers suggests that the terrorists either are not trying very hard or are far less clever and capable than usually depicted.

It follows that any terrorism problem within the United States principally derives from homegrown people, often isolated from one another, who fantasize about performing dire deeds.

Although they someday might conceivably rise to the cleverness of the 9/11 plot, far more likely to be representative is the experience of the would-be bomber of a shopping mall in Rockford, Illinois, who exchanged two used stereo speakers (he couldn’t afford the opening price of $100) for a bogus handgun and four equally bogus hand grenades supplied by an FBI informant. Had the weapons been real, he might actually have managed to do some harm.

Political scientist Michael Kenney has interviewed dozens of officials and intelligence agents and has analyzed court documents, and he finds homegrown Islamic militants to be operationally unsophisticated, short on know how, prone to making mistakes, poor at planning, and severely hampered by a limited capacity to learn. Another study documents the difficulties of network coordination that continually threaten operational unity, trust, cohesion, and the ability to act collectively.

By contrast, the image projected by the DHS is of an enemy that is “relentless, patient opportunistic, and flexible”; shows “an understanding of the potential consequences of carefully planned attacks on economic transportation, and symbolic targets”; is a serious threat to “national security”; and could inflict “mass casualties, weaken the economy, and damage public morale and confidence.” That description may fit some terrorists — the 9/11 hijackers among them — but not, it seems likely, the vast majority.

The Displacement Effect

There is something that might be called “the displacement effect.” Terrorists can choose, and change, their targets depending on local circumstances. This process, of course, does not hold in the case of natural disasters; a tornado bearing down on Kansas does not choose to divert to Oklahoma if it finds Kansans to well protected. In stark contrast, if the protection of one target merely causes the terrorist to seek out another from among the near infinite set at hand, it is not clear how society has gained by expending effort and treasure to protect the first. The people who were saved in the first locale gain, of course, but their grief is simply displaced onto others.

There have been instances in Israel in which suicide bombers, seeing their primary targets, shopping malls, rather well protected, blew themselves up instead on the street. The Israelis count this as something of a gain since they claim that fewer people died as a consequence, a fact likely to be of little comfort to the victims’ families. Actually, however, if the goal of terrorists is to kill, a shopping mall is generally not that lucrative a target because people inside tend to be fairly widely dispersed, something that is often less true on the sidewalks outside.

By John Mueller
For Whiskey & Gunpowder

December 10, 2010

Endless Targets for Terror was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

— George Orwell, Animal Farm

A few days after bombs ripped apart two apartment buildings Moscow, residents of Ryazan — a town 100 miles southeast of the Capital City — were alarmed to find several suspicious-looking figures loitering near a 13-story apartment complex. After police arrived on the scene they extracted three large sugar sacks from the high-rise. An examination of the sacks found that they contained hexagen — the same high-yield explosive that had been used in the Moscow terrorist bombings just a few days earlier.

The police arrested two of the mysterious strangers, who immediately produced credentials issued by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB. Within a few hours high-ranking FSB officials intervened to free their operatives, claiming that they had been involved in an innocuous “training exercise.”

“This was not a bomb,” insisted then-FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev. “The exercise may not have been carried out well, but it was only a test, and the so-called explosive was only sacks of sugar.”

There was at least one lapse in efficiency on the part of the FSB: The agency neglected to retrieve the detonator, which remained in the custody of the local police. Leaving aside the fact that tests had confirmed the presence of hexagen inside the “dummy” bomb, Patrushev didn’t explain why the FSB would attach a genuine detonator to phony explosives. Nor did he explain why the Security Organs insisted on collecting the “sugar sacks” and keeping them under armed guard at a nearby military base.

Patrushev’s account didn’t satisfy one of the paratroopers given that peculiar assignment. The soldier smuggled a small sample collected from one of the sacks to a laboratory, and the resulting analysis confirmed that the substance was hexagen, not sucrose.

The Ryazan “training exercise” took place on September 22, 1999. During the previous two weeks, hundreds of people had died in the Moscow apartment bombings. The FSB, acting with what could charitably be called indecent haste, destroyed both of those crime scenes before critical evidence could be collected.

Shortly thereafter, six Chechen separatists (five of them in absentia) were accused of plotting the terrorist rampage. Invoking the need to avenge the innocent dead, Moscow carried out a punitive invasion of Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim province whose population has long sought independence from Russia.

This series of events struck many in Russia as bit too tidy. In a house editorial published the day before the “training exercise” in Ryazan, the Moscow Times observed that “the bombed-out shell of the apartment block on Ulitsa Guryanova was destroyed in a controlled implosion, reducing to rubble the remains of the building and irreparably buying beneath it any remaining traces of evidence  — just ten days after the explosion. Workers at Kashirskoye Shosse, meanwhile, began clearing the rubble from the site as early as September 13 — the day of the bombing.”

As the Times pointed out, the FSB’s insistence that the case had been “solved” was impossible to reconcile with the fact that “untold traces of chemical residue, fingerprints, technical fragments, [and] hair and DNA samples that were present at the [bombing] sites are now irrevocably lost.”

“Is this ignorance?” asked the Times. “In the capital city of a country where the current Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, was once its top security official, the assumption sells the FSB short. The Federal Security Service has the equipment, the know-how and political clout required to perform a proper investigation.”

Imputing guilt to shadowy Chechen separatists “has proved both viable and convenient for federal authorities,” the Times observed. “Are they playing it safe and making sure no other options show up?”

The case made by the Moscow Times was skeletal and circumstantial; the discovery of the FSB’s abortive apartment bombing -cum- ”training exercise” on the following day put some substantive flesh on the bones of that theory. A few months later the “theory” was fleshed out even further when former Russian Prime Minister (and career KGB officer) Sergei Stepashin disclosed that the invasion of Chechnya that took place subsequent to the bombings “had been worked out in March,” and that the military campaign “had to happen even if there were no explosions in Moscow.”

The London Independent, which published Stepashin’s accusations, noted that they were an admission against interest, since the former Russian Prime Minister “played a central role in organizing the military build-up before the invasion” — and would thus be morally and legally liable for his role in the criminal conspiracy.

When we review those events in Russia from more than a decade ago, it’s difficult not to see parallels to the federally controlled “terrorist plots” that figure so prominently in the official narrative of the Homeland Security State ruling America today.

There are at least two significant differences, however. First, the FSB prefers to plant real bombs, rather than the dummy devices favored by its American counterpart, the FBI. Second, at least some local police and media organs in post-Soviet Russia, unlike their counterparts in America, have achieved a measure of independence from central government control. Although they are ruled by a gangster state, many Russians display an admirable cynicism regarding official fictions, an attitude Americans must acquire in a hurry if we want to arrest our descent into unalloyed totalitarianism.

Six years before he blew the whistle on the FSB’s false flag bombing campaign in Moscow, Sergei Stepashin played a significant role in a key event in the development of America’s police state apparatus: On July 4, 1994, while Stepashin was head of the FSB, he signed a cooperation pact with FBI Director Louis Freeh.

The agreement, which was signed at the Lubyanka Square headquarters of the KGB, envisioned close collaboration between Russian and American secret police in combating terrorism and international organized crime — that is, unsanctioned use of the same criminal means employed by the political elites that control those security organs. Thus it should hardly come as a surprise to see a strong similarity in the priorities that govern those secret police agencies, or the methods they employ in the service of official fictions. This family resemblance has been displayed to good advantage by two recent terrorism-related cases in the state of Oregon.

Stalin’s regime made an official hero out of Pavlik Morozov, the Ukrainian child who betrayed his father to the secret police. In the case of Mohamad Mohamud, the Somali-born U.S. citizen cast as the patsy in the FBI’s most recent pseudo-terrorism plot, the roles were reversed, with the father of the 19-year-old Oregon resident calling the political police to express concerns about his son’s political and religious views.

At the time, Mohamud hadn’t done anything that could be defined as a criminal act by even the most emancipated definition. This changed after the young man was radicalized by two specialists from the FBI’s vast and experienced corps of professional provocateurs, who successfully engineered a supposed terrorist plot and manipulated Mohamud into triggering what he was told was a powerful explosive device at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland.

“Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale,” intoned FBI Special Agent Arthur Balizan, who gets the “Producer” credit for the most recent Homeland Security melodrama. “At the same time, I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack.”

Even the Devil can cite scripture to his purpose, and even a Fed is capable of telling an isolated truth in the service of a larger lie. Balizan was entirely correct in saying that the FBI “denied” Mohamud the ability to carry out an attack, because the Bureau — following a familiar and tiresome script — supplied both the motivation and the means for this plot, once a suitable stooge had been identified.

Balizan insists that nobody was ever in danger as a result of the Bureau’s most recent charade. While it’s true that those who assembled in Pioneer Courthouse Square for the Christmas event were never in peril, the same can’t be said for those who attend the Salman al-Farisi Islamic Center, where Mohamud occasionally joined in worship services. Shortly after the FBI closed the trap into which it had lured Mohamud, the Muslim house of worship was the target of an arson attack — a bit of blow-back that was both eminently predictable and entirely useful to the FBI’s purposes.

The evidence presented in the FBI affidavit offers no reason to believe that Mohamud intended to harm anyone before he fell under the influence of two undercover operatives from the Bureau’s Homeland Security theater troupe.

Court-authorized surveillance of the teenager’s e-mail suggested that Mohamud was in touch with someone residing in northwest Pakistan, “an area known to harbor terrorists.” The affiant, FBI Special Agent Ryan Dwyer, recounts that Mohamud and his correspondent “communicated regularly, and in December 2009 I believe, using coded language” — presumably understood only by the wise and perceptive people employed by the Bureau —”they discussed the possibility of Mohamud traveling to Pakistan to prepare for violent jihad.”

Mohamud allegedly tried to contact another Muslim radical to make travel plans, but sent his e-mails to an inoperative address. Shortly thereafter, an FBI undercover operative contacted Mohamud and did what a federal operative will always do in such cases: He acted as a “terrorism facilitator” (a term actually used by a federal prosecutor in an earlier FBI-orchestrated plot), carefully nourishing whatever spark of potential radicalism he found in his subject.

This is the same template from which the FBI has created dozens or scores of ersatz terrorist plots. There is one critical and telling detail in this case that distinguishes it from the others: Prior to being approached by the FBI’s provocation squad, Mohamud attempted to travel to Alaska to work at a legitimate job, but was prevented from doing so when the Feds — who had him under surveillance — put him on a no-fly list. The teenager was then approached by a covert FBI operative who “hired” him to carry out a terrorist attack, providing the unemployed young man with $3,000 in cash.

Attorney General Eric Holder insists that Mohamud “chose at every step to continue” with the bombing plot orchestrated by the Feds — once other avenues of employment had been cut off, that is. And since the FBI’s undercover operative conveniently “failed” to record the original contact with Mohamud — which took place after he had been prevented from taking the job in Alaska — there’s no way to assess the extent to which the Bureau controlled his “steps” from the very beginning.

The confected bombing plot in Portland came just days after federal prosecutors sought a “terrorism enhancement” to the prison sentence given to Pete Seda, an Iranian-born resident of Ashland, Oregon who was convicted on tax evasion charges. Seda, an arborist and prominent peace activist, was president of the Oregon branch of the Al-Harimain Islamic Foundation, a Muslim charitable organization that has been accused of disbursing money to jihadist groups overseas.

Seda was accused of “laundering” a $150,000 donation from an Egyptian businessman, most of which was converted into traveler’s checks and allegedly sent to Saudi Arabia. The Regime claims that the money ended up in the hands of Chechen rebels.

All of this allegedly took place in early 2000 — shortly after Russia invaded Chechnya, slaughtering thousands and creating a humanitarian crisis that attracted understandable concern from Muslims world-wide.

The key witness for the prosecution was an accountant named Thomas Wilcox, a former IRS employee who claims that Seda instructed him to falsify an important tax record in order to conceal the nature of the transaction. Wilcox also testified that in his opinion Seda was never “intentionally dishonest” in managing the charity’s funds, but this testimony was suppressed during the criminal trial.

Another witness against Seda was Daveed Gartstein-Ross, a former intern-turned-salaried employee at Al-Harimain. During his year with the foundation, Gartstein-Ross supervised the group’s prison outreach program, which provided Korans and other religious literature to inmates. Seda, who is close to Gartsein-Ross’s family, encouraged the young man to attend law school.

Seda wasn’t aware that his helpful young protege was a paid federal informant, who would later testify that the foundation was using its literature program — the same one he supervised, remember — to promote a “harsh” and “militant” view of Islam. Even then, under cross-examination, Gartstein-Ross testified that Seda was opposed to terrorism as an offense to both his religion and to common human decency.

During Seda’s criminal trial, the court disallowed “evidence” provided by the Russian FSB purportedly illustrating that the money sent to Saudi Arabia wound up in the hands of armed rebels. Yet the Feds were permitted to use essentially the same testimony in the sentencing phase of Seda’s trial in order to demonstrate that he was “philosophically and financially” linked to Chechen terrorists.

FSB Lieutenant Colonel Sergey Nikolayevich Ignatchenko recorded his original testimony at Lubyanka Square on December 3, 2008, and provided it to the U.S. Justice Department for use at Seda’s criminal trial. The deposition was taken according to the terms of the Russian Federal Criminal Procedural Code. Obviously, no defense counsel was permitted to cross-examine the witness during that deposition.

Citing communications intercepts and other intelligence sources, Ignatchenko accused the Al-Harimain foundation of funding people connected to Islamic insurgencies in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. However, he never mentioned Seda’s name or the name of anyone directly connected to him, nor did he describe tangible institutional connections between Oregon’s branch of the charity and those allegedly involved in jihadist activities overseas.

When cross-examined via video feed during the November 23 sentencing hearing, Ignatchenko admitted that he no information directly connecting Seda to any terrorist group in Chechnya or anywhere else on the planet. “I never knew about him, I never heard of him,” Ignatchenko told the court. Nor could he connect the funds received by Chechen rebels to Seda’s charitable foundation in Oregon: “We didn’t know which country it [the donation] came from.”

Under cross-examination, Ignatchenko was also forced to admit in open court something he had acknowledged in his original December 2008 deposition at KGB headquarters — namely, that the evidence supporting the theory that Al Harimain had provided financial support to Chechen rebels doesn’t exist. As he acknowledged near the end of his original deposition:

“I have to mention that according to Russian FSB standards that are currently in effect, recordings of various communications that were not used for preliminary or court hearings are erased after 5 years. Therefore, the communications I referred to are retained only as hard copies…. However, I have an audiotape of recordings made after 2001 and I can provide it to our American counterparts. I can assure you that the deciphered communications I mentioned in this interview are original and I quoted them almost verbatim.”

So this key piece of recorded evidence isn’t available, because it is more than five years old. However, the helpful man from the KGB (as the body that employed Ignatchenko was known during the first several years of his career) can provide recordings made a year after the crucial events allegedly occurred, because that recording — which is alsomore than five years old — somehow still exists.

This leaves us with irrelevant hearsay testimony offered by a fellow who lists his home address as 2 Bolshaya Lubyanka — that is, just down the street from KGB headquarters. But the Feds insist that this is good enough to establish Seda’s connection to terrorism, you see, because Chekists are just as honest as their counterparts in the American FBI. Oddly enough, that last part is entirely true.

Regards,
William N. Grigg
Whiskey & Gunpowder

December 3, 2010

The FBI’s Stalinist Homeland Security Theater was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Let’s start with the TSA. How many passengers have I seen interviewed on TV who all share the notion that “If it makes us safer then I think it is a good idea. I just want to get to my destination in one piece.” Not only does this presume that the government is more capable at assuring safety than private citizens, but it also illustrates an alarming trend in this country where we have become willing to so easily trade freedom for the illusion of safety (or prosperity, or charity).

Let me ask you this — who has the greatest interest in safe and secure airplanes? The government? On the contrary, the people themselves have the greatest self interest in safety. The airlines would not want to jeopardize their reputation, their financial security, nor the lives of the passengers. Then there would be the insurance companies who insure those planes who would insist on the airlines taking proper steps for safe travel. And finally there are the passengers, who are so interested in safety that they willingly bend over and accept the government’s intrusion. So we now have three key private players with major interest in the safety of planes.

The TSA only had a two-year contract before the airlines could opt out. I believe it is time for America’s airlines to opt out, or for the people to opt out of America’s airlines. Let airlines decide what security policies they employ, and then let the free people of America choose which airlines they feel safest flying. This simply means if you don’t want to blow up prematurely (if blowing up was already on your agenda), ride on a plane with tight professional security, and if you don’t want to pay more for a ticket (or be probed) ride on the plane without it. Freedom and security is not a trade off. Freedom IS security.

If you believe that the federal government has the greatest interest in a secure plane, or that we should employ a more intrusive “papers please” approach or the Israeli model of rapid fire interrogations, let me ask you a few questions. If we could make airlines 100% safe, so safe that we know that a terrorist will never board a plane and take it over, would that be the end of terrorism as we know it? Do secure airlines mean a secure America? Hardly, considering that in America we have thousands of events held daily where greater numbers of people gather.

Which brings us to the title of this article, “The Forest, the Trees and the TSA.” The TSA is actually only a symptom, while the real problem is our foreign policy. Our history in the Middle East did not start on Sept. 11, 2001. Understanding our involvement around the world and how it has a habit of coming to roost is key before we end up with check points outside our children’s soccer games.

Though any step toward privatization in the airline industry is an improvement, the ultimate solution to our problems is bringing our troops home and minding our own business. Foreign belligerence is immoral, incredibly costly, and it threatens our security by inspiring people to hate us.

This is not a “blame America first” mentality. This is blame bad policy first. The fact is that our foreign policy of a trillion dollars a year is bankrupting this country. The fact is that our involvement in these countries is the main reason some want to attack us. The fact is that the TSA represents a victory for the terrorists and a loss for freedom, and facts are never unpatriotic. We are accepting a federal government to protect our freedom when the federal government military/security state is openly hostile to freedom.

We have sent the government scrambling to find new ways to intrude on our rights, without realizing that our current foreign policy of entangling alliances and questionable corporate intent is the opposite of what our founders envisioned. We need to think about this the next time we see a Fox News report about the impending threat of Iran followed by an advertisement sponsored by Lockheed Martin. America can continue down a road of war, terror, insecurity and an ever increasing police state, or we can choose a new direction of peace, commerce, security and a foreign policy of freedom.

To me the choice is clear.

Regards,
John Jay Myers
Whiskey & Gunpowder

November 29, 2010

The Forest, the Trees and the TSA was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

“Should Airports Use Full-Body X-Ray Machines?”

Poll results change over time as information is released and people revise their opinions. It may be that 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10 adults will continue to support the use of these machines.

So what?

Neither polls nor votes make something right or wrong. If right and wrong are determined by majority rule or by authorities who are acting on behalf of majorities or a consensus of the population they represent or rule, then anything can be right or wrong. In particular, the people and authorities may decide to remove all Jews from the country or deport all Afro-Americans or imprison anyone who sells an ounce of marijuana or stop a person from working at less than $10 an hour or any number of other such measures.

Right and wrong cannot possibly be determined by polls and votes. They are found by examination and discovery of law and justice in both general and particular situations.

Within the current spate of news reports appear various opinions that represent the current debate. Let’s examine some of this thinking.

“Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, says society is entering virgin technological and ethical territory. ‘The scanner’s ability to penetrate is metaphorically powerful. It’s invading privacy in all kinds of new ways,’ he told AFP. ‘Balancing that out, there is the other really basic, powerful argument, which is how you remain safe in the sky in the age of tiny weaponry and concealed bombs.’”

Prof. Thompson is correct that scanners invade privacy. On the other hand, he sees the scanners as an essential technology that is necessary to prevent concealed bombs. It isn’t necessary, however. Screening on the basis of who people are can replace it.

And scanners and molestations by physical feel-ups won’t prevent terrorism. Even if all air travel were 100 percent safe, terrorists could easily shift their focus in countless other directions on land and sea. The focus on air travel safety is misplaced. It ignores the substitution effect, whereby terrorists shift to other targets. The same kind of error is made all the time in banning drugs and tracking down drug importers and distributors. They substitute new kinds of drugs and new networks. They raise the ante of bribery, corruption, and assassinations. The terrorists will win if America ties itself in knots over air travel, and then decides to do the same for malls, arenas, marketplaces, games, nightclubs, trains, busses, or wherever people meet in numbers.

Scanners are already being used at courthouses and public buildings. The war on terror has succeeded in transforming police into terrifying creatures of tribulation. Liberty is falling prey to what passes for necessary domestic security, i.e., “homeland security.” There is no security in having a police state. Who is going to hold back those in charge and those with the guns and those with the perverted laws at their backs? Who is going to stop the tyranny and the usurpations?

“TSA Administrator John Pistole says he understands why people are upset, but ‘everybody who gets on a flight wants to be sure the people around them have been properly screened,’ he told lawmakers Tuesday.”

Mr. Pistole begs the question: What is “properly screened”? He assumes that what the TSA is doing is proper. It isn’t. He asserts that there is a demand for this kind of screening. Maybe there is, but does that mean that it is right? Does it mean that everyone must undergo it, even those who object? Are there no reasonable exceptions? Is there no flexibility? Why not?

“Sullenberger said transport authorities should trust pilots and flight attendants, because ‘we’re trusted partners’ who are already ‘thoroughly screened.’

That’s a minimal way to restore a degree of sanity. Liberty entails choice. If the airlines and airports operated in a free market, which means free of TSA procedures, travelers would have a choice of procedures. Those who wanted to pass through x-ray scanners and/or have their breasts and genitals felt could do so. Those who wanted to get secure travel by market-determined means could do so. Each group would pay its own way. The costs would not be socialized through government.

The government, through building an unnecessary empire, has created enemies throughout the world. It is a wonder that the terrorist backlash has not been even greater. It can only grow if the U.S. persists in killing and terrorizing innocent people in multiple foreign locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The government and people of the U.S. have unlawfully extended majority rule, or government by polls, to almost every area of choice that one can think of. The results are in. These extensions have led to economic instability, economic decline, needless warfare, ruination of family, community, and neighborhoods, loss of values, cultural and artistic decline, moral decline, ethical decline, degradation in discourse and thought, and loss of liberty.

X-rays and genital inspections at airports are part of a noxious cloud of government oppression spreading over the land and choking out liberty and choice. The brainlessness and intimidation of TSA officials is part of this ongoing process. It’s a travesty for the TSA to threaten John Tyner with an $11,000 fine for doing nothing that would harm anyone.

Do we have to put up with such total nonsense like the following?

“The mood among security officials is ‘anger over the way the media is playing this story,’ according to a senior Homeland Security official. ‘You had a dutiful [transportation security officer], someone who works on the front lines to protect this country from a terrorist attack, someone who did everything by the book and according to his training, and he was accosted and verbally abused by a member of the traveling public,’ the official said. ‘The fact that some in the media would hail the traveler as a kind of folk hero is shameful.’

A senior government official thinks that airports are “front lines.” He sounds like George Bush with his “fronts” in the war on terror. He has absorbed the propaganda that completely and now spreads it further. He absolves those doing the prodding, feeling, groping, and x-raying of any measure of guilt or conscience. They are, like good little Nazis, just doing their duty. Then we have a bald-faced lie, which is that Tyner accosted and verbally abused this dutiful worker! No one is supposed to question these procedures. That becomes a crime. To say “Don’t touch me” becomes a crime.

Regards,
Michael S. Rozeff
Whiskey & Gunpowder

November 22, 2010

Airport Sexual Assaults Don’t Increase Security was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

A.: I’m desperately looking for the time to visit Iran while that’s still possible. But my take, from reading and talking to overseas Iranians, of whom there are more than a million in North America alone, is that attacking it would be insane. One reason is that there’s plenty of restiveness among young people; they’ll likely, sooner or later, kick the mullahs out. Unless the U.S. attacks, in which case they’ll unite the way Americans would and try to find a way to counterattack.

Another reason is that Iran is a very large, sophisticated and well-educated place, with plenty of cash-although it’s cash that’s being badly managed, as is always the case with socialist economies. Since WW2, we’ve only invaded really small, poor, primitive places. Iran is big game.

Israel has threatened to act on its own if the Iranians build a nuke. I think that’s most foolish; nobody can hold back technology. But I’d let it be the Israelis’ problem, not ours. They’ve simply got to learn to get along with their neighbors. It’s too bad they live in such a bad neighborhood, but the location was their choice.

Q.: But isn’t Israel fighting for its survival?

A.: As hard as this may be to imagine, Jews, Christians and Muslims got on quite well in the Palestine before the aliyahs, the waves of Jewish immigration, began in earnest early in the 20th century. Then trouble started, as it does whenever there’s massive immigration from a different culture-especially if the newcomers are much better educated, cohesive and motivated than the locals. Things got out of hand when the Jews decided to transform Palestine into Israel in 1949. Israel’s formation is understandable, I suppose, in light of what the Jews had just been through during WW2. And what they’ve done is certainly nothing new in history, which, in addition to being little more than a compilation of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind, as Gibbon observed, is basically just a register of involuntary real estate transactions. Actually, if the Bible is to be believed, it’s the second time the Jews have done the same thing to the same people in the same place. The Promised Land and all that.

One thing seems baked in the cake: the Israelis aren’t going away voluntarily, and the Muslims, particularly the Arabs, particularly the Palestinians, are very unhappy about it. And the Muslims don’t need to fight to win; simple demographics would seem to guarantee their eventual victory at the ballot box. Democracy in action; that should make the U.S. Government happy. Meanwhile, as the recent Israeli/Hezbollah dust-up in Lebanon has demonstrated, even the military situation is turning against Israel. Their hi-tech, American-style weapons are great for fighting a conventional army. But they’re nearly worthless in asymmetrical, guerrilla-type warfare, where they’re not even fighting another state.

Q.: Isn’t that an overstatement?

A.: I think not. Another thing Osama has said is that he plans to beat the Americans by letting them bankrupt themselves-but Washington seems to have disregarded this statement as well. The math is quite simple. Their cost of fielding a fighter, typically a highly motivated teenager who feels he’s defending his family from alien invaders, is next to nothing. Our cost of fielding a U.S. soldier, typically a teenager looking for a college loan, or an adventure to help him grow up, is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our cost for an M1 tank, or a Bradley fighting vehicle, is several million dollars. Their cost for an IED to blow up is next to nothing. Our cost for an F-16 to launch an air strike is maybe $40 million. Their cost for a SAM to bring it down is maybe $5,000.

Actually, it’s worse than that. The new Joint Strike Fighter will cost something like $300 million a copy. I can’t imagine who that’s supposed to be used against, besides the U.S. taxpayer. At best it’s an open provocation to the Russians and Chinese. And with the Persian Gulf, basically a shallow and narrow lake, full of U.S. warships at anywhere from $500 million to $5 billion per, it’s going to be a real shooting gallery for anyone who has a good supply of $1 million anti-ship missiles that can travel 2,000 mph. I’m sure the Iranians are planning on swarming the things. If the U.S. Navy isn’t careful, they’re going to wind up looking like the Japanese at Truk Lagoon.

It’s said that the generals always fight the last war. And that’s precisely what the U.S. military is prepared to do.

It’s perverse that the U.S. Government spends more than $400 billion per year on “defense,” almost as much as the rest of the world combined, and America basically has no defense at all. People are in a lather about North Korea launching missiles. This is a complete non-event. If the Koreans, or anyone else, want to attack a U.S. city, the last thing they’ll do is use a missile. Not only are they unreliable and inaccurate, but the victim can tell precisely where it came from, which is equivalent to the attacker signing its own death warrant. I have little doubt there will be one or more nuclear events in the U.S. over the next generation, but the delivery systems will be container ships or private yachts. Cargo plane or private jet. Or maybe FedEx. And nobody will know for sure who sent it. In today’s world, there is no military defense against attack.

Q.: So what should we do? Just roll over to the bad guys?

A.: Of course not. But it pays to think these things out beforehand, not jump around, hooting and panting like a chimpanzee the way Bush is doing. Start by noticing that the “bad guys” all sincerely see themselves as good guys. Even Hitler had the self-image of a man fighting for right against the forces of evil.

It’s insane to go out of your way to provoke people who can do you serious harm, especially if it serves absolutely no purpose. Remember “Bring it on!”? This is just one of several signs that Bush may be psychologically unstable, in addition to being demonstrably unintelligent, ignorant and thoughtless. The accelerating War on Islam has no upside. If it gets out of control, scores of millions of people could die. We’ll defeat them, of course, but it will be a totally Pyrrhic victory. The real winners will be the Chinese and the Indians.

So the wise course is to defuse the bomb before it goes off. Here’s what I suggest:

1. Withdraw all U.S. troops from foreign soil. As hard as it is for the average American to understand, foreigners like American soldiers running around in their country about as much as Americans would like an Islamic army here. Even if they were supposedly invited by Washington. Prognosis? This will eventually happen, but unfortunately, for pretty much the same reasons the Romans came home.
2. Cease meddling in other countries’ affairs. Despite our politicians’ certainty that they know what’s best for the natives, economic and military aid should stop. Not just because we have to borrow money from the Chinese to dispense it, but because it always makes steadfast enemies and gains only a fickle friend who has to stay bought. Prognosis? This will happen too, but only when the USG is forced to acknowledge bankruptcy.
3. Make a sincere and well-publicized apology to the Muslim world for having caused so much grief and promise it won’t happen again. Yes, I recognize the chances of this happening are about the same as those of Bush appointing me SecDef.
4. Return to the principles that made America unique and the world’s best-loved and most respected country. This is, of course, a complete pipedream.

In light of what needs to be done but won’t be done, I think it’s prudent to prepare for some really rough times ahead.

Q.: So you expect more terrorism?

A.: First, let’s discuss that word. Bush calls what he’s doing now a War on Terror. Which is completely idiotic. Terrorism isn’t an ideology, it’s a method, a tactic. Having a war on terror is as ridiculous as having a war on cavalry charges or frontal assaults or commando raids. Terrorism may be defined as an attack on a society’s non-combatants, with the intention of weakening their support for the status quo. It’s a tactic that melds the political with the military, much as guerrilla warfare does. But what’s new or strange about that? Clausewitz pointed out that war is nothing but the continuation of politics by other methods. Anybody can use terror, and most combatants do. We used terror extensively in WW2 with the fire bombings of places like Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, when there was no military reason for it. Terrorism was what the Phoenix Program in Vietnam was all about. Everybody accuses his enemy of terrorism. It only seems illegitimate when the terrorist isn’t a recognized state.

One advantage of terrorism is its low cost. You don’t have to invest billions for cruise missiles to blow something up if you can get a guy to drive a truck full of explosives to the same place. It’s strictly PR to style only the latter as terrorism. Remember the old line “I’m a freedom fighter, you’re a rebel, he’s a terrorist”? You don’t hear it much anymore, I suspect, because it strikes too close to home. It sounds somehow seditious now that the war is underway. But this is to be expected. Truth is always the first casualty in war.

Q.: The current U.S. foreign policy would seem to be the containment of Iran and Syria. But containment turned out to be a failure in Vietnam. Why do you think we are trying it again in the Middle East?

A.: You know, you put people in a position of power, and they’ll predictably find some way to justify their existence by using that power as promiscuously, and therefore stupidly, as possible. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the lowliest bedbug working for TSA or the Secretary of State.

Containment was a moronic concept not only when it came to Vietnam, but the whole Soviet empire. These places couldn’t even feed themselves. Their factories were museums of industrial archaeology. Their citizens joked “They pretend to pay us; we pretend to work.” The USSR would have self-destructed decades before it did, were it not for the U.S. acting as a bogeyman, which united its numerous nationalities, all of whom hated one another, against a common enemy. Worse, the U.S. propped the place up with technology transfers and loans. The only thing the Soviets had going was a military, which bankrupted them. And even the military was a paper tiger, as the Afghans proved.

Vietnam had absolutely nothing, only what the Soviets gave them. Except for one thing: spirit, because they were fighting invaders from an alien culture. People will always fight for their homes against foreigners, even if the homes are hovels, and even if they have nothing but sticks and stones for weapons.

To me it just showed how little confidence the average American had, and has, in his civilization that he could actually feel threatened by a small, desperately poor bunch of peasants, who barely even knew that America existed. It’s proof of what Spengler said, that a civilization can’t be conquered from without until it’s already rotted from within.

We should let these people work things out for themselves. By sticking our nose in their business, we make fickle friends but really serious enemies. In fact, we should have let the Soviets and the Nazis sort things out after Hitler attacked in June of 1941. The chances are excellent both empires would have collapsed in exhaustion, and the Cold War, which barely escaped turning into a worldwide thermonuclear war, would have been avoided. No Korea. No Vietnam.

Q.: The ultimate price tag of the war in Iraq alone is estimated to top one trillion dollars. That’s real money. How does the country afford that, and what are the consequences to you and me as taxpayers?

A.: In pre-industrial times, wars could actually make economic sense, at least for the short run. You sent your army somewhere to steal valuable goods-gold, cattle, fabrics, artwork, women, slaves-and bring them back home. The folks back home liked the improvement in their standard of living. Better, after you killed the natives, you could distribute the land to your soldiers. And the natives who were left would be a source of continuing tax revenue. In those days, the most practical version of the Golden Rule was “Do unto others-and do it first.” There was a lot to be said for devastating your neighbors before they became large and powerful enough to devastate you. War, assuming it was successful, had some real advantages.

In today’s technological world, however, war is a totally different animal. Wealth is no longer something you can steal wholesale. This is why I never felt the Soviets would have invaded Western Europe-you can’t effectively steal businesses and technology, which are the main forms of wealth today. As economically illiterate as Marxists are, the Russians intuitively understood that.

The argument is made that we’re in Iraq to steal the oil, which is absolutely the only thing of value in the region. After all, Boobus americanus might self-righteously say to himself, “What’s our oil doing under their sand?” Of course it’s true that the Arabs wouldn’t even know what oil was, much less how to extract and use it, were it not for Western companies-which discovered and developed the deposits, only to have them stolen by the local governments. But in my view, that’s a problem for those companies’ managements and shareholders. It’s perverse to make it the problem of the U.S. taxpayer.

The direct cost of this war has been estimated at between one and two trillion. But who knows? The tab depends on how long the war lasts and how it mutates before the Americans have to abandon everything they’ve done in a panicked exit. Put it this way. Even if we were to ship out every drop of Iraqi oil, at zero production cost, that oil would still cost about $12 per barrel due to the war alone. It’s a ridiculous proposition from an economic point of view.

But the real costs are indirect. I’m not talking about the tens of thousands of permanently maimed and disfigured U.S. soldiers who will have to be compensated. Or the hundreds of thousands of dead and disabled Iraqis who will never be compensated. Or the wholesale destruction of the country itself. After all, we did pretty much the same thing in Vietnam, and life went on. The problem here is that Bush may have started what amounts to WW3. Vietnam was a small, isolated, pitifully poor and backward place; so we could get away with destroying it… although we almost destroyed ourselves in the process.

The difficulty is that the Muslim world sees itself as a whole. The worldwide Muslim community, notwithstanding the Shia/Sunni conflict, very much sees itself as the ummah, which is somewhat their equivalent of our term “Christendom,” a term that no longer has much meaning. Fortunately, for most Americans and Europeans, religion is largely a cultural artifact, a relatively insignificant accident of birth. I say fortunately because it liberates their minds to pursue things like science, technology and business; it allows them to think for themselves and not automatically see those who believe in other religions as infidels. Muslims, as a rule, take their religion much more seriously. It’s one reason the Muslim world is so backward.

We forget that the conflict between Islam and the West has been going on for over 1,300 years. Up to the Battle of Vienna in 1683 where the Turks were turned back, the Muslims actually had the upper hand, except for the interlude of the Crusades, when the Europeans invaded the Levant. But since the start of the Industrial Revolution, we’ve had the upper hand. And since the 19th century, most of the states of the Muslim world have been either European colonies or puppet governments. And we drew the boundaries.

It’s a history they resent. So would we.

Q.: Turning to other topics, do you think it is realistic that the U.S. dollar could lose its status as the world’s reserve currency anytime soon? What are the implications and how soon do you think it could happen?

A.: The U.S. dollar will eventually reach its intrinsic value; it’s simply a question of time. The Forever War is greatly accelerating the process. The whole idea of a reserve currency is meaningless if the currency is backed by nothing but the good will of the issuing government. That’s why gold has always been used as money; you don’t have to rely on anyone’s full faith and credit, good will, competence, trade surpluses, self-restraint or anything else. And it’s why gold will again be used, in everyday transactions, as money.

The dollar is a hot potato. there are trillions-nobody knows exactly how many-floating outside the U.S. But only Americans have to accept them, and only the U.S. Government can create them (although the North Koreans do their best). The Chinese have good reason to worry about all those dollars. When they tried to buy the Unocal oil company, they were turned away by the U.S. Government. So, obviously, their dollars weren’t good for that. When Dubai wanted to buy companies that manage six U.S. seaports, they found their dollars had no value.

At some point there’s going to be a panic out of the dollar. When it happens, it’s likely to be the biggest financial upset since the 1930s. Part of the question is what they’ll panic into. The euro? As I have said many times, if the dollar is an “I owe you nothing,” the euro is a “Who owes you nothing?” I think the big beneficiary will be gold. The problem for the world’s economy is that just a trillion dollars-which is only about 1/6 of the dollars outside the U.S. alone-can buy a billion ounces of gold, even at $1,000 an ounce. But only about four billion ounces have ever been mined.

It’s an explosive situation. The one thing you can count on when there’s a crisis is that the government will “do something,” which means controlling its subjects-not, God forbid, itself. And that something is likely to be foreign exchange controls. A small straw in the wind is the new regulation making it illegal to export more than $5 worth of pennies and nickels, because their metal is worth more than their face value-even though there’s no longer much copper in the pennies or nickel in the nickels.

If an American doesn’t get significant assets outside the U.S. now, it may be impossible in the future. The best thing to do is buy real estate abroad, since it’s currently not reportable, like bank and brokerage accounts, and they can’t very well make you repatriate it. I expect, however, very few people will take my advice, even though they may agree with it. But everybody gets what he deserves, so it’s not a problem..

Q.: Looking at the broad picture, it seems like the U.S. government is facing nearly insurmountable odds. The cost of government has soared to something over 50% of GDP, weighing heavily on the private sector, yet there is no end in sight to the wide river of can’t-stop spending… on the military, on Social Security and Medicare-especially in the face of the baby boomers beginning to retire. How does the country manage to maintain that?

A.: Nothing lasts forever. I’ll be surprised if the U.S. is able to maintain its present geographic boundaries for this century. The Mexicans talk of the Reconquista; the gringos stole the Southwest from them in the 1800s, and they’re likely to take it back. What do you think the odds are that a young Latino male in California, 20 years from now, is going to pay 20% of his wages in Social Security and Medicare to support some old white broad in Massachusetts? Especially since he knows he’s never going to get an aluminum nickel back? Even today, polls show that more kids believe in aliens than believe they’ll see any Social Security money.

We’ve had really good times for a whole generation. People become fat and sassy, or in the case of Americans, obese and arrogant, during good times. They don’t think of hanging their leaders from lamp posts until things get seriously bad.

I don’t know how bad things will get. But when I’m asked, I’m prone to quip “Worse than even I think they’ll get.”

Q.: You and the team at Casey Research have been vocal about expecting a major inflation. Yet, other than occasional surprises-such as the 2% jump in the PPI for November-inflation doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. What gives?

A.: Things that you expect to happen usually take longer than you’d think. But once the process gets underway, they usually happen much more quickly. It’s like a boulder balanced on the edge of a cliff; nothing seems to happen until it happens all at once. Just adjust that analogy to the scale of a human lifespan.

The word “inflation” covers two different concepts, and it’s important to keep them separate. One concept is monetary inflation, which is an increase in the supply of money that outruns growth in the supply of goods and services. The other concept is price inflation, which is an increase in the overall level of prices for goods and services.

The relationship between the two is the relationship of cause and effect. Monetary inflation causes price inflation. But while almost everyone sees price inflation when it happens, few people notice the monetary inflation that is causing it. And so they tend to blame the producers of goods and services for higher prices-rather than the money-creating government that is the true culprit.

We’re now experiencing a lot of monetary inflation, which eventually will be reflected in price inflation. What’s really going to tip this over the edge, however, is the rest of the world deciding to get out of dollars. A lot of those $6 trillion abroad are going to come back to the U.S., and real goods are going to be packed up and shipped abroad. Inflation will explode.

It’s just a matter of time. But I think it’s going to happen this cycle.

Q.: Last year you went on record early calling for gold to top $700, which it did. But you expected it to end the year at about $750. Currently, it trades at around $640. Why do you think it didn’t hold up? And, just for entertainment purposes, how high do you think it will trade in 2007?

A.: I’m sure the government, directly and indirectly, did everything it could to keep the price down. The last thing they want to see is a gold panic. So the short run is hard to predict. But we’re still relatively early, certainly in terms of price, in what will be a bull market for the record books. It’s as if you can see the perfect storm brewing. Since I’ve been involved in the markets, there have been a number of times when things could have come unglued-’70-’71, with the stock market crash and the devaluation of the dollar, ’73-’74, with another market meltdown and financial crisis, ’80-’82, when commodities and interest rates both went through the roof, ’87, ’92, ’98, the tech meltdown… Throughout that time, I’ve always tended to be a bear. In other words, I’ve tended to make my money during the crises; it’s relatively easy to make money during good times. As the tech boom proved, any idiot who knows nothing about the markets or the economy, can do it.

My guess is that the next crisis is going to be breathtaking. And it’s not going to be just financial, but economic, social, military and political. Of course, I hope I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, I’m not likely to get hurt, for a number of reasons. But I don’t want to be inconvenienced if I’m right.

So where is gold going? I hate making predictions. I’m not a fortune teller. But I think this is the year gold goes over $1,000. And then the mania starts for the mining stocks…

Regards,
Doug Casey

January 25, 2007

Make War Your Friend, Part II was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

The topic of war-with all its sorry implications-is, of course, emotionally and politically charged. Some believe to the depths of their soul that we need to “stay the course” in Iraq and Afghanistan, “fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Others judge, correctly in our view, that any military effort in the Middle East is akin to entering a knife fight without a knife. You might survive, but not without losing a lot of blood. Individuals in the latter camp are accused of wanting to “cut and run,” as the talk show morons like to say. But few seem to remember the origins of that phrase. When weather demands it, sailors would cut the anchor line and run before the wind to avoid an approaching catastrophe. It was a sign of intelligence in the face of danger.

Missing from the debate is a candid discussion of the true implications of our current war, not just for the U.S. soldiers killed or wounded, and not just for the local citizens wounded or killed by soldiers sent to deliver “democracy” to people who don’t know what the word means. To an Iraqi caught in the crossfire between an occupying army and its tormentors, the word “democracy” now translates as “duck!”

Into this morass, we push forward Doug Casey, Chairman of Casey Research and the editor of the International Speculator, a monthly newsletter focusing on investments with the potential for a 100% or better profit over the next 12 months. Never one for moral equivocation or political correctness, Doug, who wrote the best-selling Crisis Investing (Harper Collins 1980), is an avid student of crisis in its many varieties. He foresaw the coming of what many are now calling a world war in his July, 2001, International Speculator article, “Waiting for World War III”. A pertinent excerpt…

Waiting for WWIII

What are the greatest problems facing us today? Domestically, I’d say the continual and accelerating loss of freedom, compounded by the prospect of what I suspect could be the biggest financial/economic crisis of modern times. What might that crisis be like? That’s unpredictable, although the odds are it will be unlike any others that are still fresh in people’s memories, simply because people tend to be most prepared for the things that have most recently scared them. The big problems usually come from an unexpected quarter, and/or at an unexpected time. Like the monetary crisis of 1998 that materialized in Thailand.

That said, the question remains of where to look. My guess (although it sounds so unprofessional to use a word like “guess”; a government briefing would substitute a phrase like “our research shows” or “expert opinion indicates”) is that it will come from outside American borders, in the form of war. War is perhaps the worst thing that can happen, not only for the destruction it will cause in itself, but because it will immensely exacerbate America’s domestic problems. As Stirner famously said, “War is the health of the State.”

But neither a declared war, nor a war in the conventional sense, is likely in the cards. U.S. troops have been in combat in a dozen countries since our last “official” war ended in 1945; the U.S. troops stationed in over 100 countries are an accident waiting to happen. Besides the Balkans and Iraq, Colombia is probably highest on the dance card, but almost any place could erupt unpredictably. Who, after all, could have predicted that the U.S. would invade Somalia in 1991, a country few people other than stamp collectors even knew existed. No place is safe from being attacked in The National Interest of the world’s self-appointed policeman.

Anything is possible within this context, but I discount the possibility of another Vietnam, again because of the “recent collective memory” phenomenon. Vietnam is possibly the major reason why the Iraq attack ended so quickly; quick withdrawal obviated any danger that ground troops might get stuck in a major tar baby. But when you’re sticking your nose absolutely everywhere it doesn’t belong, there are lots of ways to get it bloodied. My guess is that something resembling a Crusade is developing against those who live in the Koran Belt. It won’t be overtly religious like the Crusades of the Middle Ages, but it will have major cultural undertones. And there’s every prospect it will be highly unconventional in nature.

And in August of 2002, he (correctly, it turns out) extrapolated where the attack on Iraq would lead, even before the bombs started to fall. (For the full article, see August 2002 “The Forever War, Chapter Next” in the Archives.)

At risk of being unpopular (admittedly a risk I’ve run my whole life), let me state my brief: the impending war is not only unnecessary, it’s unethical, will turn out to be totally counterproductive, will serve to further erode Americans’ freedoms, and move them further towards national bankruptcy, to boot. Are there any positives to it? I’m not sure there are any at all.

Quite frankly, the current drive toward war with a small (13 million people), backward country pretty much on the other side of the globe puzzles me. I have no question that its leader is a sociopath. But that’s true of many, if not most of the world’s leaders, and we aren’t about to start wars with them for that reason; many have been, or are, “allies.”

And here we are, four years later-with Doug’s dire predictions borne out. Where does Doug see things going over the next four years, and what are the Forever War’s more immediate implications for the global economy? We caught up with him in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Q.: It’s sort of hard to know where to start. One day, the country was ticking along, the next, September 12, 2001, we were up to our neck in a global war. In the beginning, there was an international outpouring of support for the U.S. Now we are increasingly isolated. What was the name of the truck that hit us? Or, put another way, what do you think were the controlling mindset and principles of the Bush administration that led us to this point?

A.: First let’s look at who’s been pulling the strings in Washington. The Bush Administration is overwhelmingly composed of Neocons.

They’re highly ideological academics and intellectuals who started off as hard-line socialists but converted to “conservatism” because they were bright enough to see socialism is a one-way street to universal poverty. But they don’t believe in free markets for any reason other than they generate more wealth for the people in charge to allocate-pretty much the same pragmatic approach taken by the Chinese Communist Party. And they never believed in personal freedom. Political hacks are pretty similar, no matter where you find them.

The Republicans in the U.S. have always pretended to believe in free markets while they nurtured the warfare state, but they were quite sincere in their disavowal of social freedoms. The Democrats, on the other hand, have always pretended to believe in social freedoms, and sometimes mounted weak rhetorical attacks on the warfare state, but they were quite sincere in their dislike of free markets. It was logical that, as Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, and the rest of them saw the writing on the economic wall, they’d become Republicans. The Neocons, in other words, take most of the worst in both theory and practice from both parties. They’re fans of both the Welfare State and the Warfare State. They’re dangerous people.

In addition, almost all high-level Bush types are either Zionist Jews or Fundamentalist Christians, in either case reflexive and zealous supporters of the state of Israel. For myself, I have no problem with Israel going about its business; but I think the U.S. should treat it like any other of the world’s 200-odd countries.

Of course the U.S., as evidenced by the approximately $4 billion of aid it gives Israel every year, plus another $1.3 billion to bribe Egypt to be cordial toward Israel, has long treated the country as something approaching the 51st state. Bush has taken this to a new level.

Q.: How do Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda fit into this?

A.: It’s funny, people talk about Osama bin Laden all the time. But nobody ever listens to him. This is very unwise, in that the single most important thing in a conflict is to understand your opponent’s mindset. Osama has said several times that he’s conducting his jihad for three rather simple and clear reasons. First, he wants foreign troops out of Islamic countries. Second, he wants foreign powers to stop propping up dictators in Islamic countries. Third, he wants foreign powers to cease their support of Israel, which he views as the usurper of Palestinian lands. These impress me as reasonable goals. He’s never said he’s fighting the U.S. because, as Bush seems to think, he “hates our freedom.”

Of course he loathes the U.S. and what it stands for, but that’s really got nothing to do with the actual reasons for his attacks.

The attacks were vastly more successful than Osama could have imagined-but only because of the Administration’s idiotic response. Bush immediately puts the world on notice they’re either “for us or against us,” then invades two small, primitive countries, neither of which had anything to do with the attack. This is followed up with all kinds of draconian measures at home and abroad-Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, snatching people on suspicion, the PATRIOT act, disregard for habeas corpus. Then, at least initially, the American people jumped on the jingoist bandwagon with their self-proclaimed war president and make a big deal of things like Freedom Fries. A hundred heavy-handed and pointless measures added up to convince people around the world that the U.S. had whooped itself into an out-of-control bully, undeserving of sympathy.

The U.S. likes to blame all terrorism on Osama and al-Qaeda. That’s because it makes the problem seem containable; it makes it seem as though there’s just one little group of bad guys the U.S. can track down and eliminate. That was once close to the truth. But now it’s just posturing. Today there are scores of Islamic groups all over the world, with similar worldviews and agendas. Of course they are all mutually sympathetic and try to support one another, but they’re completely independent. The way the U.S. has handled the problem is directly responsible for the metastasis.

Q.: You seem to think that Afghanistan wasn’t complicit in the 9/11 attacks. But there is a strong connection between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and even bin Laden himself said he was behind 9/11. So wasn’t some sort of punitive action called for?

A.: The first thing is to decide whether the events of 9/11 were an act of war by another state, or simply an act of criminality by independent actors. Clearly it was the latter. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the government of Afghanistan, run at the time by the Taliban, had anything at all to do with it. Is there a connection between the Taliban and Osama? Yes, of course. Osama was something of a national icon for helping to drive out the Soviet invaders in the ’80s, which is why he was living there. But people forget that none of the 20 conspirators was an Afghan, and 15 of them, not to mention Osama himself, were Saudis. There was as much reason to attack Saudi Arabia as Afghanistan.

So we have an independent act of criminality with only an incidental tie to Afghans. And these are, incidentally, the same Afghans we armed and supported in their fight to evict the Soviets in 1980. At least the Soviets were invited in by the ruling government, as we were in Vietnam. Somehow we seem to think Afghans like our soldiers running around killing people and destroying property more than they liked the Russians doing the same thing. They don’t. The difference in political goals and the ideological distinctions between the U.S. and Russia are completely lost on these backward, religious, tribal people. So you can plan on the Afghan War growing ever larger and nastier.

Q.: Getting back to what should have been done…

A.: What should have been done if 20 IRA soldiers, or 20 Quebecois separatists, or 20 Colombian Mafiosi had done the same thing? It’s a crime, albeit a very large, spectacular and unusual one, but you treat it like a crime. The U.S. military is not suited for police work.

Few Americans realize that the Constitution provides for the issuance of “letters of marque,” that authorize private bounty hunters to bring pirates to justice. Outfits modeled on Pinkerton’s of the 19th century or Executive Outcomes of the 20th would be far more effective in dealing with al-Qaeda and vastly cheaper than a regular army. That, and less likely to invite retaliation against the U.S. itself. But who reads the Constitution anymore?

One interesting thing about al-Qaeda and its clones is that I think they’re indicative of the way the world is going to evolve. The nation-state, which is only an historical aberration in the big scheme of things, and a terrible idea, is on its way out. It’s going to be replaced by transnational groups of people who coalesce based on what’s important to them-religion, race, hobbies, philosophy, any of a million things that draw people together. Loyalties won’t be to a bunch of people who happen to share some government ID document, but to self-selected, and much stronger, groups. There’s a lot more I could say about this.

Q.: I think I know your answer this to one already, but why do you think the U.S. invaded Iraq? You’ve said that attacking Iraq for 9/11 would have been like bombing China for Pearl Harbor. So, why did we do it?

A.: Einstein said that, after hydrogen, stupidity was the most common thing in the universe. And I think that really is the best explanation. But Bush gave two reasons for the invasion. One, that Iraq was “linked” to al-Qaeda. Two, that Saddam was developing so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction. At the time I said that both excuses were pitifully transparent, even ridiculous, lies.

As to the first point, Saddam’s Baath regime was highly secular; the Baathists and the Islamic fundamentalists viewed each other as mortal enemies. True, they both had reason to distrust and dislike America in general, and the Bush regime in particular. But Saddam was precisely the type of Arab leader Osama wants to get rid off. The assertion they were “linked” is laughable.

The Weapons of Mass Destruction issue is more interesting. Anybody at all with some money, technical skill and motivation can develop biological and chemical weapons. Atomic weapons are more complex and expensive, but hardly rocket science in today’s world; the methods for making them are well known. My God, even North Korea, one of the most backward countries in the world, has done it. These things used to be lumped together as ABC (atomic, biological, chemical) weapons because they were unconventional. But only atomic weapons are actually capable of mass destruction. The WMD moniker was coined recently by the U.S. as a propaganda gimmick, to create an atmosphere of hysteria conducive to the war. It’s a stupid designation, but the press seems to like it. A classical artillery barrage, or a B-52 strike, is really much more of a WMD than chemical or biological weapons.

By the way, last November, there was a video released showing Saddam and his generals before the Iraq war, discussing the possible use of slingshots, Molotov cocktails and crossbows to fight back against the U.S. In the video, Saddam got quite excited about the idea of providing every Iraqi with a slingshot. So much for the scary WMDs.

In any event, was the fear of Saddam getting ABC weapons a reason to invade Iraq? Well, it wasn’t enough of a reason to invade Israel, India or Pakistan when they got them. The fact is that there are a couple dozen countries that could have a nuclear arsenal within a year if they wanted it. The nuclear weapons genie has long been out of the bottle.

And you don’t have to build them to own them. I’ll be quite surprised if some Russian general doesn’t sell some to a party with the right amount of cash. Or maybe some Russian sergeants, since they’re the ones who actually handle them. But the big danger here is Pakistan. The Islamic world views Musharraf as a stooge of the Americans. After he’s assassinated, the odds of which are very high, there’s no telling what will happen to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq has morphed from the Osama links and WMD’s to an altruistic desire to bring “democracy” to the Middle East. Like almost everything else the man says, it makes no sense. In the first place, democracy is just a means of installing rulers; it doesn’t in any way guarantee protection for free minds or free markets. In fact, in today’s idiom, it’s nothing but mob rule dressed up in a coat and tie. What I personally want is individual liberty, which is possible only with an extremely limited government, whose sole purpose is to protect one’s life and property from aggression. I recognize I’m in a small minority, even among Americans, who today view government as a cornucopia of all they desire and see democracy and majority rule as their opportunity to scoop out as much as they want.

But Americans, even though they’re pretty far from being libertarians, come a lot closer than the average devout Muslim, for whom the Koran is the direct and incontrovertible word of Allah. It’s not just the prohibition on drinking, gambling and earning interest and the other puritanical features that make the faith unacceptable to me. Not just the obligatory zakat, which, feeling as I do about charity (see IS 6/2006), doesn’t fit. Not just the ritualistic prayer five times a day or the pilgrimage to Mecca. It’s that Islam is more than a religion; it’s a way of life that submerges politics, philosophy, economics, everything. It’s not a religion that allows for much individual liberty; the word itself means “submission.”

Q.: So here we are, three years later, and the situation is a real mess, as you and others accurately warned would happen even before the first shots were fired. Humor us by describing how you think the current mess in the Iraq and then in the Middle East will unfold from here.

A.: One thing is now clear to all but the dimmest observers: the U.S. has lost this war, and the longer it goes on, the worse it will get. The outcome was obvious from the start, because it’s not possible for an army from the other side of the planet to win a guerrilla war. At least not in a politically correct way. You could engage in wholesale ethnic cleansing, the way the Romans, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane did, but, at least in today’s world, that would be counterproductive in any number of ways, entirely apart from moral considerations. Simply killing guerrillas serves no purpose; to the contrary, the more you kill, the more you get. And, as the statistics show, for every fighter you kill, you kill several non-combatants. And there you’re really sowing dragon’s teeth, especially in a society that has high chronic unemployment among young, unmarried males-which are extraordinarily dangerous and volatile creatures.

My guess is that the next U.S. president will try to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. But it’s going to be harder then, because the U.S. will be in full retreat, taking many more casualties than today. The Brits and other members of the phony “coalition of the willing” have already bailed. From a strictly tactical point of view, it’s going to be much tougher than leaving Vietnam. The only portion of the Iraqi army that won’t have stripped off their uniforms and turned into the biggest jogging team in Asia will be the ones who are working with the insurgents. But, unfortunately, that’s the best-case scenario.

The worst case, and a not unlikely one, is there is another incident like 9/11, possibly much more serious, especially while Bush is in office. At that point, mass hysteria may take over, and the government will lock the country down like one of its many new federal prisons. If the Iranians are implicated, it may be the excuse Bush is looking for to launch an air strike against them. Now you’re looking at WW3.

A surprising number of Neocon types are saying that WW3 has already started. They’re not just saying that to make an astute observation; they’re saying that because they want the U.S. to actually broaden the war. The enemy is Islam.

To be continued…
Doug Casey

January 24, 2007

Make War Your Friend, Part I was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.