On December 17th, 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that effectively exempted Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, from Constitutional limitations. The "property and assets" of Interpol are now "immune from search" and confiscation, and its archives "inviolable."

What does this mean? "This international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests."

For an added and disturbing wrinkle, INTERPOL’s central operations office in the United States is within our own Justice Department offices. They are American law enforcement officers working under the aegis of INTERPOL within our own Justice Department. That they now operate with full diplomatic immunity and with "inviolable archives" from within our own buildings should send red flags soaring into the clouds.

One might respond to such a thing with phrases along the lines of "Holy Shit."

The linked article goes on to suggest that this is a precursor to returning the United States to the status of signatory to the International Criminal Court, probably with the purpose of allowing foreign governments to prosecute American citizens for war crimes. That’s a travesty in itself. It would subvert American sovereignty to a world government, which seems to be one of Barack Obama’s end-games. But the directly disturbing (if not terrifying) part is that the Justice Department is apparently operating side-by-side with these international bodies already, and has already figured out how to operate outside its Constitutional limits.

Some of us wonder if it’s possible that we’ll wake up one day and America-as-we-know-it will be gone. I think it’s more accurate to say it’s already gone. The framework for flipping the switch seems to be pretty much in place: a rubber-stamp Congress; international super-constitutional police forces; control of health care, industry, and financial systems; Marxist control by labor unions of the education system and the low-skilled work force; overextended military focused on wars overseas. A financial regulatory system that awards the wealthy and privileged at the expense of the lesser 99%.

I don’t know what there is that could stop it at this point.

Barack Snubbed by the Chinese

China is attempting to scupper chances of a comprehenive agreement at the Copenhagen climate summit by using delaying tactics, sources inside the negotiations have told The Independent.

At an emergency meeting convened at the Bella Center this morning, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown assembled 26 heads of state in an attempt to revive a deal. But China’s Premier Wen Jiabao did not attend and was replaced by vice foreign minister He Yafei.

This afternoon, the US president and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton called another meeting with China, but were snubbed again when only three low-level Chinese delegates arrived.

According to a high level source, the US president clearly regarded Premier Wen’s absence as a major diplomatic insult, and snapped: “It would be nice to negotiate with somebody who can make political decisions.”

He’s not just naive, ideologically-driven, and potentially evil. He’s also embarrassingly hapless when it comes to foreign policy. He showed up in Copenhagen a few months ago to pitch the case for the Olympics in Chicago, and failed in favor of a third-world crime-ridden ghetto. He let the mullahs crush the pro-freedom forces after the Iranian elections. He threw our eastern European allies under the bus by abandoning missile defense.

And now, he shows up to a meeting with the Chinese president, and the only people who show up from China are “three low-level Chinese delegates?”

This shows two things: The Chinese, to whom we owe our economic stability, think he’s weak and open to these kinds of snubs. Secondly, whoever his handlers are continue to fail him on a regular basis by putting him in these situations where he puts his credibility and star power on the line, only to crash and burn in an incredibly public way. There is no possible explanation for an American president attending ANYTHING with foreign dignitaries without being absolutely sure of the outcome before he even shows up. He’s not a fucking diplomat, and he’s not a fucking negotiator. He’s the president for Christ’s sake. Say what you want about George W. Bush, but that “inelegant” “cowboy” wouldn’t have fallen for any crap like this from anybody.

The only time Obama seems appears confident and self-assured about when it comes to foreign policy is his ability to bow inappropriately and apologize for other Americans. This is just an endless amateur hour we’re watching.

I have some questions. Anyone is free to answer.

Last week, the Obama administration, specifically Attorney General Eric Holder, announced that several terrorists including the guy behind the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, will be brought from Guantanamo to New York City to face trial in a civilian court, with a civilian judge, with a civilian jury, about 6 blocks away from the former site of the towers.

My questions:

1. These terrorists were capture on the battlefield by uniformed soldiers, not law enforcement folks. They were not read their rights. Why won’t they or their lawyers be able to ask for the charges to be dismissed because of this?

2. The President has called what these men experienced in Guantanamo "torture." Why won’t they or their lawyers be able to claim that any confessions of guilt were obtained under threat of further torture, and therefore should be dismissed by the judge?

3. These terrorists did not have access to legal counsel during their interrogations. Why can’t they or their lawyers claim that their rights have been violated and thus request that the charges be dismissed?

4. In their defense, these men or their lawyers will presumably be given access to the same confidential or classified information that the prosecution will use to make their case. What will be done to protect this classified information from being publically released or leaked by participants in the trial?

5. Given the public outcry against the supposedly illegal treatment of these terrorists by the public, what’s the possibility that a jury could acquit them outright and set them loose on American soil?

6. What’s to prevent these men from representing themselves in court, giving themselves a spotlight to gloat over the success of the attacks and rage against the Great Satan in the most public forum possible, while gaining access to our country’s national security information and infrastructure?

7. Please refute the following conclusion:

Pres. Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, experienced litigators, fully realize that in civilian court, the Qaeda quintet can and will demand discovery of mountains of government intelligence. They will demand disclosures about investigative tactics; the methods and sources by which intelligence has been obtained; the witnesses from the intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement who interrogated witnesses, conducted searches, secretly intercepted enemy communications, and employed other investigative techniques. They will attempt to compel testimony from officials who formulated U.S. counterterrorism strategy, in addition to U.S. and foreign intelligence officers. As civilian “defendants,” these war criminals will put Bush-era counterterrorism tactics under the brightest public spotlight in American legal history.

8. Please refute the following conclusion:

By transferring this case to civilian court rather than leaving it to be handled by the military-commission system created by Congress, Obama and Holder have needlessly created a perilous dilemma. Do we deny KSM & Co. the right to represent themselves and thus risk reversal of any convictions on Sixth Amendment grounds? Do we grant them self-representation but withhold critical discovery and thus risk reversal on due process grounds? Or do we grant them self-representation and disclose directly to our wartime enemies the nation’s security secrets, which they can then pass on to confederates who are actively targeting us for mass-murder attacks?

This stuff, more than anything else Barack Obama has done, tells me that he doesn’t have the country’s best interests at heart. Closing Guantanamo was supposed to make us safer, but the alternative that the administration has come up with is appalling. The idea that we give these guys a voice in a civilian court is stupid and evil. Expecting to convict them under American civilian law when no constitutional due process has been extended to them up until now is stupid and evil. Giving access to our intelligence services to people who want to destroy us is stupid and evil. Attempting to use the American courts to embarrass the previous administration for their honest attempts to defend the country against this scum is stupid and evil.

When reality sets in and we see what this decision unleashes, this stuff, more than anything else, might be the undoing of Barack Obama.

Obama’s secret intellectual property treaty

*  * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

“The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.”

Why the secrecy? Because tyranny is unpopular. Particularly when you’re also trying to pass a tyrannical health care monstrosity.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting Pakistan this week. Drudge picked up on this choice quote:

“The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world… We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she said.

“You do have 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with that kind of challenge, unless you start planning right now,” she said.

“If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together” then “there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment”.

Let’s start with that last part. In order to effectively "work together" with Pakistan, Hillary believes that they need an empowered central government and an effective "military security establishment." I can understand her point there. The state department would like to negotiate with one party rather than a bunch of tribal leaders and various corps of Islamic nutballs who integrate seamlessly into Pakistani life. But the interesting part is how she thinks a loose confederation of tribes and religious factions are supposed country is supposed to get to that point.

Her answer is by raising taxes. America taxes "everything that moves and doesn’t move." Pakistan doesn’t. Therefore, Pakistan is a mess, while America is strong. It’s about taxes, and taxes are about government control. It’s not about the character of the people, or their shared culture, or their ties to the land, or their recognition of natural law. It’s about taxation and government control.

I mean, surely she intended a nuanced interpretation of her statement, in which we’re supposed to take into consideration that the result of taxation will be the development of a vast bureaucracy to provide government-run education, press, banking, manufacturing, health care, retirement and jobs as a result of the collection of those taxes. But that’s not what she said, and what she said has meaning. It’s great when, once in a while, a liberal lets a little light shine in on the truth that lies within their cores.

In this case, liberals believe that government makes nations, whereas more enlightened people believe that a nation establishes a government for itself. It’s an important distinction. A nation is made up of people with a common language, common culture, and a historic claim to the land on which it exists. Pakistan is not a nation in the same way that America is a nation. There are over 60 different languages spoken by its population. It’s official language is English, but its national language is Urdu which less than 10% if its population speak. It’s 96% Islamic, but there’s the usual hateful split between Shia and Sunni among the population, which pretty much guarantees perpetual cultural violence and conflict. And up until 1947, there had never been a historical "Pakistani" state. It was created by the ever-disastrous British border-drawers who just flat-out made stuff up because they didn’t know what else to do with all the land that their empire couldn’t control.

But all that is secondary in importance. What REALLY matters, in the Clintonian, progressive world-view, is the ability of the the central government to impose top-down, bureaucratic, central planning and control. In other words, they want to apply to Pakistan the same liberal fascist form of government that they’re building here.

Taxation to a conservative is a necessary evil to be avoided when possible, used only to ensure the liberty of its citizens. To a progressive, taxation is an essential tool of authoritarianism used for the advancement of government power.