Friday, August 16, 2013

Letter of Liberty News Edition (8-16-2013)

Dear readers of Letter of Liberty:

As I promised, here is my Friday news edition.

The Washington Post reports that NSA broke privacy rules, according to one audit.

Sheldon Richman on the phony trade-off between privacy and security.

Jacob Hornberger reveals that the US government loves Egypt's military dictatorship.

Scott Lazarowitz on the insanity of Amerika's "terrorism drills."

Hans-Hermann Hoppe on how to fight the modern state.

Justin Raimondo on Egypt's Tiananmen.

Robert Wenzel wants to know if there is a stock market crash coming ahead.

Bill Bonner gives a sarcastic "thank you" to the national-security state.

One media ship is going down, reports Jon Rappoport.

InfoWars.com's Paul Joseph Watson reports to the FBI's admission of having documents on Michael Hastings.

Ilana Mercer's first part of an interview with Benn Steil entitled "John Maynard Keynes: Who's the Genius?"

Alexa O'Brien at the Guardian examines the moral consistency of Bradley Manning's recent apology.

Anthony Gucciardi reports on how the state is God to many people.

Gary North on Richard Nixon's worst decision among many bad decisions: closing the gold window.

William Norman Grigg on how criminal prosecutors attacked constitutionalist quilt artist Rita Hutchens.

Conservative Christian minister Chuck Baldwin on the enmity of the brethren in Christ.

Chuck Baldwin reminds us that the NSA domestic spying apparatus is built on lies.

Paul Rosenberg on the blow that killed America 100 years ago.

Michael Rubin, resident caller at the American Enterprise Institute, is calling for more Egyptian blood.

The Guardian reports that the NSA is under fire after it violated its own privacy rules.

Lavabit's death is the death of security in cloud computing, according to Alex Hern.

Edward Snowden speaks with Peter Maass on why he went to documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

The Guardian's interview with Edward Snowden. (Part 1 and Part 2) It was recorded two months ago, but it is still relevant today in regard to the surveillance state.

Amy Goodman on hip-hop artist Questlove's encounter with stop-and-frisk.

Sheldon Richman on the stop-and-frisk program.

The Guardian releases the full 2008 XKeyscore presentation.

C. Jay Engel gives a short rant on Obamacare and the GOP.

The Liberty Crier reports that Obama wants to use an executive order to impose a cell phone tax. The original link is at The Daily Caller.

Salon reports that a huge majority of Americans want James Clapper convicted for perjury.

Ron Paul on why gold will explode higher.

Americans are renouncing their citizenship to escape the IRS, reports Reason.com.

Tom Woods on his difficulty in finding the worst article of 2013, his finding it, and his seeming to make progress, only to have to reply to this inane comment on how not raising the minimum wage keeps a mother and her child homeless. He also includes an excerpt from Jeff Herbener's discussion with AEI on the Phillips Curve.

Laurence Vance gives this question: how conservative is your senator?

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, seems to be a big fan of the Pauls (Ron and Rand).

Robert Wenzel gives a partial list of the ages of the singers of the Declaration of Independence.

Tyler Cowen reveals that the Vietnam War was worse than many people think.

F. A. Hayek has made some statements showing how the Framers' system has failed in limiting the government.

Radley Balko on how to roll back America's police militarization.

Radley Balko reports on Texas police raiding an organic farm in a big SWAT raid.









TGIF: The Phony Trade-off Between Privacy and Security

Sheldon Richman of The Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF) has written a brilliant essay today in his The Goal is Freedom (TGIF) series. That article is "The Phony Trade-off Between Privacy and Security" I urge you all to read it and to send it to your friends and relatives.

I will close this post with a relevant quote from Richman:

"...you can’t trade off privacy against security becausethey’re exactly the same thing. Anyone who reads dystopian novels knows that government access to personal information about people serves to inhibit and control them. That’s insecurity."