God Bless America

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,


When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the Present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid World.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People; unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.

He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.

He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.

He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislature.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:

For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond the Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule in these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Powers to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.


Signed by ORDER and
in BEHALF OF THE CONGRESS
JOHN HANCOCK,
PRESIDENT.

ATTEST.
CHARLES THOMSON,
SECRETARY.


PHILADELPHIA:
PRINTED BY JOHN DUNLAP.

Selling Votes

...as only the DNC can.

DNC Superdelegate Puts His Vote Up For Sale
Steven Ybarra Wants $20 Million For His Vote

It's OK though because he wants to spend it on illegal alien voter registration Mexican-American voters. Right. None of that money would be redirected, squandered, stolen or what have you.

Name That Party

Anyone? No takers?

Remember the Republicans are corrupt thieves giving money to their fatcat friends. Democrats are noble public servants thinking only of the children.

At the first sign of trouble, quit.

Last Thursday, Delaware Watch was asking; How's the Surge Going?

In typically snide fashion Dana is using his vast military experience and counterinsurgency knowledge to beat up on poor hapless David Petraeus.

"The truth of the matter is that the surge has never been working. The temporary lack of hostilities within Iraq has only created the appearance of success. But the real reason for the lack of hostilities has been that the various Shia factions found it in their political best interests to cease their hostilities and they had little, if anything, to do with addition of 33,000 more US troops in Iraq.

Now that the political situation has changed and hostilities have re-emerged, the facade of the surge's success has been removed"

So after about 11 minutes of shooting Dana wails and moans that all is lost and see I told you so. Or not.

Sadr orders followers to cease fire. Why would that be?

Back to Dana:

Part of the surge strategy was to strengthen the government, a government that seems to be increasingly unpopular"

Increasingly unpopular? I wonder what does Sadr himself have to say? Let's ask him:

"Based on responsibility towards Iraq and to stem Iraqi bloodshed and to preserve the country's unity and integrity as a prelude to its independence, I call on the people to be up to their responsibility and awareness in order to maintain Iraq's stability," according to a statement issued by Sadr and sent to Voices of Iraq.

I guess it's popularity is somewhat open to question.

The US supports the Iraq government's assault and a big part of the surge's credibility hangs precariously on its success:

Given that Sadr has surrendered after a day or two of his guys getting their asses handed to them I'd say the precariousness of the credibility of the surge is a wee bit overstated.

Did you really believe that crap at the beginning of the surge about significant draw downs of the troops? Really?

The man said to wait until April 8th before making any decisions. Let's see what they say in a week. It's possible that the drawdown may not be happening but troop strength is a function of events on the ground.

This eruption of violence, which even effects the Green Zone, shows that neither the US forces nor the Iraqi government control Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr still calls many of the shots in Iraq, which signals a failure for one of General Petraeus' main objectives in his surge strategy:

Actually most of the shots Sadr has been calling have ended up with lots of dead Sadr supporters which is why he's begging for mercy after a few days of shooting.

Up next Dana goes way too far out on his THE US MILITARY IS A FAILURE AT EVERTHING branch. He quotes the bastion of fair reporting Antiwar.com. The assertion that we could not take on the Mahdi army is not grounded in any sort of quote from Petraeus just something that Gareth Porter dreamed up. Who is Mr. Porter anyway? Oh, he's that guy who was denying the Vietnamese communists were slaughtering people en masse after the US left. After he was done with that Walter Duranty bit of fantasy he upped the ante by denying the Khimer Rouge were similarly slaughtering anyone but rather just moving them around. I guess I should just take his word on present events as factual.

Dana has a different take:

Did you notice that? The US forced could not take the risk of taking on the entire Mahdi army. The meaning couldn't be more obvious. There are too many of them. We would lose too many US soldiers and might even lose the war as a consequence. They are far more popular and have more popular support in Iraq than us. Those are facts that grownup observers of this war have known for some time.

We actually have video of what happens when the US and Iraq forces take on the Mahdi Army:



See all those infrared lasers on those weapons? How many Mahdi guys do you think have those? See those nightvision scopes on the soldiers? How many Mahdi guys have those? See those nifty armored vehicles, ditto. What about what we don't see the AC-130 gunships? The Predators? The Kiowa's and Blackhawks? Yes, I hear you say but we're outsiders! Interlopers! That's why the Iraqis themselves are moving to the forefront.

A path to making the Iraqi people like us or support any government that permits us to stay within Iraq's borders will never materialize. The Iraqi people don't like or trust us. They associate us with death, torture, economic deprivation, and the death of their children. Yes, their children.

We have been responsible for the death of multiple hundreds of thousands of their children for over a decade and it has not stopped:

No, they don't. They know that the foreign fighters (i.e. Al Qaeda) are the murderers and killers. The Sunnis have taken to fighting them too. Sadr wants a piece of the political pie and he's not getting what he thinks he deserves. He thought he'd stir the pot by starting a shooting war and very quickly found himself on the wrong end of that shooting.

I wouldn't like a nation that caused my child to die as a result of economic sanctions or an invasion and occupation however high-sounding their motives. It would not be worth the death of my child for a nation on the other side of the planet to attack my nation and occupy it because it wanted to make my country a "beacon of democracy" to nations in my region.

I wouldn't either and thankfully that's not what happened. To frame that way would be simplistic and erroneous. (Where's that nuance liberals are so fond of?) I wouldn't want to live in a country run by a psychopath and his two homicidal maniac sons who lived in luxury and splendor while children starved and went without medicine.

Grownup people recognize these truths and facts without difficulty. They are not beset by the patriotic fantasies that every nation we invade is grateful to us. Grownups know when they are not wanted. They have a good sense of what is possible and what is not.

Some Iraqis probably love us. Some probably hate us. Lots are likely somewhere in between. Iraq is sovereign. They could ask us to leave tomorrow and we'd have to yet they do not. Perhaps they are the ones who have a sense of what is possible and what is not.

Technical Analysis of Jihadi encryption tools

Perhaps the title of the post is a misnomer. Intrepid infosec blogger Dancho gives a great analysis of the Global Islamic Media Front's boasting about their security toolset. See here and here for more. I confess to having missed this one entirely. I've not even heard of GIMF. However, as someone with a passing familiarity with encryption tools and network security, I can say that the key phrase in the article is this:

"If you perceive the Technical Mujahid magazine as a threat to the national security of any country, old issues of Phrack magazine must be giving you the nightmares."

I snarfed my Red Bull when I read that one. I used to be an avid reader of Phrack, 2600 and cDc's various white papers. In full nerd fashion, I went to HOPE twice and once even bamboozled my company into paying for it. At H2K one group emphatically decided I was an FBI agent and despite my protestations gave me a wide berth and breathlessly warned anyone I spoke to that I was a Fed. Rather amusing. (Oddly enough, a contact I made at that conference ended up working for a different three letter agency and in a truly bizarre turn of events I ended up working for him as a contractor but that's another story).

While I don't know enough about the tool(s) in question to comment on them it is no small thing that the Jihadis are expanding their battlespace to include cyberwarfare to the media warfare portfolio to round out their information warfare capabilities. Based on reading the posts above and their source material, I can tell you they are significantly behind the US Airforce in terms of preparedness and maturity. The specs noted seem impressive as they are current but more important (and unknown) is deployment and how good their opsec practices are. I disagree that a brute force attack would be ineffective against even 256 bit encryption as the algorithms are likely not employing strong passphrases which would cut the brute time required significantly. Additionally, the Jihadis tend to use a narrow set of key words and phrases as they are very evocative and easy to remember. I think I'm getting too far out on a limb here so I'll cut it short.

The FBI needs an overhaul

I wail and moan about needing to check the background of migrant workers and now it seems the FBI doesn't even check on people who are taking classes at Quantico.

I give up. Seriously. Our top law enforcement agency doesn't do their job when it's important. I'll bet the Pinkerton's wouldn't have let this guy in.

Michael Moore is a "Sicko"

Michael Moore has a new movie about health care. Surprising exactly no one, it's rife with factual errors, spin and dishonesty. Even the NYT puts the boot in. They can't help parroting Casto's regime officials in support of Moore but this is about as damning as the NYT can manage to be for a fellow traveler.

“Actually there are three systems,” Dr. Cordova said, because Cuba has two: one is for party officials and foreigners like those Mr. Moore brought to Havana. “It is as good as this one here, with all the resources, the best doctors, the best medicines, and nobody pays a cent,” he said.

But for the 11 million ordinary Cubans, hospitals are often ill equipped and patients “have to bring their own food, soap, sheets — they have to bring everything.” And up to 20,000 Cuban doctors may be working in Venezuela, creating a shortage in Cuba.

Like all authoritarian regimes, they look great on paper. The reality is always much uglier.

Wind power idea

I've been skeptical of wind power in the past. Largely my concerns rest with scalability and consistency of supply. There are ways of mitigating the latter somewhat but the former is a barrier created by physics not will. This idea, however, might have some merit. If that's going to be used to power lights along the highway and possibly suppliment some service stations it would be a start.

Even if this only does a small amount, that's a good thing. It won't drive the price of oil down but we need to move to renewable energy wherever possible.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Global Warming Swindle. Read the whole thing as they say. The destruction of the Grand Monolith of Scientists Who Believe In Man Made Global Warming continues apace. I'll continue to point them out over and over until we get to some sort of rational place where we're debating this not polemically shouting each other down (buckle up, it's going to be a long ride. -Ed).

We should be good stewards of the Earth and should absolutely make every effort to "go green". There are, however, trade-offs and we have to be reasonable about them. Technology is the only way we're going to get greener. To think that we're going to get their by conservation is lunacy. Likewise this is not going to be pain-free. There will be things that we may have to curb or even do without to get to where we need to be.

Life isn't fair

indeed it isn't. Foster parents get up to $1,400 a month. Natural parents get bupkis.

Now that Russia isn't getting paid....

"Six world powers reached agreement Thursday on a package of new sanctions against Iran that include an embargo on arms exports and an asset freeze on more individuals and companies associated with Tehran's nuclear and missile programs."


Meanwhile American Thinker thinks there are Three Hairline Cracks in the Iranian regime that could well prove fatal. He points to the sudden collapse of the USSR as a prior example. Only by picking up disparate sets of data was that (in retrospect) predictable.

I do think the Iranian regime is unstable. Largely due to demographic and economic reasons. They have a very young population who has no taste for the repression offered by the Mullahs. Likewise most of them are unemployed and that makes them angry. Combine that with an energy sector so poorly managed they have to rely on foreign help and investment to keep it afloat and you have a creaking, groaning government.

I just hope if it does fall, it does so bloodlessly. The last thing the people in the Middle East need is another civil war.

Inside North Korea

Inside North Korea is quite simply, horrifying.

If you ever wanted to see a personality cult on display, watch this show.

It's hosted by Lisa Ling who I assumed was a lightweight (she's an Oprah reporter, fer feck's sake). She is either extremely brave or extremely stupid. Perhaps both. Not only did she go into North Korea under false pretenses, she asked what would be considered treasonous questions while there. Either of those thing can lead to very serious consequences.

In the show, over 1000 people are treated for cataracts. Each of them, once their vision is restored, heaps praise upon the "Dear Leader" for this gift. The doctor doesn't rate a mention.

This documentary is especially good for those of you suffering from BDS. It will help put your complaints about fascism and dictatorship in perspective.

Bono Still Hasn’t Found What He’s Looking For

First Things (recoil in horror ye liberals!) has an article about how Bono's "RED" campaign has spend $100MM in advertising to raise a paltry $18MM. That's a very bad ROI. I'm just sayin'. The article goes on to explain at length the caveats with charity and even cites the Kenyan economist who has shown that aid to the third world is a net negative not a positive.

DC gun ban unconstitutional

How Appealing has the full story. This may be the only thing to get DC off the list of cities with the highest murder rate.

An Actual Bush Scandal

Lawmaker's Intervention in Law Enforcement Crosses Line

He's dead right. This one ought to be front page, above the fold lead story. I have no patience for political abuse via courts. I hated the Independent Counsel statute when they used it as a club against Republicans and it made me queasy when they did it under Clinton. In every case it started as one thing and went on and on and mutated into a beast that was determined to find something.

This is a bit different but in the same vein. They're sacking US Attourneys for not filing charges against Democrats before the election. That is thuggery. Let the heads roll.

Everything everywhere is our jurisdiction

Fed Booze Police Go Bonkers.

(h/t Insty)

Any official making even oblique threats in this regard should be immediately transferred to Saudi Arabia for the remainder of their career. If they hate alcohol that much Saudi Arabia should be paradise for them.