Foreign Policy Category Archive

These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.

Email Comment Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter

Israel Perfecting Surveillance Tech

Leave it to the Mossad and Shin Bet to profit militarily and financially from virus.

Philip Giraldi • May 14, 2020

• 1,700 Words • 79 Comments • Reply

Israel’s external spy organization Mossad and its internal espionage equivalent Shin Bet have reputations that are much larger than their actual successes, but the one area where they have excelled is electronic intelligence gathering. Recent electronic spying around the White House and other federal buildings in Washington carried out by the Israeli Embassy demonstrates that... Read More

Monitoring the Public After Coronavirus

Philip Giraldi • April 23, 2020

• 1,200 Words • 31 Comments • Reply

It is too early to say when or even whether the siege initiated by the coronavirus will end, but many Americans and Europeans are speculating over what kind of countries will emerge on the other side. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed illegal spying on American citizens, recently predicted that there would... Read More

An Open Invitation to Tyranny

Paul Craig Roberts • August 7, 2019

• 600 Words

The FBI has published a document that concludes that “conspiracy theories” can motivate believers to commit crimes. Considering the growing acceptance of pre-emptive arrest, that is, arresting someone before they can commit a crime that they are suspected of planning to commit, challenging official explanations, such as those offered for the assassinations of John F.... Read More

The Assange/Manning Cases Have Discredited America

The rule of law has given way to law as a weapon in the hands of government

Paul Craig Roberts • May 20, 2019

• 2,200 Words

Everyone who is aware of the US government’s extraordinary criminal actions at home and abroad bears a heavy weight. The millions of peoples murdered, maimed, orphaned, widowed, and displaced by gratuitous American military aggression comprise a Holocaust of deaths based entirely on lies and false accusations in order to advance secret American and Israeli agendas.... Read More

An American Nightmare

Andrew Napolitano • January 31, 2019

• 1,000 Words • 13 Comments • Reply

Last Friday, on a quiet residential street at 6 in the morning, the neighborhood exploded in light, noise and terror. Seventeen SUVs and two armored vehicles arrived in front of one house. Each vehicle had sirens blaring and lights flashing. The house, which abutted a canal, was soon surrounded by 29 government agents, each... Read More

Judith Coburn: Can We be Forgotten Anymore?

Tom Engelhardt • August 26, 2018

• 500 Words • 6 Comments • Reply

If I had to pick a single moment when I grasped that we were on a new surveillance planet, it would have been the release of the stunning revelations of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor now in exile in Vladimir Putin’s Russia (and if there isn’t irony in that, please tell me... Read More

Goodbye to All That

A Private Investigator on Living in a Surveillance Culture

Judith Coburn • August 26, 2018

• 2,700 Words • 33 Comments • Reply

Now that we know we are surveilled 24/7 by the National Security Agency, the FBI, local police, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, hackers, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, data brokers, private spyware groups like Black Cube, and companies from which we've ordered swag on the Internet, is there still any "right to be forgotten," as... Read More

Why Can't We Sue the TSA for Assault?

Ron Paul • June 18, 2018

• 600 Words • 18 Comments • Reply

When I was in Congress and had to regularly fly between DC and Texas, I was routinely subjected to invasive “pat-downs” (physical assaults) by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). One time, exasperated with the constant insults to my privacy and dignity, I asked a TSA agent if he was proud to assault innocent Americans for... Read More

Does the ACLU Any Longer Defend Civil Liberty?

Paul Craig Roberts • February 23, 2018

• 700 Words

There are many signs of American collapse. One of the most scary is the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union no longer knows what are the civil liberties it purports to defend. Identity Politics has transformed civil rights into privileges for victim groups. Yesterday (February 22, 2018) I received a 50-state survey from the... Read More

The Republican Supreme Court Gave Us the Police State

Paul Craig Roberts • January 17, 2018

• 200 Words

When the US Supreme Court consisted of civil libertarians such as William Douglas, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall, Republicans argued that the Supreme Court was coddling criminals and inventing rights. To prevent legislation from the bench, it was necessary, Republicans said, to elect Republican presidents who would appoint a different court that would respect the... Read More

The US Has Devolved Into a Police State

Paul Craig Roberts • January 10, 2018

• 900 Words

Yesterday I posted at this URL — — a news report and two videos of a white female school teacher being removed and brutalized by a black police officer from a public meeting of school teachers with the school board while the school teacher was engaged according to the rules in normal conversation with a... Read More

What if Some Spies Are Bad Guys?

Andrew Napolitano • August 3, 2017

• 1,000 Words • 8 Comments • Reply

What if the federal government captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message and all the fiber-optic data generated by every person and entity in the United States 24/7/365? What if this mass surveillance was never authorized by any federal law? What if this mass surveillance has come about... Read More

America's Militarized Police

Made in Israel?

Philip Giraldi • July 25, 2017

• 1,800 Words • 252 Comments • Reply

The horrific execution by police of an Australian woman in her pajamas that took place last week in Minneapolis has again produced a torrent of criticism over killings initiated by law enforcement in situations in which the officers are in no way threatened. America has always been a violent place relative to much of the... Read More

Times Change Out from Under Us

Paul Craig Roberts • July 13, 2017

• 1,600 Words

He had lugged the 50 lb. bag of Milorganite into the garden in order to discover, as on many prior occasions, that he had nothing with which to open it. He blamed this on the war on terror and the TSA. As a youth he, as did every boy, had a pocket knife. Always. It... Read More

General Lee Speaks: Had It Figured Out

Fred Reed • June 8, 2017

• 1,000 Words • 144 Comments • Reply

The man was perceptive. Amalgamation of the states under a central government has led to exactly the effects foreseen by General Lee. In, say, 1950, to an appreciable though imperfect extent America resembled a confederacy. Different regions of the America had little contact with each other, and almost no influence over one another. The federal... Read More

America, the Beautiful

C.J. Hopkins • April 7, 2017

• 1,600 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

Given the unbelievable amount of preposterous neo-McCarthyite hysteria that the corporate-owned media has been pumping out in a last-ditch effort to convince the public that Donald Trump is a Russian operative, you might have missed the revolting videoof a TSA officer at the Dallas Forth Worth Airport extensively groping a 13 year-old boy as his... Read More

What Is the CIA Hack All About?

The danger lies in what might be coming next

Philip Giraldi • March 14, 2017

• 1,400 Words • 97 Comments • Reply

The WikiLeaks exposure of thousands of documents relating to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) hacking program, which was expanded dramatically under President Barack Obama between 2013 and 2016, has created something of a panic in the users of cell phones, online computers and even for smart television viewers. The documents describe “more than a thousand... Read More

Liberty Is Security

The Lesson Not Drawn From Post-9/11 Government Overreach

Karen Greenberg • October 2, 2016

• 2,000 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

One vivid image of the historical relationship between government power and individual liberties in America has long been the swing of the pendulum. It catches the nature of the perpetually changing balance between the two. When it comes to terrorism and civil liberties after 9/11, that pendulum swung strongly toward the power side of the... Read More

This Is How They Protect Us!

Paul Craig Roberts • July 3, 2016

• 400 Words

This Is How They Protect Us! The Latest TSA Horror “These people think they are God. They think they can do anything they want.” A partially blind, partially deaf young woman returning home from treatment for a brain tumor was brutally smashed to the ground by goon tug TSA “security” while her mother, a nurse,... Read More

Paris and Freedom

Andrew Napolitano • November 19, 2015

• 1,000 Words • 6 Comments • Reply

The tragedy in Paris last Friday has regrettably been employed as a catalyst for renewed calls by governments in western Europe and even in the United States for more curtailment of personal liberties. Those who accept the trade of liberty for safety have argued in favor of less liberty. They want government to have more... Read More

Do We Need to Bring Back Internment Camps?

Ron Paul • July 27, 2015

• 600 Words • 32 Comments • Reply

Last week, Retired General Wesley Clark, who was NATO commander during the US bombing of Serbia, proposed that “disloyal Americans” be sent to internment camps for the “duration of the conflict.” Discussing the recent military base shootings in Chattanooga, TN, in which five US service members were killed, Clark recalled the internment of American citizens... Read More

Revenge of the Anti-Terror State

Once-defeated domestic anti-terrorism legislation is being quietly revived in Congress this week

Philip Giraldi • July 14, 2015

• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment

Back in October 2007, the House of Representatives passed The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act by an overwhelming 405 to 6 vote. The bill would have created and empowered a Congressional commission to hold hearings nationwide, conduct investigations, and propose new legislation to deal with the threat posed by various groups designated as... Read More

Protecting Hatred Preserves Freedom

Andrew Napolitano • June 25, 2015

• 900 Words • 9 Comments • Reply

The tragedy of a mass murder in Charleston, S.C., last week, obviously motivated by racial hatred, has raised anew the issue of the lawfulness of the State expressing an opinion by flying a Confederate flag at the Statehouse, and the constitutionality of the use of the First Amendment to protect hate speech and hate groups.... Read More

Policing and Defending Then and Now

The military and police have become two sides of the same coin

Philip Giraldi • June 16, 2015

• 1,700 Words • 28 Comments • Reply

Inevitably the debate over issues that relate to both national security and domestic law enforcement often become mired down in wrangling over legal or constitutional niceties, which the public has difficulty in following as it fixates instead on the latest twist in the Bruce Jenner saga. That means that the punditry and media concentrate on... Read More

Neither Freedom Nor Safety

Andrew Napolitano • June 4, 2015

• 900 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

In their continuous efforts to create the impression that the government is doing something to keep Americans safe, politicians in Washington have misled and lied to the public. They have violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution. They have created a false sense of security. And they have dispatched and re-dispatched 60,000 federal agents to... Read More

USA FREEDOM Act: Just Another Word for Lost Liberty

Ron Paul • May 3, 2015

• 600 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people. While few would argue that bringing someone like Headley to justice is... Read More

Not Your Grandfather's FBI

Andrew Napolitano • April 23, 2015

• 900 Words • 11 Comments • Reply

Does the FBI manifest fidelity, bravery and integrity, or does it cut constitutional corners in order to incriminate? Can the FBI cut the cable television lines to your house and then show up pretending to be the cable guy and install listening devices? Can FBI agents and technicians testify falsely and cause the innocent to... Read More

Can Evil be Defeated?

Paul Craig Roberts • April 3, 2015

• 1,800 Words • 3 Comments

John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney. As head of the Rutherford Institute he is actively involved in defending our civil liberties. Being actively involved in legal cases, he experiences first hand the transformation of law from a shield of the American people into a weapon in the hands of the government. American civil liberty... Read More

In Whose America?

Machine Guns, MRAPs, Surveillance, Drones, Permanent War, and a Permanent Election Campaign

Tom Engelhardt • February 17, 2015

• 2,700 Words • 15 Comments • Reply

I never fail to be amazed -- and that’s undoubtedly my failing. I mean, if you retain a capacity for wonder you can still be awed by a sunset, but should you really be shocked that the sun is once again sinking in the West? Maybe not. The occasion for such reflections: machine guns in... Read More

Obama’s War on Leaks Skirts the Constitution

Convicted under the kangaroo court conditions of the Espionage Act, Jeffrey Sterling never had a chance

Philip Giraldi • February 12, 2015

• 1,200 Words • Leave a Comment

The Obama administration is gloating over the recent conviction of Jeffrey Sterling in an Alexandria, Va. federal court for allegedly leaking details of a secret government program called Operation Merlin that was intended to damage Iran’s nuclear program. Attorney General Eric Holder described the verdict as “…a just and appropriate outcome. The defendant’s unauthorized disclosures... Read More

The Police State Is Upon Us

Paul Craig Roberts • January 30, 2015

• 1,300 Words • 12 Comments

Anyone paying attention knows that 9/11 has been used to create a police/warfare state. Years ago NSA official William Binney warned Americans about the universal spying by the National Security Agency, to little effect. Recently Edward Snowden proved the all-inclusive NSA spying by releasing spy documents, enough of which have been made available by Glenn... Read More

Who Will Keep Our Freedoms Safe?

Andrew Napolitano • January 22, 2015

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

While the Western world was watching and grieving over the slaughter in Paris last week, and my colleagues in the media were fomenting a meaningless debate about whether President Obama should have gone to Paris to participate in a televised parade, the feds took advantage of that diversion to reveal even more incursions into our... Read More

Uncle Sam’s Databases of Suspicion

A Shadow Form of National ID

Hina Shamsi and Matthew Harwood • November 6, 2014

• 3,000 Words • 5 Comments • Reply

When Wiley Gill opened up, no one was there. Suddenly, two police officers appeared, their guns drawn, yelling, “Chico Police Department.” “I had tunnel vision,” Gill said, “The only thing I could see was their guns.” After telling him to step outside with his hands in the air, the officers lowered their guns and explained.... Read More

The Presumption of Liberty

Andrew Napolitano • October 30, 2014

• 800 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

In the years following the adoption of the Constitution, before he was Secretary of State under President Thomas Jefferson and then president himself, James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, was a member of the House of Representatives. During that period of his life, he gave illuminating speeches and wrote elegant essays and letters about human... Read More

The Government and Freedom

Andrew Napolitano • October 16, 2014

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey gave an interview to "60 Minutes" during which he revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. He rightly distinguished what FBI agents do in their investigations of federal crimes from what the NSA does in its intelligence gathering, when the two federal agencies are looking for non-public data.... Read More

Parallel Reconstruction

Andrew Napolitano • October 9, 2014

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

While the political commentators in the nation's capital are wrapped up in the debate over what to do about ISIS, and as one third of the Senate and nearly all members of the House campaign for re-election, the president's spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of millions of us and... Read More

An Unhappy Summer for Liberty

Andrew Napolitano • September 4, 2014

• 1,000 Words • 8 Comments • Reply

At the root of the chaos in the Middle East and here at home are governments that respect no limits on their exercise of power. Public officials -- who are supposed to be our public servants -- routinely behave as if they are our masters. They reject the confines of the Constitution, they don't believe... Read More

Ferguson: the War Comes Home

Ron Paul • August 24, 2014

• 600 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

America’s attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown. While all the facts surrounding the shooing have yet to come to light, the shock of seeing police using tear gas (a substance banned in warfare), and other military-style weapons against... Read More

How Tyranny Arises

Paul Craig Roberts • August 22, 2014

• 200 Words • 6 Comments

Law & Order Conservatives continue to shill for police as goon thugs continue to violate constitutional protections and abuse the public: Gullible Americans have been trained to be fearful of crime, blacks, Muslims, terrorists, “domestic extremists,” and now Russia. These fears result in the public accepting illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral actions by police and government.... Read More

We Are Above the Law Declares County Attorney

Paul Craig Roberts • August 19, 2014

• 200 Words • 4 Comments

Habersham County, Georgia, the jurisdiction that allowed intentionally or through negligence a SWAT team to break into a home with violent force in the middle of the night and throw a stun grenade into a baby’s face sending him to a hospital for weeks where he was in life support, has ruled that it would... Read More

Matthew Harwood: One Nation Under SWAT

Tom Engelhardt • August 14, 2014

• 400 Words • 3 Comments • Reply

Think of it as a different kind of blowback. Even when you fight wars in countries thousands of miles distant, they still have an eerie way of making the long trip home. Take the latest news from Bergen County, New Jersey, one of the richest counties in the country. Its sheriff’s department is getting two... Read More

To Terrify and Occupy

How the Excessive Militarization of the Police is Turning Cops Into Counterinsurgents

Matthew Harwood • August 14, 2014

• 3,500 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

Jason Westcott was afraid. One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott's handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on “burning” Westcott, who... Read More

The Fourth Branch

The Rise to Power of the National Security State

Tom Engelhardt • August 3, 2014

• 3,100 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the U.S. government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just not so. During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the U.S. government has evolved.... Read More

Dead Is Dead

Drone-Killing the Fifth Amendment

Peter Van Buren • July 24, 2014

• 2,600 Words • 7 Comments • Reply

You can't get more serious about protecting the people from their government than the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically in its most critical clause: "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In 2011, the White House ordered the drone-killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without trial.... Read More

Peter Van Buren: Undue Process in Washington

Tom Engelhardt • July 24, 2014

• 600 Words • Leave a Comment

What a world we’re in. Thanks to smartphones, iPads, and the like, everyone is now a photographer, but it turns out that, in the public landscape, there’s ever less to photograph. So here are a few tips for living more comfortably in a photographically redacted version of our post-9/11 world. Even if you’re a professional... Read More

Chilling

Andrew Napolitano • July 17, 2014

• 1,000 Words • 3 Comments • Reply

"Chilling" is the word lawyers use to describe governmental behavior that does not directly interfere with constitutionally protected freedoms, but rather tends to deter folks from exercising them. Classic examples of "chilling" occurred in the 1970s, when FBI agents and U.S. Army soldiers, in business suits with badges displayed or in full uniform, showed up... Read More

Todd Miller: Bill of Rights Rollback in the U.S. Borderlands

Peter Van Buren • July 15, 2014

• 400 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

You're not in the United States. Oh sure, look around at the fog lifting over the New England countryside or the diamond deserts of Arizona, but this land isn't your land, not anymore. It’s a place controlled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and your constitutional rights do not apply on their territory. CBP... Read More

Border Wars in the Homeland

"Stop Stepping on the Pictures"

Todd Miller • July 15, 2014

• 3,400 Words • Leave a Comment

Shena Gutierrez was already cuffed and in an inspection room in Nogales, Arizona, when the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent grabbed her purse, opened it, and dumped its contents onto the floor right in front of her. There couldn’t be a sharper image of the Bill of Rights rollback we are experiencing in the... Read More

Independence Day, 2014

Andrew Napolitano • July 3, 2014

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

After a brief holiday last week, I returned to some heavy reading courtesy of the federal government. Some of the materials that I read were gratifying, and one was terrifying. In one week, the Supreme Court told the police that if they want to examine the contents of our cellphones, whether at traffic stops or... Read More

One Court, Indivisible, Votes Liberty and Justice for All

Robert Scheer • June 26, 2014

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

This week's unanimous Supreme Court decision affirming a robust Fourth Amendment protection for cellphone data is an enormously important victory for privacy rights in the digital age. It is also a reminder that support as well as opposition to civil liberty these days can come from unexpected quarters. Or maybe it is no longer much... Read More

« Earlier Items

"Civil Liberties" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

China's Rise, America's Fall

Which superpower is more threatened by its “extractive elites”?

Ron Unz

• 431 Comments • Reply

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 390 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up