5 Similarities That "American Sniper" Has With Nazi Propaganda

     Seth Rogen likes being controversial. It's good PR. Just weeks after almost starting WW3 with his movie "The Interview," Rogen is back in the news, for some comments made about the movie "American Sniper."
      http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/01/19/seth-rogen-michael-moore-blast-american-sniper/21988391/
     This is the phrase I'm going to be analyzing: "American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that's showing in the third act of Inglorious Bastards."
     The movie he is referring to is Nazi propaganda. So he's comparing American Sniper to Nazi propaganda. Before even sitting down and researching as to whether he was right or wrong, many pro-military zealots, (who support the military no matter how many democracies they topple or how many puppet governments they install or how many civilians they kill on purpose), started bashing Rogen for being unappreciative of the military, a traitor to his country, a liberal Nazi, etc, etc.
      It's really sad that people jump down each other throats without even thinking. They deem any criticism of the military as unpatriotic and untrue automatically 100% all of the time, without even stopping, calming down, sitting down, and figuring out if it is valid criticism or not. In their eyes, the military can literally do no wrong. They are angels. As soon as you show a valid, clear example of a service member doing something wrong, they yell in your face "YOU'RE UNPATRIOTIC. YOU'RE UN-AMERICAN. YOU'RE A TRAITOR. IF YOU CAN'T STAND BEHIND OUR MILITARY, THEN JUST LEAVE THIS COUNTRY." Because when you really look at the facts, you actually see that Rogen is right. So let's go through this slowly, with rationality and logic, one step at a time.

     First, let's look at the similarities between the Iraq war and the wars the Nazis started to gain territory before WW2 started. In the Iraq war, we had the American government fabricating tens of thousands of pages of fake intel to mislead the American people. They claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, (which we never found), that Iraq was helping Al-Qaida, (they weren't), that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, (they weren't), that Iraq was a threat to America, (they weren't), etc, etc, I mean this was a massive effort. Hundreds of people at the head of the Bush Administration and various government agencies were in on it. The U.S. did this so that the American people would support their invasion and occupation of Iraq.
     Germany did the exact same thing in their wars of aggression and territory grabbing just prior to WW2. They lied time after time to the German people, and the world, making up lies as a pretense to invade Czechoslovakia, Austria, etc. Hitler said that German people were being persecuted and oppressed there, (they weren't), so it was okay for Germany to invade to help them, that land originally belonged to Germany in the first place so it was Germany's right to have that land, (it wasn't), that the Jews were masterminding to destroy Germany, (they weren't). I mean this was a massive effort. Hundreds of people at the head of the Hitler Administration and various government agencies were in on it. Germany did this so that the German people would support their invasion and occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc.
     Okay, so that's one similarity, but one similarity is not enough to associate anything with anything. Hitler drank water, and you drink water, so that means you're a potential mass murderer!! No, that's not how it works. We need more similarities.

     The second similarity is that America invaded Iraq on false pretenses, set up an undemocratic government there that would do anything America says because America controlled it, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process, stole their natural resources, most notably oil, broke dozens of different universal human rights that the Iraqi people are entitled to have, kidnapped thousands of innocent people during their occupation, raping and torturing them for seemingly no reason at all other than to brutally force the population to submit. They did all of this, while the media made America out to be the victim! That's right, the media twisted just about everything to make it look the aggressor, the liar, was the victim.
      For example, an American patrol would be on their route, and come under attack by Iraqi insurgents. Some American soldiers would die in the fight. The media would make it out to be like the Americans were doing nothing wrong, that they were just innocent victims just walking along minding their own business, and the evil savage Iraqi terrorists killed them just because they are American Christians!
      This charade of making the aggressor look like the victim is portrayed in "American Sniper." Just look at the trailer. You're supposed to feel for the wife who is listening to her husband's convoy being under attack. Chris Kyle was just a pure American hero when he came under attack by those evil savages!
      Completely devoid in the trailer, or in the movie for that matter, is any context or scenario/location information. Kyle in an occupying soldier. He is a foreigner on someone else's land. Kyle is a foot soldier in the oppression of the Iraqi people. He is the muscle that is protecting the American occupation and the puppet Iraqi government. He is a small part in the big reason why the Iraqi people are dying over lies, why their universal human rights are being repressed by the occupation and the puppet Iraqi government. His patrol, trying to control the Iraqi people, is enforcing the torture, the kidnappings, the rapes, the oppression, the denial of basic human rights. Without his presence on the streets, the Iraqi government would collapse.
      The Iraqi insurgents are portrayed as savages. They are not humanized. They are not given depth, character, reason, etc. They are one faced, one dimensional monsters that only exist to kill Americans. The movie completely leaves out the fact that it is completely logical and rational to take up arms against a fascist corrupt government and a foreign occupation that is supporting it. In fact, it is an American value. Our country was born out of our fighting a corrupt puppet government and a foreign occupation that supported it. The pro-military crowd regularly spout that it is their right to use force in self-defense or when their rights are being violated. But, exposing their double standard, they don't believe every person, regardless of race or creed, gets to enjoy that right. White Christians enjoy that right, in their mind, but brown Muslims do not. That's why they demonize the Iraqi insurgents, even though they are doing the exact same thing that they would do if America was invaded by another country, and a puppet government was set up in Washington D.C.
      Everyday Americans from all backgrounds would employ the same tactics used by the Iraqis (i.e. roadside bombs, suicide vests, urban warfare, women/children, etc...) against any foreign aggressor. Why should Iraqis tolerate American tanks rolling down their streets when the very same Americans wouldn't tolerate Iraqi (or any foreign military's) tanks rolling down theirs?
      Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas.
     Compare that to Nazi propaganda. Nazi Germany invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia on false pretenses, set up an undemocratic government there that would do anything Germany says because Germany controlled it, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process, stole their natural resources, broke dozens of different universal human rights that the Austrian and Czech people are entitled to have, kidnapped thousands of innocent people during their occupation, raping and torturing them for seemingly no reason at all other than to brutally force the population to submit. They did all of this, while the media made Germany out to be the victim! That's right, the media twisted just about everything to make it look the aggressor, the liar, was the victim.
      For example, a German patrol would be on their route, and come under attack by Austrian or Czech insurgents. Some German soldiers would die in the fight. The Nazi media would make it out to be like the Germans were doing nothing wrong, that they were just innocent victims just walking along minding their own business, and the evil savage Austrian or Czech terrorists killed them just because they are blonde and blue eyed Germans!
     See, word for word, it happened exactly the same in both cases. All I changed was the identity of the actors. But the actions were exactly the fucking same. "American Sniper" practically elevates invading US soldiers to civilian status and natives who target the armed invaders are evil terrorists. Okay, so that's two major similarities down. Let's keep going.

     Pro-military zealots often use the phrase "The military is over there, dying to protect our freedoms, which were under threat." What a load of complete and utter fucking bullshit. No one has been able to answer my question "What American freedoms did Iraq threaten or break? What oppression did Iraq lay unto us? What rights of yours were being infringed on by Iraq?"
     No one has ever been able to answer that question, because the answer is NOTHING. FUCKING NOTHING. Iraq was doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to us at all. So the zealots continue to spout lies. Lies. Lies! LIES!!
     Nazi zealots did the exact fucking thing. Hitler ranted on about how neighboring countries were oppressing Germany, and how the rights of German people in Austria were being threatened, therefore, he had an obligation to invade Austria. ALL FUCKING LIES.
     Wow, that's 3 similarities now. We're on a roll.

     The 4th similarity is that America had an overwhelmingly more powerful military than Iraq. We had tanks, jet fighters, artillery, satellites, APCs, the most powerful military in the world. What do the Iraqi insurgents have to combat this? AK47s. RPGs. Homemade bombs. Grenades. It's not even comparable firepower. It's like comparing a gnat to an elephant. And yet through this seemingly incredibly one sided fight, "American Sniper" makes it out to be that Kyle and the Iraqi insurgents are fighting on equal terms, that he is in just as much danger as the insurgents are, that he is fighting against overwhelming odds, that he is the vulnerable good guy going into danger for the greater good, etc, etc. Michael Moore called snipers cowards. He's right. It's not brave to go after people with pea shooters when you have artillery and jet fighters and stealth bombers and attack helicopters to back you up in case you get your ass whooped. The other guy doesn't have any of that to back him up. He just has the gun in his hands, maybe a grenade or two, and that's fucking it. Oh, what danger you're in! That's why we only lost less than 5,000 troops in 8 years of fighting, when we killed over 26,000 of them in the same time frame.
     Do you know what is brave though? Going against the powerful military in the world, going up against APCs and tanks and radar artillery armed with only an AK47 and an RPG. That's courage. That's dedication. It's the Iraqi insurgents that were brave, not Kyle. They didn't flinch going into battle knowing that against such overwhelming odds that they were most likely going to die. An American going into the same battle wasn't most likely going to die. Most likely he would live. 
     Guess what? Nazi Germany did the exact same thing. They had the most powerful military in Europe. They had tanks, artillery, bombers, etc, etc. What did Austrian and Czech insurgents have? Bolt action rifles. Submachine guns. And yet through this seemingly incredibly one sided fight, Nazi propaganda makes it out to be that Germans and the Austrian and Czech insurgents are fighting on equal terms, that the Germans is in just as much danger as the insurgents are, that he is fighting against overwhelming odds, that he is the vulnerable good guy going into danger for the greater good, etc, etc.   

     The 5th and last similarity is that the films conveniently omit any flaws, any negatives, any bigotry, about the soldiers that they elevate to God like status. Kyle is shown as fully human, likable, complex, multidimensional, etc. There is absolutely no negative aspects about him shown on camera at all. He is, like the pro-military zealots believe, perfect, flawless, utterly impossible to do wrong. The movie conveniently leaves all these parts out about how Kyle was:      

Substitute "Koran" for "Bible." Would you like someone who said that about your holy book?

     Likewise, no Iraqi is shown as likeable, complex, multidimensional, capable of showing anything but hate. But the Iraqi insurgents are people just like you, me, and Kyle. They have jobs, they have families, they have problems, they have lives, they have little quirks in their personality, etc. But no, the movie paints them as all, one tracked minded killers.
     The same thing happened in Nazi propaganda. The Nazi soldiers are shown as likeable, human, complex, capable of thought, opinion, etc, even though they, in reality, are murdering civilians by the millions. And the Jews? No, they're subhuman. Rats. Greedy rats. All they do is scheme and plot against the poor innocent blonde Germans. That's all they do. The French resistance? Terrorists, killers, unhuman, evil, etc. 
    Look at some of the reactions people had after the film:

 

    Now, substitute the words "ragheads", "Arabs," and "Muslims" with any other religion or any race. 

• "Teared up at the end of American Sniper. Great fucking movie and now I really want to kill some fucking Jews."
• "American Sniper makes me wanna go shoot some fucking Christians."
• "Nice to see a movie where the white people are portrayed for who they really are- vermin scum intent on destroying us."
• American Sniper made me appreciate soldiers 100x more and hate black people 1,000,000 more." 

     In conclusion, there you have it. A step by step analysis of why Rogen's comments are actually true, and that the only reason why people see them as "incendiary" or "offensive" is because they want no one to criticize the military no matter what they do. People will counter with "Well, it's the politicians who started the war, the military didn't start it at all, they were just following orders." That is true, but that simply dodging the subject. The military still committed crimes. They should've said "No, that is against my American values. I took an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not the current government, administration, or president. Attacking a country based on lies is against the Constitution. Installing a puppet government is against the Constitution. Killing innocents is against the Constitution. Killing people who are simply protecting their lands against foreign occupiers is the against the Constitution."
     But they didn't. Some soldiers refused to go, but not a lot. The ones who refused to go are the heroes. But the majority of American soldiers still followed their traitorous orders without question. The politicians would not have been able to put in a puppet government if they troops didn't invade Iraq and overthrow the government.    
     The pro-military zealots will say "Not all American service members have killed innocents." True. I never said otherwise. But there were plenty of Nazis who never killed an innocent either. They were either an office worker or a soldier who got wounded before he shot anyone else. That doesn't mean the Nazi party, as an entity, is not an evil and despicable organization. 
     It's not insulting to say that the military doesn't fight to protect our freedom. The pro-military fanatics want us to believe that, as to shut down as criticism of the military's actions before the criticism can even be stated. We are not allowed to explore the topic because it is "offensive" to suggest anything otherwise. I'm not saying it to offend anyone. I researched the topic, and I can find no freedom that Iraq was taking away from us or that was even under threat from Iraq, that the American military got back for us. If it's offensive for me to simply ask the question "What freedom did the American military fight for in Iraq" then you have to seriously ask yourself what type of society we have created here. Certainly doesn't sound free to me, we can't even ask questions.

Free Community College Will Kill Higher Education in America

    Ah, a new year. A time for new beginnings, right?
    Well, if you're the Obama administration, then fuck no.
    On their everlasting quest to completely destroy America from the inside out, the Obama administration moved on to the next phase of their plan on 1/8/15. They've destroyed the military, (everlasting wars, lowered physical requirements so weaker soldiers will be on the battlefield, thus, a more likely chance of them or others around them dying, etc,), the middle class, (outsourcing millions of jobs, destroying higher education so they can't move up, standard of living way outpacing wages, etc,), the economy, (with Obamacare, tax loopholes for the 1% and the top corporations, banks, strangling small businesses with government red tape overload, etc,), America's reputation abroad, (the endless wars, spying on people of other countries on the internet, giving billions to terrorists, fascist and undemocratic regimes, etc,) the millennial generation, (by making underemployment the norm, thus them having no money to hardly anything in life, suffocating student debt, making it impossible for them to save any money, etc), and the civil liberties of Americans, (with the slow, gradual erosion and elimination of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments).
     (Billy May's voice): But that's not all!!
     Not content with the destruction mentioned above, the Obama administration has been chipping away at higher education for some time now. It is not a new front. From making it too expensive so students have to be in tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a degree that will do them nothing, from making the classes so easy that the students aren't learning the skills they need to know in order to be competitive in the weak, hyper-competitive job market, the Obama administration announced a new program that, if enacted, will spell the end of quality higher education in America:
     Community college will now be "free".

      At first glance, this sounds like a great idea. Higher education will now be more accessible to poor people, who need it the most to gain skills to get better jobs so they can move up in life. Students won't be burdened with so much student loan debt as before. But if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, (which is asking too much of the liberal retards who support this idea), you'll see that this is an absolutely horrible idea. Why? Because when you make something free, it is literally worth nothing. That's what the definition of free is. Think about having a college education that is, by definition, worth nothing. College diplomas will no longer help anyone in finding jobs or doing well in jobs. They'll be free bees, pieces of paper that say "I sat down in desks for a while, and I'm able to read and write."     

http://generationopportunity.org/issues/higher-ed/

    Here is just some of the highlights showing how utter pathetic higher education is in America:

• Only half of all college seniors believe their institution properly prepared them to enter the work force.
•  According to a 2014 USA Today poll, a  quarter of employers do not believe colleges have adequately prepped students for a job in their company, while 41 percent do not believe college graduates are prepared for customer service jobs.

     Having "free" community colleges will exacerbate the problems mentioned in the above article. The quality of higher education is already going down the tubes. Since students have to pay so much to enter classes, professors are afraid to fail anyone, because that would mean the student would have paid a lot of money for nothing. So, they make the classes super ridiculously easy, so that every student passes. But in making the class so easy, they won't be teaching anything. The students will learn nothing, no skills that they need in order to be competitive in the job market. That's how I'm able to get straights A's in my graduate school and at a community college for IT certification, at the same time, without even having to study or crack open a book at all. It's easier than elementary school. At least in elementary school I had to study to get good grades. In college now, I don't have to study at all. But I'm not learning anything, and I actually want to learn, I want to be challenged so that I will learn competitive job skills, but so far, through a whole year in a grad school and in community college, I have yet to learn a single damn thing. I ask the professors about this and they say there is nothing they can do about this because they cannot change how the course is taught.
    Having "free" community college will exacerbate this problem exponentially, damning an entire generation to poverty because there is no way they can learn just about anything in order to get jobs that will allow them to live on their own.      
    There is another major problem with the word "free."

 

    

    There is no such thing as "free." This new "free" community college still has to be paid for. Professors have to be paid, janitors have to be paid, police have to be paid, the electric bill still has to be paid. But student's tuition will no longer pay for those things, because under this new idea, they pay nothing. So, guess who has to foot the bill?

    That's right: Us. The people. The citizens. The poor and middle classes. We will see a tremendous increase in our taxes to pay for this. It will be crushing, as the lower class is ever increasing with people's money being strangled by tax after tax after tax. The middle class is disappearing in front of our eyes because people cannot make enough money, after taxes, to afford a middle class lifestyle anymore. This tax increase will already be on top of the fact that I pay 25% of my entire income in taxes, and I'm in the lowest tax bracket.

    The last thing the struggling American people need is more taxes. We're dying over here as it is, and this new tax will just be more misery. All for people to learn nothing. And you better bet that it will solely the lower and middle class footing this new bill. You see, Obama and his 1% cronies make sure that they and the top corporations have tax loopholes that they can utilize so they pay nothing on millions and billions in profits. So they won't foot the bill. They are privileged, so they can avoid it. So the bill comes to us, the lower and middle class, to pay for it all.

    In conclusion, a better idea would to be to lower college costs, not get rid of them completely. As said before, student debt is a huge and shameful problem in this country. Lowering college costs would go a long way to fix that, but eliminating it entirely would create a whole new set of problems.

How Over-Zealous and Overly Aggressive Homeland Security Policies Can Backfire

(The following was my research paper for my final project for my grad class).

How Over-Zealous and Overly Aggressive Homeland Security Policies Can Backfire

          In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. federal government created new departments, gave more power to and expanded existing ones, and wrote into law new acts. These include creating the Department of Homeland Security, (DHS), passing the Patriot Act, (and later, passing the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA), and augmenting the size, force, and power of local police forces. The government claimed to take these measures to combat terrorism. However reports from news agencies, human rights organizations, think-tanks, and scholarly research have shown that terrorism has never been and is not a major threat to Americans, certainly, there are at least a dozen other causes of death that have caused more American deaths than terrorism. The first part of this paper will analyze the threat and death rate of terrorism against Americans, compared to the threat and death rate of the government against the American people. It will also go into how Homeland Security policy makers dealt with these issues. The second part of this paper will analyze the rights of the American people taken away or being taken away from terrorism, compared to the rights taken away or being taken away by the government, from a Homeland Security perspective. Lastly, this research paper will explore a case study of Homeland Security in action.

          Before delving into the topics, first it is necessary to identify the actors in this issue. The principal actors are government agencies, as they are the ones that enforce the policies. These include DHS, the National Security Agency, (NSA), the Department of Justice, (DOJ), Customs and Border Protection, (CBP), FBI, and all local and state police and sheriffs offices. 

          The two main concerns that privacy advocates and human rights organizations have in relation to federal agencies and local police forces’ actions in Homeland Security is the militarization of police, and the taking away of peoples’ human rights.  The first one is important when talking about the threat and death rate of terrorism against Americans, compared to the threat and death rate of the government against the American people. Here are some statistics that will illustrate this concept:

·         Americans are 8 times more likely to get killed by police than by a terrorist. All emotions and political slants aside, strictly statistically speaking, the American police is more of a threat to the American people than terrorists are, (www.huffingtonpost.com). Not counting 9/11, that statistic jumps to Americans are 29 times more likely to get killed by police than by a terrorist.   

·         SWAT Teams invade more than 100 private homes every day, (www.abajournal.com).

·         The number of police raids has jumped from 30,000 in 1995 to 45,000 in 2001, (same source as the one above).

·         DHS will purchase 450 million bullets over the next 5 years, including 75 million in 2014 alone, (www.businessinsider.com).

·         DHS also purchased 2,500 mine resistant APCs.

          DHS coordinates with the FBI and state and local police forces to achieve its goals of stopping terrorist attacks and disaster response. Some of DHS’s mission statements that pertain to this topic are as followed: prevent terrorism and enhancing security; secure and manage our borders; enforce and administer our immigration laws; and ensure resilience to disasters. Behind the statistics are the policies that result in the statistics. The problem is that current homeland security efforts undermine preparedness every bit as much as they support it. Homeland Security officials and local and state police chiefs also involved top-down management systems and military-style command and control strategies in planning and implementation, often focusing on a doctrine of offense and preemption, (Bach). They are so focused on offense that they lose hindsight of the main goal of homeland security: to protect citizens’ lives and human rights.

          This leads to the first of two articles that form the backbone of looking at the actors’ approach to Homeland Security. Robert Bach and David Kaufman say in the very first sentence of their article that federal, state, and local authorities must work with citizens to achieve security. Constantly attacking citizens, taking away their guaranteed human rights, and ultimately creating a narrative or implying that they are the enemy is not working with them in any sense of the definition. That is why Bach and Kaufman say security has eluded us since the “War on Terror” started.

          So focused on offense that policies set by agencies such as the FBI and DOJ can break trust between the government and its citizens, the fundamental concept that Homeland Security relies on. Citizens cannot trust a government whose policies can be seen as making the citizens the enemy of the government. Such a policy would be the FBI’s and DOJ’s guidelines as what actions could be done by a “potential terrorist”:

Ø  Purchasing anything with cash most of the time instead of a credit or debit card.

Ø  Opposition to war.

Ø  Opposition to abortion.

Ø  Frustration with the two main political parties.

Ø  Buying a large amount of bullets, (doesn’t say what a “large amount” qualifies as).

Ø  Being concerned about your privacy from the government.

Ø  Complaining about the quality of tap water.

(www.publicintelligence.net)

       These actions are what ordinary, non-terrorists do every day. These are actions that many FBI and DOJ employees do. Is the FBI and DOJ calling their own employees potential terrorists? If government agencies want to protect Americans and their rights, a peaceful engagement of communities in collaboration would be much more effective in enhancing the resiliency and security of the nation, (Frazzano).

       This is what the second article talks about: government agencies redefining their cultural and operational identities to accurately combat new and emerging threats. It also introduces a concept called “The Whole Community,” in which “shared understanding of community risks, needs, and capabilities leads to an increase in resources through the empowerment of community members.” Nowhere in the article or in this concept does it suggest that the large majority of American citizens are potential terrorists due to doing ordinary tasks. DHS policies must incorporate the concept of The Whole Community, as this shows that DHS is working with the communities, not against them. 

       In comparing the amount and severity of the American people’s human rights taken away by terrorists and taken away by the government, the only right the terrorists took away have been the 3,000+ peoples’ right to life that they have killed since 9/11 to the present. The rights that the government has taken, is taking, and has the power to take away if it wants to, are:[1]

§  Freedom of speech. For example, protesting certain government policies is called “terrorism,” for which the government can kill U.S. citizens for. Talking against certain police actions or simply asking a police officer questions is called “assault,” or “resisting arrest.” There is no need for the government to convict a person of terrorism, they only label them a “suspected terrorist” and then kill them.

§  Freedom of the press. There have been 7 instances in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media, the most during any U.S. presidential administration in history. In comparison, it has only been used 3 times before Obama took office. It has stolen emails, phone records, and tracked the movements of journalists, (Fox News reporter James Rosen, for example), it secretly seized records for telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 Associated Press journalists, and prosecuted sources of journalists with felony charges, (Zongker).

§  Second Amendment. The Obama administration, and many past administrations, has repeatedly infringed on American citizens’ right to bear arms. While it is not DHS policy that affects this right, the police forces are the ones that enforce states’ laws relating to this amendment. Whether it has been trying to ban magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, or trying to reinstate the 1994 “assault weapons ban,” (www.whitehouse.gov), Obama has made it clear, through his actions and words, that he does not believe that the second amendment means that Americans can own guns.

§  Fourth Amendment. From allowing home invasions by police and SWAT teams without a warrant, to having the NSA steal personal information from customers of many U.S. companies, to stealing emails and phone calls from ordinary American citizens who haven’t committed terrorism, nor committed any other crime. Some statistics related to this would be, for example, that the NSA surveys 75% of all American Internet traffic, (www.reuters.com), and collected near 100% of American phone calls in 2006, down to 30% today, (www.digitaltrends.com).

§  The Fifth Amendment: The Patriot Act, and later, the NDAA, gives the government to hold an American citizen in prison indefinitely, without charges, or access to an attorney. That effectively destroys the 5^th amendment.

§  Sixth Amendment: Those same two pieces of legislation also takes away an American’s right to a trial, nullifying the 6^th Amendment.

          Examples of some of these rights being taken away from American citizens can be seen in the case study of this paper, which is the case of Sarah Abdurrahman. Sarah, her family, and some friends were returning from Canada to the United States through the Niagara Falls border crossing on September 2^nd, 2013. Sarah, and everyone in her party, are American citizens. They had been attending a wedding of another family member in Toronto, Canada, and now were returning home on Labor Day.

Sarah Abdurrahman

           When they got to the border crossing, they were immediately detained by CBP agents, with no explanation. They were held in a freezing cold room without bathrooms for six hours. Sarah repeatedly asked an agent why they were being held, but he answered “It is not your right to know.” Then they took all of their cellphones after demanding they unlock them. They didn’t get their cellphones back. After about five and half hours in detainment, one of the detained men, Khaled Ahmed, was put into handcuffs, without warning, taken from his family and put into a jail cell. The officers did not inform either Ahmed or his family why he was being taken. The rest of the family was soon released but CBP refused to tell them where Ahmed was. Eventually, they told the family that another “agency” was coming to pick Ahmed up. The agency ended up being the Michigan State Police, picking up Ahmed for an unpaid ticket for a crooked license plate (i.e. not screwed on right) from 2006. After Sarah got home, she tried to contact CBP and DHS to demand an explanation, but they never picked up the phone. Since CBP never gave Sarah a reason for doing all of this, she can only assume it was because of her and her party’s religion, (Sarah wears a hijab), (Reuters). 

          It is illegal for law enforcement officers to perform searches or detentions based solely on your race, national origin, religion, sex or ethnicity. The CBP officers infringed on Sarah’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. CBP and other Homeland Security officers are allowed to conduct stops and searches with no probable cause or arrest warrants at the border, under what is known as the "border search exception." The exception allows for routine searches. However, once you start holding citizens for prolonged detentions, it falls under non-routine searches. For that, the officer needs a particular and objective basis for suspecting that person of illegal activity, (Reuters).

          There are a number of conclusions and observations that can be made from this story. One is that the rapid expansion of and the lack of oversight over CBP contributed to Sarah being treated the way that she was. CBP has grown so fast in the decade that it has existed that government oversight has not kept pace. CBP had 10,817 in 2004. Today, it has 63,560. Therefore, there is no logical reason for CBP to not treat Muslims like they did Sarah. None of the CBP agents in the example even got a harsh comment from any supervisor. Nothing bad happened to them, so in their minds, they are thinking: why should we change our behavior?

          This is not the only time something like what Sarah experienced has happened. Human rights groups, such as the ACLU, have seen that these human rights abuses happen regularly, i.e. it is not an isolated incident that can be blamed on just a few bad CBP agents. No, they infringe on Americans’ human rights daily, meaning it is a DHS policy; the policy makers at DHS and CBP, along with training instructors, are teaching the CBP to act this way. That means certain DHS policies run contrary to the Constitution. There is no other reason why this problem is so widespread and across agencies, not just in CBP. This case study could not capture an agency breaking more Amendments than the Fourth and Fifth. But that doesn’t mean that at other times, in other situations, that DHS and local police forces are not breaking the other Amendments listed on the fifth and sixth and pages.      

          CBP’s actions run in line with the narrative and training that DHS’s approach has to Homeland Security. An overly aggressive Homeland Security doctrine saw Sarah and her party as potential terrorists, hence, their human rights being broken. Citizens are the first line in Homeland Security. Many terrorist attacks have been stopped because concerned citizens report what they heard/saw someone doing to police. That is the vital link between authorities and the communities that Bach and Kaufman talked about. If that link is broken by human rights abuses, and aggressive and rude behavior by the authorities, then the nation as a whole will not be as effective in stopping terrorist attacks and achieving security.  

Works Cited

          “American journalist and family detained and harassed at US border.” September 24^th, 2013. http://rt.com/usa/abdurrahman-npr-border-detain-291/

          Bach, Robert and David Kaufman. “A Social Infrastructure for Hometown Security: Advancing the Homeland Security Paradigm.” Homeland Security Affairs, Volume V, NO. 2 (May 2009). 

          Balko, Radley. “How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?” ABA Journal, 1/8/2013.

          Erman, Michael. “NSA surveillance covers 75 percent of U.S. Internet traffic: WSJ.” Reuters. 8/20/2013.   

          “FBI “Communities Against Terrorism” Suspicious Activity Reporting Flyers.” February 1^st, 2012. https://publicintelligence.net/fbi-suspicious-activity-reporting-flyers/

          Frazzano, Tracy, and Matthew Synder. “Hybrid Targeted Violence:

Challenging Conventional “Active Shooter” Response Strategies.” Homeland Security Affairs, Volume 10 Article 3 (February 2014).

          Johnson, Robert. “The Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets.” Business Insider, 4/5/2014.  

          Nield, David. “New reports say NSA phone tracking covers 20-30 percent of calls.” Digital Trends. 2/8/2014.

          Whitehead, John. “Vigilantes With a Badge: The War Against the American People.” Huffington Post, 2/26/2014.

          White House. “Now is the Time to Do Something About Gun Violence.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/preventing-gun-violence

          Zongker, Brett. “Report: Obama brings chilling effect on journalism.” The Associated Press. 10/13/2013.  

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[1] The following bullet points are merely quick summaries of the rights the government has taken away from us, as a whole paper can be written just one of these bullet points.

The Disconnect between Stated Goals and Actions Done

(The following is a paper I wrote for grad school, and I thought was an appropriate entry for this blog. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot different than my usual posts, I get it :D Of course, the pictures are added for this entry only, I didn't put them in the paper.)
 
           A never ending and ever changing part of U.S. foreign policy is which countries the U.S. give military/economic/political aid to. These gifts and transactions of goods and services are done either based on a set of principles and norms that supposedly the U.S. and the foreign country share, or, they are done to further the United States’ interests abroad. Some of these principles and norms include democracy, defense of human rights, wanting their citizens to be prosperous, and respect for international law. What is disturbing is, in many cases, the U.S. gives this aid to a foreign country that is openly hostile to these principles and norms. Policy makers in the U.S. government say that’s not the case, yet by all standards, a rational analysis of the country, records of breaking international law in relation to these principles, and reports done by human rights organizations, the foreign country does not share the principles and values that the U.S. claims to hold. Other times, the United States’ stated interest runs contrary to the values it says that it proclaims. That leads to an observation that the stated interest really is not going to establish or strengthen democracy in the foreign country. This review will demonstrate the positive results of giving military/economic/political aid to a country that does want to uphold democratic values, without bending the rules due to race, religion, or radical self-interest groups. 

             

          The first article is titled “Democratization of the State: A Global Perspective and South African Case Study” by Richard Harris. It talks about how to establish a democracy that is free to all in a country that was previously authoritarian. This is relevant because most of the United States’ military aid goes to countries that were/are authoritarian and that the United States’ supposedly wants them to become more democratic. The author says in simple terms that the way to establish democracy in a country is to establish democratic norms; to show the people in that country that these norms are the best way to do certain processes. Do not force them to do these norms, because that will just push them away from doing them, even from something that may benefit them. Show them, by example and logical/rational reasoning that these norms are what it takes to protect human rights, reduce corruption, etc.

            An important term that the author introduces in this article is “low-intensity democracy,” a term that describes a government that uses formal democratic institutions as a cover for continued authoritarian rule and/or foreign domination. This relates to a point made earlier that U.S. officials claim the countries they are giving military aid to are democratic, or at least trying to be democratic. The fact is, most of them aren’t. They’re simply low-intensity democracies. U.S. officials point to the formal democratic institutions as the basis of their claim that these countries are democratic, but upon further inspection, it is evident that these governments are corrupt, authoritarian, and extremely violent towards civilians for political gain, (terrorism).

            The second journal reviewed is titled “Compound Democracy and the Control of Corruption: A Cross-Country Investigation” by Alok K. Bohara, Neil J. Mitchell, and Carl F. Mittendorff. The journal talks about the effect democracy has on corruption. The study focused on four countries: India, Nigeria, Sweden, and Japan. It included various aspects of the countries and their governments such as GDP per capita, amount of government intervention in the marketplace, and amount of trade the country does with other countries. An important point from the journal is that the larger a government gets, the more opportunities for corruption there are. This supports the claim that less government is better for the people. Therefore, according to the article, if the American government wants to decrease corruption around the world, its policies must focus on reducing the size of government. American military support, economic support, and political support should revolve around this principle.

            Another important point is that the greater amount of government intervention in the marketplace also increases the opportunities for corruption. This point supports the same claim as stated in the paragraph above. Also, democracy helps countries win wars. The reasons for this is because the political culture of a democracy is better suited for warfare, the public’s consent is more powerful in a democracy vs an autocratic state, and the leader is accountable to the voters. The logical conclusion from this point would be that if the United States truly wants to help protect other populations’ human rights, it’s policies must support democracy around the globe because when a country can win a war, it can defend itself from aggressive wars and potential foreign occupation. Both of these types of conflicts trample on a multitude of human rights.

            The most important point this journal had was that corruption in a country’s government prevents other countries from coming to help that particular country. Any economic aid that comes to a corrupt government just gets taken by the corrupt officials, and hardly any, if any, actual aid comes to the poor population of that country. Military aid would just give more might to the army to oppress and kill their citizens for trying to exercise their basic human rights. So if the United States wants to help a country that is corrupt, it cannot give aid to the government to do so. It must identify opposition parties that are not corrupt, or other NGOs/human rights organizations/moderate secular rebels, (whatever the case may be in that particular country), and pinpoint which ones are in line with true American values, the ones this country was based on. That way, the American people would know that their hard-earned taxpayer money would be going towards an organization that was not in conflict with American values. 

             The links and commonality of these two articles is that they are two steps to understanding democracy. The first article talks about how to establish it, and the second article talks about what its effects will be once it is established. Stating how they are common also illustrates how they are different: they represent two different time periods on the road to democracy i.e. one has to happen before the other.

            The third article continues on this linear concept of democracy establishment/implementation, even though it is entirely possible to go backwards in this process. The article is titled “Implications of Globalization in the Teaching of Public Administration in Africa: The Case of Nigeria” by Robert Dibie. Its title is a clear statement on what it is about. Countries have to develop their own way of education that fits their specific needs. Simply borrowing a system from a rich Western country will not work. The author says “It became apparent in the nation that it is wrong to undermine all that is indigenous in favor of all that is western.’  

            The article answers the question “Why does Nigeria have a lack of qualified teachers and inadequate resources to have a decent public administration program to better itself?” The three answers are because of low salaries, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of security. If the U.S. goal is to help Nigeria have a decent public administration program, its policies have to solve these three problems. If it’s policies help contribute to these problems, then it cannot claim that it wants Nigeria to have the program.

            What this third article has in common with the previous two articles is that is illustrates how U.S. policy can (has) deviated from its stated goal, and has created situations that it publically says that it is against. It points to a necessary revaluation of U.S. foreign policy related specifically to the main topic of this review: U.S. military/economic/political aid and support, because by the results of the studies done in these three articles, the U.S. policies are not achieving their stated goals. It provides a starting point from which U.S. policy makers can create new policies. The articles do not say specifically what these U.S. policies are, but that is outside the scope of this review. However, a short amount of time invested in research, having the background that these articles provide, would result in finding these U.S. policies without a problem. 

            The fourth article is titled “Governance in a Globalizing World” by Jamil Jreisat. It talks about the very same issues as the third article: Governance and how globalization affects it. It specifically focuses on what are the consequences of a global power “going rouge,” so to speak. Such actions that would fall under this category would be changing the international commerce rules to benefit itself at the expense of weaker, poorer countries, making up false pretexts as an excuse for a war of aggression, and trampling on peoples’ (whether its own citizens or others), basic human rights. The article states that a constitution is the basis for democracy and protecting citizens’ human rights. No democracy does not have a constitution, whether written or un-written, although it points out that there are some authoritarian governments that do have a constitution. In other words, a democracy has to have a constitution, but just because it has one doesn’t mean it is a democracy.   

            Globalization brings many benefits to a country, including more trading opportunities, closer economic ties that can foster closer political ties, and the sharing of best practices, lessons learned, etc, in all areas of public administration. However, globalization can be severely reversed if a strong, world power country goes rogue, doing some of the actions listed in the previous paragraph. Globalization cannot happen if a powerful country has an “empire-building approach with imperial authority to put down challenges rather than to persuade and to negotiate agreements.” This means that if a world power such as the United States wants to foster more globalization between itself and other countries, it must refrain from committing actions that would severely reverse globalization. If the U.S. continuingly commits actions, on purpose, that guarantee the reversal of globalization, then one must question if the U.S. truly wants to foster more globalization or not.

            Both the third and fourth articles talk about the latest step in the establishment of democracy, but the fourth article talks about the concept in wide, non-tangible descriptions that are not specific to one country or region, while the third article focuses just on South Africa as its example. Together, they provide a solid basis for understanding how globalization affects democracy. One without the other would not be as effective in explaining this concept. If just the third article was presented, a reader might be left wondering how the lessons learned in South Africa could apply to any other country experiencing the same problem. If only the fourth article was presented, the reader could possibly be confused as to how these abstract, non-tangible practices would actually look on the ground in a country.

            The fifth and final article is titled “Introduction: Benefit of U.S. Educational Assistance

in the Eastern European Transformation” by James McCollum and Niles Schoening. The basic premise of this journal is that the more education a country has, the more democratic it becomes. There are very few highly educated socialists and fascists. Communism, in of itself, has inherent deficiencies. The authors suggest that the U.S. should only offer educational assistance to organizations/countries that believe in democracy. Communists, or other people that believe in tyranny, would only use that education to further control and subjugate people. Therefore, offering educational assistance to them would not further the U.S. goal of spreading democracy. The last point the journal makes is that any educational program that the U.S. sends to a foreign country has to be sensitive to the local culture; it is not a one size fits all. This is the same point that the 3^rd article, the one about globalization in Nigeria, mentioned, when it said that simply using a Western educational model in a non-Western country will not work.   

            The significance of this last article in relation to the other articles goes back to the concept of democratization as a process that was talked about when linking the other articles together. To recap, the first article talks about how to establish democracy. The second article talks about the situation right after establishment: what effects democracy will have and how it will reduce corruption. The third one talks about what effects globalization will have on this young democracy, (which globalization is inevitable at this point in history, unless one is a state like North Korea). The fourth article talks about how to govern with globalization happening all around one’s country. This is very similar to the third article’s main point. And finally, the fifth article talks about the role of education, that could happen before, after, or in-between any of these points. That observation points to the value of education: it can light the spark to create democracy, it can help a fledgling democracy once it is established, and it can help a democracy combat the ill side effects of globalization at any point of the country’s level of globalization.

            In conclusion, these journals do not directly spout policy recommendations to the United States government in relation to its efforts to spread democracy throughout the world, as that is not the journals’ goal. Their goal is simply to state the facts in way that would help ignite U.S. policymakers to think in a rational, logical, and non-biased manner: “If I want to achieve goals XYZ, how would I do that?” Such policies that would come out of such a brainstorm or discussion would be: Not to give military aid/training to fascist regimes or governments that support terrorism, identifying and helping organizations that are democratic within a despotic or tyrannical country, and not breaking these policies due to the lobbying of radical self-interest groups or racial or religious bias. The government must have principles and stick to them no matter what in order to make sure their democratization efforts are effective overseas. These journals, when read together, also show what are the consequences when there is a disconnect between a country’s stated goals and actions committed in order to achieve that goal. It is outside of the scope of this journal review to directly command “The United States must do XYZ.” Instead, it focuses on a specific aspect of the U.S. foreign policy. It provides the basis for the conversation of “If the United States says that it wants to achieve XYZ, yet commits actions that will certainly not achieve XYZ, these are the consequences that will follow.” 

Works Cited

            Alok K. Bohara, Neil J. Mitchell, and Carl F. Mittendorff, (2004). Compound Democracy and the Control of Corruption: A Cross-Country Investigation. The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2004.

            Robert Dibie Ph.D. (2004) Implications of Globalization in the Teaching of Public Administration in Africa: The Case of Nigeria, International Journal of Public Administration, 27:3-4, 151-169.

            Richard L. Harris (2004) Democratization of the State: A Global Perspective and South African Case Study, International Journal of Public Administration, 27:13-14, 1061-1100.

            Jamil Jreisat (2004) Governance in a Globalizing World, International Journal of Public Administration, 27:13-14, 1003-1029.

            James K. McCollum & Niles C. Schoening (2004) Introduction: Benefit of U.S. Educational Assistance in the Eastern European Transformation, International Journal of Public Administration, 27:11-12, 821-827.