Daily Archives: July 4, 2021

Jack Cranston, Writing From: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Editor’s Note: This is a post from Jack Cranston’s 2013 archives showing escalation of the U.S. federal government’s never-ending infringement on U.S. citizens’ rights— justified by national security—which began in earnest under the George W. Bush administration. This draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth, and the manipulation of the past has continued to grow to a point that, in 2021, it seems oh, too common—particularly the United States.

According to an analysis by the Associated Press, in 2012 the U.S. Government used “national security” as an excuse to censor or withhold more documents requested by the public than at any time in the history of the Obama administration. 

Ironically, the man elected as the “anti-Bush,” in many ways, outdid his predecessor.  According to the ACLU, “We’ve seen a meteoric rise in the number of claims to protect secret law, the government’s interpretations of laws or its understanding of its own authority. In some ways, the Obama administration is actually even more aggressive on secrecy than the Bush administration.”

This is an administration that, ironically, boasts about its commitment to transparency.  A memorandum entitled Transparency and Open Government is posted on the White House website.  In the memo, President Obama writes that “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.”

What’s actually occurring is that the administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of secrecy and opaqueness.  The Obama administration’s motto should be “Just trust us.”

As with many of the administration’s initiatives, their hollow commitment to openness generates blowback and distain. 

The administration is catching flack for appearing to be committed to ever increasing amounts of secrecy.  It keeps secret its legal justifications, policies and actions that result in gross violations of American’s liberties.  Examples include assassinations via drone strike and the power to detain American citizens indefinitely and secretly in clear violation of their Constitutional rights, and the interception and gathering of all citizens’ electronic communications. 

These new-found actions are unjust, unconstitutional, and, quiet frankly, un-American. As much as the administration’s spin-doctors within the White House, military, and homeland security do their best to justify these actions, history, commonsense, and our collective moral compass say it’s not okay.

These secret activities, and the administration’s recalcitrant attitude toward the public’s demand for more information and Constitutional accountability, undermine the public trust.  As opposed to Obama’s claims, the administration’s secrecy and attitude are weakening America’s democracy and making for a less effective government.

The administration’s actions fly in the face of Obama’s high sounding but ultimately false and misleading promise that he made in his first week in office.  He promised that public requests for information would be “administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”  In reality, the policy is “when in doubt, classify it as secret.”

“Catch-22” seems to be the administration’s new favorite game.  Embedding national security in all logical loops allows it to circumvent legal challenges.  You can’t successfully sue the NSA for intercepting your electronic communications because you’d need evidence that your specific communications were intercepted, and that information can’t be obtained because it is a national security secret.  U.S. judges can’t rule on the legality of certain actions when pertinent information, information critical to a ruling, is classified as “secret” and can be withheld on the grounds of “national security.”

U.S. federal judge Colleen McMahon of New York recently ruled against The New York Times and the ACLU in their effort to access documents regarding drone attacks. 

She referred to an “Alice in Wonderland” predicament: “I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules—a veritable Catch-22,” the judge wrote. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

This is the new modus operandi of the federal government: grab even more power, justify it due to emergency national security conditions (owing to a never-ending war on terrorism), ignore the Constitution, and keep it all secret. 

It’s all right out of George Orwell’s playbook.

Don’t wait until the U.S. government puts more sections of the Constitution into the shredder.  Internationalizing your life is your best form of self-insurance. Unfortunately you can’t just flip a switch and have it all done instantaneously. It takes time to establish foreign bank accounts, domicile businesses in favorable jurisdictions, and acquire new legal residences and citizenships. Self-reliance, including a risk management plan based on internationalization, is your best course of action. Sovereign X can help.

Jack Cranston is a partner of Sovereign X and resides in San Miguel de Allende.

Jack Cranston, writing from Geneva

Editor’s Note: According to an exposé in The Atlantic earlier this year, the U.S. government “maintains a kill list of people whom it condemns to die in secret and kills with drones.” Yet drone killings, which include American citizens, mete out death to individuals who have never been charged, tried, or convicted.

Sound familiar? This is part 1 of a three-part series from Jack Cranston’s archives which illuminated this practice in 2012. Unfortunately, the United States’ actions have only escalated during the past decade. These killings began under President George W. Bush, exploded under President Barack Obama, and accelerated under President Trump. According to Rolling Stone, reports estimate that Trump upped the pace of drone attacks by about four to five times the Obama rate, which itself was 10 times the rate of Bush.

Step by bloody step the U.S. government is descending down to the level of despotic actions that the U.S. professes to abhor.  Actions, for which it feels it must shoulder the burden as the “world’s policeman,” to protect the good freedom-loving citizens of the world from the acts of numerous evildoers and so-called bad guys.

The U.S. government is now showing its true colors and is starting to routinely act like the evildoers it claims it has an obligation to fight.

Using a very matter-of-fact tone, the U.S. Attorney General recently discussed the U.S. government’s official policy on assassinations, including the recent assassination of a U.S. citizen.  I have to pause for a moment when I write that sentence as, until recently, I could never have conceived of a U.S. official casually and openly discussing the assassination of U.S. citizens. 

This shows how much we need to open our minds to the possibilities of government using its self-granted powers of force to encroach upon our liberties and personal rights in a way that heretofore would have been considered unimaginable. 

In the view (and actions) of the current administration, its lawyers don’t have to obtain a judge’s approval before a top government official orders an assassination.  Attorney General Holder was recently quoted as saying “’Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security.” Holder went on to say that the assassination approval process has some limits, including that the use of force won’t kill “too many civilians or non-combatants.”

Too many? Too many!?! 

Admittedly, the U.S. is attempting to follow international standards for avoiding the killing of too many civilians. But regardless of international or domestic standards, this is another grave and slippery slope. How many is too many? One, two, eight, thirteen, one hundred? 

Where do they draw the line?  How many innocent lives justify the death of a single target?

Holder is also effectively asking us to place blind trust in the administration.  They are not publically releasing their internal legal memos developed for the self-justification of assassination and the suspension of due process. For an issue like this that so severely tests the basic tenets of the U.S. Constitution and the bedrock principles of individual liberty, it should be subject to a very public examination. Keeping this matter private, to be assessed, approved, and authorized behind the curtain, strongly resembles the despotic and arbitrary nature of the rulers of governments that the U.S. so haughtily holds itself to be above.

To date, and as far as we know, their intention is to limit the assassination of U.S. citizens to only those outside of the country.  But what’s so magical about an arbitrary line on a map? 

A border is just a man-made line drawn in the sand. The air doesn’t magically change when you cross a border.  Time doesn’t reverse and the laws of physics aren’t altered when you cross a border.  Now that the administration is openly and easily suspending due process, what’s to stop the U.S. from assassinating U.S. citizens within the United States based on a self-justified and non-public opinion that the target is an enemy of the state? 

And what’s to stop the definition of “enemy,” or “national security,” from growing to encompass any action or statement that could be construed as being critical of the government.?  Or sufficiently unpatriotic? Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that a President of the U.S. said, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” 

We could easily see the day when someone that the government claims is “against us,” for any number of reasons, has to suffer the consequence of a suspension of due process because of a so-called and self-declared national “emergency.”

What has separated the United States throughout much of its history from despotic, tyrannical, and uncivilized nations? The rule of law and the fairness of its application, respect for individual liberties, at least by design and public proclamation, and a well-respected process that must be followed before depriving someone of their natural rights.  Few if any nations can match the United States’ track record of respecting the freedoms of its citizens, as spelled out so eloquently in the Bill of Rights.

What separates despotic nations from the U.S. is their track record of widespread abuses of individual rights, and the arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and frequent murder of people suspected of failing to follow the decrees of tyrannical rulers. Or based on proclaimed “evidence” that is never made public.

The U.S. government’s non-public and self-justified reasoning for suspending due process is starting to look eerily similar to the tyrannical abuses of other nations.

The continued erosion of the rights and liberties that the Founding Fathers fought for is all the more reason to follow our recommendations for internationalizing your life and living life on your terms.  Diversify your life by putting all of your precious eggs, such as where and how you spend your time, your assets, and your business interests, in multiple and safer baskets.

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Jack Cranston is a partner of Sovereign X and resides in San Miguel de Allende.