Sunday, December 23, 2012

A Laughable Savage from Canada

Walter Block notes that Luiza Ch. Savage has a 4-page article in the The Canadian MacLeans Magazine (equivalent to Time or Newsweek in the U.S.). The article is titled,  End of the U.S. empire? After years of foreign wars and interventions, a new mood of isolationism is sweeping America.

Block notes:
 In it the author attempts to pinpoint who is responsible for this "new mood of isolationism" even among Republicans. She mentions numerous people: Greg Salts (don't ask), Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Ann Coulter, Peter Feaver, Grover Norquist, Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin, Steve Clemons, Hillary Clinton (don't ask), Mackenzie Eaglen, Robert Gates, Mac Destler; the list goes on and on.
This list is, of course, absurd. Ron Paul, the only high profile person consistently against foreign adventures, is not on the list. Almost all the  people on it are war hawks. This is typical mainstream propaganda.  Block writes:
The author of this disgraceful journalistic effort is Luiza Ch. Savage. I wonder where she went to journalism school? Probably, to a very prestigious one.
Boy, did he nail it. From the bio of Ch. Savage:
 I have a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard and a master’s in legal studies from Yale Law.
Here's Ch. Savage propaganda from another article calling from more government monitoring of the internet :
 The revelation that Iranian nuclear centrifuges were sabotaged by the computer worm Stuxnet—reportedly a covert U.S.-Israeli intelligence operation—is unnerving Western security policy-makers who say it is only a matter of time before cyberwar is turned against North America. Will hackers shut down the electrical grid, sending millions into darkness? Could a foreign agent remotely sabotage a pipeline carrying natural gas or crude oil, causing an environmental disaster? 
American lawmakers want to encourage U.S. government agencies to share intelligence about potential threats with private sector companies (who own and operate most of America’s critical infrastructure), and to compel these firms to be more forthcoming about their own vulnerabilities[...] But as Americans struggle to work out a plan for their cyberdefence, a former Homeland Security official is urging that the effort include Canada, arguing that the critical infrastructure of both countries is so intertwined that a “cyberNORAD” (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) is needed to protect it. “There is no border in cyberland,” says Paul Rosenzweig, a deputy secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland security in the administration of George W. Bush. “It makes almost no sense for U.S. government efforts not to include Canada.” Rosenzweig, who heads a security consulting firm, Red Branch Law and Consulting, recently presented his ideas at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a think tank in Washington, and plans to publish them in a forthcoming issue of the Canada-United States Law Journal.[...] 
But Rosenzweig points to the success of NORAD, in which Canadians and Americans sit in the same room, share a common operations system, and use joint forces for air and space defence. “The authority is unified completely because our airspace is seamless. The missile coming to hit U.S. would come over Canada,” says Rosenzweig. “That is a good metaphor for cyberspace.”

5 comments:

  1. Isolationism? They never will get it.

    Or is it willful stupidity? With the guns of Big Bro protecting Ivy League idiocy, it doesn't matter how disconnected from reality they get. Wonder how fast these schools would vanish in a truly laissez faire ed market without taxpayer subsidies...

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  2. So if we're not invading other countries then we're characterized as "isolationist"? That's insanity.

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  3. Another high-class jerk.

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  4. Just to put the article into context, check the date...July 2011. Granted, Dr Paul had been talking about non-interventionism during the 2008 election cycle, but he was a lone voice in the wilderness.

    No one else voiced even the slightest misgivings about our war efforts until well into the 2012 primary season, and those were always couched in fiscal terms (ie. we can't afford it), and, imho, were simply attempts to placate public opinion which had turned most decidedly against the wars. Ron Paul was the only one voicing objections on moral and constitutional grounds, and sadly, still is the only one.

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  5. 'The missile coming to hit U.S. would come over Canada,” says Rosenzweig.'

    Canadians do hate Americans... but not like that.

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