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Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

There is still no majority support for anything. Some will never be happy no matter what happens.

YouGov asked UK citizens what Brexit options they preferred that were “realistically possible”.

• 40% want a hard Brexit or a Boris Johnson negotiated Brexit. I lump these together because it is a natural alliance that is going to happen. Remainers forced this alliance by blocking No Deal which in turn blocked any deal.

• 19% want to remain. These are primarily Liberal Democrats but rebel Tories and some from Labour want this outcome as well.

• 15% want a delay or a referendum. This group will splinter to a Remain or Customs union because a referendum is not going to happen. Any extension solves nothing.

• 12% want a customs union. This is the official Labour policy but Corbyn seems to give a different answer every day. Labout has huge divisions. Some in Labour want to remain, some want a referendum, and some prefer a hard Brexit. The Labour camp is more split than any other.

• 8% percent will not be happy no matter what happens.

• 5% Genuinely don’t know.

• 2% support Theresa May’s deal

The 15% supporting a delay or a referendum will have to make another choice (or get sucked into a Labour referendum promise that won’t happen).

If so, the vote would likely be split between Remain or Customs Union. But throw it all in one bucket. Say give it all to the Liberal Democrats, a highly unlikely event. That would give the Liberal Democrats 34% vs the Tories 40% for a Tory Brexit Paty alliance. Labour would get smashed.

Apportion the 15% entirely to Labour and both Labour and the Liberal Democrats get smashed.

What Can Realistically Happen?

A whopping 72% believe no deal is possible. Only 7% (primarily delusional remainers) think that it isn’t.

But what does “realistically possible” mean?

Is a 5% chance realistically possible? 1%? 10%?

The least likely options are a second referendum and passing Theresa May’s deal straight up.

A short delay is possible. Johnson could conceivably agree to this in return for guaranteed early elections. But does that imply “realistically possible”?

No Deal is a 100% guaranteed option simply because it is the legal default. The 7% who think it is not realistic and the 21% who don’t know simply are not thinking clearly.

Good News for Johnson

Unmistakable Trend

Recent polls are good news for Johnson.

They also reflect another amusing fact.

Remainers pushed Johnson into a stance in which he increasingly had to rule out a deal in favor of a hard “no deal” stance to win the support of Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party.

Meanwhile, please recall that 21 Tory remainers were outed. They will lose their seats in the next election.

I see no path for Labour or the Liberal Democrats to win unless they form a coalition. That seems unlikely given the Liberal Democrats dislike of Jeremy Corbyn and the Brexit preference difference of their parties.

According to a new report from the Friends of the Earth U.S.; Amazon Watch; and Profundo, Larry Fink’s BlackRock Inc is one of the top investors in companies “responsible for tropical forest destruction in the Amazon and around the world.”

The report called BlackRock’s Big Deforestation Problem, published on Amazon Watch’s website, claims BlackRock is the top three shareholders in 25 of the world’s biggest publicly traded deforestation-risk companies; these companies are known for producing soya, beef, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber and timber, but also have a long track record in burning down forests to clear land for agriculture purposes. The New York-based investment bank is also a top ten shareholder in another 50 of the world’s top deforestation-risk companies, the report added.

“The data is clear: from the Amazon to the great forests of Africa and Southeast Asia, BlackRock is a global leader in financing forest destruction,” said Jeff Conant, senior international forest program manager with Friends of the Earth U.S., the report’s lead author.

“As long as this financial behemoth continues to unconditionally back the world’s most destructive agribusiness companies, the forests of the world, and consequently the climate and the rights of forest-dwelling people, will continue to go up in flames. BlackRock is literally reaping profits as the world’s jungles burn.”

BlackRock’s investment in deforestation-risk companies has been increasing in the last half-decade. In 4Q14, BlackRock owned roughly $1 billion in deforestation-risk investments. By 4Q18, the value of these investments jumped to $1.6 billion. 

The report said the investment firm’s deforestation-linked commodity holdings are comprised mainly of index funds. In 2014, 80% of BlackRock’s deforestation-linked commodity holdings were through index funds; by 2018, it had jumped to 94%. 

“BlackRock claims that its hands are tied by index funds. It is wrong. BlackRock can follow the lead of other global asset managers and make change for the good of the rainforest, the climate, and of its customers by shifting investments out of companies wrecking the planet, and applying maximum pressure to change company behavior,” said Moira Birss, Finance Campaign Director of Amazon Watch.

“The fires currently raging in the Amazon clearly demonstrate the risk that agribusiness expansion poses for the Amazon rainforest, indigenous peoples, and the global climate. By expanding investments in the very industries complicit in that destruction, BlackRock is emboldening right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro to continue his quest to raze the Amazon for profit-making,” Birss added.

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund has addressed the crisis in the Amazon by preventing its fund from purchasing BlackRock’s indexes that have deforestation-linked companies in them. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is another fund that has labeled deforestation-linked commodity companies as a serious investment risk. Meanwhile, BlackRock has taken no such action. 

“Responsible stewardship is about more than just nice public statements. It is about aligning your investment strategy with broadly accepted environmental and social standards,” said Ward Warmerdam of Profundo. “It is about implementing this strategy by making demands of the companies you are invested in. And it is about using your significant leverage to ensure that your demands are met and irreversible environmental and social damage is prevented, in addition to fulfilling your fiduciary duty.”

Diving down the rabbit hole of BlackRock’s holdings shows that its investments in deforestation-risk companies have been increasing over the last half-decade. 

BlackRock has made tremendous investments in pulp and paper and palm oil companies, as well as investments in beef, rubber, and timber, with many of these companies operating in South America. BlackRock’s investments in pulp and paper increased from $103 million in 2014 to $565 million in 2018, a 548% gain in value. 

And with BlackRock channeling global investment capital into deforestation-risk companies that are destroying the Amazon and the world’s forests, it seems that Wall Street is perfectly fine with burning down the Amazon for a profit. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Xenophobic violence is flaring once again in South Africa, where black South Africans are setting fire to other African migrants and attacking foreign-owned businesses.

“Rioters looted shops, created flaming barricades on roads and engaged in street fights with police, as attacks on immigrants and foreign-owned businesses increase,” reported RT.

“Some 50 businesses were looted and damaged on Sunday alone. It’s the second outbreak of such violence in the country in the space of a week.”

Shocking video shows black South Africans setting fire to other African migrants in the street.

Pray for foreigners in South Africa. No one deserves this. 😭 pic.twitter.com/BELpzoyzux

— Zari (@ZariTheBosslady) September 2, 2019

The violence was sparked after a South African driver was shot dead by a drug dealer who was a foreign national.

The wave of xenophobic violence prompted the Zambian Ministry of Transport and Communications to instruct Zambian drivers not to travel through the country.

The mainstream media has largely avoided the story, refusing to give it top billing, presumably because of who is responsible.

Rest assured, Comedy Central host Trevor Noah knows who is really to blame for this latest explosion black-on-black violence – white people.

Why? Because colonialism…or something.

During similar violence back in 2017 in a lengthy social media post, Noah said that white land ownership and wealth was the real driving factor.

South Africans and Nigerian migrants are fighting in the streets but Trevor Noah found a way to blame white people pic.twitter.com/QJwSdtddk3

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 4, 2019

“Whites in South Africa makes up about 8.7% of the population and controls over 85% wealth,” Noah wrote.

“So when I hear south Africans claiming that other Africans are competing with them on dwindling/scarce resources, I say that your anger and outrage is misplaced. African immigrants don’t own lands, don’t run companies, don’t own mining companies, don’t operate trophy hunting companies, do not ship out capital to European banks. Yours is a complete misplaced anger, prejudice and xenophobia built up out of inferiority complex created by decades of apartheid and oppression,” he added.

The post is re-circulating once again in light of recent events.

Noah’s words are downright disturbing. Not only does he largely absolve the perpetrators of such vicious violence of blame, he almost seems to be suggesting their anger would be better directed at white people.

Let’s hope Noah remains silent this time around.

*  *  *

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Authored by US Army Major (ret.) Danny Sjursen via AntiWar.com,

It has taken me years to tell these stories. The emotional and moral wounds of the Afghan War have just felt too recent, too raw. After all, I could hardly write a thing down about my Iraq War experience for nearly ten years, when, by accident, I churned out a book on the subject. Now, as the American war in Afghanistan – hopefully – winds to something approaching a close, it’s finally time to impart some tales of the madness. In this new, recurring, semi-regular series, the reader won’t find many worn out sagas of heroism, brotherhood, and love of country. Not that this author doesn’t have such stories, of course. But one can find those sorts of tales in countless books and numerous trite, platitudinal Hollywood yarns.

With that in mind, I propose to tell a number of very different sorts of stories – profiles, so to speak, in absurdity. That’s what war is, at root, an exercise in absurdity, and America’s hopeless post-9/11 wars are stranger than most. My own 18-year long quest to find some meaning in all the combat, to protect my troops from danger, push back against the madness, and dissent from within the army proved Kafkaesque in the extreme. Consider what follows just a survey of that hopeless journey…

The man was remarkable at one specific thing: pleasing his bosses and single-minded self-promotion. Sure he lacked anything resembling empathy, saw his troops as little more than tools for personal advancement, and his overall personality disturbingly matched the clinical definition of sociopathy. Details, details…

Still, you (almost) had to admire his drive, devotion, and dedication to the cause of promotion, of rising through the military ranks. Had he managed to channel that astonishing energy, obsession even, to the pursuit of some good, the world might markedly have improved. Which is, actually, a dirty little secret about the military, especially ground combat units; that it tends to attract (and mold) a disturbing number of proud owners of such personality disorders. The army then positively reinforces such toxic behavior by promoting these sorts of individuals – who excel at mind-melding (brown-nosing, that is) with superiors – at disproportionate rates. Such is life. Only there are real consequences, real soldiers, (to say nothing of local civilians) who suffer under their commanders’ tyranny.

Back in 2011-12, the man served as my commander, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. As such, he led – and partly controlled the destinies of – some 500 odd soldiers.

Then a lowly captain, I commanded about one-fifth of those men and answered directly to the colonel. I didn’t much like the guy; hardly any of his officers did. And he didn’t trust my aspirational intellectualism, proclivity to ask “why,” or, well, me in general. Still, he mostly found this author an effective middle manager. As such, I was a means to an end for him – that being self-advancement and some positive measurable statistics for his annual officer evaluation report (OER) from his own boss. Nonetheless, it was the army and you sure don’t choose your bosses.

So it was, early in my yearlong tour in the scrublands of rural Kandahar province, that the colonel treated me to one his dog-and-pony-show visits. Only this time he had some unhappy news for me. The next day he, and the baker’s dozen tag-alongs in his ubiquitous entourage, wanted to walk the few treacherous miles to the most dangerous strongpoint in the entire sub-district. It was occupied, needlessly, by one of my platoons in perpetuity and suffered under constant siege by the local Taliban, too small to contest the area and too big to fly under the radar, this – at one point the most attacked outpost in Afghanistan – base just provided an American flag-toting target. I’d communicated as much to command early on, but to no avail. Can-do US colonels with aspirations for general officer rank hardly ever give up territory to the enemy – even if that’s the strategically sound course.

Walking to the platoon strongpoint was dicey on even the best of days. The route between our main outpost and the Alamo-like strongpoint was flooded with Taliban insurgents and provided precious little cover or concealment for out patrols. On my first jaunt to the outpost, I (foolishly, it must be said) walked my unit into an ambush and was thrown over a small rock wall by the blast of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) with my apparent name on it. Since then, it was standard for our patrols to the strongpoint to suffer multiple ambushes during the roundtrip rotation. Sometimes our kids got wounded or killed; sometimes they were lucky. Mercifully, at least, my intelligence section – led by my friend and rebranded artillery lieutenant – did their homework and figured out that the chronically lazy local Taliban didn’t like to fight at night or wake up early, so patrols to the strongpoint that stepped off before dawn had a fighting chance of avoiding the worst of ambush alley.

I hadn’t wanted to take my colonel on a patrol to the outpost. His entourage was needlessly large and, when added to my rotational platoon, presented an unwieldy and inviting target for Taliban ambush. Still I knew better than to argue the point with my disturbingly confident and single-minded colonel. So I hedged. Yes, sir, we can take you along, with one caveat: we have to leave before dawn! I proceeded to explain why, replete with historical stats and examples, we could only (somewhat) safely avoid ambush if we did so.

That’s when things went south. The colonel insisted we leave at nine, maybe even ten, in the morning, the absolute peak window for Taliban attack. This prima donna reminded me that he couldn’t possibly leave any earlier. He had a “battle rhythm,” after all, which included working out in the gym at his large, safe, distant-from-the-roar-of-battle base each morning. How could I expect him to alter that predictable schedule over something as minor as protecting the lives and limbs of his own troopers? He had “to set an example,” he reminded me, by letting his soldiers on the base “see him in the gym” each and every morning. Back then, silly me, I was actually surprised by the colonel’s absurd refusal; so much so that I pushed back, balked, tried to rationally press my point. To no avail.

What the man said next has haunted me ever since. We would leave no earlier than nine AM, according to his preference. My emotional pleas – begging really – was not only for naught but insulted the colonel. Why? Because, as he imparted to me, for my own growth and development he thought, “Remember: lower caters to higher, Danny!” That, he reminded me, was the way of the military world, the key to success and advancement. The man even thought he was being helpful, advising me on how to achieve the success he’d achieved. My heart sank…forever, and never recovered.

The next day he was late. We didn’t step off until nearly ten AM. The ambush, a massive mix of RPG and machine gun fire, kicked off – as predicted – within sight of the main base. The rest was history, and certainly could’ve been worse. On other, less lucky, days it was. But I remember this one profound moment. When the first rocket exploded above us, both the colonel and I dove for limited cover behind a mound of rocks. I was terrified and exasperated. Just then we locked eyes and I gazed into his proverbial soul. The man was incapable of fear. He wasn’t scared, or disturbed; he didn’t care a bit about what was happening. That revelation was more terrifying than the ongoing ambush and would alter my view of the world irreparably.

Which brings us to some of the discomfiting morals – if such things exist – of this story.

American soldiers fight and die at the whims of career-obsessed officers as much they do so at the behest of king and country. Sometimes its their own leaders – as much as the ostensible “enemy” – that tries to get them killed. The plentiful sociopaths running these wars at the upper and even middle-management levels are often far less concerned with long-term, meaningful “victory” in places like Afghanistan, than in crafting – on the backs of their soldiers sacrifices – the illusion of progress, just enough measurable “success” in their one year tour to warrant a stellar evaluation and, thus, the next promotion. Not all leaders are like this. I, for one, once worked for a man for whom I – and all my peers – would run through walls for, a (then) colonel that loved his hundreds of soldiers like they were his own children. But he was the exception that proved the rule.

The madness, irrationality, and absurdity of my colonel was nothing less than a microcosm of America’s entire hopeless adventure in Afghanistan. The war was never rational, winnable, or meaningful. It was from the first, and will end as, an exercise in futility. It was, and is, one grand patrol to my own unnecessary outpost, undertaken at the wrong time and place. It was a collection of sociopaths and imbeciles – both Afghan and American – tilting at windmills and ultimately dying for nothing at all. Yet the young men in the proverbial trenches never flinched, never refused. They did their absurd duty because they were acculturated to the military system, and because they were embarrassed not to.

After all, lower caters to higher…

Several people from Maryland have been jailed for their role in a multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors, reported The Baltimore Sun.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis recently sentenced Bradley Mascho, 53, of Frederick, to 2.5 years in federal prison.

U.S. Attorney Robert Hur’s office told the press that Mascho had been ordered by the court to pay $5 million in restitution.

In July, Xinis sentenced investment adviser Dawn Bennett, 56, to 20 years of federal prison for her role in the scheme.

Jurors during the two-week trial heard testimony that Bennett used investors’ money to buy astrological gems and cosmetic medical procedures. She even paid Hindu priests in India more than $800,000 to ward off federal investigators while the Ponzi scheme imploded.

According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, there was evidence found inside Bennett’s home that showed she tried to silence the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigators by casting “hoodoo spells.” She wove spells around jars of beef tongue, labeled with SEC Lawerys’ names that she stored in a freezer in her kitchen in hopes of keeping the Feds quiet.

Justice Department prosecutor Erin Pulice claims that Bennett defrauded 46 investors out $20 million in three years.

“Dawn Bennett knowingly defrauded retirees of their life’s savings – most of which she used for her own personal benefit,” U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur said in a statement.

“She’s been held accountable for her lies and theft and will now spend years in federal prison.”

Mascho pleaded guilty last summer to charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and making a false statement.

Dennis Boyle, Bennett’s defense attorney at trial, tried to convince the court that Mascho defrauded Bennett. Boyle said, Bennett, invested $8 million of her own money into the venture and relied on falsified accounting prepared by Mascho, her company’s chief financial officer.

The Feds started investigating Bennett’s scheme in 2015 after the SEC accused her of defrauding investors by inflating assets and falsifying returns.

Bennett promised investors a 15% return on investments in her new sportswear company but spent the money on her extravagant lifestyle.

Bennett’s life of crime began when she first appeared in Barron’s in 2009 on its list of “Top 100 Women Financial Advisors.” Her claim to fame was $1.1 billion in AUM ranked her fifth on the list. The SEC said she made another submission to Barron’s, this time for its list of “Top 100 Independent Financial Advisors.” She listed her AUM as $1.3 billion and she was ranked 26th.

However, Barron’s never verified Bennett’s AUM claims — allowed her to appear on radio talk shows promoting her fake AUM and returns.

According to the SEC, Bennett submitted another application to Barron’s, this time for its “2011 Top Advisor Rankings: Washington D.C.” She claimed her AUM had risen to $1.8 billion, which “earned” her a No. 2 ranking.

Again, there was little accountability at Barron’s who never verified her AUM.

The SEC said Bennett inflated performance returns for clients, and at one point, claimed that her firm was “top 1%” of financial advisers.

Bennett’s decade of white-collar crime has finally come to an end in the implosion of her Ponzi scheme. She won’t be released from prison until 2039.

Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

Next week will be the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every person like a terrorist suspect. Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer Edward Snowden and a host of activists and freedom fighters, the government continues ravaging American privacy.

Two of the largest leaps towards “1984” began in 2002. Though neither the Justice Department’s Operation TIPS nor the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program was brought to completion, parcels and precedents from each program have profoundly influenced subsequent federal policies.

In July 2002, the Justice Department unveiled plans for Operation TIPS — the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. According to the Justice Department website, TIPS would be “a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity.” TIPSters would be people who, “in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement.” The feds aimed to recruit people in jobs that “make them uniquely well positioned to understand the ordinary course of business in the area they serve, and to identify things that are out of the ordinary.” Homeland Security director Tom Ridge said that observers in certain occupations “might pick up a break in the certain rhythm or pattern of a community.” The feds planned to enlist as many as 10 million people to watch other people’s “rhythms.”

The Justice Department provided no definition of “suspicious behavior” to guide vigilantes. As the public began to focus on the program’s sweep, opposition surfaced; even the U.S. Postal Service briefly balked at participating in the program. Director Ridge insisted that TIPS “is not a government intrusion.” He declared, “The last thing we want is Americans spying on Americans. That’s just not what the president is all about, and not what the TIPS program is all about.” Apparently, as long as the Bush administration did not announce plans to compel people to testify about the peccadilloes of their neighbors and customers, TIPS was a certified freedom-friendly program.

When Attorney General John Ashcroft was cross-examined by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on TIPS at a Judiciary Committee hearing on July 25, he insisted that “the TIPS program is something requested by industry to allow them to talk about anomalies that they encounter.” But, when George W. Bush first announced the program, he portrayed it as an administration initiative. Did thousands of Teamsters Union members petition 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over “anomalies”? Senator Leahy asked whether reports to the TIPS hotline would become part of a federal database with millions of unsubstantiated allegations against American citizens. Ashcroft told Leahy, “I have recommended that there would be none, and I’ve been given assurance that the TIPS program would not maintain a database.” But Ashcroft could not reveal which federal official had given him the assurance.

The ACLU’s Laura Murphy observed, “This is a program where people’s activities, statements, posters in their windows or on their walls, nationality, and religious practices will be reported by untrained individuals without any relationship to criminal activity.” San Diego law professor Marjorie Cohn observed, “Operation TIPS … will encourage neighbors to snitch on neighbors and won’t distinguish between real and fabricated tips. Anyone with a grudge or vendetta against another can provide false information to the government, which will then enter the national database.”

On August 9, the Justice Department announced it was fine-tuning TIPS, abandoning any “plan to ask thousands of mail carriers, utility workers, and others with access to private homes to report suspected terrorist activity,” the Washington Post reported. People who had enlisted to be TIPSters received an email notice from Uncle Sam that “only those who work in the trucking, maritime, shipping, and mass transit industries will be eligible to participate in this information referral service.” But the Justice Department continued refusing to disclose to the Senate Judiciary Committee who would have access to the TIPS reports.

After the proposal created a fierce backlash across the political board, Congress passed an amendment blocking its creation. House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.) attached an amendment to homeland security legislation that declared, “Any and all activities of the federal government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS are hereby prohibited.” But the Bush administration and later the Obama administration pursued the same information roundup with federally funded fusion centers that encouraged people to file “suspicious activity reports” for a wide array of innocuous behavior — reports that are dumped into secret federal databases that can vex innocent citizens in perpetuity.

Operation TIPS illustrated how the momentum of intrusion spurred government to propose programs that it never would have attempted before 9/11. If Bush had proposed in August 2001 to recruit 10 million Americans to report any of their neighbors they suspected of acting unusual or being potential troublemakers, the public might have concluded the president had gone berserk.

Total Information Awareness: 300 million dossiers

The USA PATRIOT Act created a new Information Office in the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In January 2002, the White House chose retired admiral John Poindexter to head the new office. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explained, “Admiral Poindexter is somebody who this administration thinks is an outstanding American, an outstanding citizen, who has done a very good job in what he has done for our country, serving the military.” Cynics kvetched about Poindexter’s five felony convictions for false testimony to Congress and destruction of evidence during the investigation of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages exchange. Poindexter’s convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court, which cited the immunity Congress granted his testimony.

Poindexter committed the new Pentagon office to achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA). TIA’s mission is “to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists — and decipher their plans — and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts,” according to DARPA. According to Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge, TIA would seek to discover “connections between transactions — such as passports; visas; work permits; driver’s licenses; credit cards; airline tickets; rental cars; gun purchases; chemical purchases — and events — such as arrests or suspicious activities and so forth.” Aldridge agreed that every phone call a person made or received could be entered into the database. With “voice recognition” software, the actual text of the call could also go onto a permanent record.

TIA would also strive to achieve “Human Identification at a Distance” (HumanID), including “Face Recognition,” “Iris Recognition,” and “Gait Recognition.” The Pentagon issued a request for proposals to develop an “odor recognition” surveillance system that would help the feds identify people by their sweat or urine — potentially creating a wealth of new job opportunities for deviants.

TIA’s goal was to stockpile as much information as possible about everyone on Earth — thereby allowing government to protect everyone from everything. New York Times columnist William Safire captured the sweep of the new surveillance system: “Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book, and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database.’” Columnist Ted Rall noted that the feds would even scan “veterinary records. The TIA believes that knowing if and when Fluffy got spayed — and whether your son stopped torturing Fluffy after you put him on Ritalin — will help the military stop terrorists before they strike.”

Phil Kent, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based public-interest law firm, warned that TIA was “the most sweeping threat to civil liberties since the Japanese-American internment.” The ACLU’s Jay Stanley labeled TIA “the mother of all privacy invasions. It would amount to a picture of your life so complete, it’s equivalent to somebody following you around all day with a video camera.” A coalition of civil-liberties groups protested to Senate leaders, “There are no systems of oversight or accountability contemplated in the TIA project. DARPA itself has resisted lawful requests for information about the Program pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.”

Bush administration officials were outraged by such criticisms. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, “The hype and alarm approach is a disservice to the public…. I would recommend people take a nice deep breath. Nothing terrible is going to happen.” Poindexter promised that TIA would be designed so as to “preserve rights and protect people’s privacy while helping to make us all safer.” (Poindexter was not under oath at the time of his statement.) The TIA was defended on the basis that “nobody has been searched” until the feds decide to have him arrested on the basis of data the feds snared. Undersecretary Aldridge declared, “It is absurd to think that DARPA is somehow trying to become another police agency. DARPA’s purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility of this technology. If it proves useful, TIA will then be turned over to the intelligence, counterintelligence, and law-enforcement communities as a tool to help them in their battle against domestic terrorism.” In January 2003, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) learned that the FBI was working on a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon “for possible experimentation” with TIA. Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Security Paul McHale confirmed, in March 2003 testimony to Congress, that the Pentagon would turn TIA over to law-enforcement agencies once the system was ready to roll.

DARPA responded to the surge of criticism by removing the Information Awareness Office logo from the website. The logo showed a giant green eye atop a pyramid, covering half the globe with a peculiar yellow haze, accompanied by the motto “Scientia est Potentia” (Knowledge is Power).

Shortly after DARPA completed a key research benchmark for TIA, Lt. Col. Doug Dyer, a DARPA program manager, publicly announced in April 2003 that Americans are obliged to sacrifice some privacy in the name of security: “When you consider the potential effect of a terrorist attack against the privacy of an entire population, there has to be some trade-off.” But nothing in the U.S. Constitution entitles the Defense Department to decide how much privacy or liberty American citizens deserve.

In September 2003, Congress passed an amendment abolishing the Pentagon’s Information Office and ending TIA funding. But by that point, DARPA had already awarded 26 contracts for dozens of private research projects to develop components for TIA. Salon.com reported, “According to people with knowledge of the program, TIA has now advanced to the point where it’s much more than a mere ‘research project.’ There is a working prototype of the system, and federal agencies outside the Defense Department have expressed interest in it.” The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is already using facial recognition systems at 20 airports and the Transportation Security Administration is expected to quickly follow suit.

Two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo sent a secret memo to the White House declaring that the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches was null and void: “If the government’s heightened interest in self-defense justifies the use of deadly force, then it also certainly would justify warrantless searches.” That memo helped set federal policy until it was publicly revealed after Barack Obama took office in 2009. Unfortunately, that anti-Constitution, anti-privacy mindset unleashed many federal intrusions that continue to this day, from the TSA to the National Security Agency to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.