There was a shooting two days ago (9/16) in DC. The details are still sketchy as I write this, but it appears that a deranged man decided to kill other people for some reason. In response, the usual talking heads will be debating whether this is actual Terror or merely something like it. But the T-word will be spoken in the same grave way we speak of cancer - a thing to be dreaded above all else.

Certainly this shooting was a horrible, tragic thing - especially for the families involved. But that said, any talk about an "age of terror" is utter drivel.

Terror is NOT worse now than it was before 9/11 - it's just that we've been bombarded with fear for more than a decade, creating a culture-wide residue that poisons every mind it touches. In actual fact, you are eight times more likely to be killed by a SWAT Team cop than a terrorist. Does that mean that we should all have a collective panic attack and beg for anti-SWAT SWAT Teams?

Now here's the truth they don't want you to know: You are taught to fear because fear makes you easy to manipulate. If someone is making you afraid, they're also making you into an easy mark - a sucker.  Our government wants us to live in fear.

Think of how many things people have accepted from governments just because they were afraid. Things like complete online surveillance, crotch searches at airports, random searches on the highways, and so on. Do you think those would have been accepted in 1920? Of course they wouldn't, because people hadn't been sufficiently frightened at that time.

[This was originally in To The Point for July 4, 2004. This is the version for 2008.  We at To The Point wish all of you an exceedingly happy Fourth of July.]

July 4th is Freedom's Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which are great - that you take the time to feel good about America.

Put aside your worries and concerns, your frustrations and fears about what's wrong with America. For one day, forget the negative - put it all in a zip-lock bag, hide it in the back of the freezer, and pretend it doesn't exist.

You travel around the world and you see the remnants of history's great civilizations. You walk through the preserved wreckage of Rome's Imperial Forum or the Acropolis of Ancient Athens and you wonder -- what was it really like to be here when these civilizations were at their peak? You can do that today in Washington DC -- or your hometown.

We Americans are privileged to live in one of history's supreme moments. We Americans are participants in one of history's greatest civilizations in its prime.

Someday in some future epoch, history will have moved on, and there will be distant centuries between that time and the American Era. People will then look upon America as we do upon ancient Egypt or Greece, and will do so with same wonder and awe.

I suggest you look upon America with that wonder and awe now.

Fall, winter, spring, we at To The Point endeavor to have the TTP Weekly Report issued like clockwork - every Friday by noon.  (So it's always pretty crazy Thursdays and Friday mornings!) 

Summers are different, this summer especially.  By the time you get this, I'll be off to run a safari in the Serengeti, then to various remote islands in the Indian Ocean.

The good news about this is that you'll learn all kinds of fascinating things about some of the world's weirder places.  The not-so-good news is that many of these places don't have an internet connection.  Which means there's no way to have a regular Weekly Report schedule.

So here's what we'll do:  post articles and columns whenever and as soon as we can throughout each week.  I normally edit every single item posted on TTP - but in my absence, our back-up editors will step up to the plate.

I'll also launch a new feature for To The Point called The Potpourri.

[Note:  Paul Rosenberg, has spent many years trying to protect Internet users from unjustified surveillance by groups like the NSA. Many TTPers subscribe to his Virtual Private Network (VPN) called - for reasons known only to him - Cryptohippie, to avoid tracking by the snoops. I never go online without it.  Here Paul discusses the latest revelation of unconstitutional NSA Orwellian fascism. -JW]

On September 5th, Glenn Greenwald, Ed Snowden and others revealed that the NSA was able to break the vast majority of encryption used on the Internet. You can find the story here or here, and commentary by cryptographer Bruce Schneier here.

In the NSA documents, ordinary Internet customers are referred to as "adversaries."  We're all perps now. If all Internet users are "adversaries," do you really think anyone is safe?

Forget about the US Constitution; it's a non-factor now. This is just the latest example of people who are drunk on power and don't care about the principles on which this country was founded.

The NSA and the entire US/UK "security" apparatus is a gigantic drunken beast. The operators are arrogant and untouchable.  The reality is, the system is beyond broken, no matter what kind of happy talk you hear on TV. Here's what this means to you.

Everyone says they "support our troops" fighting in Iraq.  Liberals just pretend they do - while conservatives are sincere but may not know how to for real. 

The first step in really supporting our soldiers is to understand they believe in what they are doing.  Hundreds of thousands of the finest young Americans our country possesses have served in Iraq or are there right now.  All but the tiniest fraction not only believe in the morality of this war but that it can be won.

How can you directly support them?  Let me introduce you to Major Eric England, an Air Force intelligence officer who has been deployed in Saudi Arabia (where he was on 9/11), Bosnia, Colombia, Afghanistan, and in Iraq for eight months of combat duty.

Maj. England is developing a very interesting way for regular folks to give soldiers in Iraq what they actually need.  He calls it Online Troop Sponsorship Registries.  Here's how it works.