A Good American

What the hell is going on

2008-04-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

There is to much going on at this time to put into words I dont know what to make of all the information , all information has been from over sea news and information systems.not much on any of this on American media news if you find any more information please send a email.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&tab=wn&ncl=1146305083

Analysis: Return of the 'miscalculation'

Jerusalem Post, Israel - 3 hours ago

By YAAKOV KATZ On Wednesday morning, Israel awoke to a headline in the London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi saying Syria had concentrated troops and tanks ...

Israel worried Syrian army moves a preamble for Hezbollah op

Ha'aretz, Israel - 3 hours ago

Israel is concerned that recent actions by the Syrian armed forces are a possible preamble for a Hezbollah operation against the northern border and a ...

Crossfire War - Israel/ Iran-Hezbollah-Syria Rush to Complete War ...

NewsBlaze, CA - 8 hours ago

By Willard Payne Night Watch: BEIRUT - Iran-Hezbollah-Syria are competing with Israel as to who can be ready first for the most serious regional war since ...

Israel: No tension in north

PRESS TV, Iran - 10 hours ago

The Israeli regime has denied reports that there is tension on the northern borders, saying such reports are unfounded. The remarks came less than a day ...

Syria reportedly mobilizing reserves - Damascus denies

Jerusalem Newswire, Israel - 11 hours ago

By Stan Goodenough Syria's armed forces have reportedly been put on alert and its reserves called up, according to a report in the London-based Arabic ...

Massive war drill next week

Jerusalem Newswire, Israel - 11 hours ago

By Stan Goodenough Tens of thousands of Israelis are to participate next week in a nationwide emergency drill that will simulate a massive missile strike on ...

Hizbullah's for Arab-Iranian Cooperation Against Israel

Naharnet, Lebanon - 11 hours ago

Hizbullah's Parliamentary bloc on Wednesday said the recent Arab Summit in Damascus has set the grounds for patching up Arab differences. ...

Israel to distribute gas-masks as report claims Syria fears attack

Al-Bawaba, Jordan - 12 hours ago

Syria on Wednesday denied a report according to which its army has heightened its alert over fears for an Israeli strike. "The report, which was published ...

Israel warns Hezbollah: Don't test us!

United Press International - 13 hours ago

JERUSALEM, April 2 (UPI) -- Israel is concerned Syria has transferred chemical weapons to Hezbollah, while Syria has braced for an invasion, analysts said. ...

Israeli Attack on Syria Unlikely Right Now, Analyst Says

CNSNews.com, VA - 14 hours ago

By Julie Stahl Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Syria has called up reserve forces and is conducting large-scale military maneuvers in preparation for an ...

Syria has reportedly mobilized its military in anticipation of a ...

Jewish Telegraphic Agency, NY - 15 hours ago

Israel would launch war soon, Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported Wednesday citing sources in Damascus. The claims in the London-based newspaper appeared to follow ...

Syria 'preparing to repel Israel attacks'

PRESS TV, Iran - 16 hours ago

Syria is conducting wide-scale military exercises in preparation for an Israeli strike which might be combined with an attack on Hezbollah. ...

Syria Deploys Troops to Border

Christian Broadcasting Network, VA - 16 hours ago

CBNNews.com - According to the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, Syrian troops are on high alert against an Israeli invasion. ...

Syrian official denies concentrating forces, summoning reserves

Jerusalem Post, Israel - 17 hours ago

By YANIV BERMAN, THE MEDIA LINE NEWS AGENCY Syria has denied a report according to which it has concentrated forces along the Lebanese border and summoned ...

What the Arab papers said on April 2:

Middle East Times, Egypt - 17 hours ago

Al-Quds al-Arabi (London): Syria in large-scale maneuvers reinforces reserve units to counter Israeli attack – Top Syrian sources told Al-Quds al-Arabi the ...

Israel: Iran has set up listening stations in Syria to intercept ...

International Herald Tribune, France - 18 hours ago

AP JERUSALEM: Israeli security officials say Iran has set up sophisticated listening stations in Syria in recent months to intercept Israeli military ...

Syria Sounding War Alert, Calling Reserves For What It Thinks Will ...

Infolive.tv, Israel - 18 hours ago

Syria believes Israel will attack Hizbullah pre-emptively, and that the IDF may cut off the Beirut-Damascus Road in order to stop arms from being shipped to ...

Exclusive: Israel orders bio/chemical warfare masks redistributed ...

DEBKA file, Israel - 18 hours ago

Israel’s security cabinet convened Wednesday, April 2, to examine the homeland’s preparedness for war. It decided to redistribute the bio/chemical warfare ...

Report: Syria calling up reserve forces fearing Israeli offensive

Ha'aretz, Israel - 20 hours ago

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent Syria's military has called up part of its reserve force over fears of an Israel Defense Forces offensive, ...

MidEast Daily News

The Media Line, NY - 20 hours ago

NATO must have “21st-Century capabilities,” as it “prepares for the threats of the future,” United States President George W. Bush said in a speech in ...

Syria Preparing For Battle With Israel, Believes Israel Will ...

Infolive.tv, Israel - 20 hours ago

Syria has been calling up reservist soldiers in recent days in anticipation of an Israeli strike against Hizbullah. Damascus believes such an operation may ...

'Syria drafting reserves in preparation for Israeli attack'

Jerusalem Post, Israel - 21 hours ago

By JPOST.COM STAFF Damascus is preparing for a large-scale Israeli attack on Syria and Hizbullah, London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported Wednesday. ...

Report: Syrian reservists called up for fear of Israeli strike

Ynetnews, Israel - 22 hours ago

London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper quotes sources in Damascus as saying Syria views Israeli media reports, IDF commanders' statements as incitement, ...

CRC Open Sources

Family Security Matters, NJ - Apr 1, 2008

Yesterday, the Counterterrorism Research Center received a letter from one of our sources regarding the Syrian government’s investigation into the death of ...

Apr 1, 2008

by Gershon Baskin (*) Jerusalem April 02, 2008 - Here we are 40 years later and instead of speaking about the Arab-Israeli conflict,

Apr 1, 2008

TEL AVIV — Israel plans to conduct its largest exercise ever to set contingencies for massive missile attacks by Iran and Syria.

Apr 1, 2008

Israeli war minister Ehud Barak claims the regime has learnt many lessons from the Lebanon war to stand against Hezbollah's great power

Apr 1, 2008

By David Bedein, The Bulletin Jerusalem - "I propose to Syria and Hezbollah not to try us. Israel is still the strongest country within a 1500-kilometer

Apr 1, 2008

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday warned the Hizbullah not to "test" Israel. "The soldiers of the Israeli army are watching everything

Mar 31, 2008

By Aaron Klein JAFFA – Israel and Syria engaged in recent secret talks mediated by Turkey, Syrian President Bashar Assad confirmed in an interview yesterday

2008-03-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

The Ten Steps Of Fascism

Original article by Ernest Stewart on
http://www.opednews.com

1. Create a terrifying internal and external enemy.

A good place to look for this enemy is in a minority population within the country. Some group already marginalized by the people. You can do this by staging a false flag attack, by burning down your Reichstag or by looking the other way while your patsies fly airliners into buildings. Then you...

2. Create your very own gulag archipelago.

To be really effective these concentration camps should be both foreign and domestic. Just as Bush has done throughout the world from Poland to Cuba to Texas. Once they are established and accepted by the populace you may begin building them locally. You'll then need to...

3. Develop your own "Brown Shirted" Thugs.

They can be a private army like Amerikkka's very own Blackwater who'll work hand-in-hand with the local Gestapo as they did in New Orleans in the round up of all those pesky darkies from their private property. These groups are used not only to intimidate your target group but the general populace as well. An example could be the RNC hit squads sent to Florida to disrupt the vote recount back in December 2000. Or as recently as last week when the so-called "gathering of eagles" gang got their kicks by attacking unsuspecting, peaceful, anti-war protestors; I understand that beating old men and little girls is a specialty of theirs. The next step is to...

4. Set up a surveillance system.

First you'll announce that this will only be used against the enemy and not against citizens but soon it will become apparent that everyone is being watched. The citizenry will then be told that if they have nothing to hide they shouldn't be concerned, The state will then suggest that neighbors spy on neighbors thus splitting the citizens up. This is important because it's the only practical way to control the population with just 4% of the people in power and the other 96% as slaves. If the people stand together the dictatorship will fail. Once the people are being watched then it's time to...

5. Attack citizens' groups

The best way to do this to infiltrate the groups being targeted whether it's church or anti-war groups. This is an old American tradition dating back centuries and is very effective, especially when the group suspects that one or more of it's members is working for the state. This will, of course, begin to splinter the group which may be the most important thing that the state can do. Then...

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

Ask any of the anti-war protestors how this works. I'm willing to bet that Cindy Sheehan and Ken Ashe could write several books on the subject. This is designed to make examples and scare the general populace. This is also very popular in China and Russia except that there they are not really "catch and release" programs but catch, announce and keep programs! Next you'll need to...

7. Target opposition leaders...

A leaderless army becomes a mob and is easily dealt with. In a tradition that dates back to the Romans, dictators target members of academia as they did in Italy and Germany during WWII and as we have done today on campuses all across America. Other good targets are entertainers. Ask Yoko what they did to John Lennon during the Vietnam War or the Dixie Chicks how this works today! Of course, none of this will work unless you...

8. Control the Media

While most all of the media has long been controlled by various and sundry corpo-rat goons they were forced for the most part to give both sides of a story if they wanted to stay in business. The most important part of the media, i.e. TV, was ruled by a "Fairness Doctrine" from 1949 until the Crime Family Bush had it repealed by their puppet, old Dementia Head, and the judicial criminals Robert Bork and Antonin (Tony Light-Fingers) Scalia and the head of the FCC, a Ray-Guns appointee who ended the law in 1987 saying that it interfered with 1st amendment rights. So now all TV "news" is carefully controlled rat-wing nonsense, where you never ever hear the truth. Do you wonder why the Sheeple are brain washed? The next step is claiming that...

9. Dissent equals treason

You're either with us, or against us! Ring any bells? After you've done all of the above the final step to the "final solution" is to...

10. Suspend the rule of law

From signing statements putting Smirky above the law to "The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" giving him control of the National guard through the "Military Commissions Act" which suspends the 6th amendment amongst other things. Step by step the fascists in control of America have bit-by-bit chiseled away most of our rights. In fact, all that stands between us and total dictatorial power is an excuse to institute Martial Law which Bush can do whenever it pleases him.

2008-03-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Naomi Wolf
The Guardian,
Tuesday April 24 2007
Article history

This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday April 24 2007 on p4 of the Comment & features section. It was last updated at 20:02 on April 24 2007.

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

2008-03-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

German Reichstag 1933 and Hitler

Today is the 74th anniversary of the Enabling Act by the German Reichstag which essentially grated Adolf Hitler dictatorial legislative powers.

More than 5 years ago, the United States Congress enacted the Patriot Act.

Since the enactment of the Patriot Act, America has changed so much that the office of the President is more similar to a dictatorship then a co-equal branch of government.

The Reichstag in the early 1930's became subservient to a lone "leader", a "decider." Similarly, the United States Congress in the years since the "War on Terror" began, has become subservient to our decider.

There is no need to say much more. We are slowly giving up our sacred branches of government and instilling the Executive Branch with overwhelming and unaccountable power. The same mistake that many fearful Germans fell for in 1933 can happen in this country in 2007.

No President Bush is no Hitler. But his blatant disregard for the other branches of government is without doubt.

Let's not make the Patriot Act become an Enabling Act.

2008-03-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

USA "Patriot" Act
version 1.0, 2.0, and beyond
the "Enabling Act" to attack domestic dissent about global empire

Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act

related page:

Anthrax and the "USA PATRIOT" Act
www.oilempire.us/anthrax.html

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one."
- Adolf Hitler, promise to the Reichstag (Parliament) on the occasion of the "Enabling Act," the imposition of "temporary" dictatorship following the Reichstag Fire. www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm

Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.	Free speech isn't a reality when the government is reading our emails, tapping our phones, and intimidating the public into being quiet about crimes of state.
Amendment II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.	The Second Amendment was established to balance federal power with local militia. The federalizing of the National Guard (1973) overturned this right.
Amendment III No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.	The Patriot Act's "sneak and peek" provisions allowed federal agents to snoop in your home without notice and without a warrant.
Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.	The ECHELON program of the National Security Agency made this right moot a long time ago.
Amendment V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.	Corruption in the judicial system is so entrenched that this right also vanished decades ago.
Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.	The declaration from the dictator that certain persons can be designated "enemy combatants" removed from any judicial oversight is an invalidation of this right. This abuse of power could easily be scaled up to encompass much larger numbers of victims.
Amendment VII In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.	The "enemy combatants" declaration shows that this right has been invalidated by the regime.
Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.	A peaceful protestor at the 2000 Republican National Convention was detailed on a one million dollar bail for an alleged misdemeanor. This right to be free from cruelty is a nice idea.
Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.	We the People have the power to take back the country, if we really want to.
Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.	The Constitution did not provide for the establishment of a National Security State beyond the rule of law.

The USA PATRIOT Act is similar to the Enabling Act passed in Germany in 1933 after the "burning of the Reichstag" (parliament), since both were after a terrorist act blamed on foreign infiltrators. It's not an exact parallel, since the UPA isn't quite as draconian as the Enabling Act, but it is a close historical analogy.

However, the pending "Domestic Security Enhancement Act" - also known as "Patriot Two" - would be closer to Hitler's Enabling Act. The DSEA allows for stripping US citizens of citizenship if they are assumed to be acting for a foreign power as inferred by their conduct, which is an extremely dangerous definition. Once stripped of citizenship, Americans could then be held in indefinite detention. This is very similar to the legal pretexts used in Nazi Germany to round up dissidents, and later, to deport Jews to the death camps.

Congressional Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is the only Presidential candidate who called for REPEAL OF THE PATRIOT ACT. This position was on the front of his web page, which is at www.kucinich.us

The unPatriotic Act was promulgated on the fiction that the government couldn't "connect the dots" of clues about 9/11, and that it, and the Homeland Security Department, were needed to prevent another 9/11 from happening again. Failure to question 9/11 is tacit support for the USA PATRIOT ACT.

Patriot Act vs, German Enabling Act:

The Decrees of 1933

(a) The February 28 Decree. One of the most repressive acts of the new Nazi government, this one allowed for the suspension of civil liberties ....The president was persuaded that the state was in danger and, hence, that the emergency measures embodied in the decree were necessary. Even though under Art. 48 of the constitution, the decree would have been withdrawn once the so-called emergency had passed, any hope of this happening was prevented by the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship following the Enabling Act (see below). It was in fact never withdrawn and remained until the end as an instrument of Nazi terror against ordinary citizens who ran foul of the regime.
ARTICLE 1. In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence , endangering the state:
Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
*Article 48 of the German Constitution of August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 ...........

Patriot Act:

Section 218 which amends the "probable cause" requirement before conducting secret searches or surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime;
Sections 215, 218, 358, and 508 which permit law enforcement authorities to have broad access to sensitive mental health, library, business, financial, and educational records despite the existence of previously adopted state and federal laws which were intended to strengthen the protection of these types of records;
Sections 411 and 412 which give the Secretary of State broad powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and the Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation even if no crime has been committed; and
Sections 507 and 508 which impose a mandate on state and local public universities who must collect information on students that may be of interest to the Attorney General.

Libraries post Patriot Act warnings
Santa Cruz branches tell patrons that FBI may spy on them
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/03/10/MN14634.DTL

Congress Expands FBI Spying Power
By Ryan Singel
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61341,00.html
02:00 AM Nov. 24, 2003 PT
Congress approved a bill on Friday that expands the reach of the Patriot Act, reduces oversight of the FBI and intelligence agencies and, according to critics, shifts the balance of power away from the legislature and the courts.

Post Office Wants to ID the Mail
By Ryan Singel
Story location: www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60966,00.html
02:00 AM Oct. 27, 2003 PT
Sending a letter may soon require more than a 37-cent stamp. It might also require a valid photo ID

It Didn't Take Long, Did It?
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com
Friday 15 July 2005

Well, it didn't take long, did it?
In the USA, the curtain opened on new anti-terror follies Wednesday when three Senate committees, in blustery response to the London bombings, voted to extend the power of the FBI under the Patriot Act to obtain library records without a subpoena. Exactly what suicide bomber or sleeper cell has so far been exposed by this powerful new intelligence weapon, we are not told. Did Osama fail to return his copy of 'Harry Potter'? Or 'Hijacking for Idiots'?
What we have here is the great con: to get us to pull each other's hair over the sanctity of library card privacy. We're dragged into some nit-wit debate over the "balance between security and civil liberties" - with the defenders of America against terrorism sneering at the sissies from the ACLU.
Civil libertarians are all shook up that the FBI is going through our summer reading list. My concern is deeper. What I want to know is, who at the FBI is poring over my choice of novels, how much do we pay this guy and why isn't he reviewing Swiss and Pakistani bank transfer records instead

The unPatriotic Act

http://bordc.org/patriot2.htm
Summaries of "Victory Act" and other reincarnations of Patriot II

Download the "Son of Patriot Act" - read how the Bush / Ashkroft regime wants to abolish civil liberties under the cover of another "terrorist" attack

www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/PA2draft.txt (text format)

www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/PA2draft.html (html format)

www.pbs.org/now/politics/patriot2-hi.pdf (PDF format - large file)

www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/USAPA.html

"A president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power."
--William Safire (Republican former speechwriter for President Nixon), New York Times, "Seizing dictatorial power", November 15, 2001

Center for Law and the Public's Health
Model Health Emergency Law
www.publichealthlaw.net/
a law that is worse than the Patriot Act

Analyses of "unPatriotic Act 2"

"With the INS reorganized as of March 1 and operating within the Department of Homeland Security, policies against immigrants and citizens that are undemocratic, un-American, and inhumane are likely to continue unabated. And, if and when the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (already nick-named Patriot II), becomes law, any American citizen, American citizens who support the lawful activities of an organization the executive branch deems "terrorist" may be presumptively stripped of their citizenship and deported to parts unknown or detained by INS indefinitely."
The War on Immigrants: Detained in America By ELAINE CASSEL
www.counterpunch.org/cassel03122003.html

www.counterpunch.org/neale04102003.html
April 10, 2003
A Patriot Attack on America - Ashcroft's War on the Bill of Rights
By GEOFFREY NEALE
With public attention riveted on the war in Iraq, politicians may be planning to launch a sneak attack against the American people.
Their weapon: Patriot II, a piece of legislation that would give the government frightening new powers, including the ability to make secret arrests, issue secret subpoenas, create a vast new DNA database and even strip Americans of their citizenship and deport them.
Formally called The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (DSEA), the legislation has been shrouded in secrecy, prompting civil liberties groups to fear the government has been waiting for an opportunity -- such as war or another terrorist attack -- to rush it through Congress.

Executive Orders Issued by President George W. Bush

2008-03-31T09:23:00.000-07:00

Executive Orders Issued by President George W. Bush

Date	Executive Order
2008
Feb. 29	Executive Order: President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board
Feb. 15	Executive Order: Providing An Order of Succession Within the Department of Health and Human Services
Feb. 13	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Additional Persons in Connection with the National Emergency with Respect to Syria
Feb. 7	Executive Order: Improving the Coordination and Effectiveness of Youth Programs
Feb. 5	Executive Order: Implementation of the Protocol Additional to the Agreement Between the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards in the United States of America
Jan. 29	Executive Order: Protecting American Taxpayers From Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks
Jan. 23	Executive Order: Further Amendment of Executive Order 11858 Concerning Foreign Investment in the United States
Jan. 22	Executive Order: Establishing the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy
Jan. 4	Executive Order: Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay
2007
Dec. 6	Executive Order: Closing of Executive Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government on Monday, December 24, 2007
Nov. 28	Executive Order: Establishing An Emergency Board to Investigate Disputes Between the National Railroad Passenger Corporation and Certain of Its Employees Represented by Certain Labor Organizations
Nov. 19	Executive Order: President Bush Designates The ITER International Fusion Energy Organization As a Public International Organization
Nov. 13	Executive Order: Improving Government Program Performance
Oct. 20	Executive Order: Protection of Striped Bass and Red Drum Fish Populations
Oct. 19	Executive Order: Blocking Property and Prohibiting Certain Transactions Related to Burma
Sept. 28	Executive Order: Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees and Amendments to and Revocation of Other Executive Orders
Sept. 28	Executive Order: Further 2007 Amendments to the Manual for Courts Martial, United States
Sept. 27	Executive Order: Strengthening Adult Education
Sept. 12	Executive Order: Extending Privileges and Immunities to the African Union Mission to the United States
Aug. 17	Executive Order: Facilitation of Hunting Heritage and Wildlife Conservation
Aug. 13	Executive Order: Amending the Order of Succession in the Department of Homeland Security
Aug. 2	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Persons Undermining the Sovereignty of Lebanon or Its Democratic Processes and Institutions
Jul. 20	Executive Order: Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency
Jul. 18	Executive Order: Establishing An Interagency Working Group on Import Safety
Jul. 17	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq
Jun. 29	Executive Order: Further Amending Executive Order 13381, as Amended, to Extend Its Duration by One Year
Jun. 29	Executive Order: Waiver Under the Trade Act of 1974 with Respect to Turkmenistan
Jun. 20	Executive Order: Expanding Approved Stem Cell Lines in Ethically Responsible Ways
May 17	Executive Order: National Security Professional Development
May 16	Executive Order: Protecting American Taxpayers From Payment of Contingency Fees
May 14	Fact Sheet: Twenty in Ten: Strengthening Energy Security and Addressing Climate Change
May 14	Executive Order: Cooperation Among Agencies in Protecting the Environment with Respect to Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Motor Vehicles, Nonroad Vehicles, and Nonroad Engines
May 9	Executive Order: Establishment of Temporary Organization to Facilitate United States Government Assistance for Transition in Iraq
Apr. 18	Executive Order: 2007 Amendments to the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States
Apr. 4	Executive Order: Establishing An Emergency Board to Investigate a Dispute Between Metro-North Railroad and Its Maintenance of Way Employees Represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Apr. 2	Executive Order: Renaming a National Forest in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Mar. 7	Executive Order: Extending Privileges and Immunities to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations
Mar. 6	Executive Order: Establishing a Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors and a Task Force on Returning Global War on Terror Heroes
Feb. 14	Executive Order Trial of Alien Unlawful Enemy Combatants by Military Commission
Jan. 26	Executive Order: Further Amendment to Executive Order 13285, Relating to the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation
Jan. 24	Executive Order: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management
Jan. 18	Executive Order: Further Amendment to Executive Order 12866 on Regulatory Planning and Review
2006
Dec. 28	Executive Order: Providing for the Closing of Government Departments and Agencies on January 2, 2007
Dec. 21	Executive Order: Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay
Dec. 20	Executive Order: National Aeronautics Research and Development
Dec. 14	Executive Order: Amendment to Executive Order 13317, Volunteers for Prosperity
Dec. 6	Executive Order Establishing An Emergency Board to Investigate Disputes Between Metro-North Railroad and Certain of Its Employees Represented by Certain Labor Organizations
Dec. 5	Executive Order: Strengthening Surface Transportation Security
Dec. 1	Executive Order: Assignment of Certain Pay-Related Functions
Nov. 3	Executive Order: Amendment to Executive Order 13402, Strengthening Federal Efforts to Protect Against Identity Theft
Oct. 31	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Oct. 13	Executive Order: Blocking Property of and Prohibiting Transactions with the Government of Sudan
Aug. 29	Executive Order: Improving Assistance for Disaster Victims
Aug. 22	Executive Order: Promoting Quality and Efficient Health Care in Federal Government Administered or Sponsored Health Care Programs
Jul. 3	Executive Order: Establishing An Emergency Board to Investigate a Dispute Between Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and Its Locomotive Engineers Represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen
Jun. 29	Executive Order Amending Executive Order 13381, as Amended, to Extend Its Duration by One Year
Jun. 26	Executive Order: Public Alert and Warning System
Jun. 23	Executive Order: Protecting the Property Rights of the American People
Jun. 19	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Undermining Democratic Processes or Institutions in Belarus
Jun. 7	Executive Order: Task Force on New Americans
May 12	Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Orders 11030, 13279, 13339, 13381, and 13389, and Revocation of Executive Order 13011
May 10	Executive Order: Strengthening Federal Efforts to Protect Against Identity Theft
Apr. 27	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Persons in Connection with the Conflict in Sudan's Darfur Region
Apr. 27	Executive Order: Responsibilities of Federal Departments and Agencies with Respect to Volunteer Community Service
Apr. 26	Executive Order Blocking Property of Additional Persons in Connection with the National Emergency with Respect to Syria
Apr. 18	Executive Order: National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Mar. 7	Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Feb. 8	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in Côte D'Ivoire
Jan. 13	Executive Order: Designating the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria as a Public International Organization Entitled to Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities
2005
Dec. 22	Executive Order: Providing An Order of Succession Within the Department of Defense
Dec. 22	Executive Order: Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay
Dec. 14	Executive Order: Improving Agency Disclosure of Information
Nov. 23	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Additional Persons Undermining Democratic Process or Institutions in Zimbabwe
Nov. 1	Executive Order: Creation of the Gulf Coast Recovery and Rebuilding Council
Nov. 1	Executive Order: Establishment of a Coordinator of Federal Support for the Recovery and Rebuilding of the Gulf Coast Region
Oct. 25	Executive Order: Further Strengthening the Sharing of Terrorism Information to Protect Americans
Oct. 14	Executive Order: 2005 Amendments to the Manual for Courts Martial, United States
Sept. 30	Executive Order: Further Amendment to Executive Order 13369, Relating to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform
Sept. 30	Executive Order: Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees and Amendments to and Revocation of Other Executive Orders
Jul. 27	Executive Order: Assignment of Functions Relating to Original Appointments as Commissioned Officers and Chief Warrant Officer Appointments in the Armed Forces
Jul. 15	Executive Order: Amending Executive Orders 12139 and 12949 in Light of Establishment of the Office of Director of National Intelligence
Jun. 29	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and Their Supporters
Jun. 28	Executive Order: Strengthening Processes Relating to Determining Eligibility for Access to Classified National Security Information
Jun. 17	Executive Order: Implementing Amendments to Agreement on Border Environment Cooperation Commission and North American Development Bank
Jun. 16	Executive Order: Amendment to Executive Order 13369, Relating to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform
May 12	Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Order 12788 Relating to the Defense Economic Adjustment Program
Apr. 13	Executive Order: Designating the African Union as a Public International Organization Entitled to Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities
Apr. 13	Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Order 12863
Apr. 1	Executive Order: Amendment to E.O. 13295 Relating to Certain Influenza Viruses and Quarantinable Communicable Diseases
Mar. 14	Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Order 12293
Mar. 10	Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Order 11926 Relating to the Vice Presidential Service Badge
Feb. 16	Executive Order: Clarification of Certain Executive Orders Blocking Property and Prohibiting Certain Transactions
Jan. 27	Executive Order: Amendments to Executive Order 13285
Jan. 13	Executive Order: Providing An Order of Succession in the Office of Management and Budget
Jan. 7	Personnel Announcement
Jan. 7	Executive Order: President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform
2004
Dec. 30	Executive Order: Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay
Dec. 21	Executive Order: United States-Mexico Border Health Commission
Dec. 17	Executive Order: Committee on Ocean Policy
Dec. 3	Executive Order: 2004 Amendments to the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States
Nov. 29	Executive Order: Modifying the Protection Granted to the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Property in Which Iraq Has An Interest and Protecting the Central Bank of Iraq
Nov. 29	Executive Order: Establishing the Afghanistan and Iraq Campaign Medals
Nov. 29	Executive Order: Designation of Additional Officers for the Department of Homeland Security Order of Succession
Oct. 21	Executive Order: Service-Disabled Veterans Executive Order
Oct. 21	Executive Order: Central San Joaquin Valley
Oct. 19	Executive Order: Notice Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Significant Narcotics Traffickers Centered in Colombia
Sept. 28	Executive Order: Assignment of Functions Relating to Certain Appointments, Promotions, and Commissions in the Armed Forces
Sept. 20	Message to the Congress of the United States
Sept. 20	Executive Order: Termination of Emergency Declared in Executive Order 12543 With Respect to the Policies and Actions of the Government of Libya and Revocation of Related Executive Orders
Aug. 27	Executive Order: Strengthened Management of the Intelligence Community
Aug. 27	Executive Order National Counterterrorism Center
Aug. 27	Executive Order Strengthening the Sharing of Terrorism Information to Protect Americans
Aug. 27	Executive Order Establishing the President's Board on Safeguarding Americans' Civil Liberties
Aug. 26	Executive Order Facilitation of Cooperative Conservation
Jul. 29	Executive Order
Jul. 23	Executive Order: Amending the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to Serve as the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel
Jul. 23	Executive Order Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting the Importation of Certain Goods From Liberia
Jul. 22	Executive Order: Individuals with Disabilities in Emergency Preparedness
Jul. 15	President Bush Signs Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act
Jul. 8	Executive Order Delegation of Certain Waiver, Determination, Certification, Recommendation, and Reporting Functions
Jul. 8	Executive Order Assigning Foreign Affairs Functions and Implementing the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative and the Tropical Forest Conservation Act
Jul. 7	Executive Order: Amending Executive Order 13261 on the Order of Succession in the Environmental Protection Agency
Jun. 24	Notice Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to the Western Balkans
Jun. 6	Executive Order Providing for the Closing of Government Departments and Agencies on June 11, 2004
Jun. 1	Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Commerce and Veterans Affairs and the Small Business Administration with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
May 20	Executive Order: Further Amendment to Executive Order 11023, Providing for the Performance by the Secretary of Commerce of Certain Functions Relating to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
May 18	Executive Order: Establishment of Great Lakes Interagency Task Force and Promotion of a Regional Collaboration of National Significance for the Great Lakes
May 13	Executive Order: Increasing Economic Opportunity and Business Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
May 11	Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting the Export of Certain Goods to Syria
Apr. 30	Executive Order: Issuance of Permits with Respect to Certain Energy-Related Facilities and Land Transportation Crossings on the International Boundaries of the United States
Apr. 30	Executive Order: American Indian and Alaska Native Education
Apr. 27	Executive Order: Incentives for the Use of Health Information Technology and Establishing the Position of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator
Mar. 18	Executive Order: Amending Executive Order 13257 to Implement the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003
Mar. 3	Executive Order: Further Adjustment of Certain Rates of Pay
Feb. 27	Executive Order: National and Community Service Programs
Feb. 24	Executive Order: Human Service Transportation Coordination
Feb. 24	Executive Order: Encouraging Innovation in Manufacturing
Feb. 6	Executive Order: Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction
Feb. 4	Executive Order: Federal Real Property Asset Management
Jan. 30	Executive Order: President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy
Jan. 23	Executive Order: Amendment to Executive Order 12293, the Foreign Service of the United States
Jan. 16	Executive Order: Termination of Emergency with Respect to Sierra Leone and Liberia
2003
Dec. 30	Executive Order Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay
Dec. 30	Executive Order Assignment of Functions Relating to Arrivals in and Departures from the United States
Dec. 17	Executive Order Appointments During National Emergency
Dec. 9	Executive Order
Dec. 5	Executive Order
Nov. 21	Executive Order
Sept. 25	Executive Order Volunteers for Prosperity
Sept. 17	Order Designation Under Executive Order 12958
Sept. 17	Executive Order
Aug. 29	Executive Order
Aug. 22	Statement on Executive Order 13224
Aug. 8	Executive Order
Jul. 31	Executive Order
Jul. 29	Executive Order
Jul. 29	Executive Order: HSIS
Jul. 28	Executive Order
Jul. 25	Executive Act on Intellectual Disabilities
Jun. 20	Executive Order
May 29	Executive Order
May 29	Executive Order: European Central Bank
May 29	Executive Order Establishing the Bob Hope American Patriot Award
May 22	Executive Order
May 16	Executive Order Amending Executive Order 13212, Actions to Expedite Energy-Related Projects
May 14	Executive Order
May 9	Executive Order: Facilitating the Administration of Justice in the Federal Courts
May 8	Executive Order Interagency Group on Insular Areas
May 7	Executive Order
Apr. 23	Executive Order
Apr. 18	Executive Order
Mar. 28	Executive Order
Mar. 28	Executive Order
Mar. 25	Executive Order
Mar. 24	Executive Order: Further Adjustment of Certain Rates of Pay
Mar. 20	Executive Order: Confiscating and Vesting Certain Iraqi Property
Mar. 12	Establishing the Global War on Terrorism Medals
Mar. 7	Executive Order: Blocking Property Of Persons Undermining Democratic Processes Or Institutions In Zimbabwe
Mar. 4	Executive Order: Preserve America
Feb. 28	Executive Order Amendment of Executive Orders, and Other Actions, in Connection with the Transfer of Certain Functions to the Secretary of Homeland Security
Jan. 30	Executive Order: President's Council on Service and Civic Participation
Jan. 24	Executive Order
Jan. 21	Executive Order: Establishing the Office of Global Communications
2002
Dec. 31	Executive Order
Dec. 19	Executive Order: Half-Day Closing of Executive Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government on Tuesday, December 24, 2002
Dec. 12	Executive Order: Equal Protection of the Laws for Faith-based and Community Organizations
Dec. 12	Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Agriculture and the Agency for International Development with Respect to Faith-based and Community Initiatives
Dec. 11	Executive Order: President's Commission on the United States Postal Service
Nov. 20	Executive Order: Delegation of Certain Authorities and Assignment of Certain Functions Under the Trade Act of 2002
Nov. 15	Executive Order Regarding Undocumented Aliens in the Caribbean Region
Oct. 7	Executive Order: Creating a Board of Inquiry to Report on Certain Labor Disputes Affecting the Maritime Industry of the United States
Sept. 18	Executive Order: Environmental Stewardship and Transportation Infrastructure Project Reviews
Aug. 29	Executive Order: Further Amending Executive Order 10173, as Amended, Prescribing Regulations Relating to the Safeguarding of Vessels, Harbors, Ports, and Waterfront Facilities of the United States
Aug. 13	Executive Order: Proper Consideration of Small Entities in Agency Rulemaking
Jul. 9	Executive Order Establishment of the Corporate Fraud Task Force
Jul. 3	Expedited Naturalization Executive Order
Jul. 3	Taliban Executive Order
Jun. 20	Executive Order
Jun. 20	Executive Order: President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports
Jun. 20	Executive Order: Activities to Promote Personal Fitness
Jun. 6	Executive Order Amendment to Executive Order 13180, Air Traffic Performance-Based Organization
Apr. 29	Executive Order: President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health
Apr. 12	Executive Order -- 2002 Amendments to the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States
Mar. 21	Homeland Security Council Executive Order
Mar. 19	Executive Order Providing An Order of Succession in the Environmental Protection Agency and Amending Certain Orders on Succession
Feb. 12	Advisors for Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Feb. 7	Executive Order: Amendment to Executive Order 13227, President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education
Jan. 30	Establishing the USA Freedom Corps
Jan. 17	Amendment to Executive Order 13223
Jan. 7	Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program
2001
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession in the Department of Veterans Affairs
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at the Department of State
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at the Department of Labor
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at the Department of Housing and Urban Development
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at the Department of Health and Human Services
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at the Department of Interior
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at the Department of Commerce
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession at Department of Agriculture
Dec. 29	Executive Order: Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay
Dec. 29	Executive Order on Succession in Department of Treasury
Dec. 28	Executive Orders on Succession in Federal Agencies
Dec. 27	Normal Trade Relations Treatment Executive Order
Dec. 21	Council of Europe in Respect of the Group of States Against Corruption
Dec. 20	Executive Order Establishing An Emergency Board
Dec. 14	Afghanistan Combat Zone Executive Order
Dec. 6	Executive Order for Federal Government Closure on Dec 24
Nov. 28	Executive Order: Creation of the President's Council on Bioethics
Nov. 27	Executive Order Waiver of Dual Compensation Provisions of the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement Act of 1964
Nov. 16	National Emergency Construction Authority Executive Order
Nov. 13	President Issues Military Order
Nov. 9	Citizen Preparedness in War on Terrorism Executive Order
Nov. 1	Presidential Records Act Executive Order
Oct. 22	Executive Order for Dept of Health and Human Services
Oct. 16	Executive Order on Critical Infrastructure Protection
Oct. 12	Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans Commission
Oct. 8	Executive Order Establishing Office of Homeland Security
Oct. 3	Executive Order on Excellence in Special Education
Oct. 1	Continuance of Federal Advisory Committees
Oct. 1	President Signs PCAST Executive Order
Sept. 24	Executive Order on Terrorist Financing
Sept. 14	President Orders Ready Reserves of Armed Forces to Active Duty
Aug. 17	Executive Order on Export Control Regulations
Jul. 31	Energy Efficient Standby Power Devices
Jul. 2	Executive Order
Jun. 20	President Bush Issues Executive Order Regarding 21st Century Workforce Initiative
Jun. 19	President Bush Issues Executive Order Regarding Community-Based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities
Jun. 6	Executive Order: Amendment To Executive Order 13125
Jun. 1	Executive Order
May 29	President's Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation's Veterans
May 23	Executive Order: Additional Measures with Respect to Prohibiting the Importation of Rough Diamonds from Sierra Leone
May 18	Executive Order: Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use
May 18	Executive Order: Actions to Expedite Energy-Related Projects
May 2	Executive Order: President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security
Apr. 30	Executive Order: Establishment of the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status
Apr. 6	Executive Order: Amendment to Executive Order 13202
Apr. 5	Executive Order: Further Amendment to Executive Order 10000
Apr. 4	Executive Order: Termination of Emergency Authority For Certain Export Controls
Mar. 9	Executive Order: Establishing an Emergency Board
Feb. 21	Executive Order on Preservation of Open Competition and Government Neutrality Towards Government Contractors' Labor Relations on Federal and Federally Funded Construction Projects
Feb. 21	Executive Order on Notification of Employee Rights Concerning Payment of Union Dues or Fees
Feb. 21	Executive Order: Revocation of Executive Order on Nondisplacement of Qualified Workers under Certain Contracts
Feb. 21	Executive Order and Presidential Memorandum Concerning Labor-Management Partnerships
Feb. 12	Executive Order on the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee
Jan. 29	Agency Responsibilities with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Jan. 29	Executive Order: Establishment of White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

2008-03-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

Patriot Act vs. Hitler's Enabling Act

Hitler Becomes Dictator

After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries old tradition of local political independence. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners.

Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp system.

At this time, these early concentration camps were loosely organized under the control of the SA and the rival SS. Many were little more than barbed wire stockades know as 'wild' concentration camps, set up by local Gauleiters and SA leaders.

For Adolf Hitler, the goal of a legally established dictatorship was now within reach. On March 15, 1933, a cabinet meeting was held during which Hitler and Göring discussed how to obstruct what was left of the democratic process to get an Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag. This law would hand over the constitutional functions of the Reichstag to Hitler, including the power to make laws, control the budget and approve treaties with foreign governments.

The emergency decree signed by Hindenburg on February 28, after the Reichstag fire, made it easy for them to interfere with non-Nazi elected representatives of the people by simply arresting them.

As Hitler plotted to bring democracy to an end in Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels put together a brilliant public relations display at the official opening of the newly elected Reichstag.

On March 21, in the Garrison Church at Potsdam, the burial place of Frederick the Great, an elaborate ceremony took place designed to ease public concern over Hitler and his gangster-like new regime.

It was attended by President Hindenburg, foreign diplomats, the General Staff and all the old guard going back to the days of the Kaiser. Dressed in their handsome uniforms sprinkled with medals, they watched a most reverent Adolf Hitler give a speech paying respect to Hindenburg and celebrating the union of old Prussian military traditions and the new Nazi Reich. As a symbol of this, the old Imperial flags would soon add swastikas.

Finishing his speech, Hitler walked over to Hindenburg and respectfully bowed before him while taking hold of the old man's hand. The scene was recorded on film and by press photographers from around the world. This was precisely the impression Hitler and Goebbels wanted to give to the world, all the while plotting to toss aside Hindenburg and the elected Reichstag.

Later that same day, Hindenburg signed two decrees put before him by Hitler. The first offered full pardons to all Nazis currently in prison. The prison doors sprang open and out came an assortment of Nazi thugs and murderers.

The second decree signed by the befuddled old man allowed for the arrest of anyone suspected of maliciously criticizing the government and the Nazi party. (Sound familiar?)

A third decree signed only by Hitler and Papen allowed for the establishment of special courts to try political offenders. These courts were conducted in the military style of a court-martial without a jury and usually with no counsel for the defense.

On March 23, the newly elected Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's Enabling Act. It was officially called the "Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich." If passed, it would in effect vote democracy out of existence in Germany and establish the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

Brown-shirted Nazi storm troopers swarmed over the fancy old building in a show of force and as a visible threat. They stood outside, in the hallways and even lined the aisles inside, glaring ominously at anyone who might oppose Hitler's will.

Before the vote, Hitler made a speech in which he pledged to use restraint.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one," Hitler told the Reichstag.

He also promised an end to unemployment and pledged to promote peace with France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But in order to do all this, Hitler said, he first needed the Enabling Act. A two-thirds majority was needed, since the law would actually alter the constitution. Hitler needed 31 non-Nazi votes to pass it. He got those votes from the Catholic Center Party after making a false promise to restore some basic rights already taken away by decree.

Meanwhile, Nazi storm troopers chanted outside: "Full powers - or else! We want the bill - or fire and murder!!"

But one man arose amid the overwhelming might. Otto Wells, leader of the Social Democrats stood up and spoke quietly to Hitler.

"We German Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible."

Hitler was enraged and jumped up to respond.

"You are no longer needed! - The star of Germany will rise and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!"

The vote was taken - 441 for, and only 84, the Social Democrats, against. The Nazis leapt to their feet clapping, stamping and shouting, then broke into the Nazi anthem, the Hörst Wessel song.

Democracy was ended. They had brought down the German Democratic Republic legally. From this day onward, the Reichstag would be just a sounding board, a cheering section for Hitler's pronouncements.

Interestingly, the Nazi party was now flooded with applications for membership. These latecomers were cynically labeled by old time Nazis as 'March Violets.' In May, the Nazi Party froze membership. Many of those kept out applied to the SA and the SS which were still accepting. However, in early 1934, Heinrich Himmler would throw out 50,000 of those 'March Violets' from the SS.

The Nazi Gleichschaltung now began, a massive coordination of all aspects of life under the swastika and

the absolute leadership of Adolf Hitler. Under Hitler, the State, not the individual, was supreme.

From the moment of birth one existed to serve the State and obey the dictates of the Führer. Those who disagreed were disposed of.

Many agreed. Bureaucrats, industrialists, even intellectual and literary figures, including Gerhart Hauptmann, world renowned dramatist, were coming out in open support of Hitler.

Many disagreed and left the country. A flood of the finest minds, including over two thousand writers, scientists, and people in the arts poured out of Germany and enriched other lands, mostly the United States. Among them - writer Thomas Mann, director Fritz Lang, actress Marlene Dietrich, architect Walter Gropius, musicians Otto Klemperer, Kurt Weill, Richard Tauber, psychologist Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein, who was visiting California when Hitler came to power and never returned to Germany.

In Germany, there were now constant Nazi rallies, parades, marches and meetings amid the relentless propaganda of Goebbels and the omnipresent swastika. For those who remained there was an odd mixture of fear and optimism in the air.

Now, for the first time as dictator, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the driving force which had propelled him into politics in the first place, his hatred of the Jews. It began with a simple boycott on April 1, 1933, and would end years later in the greatest tragedy in all of human history.

Patriot Act vs. German Enabling Act

2008-03-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

Patriot Act vs. German Enabling Act: The Decrees of 1933
from Furniture for the People, May 25, 2005
(Posted here by Wes Penre, May 27, 2005)

1) How the Patriot Act Compares to Hitler's Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act)

On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's "Ermächtigungsgesetz". The "Enabling Act" was officially called the 'Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.'

Opponents to the bill argued that if it was passed, it would end democracy in Germany and establish a legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. To soften resistance to the passing of the Enabling Act, the Nazis secretly caused confusion in order to create an atmosphere in which the law seem necessary to restore order.

On February 27, 1933, Nazis burned the Reichstag building, and a seat of the German government, causing frenzy and outrage. They successfully blamed the fire on the Communists, and claimed it marked the beginning of a widespread terrorism and unrest threatening the safety of the German "Homeland." On the day of the vote, Nazi storm troopers gathered around the opera house chanting, "Full powers - or else! We want the bill - or fire and murder!"

The Nazis used the opportunity to arrest 4,000 communists. Not only did the Nazis use the incident as a propaganda against communists but they also arrested additional 40,000 members of the opposition. Consequently, the Nazis had achieved their objective of eliminating democracy and ensuring their majority in the parliament.

After the fire on February 28, 1933, president Hindenburg and Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which permitted the suspension of civil liberties during national emergencies. Some examples of this Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State abrogated the following constitutional protections: Freedom of the press, free expression of opinion, individual property rights, right of assembly and association, right to privacy of postal and electronic communications, states´ rights of self-government, and protection against unlawful searches and seizures.

Before the vote, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag in which he pledged to use restraint. He also promised to end unemployment and promote multilateral peace with France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

In order to accomplish all this, Hitler said, he first needed the Enabling Act. Since this act would alter the German constitution, a two-thirds majority was necessary. Hitler needed 31 non-Nazi votes to pass it. The Center Party provided these votes after Hitler made a false promise to them. Four hundred and forty votes were registered for the Enabling Act, while a mere 84 votes were opposed – the social Democrats. In glory the Nazi Party stood to their feet and sang the Nazi anthem, the Hörst Wessel song. The German Democratic party had finally been eliminated, and Hitler’s dream for Nazi command became closer to reality.

The Enabling Act granted Hitler the power he craved and could use without objection from the Reichstag. Shortly after the passing of The Enabling Act all other political parties were dissolved. Trade unions were liquidated and opposition clergy were arrested. The Nazi party had, as Hitler said, become the state. By August 1934, Hitler became commander-in-chief of the armed forces. This was in addition to being President and Führer of the German Reich, to whom every individual in the armed forces pledged unconditional obedience. The Reichstag was no longer a place for debate, but rather a cheering squad in favor of whatever Hitler might say.

2) A 21st Century Comparison of The Enabling Act and The Patriot Act

Last September, German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin pointed out that George Bush is using Iraq to distract the American public from his failed domestic policies. She capped her statement by reminding her audience: "That's a popular method. Even Hitler did that." What was lost in the reactions to Ms. Daeubler-Gmelin's comments was that she wasn't comparing Bush to the Hitler of the late 1930s and early 1940s; but to the Hitler of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Most Americans have forgotten that Hitler came to power legally. He and the Nazi Party were elected democratically in a time of great national turmoil and crisis. They themselves had done much to cause the turmoil, of course, but that's what makes the Bush comparison so compelling.

Similar to the Bush administration, the Nazis were funded and ultimately ushered into power by wealthy industrialists looking for government favors in the form of tax breaks, big subsidies, and laws to weaken the rights of workers. When the Reichstag (Germany's Parliament building) was set ablaze in 1933 (probably by Nazis), the Nazis framed their political rivals for it. In the general panic that followed, the German Parliament was purged of all left-wing representatives who might be soft on communists and foreigners, and the few who remained then VOTED to grant Chancellor Hitler dictatorial powers. A long, hideous nightmare had begun.

History teaches us that it is shockingly easy to separate reasonable and intelligent people from their rights. A legally elected leader and party can easily manipulate national events to whip up fear, crucify scapegoats, gag dissenters, and convince the masses that their liberties must be suspended (temporarily, of course) in the name of restoring order. Consider the following two statements, and see if you can identify the authors.

Statement Number One: "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Statement Number Two: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."

The first statement is a quote from Hitler's right hand man, Hermann Goering, explaining at his war crimes trial how easily he and his fellow Nazis hijacked Germany's democratic government. The second statement is a quote from Bush's right hand man, John Ashcroft, defending the Patriot Act and explaining why dissent will no longer be tolerated in the age of terrorism. If that doesn't send chills down your spine, nothing will.

When the shooting started at Lexington Green in 1775, those calling themselves patriots were the men and women who refused to yield their rights to an increasingly oppressive government. Today, according to John Ashcroft and his Patriot Act of 2001, a patriot is someone who kneels down in fear, and hands over his or her rights to the government in the name of fighting terrorism. Isn't the hypocrisy of this all too obvious? The Bush administration wants us to fight in Afghanistan, to fight in Iraq, and to fight wherever terrorists may be hiding. And what, pray tell, are we fighting for? Well, according to the White House, we're fighting for freedom. Yet freedom is exactly what the White House is demanding that we now SURRENDER in the name of fighting terrorism.

So what's really going on? Well, it's all a lie, of course. The Bush administration isn't any more interested in protecting our freedom from terrorists than Hitler was in protecting Germans from communists, Jews, and all the other groups he scapegoated. The Bush administration is fighting only to protect itself and its corporate sponsors. It hides behind a veil of national security and behind non-stop war headlines of its own creation. And behind that smokescreen, Bush, Inc. is pursuing Hitler’s old agenda from the 1920s and 1930s: serving the interests of the corporate industrialists who brought it to power.

There is a name for governments that serve the interests of Big Business at the expense of their own citizens: fascist. Here's a short list of the rights we've already surrendered since the September 11 attacks. Most of these abuses are from a single piece of legislation called the Patriot Act of 2001, which was rushed through Congress with no debate in the aftermath of the attacks. Many of the Congressmen who voted for it later admitted that they hadn't even read it at the time.

3) Ten Key Dangers of The Patriot Act That Every American Should Know

No. 1: The government can conduct "sneak and peek" searches in which agents enter your home or business and search your belongings without informing you until long after.

No. 2: Government agents can force libraries and bookstores to hand over the titles of books that you1ve purchased or borrowed and can demand the identity of anyone who has purchased or borrowed certain books. The government can also prosecute libraries and bookstores for informing you that the search occurred or even for informing you that an inquiry was made. According to ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer, such "searches could extend to doctors offices, banks and other institutions which, like libraries, were previously off-limits under the law." Chris Finan, President of the American Booksellers group adds: "The refusal of the Justice Department to tell Congress how many times it has used its powers is even more unsettling because it naturally leads to the suspicion that it is using them a lot."

No. 3: Federal agents are authorized to use hidden devices to trace the telephone calls or emails of people who are not even suspected of a crime. The FBI is also permitted to use its Magic Lantern technology to monitor everything you do on your computer--recording not just the websites you visit but EVERY SINGLE KEYSTROKE as well.

No. 4: Government agents are permitted to arrest and detain individuals "suspected" of terrorist activities and to hold them INDEFINITELY, WITHOUT CHARGE, and WITHOUT an ATTORNEY. (That could be you or me for sending or receiving this Email, by the way)

No. 5: Federal agents are permitted to conduct full investigations of American citizens and permanent legal residents simply because they have participated in activities protected by the First Amendment, such as writing a letter to the editor or attending a peaceful rally.

No. 6: Law enforcement agents are permitted to listen in on discussions between prisoners and their attorneys, thus denying them their Constitutional right to confidential legal counsel.

No. 7: Terrorism suspects may be tried in secret military tribunals where defendants have no right to a public trial, no right to trial by jury, no right to confront the evidence, and no right to appeal to an independent court. In short, the Constitution does not apply.

No. 8: The CIA is granted authority to spy on American citizens, a power that has previously been denied to this international espionage organization.

No. 9: In addition to the Patriot Act, the Bush administration has given us Operations TIPS, a government program that encourages citizens to spy on each other and to report their neighbors activities to the authorities. It's EXACTLY the kind of thing for which we used to fault East Germany and the Soviet Union, and for which we currently fault Red China and North Korea. Fortunately, Operation TIPS (or AmeriSnitch, as it's known to its many detractors) seems to have been recalled to the factory--at least for now. (Incidentally, in a clever variation of "two-can-play-at-that-game”, Brad Templeton has set up a website at http://www.all-the-other-names-were-taken.com/tipstips.html where you can report people you suspect of being informants for Operation TIPS. It's an interesting and amusing site, well worth a look.)

No. 10: In the wake of Operation TIPS came something even worse: Total Information Awareness. TIA is a program of the Defense Department that when fully operational will link commercial and government databases so that the DOD can immediately put its finger on any piece of information about you that it wants. New York Times columnist William Safire writes: "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." And that's not all. Who did our president appoint to head the TIA? Who gets to be Big Brother himself? Why it's none other than John Poindexter, a man convicted in 1990 on five counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents, and obstructing congressional inquiries into the Iran-contra affair. Another Hermann Goering, if there ever was one.

4) BILL MOYERS' NOW COMMENTS ON THE PATRIOT ACT

At the same time the Bush administration is probing into your private life, it is shielding itself from all public scrutiny. It has shredded the Freedom of Information Act; it has locked away presidential records not only of the current administration but of administrations going all the way back to Reagan as well; and it has even locked up George W. Bush's gubernatorial records so that the people of Texas can't see what he did to them while serving as their governor.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is also using anti-terror legislation and executive orders to protect its corporate sponsors from scrutiny and from prosecution. The drug company Eli Lilly, for instance, was recently granted immunity from all cases brought against it-–even those initiated long before the war on terrorism--related to a vaccine it manufactured that turned out to cause autism in many children. (Eli Lilly contributed over $3 million in the last two election campaigns.) The Bush administration also protected the Bayer Corporation1s patent on the antibiotic Cipro throughout the anthrax scare, whereas other countries, such as Canada, broke that patent so that other companies could make cheaper versions of the drug in case of emergency.

It is interesting to note that during WWII Bayer was part of the I.G. Farben conglomerate, the top financial contributor to the Nazi Party. I.G. Farben produced petrol and rubber for the Nazi war machine and it manufactured the Zyklon B gas that was used to exterminate millions of Jews and other "enemies of the state." In exchange for these services, the Nazis provided Farben (and Bayer) with lucrative government contracts and with slave labor from concentration camps.

Under George W. Bush's kinder, gentler fascism, U.S. corporations are now allowed to do business with the Homeland Security Department even if they cheat the government out of vast amounts of tax revenues by setting up offshore business fronts in the Caribbean Islands. It used to be that tax-evaders were tracked down and punished. Now they're rewarded with fat government contracts. Could the slave labor be far behind?

If only this were the extent of the Bush administration's ramble down the road to fascism. Way back in November of 2001, William Safire accused the Bush administration of "seizing dictatorial power." Well, Mr. Safire, you ain't seen nothing yet. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, just when you thought we can't lose any more of our liberties and still call ourselves a "free society," we learn that the Bush administration wants to take away even more of our rights. A secret document was just leaked out of John Ashcroft's Justice Department and turned over to the Center for Public Integrity. Titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, this document turns out to be a draft of new anti-terrorism legislation, a vastly more muscular sequel to Patriot Act. If passed, it would grant the executive branch sweeping new powers of domestic surveillance, and it would eliminate most of the few remaining checks and balances that protect us from tyranny.

It's the Patriot Act on steroids. Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity shared this document with Bill Moyers, who examined it on NOW, his weekly PBS program. That episode aired Friday, February 7, yet even now no mainstream news broadcaster has picked up this incredible story. Read the NOW transcript and see the document itself online at http://www.pbs.org/now/. You can also read the Center for Public Integrity's analysis of the document at http://www.publicintegrity.org/.

Dr. David Cole, a Law professor at Georgetown University and author of Terrorism and the Constitution assessed the document, saying, "I think this is a quite radical proposal. It authorizes secret arrests. It would give the Attorney General essentially unchecked authority to deport anyone who he thought was a danger to our economic interests. It would strip citizenship from people for lawful political associations."

"Secret arrests”? Did we hear that right? It seems that the Homeland Security Department (HSD) is about to become the KGB. The first Patriot Act already allows for people to be locked up indefinitely without a lawyer and without being charged with a crime. If Patriot Act II passes, then arrests would also be secret. That means that dissenters (or anyone else, for that matter) could disappear without a trace, just as they did in Nazi Germany, in Stalinist Russia, and in Pinochet's Chile.

Patriot Act II would also grant even more immunity to Big Business. A corporation could pour toxins into your local river, for instance, and you wouldn't know about it until all the fish died and your neighbor’s kids were born with missing limbs. And then when you went to court and demanded to know what the company was dumping in your river, the company could deny you that information on the grounds that it's a national security secret. Jim Hightower put it this way: "All a company has to do to shield anything it wants to keep from the public eye--say, an embarrassing chemical spill--is give the documents to the Homeland Security Department and call them "critical infrastructure information."

Ah, but there's even more to be concerned about here. The document was created back in early January, but so far it appears that the only members of Congress who even know of its existence are House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Vice-president Dick Cheney. (The Vice-president presides over the Senate, which makes him a member of the legislative branch as well as the executive branch.) This raises a troubling question: Why has the White House been sitting on this bill for a month? If the CEOs down at Bush, Inc. really believe that they need these broad new powers to protect us from terrorists, why not roll out that bill and start the debate? The answer is all too plain. In all likelihood, the Bush administration was planning to avoid debate entirely by springing this bill on the American people in the midst of a perceived national crisis. Perhaps during the war with Iraq, for instance. Or perhaps in the aftermath of the next terrorist attack. Or perhaps right after the Reichstag fire.

Had some courageous soul not leaked this document out of the Justice Department, the White House might easily have succeeded in passing it through Congress without debate in the midst of our next perceived national crisis, much as it did with the first Patriot Act in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. A thorough debate of this bill right now, under fairly stable circumstances, would defuse it and prevent its passage even under more frightening circumstances later on. There's just one problem. The debate can't begin until more Americans know about this bill, but so far the Washington Post is the only major news outlet to even MENTION this story since Bill Moyers broke it on Friday night.

Here's what you can do to help
First, forward this email to everyone you know. Second, send an email to the Center for Public Integrity and to the producers of NOW thanking them for breaking this story. Here's a sample message that you can use or modify:

Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

2008-02-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S.West Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law

WASHINGTON, DC - December 20 - Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming. "This is an historic day for our Lakota people," declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. "United States colonial rule is at its end!" "Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit," shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. "They never honored the treaties, that's the reason we are here today." The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover. "In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny," said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock. Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property. Young added, "The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people". Following Monday's withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations. Lakota's efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are "very, very interested in the Lakota case" while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with "respect and solidarity." "Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations," explained Garry Rowland. "As a nation, we have equal status within the national community." Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. "Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty," said Means. "Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people." The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average. 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%. "After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative," emphasized Duane Martin Sr. "The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway." We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have traveled to Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com.

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death

2007-11-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

By Jason MillerRINF Alternative News
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
–Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984
If you needed more evidence that most of our “esteemed” members of Congress are members of a criminal class of ruling elites, who regard the likes of us in the poor and working classes with the disdain most people reserve for cockroaches, look no further than H.R. 1955.
93% of the filth “representing” us in the House voted in favor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Once this vile piece of legislation sails through the Senate and the sociopath on Pennsylvania Ave gleefully slaps his endorsement on it, the mechanisms will be in place for our lords and masters to initiate programs that will make Cointelpro and the murder of Fred Hampton look like child’s play.
According to our “betters” amongst the US plutocracy, we can’t afford the “luxury” of dissent. We are waging war on terrorism, a threat to the continued existence of the American Way of Life, which we know to be non-negotiable. Besides, dissidents simply present an obstacle to the wholesale terrorism we are inflicting on entire nations so that we can bring them “freedom and democracy.” As Bill O’Reilly suggested on Faux News last night, the only “sane thing” to do is to support the troops. And war protestors need to be arrested. So whether we are committing heinous war crimes or not, ignore your conscience, root for the home team, thank a vet and shut the fuck up!
Under the soon-to-be law Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, state and local police will join forces with the FBI, DHS, ICE, and like fascist entities to eradicate ideologies, plans, Internet “terrorist-related propaganda,” and any other “noxious weeds” which might spring forth to “threaten” the “aesthetics” of the immaculate grounds of our glorious corporatocracy, amply fertilized by the corpses of the millions of victims of our imperial and neoliberal conquests.
Within the Orwellian construct of H.R. 1955, I have not decided whether I am a violent radical or a homegrown terrorist. Perhaps the powers that be will deem that I am both. Were I neither, that would mean that I had sold my soul and taken the last refuge of a scoundrel. What a nightmare that would be!
Yes, America, I am a thought criminal. Consider my confession:
1. While I have deep reservations about the death penalty for a number of reasons, I will gladly suspend those misgivings once the gradually intensifying social unrest reaches critical mass. Little would please me more than to see the likes of Bush, Cheney, Condi, O’Reilly, Perle, Clarence Thomas, Bolton, Negroponte and a host of others who have committed and enabled some of the most grievous crimes in history dangling lifelessly from the end of a rope.
2. I view Zionism as a mental disease. The criminal apparatuses which pass themselves off as governmental structures in DC and Jerusalem do need to be “wiped off the map.” A majority of the constituencies in both the US and Israel view their governments with disgust and contempt. Both ruling bodies are infected with supporters of the Zionist plague and frequently implement policies which serve to inflict abject misery on millions of human beings.
3. While I am not a direct participant, I wish the Animal Liberation Front great success in their endeavors. Under our depraved system of capitalism, the property ALF destroys and the profits they stymie are sacred. Yet the billions of sentient beings they champion are mere objects which we can wantonly subject to maiming, torture and death.
4. I loath the Holocaust industry. Zionists have hijacked and exploited a horrific tragedy, cynically employed it to enact their own ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, and used it as a justification for the continued existence of the monstrous state of Israel. While it is profoundly tragic that the Nazis tortured and murdered so many Jews, there were also significant numbers of Romas, homosexuals, and socialists who suffered similar fates. Besides, there have been many genocides throughout human history, including the one we have been inflicting upon Iraqis through the Gulf War, Clinton’s heinous economic sanctions, and the present illegal occupation.
5. I long for the collapse of the American Empire. While we can’t predict what will arise to fill the ensuing vacuum, at least it will present an opportunity for us to create a more humane and just sociopolitical order.
6. I believe the world would be a much better place if Wall Street and Madison Avenue ceased to exist. The greed, narcissism, and exploitation spewing forth from the entities and industries they represent are toxins to the human soul.
7. I admire and support demonized people and entities such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Hamas as true champions of victimized people. Our ruling class portrays them as “threats” and “terrorists” because they have the cajones to stand up to the biggest, meanest, and most powerful bullies in history. Are they perfect? No. Are they admirable? Definitely.
8. I despise the American flag. Since 9/11, it’s nearly ubiquitous presence has helped foster a cancerous form of patriotism and nativism. The “Stars and Stripes” has become a symbol of imperialism, oppression, and state terrorism. And yes, I have burned an American flag.
9. I consider capitalism to be an abomination and a crime against humanity, the rest of the sentient beings on the planet, and the Earth. I am aggressively pursuing its demise through my intellectual efforts, including writing, educating, motivating, and publishing on my brain-child, Thomas Paine’s Corner at http://www.bestcyrano.org/thomaspaine/.
10. I have known, befriended, and helped so-called “illegal” immigrants, and will continue to do so. People flooding the United States from Mexico are doing so because of the abject poverty caused by our neoliberal economic terrorism, NAFTA, and our support of their right wing oligarchs who joyfully implement the Washington Consensus, a recipe for misery for the poor and working class amongst their people. “Illegal immigration” is a forced migration caused by the ever-growing hubris and avarice of our moneyed elite.
Much to the chagrin of those of you who remain enslaved by the intellectual chains of your indoctrination or who are dedicated reactionaries, I have as much right to remain in the United States as you do. And I’m not going anywhere voluntarily. So save your emails offering me passage on a slow boat to Russia. One thing we can probably agree upon though is the sanctity of the Second Amendment. My .38 caliber and 12 gauge are ready. Just in case I need to exercise my right to defend family, hearth and home.
Meanwhile, let’s see if a thought criminal like me, who has committed no felonies, has no history of violence, and has formulated no plans to foment violence or engage in violent acts becomes a target of the Bush Regime’s Orwellian apparatus once they have read my confession.

Bush Cites Military Takeover In Case Of Flu Outbreak

2007-11-14T18:45:00.000-08:00

Bush Cites Military Takeover In Case Of Flu Outbreak
October 4 2005

During this afternoon's White House press conference President Bush confirmed that he would attempt to impose military curfews and quarantines in case of a flu pandemic occurring in the United States.

The comes on the heels of a majority of the nation's governors rejecting the Bush administration's proposal to use active-duty military assets in providing disaster relief. Understanding this in the context of Hurricane Katrina, this means total gun confiscation and enforced evacuation at gunpoint.

Bush stated, "If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country, and how do you then enforce a quarantine? When -- it's one thing to shut down airplanes; it's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move."

CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO CLIP

This is the same justification that Bush used throughout the Hurricane Katrina debacle. The crisis was made worse by intentional federal sabotage of the relief efforts that were being conducted by the local government in New Orleans. FEMA were cutting communication lines and denying food, water and oil shipments to the critically affected areas. This led local Sheriffs to set up armed patrols to keep FEMA out of their county zones.

The elimination of Posse Comitatus via natural disasters which are then intentionally sabotaged by government, is one of the Bush administration's major goals. Bush has openly announced his plan to have the Pentagon usurp power over State's rights.

Posse Comitatus allows for the use of the military for relief efforts only, not for law enforcement. This is why Bush is trying to eliminate the 1878 law, because his ideal of military involvement in crises is one of quarantines, checkpoints, mandatory vaccinations, curfews and evacuations, and not of providing relief or infrastructure protection.

We have been warning for years that natural disasters would be used as a means of placing active duty military on the streets of America. People are not buying into the scam that we need a police state to fight Al-CIAda terrorists so this is the next step. Today it's hurricanes, in five to ten years it will be the threat of asteroids and meteors.

The message is the same, you have no right to protect yourself and we will confiscate your firearms if you even try. The truth is that throughout history government has never been able to adequately protect the people and to forcefully take that mantle only makes matters worse.

Is the threat of a bird flu pandemic a red flag or is it simply a means of creating a false scarcity so that everyone runs out and buys the antidote fearing an imminent outbreak?

We should be wise to remember that the revelation that the Bush cabinet was on Cipro, the anthrax fighting antibiotic, only emerged in the media after the anthrax attack was in process, not before.

Therefore it seems more likely that this is a ruse to line the pockets of the government affiliated pharmaceutical companies.

One thing is clear, if this outbreak did occur then the justification to suspend Constitutional rights will be flaunted to its maximum exposure. Back in April President Bush added pandemic influenza to the list of diseases for which quarantine is authorized.

China's zealous martial law tactics in dealing with SARS, home detention, curfews, mandatory vaccinations, restriction of travel, are the model for what could unfold in the US.

The federal blueprint for the exact same scenario was released and picked up by the Associated Press a year ago.

This will make ID cards and airport security checks look like a tea party.

And when this flu pandemic happens who will we blame? Surely not US scientists playing around with the deadly 1918 Spanish flu virus at "less than the maximum level of containment" according to the New Scientist magazine.

Bush's comments are clearly intended to acclimatize people to accept martial law in times of crisis caused by natural disasters or health pandemics.

With two more major hurricanes predicted to hit in October we should all remain vigilant and speak out against the government hijacking crises in order to implement their jack-booted police state agenda.

The New York Times, the so-called “paper of record”

2007-11-13T17:25:00.000-08:00

The New York Times, the so-called “paper of record”, has still not written about H.R. 1955, The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism and Prevention Act of 2007 (the thought crime bill) which I reported on last week.

The bill passed in the House on 23 October 2007, and was sent to the Senate where, sponsored by Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, it has been referred to Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs where Ms. Collins in the ranking member.

It is interesting that even though H.R.1955 was sent to the Senate more than three weeks ago, on the page at congress.org showing Collins-sponsored legislation, this bill is not listed.

Last Sunday, Frank Rich titled his New York Times Op-Ed column, The Coup at Home. Without mentioning H.R. 1955, he laid out the six-year, incremental subversion of the rule of law taken by the Bush administration that is resulting, says Rich, in a “quiet coup.” Some highlights from his piece:

“…our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite.”

“More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it.”

“Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte.”

“To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.
“This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling all over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights.”

“…only 24 percent of Americans believe their country is on the right track…Americans know the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see restoration anytime soon.”

Without mentioning Naomi Wolf and her book, The End of America, which I have been re-re-re-reading for the past several weeks, Frank Rich is on the same page although Ms. Wolf’s argument is more urgent and sharply etched. If you haven’t read her book, please do. If that’s too much for you or you want to get started right away, try the following.

Most of the book – ten of the 11 chapters – recounts, with historical and present-day examples, the ten steps Ms. Wolf has identified from her research that are taken by incipient dictators to turn democracies into fascist states. She wrote a short version of the ten steps on her blog at Huffington Post titled Ten Steps to Close Down an Open Society. It is a Must Read.

In addition, Ms. Wolf has made available the Preface and Introduction to her book in two parts at HuffPost: Part 1 here and Part 2 here. These too are required reading for the 76 percent of us who know something is terribly wrong in the United States.

In the final chapter of her book, “Conclusion: The Patriot’s Task”, Ms. Wolf writes:

“So it turns out we really are at war – a long war, a global war, a war for our civilization.
“It is a war to save our democracy.

“Each one of us needs to enlist. We have no one to spare.”

Equally pertinent for you and me is the following passage from Chapter 9 which is on freedom of the press:

“At a time such as this, it is up to U.S. citizens who are not part of the formal media world to publish online, research aggressively, check facts assiduously, expose abuses, file Freedom of Information Act requests, publish ‘zines, write op-eds, and take ownership of producing as much of the news and information stream as they can…
“Blogging has to lead the way, because this is the access point for citizen journalism. But bloggers must take their impact far more seriously, becoming warriors for truth and accountability: Citizens have to start to produce reliable samizdat. Opinion is important, but opinion alone is totally inadequate when the ground of truth itself is under assault.

“Bloggers must become rigorous and fearless documentarians and reporters – not just to critique the news, but also to generate the news. Citizens in every venue must now apply to their work the accuracy and accountability that news editors have traditionally expected of their writers and researchers.

“The locus of the power of truth must be identified not in major news outlets but in you. You – not “they” – must take responsibility for educating your fellow citizens.”

H.R. 1955 “only” establishes a commission to study violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism and their prevention. It’s that “study” part that chills me; do they mean to find out how dictators, past and present, accomplished the closing of open societies to better apply the tactics to the U.S.? It is a reasonable question.

With no media attention, this frightening bill is so far under the public radar that it could become law and our blogs shut down before we realize what's happened. If we lose the freedom to speak freely, we lose everything else for it is the only way to protest other wrongs.

I telephoned the offices of the Senate bill’s sponsor, Susan Collins, to ask what her rationale is in supporting H.R. 1955. There was no answer, not even a message machine in her Bangor, Maine office.

There was a recording at the senator's Washington, D.C. office stating only that I, as a constituent, should leave a message with my “exact street address” so that Ms. Collins could answer. Given past experience in contacting congressional representatives, I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, please do the above reading. Although it is long, it is crucial for the future of our nation to understand what has been happening to our democracy while the administration and the media has diverted our attention elsewhere. And watch this space. I’ll have more to say each week.

Thought Crime Bill Story List

[At The Elder Storytelling Place today, janinsanfran tells how 30 years of fear were finally lifted in Long Story, Good Ending.]

Posted by Ronni Bennett at 06:14 AM | Permalink | Email this post

Comments

I copied and pasted your last blog on this subject and sent it to everyone on my Email list. Only one person responded and he sent my Email to a Democrat club in Tucson. That's how it spreads, but it is disheartening that others don't seem to be taking this seriously. The apathy of the electorate is what will do Democracy in. I will try again by copying this post and send it to the same group along with a letter to the Editor. I did read that Frank Rich column. Perhaps an Email to him will produce results nationally and others will pick it up. One can hope.

Posted by: D on Nov 13, 2007 7:53:52 AM

Do you think a letter maybe a few hundred letters "to the editor" would help? I could do that.....the post from D. saddens me since she is correct about the apathy of the electorate. But where I live people are concerned about getting a decent pay check & getting a meal on the table. Perhaps we need a "million citizen" march on Washington. Let me tell you Ronni.......it's damned depressing. Dee

Posted by: Dee on Nov 13, 2007 8:06:45 AM

D and Dee:

I'm sending this story around to some people I know at media outlets and next week, I'll have some specific suggestions and plans that we can all be part of.

Posted by: Ronni Bennett on Nov 13, 2007 8:30:52 AM

You are nailing it and the mainstream media is not on the side of the American people. If we never knew it before, or only suspected it, it's obvious now. It is a very scary time

Posted by: Rain on Nov 13, 2007 10:47:15 AM

Rep. Tom Allen, who is challenging Susan Collins in next year's Senate race, voted for H.R. 1955. As of yesterday, I couldn't find a mention of this vote on his website.

A couple of questions come to mind for both Collins and Allen: If you think a vote is right, why hide it? If you think a vote is wrong, why cast it?

In short, what the hell is going on here?

Posted by: Pete on Nov 13, 2007 11:21:56 AM

This information needs to stay front and center.

I am interested to see what your media outlet connections are saying about the bill and the under-reporting factor.

SPP's goal

2007-11-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

SPP's goal: "The SPP process is the vehicle for the discussion of future arrangements for economic integration to create a single market for goods and services in North America." The key words are "economic integration" (a phrase used again and again) into a North American "single market" (another phrase used repeatedly).

"Integration" with Mexico and Canada is exactly what North American Union means, but there's a big problem with this goal। "We the people" of the United States were never asked if we want to be "integrated" with Mexico and Canada, two countries of enormously different laws, culture, concept of government's role, economic system, and standard of living.

SPP's process: "The most important feature of the SPP design is that it is neither intended to produce a treaty nor an executive agreement like the NAFTA that would require congressional ratification or the passage of implementing legislation in the United States। The SPP was designed to function within existing administrative authority of the executive branch."

The design of the SPP is innovative, eschewing the more traditional diplomatic and trade negotiation models in favor of talks among civil service professionals and subject matter experts with each government. This design places the negotiation fully within the authority of the executive branch in the United States."

Indeed, SPP is very "innovative।" The arrogance of SPP's "design" to give the executive branch full "authority" to "enforce and execute" whatever is decided by a three-nation agreement of "civil service professionals," as though it were "law," is exceeded only by its unconstitutionality.

SPP completely lacks "transparency and accountability।" Hudson freely admits "the exclusion of Congress from the process"; constituents who contact their Congressmen discover that Members know practically nothing about SPP. Hudson states that, under SPP, one of the U.S. challenges is "managing Congress." Is Congress now to be "managed," either by executive-branch "authority" or by "dozens of regulators, rule makers, and officials working with their counterparts" from Mexico and Canada?

the 2005 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) document called "Building a North American Community" bragged that its recommendations are "explicitly linked" to SPP। The CFR document called for establishing a "common perimeter" around North America by 2010.

The top-tier Republican presidential candidates showed little or no compassion for the three million Americans who have lost their jobs to globalism। It's no wonder that polls now show that Americans believe Democrats are better at dealing with the economy than Republicans.

The World Trade Organization has ruled against the United States in 40 out of 47 cases. Why is anybody surprised? Why do we put up with the globalists who put our country into trade agreements and world organizations dominated by foreigners who hate and envy us, and who rule against us every chance they get?

The latest outrage of the World Trade Organization is to rule that we must repeal our law against internet gambling because it violates free trade in "recreational services।" If we do not comply with this ruling, the World Trade Organization will assess billions of dollars in damages against us. There is no appeal from a World Trade Organization ruling, or from the decision of any United Nations tribunal.

Those who seek to understand what's behind the chatter about Bush's Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) as a possible prelude to a North American Union (NAU), similar to the European Union (EU), should read the 35-page White Paper published recently by the prestigious Hudson Institute called "Negotiating North America: The Security and Prosperity Partnership." This Washington, DC think tank is blunt and detailed in describing where SPP is heading.

SPP a "hostile takeover"

2007-11-13T17:09:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Canadian Action Party Leader: SPP a "Hostile Takeover"

Hey Gang,

This from the Canadian Action Party's website...

CAP/PAC (Canadian Action Party) Leader calls the SPP a "hostile takeover" of the apparatus of democracy posted on 11:45 PM, August 2, 2007
Connie Fogal says the SPP is the "hostile takeover" of the apparatus of democratic government and an end to the "rule of law". There has been a kind of coup d'état over the government operations of Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico.

The first formal step towards the NAU was NAFTA. Dr. Robert Pastor of the Council on Foreign Relations has affirmed that. The Canadian Action Party/Parti action canadienne, a registered federal sovereigntist political party in Canada, began as a party in 1997 precisely because none of the mainstream parties were calling for the clear, outright, unequivocal abrogation of NAFTA, or for control
of our national monetary system.

Even now, our mainstream Canadian political parties and significant citizen groups are still stuck on re-negotiation of NAFTA (they talk of fair trade) which completely misses the point. As such, they remain blinded, and of no use to the citizens who care about our nation and our sovereignty, our independence, our civil liberties, our civil rights, our culture, our freedom.

The second formal step was the integration and subjugation of Canada's military into the US military command under NORAD, NORTHCOM, and the Bi-National Planning Agreement. That is why our Canadian military is in Afghanistan.

The third formal step in the creation of the NAU was the implementation of the respective liberty-stripping anti-terrorist legislations, the Patriot Act in the USA and the Anti-terrorist Act in Canada. This has been the mechanism to implement the police state apparatus necessary to enforce Fortress America.

The fourth formal step is the SPP, Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement. That agreement is a "hostile takeover" of the Executive branch of government, a coup d'état over the government operations of Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico.

(The three branches of democratic governance are: 1, the legislative arm, i.e., the policy makers, the people we elect; 2, the judicial arm, i.e., judges who interpret and apply the laws created by the policy makers; and 3, the executive arm, i.e., the civil service, the bureaucracy, who implement and run the policy and operations of government.)

The SPP is a treasonous metamorphosis of our federal and provincial government bureaucracies into formal instruments to implement the agenda of the shadow government - the military/industrial/financial complex exemplified by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives who in turn are dominated by the U.S Council on Foreign Relations, and the US military apparatus. The S.P.P. has created the competitiveness council (10 to 16 people from industry and academe unelected by citizens, unaccountable to citizens, unrepresentative of citizens) in each of Canada, U.S.A., and Mexico. They meet with our Prime Minister and the two Presidents.
They actively direct the restructuring of the civil service apparatus and governance of Canada, U.S., and Mexico away from instruments serving the public interest and nationhood, and into tools to serve the power and greed of the industrial, financial, military complex. This Competitiveness Council will be at Montebello directing the three leaders in August, 2007 finalizing the last steps of the NAU.

Since March, 2005, under the direction of three senior cabinet ministers of each country, about 100 working groups of unelected officials from government and industry have been meeting at taxpayer expense deciding on and directing the implementation of the restructuring of the apparatus of governance and the form of rule over the people. Their command goes out down the chain of bureaucracy expending vast amounts of taxpayer dollars implementing the changes in our border crossings, in our airports, on our airplanes, in our skies, on and to our roads and highways, in our personal identification systems, in our health, in our vaccines, over our food supplements, in our pesticide safety levels, in our schools and universities, in the exploitation of our natural resources - our rivers, lakes, oil, gas, in our environment, in the arms industry, in the manufacture and use of depleted uranium, in the exploitation of and experimentation on our indigenous people and our military personnel, in immigration, over our right of Habeus Corpus, in our right of due process, our right to assemble and our freedom of speech, etc., etc.

Government of the people, by the people,for the people has been eliminated while those people we have elected stand idly in the sidelines apparently blissfully oblivious, or deliberately careless of the termination of their policy making role except as a rubber stamp. Those we have elected have abused their responsibility to protect our power, the people's power. They have permitted an undemocratic elite to control them and the operation of government. It is by us, the general citizenry, that Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies and city
councillors, and Senators and congressmen are supposed to be ruled in all matters, not by the military/ industrial complex that General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about on his final address to his nation in 1961. The Prime Minister and Presidents along with their most senior Cabinet members and officials really now do apply a "Divine Right of Kings" mentality to their role. They have metamorphosed into a cancer rotting the life out of our democracies.

For this reason the Canadian Action Party/Parti action canadienne calls for electoral reform not just in how we elect candidates, but why and how the bureaucracy operates. In particular, we call for a curb on the exercise of power in the executive branch of government, and especially in the P.M.s office.This need is of paramount importance because it is the key to why and how three nations (Canada, USA, Mexico) are being dismantled.

Remember, if you believe in democratic accountable representation, there must be a universal franchise. Government of the people, by the people,for the people still is right. It is not government by officials of any organization or interest group whether public or private who are unelected by, unrepresentative, and unaccountable to the general public. We need to reform our government structure so that we can recall and replace any person we elect when they fail to keep their promise or do their duty to us, the citizenry; and we also need to turn our executive arm of government back to being the servant of the citizens.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (S.P.P) is deliberately not a formal international treaty such as NAFTA which is set out in a system of rule by international law. As a legal treaty the SPP would never have flown because it would have been exposed to scrutiny.

It remains a work in progress agreement of incredible treacherous magnitude. It has already succeeded in implementing profound changes to three nations integrating the geographical region of North America. We do not even know the full extent of what has been completed or what little is left to be accomplished..

We know that a powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc.

We know that the final report, published in English, Spanish and French, is scheduled for submission to all three governments by Sept. 30, according to the http://www.csis.org/ Center for Strategic & International Studies.

We know that the data collected for the report is based on seven secret roundtable sessions involving between 21 and 45 people and conducted by CSIS. The participants are politicians, business people, labour leaders and academics from all three countries with equal representation.

We know all this because it is described in a CSIS report,
http://www.canadians.org/water/documents/NA_Future_2025.pdf "North American Future 2025 Project."

It will be interesting to see who the think tank representatives will be that appear before our Canadian Parliament and how it is presented since so many of our Canadian MP's deny this integration is happening. They need to realize that the vote still works in Canada and if they want to be re-elected, they must repel the submissions for integration. In fact, their duty to us is to refuse to hear such a delegation.

Since when has it become lawful to entertain discussion or debate on any form of treason??

This kind of presentation by such influential players will likely be a formalization of the integration as a done deal.

We, the citizens, must demonstrate to our governments that we demand an end to the integration of North America . And, we must tell them we are not asking for a front row seat at our hanging party. We do not want to be involved or to have them involved in any negotiations or discussions or debate about how our nations are to die. We already know we do not want a North American Union, period!!! They must repel the formal instructions coming to them this fall from the shadow government.

In recognition of our sovereign democratic rights and powers as citizens promulgated by the respective founding fathers of three nations, the Canadian Action Party/Parti action canadienne calls upon all Canadians to join with our neighbours in the USA and Mexico to stand and defend our distinctive nations, NOT TO CALL FOR DEBATE AND DISCUSSION ON INTEGRATION. We must DEMAND SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE We must make a
sound and sight so that uninformed citizens can be alerted. How can we do this?

Right now, focus on being at the 25 km perimeter around Montebello, Quebec on August 20 and 21, 2007. In a separate e mail I will send suggestions about Montebello actions.

Destroying the American dollar could force the crisis that would force the creation of the North American Union

2007-11-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

Destroying the American dollar could force the crisis that would force the creation of the North American उनिओं

Just how bad is it? Well, let’s say in a little while the “Great Depression” won’t look all that Great anymore!

Take two minutes to read the following article and you’ll have a fairly decent perspective of the situation. It is dire-you just don’t realize how bad yet (because, TPTB are doing everything possible to keep you from finding out. They’re not through milking society for everything it’s worth yet and, they’re still not quite ready to go underground, while the shit hits the fan on the surface!)

Dismas

Sunday November 11th, 2007
informationliberation.com

Dollar Crisis: None dare call it ‘conspiracy’

Crude oil prices hit an all-time high this week, closing above $98 a barrel for the first time in history.

According to the AAA, many drivers in my home state of California are already paying more than $4 a gallon for regular unleaded gas. And in one town south of Big Sur, unleaded gas topped $5 a gallon.

The U.S. dollar is at an all-time low, even when compared against the hapless Canadian loonie. Five years ago, a loonie was worth 60 cents. Today, it’s worth $1.12 and climbing.

Yesterday, WorldNetDaily reported that the Chinese are considering abandoning the U.S. dollar as their national reserve currency. WND quoted Craig Smith’s assessment of the consequences of such a move by Beijing on our economy: “If that were to happen, all bets are off, and we will be in a depression that makes 1929 look like child’s play, or we will experience Weimar Republic inflation as the dollar makes extreme moves toward devaluations.”

On Tuesday, the U.S. national debt topped $9 trillion for the first time in history, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s daily accounting of the national debt. Nine trillion dollars! The number is so staggeringly high that it exceeds our ability to comprehend it in monetary units.

Million, billion, trillion – in financial terms, for most of us, it means a lot of money, really a lot of money, but that is about as specific a picture as most ordinary people can grasp.

Let’s put all these “illions” into perspective. A million seconds is roughly 12 days, whereas a billion seconds is approximately 32 years.

We understand dollars. And we understand time. So it would take 12 days to pay back a million dollars at a dollar a second. But if you started right now, you’d pay back a BILLION dollars, at a dollar a second, in the year 2039.

A trillion seconds is roughly 32 thousand years. At a dollar a second, you’d pay back a TRILLION dollars in the year 34007.

The U.S. debt stands at $9 trillion. If my calculator is working, then at a dollar a second, the U.S. could be debt- free in the year 290007.

The point of that little exercise was two-fold. The first was to clarify the sheer volume of the debt; the second was to demonstrate the possibility that anybody in government really believes we can ever pay it off.

Each U.S. citizen’s share of the national debt works out, according to the National Debt clock, to $29,947.50. That means the average American family of five owes, collectively, $149,737.50.

It also means that unless the average American family of five has a net worth of at least $149,737,50 in assets excluding liabilities (they don’t), America is already bankrupt.

Over the past few years, there has been growing public concern about the emerging “Security and Prosperity Partnership” plan that some say is really a “deceptive roadmap” to a coming North American Union and a new, unified currency tentatively called the “amero.”

The feds steadfastly deny such a plan exists, even as it opens the borders to Mexican truck traffic, widens the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada and, counterintuitively, refuses to tighten the borders with either Mexico or Canada, despite both logic and widespread public demand.

All of these things have brought me to believe that powerful forces outside of our government – like the shadowy international Money Trust members of the “Bilderberg Group” – made a decision to force the formation of the North American Union along with the amero. There decisions have been instituted in the past via the Trilateral Commission, which is the dba for the nefarious Conference on Foreign Relations. Destroying the American dollar could force the crisis that would force the creation of the North American Union. To quote the title of a book of the 1960s era, “None Dare Call It Conspiracy.”

Ordinary Americans may not fully grasp just how dire the true economic picture is, but you can bet our leaders do. Yet from the White House to the Federal Reserve, nobody seems particularly eager to address the issue, preferring instead to talk about the “budget,” as if the budget WERE the debt, rather than merely a measure of our ability to keep up with our payments on the debt.

It is almost as if they already have a Plan B in reserve, ready and waiting to be triumphantly introduced – just in the nick of time.

I wonder what it might be?

H.R. 1955 is an absolute attack on the freedom of speech

2007-11-12T15:09:00.001-08:00

H.R. 1955 is an absolute attack on the freedom of speech. Not only does it assault my right to question government, it also assaults the right of ardent Marxists to speak their minds. So, I am at a loss at both ends.

You see, I value the ability to speak as much as the ability to read nonsense from those such as the writers and curators over at Marxists.org. Should H.R. 1955 become law, no longer will I be able to read articles like "Trotsky or Deutscher? On the New Revisionism and Its Theoretical Source" from James P. Cannon, Fourth International, Winter 1954. The logical gymnastics of such articles will be gone from the web. A very sad day indeed.

I do not fear the idiocy of Cannon and his fellow travelers. But I do fear the agenda of those who proudly strut the halls of DC, American flag pin displayed loudly on lapel or blouse.

These folks aren't simply debating historical and epistemological positions, they are conspiring to subvert the remaining vestiges of Liberty and Property. They are not some group of fanatic windbags. No, they are modern day Brownshirts fighting over whose match ignites the Reichstag -- the Constitution.

The freedom of speech is about to be turned on its head. Fight H.R. 1955 as if it's your life. For without Liberty, your life is no longer yours anyway.

By the People of the United States of America

2007-11-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

The (Updated) Declaration of Independence

By the People of the United States of America, Veteran's Day, 2007.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present illegitimate King George and his neocon advisors, with the complicity of Congress is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• The Government has refused the most wholesome and necessary laws for the public good by decimating the public sector for the war sector, thus depriving children and the poor of healthcare and food for the benefit of corporate profiteering and empire.

• The Government has called together legislative, business and intelligence bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of usurping the right of the people to rightfully know of policies being implemented in their name, fatiguing them into compliance with their measures.

• The Government has ignored serious inquiry into the events of 9/11, and has supported a whitewash 9/11 commission, which has enormous consequences for the world as 9/11 is used as pretext for the "war on terror"

• The Government has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others not amenable to the neocon agenda to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, crippled by inertia and fear, have become nothing more than a insignificant body going through the motions of government; the People remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

• The Government with its corporate sponsors has taken over much of the media and forced propaganda on the people in order to promote an evil Neocon ideology and criminal war

• The Government's legislative branch has sanctioned an illegal war on Iraq and Afghanistan by abrogating their constitutional duty to be the sole government body to decide on whether or not the government should go to war and have forfeited this power to the Executive branch.

• The Government has refuses to stop financing the war in Iraq even though it is against the direct wishes of the majority of the people and is causing untold suffering and death

• The Government by Deceit and Acts of War has incurred an enormous national debt that will be used as an excuse to sell off the people's assets to transnational corporations and banks, as well as keep the people in perpetual slavery

• The Government has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by allowing partisan political appointments to the courts in order to carry out the unitary executive doctrine.

• The Government, representing corporate interests, has made Judges dependent on their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

• The Government has not seriously contested the last two stolen elections which effectively made the notion of our country as a "democracy" null and void and the voice of the people insignificant

• The Government has passed countless un-Constitutional laws, including the "U.S. Patriot Act," "the Military Commission's Act," "The John Warner Defense Appropriations Act", and the more recent H.R. 1955, otherwise known as the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007"

• The Government is actively sanctioning torture and rendition practices, both crimes against domestic and international law.

• The Government has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

• The Government has taken no action to censor the president when he calls the Constitution "just a goddamned piece of paper!” Every federal official - including the President - who takes an oath of office swears "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

• The Government has kept among us, standing private Armies like Blackwater and Dyncorp who are above the law without the consent of the people.

• The Government has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

• The Government has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation

• The Government has protecting them by mock Trials and Commissions, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury by calling a citizen an enemy combatant and effectively getting rid of Habeas Corpus

• For spying on citizens without a warrant

• For not upholding their oaths of office by defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC

• For transporting prisoners beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses and tortured by U.S. client states

• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments

• For allowed unfettered War Profiteering based on a war that should never have happened

• For abdicated their responsibility by declaring us out of their Protection and waging War against us.

• For plundering our seas, ravaging our Coasts, burning our towns, and destroying the lives of our people, specifically in New Orleans, and California

• The Government is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign and domestic Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

• The Government has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Private Military Contractors, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our American brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our laws and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the People of the United States of America, in General, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of the World, solemnly publish and declare, That these States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to a Fascist Corporate Cabal who have illegally taken over this Government and Pretends to do the will of the people, and that all political connection between them and the People, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy Change, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

WHY TRUE PATRIOTS ARE TIMELESS AMERICAN HEROES

2007-11-12T14:48:00.000-08:00

WHY TRUE PATRIOTS ARE TIMELESS AMERICAN HEROES

By Greg Evensen

November 10, 2007

NewsWithViews.com

Is it possible to define the moment when the government began targeting real Lexington and Concord model patriotic Americans as recipients of government smear campaigns, investigations, and outright threats?

History shows that the great federalist Alexander Hamilton was one of the nation’s first advocates for a strong central bank. In fact, Hamilton submitted the bill in 1790 that would become the Bank of the United States. It was an exact replica of the Bank of England. Jefferson argued heavily against it stating that “A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army.” He also warned against letting the nation be saddled with great debt. On the other hand, Hamilton believed that a nation could not succeed long without the influence of the rich on the state’s credit. He believed that debt was a good thing—“a national blessing” if not excessive. Rule by the few was an issue right from the start.

Some would argue that it began with the battles Andrew Jackson fought in 1832, against the national efforts to establish a banking monopoly through the chartering of the Second Bank of the united states. Nicholas Biddle as head of this bank held great power over the political landscape. He caused a banking panic and economic depression in his vicious attempt to blackmail the president and congress into accepting this forerunner of the central bank we suffer under today.

Others would argue that it began getting a head of steam when southern leaders began to threaten secession in earnest during the 1850’s. I hate to tell you, but it wasn’t really about slavery—the north held just as many salves and most of the slave markets as well. It WAS about tariffs and the money that was leaving the agrarian south and not returning to improve roads, bridges, and infrastructure of all kinds. There were other needs the southern states had as well, but they were being financially strangled by the northern industrial states under Lincoln’s boot. It was also about the united states move away from the founding ideals and toward a bureaucratic, paternalistic ever growing central government. The pre-war south remained true to the country of Benjamin Franklin’s time—a constitutional republic.

Still others would point to the brutal westward American expansion, with a rail empire that brought industry which held no regard for the culture of the Indian tribes. The elitists saw only the phenomenal resources of that vast frontier. Industrialists have rarely seen real people with families and traditions, they only see working units to be exploited, herded, controlled, excluded from government, and silenced when awakened to their crimes.

I believe it was a “gathering storm” of issues including the never-ending exploitation and misery brought on by Mayer Amschel (Bauer) Rothschild’s European banking model। These schemers invested in a grand cycle of war and business monopolies (by use of fractional-reserve banking) that supported and prospered greatly from the profits of war after war after war. Rothschild forecast precisely what effect his money cartel would have on the United States. He said, “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” What arrogance! What disdain for a republic’s efforts to govern itself free from the corruption of the money changers! Biographer Frederic Morton stated, “The Rothschild family had, “conquered the world more thoroughly …than all the Caesars before or all the Hitlers after them.” (Creature from Jekyll Island, pg.218) Extreme secrecy has been the hall mark of these banksters since the beginning. That is why there has never been a public audit of the Federal Reserve in all of its history. That must be the rule; otherwise clear-thinking and honest people would burn them out.

It was conspiratorial efforts in the 1880’s to crush American financial independence (read “The Coming Battle”) that lead us into cycles of recession and depression that were later the catalyst for the establishment of the Federal Reserve banking system in the United States. This was of course the crown jewel accomplishment of Paul Warburg (a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, he represented the Rothschild’s), Nelson Aldrich (Republican “whip” in the Senate, chairman of the National Monetary Commission, and father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr’s. family, and grandfather of Vice-President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller), Benjamin Strong (head of JP Morgan Bankers Trust Company, first chairman of the federal reserve system), Henry Davison, Sr. (partner at JP Morgan), Charles D. Norton (President, 1st National Bank of New York), A. Piatt Andrew (Assistant Secretary of the Treasury), and Frank A. Vanderlip (president, of the National City Bank of New York, representing William Rockefeller). These seven men held an estimated one-fourth of the total wealth of the world in 1913. (“Creature from Jekyll Island,” pages 24, 208-213) So, does this fit your definition of conspiracy, complete monopoly, and the absolute success of the world’s banking elite over the sovereignty of the united states of America and its citizens? Do you understand why exposing this, fighting its influence, and demanding accountability from Washington, will put you high on the target list? Your nation was literally sold out 94 years ago. Since then, not a single credible effort has been undertaken by ANYONE in Washington to investigate, audit, explain, or attempt to undo the grievous damage to our country. Could someone in Congress even suggest that we should abolish the Federal Reserve as a criminal conspiracy? Doing so, would label you as a raging patriot.

It was the confluence of great personal fortunes of men like JP Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, George Westinghouse, Pierre DuPont, the British diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, (Rhode’s Scholars fame), August Belmont, American investment czar for the Rothschild’s, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Comp. Schiff was a principal investor of the Russian Bolshevik revolution, a major Woodrow Wilson campaign contributor and backer of the Federal Reserve Act. Is it getting clearer, now? Edward Mandell House, the hidden “Phillip Dru” of Wilson’s White House, was instrumental in working toward world government (in his fictional book and real life) and the Federal Reserve Act as well. The fledgling Council on Foreign Relations (founded in New York in 1921 as an offshoot of the Cecil Rhodes secret society bent on world financial domination) began with backing from nearly all of these players. It has grown to over 3,000 “elites” whose sole reason for existence is to direct the domestic policy, the foreign policy, the economic policy, the banking policies, the media’s role in all of these efforts, the integration of the united states into world governance, and the removal of united states sovereignty from its citizens. They are a lethal group (many of whom serve in cabinet positions or are now running for president from both parties) whose mission has been highly successful and virtually unnoticed by most hard working Americans.

There was a great American conspiracy to rule our nation that centered hundreds of millions of dollars in late 19th and early 20th century financial markets on one empire building goal. It was the control of these markets, the use of their power and the resulting force of this influence to build an American financial kingdom with these treasonous conspirators in complete power. That goal has never changed. As a result, the ideals of personal freedom, self-reliance, private property, very small and limited government, and congressional “common sense” law-making standards have all been sacrificed to insure a continuation of tyranny. It is achieved through the courts, government, business, and a banking stranglehold over the American public.

With the artificial panic of the early 1890’s, the final push was underway to complete a central bank that would have final and unequivocal power over all things governmental, political, financial and industrial। The so-called “Creature from Jekyll Island” (a landmark piece of documentation by G. Edward Griffin c. 1994, American Opinion Publishing) was the result. In 1913, the greatest financial coup in the history of this nation was codified by a treasonous Congress. The Federal Reserve Banking Act was passed and signed into law by Woodrow Wilson. It was followed in the same year by the 16th amendment that “established” the income tax. The Federal Reserve Act created a banking monopoly, (carefully avoided by President Jackson) allowed a PRIVATE bank to take the place of our Department of the Treasury with the issuance of Federal Reserve Bank Notes (a fiat currency with no gold or silver backing). This private bank with individual owners/shareholders is a “central” bank modeled exactly after the Rothschild banks of Europe.

The government has borrowed some $8 trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve Bank since its inception and is currently paying roughly $550 billion dollars per YEAR in compound interest charged by the bank against the American people through a criminally complicit Congress. The Internal Revenue Service acts as the “enforcement arm” of the Federal Reserve and forces the American people to “voluntarily” pay tax that virtually all Americans absolutely do not owe, to a government hell-bent spending every last dime it can borrow. In so doing, the Federal Reserve shareholders guarantee that interest on an ever increasing national debt will continue on and on. Why should America be a debt free nation when paying compound interest on the national debt is so rewarding for so few? As long as the Federal Reserve Bank is allowed by our people and our criminally complicit congress to continue operating, we will be financial slaves to the central bank and its evil European allies. Needless to say, the Rothschild family’s total financial coup has come to pass in our lifetime in our America.

This is the first test in whether or not you are a patriot or a conspirator. If you understand and detest the banking establishment and its purposes, then you are a patriot to be scorned, belittled, ignored politically, and silenced when possible by the government, its agents, and the “establishment.”

The second test comes when you question publicly and write or speak against the influence of film, radio, newspaper or television syndicates, and their hostile, maligned, monopolistic, and dangerous lack of truth in bringing “news” to the American people. This includes the so-called “independently conservative cable outlets” that merely slants the reporting more convincingly to a hungry public hoping for REAL truth in the news. The united states of America does not have a free press or a responsible one. There is a trickle of news that is both truthful and accurate that escapes from the internet for now, but it is simply not capable of competing with a dumbed-down citizenry too impatient and in gross denial about virtually everything that deals with the true state of the nation. If you are a purveyor of the truth and willing to accept the withering blows from the big media conglomerates as well as the government, then you are a patriot in the cross hairs once again.

When you take on the public schools in America, you are up against the three hundred pound bully on the block. The schools that insist upon contraception dispensers, rejection of ideas (creationism) not on the ACLU’s approved list, hatred for real US history, prohibition of common sense and family values, insistence on all things provocative and academically questionable, then you are dealing with a monster in every sense of the word.

To hold a communistic administration (in most districts) and untrained, agenda driven school boards to the task of real education is an exercise in absolute futility। You will be called a “fundamentalist whacko,” or marginalized by a hostile community activist group that favors the illegitimate role education has been granted by the federal government. This has been done and is encouraged by state departments of education to complete the circle of injustice being done in the name of “quality teaching management.” This insures that your child is both illiterate and in-line to accept all dictates coming from the state or Washington. To question this and fight its inclusion in your local schools is to be a confirmed patriot.

The list goes on and on. When you choose alternative natural therapy to pharmaceutical poisons, you are exercising freedom of choice—you are a patriot. When you eat naturally raised foods and drink non-fluoride laced water, you may be a “nut” but you are also a spot-on patriot. When you refuse to jump on the taxpayer subsidized entitlement train, then you have chosen the way of liberty and you are a patriot of the first order.

If you have demonstrated against the well-documented invasion of illegals, fought the good fight opposing the North American Union or Security and Prosperity Partnership linking Canada, the u.s., and Mexico, then you are on your way to membership in a new patriot’s club.

Be assured, that if you question the scandalous loss of life by our military while fulfilling the role of mercenaries for oil, business and ultimately the banks, then you are fulfilling George Washington’s admonition to avoid foreign entanglements। It is NOT about freedom (our buzzword to justify all military interventions), but it is about keeping fuel in the engine of industry.

If you agree with President/General Washington, you MUST be a patriot.

If Agenda 21, the horrible re-ordering of private property and the elimination of our national use of lands for purposes WE deem important, is an issue you detest and protest against, then guess what, you are definitely an American patriot.

You are a patriot because you believe in truth, honesty, national purpose that reflects real freedom, personal liberty and sovereignty for the individual and the nation. You are independently minded, yet of one mind with those who pursue the same moral, virtuous, above board values that began this great homeland. You have been proud to serve your community and for righteous causes, your nation, during times of justified conflict. You worked for honest people who followed the laws and served you in government. You helped those in need and became volunteer firemen, deputies, food pantry workers and Sunday school teachers. You did this for God, for family and for country. A noble purpose pursued by noble people.

Finally, if you believe that conspiracy extends to JFK, Flight 800, 9/11, and far too many other events, then you have found yourself in the middle of a virtual firestorm of disdain and vicious treatment by radio, TV and newsprint “professionals” who are in the employment of national co-conspirators. Their only mission is to protect the really guilty people in and out of government who have murdered thousands of your fellow countrymen for greed, and the continuation of a circle of power that will stop at absolutely nothing to insure they win everything and the rest of us lose it all.

Many of you have chosen not to be corrupt, selfish, elitist, traitorous, or a criminal against your city, state and nation. Clearly, others have chosen to be moral failures, or support those who are, and have literally sold out their country. I find no forgiveness for that. I find no excuse for that. I find moral justification to go after these situations and these individuals with everything at my disposal and rid my nation of the last vestige of these scurrilous bastards.

If you fit the description of a patriot, then wear your label proudly. You must get used to the laser imprint on the front of it, for the government has you in their sights. Make no mistake, they will eventually make their move and we will be literally hunted and in the crosshairs for real. They will not and can not ignore us forever. A government that has been sold out from top to bottom has not only lost its moral authority to lead, it has defined those who have held it to account as the enemy. As a result, they must live the lie forever, or try to silence those who speak the truth. Those named above and their political family descendents are THE enemy. Those in government who support them and their agendas are the VERY definition of tyranny. Those who have accused them of high treason ARE American patriots. America has every reason to be very afraid of and unrelenting towards its government and those who have sold us out. America has every reason to be grateful to and take strength from God for giving the wisdom and courage of the ages to men and women who have joined the ranks of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Mason, Patrick Henry, John Paul Jones, Andrew Jackson, Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, John Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Joe McCarthy, and thousands more who even today, wear the title of PATRIOT proudly, and know EXACTLY what it means. They also know what it will cost to continue to speak out on behalf of those who cannot or will not stand and fight.

I believe that the next monument in Washington D.C. will not be built to honor these corrupt and evil people. It will instead be built for Patriots of this generation, who against all odds and against all the power a dictatorship can bring to bear gave their all for posterity. I do understand what John Quincy Adams said, when he admonished our young Republic that posterity would never know, how much that (patriotic) struggle cost his generation. …………….Yes sir, I believe I do.

© 2007 Greg Evensen - All Rights Reserved

Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

2007-11-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

Name: Fred Martinez
Location: United States

Fred Martinez is a widely published Catholic writer and former TV broadcaster who has been a pro-life activist, speaker and Board member/adviser with various organisations for many years.

"Judicial Watch Does Not Find [SPP] Amusing"

Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

About NASCO

On March 23, 2005, heads of government Vincente Fox, George W. Bush, and Paul Martin launched the North American partnership at a meeting in Waco, Texas, with the expressed goal of “a safer, more prosperous North America.”

Proponents of the partnership claim its purpose is to increase security and prosperity for all three nations through enhanced cooperation. Critics maintain the partnership will sacrifice U.S. sovereignty by establishing a “North American Union,” with open borders and a common currency. Recently, President Bush stated that he found these fears "amusing."

Judicial Watch does not find it amusing and is calling for complete transparency and disclosure in the matter. Follow the links below to read the recently released documents and learn more about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

THE MARCH FOR AMERICA IS FOR EVERY PATRIOT

2007-11-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

THE MARCH FOR AMERICA IS FOR EVERY PATRIOT!

We need and encourage everyday Americans just like you to join us!

By walking with a flag in the March for America, you take a tremendously important stand in showing that there are real people behind the demands to halt North American integration, to keep the United States of America a free and sovereign nation. WE NEED YOU!

WE WILL MARCH TO DEMAND

* Withdrawal from the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and NAFTA

* An immediate halt of government and corporate efforts to integrate the United States into a North American Union with Canada and Mexico.

* Restoration of the Republic by re-commitment and adherence to the Constitution by which our elected officials are accountable to American citizens.

* The defense of our national borders and enforcement of existing immigration law.

* An end to the sell-out of America to globalist interests that have resulted in our economic enslavement and have eroded our sovereignty.

HOW YOU CAN HELP!

If you are unable to attend, please help us by spreading word of the march anywhere and everywhere you can. We have made a March for America button available that you may post on your web site which will re-direct those who click on it to http://mfa.allamericanpodcaster.com

For more information about the North American Union please visit:

* Stop the NAU http://www.stopthenau.org

* Stop SPP http://www.stopspp.org

* August Review http://www.augustreview.com

* The Security & Prosperity Partnership http://www.spp.gov

* You Tube http://www.youtube.com Search for “North American Union”

March for America is a national patriotic movement consisting of pro-American organizations and citizens who come together to defend their country in a time where our leaders are seemingly committed to national suicide. To start a March for America effort in your city email contact@mfawash.org

IT’S YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

truth is the greatest enemy of the State

2007-11-11T09:43:00.000-08:00

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." — Joseph Goebbels

secular humanism has become the new religion

2007-11-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

You hear many people today saying what a mess this country is in. That’s because while surveys show most Americans claim to believe in Biblical religion, in practice, a growing number of younger people are really secular humanists. Why?

While young people’s values are shaped by the media, music, etc., the only thing they are required to do is go to school. And most of them attend public schools, where secular humanism exclusively has been “preached” for decades. How did this come about?

For the last two centuries, there has been in the U.S. a battle between the Biblically-based values of the American Revolution and the secular humanists’ values of the French Revolution, which emphasized Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati philosophy of “do what thou wilt.” One of the leading proponents of the French Revolution was the Marquis de Lafayette, who brought Madame Francoise d’Arusmont (Fannie) Wright to the U.S. in the early 1800s. Here, she joined with Socialists Robert Dale Owen and Orestes Brownson secretly to take over America. According to Brownson, who later converted to Christianity, they wanted to establish a “national, rational, republican education, free for all at the expense of all, conducted under the guardianship of the State” with the purpose of separating children from what they considered the “negative influence” of parents. In terms of values instruction, they wanted to impart to the students values different from those of their parents, and this would come to be known as secular (not God-centered) humanistic education which emphasizes naturalistic evolution as well as moral relativism and situation ethics via values clarification techniques.

A few years after the plan of Owen, Wright and Brownson was begun, Karl Marx in 1844 authored ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS, which stated: “Communism begins from the outset with atheism. . . . Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism” (see Naturalism chart). The next decade, Auguste Comte in 1851 began to author a series of volumes on his SYSTEM OF POSITIVE POLITY, with a “positivist” philosophy in which man, not God, would decide for himself what’s right or wrong.

During the last half of the 19th century and into the 20th century, this philosophy became dominant among American intellectuals, including educators and jurists. As these individuals in the 20th century gained control of American higher education and the federal courts, the philosophy began to spread, even to public elementary and secondary schools.

In 1930, Charles Francis Potter authored HUMANISM, A NEW RELIGION, in which he boasted: “Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

Three years later, Potter signed the first HUMANIST MANIFESTO (1933) as did John Dewey, the “Father of Progressive Education.” The MANIFESTO’s first affirmation stated: “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.” Secondly, it affirmed that man is a product of naturalistic evolution. Humanist Sir Julian Huxley, UNESCO’s first director-general, would later explain that humanism’s “keynote, the central concept to which all its details are related, is evolution.”

In 1954, former president of the American Humanist Association Lloyd Morain, and his wife Mary (a director of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, which has 4 million members), authored HUMANISM AS THE NEXT STEP, which declared that “Humanism is the most rapidly growing religious movement in America today.” With all of these references to humanism as a “religion,” it was no surprise when the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins (June 19, 1961) listed “secular humanism” as a non-theistic religion.

One would think that with the Supreme Court’s “separation of church and state” rulings in the early 1960s banning school prayer and Bible reading, secular humanism would also be banned from public schools. This, though, was not the case. When a case eventually was brought before federal district Judge Brevard Hand, he sided with parents in their desire to ban this “religion” from public schools (see “Judge Bans Humanist Textbooks,” THE WASHINGTON POST, March 5, 1987). However, his decision was reversed at the federal Appeals Court level, which was dominated by a Positivist philosophy. This was despite the fact that even liberal WASHINGTON POST columnist Colman McCarthy in “Textbook Case Look Again” (April 5, 1987) wrote of Judge Hand’s decision about the school texts being challenged, saying “this highly relativistic and individualistic approach constitutes the promotion of a fundamental faith claim opposed to other religious faiths.” So much for “government neutrality” !

As the decade of the 1960s closed, leading educator Ted Sizer wrote in FIVE LECTURES…ON MORAL EDUCATION (1970) that “Christian sermonizing denies individual autonomy….Moral autonomy…is the ‘new morality’ toward which we are to guide ourselves and other people….Clearly the strict adherence to a (moral) ‘code’ is out of date.” Three years later (1973), HUMANIST MANIFESTO II was published and declared: “Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction.”

Three years after that, THE HUMANIST (January-February 1976) published an article by Sheila Schwartz expressing her thankfulness “the crazies (fundamentalists) don’t do all that much reading. If they did, they’d find out that they have already been defeated.” Then, the very next issue of THE HUMANIST (March-April 1976) contained an article by Paul Blanshard, in which he remarked : “I think the most important factor leading us to a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to lead toward the elimination of religious superstition. The average child now acquires a high school education, and this militates against Adam and Eve and all other myths of alleged history.” Textbooks followed this same philosophy, as in the early 1970s, PERSPECTIVES IN UNITED STATES HISTORY informed students that “the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition was a god worshipped by desert folk…clearly man-created.”

The year after Blanshard’s article appeared, THE HUMANIST (January-February 1977) published an article by Sidney Hook, in which he explained that “human beings can be influenced to examine critically their religious beliefs only by indirection, (by which) I mean the development of a critical attitude in all our educational institutions that will aim to make students less credulous to claims that transcend their reflective experience.” And 3 years after that, Morris Storer (director of the American Humanist Association 1975-1980) declared in his book HUMANIST ETHICS (1980) that “a large majority of the educators of American colleges and universities are predominantly humanists, and a majority of the teachers who go out from their studies in colleges to responsibilities in primary and secondary schools are basically humanists, no matter that many maintain a nominal attachment to church or synagogue for good personal, social or practical reasons.”

The point in using all these quotes is to show that humanists’ control of American education and the values our children are taught in public schools is not an accident. If you need any more proof of this, the following quote by H. J. Blackham, a founder of the 4-million-member International Humanist and Ethical Union, should suffice. In THE HUMANIST (September-October 1981), he proclaimed that if schools teach dependence (in a moral sense) on one’s self, “they are more revolutionary than any conspiracy to overthrow the government.” Blackham was absolutely right, and this is exactly what the religion of secular humanism has done. It has become most Americans’ new religion, and that is reflected both in government (e.g., Supreme Court legalizing abortion) and in most Americans’ personal lives.

Humanists have not hidden their agenda, as John Dunphy’s prize-winning essay was published in THE HUMANIST (January-February 1983), and proclaimed that “the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom…between the rotting corpse of Christianity…and the new faith of humanism…(and) humanism will emerge triumphant.”

Unfortunately, humanism has “emerged triumphant” in the U.S. today. Not too long ago, the Josephson Institute of Ethics polled more than 20,000 middle and high school students and found that an amazing 47% acknowledged that they had stolen something from a store in the past 12 months. Do public school teachers and secular humanists tell students to steal? No, but they do say the student is an autonomous moral decisionmaker who should make up her or his own mind about what is right or wrong based on the situation. This could lead some students to say, “Most of the time I don’t steal, but that store owner ripped me off on the price of a sweater, so in this situation I didn’t see anything wrong with shoplifting something from him.”

Yes, secular humanism has become the new religion of most Americans today whether or not they realize. You think not? Ask yourself how many Americans cheat on their taxes! Public school textbooks actually have promoted this philosophy, as HEALTH COMMUNICATING SERIES asked first-graders: “Do you think there is ever a time when (cheating) might be right? Tell when it is. Tell why you think it’s right.”

The consequence of abandoning Biblical principles will be our “destruction.” Remember that in Philippians 3, Paul is talking about “the enemies of the cross of Christ,” and verse 19 reads: “Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.”

There is a famous quote about men and women becoming accomplices to the evils they fail to oppose. This is something of a paraphrase of the last part of Romans 1:32, and it applies to Americans and their new religion of secular humanism today. Shortly after the Iraq war began, a poll showed two-thirds of Americans supported torturing prisoners in wartime. Subsequently, the horrors of Abu Ghraib were made public. The American people basically invited this evil, and since God holds nations accountable for their actions and nations cannot be punished after this life, can’t we expect God to punish the U.S. and its people here in this life?

All of the so-called Christians who humanistically rationalize torture based on situation ethics should ask themselves what Jesus would say about this. You say you’re not one of those supporting torture, so you’re all right. Well, do you check to see from where the TV, radio, shirts, jeans, etc., which you buy come, so you’re sure they are not from Communist China, which tortures and kills Christians? If you buy products from China, you are supporting a torturing and murdering dictatorship, and what would Jesus say about that?

If I were a reporter at one of the current presidential debates, I would ask the candidates (and the millions of viewers watching) the following: “If Hitler and the Nazis controlled Germany, Austria, Poland, etc., today, and acknowledged murdering millions of Christians and Jews, would you have a trading relationship with them, supporting their economy and military?” After the gasps of unbelief from the candidates and viewers subsided, I would then ask: “Well, if you wouldn’t trade with Hitler, when are you going to end our trade with Communist China, which we all know has murdered tens of millions of innocent people, including many Christians whose body parts have been harvested to sell to Americans and others for implants?”

Militarization of North America

2007-11-09T22:36:00.000-08:00

Canada’s Sovereignty in Jeopardy: the Militarization of North America

November 10, 2007

GlobalResearch.ca

Canadian jurisdiction over its Northern territories was redefined, following an April 2002 military agreement between Ottawa and Washington. This agreement allows for the deployment of US troops anywhere in Canada, as well as the stationing of US warships in Canada’s territorial waters. Following the creation of US Northern Command in April 2002, Washington announced unilaterally that NORTHCOM’s territorial jurisdiction (land, sea, air) extended from the Caribbean basin to the Canadian arctic territories. “The new command was given responsibility for the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, portions of the Caribbean and the contiguous waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans up to 500 miles off the North American coastline. NorthCom’s mandate is to “provide a necessary focus for [continental] aerospace, land and sea defenses, and critical support for [the] nation’s civil authorities in times of national need.” (Canada-US Relations - Defense Partnership – July 2003, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR), http://www.sfu.ca/casr/ft-lagasse1.htm NORTHCOM’s stated mandate was to “provide a necessary focus for [continental] aerospace, land and sea defenses, and critical support for [the] nation’s [US] civil authorities in times of national need.” (Canada-US Relations - Defense Partnership – July 2003, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR), http://www.sfu.ca/casr/ft-lagasse1.htm) Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld boasted that “the NORTHCOM – with all of North America as its geographic command – ‘is part of the greatest transformation of the Unified Command Plan [UCP] since its inception in 1947.’” (Ibid) Canada and US Northern Command In December 2002, following the refusal of (former) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to join US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), an interim bi-national military authority entitled the Binational Planning Group (BPG) was established. Canadian membership in NORTHCOM would have implied the integration of Canada’s military command structures with those of the US. That option had been temporarily deferred by the Chrétien government, through the creation of the Binational Planning Group (BPG). The BPG’s formal mandate in 2002 was to extend the jurisdiction of the US-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to cover sea, land and “civil forces”, “to improve current Canada–United States arrangements to defend against primarily maritime threats to the continent and respond to land-based attacks, should they occur.” Although never acknowledged in official documents, the BPG was in fact established to prepare for the merger of NORAD and NORTHCOM, thereby creating de facto conditions for Canada to join US Northern Command. The “Group” described as an “independent” military authority was integrated from the outset in December 2002 into the command structures of NORAD and NORTHCOM, both operating out the same headquarters at the Paterson Air Force base in Colorado. In practice, the “Group” functioned under the jurisdiction of US Northern Command, which is controlled by the US Department of Defense. In December 2004, in the context of President Bush’s visit to Ottawa, it was agreed that the mandate of the BPG would be extended to May 2006. It was understood that this extension was intended to set the stage for Canada’s membership in NORTHCOM. In March 2006, two months before the end of its mandate, the BPG published a task force document on North American security issues: “‘A continental approach’ to defense and security could facilitate binational maritime domain awareness and a combined response to potential threats, ‘which transcends Canadian and U.S. borders, domains, defense and security departments and agencies,’ (quoted in Homeland Defense watch, 20 July 2006) The BPG task force report called for the establishment of a “maritime mission” for NORAD including a maritime warning system. The report acted as a blueprint for the renegotiation of NORAD, which was implemented immediately following the release of the report. On April 28, 2006, an agreement negotiated behind closed doors was signed between the US and Canada. The renewed NORAD agreement was signed in Ottawa by the US ambassador and the Canadian Minister of Defense Gordon O’Connor, without prior debate in the Canadian Parliament. The House of Commons was allowed to rubberstamp a fait accompli, an agreement which had already been signed by the two governments. “‘A continental approach to defense and security could facilitate binational maritime domain awareness and a combined response to potential threats, “which transcends Canadian and U.S. borders, domains, defense and security departments and agencies,’ the report says.” (Homeland Defense Watch, May 8, 2006) While NORAD still exists in name, its organizational structure coincides with that of NORTHCOM. Following the April 28, 2006 agreement, in practical terms, NORAD has been merged into USNORTHCOM. NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Gene Renuart, USAF happens to be Commander of NORAD, Maj. Gen. Paul J. Sullivan who is NORTHCOM Chief of Staff, is Chief of Staff of NORAD. With a exception of a token Canadian General, who occupies the position of Deputy Commander of NORAD, the leadership of NORAD coincides with that of NORTHCOM. (See photo gallery below). These two military authorities are identical in structure, they occupy the same facilities at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado. There was no official announcement of the renewed NORAD agreement, which hands over control of Canada’s territorial waters to the US, nor was there media coverage of this far-reaching decision. The Deployment of US Troops on Canadian Soil At the outset of US Northern Command in April 2002, Canada accepted the right of the US to deploy US troops on Canadian soil. “U.S. troops could be deployed to Canada and Canadian troops could cross the border into the United States if the continent was attacked by terrorists who do not respect borders, according to an agreement announced by U.S. and Canadian officials.” (Edmunton Sun, 11 September 2002) With the creation of the BPG in December 2002, a binational “Civil Assistance Plan” was established. The latter described the precise “conditions for deploying U.S. troops in Canada, or vice versa, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or natural disaster.” (quoted in Inside the Army, 5 September 2005). Canadian Sovereignty In August 2006, the US State Department confirmed that a new NORAD Agreement had entered into force, while emphasizing that “the maritime domain awareness component was of ‘indefinite duration,’ albeit subject to periodic review.” (US Federal News, 1 August 2006). In March 2007, the US Senate Armed Services Committee confirmed that the NORAD Agreement had been formally renewed, to include a maritime warning system. In Canada, in contrast, there has been a deafening silence. In Canada, the renewed NORAD agreement went virtually unnoticed. There was no official pronouncement by the Canadian government of Stephen Harper. There was no analysis or commentary of its significance and implications for Canadian territorial sovereignty. The agreement was barely reported by the Canadian media. Operating under a “North American” emblem (i.e. a North American Command), the US military would have jurisdiction over Canadian territory from coast to coast; extending from the St Laurence Valley to the Queen Elizabeth archipelago in the Canadian Arctic. The agreement would allow for the establishment of “North American” military bases on Canadian territory. From an economic standpoint, it would also integrate the Canadian North, with its vast resources in energy and raw materials, with Alaska. Ottawa’s Military Facility in Resolute Bay Ottawa’s July 2007 decision to establish a military facility in Resolute Bay in the Northwest Passage was not intended to reassert “Canadian sovereignty. In fact quite the opposite. It was established in consultation with Washington. A deep-water port at Nanisivik, on the northern tip of Baffin Island is also envisaged. The US administration is firmly behind the Canadian government’s decision. The latter does not “reassert Canadian sovereignty”. Quite the opposite. It is a means to eventually establish US territorial control over Canada’s entire Arctic region including its waterways. This territory would eventually fall under the jurisdiction of US Northern Command (NORTHCOM). The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP) The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP) signed between the US, Canada and Mexico contemplates the formation of a North American Union (NAU), a territorial dominion, extending from the Caribbean to the Canadian arctic territories. The SPP is closely related to the Binational Planning Group initiative. An Independent Task Force sponsored by The Council on Foreign Relations calls for the transformation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) into a “multiservice Defense Command”. The CFR document entitled “North American Community” drafted on behalf of the SPP endorses the BPG March 2006 recommendations: “As recommended in a report of the Canadian-U.S. Joint Planning Group [BPG], NORAD should evolve into a multiservice Defense Command that would expand the principle of Canadian-U.S. joint command to land and naval as well as air forces engaged in defending the approaches to North America. In addition, Canada and the United States should reinforce other bilateral defense institutions, including the Permanent Joint Board on Defense and Joint Planning Group, and invite Mexico to send observers. (North American Community, Task Force documented sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) together with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales) The accession of Canada to this Multiservice Defense Command, as recommended by the CFR, has already been established, signed and sealed, approved by the Canadian Parliament in May 2006, in the context of the renewal of the NORAD agreement. In all likelihood, the formal merging of “the renewed NORAD” and US NORTHCOM will be on the agenda at the August Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (SPP) Summit meeting of President Bush, Prime Minister Harper and President Calderon at Montebello, Quebec. This decision would lead to the formation of a US-Canada NORTHCOM, with a new name, but with substantially the same NORTHCOM rhetorical mandate of “defending the Northern American Homeland” against terrorist attacks. The military of both the US and Canada would also be called to play an increasing role in civilian law enforcement activities. The real objective underlying the SPP is to militarize civilian institutions and repeal democratic government. “Integration” or the “Annexation” of Canada? Canada is contiguous to “the center of the empire”. Territorial control over Canada is part of the US geopolitical and military agenda. It is worth recalling in this regard, that throughout history, the “conquering nation” has expanded on its immediate borders, acquiring control over contiguous territories. Military integration is intimately related to the ongoing process of integration in the spheres of trade, finance and investment. Needless to say, a large part of the Canadian economy is already in the hands of US corporate interests. In turn, the interests of big business in Canada tend to coincide with those of the US. Canada is already a de facto economic protectorate of the USA. NAFTA has not only opened up new avenues for US corporate expansion, it has laid the groundwork under the existing North American umbrella for the post 9/11 integration of military command structures, public security, intelligence and law enforcement. No doubt, Canada’s entry into US Northern Command will be presented to public opinion as part of Canada-US “cooperation”, as something which is “in the national interest”, which “will create jobs for Canadians”, and “will make Canada more secure”. Ultimately what is at stake is that beneath the rhetoric, Canada will cease to function as a Nation: -Its borders will be controlled by US officials and confidential information on Canadians will be shared with Homeland Security. -US troops and Special Forces will be able to enter Canada as a result of a binational arrangement. -Canadian citizens can be arrested by US officials, acting on behalf of their Canadian counterparts and vice versa. But there is something perhaps even more fundamental in defining and understanding where Canada and Canadians stand as nation. By endorsing a Canada-US “integration” in the spheres of defense, homeland security, police and intelligence, Canada not remains a full fledged member of George W. Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing”, it will directly participate, through integrated military command structures, in the US war agenda in Central Asia and the Middle East, including the massacre of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture of POWs, the establishment of concentration camps, etc. Canada would no longer have an independent foreign policy. Under an integrated North American Command, a North American national security doctrine would be formulated. Canada would be obliged to embrace Washington’s pre-emptive military doctrine, its bogus “war on terrorism which is used as a pretext for waging war in the Middle East. . The Canadian judicial system would be affected. Moreover, binational integration in the areas of Homeland security, immigration, policing of the US-Canada border, not to mention the anti-terrorist legislation, would imply pari passu acceptance of the US sponsored police State, its racist policies, its “ethnic profiling” directed against Muslims, the arbitrary arrest of anti-war activists.

World could go to war over water

2007-11-09T19:05:00.000-08:00

World could go to war over water, says Barlow
By Francesca Allodi-Ross
The McGill Daily

Maude Barlow says water commercialization puts the human race at risk.

Stephen Davis for The McGill Daily
Water shortages are no longer the exclusive concern of poor desert countries, and unless we change course dramatically, the entire world could go to war over water.

This was the message of Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, in Montreal Monday night as part of a national tour for her new book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Americans in particular are getting thirsty, and and they want Canada’s water. For Barlow, the greatest threat to Canada’s freshwater is the possibility of losing it to the U.S. through bulk water exports.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S. cannot force any province to start selling them water in bulk.

“[But] once any province does, you can’t turn the tap off,” Barlow said, adding that although there is a voluntary provincial ban on these exports, Quebec, British Columbia, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador have all considered the idea.

The threat to Canada’s freshwater is heightened by the recent Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which Barlow claims has reframed access to water markets as an issue of national security. Barlow credits her organization for outing a secret meeting between Canadian and American government and business officials that proves bulk water exports are up for discussion, despite denial by the Harper government, which is in the process of drafting a national water policy.

A further indication of the move towards commercialization of water is the recent interest by multinational companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, ITT, and Dow Chemical.

According to Barlow, such companies see a market in the growing water shortages that are resulting from pollution and over-extraction, and are eager to capitalize, either by seeking out new sources of clean water in Canada’s northern regions or developing new technologies such as toilet-to-tap – which purifies toilet water – and desalination.

Sam Boskey, former Montreal city councillor and a moderator at Barlow’s discussion at the Best Western hotel Monday evening, echoed Barlow’s concerns about water commercialization. Boskey said that local communities will no longer be able to make decisions about issues such as water infrastructure, privatization, and fluoridation.

“If water goes into global trade, we’ll lose our sovereignty as far as water is concerned,” Boskey said.

The myth that Canada has an abundance of freshwater serves to bolster the argument of governments and multinational companies interested in water commercialization. Barlow pointed our that, although Canada has 20 per cent of the fresh water in the world, it has only seven per cent of the renewable water flow – the amount of water discharged into the ocean and the amount that can be consumed if Canada wants to preserve its current water levels.

In fact, she said, many provinces are experiencing water shortages.

Compared with the problems facing the developing world in terms of access to clean water and pollution, Canada’s looming water commercialization might not seem so terrible. But Barlow claims the problem – a failure to recognize water as a human right – is the same.

This is the basis for her book and the solution to the global water crisis: that governments around the globe recognize water as a human right and guarantee access.

“We know what we need to do. We don’t have the political will yet, but we know,” she said.

Barlow stressed the urgency of the situation, painting a miserable picture of the world in 20 years if we choose not to act. Over-extraction of groundwater and massive displacement of water are disrupting the earth’s natural hydrological cycle, while pollution is making what water is left unusable.

Barlow’s concluding remarks were ominous: “We will either listen, or we will be the species that monitored its own extinction.”

AMERICAN BLOGOSPHERE A ‘DEAD MAN WALKING’?

2007-11-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

at present you have little to fear, but based on the election results it could spell the end of blogging in america and likely in the world as the trend seems to be towards less freedom and more control, its not just internet. it’s going to be everywhere, you will have to be very careful what you say.
you will see very normal people carted off for seemingly insignificant speech infractions, get ready for the new world goverment people. you voted the left in office, live with the results.

what gets me is that Americans fought off a similar bill twice and now this woman has sneaked this in under their noses. It’s in place now, and yes, I believe it is a global trend. Kevin Rudd will surely bring it in in Australia because he never gave a definitive ‘no’ when Christians asked him point blank if he intended on doing that.

Phrase has a cat got your tongue should be changed to has a Democrat got your tongue? Seems like every effort is being used to silence western citizens before June 2009 when the EU elects its first president & the world will be ripe for One World Government. Every western nation immigrants seem to have more rights than citizens and citizens rights are starting to disappear in favor of criminal rights. Corruption is sweeping our world.

This is all part of the run-up to the inevitable civil war in this country between the Right and Left. Oh! And I should note that all these pathetic Leftard attempt to silence the Right will fail and will serve only to rally Patriots to arms. If necessary we’ll communicate by pamplets, courier and coded letters just like we did prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. The only thing these Leftard pigs and the their willing allies have accomplished is to add their names to a growing list of traitors who will face termination with extreme prejudice when they force the righteous to defend themselves.

The American Patriots have long memories and long knives and treason against the Republic is never forgiven or forgotten. A little history lesson here: At the end of the American Revolution hundreds of thousands traitors were forced into exile after the seizure of all their property.

This can and will happen again.

Friends, the noose that is HR 1955 is not going to care about anyone’s political or religious leanings, or much of whatever the flavor of division is this week. Make no mistake: *All* of our American necks, both present and future, are in jeopardy. Playing the blame game is moot at this point. The framers of the U.S. Constitution and The Bill of Rights must be rolling in their graves. And yes, this nation may LET itself be duped into a civil war if we collectively CHOOSE to forget that United We Stand. Blind obedience and forced mutism has never been the American way. Nor should it ever be.

Imagine a bill which ensures that you could be taken off to jail for years and years for speaking out, speaking out! against the government. About a week ago, Democrat Jane Harman’s proposed bill HR 1955 was passed.

H.R. 1955 passed the House by a landslide vote of 404-6 on October 23, 2007 (Roll Call Vote 993). The bill has been received by the Senate and was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Why is it that these bills are so vaguely worded? If you’re like me, you’re suspicious that this is for the purpose of judicial activists to interpret them as they see fit. The wording of this bill hints at the open market and the internet.

According to the measure, “The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

The unspoken threat implied by that passage is that the government might have to clamp down on free speech online. “At base,” wrote retired Col. Dan Smith in Counterpunch, “Harman’s proposal seems to be a direct attack on First Amendment rights.”

Is the critical American blogosphere about to become a target just like the European?

Pakistan quickly ended house arrest

2007-11-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

US Worry Rises Over Pakistan Crackdown

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG – 4 hours ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan quickly ended house arrest for opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday as President Gen. Pervez Musharraf came under new U.S. pressure to end a crackdown that Washington fears is hurting the fight against Islamic extremism.

Earlier in the day, police threw up barbed wire around Bhutto's house to keep her from speaking at a rally to protest Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule, and security forces rounded up thousands of her supporters to block any mass demonstrations.

The action was a new blow to hopes the two U.S.-friendly leaders could form an alliance against militants — a rising threat underlined by a suicide bombing in northwest Pakistan that targeted the home of a Cabinet minister, who escaped without injury.

Bhutto twice tried to evade authorities in her car, telling police who surrounded her villa: "Do not raise hands on women. You are Muslims. This is un-Islamic." Officers blocked the former prime minister's way with an armored vehicle.

In Rawalpindi, the nearby garrison town where she had hoped to stage the rally, police fired tear gas at hundreds of Bhutto loyalists who staged wildcat protests and hurled stones. More than 100 were arrested.

The Bush administration called for the restrictions on Bhutto to be lifted, and Pakistan's government said late Friday that she was again free to move about, although police barriers remained outside her house. Her supporters said she would try to leave Saturday morning.

In Washington, where some lawmakers are calling for aid to Pakistan to be curtailed, U.S. officials again criticized Musharraf's crackdown.

"We remain concerned about the continued state of emergency and curtailment of basic freedoms, and urge Pakistani authorities to quickly return to constitutional order and democratic norms," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement.

As Musharraf's chief international backer, the Bush administration is deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 160 million people that is on the front lines of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorist groups.

The suspension of the constitution last weekend has intensified the anger of moderate and secular Pakistanis who have become increasingly frustrated with military rule. At the same time, Islamic militants with ties to the Taliban and al-Qaida are stepping up violence, including suicide bombings and fighting in the northwest along the border with Afghanistan.

Musharraf cited the gains by extremists in the frontier region as one of the main reasons for his emergency decree, saying political unrest was undermining the fight against militants.

On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the home of Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Muqam was unhurt but four people died.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the turmoil could undermine the battle against Pakistani insurgents.

"The concern I have is that the longer the internal problems continue, the more distracted the Pakistani army and security services will be in terms of the internal situation rather than focusing on the terrorist threat in the frontier area," Gates told reporters while flying home from a weeklong visit to Asia.

Despite the government's attempt to squelch Pakistani news coverage of the unrest, some independent TV channels are finding ways to broadcast reports. Geo TV, for instance, transmits by satellite from a backup facility in the Persian Gulf and it streams video on the Internet.

Most of the thousands of people rounded up this week have been moderates — lawyers and activists from secular opposition parties, such as Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. The detentions have fueled popular suspicions the embattled Musharraf declared the emergency to maintain his grip on power, which he has held since leading a coup in 1999.

Bhutto's detention, if only for a day, showed Musharraf has no intention of easing the crackdown despite saying Thursday that parliamentary elections would be held by mid-February, just a month later than originally planned. The announcement came after intense pressure from the U.S.

The move against Bhutto further harmed prospects for a Bhutto-Musharraf alliance that Washington has been pushing for.

"I worked out a road map with Gen. Musharraf for a peaceful transition to democracy and I'm very disappointed that though there is a peaceful way, he chose the nonpolitical path," Bhutto told a few dozen supporters after her second foiled attempt to get out of her villa.

Police kept a wary eye on her supporters, who repeatedly tried to remove the barbed wire and steel and concrete barriers ringing Bhutto's house. At least 30 of her loyalists were arrested, including a woman carrying flowers.

Dressed in a blue tunic and her trademark white head scarf, Bhutto twice tried to leave for Rawalpindi inside a white Landcruiser with tinted windows, surrounded by about 50 supporters, including several lawmakers.

After being turned back the second time, her way blocked by an armored vehicle, she got out of the car and joined her supporters, who chanted "Go, Musharraf, go!"

"I want to tell you to have courage because this battle is against dictatorship and it will be won by the people," Bhutto said as police stood guard nearby.

Her supporters said they would only be further emboldened by Friday's clampdown.

"We will not go away. Our party activists have been mobilized to move out and take to the streets," said Abida Hussain, a former ambassador to the United States.

website dubbed ‘March for America’ states

2007-11-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

Anti North American Union protests planned in 7 cities for November 17th

Organizers are planning to protest the North American Union in 7 cities on November 17th. Protests are planned in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Yakima, WA.

The nation wide protest march is in opposition to the Security & Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and establishment of a North American Union between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

The website dubbed ‘March for America’ states:

“The SPP is a “hostile takeover of democracy” by the leaders of the United States, Canada & Mexico in collaboration with un-elected and unaccountable corporate elite “working groups” who are integrating and “harmonizing” policies and regulations between the three nations without any public forum or congressional oversight.”

Thomas Jefferson

2007-11-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

Quote of the Week
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." ~Thomas Jefferson

Iran Attack Plans Ready if Needed

2007-11-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

US: Iran Attack Plans Ready if Needed

By ROBERT BURNS – 6 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. defense officials have signaled that up-to-date attack plans are available if needed in the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear aims, although no strike appears imminent.

The Army and Marine Corps are under enormous strain from years of heavy ground fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the United States has ample air and naval power to strike Iran if President Bush decided to target nuclear sites or to retaliate for alleged Iranian meddling in neighboring Iraq.

Among the possible targets, in addition to nuclear installations like the centrifuge plant at Natanz: Iran's ballistic missile sites, Republican Guard bases, and naval warfare assets that Tehran could use in a retaliatory closure of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital artery for the flow of Gulf oil.

The Navy has an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf area with about 60 fighters and other aircraft that likely would feature prominently in a bombing campaign. And a contingent of about 2,200 Marines are on a standard deployment to the Gulf region aboard ships led by the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship. Air Force fighters and bombers are available elsewhere in the Gulf area, including a variety of warplanes in Iraq and at a regional air operations center in Qatar.

But there has been no new buildup of U.S. firepower in the region. In fact there has been some shrinkage in recent months. After adding a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf early this year — a move that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said was designed to underscore U.S. long-term stakes in the region — the Navy has quietly returned to a one-carrier presence.

Talk of a possible U.S. attack on Iran has surfaced frequently this year, prompted in some cases by hard-line statements by White House officials. Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, stated on Oct. 21 that the United States would "not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," and that Iran would face "serious consequences" if it continued in that direction. Gates, on the other hand, has emphasized diplomacy.

Bush suggested on Oct. 17 that Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear arms could lead to "World War III." Yet on Wednesday, in discussing Iran at a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Bush made no reference to the military option.

"The idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is dangerous, and, therefore, now is the time for us to work together to diplomatically solve this problem," Bush said, adding that Sarkozy also wants a peaceful solution.

Iran's conventional military forces are generally viewed as limited, not among the strongest in the Middle East. But a leading expert on the subject, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says it would be a mistake to view the Islamic republic as a military weakling.

"Its strengths in overt conflict are more defensive than offensive, but Iran has already shown it has great capability to resist outside pressure and any form of invasion and done so under far more adverse and divisive conditions than exist in Iran today," Cordesman wrote earlier this year.

Cordesman estimates that Iran's army has an active strength of around 350,000 men.

At the moment, there are few indications of U.S. military leaders either advising offensive action against Iran or taking new steps to prepare for that possibility. Gates has repeatedly emphasized that while military action cannot be ruled out, the focus is on diplomacy and tougher economic sanctions.

Asked in late October whether war planning had been ramped up or was simply undergoing routine updates, Gates replied, "I would characterize it as routine." His description of new U.S. sanctions announced on Oct. 25 suggested they are not a harbinger of war, but an alternative.

A long-standing responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is to maintain and update what are called contingency plans for potential military action that a president might order against any conceivable foe. The secret plans, with a range of timelines and troop numbers, are based on a variety of potential scenarios — from an all-out invasion like the March 2003 march on Baghdad to less demanding missions.

Another military option for Washington would be limited, clandestine action by U.S. special operations commandos, such as Delta Force soldiers, against a small number of key nuclear installations.

The man whose responsibility it would be to design any conventional military action against Iran — and execute it if ordered by Bush — is Adm. William Fallon, the Central Command chief. He is playing down prospects of conflict, saying in a late September interview that there is too much talk of war.

"This constant drumbeat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful," Fallon told Al-Jazeera television, adding that he does not expect a war against Iran. During a recent tour of the Gulf region, Fallon made a point of telling U.S. allies that Iran is not as strong as it portrays itself.

"Not militarily, economically or politically," he said.

Fallon's immediate predecessor, retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, raised eyebrows in September when he suggested that initiating a war against Iran would be a mistake. He urged vigorous efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but failing that, he said, "There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran." He also said he believed Iran's leaders could be dissuaded from using nuclear arms, once acquired.

The possibility of U.S. military action raises many tough questions, beginning perhaps with the practical issue of whether the United States knows enough about Iran's network of nuclear sites — declared sites as well as possible clandestine ones — to sufficiently set back or destroy their program.

Among other unknowns: Iran's capacity to retaliate by unleashing terrorist strikes against U.S. targets.

Nonmilitary specialists who have studied Iran's nuclear program are doubtful of U.S. military action.

"There is a nontrivial chance that there will be an attack, but it's not likely," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of a nuclear strategy project at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy group.

Legislation Assaults Personal Liberties

2007-11-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

Legislation Assaults Personal Liberties
"Thought Crime Bill Passes House"

is the title of Ronni Bennett's Tuesday, 06 November 2007 post at

"Time Goes By."

She reports this bill is:

"Designated H.R.1955 and titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism and Prevention Act of 2007, it is an amendment to the Homeland Security Act of 2002"

I strongly urge anyone who has not read the alarm she sounds to do so by connecting to her blog on the link highlighted above.

Please contact your congresspersons to prevent the bill's becoming law if you care about our personal freedoms, preserving our democracy and constitution.

Coincidentally, without having read her post I had just written in my previous post here about prior unsatisfactory communication experiences with my congressperson. I will make my views known in the hopes this time they will receive serious consideration.

govern "dissent"

2007-11-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

In additiion to the stupid hate crimes legislation, that's evidently not enough for the government. Now they want the power to govern "dissent" You may want to let Congressman Franks know what you think of that House vote, and let Senators McCain and Kyl know what you want them to do about it.

Bill Number: H.R. 1955

Sponsor: Representative Jane Harman (D-CA)
Number of Cosponsors: 14

Bill Summary:
According to supporters, the measure will play an important role in helping government and law enforcement officials understand and prevent domestic terrorism. In a speech on the House floor advocating passage of the bill, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) -- the coauthor and initial sponsor of the measure -- warned that the next time the U.S. faces a terrorist threat, "my assumption is that many who attack us will already be here, and some will be US citizens." To prevent that attack, she said, the new "legislation will help the nation develop a better understanding of the forces that lead to homegrown terrorism, and the steps we can take to stop it."

Critics of the measure allege that it is a thinly veiled and dangerous attempt to criminalize dissent. Such concern is based on the bill's vague and open-ended language that, critics say, could be used by the government to trample basic rights to free speech and assembly and turn legitimate dissent into thought crimes.

The legislation, for instance, defines "violent radicalization" as "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." The bill makes no attempt to define what an "extremist belief system" might be. Nor does it define the action of "facilitating ideologically based violence."

In its section on key findings related to homegrown terrorism, the measure gives lip-service to constitutional rights, but also singles out the Internet and its open market for the flow of ideas and information as part of the problem. According to the measure, "The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."

The unspoken threat implied by that passage is that the government might have to clamp down on free speech online. "At base," wrote retired Col. Dan Smith in Counterpunch, "Harman's proposal seems to be a direct attack on First Amendment rights."

Bill Status:
H.R. 1955 passed the House by a landslide vote of 404-6 on October 23, 2007 (Roll Call Vote 993). The bill has been received by the Senate and was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

PATRIOT WILD FIRE IS SPREADING ACROSS THE NATION

2007-11-08T16:35:00.002-08:00

A PATRIOT WILD FIRE IS SPREADING ACROSS THE NATION!

Carry the flag in your city!

On Saturday November 17th, 2007 there will be a nation wide protest march in opposition to the Security & Prosperity Partnership of North America http://www.spp.gov and establishment of a North American Union between the United States, Mexico and Canada.The SPP is a “hostile takeover of democracy” by the leaders of the United States, Canada & Mexico in collaboration with un-elected and unaccountable corporate elite “working groups” who are integrating and “harmonizing” policies and regulations between the three nations without any public forum or congressional oversight.

Overwhelming evidence supports the assertion that these efforts are the groundwork for an official and/or de facto merger into an “EU style” North American Union. The SPP seeks to establish a “North American framework” doublespeak for “Building a North American Community” a report sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales. The SPP is implmenting CFR policy.

References:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/

http://www.spp.gov

Aspects of an eventual North American Union include a single currency (Amero) and a North American Triumvirate (Trilateral Parliament) that would super cede our judicial branch of government and outright subvert American Sovereignty.

References:

http://www.american.edu/ia/cnas/index.cfm

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58052

WHAT TO BRING

OLD GLORY - If nothing else please bring yourself and an American flag. A Sea of Red, White n’ Blue to make the highest visual impact possible. The American flag is the mainstay of the March for America.

* Please NOTE * We have room but for one flag, the American flag.

PROTEST SIGNS

Those who wish to do so are encouraged to bring signs that are PRO-AMERICA and oppose the SPP/NAU.

Suggested:

NO SPP!

NO NAU/NORTH AMERICAN UNION!

NO SPP/NAU!

WE HAFTA REPEAL NAFTA

US OUT OF UN NOW!

SECURE OUR BORDERS

SOVEREIGN USA!

SPP = TREASON!

STOP THE CFR!

STOP NORTH AMERICAN INTEGRATION!

THE MARCH FOR AMERICA IS FOR EVERY PATRIOT!

We need and encourage everyday Americans just like you to join us!

By walking with a flag in the March for America, you take a tremendously important stand in showing that there are real people behind the demands to halt North American integration, to keep the United States of America a free and sovereign nation. WE NEED YOU!

WE WILL MARCH TO DEMAND

* Withdrawal from the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and NAFTA

* An immediate halt of government and corporate efforts to integrate the United States into a North American Union with Canada and Mexico.

* Restoration of the Republic by re-commitment and adherence to the Constitution by which our elected officials are accountable to American citizens.

* The defense of our national borders and enforcement of existing immigration law.

* An end to the sell-out of America to globalist interests that have resulted in our economic enslavement and have eroded our sovereignty.

HOW YOU CAN HELP!

If you are unable to attend, please help us by spreading word of the march anywhere and everywhere you can. We have made a March for America button available that you may post on your web site which will re-direct those who click on it to http://mfa.allamericanpodcaster.com

For more information about the North American Union please visit:

* Stop the NAU http://www.stopthenau.org

* Stop SPP http://www.stopspp.org

* August Review http://www.augustreview.com

* The Security & Prosperity Partnership http://www.spp.gov

* You Tube http://www.youtube.com Search for “North American Union”

March for America is a national patriotic movement consisting of pro-American organizations and citizens who come together to defend their country in a time where our leaders are seemingly committed to national suicide. To start a March for America effort in your city email contact@mfawash.org

IT’S YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

2007-11-08T16:35:00.001-08:00

Get This Button For Your Site

2007-11-08T16:32:00.000-08:00

Anti North American Union protests planned in 7 cities for November 17th

Marty Eels

Published 11/08/2007 - 12:45 p.m. EDT

Organizers are planning to protest the North American Union in 7 cities on November 17th. Protests are planned in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Yakima, WA.

The nation wide protest march is in opposition to the Security & Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and establishment of a North American Union between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

The website dubbed ‘March for America’ states:

“The SPP is a “hostile takeover of democracy” by the leaders of the United States, Canada & Mexico in collaboration with un-elected and unaccountable corporate elite “working groups” who are integrating and “harmonizing” policies and regulations between the three nations without any public forum or congressional oversight.”

Critics have charged that the Bush administration has been attempting through Executive Initiative to replace U.S. representative government with a North American Union. The SPP was not authorized by Congress.

They see moves that have increased the power of the Executive Branch of government as a tool to be used at the behest of an international oligarchy.

The proposed plan for a North American Union on the Council on Foreign Relations wevsite, calls for a 15 member council that includes five members from each nation, which will set the agenda for the president instead of Congress.

The plan also calls for replacing Congress with a North American Parliament and a North American Court to replace the U.S. Supreme Court as well as a new continental perimeter and a continental tariff. It also calls for integrated Homeland Security and Customs.

Former Mexican President Vincente Fox has said recently that he supported massive immigration into the U.S. in order to integrate the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, to further the long term goal of a North American Union. Visit the USA Daily Forum to discuss this and other issues

Officials debate implementing ‘Real ID Act’

2007-11-08T16:28:00.000-08:00

It is clear most lawmakers representing the area agree the state should not issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

What they don’t agree on, however, is the Real ID Act, a piece of federal legislation passed in 2005 that prohibits federal agencies from accepting state issued driver’s licenses or identification cards unless such documents are determined by the secretary to meet minimum security requirements, including the incorporation of specified data, a common machine-readable technology, and certain anti-fraud security features.

Proponents of the Real ID Act say, among other things, it will prevent illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses.

The act sets minimum issuance standards for such documents that require (1) verification of presented information; (2) evidence that the applicant is lawfully present in the United States; and (3) issuance of temporary driver’s licenses or ID cards to persons temporarily present that are valid only for their period of authorized stay (or for one year where the period of stay is indefinite).

The act also requires states to participate in the interstate compact regarding the sharing of driver’s license data (the Driver License Agreement).

In a May 8 press release where Democrat Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Republican Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land offered the state’s perspective on the Real ID Act, the pair said the act establishes national standards for issuing state driver licenses and identification cards, requiring states to re-issue driver’s licenses and identification cards to 245 million current holders by 2013, establish on-site identification verification procedures at Secretary of State offices, and meet specific security and production requirements for the new cards.

In a joint letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, Granholm and Land said the ID requirements can only be an effective homeland security tool if all states fully implement the law. They noted that some states have acted to limit or reject Real ID because of concerns about policy goals and the resources available to assist with implementation.

"DHS must take seriously the states' positions that the process of revamping the standards for identification documents is a federal mandate that should be backed by federal funding," they said in the joint letter to Chertoff.

According to a study released last year by the National Governors Association, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, and the National Conference of State Legislatures, states' costs could total more than $11 billion over 10 years. A federal cost estimate issued this year by DHS pegged cumulative states' costs at more than $14 billion.

Granholm and Land said they were particularly interested in avoiding duplication of services and imposing unnecessary requirements for citizens who have been issued driver licenses and ID cards for many years.

The Real ID Act has come under fire from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and organizations.

According to a Nov. 4 article in the Washington Post, eight states have passed legislation to opt out of the program, nine others have passed resolutions in opposition, and more will consider doing so this winter.

In Michigan, a resolution opposing the Real ID Act already has passed in the House.

Rep. John Espinoza, D-Croswell, sponsored the resolution.

He said he opposed the act because of the price Michigan will have to pay.

Conservative estimates of the cost of implementing the program in Michigan start at around $7 million, Espinoza said.

“And some say it could be as high as ten times that,” he added.

Espinoza said he also opposed the act because he has real concerns with the privacy of citizens being protected.

Sen. Jim Barcia, D-Bay City, co-sponsored a similar resolution in opposition of the Real ID Act.

“It’s a huge unfounded mandate that would require Michigan (to go through) complex and unnecessary hurdles in order to comply with the federal law,” he said.

Barcia said he also is opposed to the Real ID Act because it could dramatically increase the amount of identity theft crimes if things like everyone’s social security numbers were stored in a federal database.

Both lawmakers, however, were strictly opposed to Michigan issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mount Clemens, said she helped craft the Real ID Act.

On Tuesday, she called on Granholm and Lt. Gov. John Cherry to implement the Real ID Act immediately.

In response, Liz Boyd, the governor’s spokeswoman, said, “if Rep. Miller is serious about Real ID implementation she’ll make two phone calls: One to President Bush to ask him to release overdue Real ID implementation rules, and one to her successor, Secretary Land, to ensure the federal mandates can be implemented without haste and without waste.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Miller said because Michigan receives millions and millions of dollars in Homeland Security funding, they should be able to afford to implement the Real ID Act.

“I would say this: Forty-two other states have figured out a way to do so, and I think Michigan needs to do this now,” she said.

Miller said states that have opted to not implement the program will make their forms of identification basically irrelevant and useless at the federal level.

“Essentially what happens is their identification — their driver’s license or their state ID card — is not a recognized document, federally,” she said. “So in other words, you couldn’t use a Michigan driver’s license to get on an airplane, for photo identification, for all kinds of things. You could use it to drive in Michigan, but that would be the extent of it.”

Regarding local lawmakers’ concerns of privacy, Miller said it’s impossible not to have everyone’s social security numbers stored on the federal database. She added that residents giving their social security numbers when applying for a driver’s license isn’t anything new.

“In that particular issue, when you get your driver’s license now, you have to give them your social security number,” Miller said.

All of that being said, she said now the question remains: Will Michigan implement the Real ID Act?

“If they’re not going to do it, then people in Michigan have to realize they are going to have problems,” Miller said.

Bio? Are you crazy?

Are you nuts? I'd like to see the government try to get people implanted with a chip or anything else. There would be bloodshed over that one. Are we really that concerned about identity theft that we should get a chip implant that has already been proven to cause cancer in pets? I'm sorry but this is still America and things like identity theft happen, get over it. To say that Americans need something implanted into them because of the very minimal threat of identity theft is just nuts. And yes I am a studier and follower of Christ that would most definitely see that as a mark of the beast. Anyone who reads the bible knows that "Beast" almost always refers to a government. Let's see...a Government making it mandatory to get a chip implant..hmmm How hard is that to figure out.

The great thing about being a true believer and studier is this. The Bible tells us it is going to happen, so believe me it is. You yourself are already pushing it and trying to write off the religous as crazy I suppose. The thing is, we will resist this mark and we will pay dearly for it. However we will be rewarded for our faith as those who take the mark will be rewarded for a short time and then all hell breaks loose, not to mention an eternity of death which in my understanding is to mean "apart from God". It's your choice. Make the government (beast) happy or follow God's laws and warnings and be rewarded with an eternity in the presence of God.

I hope you rethink your position, study not only Revelations, but spend more time with Daniel and Isiah. Daniel was told and shown everything that was going to happen in the end of days, but then told to SEAL up the knowledge. The knowledge would then be released in the end times, when men travel to and fro'. Just recently in History does man travel at mach speed and beyond, not to mention mass transit and such. Just recently in History (last 100 years) has so much knowledge been released. They say that 99% of all scientist that have existed are alive right now, not to mention the internet where anyone can study, research, and see facts.

I pray you make the right choice. Remember the wide road is easy, and not the right choice. The correct Way is the narrow path, and always will be. Don't follow the herd.

Added: Thursday November 08, 2007 at 11:44 AM EST

Now is the Time For BioSecurity

Now is the time that the world needs to recognize that any piece of identification that is a physical piece of identification, can be stolen, copied, and used for dishonest practices. Now is the time the world start implementing BioSecurity.

BioSecurity, is identification that is held within a person's body. Many main stream Christians believe that this would be the Mark of the Beast. Religious feelings aside, it is the only way for us to truely be safe against identification theft and many frauds that are committed with fraudulent identification. Talk to anyone that has suffered from identity theft and found their credit is ruined. Or worse, their bank accounts are empty and their life savings is gone. Or simply look at the Country as a whole, and the economy. Businesses lose millions of dollars a year do to fraud. With BioSecurity, those theives would have a much tougher time of it.

It's time for us to embrace the future of commerce security, not hide from it, or create more physical id's।

Gary Langley

Congress Suffers from Constipation

2007-11-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

Congress Suffers from Constipation of Thought Once Again: HR 1955
Call your state senators and tell them to vote against HR 1955! I just did. It was easy.

Senate Switchboard phone no.: 202-225-3121

HR 1955 was shuttled through the House of Representatives on October 23, 2007, by a bi-partisan landslide majority of 404-6 votes and is now on its way to the Senate.

Representatives who voted against it:

Jeff Flake [Rep-AR]
Dana Rohrabacher [Rep-CA]
Neil Abercrombie [Dem-HI]
Jerry Costello [Dem-IL]
Dennis Kucinich [Dem-OH]
John Duncan [Rep-TN]

HR 1955 is probably the most insidious attack against freedom in America because it criminalizes any act, or any promotion of, anything the Government interprets to be "radical" or "extremist."

The Bill will allow the U.S. government to establish a new temporary National Committee to research the motivation behind any and all "violent radicalization" in the United States, and proposes the governmental implementation of long-term methods to be used to prevent the adoption of "extremist ideologies."

In simpler terms, Americans could eventually be found guilty of thought crime. Our words, actions, and ideas could come under potentially heavy scrutiny should this bill pass through the Senate.

As you can see from the following selections, the wording of HR 1955 is horrifically vague:

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007

"VIOLENT RADICALIZATION—The term violent radicalization means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

"HOMEGROWN TERRORISM—The term homegrown terrorism means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

"IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE—The term ideologically based violence means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs."

The main thrust of these words seems admirable enough, but once you stop and think about what it's NOT saying, you're left to wonder just how far the bill goes.

Here's a hint:

"The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."

"Preventing the potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and can benefit from the incorporation of State and local efforts."

"Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion." (Although Islam is directly mentioned as a source).

"Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations."

The bill itself is extremely short, because its focus is on the need for, funding, and establishment of this temporary (18-month) research Committee. And while there is a need to fight homegrown terrorism, how far is our government willing to go to do it?

I think there has to be another way.

one country that won't let you bring a Bible.

2007-11-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

Sorry, You Can't Bring That Koran on the Plane With You!

Imagine how many people would scream bloody murder if a stewardess told someone that they couldn't bring their Koran on the airplane with them, because they were going to a country that Korans. Well, as far as I know there is no such country. But there is at least one country that won't let you bring a Bible.

I am currently reading the book entitled The Prince: The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. I suspected that it would be a whitewash of the issue, but I didn't really realize just how much.

The Jerusalem Post recently discovered a Saudi web site that spoke about items that could not be brought into the country:

"A number of items are not allowed to be brought into the kingdom due to religious reasons and local regulations," declares the Web site of Saudi Arabian Airlines, the country's national carrier.

After informing would-be visitors that items such as narcotics, firearms and pornography may not be transported into the country, the Web site adds: "Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are also prohibited. These may include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David, and others."

So they decided to do some investigating. They found that

An official at the Saudi Consulate in New York, who declined to give her name, told the Post that anyone bringing a Bible into the country or wearing a crucifix or Star of David around their neck would run into trouble with Saudi authorities.

"You are not allowed to bring that stuff into the kingdom," the consular official said. "If you do, they will take it away," she warned, adding, "If it is really important to you, then you can try to bring it and just see what happens, but I don't recommend that you do so."

I did a search on both the Google and Yahoo news services. The story was reported twice: by the Jerusalem Post and by The Christian Post.

People are nearly apoplectic that George W. Bush is attempting to sell weaponry to Saudi Arabia. What they unfortunately aren't as angry about, and that is told about in The Prince, is that every president since at least Nixon has sold weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

Maybe that's why nobody in the American press cares that, although Muslims can bring their Korans to America (as they should be able to), Americans can't take their Bibles to Saudi Arabia.

A British airline recently did prohibit someone taking a Bible with them on a flight.

2007-11-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

The Amero: Coming Soon to a Region Near You!!!

Have you ever wondered why the Bush Administration not only doesn't seem to care about our illegal immigration problem, but is actively thwarting it? It's because they're actively supporting the North American Union. Have you ever wondered why the Bush Administration and Congress seem to be uncaring about our out-of-control national debt? Could it be that there are some people in high places who want America to fail, so we can be joined together in a North-American Union with one regional currency? Yes.

Shortly after Congress approved several hundred miles of border fencing last year, machinations allowed the Bush Administration to allocate the funds in essentially whatever way it saw fit. Not surprisingly, pretty much none of the fence has been built.

The United States debt exceeded the 9 trillion dollar mark yesterday. It wasn't but a year and a half ago that Congress set 9 trillion as the Federal Debt Limit. Hmmmm....do they get arrested now? Do they care that it's higher than 9 trillion? Do they even know?

One trillion seconds makes 31,546 years. I wonder how high 9 trillion one-dollar bills would be if they were stacked on top of each other.

Did you ever wonder why the price of a barrel of oil is now approaching $100? Things currently are actually going relatively well in the Middle East. The reason for the exploding cost of oil is that the dollar is sucking hind teat these days. The cost has not exploded for those who buy oil with Euros, because the Euro is strong. Especially when compared with the dollar. Some people tell you it's not a big deal. I got B's in my economics classes, so I'm not an expert, but I think it is a big deal. Maybe this will be the impetus for America to become more energy independent? Nope. If only there were no ulterior motives agitating against such a simple solution.

China is losing confidence in the dollar, at a time when a lot of other people and entities are as well.

The latest catalyst was comments by Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the standing committee of China’s National People’s Congress.
He said the country’s $1,430bn foreign exchange reserves should be diversified away from the dollar into strong currencies such as the euro.

It doesn't appear that the Bush administration cares. Well, actually they care, I think, in a certain way, and that's why they aren't doing anything about it, except for pontificating on the lie that there's nothing wrong.

In 2005, Bush met with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to begin the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). You probably didn't know that this supra-national governmental entity is in full swing, did you? I wonder if SPP executives are worried about the collapse of the dollar. Probably not, but others are for the first time in their lives.

Stephen Jen has seen more than a few bouts of negative sentiment towards the US dollar but none as severe as today.

“This is the first time in my career that I am really worried about the dollar,” says the head of currency research at Morgan Stanley.

“I didn’t know it was going to go so far. The dollar is in trouble..."

I wonder if it is being planned that way.

In 2005, before a committee of the US House of Representatives, Robert Pastor a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and one who has been very involved in the creation and establishment of SPP, had this to say:

...incremental steps will no longer solve the security problem, or allow us to grasp economic opportunities. What we need to do now is forge a North American Community, based on the premise that each member benefits from its neighbor’s success and is diminished by its problems.

The subject of this hearing today – whether passports should be required to cross our two borders – is symptomatic of the problem. We are thinking too small. We need to find ways to making trade and travel easier while we define and defend a continental security perimeter.

The establishment moguls have already sniffed their noses at congressionally-mandated border security measures. What better way to get us the rest of the way into the SPP than by bringing America and its dollar to their knees economically, so that we will beg for a new currency?

Here are three things that will have to occur before I believe that this countries sovereignty is at risk from the S।P.P.

1) A treaty, or agreement must be ratified by congress giving authority to one or more of our neighbors to prosecute our citizens or nation(such as L.O.S.T which is at risk of passing a vote of congress).

2) Discussion of immigration reform in congress ceases. If the S.P.P. is meant to take care of all things immigration, then I would expect congress to fall in line and defer to the white house on this point.

3) Congress earmarks dollars for the S.P.P.

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About this article

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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one country that won't let you bring a Bible.

Sorry, You Can't Bring That Koran on the Plane With You!

The Amero: Coming Soon to a Region Near You!!!