A Dose of Reality in The Land of Delusion

Privacy in America Is Dead

What in the hell is going on? Have most all in this country lost their minds and their spirit, or concerning freedom, is apathy all that remains? Oh to be a conspiracy theorist! Everything today in actuality is conspiratorial, and those who have been continuously demoralized for their constant suspicions of government are now the only sane ones left. This is evident because "1984" is no longer fiction; it is reality!

The latest crime in a long line of usurpations of liberty by government evildoers has now effectively eliminated privacy as we know it. As reported on LRC and told by Glenn Beck, anyone accessing the "cash for clunkers" program literally gives up ownership of their computer to the federal government...

...Many brutal political "leaders" of the past like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini attempted to monitor and control all citizens and their behavior. The end results were telling, and they were horrible. Mass murder at the hands of the state was the rule not the exception. Starvation was prevalent and sickness was constant. Wars consumed production and economies collapsed. Freedom was unheard of during the reign of these monsters. Can you imagine the political and monitoring capabilities of today being available to those brutal tyrants of the past? There is a reason that the U.S. federal government has taken over and co-opted all the means of society. This same government now controls and monitors all money, banking, transportation, health care, police, and communication, including the internet. Those dictators I mentioned above did not have this capability, and still mass oppression won the day. If this history is any guide, our future looks bleak.

Monumentally Tragic Disappointment on the Horizon

Whenever the herd mentality lines up along a compass point leading to “permanent prosperity,” or a yellow brick road lined with green shoots, or something like that, I tend to see the edge of a cliff up ahead. We are now completely in the grips of the deadly diminishing returns of information technology. The more information comes to us about How Things Are, especially from TV, the more confused or wrong the conventional view gets it.

A broad consensus has formed in the news media and among government mouthpieces and even some “bearish” investors on the street that “the worst is behind us” in this tortured economy. This view is completely crazy. It will only lead to massive disappointment a few weeks or months from now, and that disappointment might easily transmute to political trouble. One even might call the situation tragic, except a closer look at the sordid spectacle of what American culture has become — a non-stop circus of the seven deadly sins — suggests that we deserve to be punished by history.

America the Great ... Police State

For those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans. But what was most alarming was the plain fact that neither the president nor a “stupid” local policeman seemed to understand the rules of behavior in a new America, where we find ourselves marooned as well as guarded (is that the verb?) by armed police who have been instructed that they are indeed, once armed, the law and may not be criticized verbally or in any other way and are certainly not subject to any restrictions as to whom they arrest or otherwise torment.

This is rather worse than anyone might have predicted, even though the signs have been clear for some years that ours is now a proto-fascist nation and there appears to be no turning back; nor, indeed, much awareness on the part of our ever-alert media. Forgive me if you find my irony heavy, but I too get tired of carrying it about in “the greatest nation in the country,” as Spiro Agnew liked to say.

How can an entire nation completely ignore reality? How can they blindly take the word of a government that has blatantly lied, time and time again. Despite the obvious, REAL signs of economic, political, and societal meltdown, the majority of Americans choose to believe the official line...you know the one...where they give us a patronizing pat on the head and say that everything will be juuuuust fine if we just believe it to be so. Close you eyes and wish really hard folks....worked for the Germans under Hitler ...right? Or the Russians under Stalin? Or for the...well, I could go on and on with the examples, there have surely been plenty....but we all know don't we...Americans are not a stupid people, we have just made a CHOICE to ignore our troubles in the vain hope that doing so will make them disappear. Well, folks, fairy tales are for children., and these monsters won't disappear when you pull the blankets over your head....facing the harsh realities of life and dealing with them isn't an optional excercise for adults....time to grow up already.

Oh Look....Terrorists Can Investigate Themselves These Days.....And Find Themselves Innocent Too...

Well, the result have come back from one of the many investigations I instigated on the abuse of power issue with CPS that I wrote about in my last post. In a letter I received this past week from the CPS Consumer Affairs office.....a rather Orwellian name for this office, as if anyone CHOOSES to be a CPS “consumer”......they state that they have investigated themselves, and ...SURPRISE!!!!....they have come to the conclusion that there was no wrong doing. Apparently, this “investigation” entailed asking the CPS investigators involved whether they had abused their power, and they ...of course...lied. None of the impartial witnesses on the scene when this visit took place ....two Sheriff's deputies and one local Constable...were questioned as to what occurred, nor was I contacted. Mr. Ramos denies threatening me over keeping dogs indoors, having a camp fire in the yard, or giving my girls a bath rather than a shower, and his partner in crime, Ms. Carrasco lied for him as well. I guess I am supposed to accept that I must have been hearing things and go along my merry way. Fortunately, there is another witness to this misconduct that CPS has yet to become aware of....who remained inside listening at an open window to all threats made that day.......so things are going to get interesting. ....To be continued.......

Common Sense: A Revolutionary Idea

Interesting little film...the link is in the title.

Fascist America: I Live in a Constitution Free Zone...And You Probably Do Too

ACLU Assails 100-Mile Border Zone as 'Constitution-Free'

Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation's border lines.

The government has long been able to search people entering and exiting the country without need to say why, which is known as the border search exception of the Fourth Amendment.

"It is a classic example of law enforcement powers expanding far beyond their proper boundaries – in this case, literally,” said Caroline Fredrickson, who heads the ACLU's Washington, D.C., Legislative Office.

In a video shown to reporters at a national press conference event Wednesday, retired San Diego social worker Vince Peppard complained that he and his wife were stopped at a checkpoint on a road east of San Diego on I-94, many miles after crossing back into the United States with tiles he'd bought in Mexico.

When he refused to let the Customs and Border Protection officer search his car, the officer led him to a bench, called in the contraband dog and then "ransacked" his car.

"I didn't feel like I was inside the U.S.," Peppard said, calling the search on the side of the road embarrassing. "I felt like I was in a B-movie with Nazis asking for my papers."

ACLU attorney Chris Calabrese is certain there are more people who have been negatively affected than have complained.

As an example, he cited Seattle's domestic ferries, where DHS agents ask passengers for ID to check their citizenship and use license plate readers.

"The people who live on these islands are undergoing this extra scrutiny just when they are going to get their groceries," Calabrese said.

Be sure to hit the link and see the map there...You'll be amazed to find that Homeland Security has placed these Constitution Free Zones in such a manner as to encompass two thirds of our population. Obviously it is us, the citizens of the United Fascist States of America that are to be controlled, not immigrants. I too have to pass through one of these checkpoints--100 miles in from the border-- to go grocery shopping, and I drive away fuming each and every time. On several occasions, we've been hauled out of the vehicle to be searched and questioned. Once, in our RV, they claimed that the dogs signaled we might be smuggling an illegal alien...they searched everything, tearing through our luggage and all...apparently they thought I might have concealed a very small Mexican among my clean underwear. This is America? "Your Papers Please" for going to buy food?

Considering a protest? You Too Could Be Arrested for THOUGHT CRIMES

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Federal government involved in raids on protesters

We've gone from seeing citizens brutalized, intimidated, and arrested for exercising their right to free speech, to a bizarre state of affairs where one can receive that treatment for THINKING about doing so. Or being a journalist covering the story of police thugs attacking people in their homes for THINKING about protesting. OR, even being a lawyer willing to represent innocent, non violent people who have broken no laws. We have reached the ultimate police state. They can kick in your door for thought crimes, for disagreeing with the government. Took a bit longer than Orwell thought, but it is here. The inmates are in charge of the asylum, and the sheeple seem to be content with letting them run the show.

Report: Suspicious Cookies

The police, invoking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, suggest that any operation undertaken for any reason is legitimate. "In a post-9/11 world," said Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, superintendent of the Maryland State Police, officers are duty-bound "to protect the citizens of Maryland from threats foreign and domestic." But if they cannot distinguish five middle-aged peaceniks from criminals, the police themselves become the real threat to American society.

Remember when these types of reports came from foreign, totalitarian nations? When we couldn't imagine this sort of repression in the "Land of the Free"? Will our children have a clue what freedom really means? We have forgotten our roots...and we will pay dearly for that I'm afraid.

Change, Obama Style....Scrapping the 4th Amendment

Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping

The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill -- approved last week by the House -- to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.

The hope and change candidate indeed...more like bait and switch. Even though I predicted Obama would be no different than any of the other political prostitutes out there, I really hoped to be wrong. Unfortunately not...this country is in big trouble no matter which of the presumed nominees win the presidency.

Sold Out Again

Yep...we elected them for change. To stop the Bushco assault on our Constitutional rights. We got change alright....they changed the speed at which Congress rolls over for Bushie from lightening speed to warp speed, and threw in a little hemming and hawing about it to try to appear to give a damn. Apparently defending the Constitution is "off the table" as well.

Compromise (SELLOUT)reached on government wiretaps

Senate leaders announced a compromise Thursday on legislation to expand the government's eavesdropping authority and protect telephone companies that cooperate from being sued.

If approved, the compromise would give U.S. spy agencies sweeping power to siphon international e-mails and phone calls from fiber-optic networks in the United States.

Update: Big surprise...the House has indeed approved the Sellout Agreement: House Approves Spy Bill Protecting Phone Firms

The Last Roundup

For decades the federal government has been developing a highly classified plan that would override the Constitution in the event of a terrorist attack. Is it also compiling a secret enemies list of citizens who could face detention under martial law?

By Christopher Ketcham

05/05/08 "Radar Magazine" -- - 28/04/08 --- -In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present.

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A host of publicly disclosed programs, sources say, now supply data to Main Core. Most notable are the NSA domestic surveillance programs, initiated in the wake of 9/11, typically referred to in press reports as "warrantless wiretapping." In March, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal shed further light onto the extraordinarily invasive scope of the NSA efforts: According to the Journal, the government can now electronically monitor "huge volumes of records of domestic e-mails and Internet searches, as well as bank transfers, credit card transactions, travel, and telephone records." Authorities employ "sophisticated software programs" to sift through the data, searching for "suspicious patterns." In effect, the program is a mass catalog of the private lives of Americans. And it's notable that the article hints at the possibility of programs like Main Core. "The [NSA] effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called black programs whose existence is undisclosed," the Journal reported, quoting unnamed officials. "Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach."

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local "intelligence" reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; "commercial databases"; and unidentified "private sector entities." Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor anti-war protestors and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.

If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protestors, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.

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Congress itself has recently widened the path for both extra-constitutional detentions by the White House and the domestic use of military force during a national emergency. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill of Rights. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act, also passed in 2006, included a last-minute rider titled "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," which allowed the deployment of U.S. military units not just to put down domestic insurrections—as permitted under posse comitatus and the Insurrection Act of 1807—but also to deal with a wide range of calamities, including "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or incident."

More troubling, in 2002, Congress authorized funding for the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which, according to Washington Post military intelligence
expert William Arkin, "allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control."

"We are at the edge of a cliff and we're about to fall off," says constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein. "To a national emergency planner, everybody looks like a danger to stability. There's no doubt that Congress would have the authority to denounce all this—for example, to refuse to appropriate money for the preparation of a list of U.S. citizens to be detained in the event of martial law. But Congress is the invertebrate branch. They say, 'We have to be cautious.' The same old crap you associate with cowards. None of this will change under a Democratic administration, unless you have exceptional statesmanship and the courage to stand up and say, 'You know, democracies accept certain risks that tyrannies do not.' "

As of this writing, DeFazio, Thompson, and the other 433 members of the House are debating the so-called Protect America Act, after a similar bill passed in the Senate. Despite its name, the act offers no protection for U.S. citizens; instead, it would immunize from litigation U.S. telecom giants for colluding with the government in the surveillance of Americans to feed the hungry maw of databases like Main Core. The Protect America Act would legalize programs that appear to be unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, the mystery of James Comey's testimony has disappeared in the morass of election year coverage. None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? (Radar put these questions to spokespeople for the McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaigns, but at press time had yet to receive any responses.)

Disturbing stuff...and interesting....well worth the time to read in its entirety, as always, the link is in the title

China's All-Seeing Eye

Interesting stuff...and quite likely to be a glimpse of the future here if Americans continue to behave like sheep.....

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" — a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.

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Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.

Just a couple paragraphs from a rather long but incredibly interesting article...7 pages....the link is in the title

The FISA Follies, Redux

The Senate (reportedly still under Democratic control) seems determined to help President Bush violate Americans’ civil liberties and undermine the constitutional separation of powers. Majority Leader Harry Reid is supporting White House-backed legislation that would expand the administration’s ability to spy on Americans without court supervision and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping program.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which Mr. Bush decided to ignore after 9/11 — requires a warrant to intercept telephone calls and e-mail messages between people in the United States and people abroad.

It needed updating to keep pace with technology, and the technical fixes were included in a bill that Congress passed last summer. The problem was that Mr. Bush managed to add measures that sharply undercut the court’s role in monitoring eavesdropping. Fortunately, lawmakers gave them an expiration date of Feb. 1.

The House has passed a reasonable new bill — fixing FISA without further endangering civil liberties. But Mr. Bush wants to weaken FISA as much as he can. And the Senate leadership has been only too happy to oblige.

With the help of Republican senators and the misguided chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, the White House got a bill that, once again, reduces court supervision of wiretapping. It also adds immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the illegal spying.

Mr. Bush says without amnesty, the government won’t get cooperation in the future. We don’t buy it. The real aim is to make sure the full story of the illegal wiretapping never comes out in court.

I guess it is becoming quite clear to many that the Demofacists have no intention of putting a stop to Bushco's assault on our civil liberties...all that power that the Bush bunch has seized for the executive branch is expected to fall into the hands of one of their own after the election....did anyone REALLY think they were going to give up their shot at running the dictatorship by restoring our rights?

Cheney Calls for Permanent Warrantless Wiretapping

Vice President Cheney called on Congress today to permanently extend the Protect America Act as the White House launched a drive to secure the tools it says are needed to fight a continuing terrorist threat beyond the law's Feb. 1 expiration.

In a speech to a sympathetic audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, Cheney also said the law must include immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that assisted the U.S. government's electronic surveillance efforts after Sept. 11, 2001.

"There is no sound reason to pass critical legislation like the Protect America Act and slap an expiration date on it," Cheney said. "The challenge to the country has not expired over the last six months. It won't expire any time soon, and we should not write laws that pretend otherwise."

yep..perpetual war and perpetual tyranny....the terrorist threat to our country inhabits the halls of government.

Extinguishing Liberty’s Light and Independent Views, By Paul Craig Roberts

What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq? The decline in the value of the US dollar? Subprime mortgages? No. The greatest failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic Congress.


The American people’s attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue government, which has committed the US to costly military adventures while running roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate has made no difference.


The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as determined as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the House passed a bill sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman, chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, that overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly.


The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins and apparently faces no meaningful opposition.


Harman’s bill is called the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.” [ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955 ] When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas. The commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be government agents and fellow citizens.


We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention centers being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.


Who will be on the “extremist beliefs” list? The answer is: civil libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the administration’s wars and foreign policies, critics of the administration’s use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration’s spying on Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group--such as environmentalists opposing politically connected developers--is also a candidate for the list.

......This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the Justice (sic) Department declare that the President can ignore habeas corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these “patriotic” views are extremist.

The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts to Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of Congress or the executive branch ever explained the need for the detention centers or who the detainees would be. Of course, there is nothing extremist about building detention centers in the US for undisclosed inmates.

Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty. Thanks to 2007’s greatest failure--the Democratic Congress--there is to be an “Extremist Beliefs Commission” to secure inmates for Bush’s detention centers.

President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause the “untamed fire of freedom” to “reach the darkest corners of our world.” Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but also is being extinguished.

The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.

Dark days are ahead for this country, and the public remains oblivious. This is exactly why it matters that history is no longer taught in the schools to any real extent...and surely that is no accident. So many Americans are in for a very rude awakening. How can so many intelligent people be so completely unaware of the world around them? Very frustrating, and incomprehensible to me.

Leading surveillance societies

Despite political shifts in the US Congress, surveillance initiatives in the US continue to expand, affecting visitors and citizens alike.


In terms of statutory protections and privacy enforcement, the US is the worst ranking country in the democratic world. In terms of overall privacy protection the United States has performed very poorly, being out-ranked by both India and the Philippines and falling into the "black" category, denoting endemic surveillance.


The 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance o privacy safeguards.


Concern over immigration and border control dominated the world agenda in 2007. Countries have moved swiftly to implement database, identity and fingerprinting systems, often without regard to the privacy implications for their own citizens.


The 2007 rankings show an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion.


The privacy trends have been fueled by the emergence of a profitable surveillance industry dominated by global IT companies and the creation of numerous international treaties that frequently operate outside judicial or democratic processes.


Surveillance initiatives initiated by Brussels have caused a substantial decline in privacy across Europe, eroding protections even in those countries that have shown a traditionally high regard for privacy.

Congrats folks, Our government here in "The Land of the Free" is locking it's citizens down at a faster rate than most official dictatorships.

Top Ten Signs Your Country May Be Going Fascist

We Are All Prisoners Now, By Paul Craig Roberts

Excerpts:

Americans are also imprisoned by fear, a false fear created by the hoax of “terrorism.” It has turned out that headline terrorist events since 9/11 have been orchestrated by the US government. For example, the alleged terrorist plot to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower was the brainchild of a FBI agent who searched out a few disaffected people to give lip service to the plot devised by the FBI agent. He arrested his victims, whose trial ended in acquittal and mistrial.

Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, a former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, said in an interview with the newspaper, Corriere della Sera (November 30, 2007), that “democratic elements in America and Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know that the 9/11 attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad in order to blame the Arab countries, and to persuade the Western powers to undertake military action both in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

....Cossiga’s statement has not been reported by a US newspaper or TV channel. Raising doubts among Americans about the government is not a strong point of the corporate media. Americans live in a world of propaganda designed to secure their acquiescence to war crimes, torture, searches and police state measures, military aggression, hegemony and oppression, while portraying Americans (and Israelis) as the salt of the earth who are threatened by Muslims who hate their “freedom and democracy.”

Americans cling to this “truth” while the Bush regime and a complicit Congress destroy the Bill of Rights and engineer the theft of elections.

Freedom and democracy in America have been reduced to no-fly lists, spying without warrants, arrests without warrants or evidence, permanent detention despite the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, torture despite the prohibition against self-incrimination--the list goes on and on. http://www.truthnews.us/?p=1115]

In today’s fearful America, a US Senator, whose elder brothers were (1) a military hero killed in action, (2) a President of the United States assassinated in office, (3) an Attorney General of the United States and likely president except he was assassinated like his brother, can find himself on the no-fly list. Present and former high government officials, with top secret security clearances, cannot fly with a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of water despite the absence of any evidence that extreme measures imposed by “airport security” makes flying safer. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071221/us_nm/security_airports_dc;_ylt=ApzEobAIQMfiX02LTvKbk1UXIr0F

Elderly American citizens with walkers and young mothers with children are meticulously searched because US Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between an American citizen and a terrorist.

All Americans should note the ominous implications of the inability of Homeland Security to distinguish an American citizen from a terrorist.

An article well worth reading in its entirety...just hit the link in the title...The condition this country is in is clear to so many, but apparently not enough to stop the noose from slowly tightening, as the oblivious majority slowly hang us all. We have merely been given the rope to do it ourselves...which we have cheerfully done. What a shame it is to see...sometimes I just barely resist the impulse to shake people, or scream at them...as they fret about nonsense like who is winning American Idol or how their kids will be sniveling if they don't get the latest $500 video game system...I can't stand it...

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards.


Self-employed, self sufficient, and ready to leave quickly ..the only way to live in the Big Brother Police State. How long will it be until the Sheeple open their eyes to what is happening here?

Intel Official: Say Goodbye to Privacy

A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a court order between 2001 and 2007.

Yep...I trust Big Brother to "protect" us don't you? How much more are Americans going to take? Do the sheeple even notice how very quickly this nation is turning into a police state?

Bush Preaches Democracy, Proposes Tyranny-The Fraudlent War on Terror

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Americans had best rethink the "war on terror" while they still have the liberty to do so. For all of President Bush's blah-blah talk about bringing democracy to the world, the Bush administration has proved that it is no friend of liberty at home.

The Bush administration has violated constitutional principles, US law, and the Geneva Conventions as no previous administration has done................

Now the Bush administration wants to take away the American people's freedom to travel within their own country by airplane. Not content with an 80,000 "no fly" list, a subset of a 500,000-750,000 "watch list," the Bush administration's Transport Security Administration has proposed new rules that will require Americans to get government permission 72 hours in advance prior to being allowed to board a domestic flight.


Any agency of the government that can propose such a tyrannical regulation should be abolished. The TSA's mentality shows it to be a far greater threat to Americans than are terrorists.

Even without the "permission to fly" rule, the TSA's practices are ridiculous and unjustified. The confiscation of tooth paste and unopened bottles of perfume, the harassment of US military officers in uniform, the harassment of old people struggling with their walkers, of mothers struggling with small children--none of this makes any sense except in terms of getting Americans accustomed to harassment as a citizen's duty to government and to train a cadre to conduct warrantless searches of fellow citizens.


Set aside the violation of the Constitution and the Soviet-style tyranny of the loss of the freedom to travel and consider merely the practical aspect of the proposal. What American wants his travel plans dependent on a government bureaucracy capable of putting US Senator Ted Kennedy on the "no fly" list and capable of issuing US visas to two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers six months after they allegedly died in the 9/11 events?

If we believe the official story, 9/11 itself reveals a government totally devoid of any competence whatsoever.

The "war on terror" is fraudulent. The cruel war and the deceptive vocabulary that protects it are a cover for expanding US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and for constructing a functioning police state at home. A country in which people cannot make airline reservations without the government's permission is not a free country.

This is definately an article well worth reading in full...We are being locked down in this country ...first the new passport regulations, now this...and who exactly are these "border tightening" policies meant for?....they are ineffective against people coming into the United States....structured to control the population here. Illegal aliens still come in every day, yet activists are stopped at the border trying to leave. The entire immigration debate has been started by these fascists to wind up the bigots, who are begging for tyranny to protect themselves from "those people"....the politicians can surely count on the eager assistance of the ignorant among us to further their police state agenda...they surely seem to outnumber the thinking people who can see through the divide and conquer politics and propaganda....as long as they keep the sheeple's minds occupied fighting amongst themselves, they are free to do as they please.

With Democrats Like These ...

Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.

The task before Congress was to review and improve an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, that was pushed through the Capitol just before the summer break. That bill endorsed warrantless wiretapping and gutted other aspects of the 1978 law.

House Democrats drafted a measure that, while imperfect, was an improvement to the one passed this summer. But before the House could vote, Republicans tied up the measure in bureaucratic knots and Democratic leaders pulled it. Senate Democrats did even worse, accepting a Potemkin compromise that endorsed far too much of the bad summer law.

We were left wondering who is really in charge, when in a bipartisan press release announcing the agreement, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond, described the bill as "a delicate arrangement of compromises" that could not be changed in any way. The committee's chairman, Jay Rockefeller, didn't object.

As the debate proceeds, Americans will be told that the delicate compromises were about how the government may spy on phone calls and electronic messages in the age of instant communications. Republicans have already started blowing hot air about any naysayers trying to stop spies from tracking terrorists.

No one is doing that. The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism.

The democrats find the Constitution and the rule of law just as inconvenient as the current administration,or they would have long since used their power to restore the damage done in recent years. How gullible are the people to still expect that the democratic wing of the ruling elite will address anything but their own political and financial interests?