New Amendments Introduced To Halt Indefinite Detention of Americans
Obama administration reaffirms support for state sponsored assassination of U.S. citizens
by Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
December 1, 2011
Two new amendments that would attempt to halt the indefinite detention of American citizens on U.S. soil under a section of the National Defense Authorization Act have been introduced and could be voted on by the end of the day, even as Obama administration lawyers reaffirmed their backing for state sponsored assassination of U.S. citizens.
Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty website has the details.Senate Amendment (SA) 1126 would “clarify” Section 1031 to explicitly state within the section that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities does not apply to American citizens.
SA 1125 would limit the mandatory detention provision in Section 1032 to persons captured abroad, not in America.
However, given the fact that a previous amendment which merely sought to provide oversight for the egregious Section 1031 of the NDAA bill was voted down comprehensively yesterday, getting these two new amendments passed seems a tall order.
Indeed, despite some expressing confidence that Obama will veto the NDAA bill because of the indefinite detention provision, the Obama administration today reaffirmed the notion that it considers American citizens as legitimate targets for state assassination in the war on terror.
More critical voices have warned that the passage of the bill would hand the federal government unprecedented powers on the scale of Stalinist North Korea, which routinely imprisons political dissidents in concentration camps, having first declared them enemies of the state, of course.
“Congress is poised to affirm that President Obama and his successors can imprison whomever they want, for as long as they want, on no authority but their own, so long as they first assert that the person in question is a terrorist,” writes the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “They needn’t present evidence, or persuade a judge, or get a majority of votes from a jury. Just whispering “he’s a terrorist” is enough. Yes, even if the suspect is an American citizen.”
Writing in an op-ed for the Washington Times, Senator Rand Paul warned that American citizens could be sent to Guantanamo Bay and that if the bill is passed it means, “the terrorists will have won.”
“Detaining citizens without a court trial is un-American. In fact, this alarming arbitrary power is reminiscent of Egypt’s “permanent” emergency law authorizing indefinite preventive detention, a law that provoked ordinary Egyptians to tear their country apart last spring and risk their lives to fight,” writes Paul.
Final passage of the NDAA bill with Section 1031 included would formally codify into law the federal government’s ability to completely strip U.S. citizens of their rights, deny them a trial, and send them off to a foreign detention center never to be seen again.
You can contact your senators at 202-224-3121 to demand they support SA 1125 & 1126 to the National Defense Authorization Act.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
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‘US poker, Iran chess: Lies vs strategy’ (video)
RT
December 1, 2011
European foreign ministers are expected to discuss fresh sanctions against Iran, following an attack on the UK embassy in Tehran. Ahead of the talks in Brussels, British Foreign Secretary William Hague called for increased economic pressure and isolation on Iran’s financial sector. On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters attacked the UK embassy, occupying it for several hours. The demonstrations came after Iran resolved to reduce diplomatic ties with the UK following its decision to impose further sanctions over its nuclear programme. Violence prompted Britain to close the Iranian embassy in London and to pull its own diplomats out of the Islamic state’s capital. Political analyst and author Adrian Salbuchi says the West is waging a complex war against Islamic countries.
Crossing Police Lines: US cops defect to OWS (video)
RT
December 1, 2011
Police in Los Angeles have cleared one of the last and longest-standing ‘Occupy’ camps in the U.S, making 300 arrests in the process. These latest arrests bring the total across the whole ‘Occupy’ movement to almost 5,000, but now police are starting to defect to the other side. Our correspondent Marina Portnaya has been finding out why some people have been choosing to make history instead of making arrests.
Syria: NATO Genocide Approaches
UN Syria Report Co-Authored by Director of US Corporate Think-Tank
by Tony Cartalucci, Contributing WriterBlatant lies told by alleged “human rights activists” led to ignominious NATO-sanctioned brutality and ultimately brought BP, Shell, Total-sponsored Petroleum Institute representative, Abdurrahim el-Keib, into power in Libya. Now, these same corporate-financier interests, through their same networks of propaganda, duplicity and deception, are laying the groundwork for a repeat performance in Syria.
It was just recently revealed that the UN Human Rights Council report regarding Syrian “crimes against humanity” was actually co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, AlJazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO’s operations against Libya), and Boeing.
The conflict of interest is so monumental it is only outdone by the corporate media’s eager acceptance of the report and their complete negligence in airing the compromised backgrounds of those responsible for compiling it.
The UN report itself (.pdf) contained no verifiable evidence, but rather hearsay accounts recorded in Geneva by alleged “victims” “witnesses,” and “defectors,” put forth by “all interested persons and organizations.” In other words, it was an open invitation for Syria’s enemies to paint whatever image of the ruling government they pleased. While critics claim this is due to the Syrian government’s lack of cooperation with the UN, it is more likely that the UN itself, with a proven track record of doing so in Iraq, the Ivory Coast, and most recently Libya, is merely complicit in providing “window dressing” for Wall Street and London’s otherwise naked military conquests.
How to Start the War
And it is through this purposefully distorted lens that calls for military intervention are being made. After months of denying the opposition was armed, the Wall Street-funded think-tank Council on Foreign Relations now openly claims that not only are the “protesters” armed, but there is a resistance army of “15,000.” The CFR claims this “Free Syrian Army” is requesting weapons and air support. It has already been revealed that weapons are freely flowing over Syria’s borders from foreign-supporters, most notably, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and now even as far as Libya. The CFR report then goes on to explore the options available to NATO for facilitating “regime change” including the use of “overhead surveillance assets, logistical enablers, peacekeepers, armed drones, combat aircraft, ground troops,” and “smuggled weapons.”
Of course the number of Syrian defectors are as baseless as the UN human rights report. However, even the claim of a large, armed militant force operating inside of Syria directly contradicts the West’s concurrent narrative that Syria’s military is running rampant over defenseless civilians. With an army of “15,000 defectors” attempting to seize the nation by force with the help of foreign money, weapons, and diplomatic support, one finds it difficult to believe the Syrian government would instead be spending its time “massacring civilians.” Just as in Libya, or any number of nations where foreign-backed “revolutions” have been attempted or achieved, Western-enabled violence is always a predetermined part of the equation, fully provisioned ahead of time with the subsequent violence cloaked behind tales of one-sided brutality aimed at the targeted regime.
As mentioned in the corporate-funded Brookings Institution report “Which Path to Persia?” the inclusion of covert armed support for US-backed protests is not just an option, but a necessity when carrying out such operations within a nation possessing competent security forces.
Using Military Force to Assist Popular Revolutions, page 109-110 (page 122-123 of the PDF):
Consequently, if the United States ever succeeds in sparking a revolt against the clerical regime, Washington may have to consider whether to provide it with some form of military support to prevent Tehran from crushing it. This requirement means that a popular revolution in Iran does not seem to fit the model of the ‘velvet revolutions’ that occurred elsewhere. The point is that the Iranian regime may not be willing to go gently into that good night; instead, and unlike so many Eastern European regimes, it may choose to fight to the death. In those circumstances, if there is not external military assistance to the revolutionaries, they might not just fail but be massacred.
Consequently, if the United States is to pursue this policy, Washington must take this possibility into consideration. It adds some very important requirements to the list: either the policy must include ways to weaken the Iranian military or weaken the willingness of the regime’s leaders to call on the military, or else the United States must be ready to intervene to defeat it.
In addition to this confession by the Brookings Institution, this pattern of providing for, or covering up the existence of, armed elements deployed during the opening phases of a color revolution has also been documented in Libya, Syria, and in Bangkok, Thailand in 2010. Just as in Libya where legions of Al Qaeda rebels armed by NATO and fresh back from killing US and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were initially covered up with tales of street protesting youth being cut down by Qaddafi’s troops, Syria too has been plagued by violent militants since the unrest began earlier this year. In April’s “Globalist War Machine Fixates on Syria,” the first reports of the now ubiquitous snipers terrorizing Syria began to surface. Also noted was the similarity between these sniper attacks and concurrent attacks being carried out in Yemen, and the year before in Thailand — all victims of Western-backed destabilization.
It will be through a perpetual campaign of deceit waged by the West’s various puppet regimes and their compromised corporate-media that this war will be started. The ruling regime in Syria will be portrayed as grotesque human rights offenders, while covert arms and support are provided to a mercenary army of ever-increasing size, committing ever greater provocations. In time, as the proper “international” legal maneuvers are performed, this mercenary army will be provided NATO air and naval support, NATO special forces, and potentially NATO ground troops — this of course includes Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and already deeply involved in meddling in Syria’s sovereign affairs.
How to Stop the War
While the power behind this war machine grinding up the planet seems monolithic and unstoppable, the very source of its power looks us back in the mirror every day. We, through our choices of how we spend our time, money, and attention, are fueling daily its destructive consumption of our world. While protests, elections, and activism are important, what is absolutely essential is to entirely cut this machine off from its fuel. That is, for us to boycott the corporations, institutions, and personalities that constitute it to the point of starvation and submission. We must work ceaselessly to identify and expose who these corporations, institutions, and personalities are through the alternative media, boycott them out of business, and replace them entirely with local solutions derived from both tradition and technological innovation.
The Greatest Generation said “never again” to the rise of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, yet here we are again watching the rise of Wall Street and London to sickening heights of unwarranted power and warmongering. Let this generation say, “not in our names” and starve this beast into submission, just as it has done to so many other sovereign nations.
Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report.
UN Report on Syria: Based on Witness Accounts … OUTSIDE of Syria
Humanitarian concerns “dressing up” the military conquest of Syria.
Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
November 28, 2011
Wall Street and London’s media machine eagerly churned out headlines like BBC’s “Syria security forces ‘commit crimes against humanity‘” announcing the conclusions of a recent UN Human Rights Council report regarding the ongoing violence in Syria.
However, even upon reading the BBC article it is soon discovered that, “the investigation team members say they were denied entry into Syria itself,” and that the entirety of their “evidence” is garnered solely from interviews with “223 victims, witnesses and also army defectors to investigate alleged human rights violations.”
BBC’s article raises immediate suspicion over the veracity of the report, as “victims, witnesses, and defectors,” interviewed outside of Syria is not evidence, but rather more hearsay by groups of people with a vested interest in painting the Syrian government in the worst light possible.
However, upon actually reading the full text of the UN Human Rights Council report, we see just exactly “how” the report was compiled.
Under a section titled, “Methods of Work” we find a shocking admission of the utter lack of substance and immense conflict of interest behind the UN’s predetermined conclusion, that Syria is guilty of “crimes against humanity” and that the UN Security Council must act.
The report states (emphasis added):
First-hand information was collected through interviews with victims and witnesses of events in the Syrian Arab Republic. The interviewing process began in Geneva on 26 September 2011. Overall, 223 victims and/or witnesses, including personnel who defected from the military and the security forces, were interviewed.
A public call was made to all interested persons and organizations to submit relevant information and documentation that would help the commission implement its mandate. It held meetings with Member States from all regional groups, regional organizations, including the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, non-governmental organizations, human rights defenders, journalists and experts. Reports, scholarly analyses and media accounts, as well as audio and visual material, were also duly considered.
The information collected is stored in a secure database governed by United Nations rules on confidentiality
Quite obviously this is not an investigation, nor is the information provided within the report “evidence” by any stretch of the imagination. The report would go on to admit that it received no cooperation from the Syrian government meaning that this publication by the UN is but a one-sided exercise to provide the worst possible image of the Syrian government as told by opposition groups now on record fully armed, foreign-backed, and trying to seize power by force.
The inclusion of “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) should also raise immediate concerns. While the report is entirely negligent in listing any of these contributing NGOs, it is more than likely they include the US government and corporate-funded army of sedition emanating out of the National Endowment for Democracy, Geroge Soros’ Open Society Institute, and their myriad of subsidiaries. It has been these very NGOs supplying a steady stream of similarly baseless “witness accounts” since the unrest began earlier this year, as they’ve done in Libya, Belarus, Tunisia, Thailand, and beyond.
“Alleged” is used throughout the report in various forms further illustrating the tenuous nature of the UN Human Rights Council’s “evidence” while all of the testimony, those who gave it, and apparently the NGOs involved in compiling the UN report are conveniently kept “confidential.” This may be because the United Nations believes that its reputation coupled with global faith in its work is all that is necessary to lend their report the legitimacy it needs to bring Syria one step closer to NATO inflicted genocide.
However, considering Iraq and more recently Libya, and the UN’s complicit role in facilitating genocide in both nations based on similarly tenuous “human rights” reports, a clear pattern emerges. Human rights activists, their Wall Street and London-funded NGOs, and the disingenuous UN are merely dressing up with humanitarian concerns an otherwise naked campaign of military conquest.
Video: Part 1 & 2 of “Lies behind the “Humanitarian War” in Libya.” The outrageous, confirmed, confessed “humanitarian-based” lies used with UN complicity to justify NATO’s invasion by proxy of Libya. Libya is now run by a corporate-backed proxy Abdurrahim el-Keib, formally of the British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, Japan Oil Development Company, and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company-sponsored Petroleum Institute.
It has been pointed out in April’s “Globalists Coming Full Circle,” and more recently in Salon’s “Wes Clark and the neocon dream” that the unrest unhinging the Middle East, North Africa, and slowly creeping toward Moscow and Beijing, is part of a plan 20 years in the making. Those behind it just so happen to populate the boards of the faux-humanitarian front, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have affiliations with the so-called “liberal” George Soros and his Open Society Institute, and have signed their names to Hitlerian declarations of world conquest within the notorious “Project for a New American Century.”
You’re not expected to read the report, let alone research the authors.
Without a doubt, the UN has compiled a tenuous and transparent fabrication of such little substance, those involved in writing it, Paulo Pinheiro, Yakin Ertürk, and Karen Koning AbuZayd, are clearly conspiring to justify an otherwise unjustifiable escalation in Syria’s current unrest. If they did indeed have evidence of Syrian brutality, they surely would have included it in their report and the voices at the BBC, on CNN, in Reuters and beyond would ceaselessly air it. Instead, the impact of the report solely depends on people trusting the legitimacy of the UN and not bothering to even objectively read it. It equally depends on members of the media, including the disingenuous hand-wringing “humanitarians” amongst NED’s vast global network to keep their heads down and not expose this willful duplicity.
The impact of the UN’s report also depends on people not bothering to research the associations of those who compiled it. Should they, they will find that Karen Koning AbuZayd is concurrently a member of the Washington D.C. based Middle East Policy Council, along side current and former associates of Exxon, the US military, the CIA, the Saudi Binladin Group, the US-Qatari Business Council and both former and current members of the US government. It is more than just a coincidence that the UN Human Rights Council report has given the US exactly what it wanted to hear regarding Syria, and one of those compiling the report just so happens to sit amongst an organization full of corporate-financier interests clamoring to despoil the Middle Eastern republic. Clearly, claims that the UN is merely a tool of corporate fascists on Wall Street and within the City of London represent a truth that confronts anyone who researches any of the claims coming out of the UN.
Image: Just some of the corporate members of the US-Qatar Business Council, whose president just so happens to sit on the same board of directors of the Middle East Policy Center as Karen AbuZayd, co-author of the conveniently timed UN Human Rights Council report on Syria.
Indeed with this tissue of lies and the associations of the liars peddling them, the UN is truly a disingenuous tool of the world’s elite, used to strip the freedom and humanity of its enemies while simultaneously claiming to uphold such values in the process. The Syrian people are facing a criminal conspiracy of vast proportions in a world increasingly devoid of empathy, intelligence, or courage. Like the Libyans who fought for the better part of a year against the militant aggression of global corporate fascism, the Syrians will soon be fighting too.
For those indeed repulsed by what has transpired in Libya and what is facing Syria at the hands of the global elite, it should be obvious that the corporations, banks, and institutions involved need to be exposed, boycotted, and promptly replaced. It was Libya yesterday, Syria today, and inevitably you tomorrow.
Collectively after World War II we said, “never again,” regarding fascism and the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, yet here we are . . . again.
Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
Land Destroyer Report.
30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison
The American Dream
November 29, 2011
If you live in the United States of America, you live in a giant prison where liberty and freedom are slowly being strangled to death.
In this country, the control freaks that run things are obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do. Nothing is private anymore. Everything that you do on the Internet is being monitored.
All of your phone calls are being monitored. In fact, if law enforcement authorities suspect that you have done something wrong, they will use your cell phone microphone to listen to you even when you think your cell phone is turned off.
In many areas of the country, when you get into your car automated license plate readers track you wherever you go, and in many major cities when you are walking on the streets a vast network of security cameras and “smart street lights” are constantly watching you and listening to whatever you say.
The TSA is setting up “internal checkpoints” all over the nation, Homeland Security is encouraging all of us to report any “suspicious activity” that our neighbors are involved in and the federal government is rapidly developing “pre-crime” technology that will flag us as “potential terrorists” if we display any signs of nervousness.
If you are flagged as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military can arrest you and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything. Yes, the United States of America is rapidly being turned into a “Big Brother” prison grid, and most Americans are happily going along with it.
The sad thing is that this used to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.
So what in the world happened?
A fundamental shift in our culture has taken place. The American people have eagerly given up huge chunks of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security.
Our country is now run by total control freaks and paranoia has become standard operating procedure.
We were told that the terrorists hate our liberties and our freedoms, and that we needed to fight the terrorists so that we could keep our liberties and our freedoms.
But instead, the government keeps taking away all of our liberties and our freedoms.
How in the world does that make any sense?
Have the terrorists won?
As a country, we have moved so far in the direction of communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany that it is almost impossible to believe.
Yes, turning the United States of America into a giant prison may make us all slightly safer, but what kind of life is this?
Do we want to be dead while we are still alive?
Is this the price that we want to pay in order to feel slightly safer?
Where are the millions of Americans that still yearn to breathe free air?
America is supposed to be a land teeming with people thirsting for independence. For example, “Live Free or Die” is supposedly the official motto of the state of New Hampshire.
But instead, the motto of most Americans seems to be “live scared and die cowering”.
We don’t have to live like this.
Yes, bad things are always going to happen. No amount of security is ever going to be able to keep us 100% safe.
We need to remember that a very high price was paid for our liberty and we should not give it up so easily.
As one very famous American once said, when we give up liberty for security we deserve neither.
The following are 30 signs that the United States of America is being turned into a giant prison….
#1 A new bill that is going through the U.S. Senate would allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trial. This new law was recently discussed in an article posted on the website of the New American….
In what may be a tale too bizarre to be believed by millions of Americans, the U.S. Senate appears ready to pass a bill that will designate the entire earth, including the United States and its territories, one all-encompassing “battlefield” in the global “war on terror” and authorize the detention of Americans suspected of terrorist ties indefinitely and without trial or even charges being filed that would necessitate a trial.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is a big supporter of the bill, and he says that it would “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield”.
According to the PPJ Gazette, the following are three things that this new law would do….
1) Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;
(2) Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and
(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.
#2 U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is asking Google to install a “terrorist button” on all Blogger.com blogs so that readers can easily flag “terrorist content” for authorities.
#3 Most Americans have no idea how sophisticated the “Big Brother” prison grid has become. For example, in Washington D.C. the movements of every single car are tracked using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The following comes from a recent Washington Post article….
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
#4 In some American schools, RFID chips are now being used to monitor the attendance and movements of children while they are at school. The following is how one article recently described a program that has just been instituted at a preschool in California….
Upon arriving in the morning, according to the Associated Press, each student at the CCC-George Miller preschool will don a jersey with a stitched in RFID chip. As the kids go about the business of learning, sensors in the school will record their movements, collecting attendance for both classes and meals. Officials from the school have claimed they’re only recording information they’re required to provide while receiving federal funds for their Headstart program.
#5 Increasingly, incidents of misbehavior at many U.S. schools are being treated as very serious crimes. For example, when a little girl kissed a little boy at one Florida elementary school recently, it was considered to be a “possible sex crime” and the police were called out.
#6 But what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California earlier this year was even worse….
Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.
#7 In the United States today, police are trained to respond to even the smallest crimes with extreme physical force. For example, one grandfather in Arizona was recently filmed laying unconscious in a pool of his own blood after police rammed his head into the flood inside a Wal-Mart on Black Friday night. It was thought that he was shoplifting, but it turns out that he says that he was just trying to tuck a video game away so other crazed shoppers would not grab it out of his hands.
#8 Did you know that the government actually sets up fake cell phone towers that can intercept your cell phone calls? The following is how a recent Wired article described these “stingrays”….
You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier’s cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.
So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.
The government maintains that the stingrays don’t violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don’t have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower.
#9 U.S. border agents are allowed by law to search any laptop being brought into the United States without even needing any reason to do so.
#10 In the United States of America, everyone is a “potential terrorist”. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, “homegrown terrorists” represent as big a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.
#11 Most Americans are not that concerned about the Patriot Act, but that might change if they understood that the federal government has a “secret interpretation” of what the Patriot Act really means. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden says that the U.S. government interprets the Patriot Act much more “broadly” than the general public does….
“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.”
#12 The FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com….
If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.
#13 The federal government has decided that what you and I share with one another on Facebook and on Twitter could be a threat to national security. According to a recent Associated Press article, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be “gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes”.
#14 What you say on your cell phone is never private. The truth is that that the FBI can demand to see your cell phone data whenever it wants. In addition, according to CNET News the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cell phone and listen to whatever you are saying….
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.
#15 In some areas of the country, law enforcement authorities are pulling data out of cell phones for no reason whatsoever. According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are now using “extraction devices” to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.
The following is how a recent article on CNET News described the capabilities of these “extraction devices”….
The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.
#16 The federal government has become so paranoid that they have been putting GPS tracking devices on the vehicles of thousands of people that have not even been charged with committing any crimes. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Wired magazine article about this issue….
The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car.
Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man.
The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices.
The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.
#17 New high-tech street lights that are being funded by the federal government and that are being installed all over the nation can also be used as surveillance cameras, can be used by the DHS to make “security announcements” and can even be used to record personal conversations. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com….
Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.
#18 If you choose to protest in the streets of America today, there is a good chance that you will be brutalized. All over the United States law enforcement authorities have been spraying pepper spray directly into the faces of unarmed protesters in recent weeks.
#19 In many areas of the United States today, you will be arrested if you do not produce proper identification for the police. In the old days, “your papers please” was a phrase that was used to use to mock the tyranny of Nazi Germany. But now all of us are being required to be able to produce “our papers” for law enforcement authorities at any time. For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.
#20 According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate “in monthly anti-terrorism drills”. The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends….
Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.
So who in the world ever decided that it would be a good idea for 1st grade students to endure “lockdown” and “active shooter” drills?
To get an idea of what these kinds of drills are like, just check out this video.
#21 With all of the other problems that we are having all over the nation, you would think that authorities would not be too concerned about little kids that are trying to sell cups of lemonade. But sadly, over the past year police have been sent in to shut down lemonade stands run by children all over the United States.
#22 The federal government has decided to invest a significant amount of time, money and energy raiding organic farms. The following example comes from Natural News….
It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special “farm to fork” picnic dinner put on for guests — and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach.
#23 It is an absolute disgrace that all of us (including grandmothers and young children) must either go through body scanners that reveal the intimate details of our naked bodies or endure “enhanced pat-downs” during which our genitals will be touched before we are allowed to get on an airplane.
It is also an absolute disgrace that the American people are putting up with this.
#24 Invasive TSA security techniques are not just for airports anymore. Now, TSA “VIPR teams” are actively conducting random inspections at bus stations and on interstate highways all over the United States. For example, the following comes from a local news report down in Tennessee….
You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).
“Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,” said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.
Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.
TSA “VIPR teams” now conduct approximately 8,000 “unannounced security screenings” a year at subway stations, bus terminals, ports and highway rest stops.
#25 More than a million hotel television sets all over America are now broadcasting propaganda messages from the Department of Homeland Security promoting the “See Something, Say Something” campaign. In essence, the federal government wants all of us to become “informants” and to start spying on one another constantly. The following comes from an article posted by USA Today….
Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.
#26 Certain “types” of American citizens are being labeled as potential threats in official U.S. government documents. An unclassified Department of Homeland Security report published a couple years ago entitled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” claims that a belief in Bible prophecy “could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition and weapons.” The report goes on to state that such people are potentially dangerous.
#27 Back on February 20, 2009, the State of Missouri issued a report entitled “MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement“. That report warned that the following types of people may be potential terrorists….
*anti-abortion activists
*those that are against illegal immigration
*those that consider “the New World Order” to be a threat
*those that have a negative view of the United Nations
#28 As I have written about previously, a very disturbing document that Oath Keepers has obtained shows that the FBI is now instructing store owners to report many new forms of “suspicious activity” to them. According to the document, “suspicious activity” now includes the following….
*paying with cash
*missing a hand or fingers
*”strange odors”
*making “extreme religious statements”
*”radical theology”
*purchasing weatherproofed ammunition or match containers
*purchasing meals ready to eat
*purchasing night vision devices, night flashlights or gas masks
Do any of those “signs of suspicious activity” apply to you?
#29 Soon you may get labeled as a “potential terrorist” if you are just feeling a little nervous. A new “pre-crime” technology system that is currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will soon be in use all over the nation. It is called “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST), and it is very frightening. The following description of this new program comes from an article in the London Telegraph….
Using cameras and sensors the “pre-crime” system measures and tracks changes in a person’s body movements, the pitch of their voice and the rhythm of their speech.
It also monitors breathing patterns, eye movements, blink rate and alterations in body heat, which are used to assess an individual’s likelihood to commit a crime.
The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) programme is already being tested on a group of government employees who volunteered to act as guinea pigs.
#30 The truth is that nobody puts more people into prison than America does. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.
To read about some of the crazy things that the control freaks running things have planned for the future, just check out this article by Natural News: “10 outlandish things the ‘scientific’ controllers have in mind for you in the near future“.
Once again, despite all of this outrageous “security”, it is inevitable that a lot of really bad things are going to happen in the United States in the years ahead.
When there are incidents of violence, it is also inevitable that there will be calls for even more “Big Brother” security measures.
We are going to be caught in a never ending spiral of tyranny where the “solution” is always even tighter security.
Eventually, we will have lost all of our liberties and freedoms, and we will probably be even less safe than we are today.
Do not be deceived. We could put a soldier on every corner, a video camera in every room of every home and an RFID chip in every citizen but that would not make us “safe”.
Every single lawmaker that is backing these laws which strip our liberties and freedoms away deserves to be voted out of office.
If you love the United States of America, please stand up and say something while you still can.
Please use this article and other articles like it as tools. Share them with your friends and your family. If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn the direction of this country around.
Will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be mentioned in the same breath as communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany, or will the final chapters of the history of the United States of America be the greatest chapters of all?
The choice, America, is up to you.
————
(hat tip: The Intel Hub)
Do not be deceived: S. 1867 is the most dangerous bill since the PATRIOT Act
Madison Ruppert
End the Lie
November 30, 2011
Recently I reported on the highly controversial bill S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year of 2012 which was introduced back in June.
This bill was replaced by the one introduced on the 15th of November, S. 1867. Today Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator John McCain of Arizona faced off on the floor of the Senate over a proposed amendment to S. 1867.
The minimal coverage this bill is getting in the corporate-controlled establishment media, especially when it comes to the massive danger it poses to everything America was built upon, is nothing short of deplorable.
This amendment would, according to Senator Paul, put “every single American citizen at risk.” Paul rightly pointed out that if the amendment were to pass, “the terrorists have won.”
I couldn’t agree more and this is the major fact that McCain and far too many others in Washington seem to miss. Or, equally likely, McCain and others are well aware of the erosion of civil liberties and have no interest in stopping it.
After all, it isn’t the sycophantic corrupt politicians in Washington that have to endure being groped by TSA goons or surreptitiously blasted with X-Rays by a passing DHS van; it is the everyday Americans like you and me that are subjected to such absurd “counterterrorism” measures.
John McCain is a man who revels in death and suffering in true sociopathic style: joking about bombing Iran, calling for military operations in Syria, and supporting the murderous and thoroughly racist al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels.
McCain is the epitome of Washington doublethink: in Libya, al Qaeda is good. Yet, al Qaeda is still the biggest threat to humanity, so much so that it justifies turning the entire world into a theater of war in which all rights are suspended in the name of the war on terror?
Senator Paul argued against the amendment to S. 1867 that McCain co-sponsored by saying, “Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won. [D]etaining American citizens without a court trial is not American.”
Unfortunately, the PATRIOT Act has already removed “some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism,” but there are very few politicians who will put their careers on their line in saying this fact.
McCain quickly attempted to defend the amendment he’s been peddling on the Senate floor by saying, “Facts are stubborn things. If the senator from Kentucky wants to have a situation prevail where people who are released go back in to the fight to kill Americans, he is entitled to his opinion.”
This is the typical, “Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” fallacious logic employed by those in Washington who will take every opportunity to exploit the non-threat of terrorism as a method of control and erosion of civil liberties.
McCain, who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a member of the camp of individuals who either lie on a regular basis while knowing the facts or are so deluded and removed from reality that they actually fear the al Qaeda boogeyman.
Senator McCain, just like the non-profit groups that are directly linked to the Department of Homeland Security, promotes a fear of terrorism that is completely at odds with the facts, using this climate of fear and paranoia to justify otherwise unacceptable legislation like S. 1867 and the PATRIOT Act.
McCain’s proposed amendment would allow the executive branch, which has already murdered American citizens abroad without so much as a single charge, to have power over if a suspect was put through the civilian court system or through the military tribunal system.
Military tribunals are the complete antithesis of the civilian justice system and putting American citizens through such a system would signal the death of everything the American justice system was built upon.
The most dangerous aspect of S. 1867 is not only that it could subject American citizens to military tribunals and detention, but also that individuals could be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.
Even if this was not used on American citizens, it represents a deplorable move that would only make the rest of the world hate us that much more, knowing that it is explicitly allowed for the American government to snatch up people and detain them forever without charge or trial.
If any other government were to even consider engaging in such behavior, people like Hillary Clinton who laughably claim to support human rights, would likely decry such moves.
Yet, the nonsensical logic of American exceptionalism makes people like McCain think that America has the right to operate outside of the rule of law (not to mention common decency and respect for other human beings) at home and abroad, so long as it is supposedly to combat terrorism.
Senator Paul countered McCain’s absurd assertion by saying, “I don’t think it necessarily follows I am arguing of the release of prisoners. I am simply arguing that particularly American citizens should not be sent to a foreign prison without due process.”
It amazes me that any such thing would have to even be argued. The Constitution is supposed to protect us from such egregious breaches of our inalienable rights and our so-called representatives take an oath to protect the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic.
It is now clear that the true enemies of the Constitution, the ones that truly put our liberties in danger, are domestic.
They wear expensive suits and happily stroll through the halls of power in Washington, seemingly confident that they will not be treated as the traitorous criminals that they are.
McCain is one of these traitors who are launching an all-out assault on our way of life and our civil rights, S. 1867 is just the most recent, and most virulent, manifestation of this.
“An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat,” McCain said in defense of his attack on our rights.
“We need to take every stop necessary to prevent that from happening, that’s for the safety and security of the men and women who are out there risking their lives … in our armed services,” McCain added.
The real people who put the men and women in our armed services at risk are warmongers like McCain who happily put Americans in the line of fire in order to keep their war profiteering cronies satisfied.
44 Republican Senators and 15 Democrats along with one Independent voted to keep the new detainee provisions in the NDAA, with Senator Paul and Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois being among the few Republicans who broke party ranks and sided with a majority of Democrats who voted to block the new provisions.
Paul argued, “If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay,” while Republican Senator Lindsey Graham countered, “To be clear: These provisions do not apply to U.S. citizens.”
Did that stop the American government from murdering a citizen of the United States in Yemen in a drone attack?
No, in fact, the National Security Council’s secret death panel makes these decisions outside of all legislation and accountability, so Graham’s claim that it wouldn’t apply to American citizens is hollow, at best.
A couple of days ago Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for Salon and a former Constitutional and civil rights lawyer tweeted a very similar sentiment:
“With very few exceptions, the McCain-Levin bill, awful though it is, doesn’t create any powers beyond what the O[bama] Admin[istration] thinks it now has.”
The problem is that this bill would make it explicitly legal for the United States to conduct the horrific operations they have already been carrying out.
If this were to pass, there would be absolutely nothing standing in the way of the government rounding up dissidents who they could easily label terrorists or individuals planning/supporting terrorism (given the absurdly broad definition used).
They could then imprison them without charge or trial for however long they please, and if they have their way, they would be able to openly torture them, not just the torture deceptively labeled “enhanced interrogation” but torture that can go by no other name.
Of course, that is not to diminish the fact that the tactics now employed by the CIA and others are indeed torture. Just ask people like conservative radio host Mancow who was waterboarded and came to the conclusion that it is indeed torture after having held the complete opposite opinion previously.
Or if that isn’t enough proof, take the Vanity Fair article written by Christopher Hitchens in which he describes his experience being waterboarded which brought him to the exact same conclusion: waterboarding is torture.
Even Bahrain ostensibly has more democratic accountability for torture, although I think we all know that is about as legitimate as calling waterboarding “enhanced interrogation.”
McCain laughably claimed that the changes would “help defend our nation against the threat posed by al Qaeda while upholding our values and honoring our Constitution.”
This is especially hilarious given that McCain said that the al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels “inspired the world” in carrying out their bloody revolution.
Does McCain actually believe that he has the power to pick and choose when individuals and groups directly linked to al Qaeda are good or bad?
How can they actually reconcile such absurdist moral relativism? Personally, I don’t think that McCain can actually believe the things he says unless he has actually been able to eliminate every bit of sense and logic that is innate in human beings.
To the many people commenting and emailing me claiming that this is overblown and it will not apply to American citizens, you might want to listen to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s own words on the Senate floor.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/SenateSession4951/start/26369/stop/26470
“In summary here, [section] 1032, the military custody provision, which has waivers and a lot of flexibility doesn’t apply to American citizens. [Section] 1031, the statement of authority to detain does apply to American citizens, and it designates the world as the battlefield including the homeland,” Graham said.
Is there really anything even remotely unclear here? Our government is making the final strides towards turning the brutal military apparatus that has slaughtered so many people abroad in the name of “freedom” back to our own people.
What we are witnessing now is truly historic, the American government is trying to explicitly codify the ability to detain Americans without trial or charge in a military facility under military rule with military tribunals.
While I argue that we already live in a police state, based on the citizen spying programs, ludicrous amounts of domestic surveillance, collection and storage of massive amounts of biometric information, and the Department of Homeland Security’s invisible surveillance state (just to mention a few) the passage of this bill would bring about a new dangerous paradigm in America.
Even if it was sold as something that wouldn’t apply to American citizens, like the PATRIOT Act was sold as a counterterrorism bill, it would undoubtedly be used against us regardless of these claims, just as the PATRIOT Act has been utilized in cases wholly unrelated to terrorism.
Even the officials from the Department of Justice readily admit that the PATRIOT Act is being used against non-terrorist American citizens.
As you will see in the above video, they admit that the PATRIOT Act is used in cases completely unrelated to terrorism.
Is anyone really naïve enough to believe that the government will actually restrict the usage of S. 1867 to terrorists and not Americans who stand up to their corrupt, out of control, and wholly illegitimate criminal government?
To make matters even worse, the usage of drones in the United States is being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the FAA plans to propose new rules this coming January, which would give free license to police departments and other domestic agencies to use them in the United States.
Yet, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have been used by law enforcement in the United States for some time now.
In fact, The Washington Post reported on the usage of aerial drones domestically in January of this year along with Homeland Security News Wire.
Currently, law enforcement agencies supposedly have to seek out emergency authorization from the FAA to use drones, which, according to The Washington Post is “only occasionally” granted.
The new FAA regulations coupled with turning the United States into a battlefield in which all Americans could be enemy combatants is dangerous, to say the least.
Given the fact that our current administration under the traitorous warmonger Barack Obama has no problem killing children with drones abroad, do we really think that they wouldn’t conduct such operations at home?
To an administration that commits extrajudicial executions of American citizens – and their 16-year-old child who was born in Denver, Colorado – is anything off the table?
The unfortunate and thoroughly disturbing reality is that our government has no problem carrying out such operations and S. 1867 would just make it that much easier by codifying it and creating an explicit legal apparatus through which they can operate.
I highly recommend that you explore at least some of the 344 proposed amendments for S. 1867 in the Library of Congress’ Thomas system which can be found here.
You can track all of the updates on the act with the amendments organized by date on this Library of Congress page.
As you can tell, the 28th was by far the busiest day so far in the life of S. 1867 with over 100 amendments considered in that single day, although this very well might be beat in coming days when our so-called representatives continue to debate turning the United States into a giant battlefield.
UPDATE: If the ridiculous assault on our inalienable rights embodied by S. 1867 wasn’t enough, the Senate is also considering repealing the anti-torture measures currently in place (lax though they may be).
This flies in the face of the fact that torture does not provide actionable intelligence or anything even remotely reliable unless you’re looking for a false confession to anything from terrorism to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
This bill must be stopped if we want to preserve anything that America is supposed to stand for. The PATRIOT Act was a crippling blow to the Constitution but S. 1867 would be the death of every last bastion of hope and freedom that was left after the vicious attacks on our civil liberties that have brought us to this point.
UPDATE 2: Updated throughout with more information. If I missed anything please do not hesitate to contact me right away at Admin@EndtheLie.com
