The Destruction of America is well underway
Things haven’t been going well with the USA for a long while now, and recently it has only become more clear. If people were doubting certain developments before, they are going to find it increasingly more difficult to ignore what’s going on these days in not only the USA, but around the world. Most people don’t realize what’s going on because they can’t see the big picture. Unless you keep yourself updated on a daily basis and keep recent events in memory, it’s not easy to see the big picture. There often is a long period of time between events and most people are too busy with daily activities to remember certain information and be able to connect the dots. The example I often like to use is the frog in a pot of water. If you would throw a frog in a pot of hot water, it would try to jump out immediately. However, if you put the frog in a pot of water and very slowly increase the temperature of the water, the frog doesn’t notice the small increases in temperature and eventually dies when the water becomes very hot.
And basically the same thing is happening in the USA. Slowly but surely all kinds of things are being put into place that ultimately lead to a goal in the future, which is the transformation of the USA into a police state. And it seems most Americans are too occupied with their daily activities to even notice what’s going on around them. Indeed many of them don’t even seem to care about what’s going on. If they aren’t too busy working 2 to 3 jobs to be able to pay their bills every end of the month, they care more for having fun and wasting their time on unproductive activities. To be honest, this is not just a problem with Americans, but people in general. But in the case of Americans, it allows the people in control to gradually take their freedoms away while they are too busy to notice.
Not too long ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill that authorizes Bush to spy on US citizens without the need for a warrant while at the same time making it more difficult to legally challenge such actions by the government:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would provide congressional authorization for President George W. Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program but subject it to new rules.
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“Hidden in the fine print are provisions which grant the administration authority to maintain permanent records on innocent U.S. citizens, granting the administration new authority to demand personal records without court review, and terminating any and all legal challenges to unlawful wiretapping,” said Rep. John Conyers, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
Shortly after that, the Senate approved a detainee bill that not only enables the US government to torture suspects and prisoners, but also makes it impossible for them to challenge their detention:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday gave final approval to a bill for tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, as President George W. Bush prevailed after a series of setbacks on his detainee policies.
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The bill sets standards for interrogating suspects, but through a complex set of rules that human rights groups said could allow harsh techniques that bordered on torture such as sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia.
It establishes military tribunals that would allow some use of evidence obtained by coercion, but would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them.
The bill also expands the definition of “enemy combatants” mostly held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups.
After a high-stakes negotiation, Bush got much of what he wanted in the bill to continue the once-secret CIA program of detention and aggressive interrogations of suspects that critics said amounted to torture.
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said the right to challenge one’s detention was fundamental in American law, and the Supreme Court would reject the plan if it were stripped.
“This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American,” said Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat. He said it was intended to choke off access to Guantanamo to “ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power.”
As soon as the bill was passed, the US government moved ahead quickly to implement it:
Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that “no court, justice, or judge” can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.
Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents.
The USA can now pick up anyone it labels as an “enemy combatant”, including US citizens, and ship them to Guantanamo Bay without a trial. These people can then be held there for as long as the US government wants, they can be tortured there and there’s nobody who can do anything about it. You can’t even go to court. It’s just incredible when you think about it. How could something like this be approved by the Senate? Not only that, how could most Americans just fail to realize what this means and do nothing about it? Where are the protests?
Some are calling this a total rollback of everything America stood for, and I have to agree:
The Senate has agreed to give President Bush extraordinary power to detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on terror. The legislation strips detainees of the right to challenge their own detention and gives the President the power to detain them indefinitely. The bill also immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for torturing detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year.
Bush saved himself with that as well, since he was the one who gave the CIA authorization to detain and torture people:
WASHINGTON: The CIA has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President George W. Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.
The CIA referred to the documents in a letter sent last Friday from the agency’s associate general counsel, John McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is “a directive signed by President Bush granting the CIA the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees,” the civil liberties union said, based on its review of published accounts.
Others are calling this a constitutional shredding:
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, “unlawful enemy combatants.”
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Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
It is a constitutional shredding. It’s more easy to understand how all of this is possible when you realize Bush said that the constitution is “just a goddamn piece of paper.” Now when you know all this, you might want to worry about who the US government actually thinks is an “enemy combatant”:
There has been a great deal of discussion about the Military Commissions Act of 2006, recently passed by both houses of Congress, and most of it has to do with the provisions allowing torture of alien detainees, that is, of non-citizens apprehended in, say, Afghanistan or Iraq, and their treatment at the hands of their American captors. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner, all Republicans, grandstanded for weeks over the torture provisions, then capitulated. Another “Republican maverick,” Arlen Specter, zeroed in on the real issue, however, when he said the bill would set us back 800 years by repealing the habeas corpus protections against arbitrary arrest and jailings and then went ahead and voted for it, anyway. [Editor: You just can’t make this stuff up.]
Liberal opposition mainly centered around the morality or, rather, immorality of torture, but the debate largely ignored the ticking time-bomb at the heart of this legislation, scheduled to go off, perhaps, in tandem with some future crisis, e.g., another terrorist attack on American soil: the redefinition of the “unlawful combatant” concept that lays the foundations for this administration’s reconstruction of the gulag. Here is the new, broadened definition, as enunciated in the legislation recently passed by the House:
“The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ means (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or associated forces); or (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”
It doesn’t say “alien” or “terrorist,” although it specifically includes members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It says “person” any person, including American citizens. As Bruce Ackerman, professor of law at Yale and author of Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism, puts it:
“Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”
Congress has now granted the president the powers of a dictator. The rest of the story of our slide into absolutism is merely a matter of filling in the details.
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One suspects, however, that this administration will not be so easily deterred. To begin with, they won’t have to deal with a judge or bad publicity, because the “trial” will be conducted by a military tribunal, operating in secret. Secondly, the defendants will stand trial without benefit of constitutional protections normally afforded to all American citizens. I say “normally” because I am still living in the world before the passage of our modern-day Alien and Sedition Act, at least mentally. But it’s a new world, now.
The exact contours of this strange new world are vague, but they are fast coming into painfully clear focus. As the president equates criticism of the Iraq war with “enemy propaganda,” and the neocon media blares away at the theme of “dissent = treason” or, as Glenn Reynolds puts it, “they’re not antiwar, they’re on the other side” it isn’t hard to imagine that we have a few sedition trials in our future.
My expectations are dire, although this could simply be my own subjective impression, a mood that will pass. I can’t help feeling, however, a sense of gathering dread, attached not just to the Military Commissions Act but arising out of the political atmosphere surrounding its passage. I never could understand in the sense of share the fear of authority that emanates from my Arab friend every time he sees someone in uniform. Now, however, I am beginning to feel it myself as we all will.
Yep, it’s like Olbermann says: “Americans can kiss their freedom goodbye.” Ofcourse, this is all because the government has to take all of these measures to protect the freedoms of the American people, you see. Those damn terrorists just can’t stand all the freedom in America!
The real reason for all of this is to have better control over the American people. As one can clearly see, it is not to protect their freedoms because their freedoms are actually being taken away and their constitution is being systematically weakened. The US government is expecting things to get worse in the near future, and these measures are to ensure that they will be able to take care of anyone standing up to them. It’s like I wrote in a previous post, with the growing opposition including the 9/11 Truth movement and the income tax opposition, they are going to want to be able to stop these people somehow. Nothing will be easier than to simply label them terrorist supporters and as a result treat them like “enemy combatants” so they can be detained and shipped to Guantanamo Bay.
As you can imagine, Guantanamo Bay is soon going to be too small to be able to detain all those Americans there. But not to worry, the government is already on it. American prison camps are on the way, and they’re being constructed by none other than the mighty Halliburton:
Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush’s “unlawful enemy combatants.” Americans are certain to be among them.
How could that even be going on, you ask? Well it appears this was “enabled” by the Military Commissions Act:
Re-elected Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul joined Alex Jones on air last week to discuss the fallout of the midterm elections and what he sees transpiring over the next two years. He ended by ominously warning that if something is not done soon to overturn legislation such as the Military Commissions act, the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities.
Not only are they building new camps, but they even seem to be restoring old internment camps, possibly to use them again in the future:
One of the last acts of Congress was to send President Bush a bill that establishes a $38 million program of National Park Service grants to preserve Japanese POW internment camps in Hawaii, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho. Is this really in the name of historical interest or does it dovetail with programs on the books to intern hundreds of thousands of dissidents in a time of crisis?
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Precise details of exactly what the “restoration” of these camps will entail remain absent from news reports, but suspicions will undoubtedly be cast as to whether making the camps accessible again to process people in whatever form is part of a wider agenda to set up a network of internment camps that will be used to forcibly detain American citizens under emergency provisions.
During the Iran Contra hearings in the 80’s, previously classified information came to light about Continuity of Government (CoG) procedures in times of national crisis. The masterminds behind these programs were Oliver North, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and the Rex-84 ‘readiness exercise’ discussed the plan to round up immigrants and detain them in internment camps in the context of uncontrolled population movements across the Mexican border.
The real agenda was to use the cover of rounding up immigrants and illegal aliens as a smokescreen for targeting political dissidents and American citizens . From 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the “ADEX” list.
Since 9/11 shadow government and CoG programs that were outlined in Rex-84 have been activated, including mass warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. The internment camp program is being readied for execution following the announcement on January 24th that Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Brown and Root) had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps.
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Following the news first given wide attention by this website, that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency, the Alternet website put together an alarming report that collated all the latest information on plans to initiate internment of political subversives and Muslims after the next major terror attack in the U.S.
The article highlighted the disturbing comments of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who encouraged torture supporting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to target, “Fifth Columnists” Americans who show disloyalty and sympathize with “the enemy,” whoever that enemy may be.
Respected author Peter Dale Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.”
Daniel Ellsberg, former Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense, called the plan, “preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
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Under the enemy combatant designation anyone at the behest of the US government, even if they are a US citizen, can be kidnapped and placed in an internment facility forever without trial. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has spent over four years in a Navy brig.
In 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.
Okanogan County Commissioner Dave Schulz went public three years ago with his contention that his county was set to be a location for one of the camps.
Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps. Actors scream out that they have constitutional rights as they are handcuffed and hauled off to the detainment facility.
This is all part of the process the US government seems to be in right now of “tooling up” for what’s to come in the near future:
The Bush Junta has quietly “tooled up” to utilize the U.S. military in engaging American dissidents after the next big crisis, with a frightening and overlooked piece of legislation that was passed alongside the Military Commissions Act, which greases the skids for armed confrontation and abolishes posse comitatus.
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Morales traced the ancestry of the bill back to “Operation Garden Plot” and the United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, now de-classified programs dating back to the 80’s which outlined how the military would be involved in suppressing domestic civil disobedience in America. The groups listed as potential non-conformist troublemakers included tax protesters, militia groups, religious cults, and various other general anti-government dissenters.
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Morales said that the authorities know full well that a widespread awakening is taking place and so the Defense Authorization Act was essentially part of a move to try and “tool up” for the reaction that will take place after their next lunge to destroy what’s left of American liberty.
Morales speculated that the trigger event for the push to use the U.S. military against American dissidents under the bill was right around the corner.
Others are seeing these recent events as a move by the Bush administration towards Martial Law:
Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007” (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”
President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”
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For the current President, “enforcement of the laws to restore public order” means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against “disorderly” citizenry – protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.
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The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called “illegal aliens,” “potential terrorists” and other “undesirables” for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That’s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency” and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.
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Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007’s Defense Authorization Act contained a “widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation’s governors.”
Again, when you look at the growing civil unrest in the USA, it’s quite easy to understand why the US government is taking these steps. They know what’s coming and seem to be preparing for it. This civil unrest is only going to get worse when Americans find out in the near future about the plans for the creation of the North American Union, which the USA will be a part of, and which will mean the end of the USA as we know it today. Execution of these plans seems to be making a lot of progress as well, and it’s all being done mostly in secret without notifying the American people of what’s going on:
There he stood, a man with a captive audience of fellow anti-American neo-cons bent on one world government. His mission: to lay out the military and security integration of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The date: September 13, 2006. The place: Banff Springs Hotel, Alberta, Canada. The forum: a secret meeting of the powerful elite, a meeting that all of a sudden become not so secret. The man: Donald Rumsfeld, point puppet for the Bush administration’s planned integration known as the North American Union. This is serious government collusion behind the backs of the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It is government for the elite, not government representing the people.
Completely in line with the Bush administration’s current policy, this is being done without Congress officially knowing about it, even though it seems that this will have far reaching consequences for the USA:
Journalist Jerome Corsi has received the first documents pertaining to a FOIA request asking for full disclosure of the SPP office in its activities towards creating a Pan American Union.
According to a report by World Net Daily, the documents reveal that the Bush administration is running a “shadow government” without congressional oversight in conjunction with Canada and Mexico under the guise of a program “to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation.”
Corsi asserts that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to “integrate” and “harmonize” with administrative law in Mexico and Canada. The documents contain references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Corsi has further reported that at a recent high-level confab in Banff, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, Thomas A. Shannon , chaired a panel that featured a presentation by Prof. Robert Pastor, author of a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.
The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union networked by a NAFTA Super Highway has long been a Globalist brainchild but its very real and prescient implementation on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations has finally been reported on by mainstream news outlets.
After nearly ten years of reporting by Alex Jones and the rest of the Patriot Movement, the establishment press is finally covering serious reports on the plan for a Pan-American Union, based on recent articles by Human Events columnist Jerome Corsi.
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“Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.”
This admission is as historical as it is concerning – the CFR moulds the foundational policy for the elimination of American sovereignty and it is passed as executive law within weeks. It is once again evident that the true vestiges of power lie within the ranks of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission who act on policy decided upon by the big brother of multinational semi-secret steering societies, the Bilderberg Group.
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The NAFTA Super Highway will allow vehicles, people and goods to travel from Mexico, into the heart of America and up to Canada with little impediment, effectively erasing America’s borders wholesale. Coupled with Bush’s blanket amnesty program, the Pan American Union is the final jigsaw piece for the total dismantling of America as we know it.
The NAFTA Super Highway? Yes, the NAFTA Super Highway:
WASHINGTON – Rep. Ron Paul, a maverick Republican from Texas, today denounced plans for the proposed “NAFTA superhighway” in his state as part of a larger plot for merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American Union.
“By now many Texans have heard about the proposed ‘NAFTA Superhighway,’ which is also referred to as the trans-Texas corridor,” he said in a statement. “What you may not know is the extent to which plans for such a superhighway are moving forward without congressional oversight or media attention.”
But fortunately, some congressmen have taken it upon them to officially get these developments discussed in Congress:
WASHINGTON – While several members of Congress have denied any knowledge of efforts to build “NAFTA superhighways” or move America closer to a union with Mexico and Canada, four members of the House have stepped up to sponsor a resolution opposing both initiatives.
Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., has introduced a resolution H.R. 487 designed to express “the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico and Canada.”
“Now that Congress is preparing to take up the issues of the North American Union and NAFTA superhighways, we are moving out of the realm where critics can attempt to disparage the discussion as ‘Internet conspiracy theory,'” explained Jerome Corsi, author and WND columnist who has written extensively on the Security and Prosperity Partnership the semisecret plan many suspect is behind the efforts to create a European Union-style North American confederation and link Mexico and Canada with more transcontinental highways and rail lines. “This bill represents a good first step.”
But will that help? I doubt it. Congress has already proven to be easily manipulated into supporting any boneheaded policy the Bush administration can come up with. It might be a bit more difficult to convince the American people about these ideas though, which is probably why all of this North American Union planning has been happening behind the scenes. It’ll probably remain that way until another big crisis that will help to “convince” the American people to choose for a North American Union:
Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas could be developed into a continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has replaced the national currencies of Europe.
This is ofcourse similar to 9/11, the catalyzing event or new Pearl Harbor, which was needed to “convince” the American people about the need for the USA to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Does this help to make you realize why the US government feels the need to “tool up” as I discussed earlier? If not, how about this:
In May of 2005, a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force released “Building a North American Community”, a blueprint for merging the United States, Mexico and Canada into one country called “North America”. The plan, which is being implemented via the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement signed last year between the leaders of the three countries, will destroy the sovereignty of the USA. The United States will cease to exist as an independent nation. The United States Constitution , including the Bill of Rights, will be extinct. Implementation of such a plan is, therefore, by definition, an act of TREASON. No other word fits the crime.
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One has to wonder if the professors that the globalists are conning into spreading the glory of driving a knife into the back of America have any concept of what they are doing. This author is of the opinion that most college professors live in an academic bubble insulating them from the real world consequences of their actions and of the implementation of their pie-in-the-sky socio-economic theories and beliefs. Most of them, trapped by their own inflated opinion of their intellect, sadly, do not have a clue. Perhaps these people at Arizona State University would not be duped into teaching TREASON 101 if they had a clue, if they were given a copy of The United States Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Perhaps these professors need to be taught a lesson.in the rights and responsibilities of being an American.
It seems to me that most Americans would normally not choose to part with their constitution and the opposition against the North American Union in the future might be huge. All the more reason for the US government to make sure they can keep the opposition in control in the near future and all the more need for some kind of crisis to get people to accept those plans. It’s probably in that light that we should view recently developments such as this one:
DALLAS The first of many surveillance cameras has been installed in downtown Dallas. Once the system is up and running, the Dallas Police Department will be able to monitor 30-percent of the business district.
Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle says, “It will create an environment where people know they can’t do anything unlawful in the central business district, because the fact that the cameras are going to take away their anonymity.”
Or how about this:
OPINION In July last year, San Francisco began installing video surveillance cameras to monitor the public streets. What quietly started as a pilot program with two cameras in the Western Addition has quickly expanded, with more than 30 cameras throughout the city. The Mayor’s Office is seeking to install 22 more cameras at a number of locations, including heavily trafficked areas such as the 16th Street and Mission and 24th Street and Mission intersections.
Aah yes, nothing to worry about, ofcourse. It’s just to protect your freedoms and for your own safety. Privacy? What privacy? Oh wait, it seems they are actually doing something to protect your privacy:
The US Government signalled some willingness this week to address concerns over citizens’ privacy, but also launched a scheme which will analyse secret airline passenger risk profiles and keep them for 40 years.
The US Government released guidelines which it says will protect the privacy of US citizens in an era of increasing data collection and information sharing by and between Government bodies.
Congress had previously mandated greater information sharing within government and law enforcement, but there have been concerns that that process undermines individuals’ privacy.
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Meanwhile, however, the US Government began a planned scheme this week which creates risk assessments of airline passengers, assessments that passengers can ever see and which are kept on file for 40 years.
A programme has been identified by digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which collects information about individuals, stores it in a database and performs a risk assessment about whether or not the individuals concerned are likely to break US law.
“Personally identifiable information is collected to ensure that people and cargo entering or exiting the United States comply with all applicable US laws,” said a privacy impact report on the Automatic Targeting Scheme (ATS). “Relevant data, including personally identifiable information, is necessary for CBP to assess effectively and efficiently the risk and/or threat posed by a person, a conveyance operated by person, or cargo handled by a person, entering or exiting the country.”
Information will be gathered and stored on US citizens and foreigners, including EU citizens. A major source of data will be passenger name records (PNR), themselves the subject of data protection controversy in Europe.
Hmmm no, I guess not. Notice how they claim to be protecting the privacy of citizens with so called “privacy guidelines”, while at the same time collecting even more personal information from them and storing this for at least 40 years. Now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Microsoft came up with the same stuff not too long ago and I wrote about it here.
Expect it to get worse. Just check out what’s happening now in London:
POLICE and councils are considering monitoring conversations in the street using high-powered microphones attached to CCTV cameras, write Steven Swinford and Nicola Smith.
The devices are used at 300 sites in Holland and police, councils and transport officials in London have shown an interest in installing them before the 2012 Olympics.
The interest in the equipment comes amid growing concern that Britain is becoming a “surveillance society”. It was recently highlighted that there are more than 4.2m CCTV cameras, with the average person being filmed more than 300 times a day. The addition of microphones would take surveillance into uncharted territory.
The Association of Chief Police Officers has warned that a full public debate over the microphones’ impact on privacy will be needed before they can be introduced.
It might already be happening in the USA as well while people don’t know it. Kindof like how Americans found out much later about all the NSA wiretapping going on. Plus, did you also know that the FBI can listen in on your conversation through the microphone in your mobile phone, even while you are not using it and while it is turned off? No? Then just check out this video. Still, only 66% of Americans think their government is spying on them. I would have expected it to be much more. I guess most of them are still not aware of Echelon. Even the Internet is being monitored. I wrote about this before in more detail. And when they check your webbrowsing history, they might be just as surprised as this principal:
The student was sent to the Principal’s office to face disciplinary measures. Steiner Ranch Elementary Assistant Principal Amy Moore was reportedly surprised that the school’s IP filters hadn’t blocked the sites.
“They should have,” the Principal said to Mark while at the office.
He says that his principal checked the web history in his school web account, and was ‘surprised.’
“I was going to websites that tell the truth about 9/11. She thought it was all a conspiracy; I confronted her,” Mark said. “‘No, it’s all the truth,’ you know. Bush– and its not just him, a lot of other people– and they’re just trying to cover it up.”
The assistant principal then told the 10 year-old, “Don’t talk back to me” before sending him to sit in the hall and later back to class.
Yep, it appears visiting such websites and even having certain opinions can get you kicked out of class these days. Well at least they don’t taser students yet. Oh wait, they do. I guess that’s a lot better than being run over by police on horses.
With all of this in mind, it seems the destruction of the USA is well underway:
Relatively few Americans are aware that the destruction of the United States is well under way. How can this be? It is because the federal government wants to entangle us in a North American Cooperative Security Act with Canada and Mexico.
This act will be used as a stepping stone to build a North American Union similar to the European Union. Our borders with Canada and Mexico will be erased, and we will be subjected to rulings from an unelected NAU governing body. We will lose our sovereignty and our constitutional protection.
Some are suggesting that the USA, as defined by its founding fathers, no longer exists:
The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended his client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush administration retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift’s promotion, which killed his military career and sent the chilling message to all US military and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US Constitution is against Bush and his neocon regime.
The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded. First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: “You are with us or against us”–a formulation that leaves no place for duty to the US Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to country and Constitution to loyalty to the government’s leader.
Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler’s drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany’s right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people. Neoconservatives use “American exceptionalism” and “the war on terror.” There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.
When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses “signing statements” to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: “A man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people.”
“You are with us or against us.”
Others seem to be a bit more optimistic and have compiled a list of 10 reasons why you won’t recognize America in 10 years:
The New Torture Bill
House bill H6166 (yup) signed by the president, introduces, per the New York Times, “a dangerously broad definition of ‘illegal enemy combatant’ could subject legal residents to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal.” It essentially broadens the term so that it can be applied to “whomever a military tribunal says so,” to paraphrase freedomunderground.org.The PATRIOT Act
This law expands the government’s surveillance ability involving American citizens, particularly on-line and over voice communications via the use of wiretaps. It also greatly expands the definition of “terrorism” and allows the government to enter and search our homes without them informing us.The REAL ID Act
This bill requires all U.S. citizens to carry a federal I.D. card to, as stated by CNET.com, “travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service.” Americans will hear some variant of “Your papers, please.” Will we accept it as necessary for our protection?…
North American Union
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America website states that it “was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing.” Reading between the lines of the lullaby rhetoric, the president has signed agreements with Canada and Mexico, without congressional approval, to merge the three countries into a single North American Union. Prepare yourselves for the formal dismantling of the United States as a sovereign entity.…
Suppression of Dissent
The government began revoking the tax exempt status of churches whose pastors do not genuflect to the administration. The homes of whistle-blowers are raided by the BATF or similar organizations. Surveillance of peaceful demonstrations and the compilation of political profiles of peaceful demonstrators by police in New York (as reported by the ACLU).
But it seems everyone agrees that all of this can only end in one way:
BIG PICTURE – The US is widely adored as the world’s greatest empire, yet few realise that the emperor has no clothes. As the masses look up to the nation in admiration, they are fooled into believing that it is swimming in wealth; the reality being that it is up to its eyeballs in debt. The US economy is living on borrowed time and judgement day is inevitable. No nation in history has ever managed to escape such economic imbalances and I suspect the US won’t get away with it either.
So if you’re Bush, what do you do when you know all of this? You buy land in South America to ensure you’ll be able to get the hell out of the USA when things start to get really bad:
Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina) An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region.
Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia.
Well let me assure that Argentine official that it was absolutely no surprise to me! And most certainly not to any reader of this post, I’m sure.
But speaking of the bad US economy, it seems that not only Americans are going to feel the consequences of that, but the whole world. This is easy to understand when you realize the influence the US dollar has in world economy. Any serious issue with the US dollar is bound to have an impact on world economy. And unless you’ve only been listening to the mainstream media (What else are they lying about?), you probably already know there are serious issues with the US dollar.
When you see stories such as the following, you can probably already see trouble ahead:
SHANGHAI – The Chinese yuan rose to a fresh high against the U.S. dollar Monday as reports cited officials urging diversified investments of the country’s $1-trillion in foreign exchange reserves.
The central bank’s official “parity” rate for the yuan was set at 7.824 per dollar Monday morning, compared with an official rate of 7.8331 on Friday. The yuan has gained about 3.5 per cent against the dollar since the current foreign exchange system was set up in July 2005.
…
Meanwhile, China’s state-controlled media have carried reports noting the potential risks from the dollar’s overall decline to the country’s $1-trillion foreign exchange reserves, which are thought to be weighted toward U.S.-dollar denominated Treasuries and other investments.
Those reports have helped fan market speculation that a sell-off of dollar assets by China might drive the dollar’s value still lower.
It seems the US dollar is facing an imminent collapse and that much lies in the hands of the Chinese:
Even as the stock market is hitting new record highs almost every day, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department are quietly coordinating a devaluation of the dollar that the Bush administration hopes will be a slow decline rather than a dollar collapse.
This week, in an unusual move, the Bush administration is sending virtually the entire economic “A-team” to visit China for a “strategic economic dialogue” in Beijing Dec. 14 and 15.
…
The Bush administration wants to get China’s cooperation in preventing a dollar collapse. That’s the conclusion of John Williams, an experienced professional econometrician, who writes the “Shadow Government Statistics” blog.
…
Williams has re-created M3, a money-supply measure whose data the Federal Reserve simply stopped publishing after issuing a technically worded March 2006 announcement.
Williams reports M3 is currently growing at close to a 9.6 percent rate and trending higher, compared with an 8 percent rate early this year, when the Fed quit reporting the measure.
“The Fed is pumping liquidity into the U.S. economy,” Williams told WND, “and the Fed evidently did not want the markets to follow too closely what the Fed was doing with the money supply.”
China today now is holding a historically unprecedented $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. During the Thanksgiving holiday, an announcement by China that their central bank planned to diversify foreign-exchange holding away from the dollar caused the dollar to drop in value on international currency markets. Since then, the dollar has hit a 20-month low against the euro.
Some are linking the fall of the dollar with the introduction of the Amero with the creation of the North American Union. The Amero will then be positioned as the solution to the devalued US dollar, but not before those in control and in the know have benefitted from their early knowledge first, ofcourse:
As the dollar goes into free fall and the housing market accelerates in sales yet plunges in price, the quickening of an agenda of economic catastrophe allied to the “solution” of predatory globalism and the creation of a North American Union is afoot, and it spells potential disaster for the livelihood of all Americans.
Home prices have dropped 24% in the last year and most of that fall has happened in the last six months. The dollar has devalued around 35% against its level six years ago and is being trounced by the Euro and Sterling.
A false impression of a rosy economy is being spun with the rise of the stock market. Former fed chief Alan Greenspan’s doubling of the money supply and Bernanke’s promise that the money supply will be doubled again leads to only one outcome. Common sense tells us that a dollar sink is inevitable and if the housing market isn’t the place to put all these devalued dollars then that excess will chase the stock market. Taking into consideration the devalued dollar, the stock market is really at about 6,000 – not 12,000.
While most Americans don’t even know what’s going on, stock traders are already urging for a move to the Amero:
In an interview with CNBC, a vice president for a prominent London investment firm yesterday urged a move away from the dollar to the “amero,” a coming North American currency, he said, that “will have a big impact on everybody’s life, in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.”
Steve Previs, a vice president at Jefferies International Ltd., explained the Amero “is the proposed new currency for the North American Community which is being developed right now between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.”The aim, he said, according to a transcript provided by CNBC to WND, is to make a “borderless community, much like the European Union, with the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso being replaced by the amero.”
Along with the fall of the dollar, business in the USA seems to slow down:
The dollar suffered sharp falls on Thursday, hit by reports of weak US business activity and a benign inflation picture.
The euro rose 0.7 per cent against the dollar to $1.3247 by late afternoon in New York after data from Chicago purchasing managers indicated that business activity in the Midwest unexpectedly fell last month.
Sterling rose to its highest level against the dollar since its ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992 as UK house prices continued to show rapid growth. The pound rose to $1.9699 before edging back to $1.9658, almost 1 per cent up on the day. The yen also gained, up 0.5 per cent against the dollar to Y115.77.
Still others are making good profits because of this:
British investors and homebuyers are rushing to cash in on the plunge in the dollar, which hit a 14-year low of $1.98 against the pound last week and could breach the key $2 mark within days.
The greenback’s decline hit the FTSE 100 index of leading shares because big firms such as Pearson, the publisher, and Carnival, the cruise operator, make most of their sales in America. These will now be worth less when converted into sterling. However, investors have found other ways to profit from the rout.
Top-level corporate insiders have also been selling their stocks in abnormally high quantities:
America’s corporate chiefs are unloading their own stocks at one of the boldest paces in 20 years.
In cases of the very rich, such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s top brass, the executives are selling a whopping $63 for each $1 of stock they bought, says a report by Bloomberg.
In November alone, leaders of public companies dumped $8.4 billion worth of stock they owned as insiders, most of it awarded as compensation, bonuses or other management incentives.
But the vast majority of the executives put their windfall cash to work elsewhere, with just $133 million being plowed back into purchases of more company stock.
Analysts say a take-the-money-and-run flight from their own companies signals a growing lack of confidence in the economy’s future course, as well as fears of a possible global meltdown if the Iraq crisis escalates across borders.
It’s also a good time to take profits, with the Dow Jones industrial average up nearly 15 percent this year, the S&P 500 ahead 13 percent, and the Nasdaq 11 percent higher.
…
Billionaire Paul Allen also sold off 28 percent of his stake last month in DreamWorks Animation SKG for $224.2 million, keeping about 21 million shares.
Insiders at Seagate sold $311.8 million in November, while Google insiders unloaded $182.1 million in the four weeks.
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and its co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have usually led the insider-selling parade with sales of hundreds of millions as the stock rose steadily to break the $500 mark.
I don’t know about you, but when I see this kind of stuff happening, it looks like they are expecting things to get really bad soon. Why else try to cash in as much as possible right now? Even companies in the UK are slashing their IT budgets for 2007 because they seem to be worried about world economy and are expecting something bad:
UK BUSINESSES are so worried about the world economy they are slashing their IT budgets just in case it all goes pear shaped.
…
Some of the reason is that UK companies spent too much last year, but it is also because they are worried that the world is becoming a more dangerous and unhappy place.
Again, I doubt they’re doing this just because they want to look cool and hip. If you also take note of the fact that a former World Bank Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner is seeing a global economic crash in the near future, it becomes really difficult to ignore all of this:
Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has predicted a global economic crash within 24 months – unless the current downturn is successfully managed. Asked if the situation was being properly handled Stiglitz emphatically responded “no,” and also drew ominous parallels to the development of the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union.
Stiglitz caused controversy in October 2001 when he exposed rampant corruption within the IMF and blew the whistle on their nefarious methods of inducing countries to fall under their debt before stripping them of sovereignty and hollowing out their economies.
Speaking on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show, Stiglitz defined the process of globalization as a system that was “rigged against the poor countries, rigged for the advanced industrial countries – the result of that is there were an awful lot of losers.”
The Columbia University Professor described how rampant privatization has crippled Mexico, in particular citing the sell-off of major infrastructure such as roads.
“They sold the roads to the private enterprise and the hope was that they would be more efficient but of course what happens is that they didn’t maintain the roads, they couldn’t generate enough revenue and they eventually had to default and give the roads back to the government.”
Stiglitz agreed that the process of hijacking and looting key infrastructure on the part of the IMF and World Bank, as an offshoot of predatory globalization, had now moved from the third world to Europe, the United States and Canada.
So I don’t know about you, but I’ve already converted most of my US dollars to Euros, and am pricing my products and services in Euros starting next month. It seems the longer you wait, the more you’re going to lose:
I know I said I was done for the year, and I’m sure I heard a collective sigh of relief all the way down here in Peru, but the subject of the U.S. dollar is just too tempting to put off until next year. A lot has happened since I last wrote about it back on October 10th and I believe it is the single most important market event we are facing at this point in time. Even more important than the non-confirmations we currently see between the Dow and other major indexes. What’s more, the ripple effects will reach all the way into the bond, stock, and commodities markets. The dollar is very important for what it is, i.e., a proxy for U.S. debt. It is not a ‘store of wealth? as so many believe. Instead it is a piece of paper backed by absolutely nothing, printed and emitted by the U.S. government as a way of postponing the settlement of its debts. Better yet, it is an ndeclared “bond”, which can never be redeemed, except by receiving more of the same.
All of this is certainly not very good news at the end of 2006, and it casts a shadow over 2007. I think it’s a good idea to be very cautious in the new year, just like those UK companies who slashed their IT budgets for 2007, and be prepared for things potentially getting (much) worse.
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