Big Bro Data Base Called 'a Step Too Far'

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

When London is already the world's most surveilled city, there are plans afoot to implement a 'Big Brother' society that even Orwell could not have imagined. In a global economy, the consequences will not be confined to the British Isles. The good news is that a proposal to create a huge database of phone call details, e-mails and internet use has kicked up a firestorm of controversy. The name George Orwell comes up repeatedly.

In London, the Information Commissioner Lord West warns that such a database could be a "step too far for the British way of life".

The most 'Orwellian' aspect of this threat to person hood itself it that not even Orwell might have imagined its implications. The technology exists right now to enslave the entire world. Every movement by every single individual could be monitored 24-7 with implanted chips implanted at birth. Your every movement, perhaps your feelings now and, later, your very thoughts, could be monitored via satellites and a world wide network of super computers. If Google can spider every web site on the world wide web, a network could monitor the implanted, dynamic profiles of every person on earth. There is no place you could go and nothing you could do that could not be traced and documented. In such a society, you could be executed remotely.

Proposals for a central database of all mobile phone and internet traffic have been condemned as "Orwellian".

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the police and security services needed new powers to keep up with technology.

And she promised that the content of conversations would not be stored, just times and dates of messages and calls.

But the Lib Dems slammed the idea as "incompatible with a free country", while the Tories called on the government to justify its plans.

Details of the times, dates, duration and locations of mobile phone calls, numbers called, website visited and addresses e-mailed are already stored by telecoms companies for 12 months under a voluntary agreement.

The data can be accessed by the police and security services on request - but the government plans to take control of the process in order to comply with an EU directive and make it easier for investigators to do their job.

--BBC, Giant database plan 'Orwellian'

As the British government debates how and whether it should monitor every aspect of a citizens life until death, other interests, primarily corporate, are studying the creation of a computerized 'Big Bro' against which to measure your resume.

There is evidence of a growing concern regarding the authenticity of qualifications presented at interviews. Today's computer software makes it simple to edit documents, thereby allowing falsification of information by the unscrupulous. The use of sophisticated document scanners, printers and copiers further complicates the issue. The research revolved around an investigation of the need for authentication of education qualifications and the establishment of the feasibility of doing this by using information technology to allow for efficient and effective verification that an education qualification was attained that the results were accurately reflected. The research concluded that there is a growing incidence of and concern regarding qualification fraud, that there was a need for authentication of qualifications by Human Resource practitioners as part of the recruitment process and presented a model that met all the research objectives - an innovative model deemed to offer an efficient, effective and feasible technology solution to the problem of qualification fraud in South Africa

--The feasibility of using the world wide web to authenticate higher education qualifications issued by universities and technikons

Some people do make inflated claims on resumes, some tell bald-faced lies. So what? Corporations tell much bigger and more harmful lies to the entire world every minute of every day of every year. In fact, most corporations --perhaps the very concept of 'corporation itself -are themselves deliberate frauds. Enron is the most famous example. The recent financial melt down was the result of numerous frauds by both government and corporations. The resulting bailout is --itself --a hoax!

Government and corporations apparently believe that they have a right to hoax you, lie to you and cheat you! Neither 'computers' NOR 'organizations/corporations' are people. Yet, it is believed as a principle of law that 'corporations' are 'persons' that have rights. As a result, machines are given priority over living, breathing human beings because a small percentage of them may be incipient 'terrorists' or might have fibbed about a degree they almost got but didn't.

This is absurd!

Government thinks it has a right to 'shakedown' a portion of your income every year to finance the campaign of lies and hoaxes that it perpetrates upon you. In other words, you pay for the privilege of being lied to and hoaxed. Government is a shakedown.

Government andl corporations operate only at the collective will of the people. Perhaps the time has come to abolish and bury the idiotic idea that corporations have rights, that corporation are people!

Unless human beings re-assert their sovereignty over both the machines and the 'souless organizations' of their creation, we will have been enslaved by them in the end.

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'Great Depression' Lessons from 'It's a Wonderful Life'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Watching CNN leaves one the impression that the U.S. is poised, like George Baily on a bridge, about to jump off into another Great Depression. George Baily owned the local 'Building and Loan' from which he received deposits which he loaned to build homes in Bedford Falls, a symbolic American 'every town'.

The film --'It's a Wonderful LIfe' --is set in a time shortly after World War II. James Stewart is George Bailey, a man whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve required the intervention --not of Congress --but a 'guardian angel'. In the real world, when big banks required a 'guardian angel', they got a bailout! They were not George Baily nor are big banks an integral part of real communities like Baily's 'Buildling and Loan' had been in Bedford Falls.

On Christmas Eve, while on his way to deposit $8,000.00 for the Building & Loan, Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) encounters Mr. Potter and, bursting with pride, shows him the newspaper article about his nephew, about to be honored by the President. Absentmindedly, he leaves the deposit envelope with the $8000 in the folds of the newspaper; Potter discovers it later in his office, but since Billy left the bank without officially depositing it into the B&L account, Potter keeps the money without crediting the account. This is also the day the bank examiner is to inspect the Building & Loan's records; he arrives to find the money missing and George and Billy frantically ransacking the place looking for it. Returning home, George sees his whole life as a massive failure. In desperation, George appeals to Mr. Potter for a loan to rescue the company; Potter turns him down when all the collateral George can offer is $500 equity in a $15,000 life insurance policy. Potter cruelly remarks George is "worth more dead than alive." Later, George crashes his car into a tree during a snowstorm and runs to a nearby bridge, intending to commit suicide.

--It's a Wonderful Life

In the 1930s, disillusioned Americans might have embraced full blown socialism. The 'right wing' was spooked. The FBI considered 'It's a Wonderful Life' to be a subversive film, because it "deliberately maligned the upper class" and attempted to show that "people who had money were mean and despicable characters". They might do so again if it might avoid another Great Depression --still misunderstood by most writers, historians and economists. Right winger cheerleaders for 'laissez-faire' economics must be chagrined by a recent 'Marxist' bailout of so-called 'free enterprise'. Just as economists are conducting post-mortems on our ongoing crash, economists were reading the 'bones' left behind by the stock market crash of 1929.

However, in 1963, Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz transformed the debate about the Great Depression. That year saw the publication of their now-classic book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. The Monetary History, the name by which the book is instantly recognized by any macro economist, examined in great detail the relationship between changes in the national money stock--whether determined by conscious policy or by more impersonal forces such as changes in the banking system--and changes in national income and prices.

--Ben S. Bernanke, The Federal Reserve Board, Money, Gold, and the Great Depression

What Bernanke fails to mention is that Friedman --despite his great reputation and adulation as a 'conservative' economist --leaned heavily upon the work of John Maynard Keynes in his analysis of the Great Depression.

[John Maynard] Keynes seemed to be the right man for the time as he was reflecting the increasingly common view that blamed the capitalists themselves for the situation. In the General Theory Keynes rejected the view that the boom-bust cycle was due to over-expansive government monetary policy and that the stubbornness of the Depression was due to government interference with market mechanisms. He labeled all economists who believed such views as “classical”—in other words, hopelessly out of touch with reality. Instead, Keynes proposed a “general theory” that he thought capable of explaining not only the good times but also the bad.

According to Keynes, what drives the economy is aggregate demand or aggregate expenditures. Aggregate demand can be broken down into three main components: personal consumption (C), private investment (I), and government expenditures (G). The relationship can be summed up with this formula: AD = C + I + G. If Aggregate Demand is strong, the economy will be strong. However, if Aggregate Demand falters, businesses will end up with large unsold inventories and will cut back on production to avoid surpluses in the future. As they cut back they will of course need fewer inputs—including labor—and high unemployment will result.

The culprit in this story, the element that throws the entire system out of whack, is private investment. Private investment consists of business expenditures on machines, buildings, factories, and so on. In other words, investment is capital formation. Keynes claimed that private investment is inherently unstable due to what he called the “animal spirits” of businessmen/capitalists. He believed that businessmen are ultimately irrational and prone to herd-like behavior. Like sheep that blindly follow other sheep in the herd, it is easy for businessmen to become “irrationally exuberant”—as well as irrationally lethargic. Investment lethargy would trigger a large decrease in private investment, thus decreasing aggregate expenditures and triggering an economic downturn.

--Ivan Pongracic, Jr, The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman

George Baily represents the 'private investment' part of the Keynes' equation. Had he jumped off the bridge, the picture of Bedford Falls as "Pottersville" might have come true. I see Pottersville whenever I see Wal-Mart come to town to put the locals out of business. It required an intervening angel to save Bedford Falls from its fate at the hands of a greedy banker. Like John Maynard Keynes, we wonder: who will save "capitalism from itself”? Where is our guardian angel?

It seems an extraordinary imbecility that this wonderful outburst of productive energy [over 1924-1929] should be the prelude to impoverishment and depression. Some austere and puritanical souls regard it both as an inevitable and a desirable nemesis on so much over expansion, as they call it; a nemesis on man's speculative spirit. It would, they feel, be a victory for the mammon of unrighteousness if so much prosperity was not subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy. We need, they say, what they politely call a 'prolonged liquidation' to put us right. The liquidation, they tell us, is not yet complete. But in time it will be. And when sufficient time has elapsed for the completion of the liquidation, all will be well with us again.

I do not take this view. I find the explanation of the current business losses, of the reduction in output, and of the unemployment which necessarily ensues on this not in the high level of investment which was proceeding up to the spring of 1929, but in the subsequent cessation of this investment. I see no hope of a recovery except in a revival of the high level of investment. And I do not understand how universal bankruptcy can do any good or bring us nearer to prosperity... [p. 349].

While some part of the investment which was going on in the world at large was doubtless ill judged and unfruitful, there can, I think, be no doubt that the world was enormously enriched by the constructions of the quinquennium from 1925 to 1929; its wealth increased in these five years by as much as in any other ten or twenty years of its history... [p. 347].

Doubtless, as was inevitable in a period of such rapid changes, the rate of growth of some individual commodities [over 1924-1929] could not always be in just the appropriate relation to that of others. But, on the whole, I see little sign of any serious want of balance such as is alleged by some authorities. The rates of growth [of different sectors]seem to me, looking back, to have been in as good a balance as one could have expected them to be. A few more quinquennia of equal activity might, indeed, have brought us near to the economic Eldorado where all our reasonable economic needs would be satisfied... [pp. 347-48].>

--John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory and After: Part I, Preparation; Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 13, pt. 1, Donald Moggridge, ed., (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press).

I should not be surprised to learn that the FBI considered 'It's a Wonderful Life' to be subversive in their view. The FBI reported that it "...attempted to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists." So?

There is submitted herewith the running memorandum concerning Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry which has been brought up to date as of May 26, 1947....

In addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. [redacted] related that if he made this picture portraying the banker, he would have shown this individual to have been following the rules as laid down by the State Bank Examiner in connection with making loans. Further, [redacted] stated that the scene wouldn't have "suffered at all" in portraying the banker as a man who was protecting funds put in his care by private individuals and adhering to the rules governing the loan of that money rather than portraying the part as it was shown. In summary, [redacted] stated that it was not necessary to make the banker such a mean character and "I would never have done it that way."

[redacted] recalled that approximately 15 years ago, the picture entitled "The Letter" was made in Russia and was later shown in this country. He recalled that in this Russian picture, an individual who had lost his self-respect as well as that of his friends and neighbors because of drunkenness, was given one last chance to redeem himself by going to the bank to get some money to pay off a debt. The old man was a sympathetic character and was so pleased at his opportunity that he was extremely nervous, inferring he might lose the letter of credit or the money itself. In summary, the old man made the journey of several days duration to the bank and with no mishap until he fell asleep on the homeward journey because of his determination to succeed. On this occasion the package of money dropped out of his pocket. Upon arriving home, the old man was so chagrined he hung himself. The next day someone returned the package of money to his wife saying it had been found. [redacted] draws a parallel of this scene and that of the picture previously discussed, showing that Thomas Mitchell who played the part of the man losing the money in the Capra picture suffered the same consequences as the man in the Russian picture in that Mitchell was too old a man to go out and make money to pay off his debt to the banker..

--To: The Director [FBI], D.M. Ladd, COMMUNIST INFILTRATION OF THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY

The FBI may have been correct to believe 'It's a Wonderful Life' to be 'subversive'. Indeed! Capra's great film was subversive of the right wing reduction of human beings to mere 'economic units' in a right wing machine in which an increasingly tiny elite alone --Mr Potters --benefit. The difference is that in an FBI version of 'It's a Wonderful Life', George Bailey would have jumped off the bridge.

I believe that it is the FBI that is subversive of our most precious freedoms guaranteed us in the Bill of Rights! It is the FBI that is subversive of the intentions of James Madison who wrote our Bill of Rights, subversive of the intentions of those brave patriots who were willing to hang in order order to secure those rights. What has the FBI to say about that? That the FBI would think a classic film 'subversive' I find subversive! I would suggest the FBI STFU with respect to those "freedoms" that are guaranteed us by law!! I wonder if the FBI would like to debate that topic with me.

From an online reader review of "It's a Wonderful Life".

I've always thought that the reason It's A Wonderful Life has enjoyed such enduring popularity is that more than any other film it shows what us clearly and poignantly what can be the value of a single individual and the contribution to the greater good that almost everyone can make.

George Bailey as portrayed by James Stewart is the kind of "every man" hero with whom all us can identify. He had every day problems to be sure, raising and providing for a family, but he had even bigger problems. Fate has made him the rallying point of opposition in his small town of Bedford Falls to the "richest and meanest man in town", embodied in Lionel Barrymore.

It's a real David vs. Goliath battle. Barrymore seems to have unlimited resources at his disposal. Samuel S. Hinds as Peter Bailey put it so well to him in asking what are you doing all this for? Barrymore does have more money than he could ever possibly use. A little charity wouldn't hurt him.

Remember the basic plot outline. A whole lot of people in Bedford Falls one post World War II Christmas Eve see that their friend George is toting a heavy load of mysterious origins. Their prayers reach the heavens where an angel is dispatched to aid.

But before Henry Travers the angel arrives, he's given the story of George Bailey's life. And we see the kind of struggles he's had, the sacrifices he's made for the good of a whole lot of others. We've also seen a greedy and grasping Potter, grabbing everything that George Bailey cannot save.

Something happens that day before Christmas through no fault of his own, Bailey is in big trouble. It's driven him to the brink of despair. That's why the angel is sent down. He shows him the alternate universe that would have been had he never existed. It's something each and every one of us should try to do, step outside ourselves see just what our contributions can be.

But I think what Frank Capra is trying to say in this greatest of his films is that having done that and we realize we haven't contributed to the greater good of humankind, we resolve to do so. It's a simple, but profound lesson.

What if Potter got the same opportunity? In a sense Charles Dickens did just that in A Christmas Carol. Would Lionel Barrymore change? It's an interesting point of speculation.

In addition to those cast members already mentioned a whole group of players who worked with Capra before grace this film. Add to that some others and you have a perfectly cast feature picture.

Donna Reed has an interesting part as well. Your choice of mate is real important in life. Had she not been as loving and supportive to George Bailey, he might very well have taken a different route in life. Mary Hatch Bailey became a signature part for her, more identified than her role in From Here to Eternity which got her an Oscar. It certainly was the basis for her TV series.

When Todd Karns who plays Harry Bailey toasts his brother he's saying that the riches of the world are not necessarily things that can be quantified. Your life is not measured in material things, but in how you use the material things given you.

And that universal lesson will be taught into eternity as long as It's A Wonderful Life is shown every year. Wouldst we all learn it.

--"To My Big Brother George, The Richest Man In Town", 25 December 2005

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Monsters from the GOP 'Id'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the late 90s, a sleep study done at Stanford University indicated that Republicans have more 'nightmares and night terrors' than do Democrats or, for that matter, members of any other party. The study could not have imagined one of the GOPs worst nightmares ever: a landslide loss of the White House to a black liberal who has proven himself as tough as he is intelligent, as formidable in debate as John F. Kennedy. Faced with a similar catastrophe, a good Nazi could have been relied upon to shoot himself. With the cowardly GOP, the rest of us won't be nearly so lucky.

The victory would send Barack Obama to the White House and give him larger Democratic majorities in both the House of representatives and the Senate — and perhaps a filibuster-proof margin there.

That could mark a historic realignment of the country's politics on a scale with 1932 or 1980, when the out party was given power it held for a generation, and used it to transform government's role in American society.

--Daring to utter the 'L' word: Obama on track to a landslide

The GOPs worst nightmare? Certainly -- Stanford psychologists could not have imagined that in Bush's occupation of eight years, a panoply of GOP nightmares --literally, monsters from the id --would manifest themselves to terrify the nation and the world. The monster summoned up: world terrorism which FBI stats prove is always worse under GOP regimes.

While the specter of 'terrorism', the monster from the GOP id, born of its irrational fears and twisted neuroses, deflected US attention, Bush waged a less publicized but much more effective war on the US Constitution. He presumed to rule by decree: 'signing statements' that rewrote laws passed by Congress. Bush trashed Constitutional protections of Due Process of Law, the presumption of innocence, and habeas corpus. Merely 'deeming' one to be a terrorist was enough to get a target incarcerated, perhaps for life. Anyone 'deemed' a 'terrorist' did not get a phone call, did not get a lawyer, did not get a pre-trial hearing or a trial, did not get his day in court. There is no way of knowing whether any of Bush's victims were really terrorists. As an instrument of oppression, tyranny and political suppression, the specter of terrorism was a demagogue's dream! His dream! Our nightmare!

It remains to seen how much of this arbitrary and dictatorial seizure of illegitimate, unconstitutional power will be undone. Getting an idiot out of the White House is one thing. Preventing its takeover by yet another idiot is something else. That is the best reason not to vote for McCain. A vote for McCain guarantees a third term for Bush's failed policies whether McCain lives or dies. A lose-lose deal!

'Terrorism' is a meaningless, political abstraction. One who blows up a truck is not a terrorist; he/she is a criminal. The 'blowing up of a truck' is not an act of 'terrorism', it's a crime. One is not born a terrorist! 'Terrorism' is just the name attached by fearful neurotics to meaningless abstractions for political purposes. It was for this reason that Bush refused to allow trials for those 'deemed' to be 'terrorists'. To allow trials would require that charges relevant to a specific person and a specific act, a specific crime be proven in court. To allow that would have robbed the GOP of its ability to prosecute imagined enemies for a state of being rather than prosecuting criminals for the commission of specific crimes, specific acts. For political reasons, the GOP chose not to prosecute 'culprits' against which there may have been real evidence of the actual commission of a real and specific crime.

You cannot prosecute someone for merely 'being' something. One is not a murderer until he/she commits a murder. You can only prosecute someone for having done something that is against the law. When the law is broken, the individual is charged with having broken it. As long as the GOP tilts at windmills of philosophical abstraction, a 'war on terror' will remain un-winnable because it is not real. To prosecute a 'state of being' is an absurd recipe for tyranny. The GOP will prosecute one for 'being' a terrorist today, and prosecute you for not being a GOPPER tomorrow.

Bush never insisted upon but obstructed a real investigation of the crime called '911'. A real investigation of this very real crime would surely have resulted in real culprits charged with real crimes in a real court returning real convictions. What did Bush fear from such an investigation? Did he fear his own conviction upon the probable cause, indeed, the evidence that 911 had been ordered, planned and carried out from within his own administration? Did Bush fear the loss of the 'terrorism' issue so deftly exploited and demagogued? Did Bush ever, really believe that there were 'evil doers' who had anything other than legitimate 'beefs' with his imperial ambitions, his programs of war crimes, conquest and oil theft?

It is generous to say that Bush never understood the nature of terrorism. More objective observers, however, will find the the most telling clue among terrorism statistics collected by the FBI, compiled by Brookings and published in a chart. I managed to download that chart before it was 'pulled'.

The chart proves that terrorism is worse under GOP regimes. For example, terrorist incidents against US interests were three times more numerous during the Reagan administration than that of Bill Clinton.

Bush and the GOP as a party exploited the term 'terrorism' as the party earlier exploited the perfectly good word 'liberal' to rally a base of bigots, fear mongers, and right wingers fearful of everything. It is this 'base' who fears to sleep at night. It is this 'base' that is so definitively identified by the Stanford study.

The GOP is terrified by the monsters of its own creation. In 1936, Jung was trying to figure out what was happening in Germany —just as many are trying to understand what is happening in America today. Jung wrote an essay called "Wotan" and in it, he tried to understand developments under Hitler, in terms of the mythology of the god Odin, a.k.a. the Germanic god Wotan. Jung wrote: "We have seen him come to life in the German Youth Movement." I am not sure what "gods" have come to life in America —but I am inclined to characterize them as fallen demigods, if not demons. Gods or Demons, they are but manifestations of the human personality. There may be a "Wotan" in all of us.

A “mask” is but the smiley face we show the world; it's origin is always the lie that we tell ourselves. A PBS documentary dealt with a Japanese sergeant who "supervised" British and Australian POW's in Southeast Asia during WWII. Though he had been convicted of war crimes in connection with the treatment of the POWs, the man —some 55 years after the fact —still denied that thousands of POWs had been literally worked and starved to death under his supervision. He denied that he had beaten many of them himself with wire whips.

There is an old saying that the truth will set you free. Here was a man who by his denial made himself prisoner to the lies he told himself. In Jungian terms, his life --premised as it was upon the falsehood --was "inauthentic".

Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist at Nuremberg, came to some conclusions based on his experiences keeping Nazi war criminals alive until they could be hanged. He said that he had come to understand the nature of "evil". Evil, he said, was an utter lack of empathy. I might add: that empathy with another is only possible if one has come to terms with one's own "shadow", one's own "source of creativity", one's own humanity. One who cannot see humanity in him/herself or in another is a Nazi in spirit; and “Nazism” typifies what Jung would have called the "inauthentic" life, a life lived upon lies and denial --a life lived behind a mask.

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, A Climate of Fear is Maintained
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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The End of the Rule of Law in America

US troops are back home in America to wage war upon the people of the US. New laws make public dissent of any kind --however peaceful --an act of 'terrorism'. Congress was threatened with martial law, literally blackmailed, into passing the infamous and ineffective bailout! The threat of martial law, therefore, is not only in the official record, it is made clear with the arrival of US troops withdrawn from Iraq to patrol US streets, control crowds, deal with 'civil unrest'. Bluntly --they are here to wage war on you unless you happen to be among the one percent who owns more than 90 percent of the nation's total wealth.

It was in 1999 that the government contracted to Kellogg, Brown and Root [KBR], a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, huge contracts to build a FEMA archipelago of 800 camps in secret locations across the US. They have ovens. They have --at their disposal --the government's recent acquisition of about 500,000 plastic coffins. What is the 'innocent' explanation for this secret that is no secret?

There is no innocent explanation! The new laws seem designed to fill up the camps. Peaceful activists may be arrested, detained and denied 'Due Process of Law' if anyone in authority but 'deems' one to be a 'terrorist'. Any public dissent of any type --however peaceful --is defined to be an act of 'terrorism'. Free speech is dead. You may no longer express a contrary opinion where it can be heard and thus 'deemed' to be an act of terrorism. This has been true in airports for some time now.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

--SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle, Rule by fear or rule by law?

The Army Times --hardly a 'conspiracy site' --issued a complete story about a combat brigade that has been withdrawn from Iraq to civilian duty in the US --duty that will include shooting at American citizens with 'rubber bullets', tasering folk, stopping vehicular traffic, using shields' and 'batons'!

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.”

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

...

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

--Army Times, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

What does the the government fear from citizens who would otherwise be happy with their governments if they were not daily threatened and blackmailed with martial law?

Rep. Brad Sherman

The Congress was literally blackmailed and threatened. There were warnings of drastic drops in the stock markets. The bailout was passed --under duress --but the stock market collapsed anyway!

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it.

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--SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle, Rule by fear or rule by law?

Perhaps the 'new programs' referred to are the sweeping laws which, in fact, create a police state. A new program is most certainly the use of the US military for 'crowd control' and 'civil unrest'. I would have expected this criminal affront to the Constitution from a gopper --but from a Democrat, it is the unkindest cut of all! Et tu, Brute!

Earlier this week, Congressman Michael C. Burgess from the 26th District of Texas, went public on Monday stating live on Infowars nationwide radio broadcast, that House speaker Nancy Pelosi had declared House Rule 136A, effectively putting the House under "Martial Law" rules, a dictatorial measure only activated during times of national emergency.

Analysts and Congressmen alike have equated these threats;to "fearmongering" and described as a form of "economic terrorism" carried out powerful banking interests in order to secure the record $850 billion payout to the banks by the American people.

Physical Martial law may be invoked by the President of the United States in case of any deemed "state of emergency". Martial Law has not been put into practice since Lincoln, where several Congressmen were arrested or put under house arrest. In 1878, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids military involvement in domestic law enforcement without congressional approval. However, both the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and USNORTHCOM has increased its direct involvement with US civilian administration. Additionally, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, and President Bush's recent PD51 may possibly rescind previous limits by suspending Government as well as other Constitutional guarantees such as habeas corpus.

--Representatives Were Threatened with "Martial Law" if Bailout Bill Did Not Pass

That US troops are deployed in order to wage war upon the people of the US is evidence that the Police State has already been declared. It's a Bush fait accompli. US Troops have no legitimate business patrolling US streets in the absence of a 'real' emergency. A Bush pretext will provide one!

If the high court had not been packed with the likes of Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas one might might have believed that such draconian, totalitarian measures would be struck down. One is no longer confident. The measure will stand because our once free nation is no longer. It will stand because what previous courts had declared to be protected rights under the First Amendment have been trashed by Bush and his co-conspirators in the judiciary.

The use of US troops against US citizens is, in fact, against federal law and the Constitution. Everything that the Army Times says the Brigade is trained for violates the original prohibition against the use of the military as a Posse Comitatus.

Has this nation already acted in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act? The horrifying use of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other weapons of war in the military-style assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco was but a preview, a harbinger of things to come.

The allegations of child molestation were investigated in the intervening two years, twice, by Texas welfare department authorities and found to be baseless. The Sheriff's department investigated the allegations of illegal guns and these claims were found to be baseless. The investigations were peaceful. There were no problems.

Mark Breault, however, continued to make his baseless and slanderous allegations against the Branch Davidians. The Cult Awareness Network turned up the pressure.

The newspapers called Breault a "private investigator who has tracked the Davidians for two and a half years." "Tracked"? They had lived at the Mt. Carmel Center since 1935. How much "tracking" did it take? "Investigator"? Ha. He's a self-proclaimed "prophet" with a vendetta against the Branch Davidians. And who paid him so handsomely that he could afford to "track" them for 2-1/2 years, anyway? Did the media bother to check any of this out? Never.

...Calling a religion a "cult" and putting out false information across the media about "child molesting" and "weapons caches" is exactly the same technique that was used by the Nazis to portray the Jews as filthy, disgusting people, so they could be killed. It is the same technique used by every tyrannical government, to kill an unpopular and potentially vocal adversarial group. But in this country, we are supposed to have freedom of religion. It would seem that is a pipe dream.

...

So, America, we have cold-blooded killers running our country. Isn't it about time you put down your beer, got up off the sofa, and did something about it?

--Linda Thompson, What Hapened at Waco

The ATF attack on Mt. Carmel should have been a wake up call. If anyone in the Clinton administration deserved impeachment, it should have resulted from what happened in Waco. But --no! There was no GOP outrage because the GOP might have ordered worse themselves and did not wish to establish a precedent that they didn't want to live with later. I can't recall a single word uttered by the GOP in defense of the Constitution. I cannot recall a single GOP voice raised in defense of the guaranteed right of religion or free speech!

I cannot recall a single GOP voice raised to protest the violations of Due Process of Law! I cannot recall a single GOP voice in opposition to the jack-booted thugs who brought to an end a rule of law in America! The GOP would, instead, try to impeach the president for a blow job --an act that is not even a crime!

The GOP coveted Clinton his position because, as the record has proven, they intended to make of the White House a platform from which they would establish their own dictatorship. Under Bush, it is a fait accompli.

In the meantime, some 800 FEMA camps are readied --with ovens and Nazi-like barracks --to receive dissenters. Here's an excerpt from one person's report of a visit to a KBR FEMA camp:

"The first one we observed was in Palmdale, California. It is not operating as a prison at the moment but is masquerading as part of a water facility. Now why would there be a facility of this nature out in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no prisoners?

The fences that run for miles around this large facility all point inward, and there are large mounds of dirt and dry moat surrounding the central area so the inside area is not visible from the road. There are 3 large loading docks facing the entrance that can be observed from the road. What are these massive docks going to be loading?

We observed white vans patrolling the area and one came out and greeted us with a friendly wave and followed us until we had driven safely beyond the area. What would have happened had we decided to enter the open gate or ask questions?

This facility is across the street from the Palmdale Water Department. The area around the Water Department has fences pointing outward, to keep people out of this dangerous area so as not to drown. Yet, across the street, the fences all point inward. Why? To keep people in? What people? Who are going to be it’s occupants? There are also signs posted every 50 feet stating: State of California Trespassing Loitering Forbidden By Law Section 555 California Penal Code."

I believe that the 'goddamned piece of paper' --otherwise known as the Constitution of the United States --makes the use of armed forces against American citizens on American soil a matter of 'high treason' i.,e the government waging 'war' upon the people, a matter that is expressly forbidden by the "Goddamn Piece of Paper", Article III:

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

--US Constitution, Article III

Under the 'goddamned piece of paper' (know to us as the US Constitution) the people of the US are the 'sovereign'. We ARE the United States --by law! By waging war upon us --the people of the United States --Bush has already committed mass murder and high treason. [See: Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution]

Additionally --

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

--US Constitution, Amendment III

There is also the matter of the abusive use of military personnel to violate the Constitutional rights of US citizens:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

US Codes, § 1385. Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus

of the U.S. Army against the American people?

-- Of course, none of this means anything to George W. Bush, a would be dictator for whom the rule of law means nothing, the Constitution is 'just a goddamned piece of paper". Bush is the price we pay for our failure as a nation to value the gift of intelligence. We might have done better had we paid attention to the great philosopher who wrote of the 'moral imperative to be intelligent'.

Bush is an incompetent boob who has, in fact, bankrupted the nation, violated the Constitutional rights of US citizens and has waged war upon them with acts of high treason and mass murder --capital crimes for which he should stand trial for his life. The charges to include thousands of violations of US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441. War crimes

Winston Churchill wrote:

""The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

-- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943"

Bush repeatedly asserts a power to imprison anyone without charges --no phone call, no lawyer, no hearing, no trial! The Army Times stated that the troops --formerly in Iraq --will be used domestically for 'crowd control' in cases of civil unrest. And within days of the Army Times 'story', it was revealed that the Bush administration had threatened 'Martial Law' if the bailout bill was not passed. Therefore, we are already living in a police state. And there is likewise a warning.

People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.

--Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Guerilla Warfare

It was stated recently that the troops will be on 'our side'. Well --our troops will be taking their orders from the government. And the government is NO LONGER on our side.

And --on our side against whom? More phony terrorists?

The 'terrorists' ARE the government and, as Che would have put it: the peace is already broken.

Government is legitimate ONLY to the extent that it lives up to its SOCIAL CONTRACT with the people. The government of the US has broken that contract! Repeatedly and with impunity. This 'government' is illegitimate!

Scott Ritter: "Pick Your City"

The war waged upon the people of the US will get worse and the people will push back. The people --as a body -- must declare now that no decree now issued is valid, no unjust law enforceable! The revolution has begun and the illegitimate government in DC has won the first several rounds. With US troops in the streets, it is naive to believe that upon a landslide win by Obama, the entrenched militarists will simply fold up their tents and ride willingly into that dimming sunset.

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, A Climate of Fear is Maintained
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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