Ten advances towards the end of freedom and privacy in the United
States
Paul Joseph Watson
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
The top ten advances towards tyranny in the United States during the
tenure of the Bush administration, from the Patriot Act to the latest
expansion of the illegal eavesdropping surveillance program.
1) The USA Patriot Act
The party line often heard from Neo-Cons in their attempts to defend
the Patriot Act either circulate around the contention that the use of
the Patriot Act has never been abused or that it isn't being used
against American citizens. Here is an archive of articles that
disproves both of these fallacies.
The Patriot Act was the boiler plate from which all subsequent attacks
on the Constitution were formed.
2) Total Information Awareness
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine
subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site
you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you
receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every
event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go
into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized
grand database," infamously wrote New York Times writer William
Safire, announcing the birth of Total Information Awareness, a kind of
Echelon on steroids introduced a year after 9/11.
TIA was not canned, it was simply removed from the newspaper, renamed
and continues to operate under a guise of different programs.
3) USA Patriot Act II
The second Patriot Act was a mirror image of powers that Julius Caesar
and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot Act only
gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously
damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganized
the entire Federal government as well as many areas of state
government under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department,
the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM military
command.
The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as the Second
Patriot Act is by its very structure the definition of dictatorship.
Military Commissions Act
Slamming the final nail in the coffin of everything America used to
stand for, the boot-licking U.S. Senate gave President Bush the legal
authority to abduct and sexually mutilate American citizens and
American children in the name of the war on terror in passing the
Military Commissions Act and officially ending Habeas Corpus.
There is nothing in the "detainee" legislation that protects American
citizens from being kidnapped by their own government and tortured.
The New York Times stated that the legislation introduced, "A
dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill
could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign
citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and
indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give
the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted."
Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman states in the L.A. Times, "The
compromise legislation....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."
Similarly, law Professor Marty Lederman explains: "this [subsection
(ii) of the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant'] means that if
the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever
criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is
concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to
'hostilities' at all."
John Warner Defense Authorization Act
The Bush Junta 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, the John Warner Defense
Authorization Act, which greased the skids for armed confrontation and
abolishes posse comitatus.
Illegal Domestic Wiretapping Program
"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized
the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others
inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity
without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic
spying, according to government officials," reported the New York
Times on December 16, 2005
The secret warrantless spying program was a complete violation of both
the 4th Amendment and FISA.
Expansion of Illegal Domestic Wiretapping Program
Not content with now being lawfully allowed to force ISP's and cell
phone companies to turn over data about customers without a warrant,
the Bush administration is pushing for even more authority to spy on
American citizens, and has already been handed a 6 month window within
which to impose any surveillance policy it likes, and for that program
to remain legal in perpetuity.
The administration has a 6 month window in which to impose any
surveillance program it chooses and that program will go unchallenged
and remain legally binding in perpetuity - it cannot be revoked. Under
the definitions of the legislation, Bush has been granted absolute
dictator status for a minimum of 6 months.
If he so chooses, and so long as it's implemented within the next half
year, Bush could build a database of every website visited by every
American - and the policy would be immune from Congressional challenge
even after the "surveillance gap" legislation reaches its sunset
Martial Law Presidential Decision Directive 51
New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a
"catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the
government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government
at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus
ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive,
which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of
domestic "security", was signed earlier this month without the
approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the
National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a
national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority
to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it
believes the president has acted inappropriately.
Destruction of the Dollar
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,".
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.
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.
Amnesty & The North American Union
The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan
American Union 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.
The framework on which the American Union is being pegged is the NAFTA
Super Highway, a four football-fields-wide leviathan that stretches
from southern Mexico through the US up to Montreal Canada .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.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/070807_timeline_to_tyranny.htm
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