By Christopher Ross Harrison, 2011-03-25

Where the debate over privacy rights is concerned, there exists a perpetual danger of being drawn into one of two extreme camps: One that would dismantle all security entirely, leaving us open to those very real threats that exist at home and abroad, and the other that would submerge our basic rights and freedoms beneath an Orwellian surveillance state, all in the name of our collective safety. Of course; freedom isn’t free, it just seems that way because we have been blessed to live in an oversaturated freedom market. On the other hand, although the price of freedom is still eternal vigilance, it seems there are those who would impose an artificial price hike; having us pay eternal vigilance, plus groping and manhandling fees, plus a whopping one hundred and fifty percent interest. These folks don’t necessarily hate freedom, they’d just prefer that you visit it in a museum under a glass cover.

If this sounds like a paranoid fantasy, let us reflect upon the following evidence for the recent and undue ascension of Big Brother in our Western Democracies.

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Antifascist - Mar 14, 2010

A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the “barbarians at the gates,” that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of “democracy on the march,” “hope” and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.

Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt, The Society of the Spectacle:

“The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender ‘lonely crowds.’ With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions.”

And when those “presuppositions” reproduce ever-more wretched clichés promulgated by true believers or rank opportunists, take your pick, market “democracy,” the “freedom to choose” (the length of one’s chains), or even quaint notions of national “sovereignty” (a sure fire way to get, and keep, the masses at each others’ throats!) we’re left with a fraud, a gigantic swindle, a “postmodern” refinement of tried and true methods that would do Orwell proud!

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Dana Gabriel - January 24, 2010

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics will be the largest security operation in Canadian history. It will include more than 15,000 Canadian Forces, private security personnel, along with the RCMP and other police agencies. The U.S. will also provide security and support for the Games. With the Olympics fast approaching, the fear of terrorism is back in the public’s psyche. Although there has been no specific threats to the Games, more than anything, it is the danger of terrorism which is used to justify the huge security operation. This is further advancing the militarization of North America and U.S.-Canada military and security integration. The Olympics will take bi-national security cooperation to a whole new level.

Unmanned drones are patrolling the U.S.-Canada border as part of the war on terrorism and to curb smuggling, along with drug trafficking. It is unclear if they will be used for surveillance during the Games, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, Juan Munoz-Torres has stated that, “If the RCMP or Canadian government believes they can make use of the aircraft for support during the Olympics, we will be more than willing to provide it.” In Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world, armed American drones continue to carry out strikes against suspected terrorists and insurgents. It is interesting that many of the weapons used in the war on terrorism overseas are later deployed for domestic purposes. The use of unmanned drones on the northern border will only add to the further militarization of North America.

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WeAreChange Ohio traveled to Newport, Kentucky to investigate the military checkpoints that appeared around the downtown area on September 6, 2009. Officially, this was done for traffic control purposes during the annual Riverfest celebration that is held on both sides of the Ohio River.

Military Police from the U.S. Army National Guard performed a series of tasks throughout the day, which included aiding the local police to close bridges across the river, and to reverse traffic along Monmouth Street in Newport.

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Mark Thompson - Jan. 15, 2009

The nation may be waging two wars, but those coming to Washington for the Inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama can be forgiven for wondering if we’re in the middle of a third one here at home. Roads in the capital are suddenly being blockaded. Concrete barriers are popping up overnight on sidewalks. The city is taking on a bluish cast as its police presence surges. Not surprisingly, the debate has already begun: Is the unprecedented security a wise move given the historic nature of Obama’s swearing-in and the tempting target it provides or is it overkill, an indication that the terrorists have already won?

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William N. Grigg - January 14, 2009

For two years, Bart McIntyre was deeply involved in the insignificant, thinly populated white supremacist movement.

Though it may be difficult to believe, this actually represented something of an improvement in McIntyre’s social circle, since his paying job was a position in one of our country’s most repellent criminal syndicates, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives, and Persecution of Unsanctioned Political and Religious Minorities (or ATF, for the sake of convenience).

Unsavory as their personal beliefs may be, most adherents of the white supremacist movement actually work for a living, unlike the tax-engorged parasites of the ATF. Tiny though that sub-population is, I’ll bet that less than one of every 1,000 white supremacists ever commits a crime against the person or property of another human being. The core mission of the ATF, on the other hand, is to commit various kinds of aggression against gun owners and other harmless people, and the agency is indelibly tainted by its role in the 1993 mass murder at Mt. Carmel.

But this is simply the predictable fruit of a very evil tree. The ATF’s progenitors were the properly despised 18th Century “Revenuers” whose haughty impositions helped precipitate the Whiskey Rebellion; the agency also played a key federal enforcement role during the demented quasi-puritanical social experiment called “Prohibition.” In that role the agency’s immediate ancestor was an appendage of the federal Bureau of Internal Revenue, as the IRS was known at the time.

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The Existentialist Cowboy - January 06, 2009

According to a planning document obtained by the ACLU, the Republican National Convention had planned to violate federal law by using federal troops to suppress and/or infringe the rights of free speech and assembly during the recent Republican national convention. According to the ACLU, several named agencies are military based, a violation of federal laws prohibiting the use of the military in domestic intelligence gathering activities. It is also a violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. [ACLU]

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which provides mapping tools and imagery intelligence that are obtained from the United State’s military spy satellites, is named specifically in the report. The document obtained by ACLU supports the charge that the RNC had planned to exploit the capabilities of what is called “these top spying tools” to gather intelligence, spy on activists, media, demonstrators. It is feared that the GOP (the RNC) would have relayed this illegally obtained information to local officials or agencies in the federal government.

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Ben Leach - 05 Jan 2009

The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 has been used to stop 62,584 people at railway stations and another 87,000 were questioned under “stop and search” and “stop and account” legislation.

Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker, who uncovered the figures, warned that Britain was heading towards a “police state”.

He said: “Law-abiding passengers get enough hassle on overcrowded trains as it is without the added inconvenience of over-zealous policing.

“The anti-terror laws allow officers to stop people for taking photographs and I know this has led to innocent trainspotters being stopped.

“This is an abuse of anti-terrorism powers and a worrying sign that we are sliding towards a police state.

“Trainspotting may be an activity of limited, and indeed questionable, appeal, but it is not a criminal offence and it is not a terrorist threat.”

The revelation will increase concern that the controversial anti-terror powers are being used “disproportionately”.

The Liberal Democrat MP added: “While it is important to be vigilant about the threat of terrorism to the transport network, the sheer scale of the number of people stopped by police on railway property is ridiculous.”

In a letter to Mr Baker, Ian Johnston, the British Transport Police’s Chief Constable, said: “There is clear guidance available to officers (and railway enthusiasts), and this has been reissued on a number of occasions over the last couple of months in response to the increased concern among some railway enthusiasts.”

The propagandists are working overtime to fear the public into submitting to their global warming threats.

noonehastodietomorrow.com | Oct 13, 2008

By Amy de Miceli

The main stream media is reporting on what the world will be like in 22 years based on a fictitious account, made up by a non-governmental organization know as, Forum For the Future. A self proclaimed, “charity committed to sustainable development” working on behalf of big business. The 76 page report titled Climate Futures A Response To Climate Change in 2030, was created in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Labs.

They outline five possible scenarios of what type of brave new world hell we could be living in by the year 2030; efficiency first, service transformation, redefining progress, environmental war economy and protectionist world. Each one has its own timeline, a make believe “history” with wide array of things that may occur between 2009 and 2030 if we don’t start making globalwarmingour number one priority, they include:

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Antifascist - October 6, 2008

Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army’s secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, “Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program,” dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: “Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.” The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

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Anne Elizabeth Moore - October 1, 2008

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA — Since 11 am on Tuesday, September 2, the first (albeit rejiggered) full day of the Republican National Convention (RNC), masses of cops indistinguishable from one another had suited up in riot gear pulled from the backs of open Ford Expeditions. Now, they were forming a thick perimeter around the St. Paul Capitol grounds, where happy young people had gathered to listen to bands, flirt, and trade colorful flyers advertising varieties of social justice. These men were dressing for a specific kind of evening on the town, and by 8:30, they were hot and bothered. Had they gotten all dressed up with no place to go?

They’d seen action the night before, of course, with 284 arrests, and in raids for several days beforehand. Millions of bucks in federal funds had been shelled out for their new gear, along with a massive insurance policy to cover lawsuits in the event of misuse. But having trailed a march for several hours to a downtown location in front of Mickey’s Dining Car, the officers were ready for more.

That’s when the rumbling began. Not low stomach rumbling, a literary device conveying impending danger. This was the sound of motors rumbling. From snowplows, dump trucks, massive city vehicles. The trucks were establishing a blockade on the dark summer streets of my hometown, forming the outer barricade in a series of three impasses — the two others created by rows of riot cops — penning in politically engaged Americans.

Confused, hungry, and with a sudden awareness that conspiracy to document a riot might be considered a felony under Minnesota’s USA PATRIOT Act, I headed in the opposite direction for dinner, hoping to meet along the way with an exhausted videographer whose two camera people were still in jail. A young girl walking nearby turned to me. “I’m not a protester,” she explained. She was heading to the capitol to sit on the grass to rest.

Clearly, she’s from here, I thought: that’s exactly the kind of boring night I used to have in this town when I was her age.

I turned off toward the restaurant and gasped. Around the corner, a constantly replenishing row of fresh riot cops was marching — goose-stepping, even — up the center of Robert Avenue, in perfect formation. Perhaps 200 went by as I stood, open-mouthed gaping. It dawned on me that I had grown up in what is now a police state. And that that poor girl was not going to enjoy another boring night in St. Paul.

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William N. Grigg - September 15, 2008

Hail comrades well met: In this famous 1911 editorial cartoon, Karl Marx is rapturously greeted on Wall Street and taken to the bosom of Carnegie and Rockefeller. This tidily sums up the relationship between Wall Street corporate socialists and the non-housebroken Marxist revolutionaries who are their distant kin.

Denouement (n) — The unraveling of a plot; a catastrophe….

From Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

There is something supernally appropriate to the fact that, in order to find the most suitable definition for just right word to describe the ongoing crisis of the financial system, we have to refer to a dictionary published in 1913.

We are now into the second year of the unraveling of the world financial system. It could be described as the Great Denouement (or final act) of a plot that began in 1913, when Congress created the Federal Reserve System, aka the Focus of Evil in the Modern World. So far the effects of the unraveling have had minimal impact on the larger economy.

This is about to change.

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by William Norman Grigg

The recently concluded Republican National Convention in St. Paul served as the grand coming-out party for the Homeland Security State.

Its enforcers, fully panoplied in the military regalia that is rapidly becoming standard police attire, could be seen either strutting through the streets hungry to conduct a beat-down or marching to military cadences. Armored vehicles prowled the streets, while military helicopters rattled overhead. Several journalists, including Amy Goodman and two associates from the independent Democracy Now! media enterprise, were arrested and assaulted by police while covering protest marches.

Large sections of Minneapolis/St. Paul, a placid Midwestern American community, were made to resemble Baghdad under military occupation. As in Baghdad, homes in the Twin Cities were subjected to “pre-emptive” military raids on the eve of the Republican Convention. Beginning the night of Friday, August 29, multi-jurisdictional paramilitary police units armed with automatic weapons stormed residences where left-wing activists were billeted in anticipation of protest demonstrations.

More than one hundred people were handcuffed and questioned during those raids, many of them forced to lie face-down on the ground while officers searched for evidence of various purported plots to disrupt and “terrorize” the convention. According to Glenn Greenwald, a civil libertarian commentator who was on-site immediately after the raids, at least some of the police who conducted the raids couldn’t resist tormenting helpless detainees with jocular talk about summary executions.

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Michael S. Rozeff - September 5, 2008

Protests challenge the power of the authorities. Having to defend their every move shows how weak they really are. They respond the only way they know how, which is with a greater police presence. The police counter-attack with methods that infringe rights and threaten the liberties of all. Reminiscent of police operations in pre-Revolutionary Russia, the New York Police Department “infiltrated and spied on protest groups across the country” prior to the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC). Agents provocateurs were also reported.

Peter Dale Scott, Global Research, September 4, 2008

Though few Americans realize it, Cheney and Rumsfeld worked through the 1980s and 1990s on emergency nuclear-response plans which allegedly suspended the American constitution and also Congress.[1] (Through these decades Rumsfeld was CEO of a major pharmaceutical firm, and in the later 1990s Cheney was CEO of Halliburton; but their private status did not deter them from continuing to exercise a supra-constitutional planning power conferred on them by Ronald Reagan.)

Even fewer Americans know that these rules, originally dealing with a nuclear attack on America, were extended by Reagan Executive Order 12656 to cover “any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.”[2] And few Americans realize that at least some of these rules, known technically as Continuity of Government or COG rules, were invoked before 10:00 AM on September 11, 2001.[3]

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