Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq? The decline in the value of the US dollar? Sub prime mortgages? No. The greatest failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic Congress.

The American people’s attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue government, which has committed the US to costly military adventures while running roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate has made no difference.

The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as determined as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the House passed a bill sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman [http://www.congress.org/bio/id/52], chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, that overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins [http://www.congress.org/bio/id/283] and apparently faces no meaningful opposition. Harman’s bill is called the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.”When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas. The commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be government agents and fellow citizens.

We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention centers being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.

Who will be on the “extremist beliefs” list? The answer is: civil libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the administration’s wars and foreign policies, critics of the administration’s use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration’s spying on Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group–such as environmentalists opposing politically connected developers–is also a candidate for the list.

The “Extremist Beliefs Commission” is the mechanism for identifying Americans who pose “a threat to domestic security” and a threat of “homegrown terrorism” that “cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts.”

This bill is a boon for nasty people. That SOB who stole your girlfriend, that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next door–just report them to Homeland Security as holders of extreme beliefs. Homeland Security needs suspects, so they are not going to check. Under the new regime, accusation is evidence. Moreover, “our” elected representatives will never admit that they voted for a bill and created an “Extremist Belief Commission” for which there is neither need nor constitutional basis.

That boss who harasses you for coming late to work–he’s a good candidate to be reported; so is that minority employee that you can’t fire for any normal reason. So is the husband of that good-looking woman you have been unable to seduce. Every kind of quarrel and jealousy can now be settled with a phone call to Homeland Security.

Soon Halliburton will be building more detention centers.

Americans are so far removed from the roots of their liberty that they just don’t get it. Most Americans don’t know what habeas corpus is or why it is important to them. But they know what they want, and Jane Harman has given them a new way to settle scores and to advance their own interests.

Even educated liberals believe that the US Constitution is a “living document” that can be changed to mean whatever it needs to mean in order to accommodate some new important cause, such as abortion and legal privileges for minorities and the handicapped. Today it is the “war on terror” that the Constitution must accommodate. Tomorrow it can be the war on whomever or whatever.

Think about it. More than six years ago the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. The US government blamed it on al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission Report has been subjected to criticism by a large number of qualified people– including the commission’s chairman and co-chairman.

Since 9/11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. The FBI has tried to orchestrate a few, but the “terrorist plots” never got beyond talk organized and led by FBI agents. There are no visible extremist groups other than the neoconservatives that control the government in Washington. But somehow the House of Representatives overwhelmingly sees a need to create a commission to take testimony and search out extremist views (outside of Washington, of course).

This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the Justice (sic) Department declared that the President can ignore habeas corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these “patriotic” views are extremist.

The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts to Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of Congress or the executive branch ever explained the need for the detention centers or who the detainees would be. Of course, there is nothing extremist about building detention centers in the US for undisclosed inmates.

Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty. Thanks to 2007′s greatest failure–the Democratic Congress–there is to be an “Extremist Beliefs Commission” to secure inmates for Bush’s detention centers.

President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause the “untamed fire of freedom” to “reach the darkest corners of our world.” Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but also is being extinguished.
The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

The U.S. is intruding into Canadians Privacy?

What now? The U.S. is intruding into Canadians Privacy? Grr…

Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
Dean Del Mastro – MP for Peterborough, Ontario

I write to strongly protest the proposed policy that requires Canadian airlines flying through U.S. airspace to hand over the personal data of everyone aboard the plane even if the destination is not in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “Secure Flight Program,” is opposed by the organization representing all Canadian airlines, the Air Transport Association of Canada (ATAC), as well as most Canadians who do not want their travel destinations, itineraries and personal information on record with U.S. spy agencies.

I demand that the Canadian government not turn over information about its air passengers to a foreign country. Those who wish to be closely governed by U.S. authorities should move to the United States as soon as possible. Those who sell out the rights of Canadian citizens to foreign countries should be removed from office for failing to protect Canadian rights.

Sincerely,
Kathryn Langley

(Source: Canadian Action Party Newsletter)

The Militarization And Annexation Of North America

By Stephen Lendman
7-19-7

Besides the Bush administration’s imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington. That’s the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, “indivisible” minus old-fashioned ideas like “liberty and justice for all” we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our “Pledge of Allegiance.” They now have a whole new meaning. They’re just words drummed into young minds hoping they’ll still believe them when they’re old enough to know better.

There may be a greater scheme for the planet ahead, but this article only focuses on what we know about and how it’s unfolding so far. It has a name, in fact, several, but they all aim for the same thing – one nation, indivisible, where three sovereign ones once stood, headquartered in Washington.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) or “Deep Integration” North American Union

SPP was formerly launched at a March 23, 2005 meeting in Waco, Texas attended by George Bush, Mexico’s President Vincente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. It’s a tri-national agreement hatched below the radar in Washington containing the recommendations of the Independent Task Force of North America. That’s a group organized by the powerful US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), and Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. It advocates greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social, and security integration with secretive working groups formed to devise non-debatable agreements that, when completed, will be binding beyond the power of legislatures to change. It’s also taking shape without public knowledge or consideration.

From what’s already known, SPP unmasked isn’t pretty. It’s a corporate-led coup d’etat against the sovereignty of three nations enforced by a common hard line security strategy already in play separately in each country. It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones. It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of Canada water as well. It’s to assure US energy security as a top priority while denying Canada and Mexico preferential access to their own resources henceforth earmarked for US markets.

It’s also to create a fortress-North American security zone encompassing the whole continent under US control in the name of “national (and continental) security” with US borders effectively extended to the far reaches of the continent. The scheme, in short, is NAFTA on steroids combined with Pox Americana homeland security enforcement. It’s the worst of all possible worlds headed for an unmasked police state, and it’s the Bush administration’s notion of “deep integration” or the “Big Idea” meaning we’re boss, what we say goes, no outliers will be tolerated, public interest is off the table, and the people of three nations be damned.

http://www.rense.com/general77/mdsil.htm

(Source: http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070719111015274)