Freedom Removed by USA
Patriot Act
“Five and a
half years later, we have the USA
Patriot Act, which takes all of this
to the next level. It allows the
government to conduct
secret searches and the FBI to
obtain access to personal and
financial records of individuals
without a court order or without even
establishing probable cause of crime.
The
government can also jail
Americans citizens indefinitely,
without a trial, without being
charged, or without being able to
confront the witnesses against them.
Representing,
says one reporter for the Seattle
Times, “the largest
expansion of police powers in
decades,’ the Patriot Act
enables the FBI, without very few
judicial obstacles, to monitor
phones and computers and investigate
library borrowing records. The FBI can force
anyone to turn over records on
customers or clients and it can gag
the recipient of a search order from the
disclosing the search. It can also
conduct ‘sneak and
peek’ searches on individuals
(enter your home and copy the
contents of your hard drive, for
example, or plant a ‘bug’
in your living room) without
notifying the subjects until long
after the search has been executed. It can wiretap
without showing probable cause or reasonable
suspicion of criminal activity, and the definition
of ‘terrorism’ is so broad
that it can be used to target
environmentalists or any other
domestic political protestors whom the government
happens not to like. Indeed, by
September 2003 it was revealed that the powers
of the Patriot Act were being used
quite widely, to include nonterrorist
cases and garden-variety
crimes….
TIA Sets Stage for
Information
Security Apparatus
That Will
Alter Our Democracy
Forever
“Another program
being entertained in one form or
another is TIA (Terrorist Information
Awareness, originally called Total
Information Awareness), which
provides for massive surveillance
of citizens, merging large numbers of
data banks and setting up extremely
sophisticated technological
recognition systems, including eye
(the iris) and gait (style of
walking), which can be measured by a
radar-based device (the Pentagon
has enlisted the Georgia Institute of
Technology and Carnegie Mellon
University in this effort). The new
technologies are quite creepy, going
‘beyond even the wildest dreams
of Orwell’s Big Brother,’ as
one expert in the field has remarked.
Their use will take on a life of
its own, setting the stage for an
information security apparatus
that will alter our democracy
forever. It also involves video
surveying with the global positioning
system, now extended from foreign
spying to the domestic arena. It
is not for nothing that a survey
found that 31 percent of corporate
chief security officers believe that the
United States was in jeopardy of
becoming a police state, and
former House majority leader Dick
Armey called the Justice Department
‘out of control’ and ‘the
most dangerous agency of [the]
government.’”
–Berman, 226.228.
The Scenario: Erik Jon
Phelps Regarding
Blackwater
This is from an e-mail
by Erik Jon Phelps at Vatican
Assassins.org,
Sent: Thursday, May
03, 2007, 1:39 p.m.
Subject: Consider
Blackwater Coming Back Home
“Consider this
for a moment. We presently have over
100,000 Blackwater et. al. ‘Security’
personnel in Iraq. What they
actually happen to be is mercenaries.
They have been working for over 4
years at a very special task; kicking
down doors in the night, rounding up
people on ‘lists,’
transporting them to prison (some
secret, some like Abu Ghraib)
‘interrogating them (meaning
learning how to torture them to the
point of death and no further to get
information they may not even have)
and keeping the general population
terrified enough to not rise up.
“And one day
in the not-too-distant future, they
will be coming back to U.S.
“In the Spanish
Civil War, Germany did something
similar. They had plans for a war to
come very shortly and desperately
needed to train their tankers, pilots
and army officers in the art of war
under real life conditions, and so
sent them to Spain to learn the
‘craft.’ It worked
remarkably well.
“Is this one of
the things Blackwater is doing in
Iraq? I think it is.
“We have the
files now. We have been under
unchecked investigation by the US
intelligence Agencies for 6 years
now….with no one checking
exactly WHAT they were investigating.
The data banks are filling up. We
have the prisons…Bush has constructed
enough of them to hold his round-up
of the ‘illegal aliens’ OR
us, whoever it is that is going to be
in them. Bush has the
means…the Patriot Act gave him
the power and you can thank your
Senator and Congressman for that.
“We have the
personnel…100,000 Blackwater
‘employees’ along with the
Army and National Guard troops Bush
NOW has the authority to command
domestically above the authority of
State Governors – it’s more
than he needs.
“Bush has
everything in place to round up
every American he wants. He has every
authority all lined up like ducks. WE
have no way to stop it. Have you
thought about that?
“One other ace in
the hole Bush has…he can declare
Martial Law without even CONSULTING
or INFORMING Congress. It gives
him the authority to shut down and
dissolve Congress under any emergency
he deems serious enough. SO does
Cheney if Bush kicks off for some
reason.
“Add it up and
read the hand writing on the wall.
Bush can, tonight if he wishes, wake
up and declare Martial Law. He
needs to justify nothing. The
branches of the Government that check
him can then be shut down leaving him
no opposition. He can then order
every National Guard and military
troop in the USA to ‘maintain
order,’ shut down communications
and travel, keep us in our homes
while those data bases round up
whoever he finds to be ‘in
question.’
“The transport
and prisons are already there to
house us, all over the country. All
he needs to do is bring back the
100,000 Blackwater employees, and the
death squads and
‘interrogators’ are in
place.
“And if he wants,
NOTHING can stop him.
“You better think
about that, because personally I do
NOT think the Decider wants to stop
Deciding. I [Erik Phelps] do NOT
think he will be stepping down in
January 2009. I do NOT think the
republican neocons want to reap the
whirlwind of political defeat they
brought down on their own heads in
the past 6 years.
“But it comes
down to this: DO WE TRUST GEORGE BUSH
TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND NOT ABUSE
POWER???????
Think about it.
P.S. If we were
rounded up, I WONDER what would
happen to our families and our
property…
“But then, the
Nazis worked THAT little problem out,
didn’t they?
“America: We need
to find our conscience.”
–Erik Jon Phelps, author of Vatican
Assassins, e-mail. [Capital
letters Phelps’ emphasis; bold
is our emphasis.]
Tactics Being Used in
Iraq By
Marines
Just a note here about
the tactics being used now in Iraq by
the Marines. A former military
interrogator in Iraq writes:
“The marines were
using a tactic called cordon and
search. They’d roll into town,
define a perimeter, and search every
house.” –Tony Lagouranis
and Allen Mikaelian, Fear Up
Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s
Dark Journey Through Iraq. New
York: NAL caliber, a division of
Penguin Group, 2007, p. 175.
The Way of Truth
While many will be
martyred during the seven first
trumpets during the Great
Tribulation, during the last seven
plagues there will be no martyrs, for
probation is then closed.
“I saw the saints
leaving the cities and villages and
associating together in companies, and
living in the most solitary places.
Angels provided them food and water,
while the wicked were suffering from
hunger and thirst. Then I saw the
leading men of earth consulting
together, and Satan and his angels
busy around them. I saw a writing,
copies of which were scattered in
different parts of the land, giving
orders that unless the saints should
yield their peculiar faith, give up
the Sabbath, and observe the first
day of the week, the people were at
liberty after a certain time to put
them to death. But in this hour of
trial the saints were calm and
composed, trusting in God and leaning
upon His promise that a way of escape
would be made for them. In some
places, before the time for the
decree to be executed, the wicked
rushed upon the saints to slay them;
but angels in the form of men of war
fought for them. Satan wished to have
the privilege of destroying the
saints of the Most High; but Jesus
bade His angels watch over them. God
would be honored by making a covenant
with those who had kept His law, in
the sight of the heathen round about
them, and Jesus would be honored by
translating, without their seeing
death, the faithful, waiting ones who
had so long expected Him.
“Soon I saw the
saints suffering great mental
anguish. They seemed to be surrounded
by the wicked inhabitants of the
earth. Every appearance was against
them. Some began to fear that God had
a last left them to perish by the
hand of the wicked. But if their eyes
could have been opened, they would
have seen themselves surrounded by
angels of God. Next came the
multitude of the angry wicked, and
next a mass of evil angels, hurrying
on the wicked to slay the saints. But
before they could approach God’s
people, the wicked must first pass
this company of mighty, holy angels.
This was impossible. The angels of
God were causing them to recede and
also causing the evil angels who were
pressing around them to fall
back….
“As the saints
left the cities and villages, they
were pursued by the wicked, who
sought to slay them. But the swords
that were raised to kill God’s
people broke and fell powerless as a
straw. Angels of God shielded the
saints. As they cried day and night
for deliverance, their cry came up
before the Lord.
“It was at
midnight that God chose to deliver
His people.” EW 282-285.
