(author's note: this is a reprint of a series of articles originally posted on P! between October, 2006 and October, 2007 at the original iteration of P! That blog was hacked and trashed, although some of the posts are being salvaged. Some links may no longer be valid. Edits/corrections are minor.)

Part 1.

Coupla stories in the noose this morning that you might ponder . . .
First from Wayne Madsen (clip):

October 12, 2006 . . . .

It sounds like a case from the old Soviet Union. An activist opposing the government's policies is charged with crimes against the state, declared mentally unbalanced, and forced to take psychotropic drugs in a military prison hospital. However, this case occurred in the United States and involved a Justice Department attempt to silence a one-time CIA asset who was engaged in backchannel negotiations with Saddam Hussein's government to avert a war.

On September 8, Susan Lindauer, a one-time congressional staffer for Rep. Peter DeFazio and Sen. Ron Wyden or Oregon [Wyden is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence], and journalist, was ordered released from incarceration from the Bureau of Prisons Carswell Federal Medical Center located at the Naval Reserve Air Station in Fort Worth, Texas. Lindauer, who was never convicted of any crime, spent seven months in the prison hospital and was transferred to New York City where she spent an additional four months in prison . . .

The next one is from NYT (clip):

Documents Reveal Scope of U.S. Database on Antiwar Protests by Eric Lichtblau.

Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

The Defense Department acknowledged last year that its analysts had maintained records on war protests in an internal database past the 90 days its guidelines allowed, and even after it was determined there was no threat.

A department spokesman said Thursday that the “questionable data collection” had led to a tightening of military procedures to ensure that only information relevant to terrorism and other threats was collected. The spokesman, Maj. Patrick Ryder, said in response to the release of the documents that the department “views with great concern any potential violation” of the policy.

“There is nothing more important or integral to the effectiveness of the U.S. military than the trust and good will of the American people,” Major Ryder said . . .

Oh, yeah . . . really!.

Hmph. The only hope is that, since Halliburton/KBR has the contract to build concentration camps in the US, it'll be a long time before the regime can imprison us. And they'll be so badly done that we'll be able to easily escape. The down side is that there won't be any electricity and the food'll prolly kill us. I just can't wait.

Part 2: Knock, Knock, Knock . . .

Atlantic Free Press (AFP) is a new news and opinion blog founded by Chris Floyd and the folks at Empire Burlesque, which has been on my sidebar for quite awhile. This story is a little over two years old, but even more relevant these days:

Death squads in America?
Written by Tom Maertens
Saturday, 12 June 2004

Tom Maertens served as National Security Council director for proliferation and homeland defense in the George W. Bush White House, and as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department on 9/11.

Five years after 9/11, it's clear that the Bush administration's costly War on Terror has failed on two counts. It has undermined our civil liberties and made the world more dangerous. The direct cost of the war in Iraq, according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economist, has already exceeded $1 trillion, including long-term veterans' care and similar costs. Along with the war has come enormous destruction and loss of life, and major damage to our international standing.

deathsquads And there are more terrorists in the world than ever before, a fact the administration plays up to curtail our freedoms. In the aftermath of 9/11, the administration succeeded in passing an extreme version of an internal security law, called the USA Patriot Act. It permits secret arrests, sneak and peek searches, and obtaining bank, credit, library and Internet records, all without a warrant. The administration also instituted wiretaps and intercepts on millions of Americans' e-mail messages and phone calls without warrants, a program recently ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.

In 2005, Bush quietly created the National Clandestine Service, which authorizes the CIA to operate within the United States -- despite past abuses such as Operation Chaos -- and reinstituted domestic spying by the military through the Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA), in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. He also created the National Security Service, putting elements of the FBI under his direct control, the closest we have had to a secret police agency in our 200-year history. The FBI now sends out 30,000 National Security Letters per year, demanding personal information without benefit of a warrant. It has imposed gag orders on every aspect of NSLs, making it illegal to reveal that one has been received. How does this differ from secret police tactics?

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show that the government conducted surveillance on as many as 150 peaceful protest or social groups, including Greenpeace, Catholic Workers, and Quakers in Florida.

The Bush administration has used the threat of terrorism to silence peaceful protest at public events. It has happened all over the country, including to two women in Cedar Rapids who were handcuffed, led off to jail and strip-searched for "disrupting" a Bush rally. Terrorists, perhaps? One was wearing a Kerry/Edwards button; the other carried a small antiwar sign.

Perhaps no event demonstrates more clearly the dangerous authoritarianism of the Bush crowd than the arrest of two American citizens, Jose Padilla and Yasir Hamdi, who were held for 3½ years in solitary confinement with no charges, no court appearance and no lawyer. The Bush administration declared them "enemy combatants" -- Enemies of the State -- and threw them in prison indefinitely, just like a Third World dictatorship . . .

This morning, Jason Miller at Thomas Paine's Corner posted this (clips):

American Prison Camps Are On The Way


Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

Americans are certain to be among them.

By Marjorie Cohn
10/14/06
Guerilla News Network

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens . . .

Subsequent [to the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798] examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).

During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting." One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do." . . .

Most people, even among the realist hard Left, believe that massive internment is at best a remote possibility and that the Supreme Court will declare The Military Commission Act unconstitutional. Don't bet on it. Even with a possible Democratic majority in place.

As regular readers here realize, I'm almost convinced of the likelihood of a contrived "false flag" "terrorist event" in the US prior to the 2008 presidential elections, resulting in martial law and the last brick in the blood-red road to a totalitarian police state.

Even if this doesn't happen and there is a Democratic Party victory this November and in 2008, why do think things will change? Looking at the history of Democrats and war, there is no evidence whatsoever to believe they won't use these terrifying laws and other mechanisms to their own advantage.

Heavy hitters among the Dems, such as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, are already recipients of massive amounts of corporate money. Neoliberalism is no different than neoconservatism in its aims. It is ridiculous to believe that Bill Clinton was much different than the Bushes. That is a fantasy of a pathologically selective memory. And the voting records of most Democatic senators and congresspeople, especially the DLC types who still rule the party in spite of Howard Dean, are more than an adequate clue of what may be coming.

Part 3: The NAU

Some excerpts from "The American Police State: End Game for 9/11 and Bush's Subsequent Power Grabs" by Dan Merica at OpEd News:

"Catastrophic Empowering Events"

Throughout history, various politicos have utilized "Catastrophic Empowering Events" to incite their citizenry and coerce them into accepting undesirable agendas. Hitler torched the German Reichstag and blamed his opponents in a plot to eliminate them. FDR allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor to thrust America into WWII. Then, there was George W. Bush and 9/11.

Back in 1998, Dick Cheney's group, the "Project for a New American Century" , which included Jeb Bush and subsequent major players in George W. Bush's administration, lobbied President Clinton and Congress to attack an already weakened Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and build permanent U.S. bases in the oil-rich Middle East. As soon as Bush obtained the presidency in 2001, their quest for the long-sought-after Iraq War was on. But, Secretary of Defense Rumsfield bemoaned the fact that the American people probably wouldn't go for the illegal war without a "Catastrophic Empowering Event" to push it through. Then, with 'phenomenal luck', one of those events actually did happened just in the nick of time. It was as if government insiders were complicit with the 9/11 attacksso say the 'disputers' of the official story . . .

Bush's "Reform Movement" Exploiting Terrorism

Even before his 9/11 "Empowering Event" occurred, Bush started his "reform movement" (as Republicans call it) to increase his powers and turn America's free, open society with equality for all into a corporate, fascist dictatorship with a rich ruling class and an oppressed, poor working class. His first move was to start building a 'big brother' style system of severe surveillance upon Americans. As soon as he obtained the presidency in January 2001, Bush ordered the National Security Agency in the Pentagon to launch an illegal domestic spy program. But, after his 9/11 "Empowering Event" and with the benefit of terrorism as an excuse he was able to make huge strides in grabbing power, creating his imperial presidency and destroying the federal government's system of checks and balances established by the founding fathers . . .

• The Department of Homeland Security is now opening private mail and forcing Internet providers to overhaul their computer networks to make it easier for monitoring E-mail. Also, it has pressured Yahoo, Google and the like to turn over their databases in order to see what websites citizens are visiting.
• 
  
• The Department of Homeland Security has hired General Yevgeni Primakov, Ex-head of the Soviet Secret Service (KGB) and Markus Wolfe, ex-boss of the East German State Security Police (STASI).
• 
  
• The 2004 Intelligence Reform Act was passed by Congress while being denied access to some sections classified "top Secret" in the 3,000 page bill. The act created the Department of National Intelligence as a clearing-house for all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. It mandated a counter-terrorism center, spy satellite network to monitor private communications and standardizing state drivers licenses and birth certificates creating a national ID system. There is talk of eventually implanting signal-sending ID chips under the skin of all Americans to be tracked by satellite.
• 
  
• In June 2005, the National Security Service, a secret police unit to be operated by the White House with no Congressional oversight was created by George W. Bush by placing a portion of the FBI under his personal control.
• 
  
• In October 2005, the National Clandestine Service a new department in the CIA was created by a Bush executive order to engage in covert operations within the United States.
• 
  
• The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (dubbed the torture act) does away with habeas corpus. Anyone specified by the executive branch alone, could be arrested and held indefinitely without trial, access to the courts, and hope of appeal. Anyone could be declared an "enemy combatant" and then permanently detained and tortured, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, solely on the word of the president. It allows civilians to be tried by military tribunals instead of civilian courts and permits the use of evidence against them extracted under cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. All legal residents of the U.S. and foreign citizens living in their own countries could be subject to this law. Also, it provides for a "stealth pardon" for war crimes committed by those who allow the torture and abuse of detainees, such as in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison . . .

Martial Law

To where is all the above leading? It would appear that the Bush administration is preparing for martial law. Bush has signed executive orders giving himself sole authority to impose martial law and suspend habeas corpus with no checks and balances during a national emergency. The Pentagon has ordered U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base to prepare a series of secret strategies for rapid military takeover of the U.S. upon Bush's orders. General Tommy Franks said in 2003 that after a major casualty-producing event in the Western world, Americans would "question our own Constitution" and consent to militarization of the United States for security. Homeland Security gave Halliburton a $385 million dollar contract to construct detention facilities around the country supposedly for a national emergency. Remember, Bush's predilection for interment camps was demonstrated during the 2004 Republican Convention when 1,806 protestors were rounded up, imprisoned without charges and kept in filthy conditions for 24 hours or more.

"North American Union"

Bush isn't content with just turning the United States alone into a dictatorship. In March 2005, He emerged from a meeting at Baylor University with Mexican President Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Martin and announced that the North American continent was in the process of being transformed from three sovereign nations into one super regional political and economic entity dubbed the "North American Union". As early as 2010, boundaries will be redefined so immigration control will be around the three countries and not between them and legitimate traffic can be streamlined across their borders. Soon, a non-elected governance board for the "North American Union" will be formed along with a tribunal with supremacy over the U.S. Supreme Court and a customs and immigration service with authority over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the 'DHS'. Public discourse as well as a vote within each nation as to the will of the people has been disallowed. The formation of the "North American Union" has been under wraps with 'mums' the word from the mainstream media. Thus, very few Americans know about it. Even Congressional requests for information have been denied. The driving forces are military and corporate (Eisenhower's military-industrial complex) and their goal is to create an enormous despotic police state not for the benefit of the people but their self-serving pursuit of extreme greed and power. They will use anti-terrorism as the ruse and strip civil liberties from citizens to squash dissent . . .

In "The Police State Is Closer Than You Think" at Antiwar.com Paul Craig Roberts writes:

Habeas corpus is the greatest protection Americans have against a police state. Habeas corpus ensures that Americans can only be detained by law. They must be charged with offenses, given access to attorneys, and brought to trial. Habeas corpus prevents the despotic practice of picking up a person and holding him indefinitely.

President Bush claims the power to set aside habeas corpus and to dispense with warrants for arrest and with procedures that guarantee court appearance and trial without undue delay. Today in the US, the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely. Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention . . .

Also at Antiwar.com ex-spook Ray McGovern, in "Bowing to the Police State", points out:

Like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, we have become inured to what goes on in the name of national security. Recent disclosures about increased government surveillance and illegal activities would be shocking, were it not for the prevailing outrage-fatigue brought on by a long train of abuses. But the heads of the civilian, democratically elected institutions that are supposed to be our bulwark against an encroaching police state, the ones who stand to lose their own power as well as their rights and the rights of all citizens, aren't interested in reining in the power of the intelligence establishment. To the contrary, Rep. Hoekstra and his counterpart in the Senate, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., are running the risk of whiplash as they pivot to look the other way.

James Bamford, one of the best observers of the inner workings of U.S. intelligence, warned recently that Congress has lost control of the intelligence community. "You can't get any oversight or checks and balances," he said. "Congress is protecting the White House, and the White House can do whatever it wants." . . .

Let's look at the "National Amercan Union" in more depth . . .

First, "Abolishing the USA" from The New American / Stop the FTAA.org by William Jasper:

The United States of America is being abolished. Piecemeal. Before our very eyes. By our own elected officials — under the guidance and direction of unelected elites. Incredible? Certainly. But, unfortunately, true nonetheless.

For decades, federal officials have ignored the pleas of American citizens to secure our borders against an immense, ongoing migration invasion that includes not only millions of “common variety” illegal aliens, but also drug traffickers, terrorists, and other violent criminals. Now, under the pretense of providing security, the Bush administration is adopting an outrageous policy that, in effect, does away with our borders with Mexico and Canada altogether. Regular readers of THE NEW AMERICAN know that this magazine has been warning that this direct assault on our nationhood was coming, that it is part and parcel of the NAFTA-CAFTA-FTAA process.

However, almost a million Americans received their first notice of this fast-looming threat from a startling special report on CNN. On June 9, CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs began his evening broadcast with this provocative announcement: “Good evening, everybody. Tonight, an astonishing proposal to expand our borders to incorporate Mexico and Canada and simultaneously further diminish U.S. sovereignty. Have our political elites gone mad?”

Mr. Dobbs, who has been virtually the lone voice in the Establishment media cartel opposing the bipartisan immigration and trade policies that are destroying our borders and national sovereignty, then noted:
Border security is arguably the critical issue in this country’s fight against radical Islamist terrorism. But our borders remain porous. So porous that three million illegal aliens entered this country last year, nearly all of them from Mexico. Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada.
Dobbs then switched to CNN correspondent Christine Romans in Washington, D.C., who reported: “On Capitol Hill, testimony calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country.” Romans then showed brief excerpts of congressional testimony by Professor Robert Pastor, one of the six co-chairmen of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Task Force on North America. “The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada but at the borders of North America as a whole,” Pastor told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “What we hope to accomplish by 2010,” Pastor continued, “is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America, so as to ease the travel of people within North America.” . . .

Then there's "CFR/Bilderberg Plan To Erase US Borders Finally Gets Attention" by Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones at Prison Planet:

The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union networked by a NAFTA Super Highway 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.

After nearly ten years of reporting by Alex Jones and the rest of the Patriot Movement, the establishment press is finally covering serious reports on the plan for a Pan-American Union, based on recent articles by Human Events columnist Jerome Corsi.

World Net Daily reports,

"The White House has established working groups, under the North American Free Trade Agreement office in the Department of Commerce, to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005."

The article even carries the admission that the Council on Foreign Relations, often the bane of sophomoric stereotypical caricatures of paranoid conspiracy theorists, played a fundamental role in crafting the policy for the homogenization of the US, Canada and Mexico.

"Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form."

This admission is as historical as it is concerning - the CFR moulds the foundational policy for the elimination of American sovereignty and it is passed as executive law within weeks. It is once again evident that the true vestiges of power lie within the ranks of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission who act on policy decided upon by the big brother of multinational semi-secret steering societies, the Bilderberg Group.

Up until five or six years ago the CFR largely operated in the shadows, only publishing its mouthpiece Foreign Affairs, and any inference that the group held sway in US politics or even existed was met by heckles of incredulity from the establishment media. Now the Associated Press openly reports their guiding hand in the drives towards global government . . .

We can be pretty sure that when we turn the klieg lights on the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergs, we're illuminating the Illuminati.

Frank Miele, a columnist for the Daily Inter Lake in northwestern Montana, is a pretty thoughtful, fair, and balanced editorialist. Here are some clips from a July 2, 2006 piece, "More on ‘merger’: Three nations under God?":

. . . in recent weeks . . . I wrote several columns on the topic of illegal immigration. In one of those columns I referred to the McCain-Kennedy-Bush “reform” plan as a proposed “merger” with Mexico, and lamented that the “shareholders” of the United States had not been consulted about the merger.

I chose the language intentionally to dramatize the point that U.S. sovereignty was on the verge of being given away, but I thought the idea of a merger was a colorful exaggeration that would be useful to make my point. Now I find out, thanks to the help of several readers, that it was no exaggeration at all, and that the McCain-Kennedy reform plan is not the starting point for the merger, but just one more steppingstone in a path being built for several years.

It has the sound of a global thriller, right? People in high places plotting to advance their own self-interest while the little people go about their business oblivious to the great forces at work all around them. But of course that is not just the stuff of Tom Clancy novels; it’s the way the world really works.

In this case, we have the presidents of the United States and Mexico and the former prime minister of Canada meeting at the president’s ranch at Crawford, Texas, on March 23, 2005. On that day, President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox announced the establishment of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.”

It has all the makings of a treaty. It is in fact an agreement between three countries to regulate trade, health care, emergency management and the environment. Yet it has not been presented to the Senate for ratification, nor have the people of the Unites States been consulted. Instead, the “partnership” was born full-grown out of that Texas summit like Athena springing from the head of Zeus in battle gear.

The name itself, Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, sounds suspiciously like the announcement of a merger, doesn’t it? But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can visit the official Web site at www.spp.gov or read about it by doing a Google search for “North American Union.”

You won’t find any explicit acknowledgment that the ultimate goal is to combine these three nations into a sort of North American version of the European Union, but the signs are all there. And if you need any proof that the U.S. government would be willing to cede part of its powers to a foreign government, you just need to look closely at the Senate/Bush amnesty plan for illegal immigrants, which is basically a federally funded bailout plan for the Mexican economy . . .

Such growth toward globalization may be a healthy instinct in some respects. If it works, it could lessen the chance of war and increase cooperation among all peoples. But the downside is that it results in a hybridization and flattening of all human experience. Eventually it could lead to a world where there is no room left for freedom such as the world of “1984.” If the American experiment in liberty is considered expendable in the interests of helping to feed hungry mouths elsewhere in the world, then we are all in trouble.

No one can prove such a plan exists, but there is plenty of evidence that there is a government-sponsored effort under way to change forever the relationship between Mexico, the United States and Canada. It is spelled out in detail on the federal government’s own Web sites. In addition, there is the 2005 report of the quasi-private Council on Foreign Relations, which proposes “the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity.” (Download it at www.cfr.org/publication/8102/building_a_north_american_community.html)

To me, that idea of a “North American community” sounds like a European Union for North America. In fact, it sounds like a new country. As the Council on Foreign Relations task force wrote: “Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe.”

Forget about amnesty for illegal immigrants. That is the least of our problems. This plan calls for the legal and orderly “movement of people” across our former borders as a matter of economic necessity. It says that by 2010 the three nations should “lay the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America.”

If and when that happens, it will be hard to recognize where the United States ends and Mexico begins, but one thing is sure: It will be the beginning of the end for the United States of America as we know it.

Part 4: (New Fall Fashions)

Diversion and deceit may not be the primary reasons that The Doubleduh-Cheney Gang keeps us in Iraq, but clearly the war is great cover. If you read Part 3 of this series you learned, I hope, that the smog of war does veil the continuing neocon march toward its real goal: the destruction of the United States.

In this light, we can see that 9/11's effect was not primarily to allow The Gang to invade Iraq, although it certainly did that. Once there, however, they have benefited from the war's ability to mass-capture the attention and energy of those who might otherwise effectively organize against militant globalization.

Leave it not to the Left, but the jingoist, ultra-paranoid militia-types like The Minutemen to see the point. Yesterday Ron Brynaert at RINF published "Minutemen ‘expose’ Bush’s ’shadow government’". Clip:

A major anti-immigration group is accusing the Bush Administration of creating a “shadow government,” by “engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution,” RAW STORY has learned.

The Minuteman Project sent out a press release late Tuesday evening hyping their Web site, which is showcasing 1,000 documents allegedly obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) by World Net Daily columnist Jerome Corsi. Most widely known for his longtime attacks on Democratic Senator John Kerry’s military record, Corsi also co-authored a book about the Minuteman “battle” to secure America’s borders.

SPP was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort by the United States, Canada and Mexico to increase the security and improve the quality of life of North Americans through greater cooperation and information sharing. Many conservative critics view the trilateral initiative as a threat to U.S. sovereignty.

“The documents give clear evidence that the Bush administration has created a ’shadow government,’” Corsi said in the press release.

Corsi claims to have “hundreds of pages of e-mails from U.S. executive branch administrators who are copying the e-mail to somewhere between 25 to 100 people, a third of whom are in the U.S. bureaucracy, a third of whom are in the Mexican bureaucracy and a third of whom are in the Canadian bureaucracy.”

“They are sharing their laws and regulations so we can ‘harmonize’ and ‘integrate’ our laws into a North American structure, not a USA structure,” Corsi said . . .

Also yesterday the same source published a piece by Sorcha Faal (whose English is a bit dicey in spots - I'm not going put "[sic]s" in here), "Army Announces Readiness for Total Military Takeover of America". Excerpts:

Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that final steps towards a full Military Dictatorship of the United States have been taken with the US Army announcing USANORTH has now reached ‘full operational capacity’ and is now ready to: “Execute homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities missions”, and “Conduct the Army-to-Army portion of the theater cooperation mission with Canada and Mexico”.

According to these reports, the first of the USANORTH plans for the total military takeover of the United States, from its few remaining civilian overseers, rest with a new series of draconian laws recently enacted by their top Military Leaders and which, among other things, suspends the right of habeas corpus for Americans, and which the American Military Leaders have ordered their courts to disallow, and as we can read as reported by the Washington Post News Service in their article titled “Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee Cases”, and which says: “Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents. Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning “you have the body,” is one of the oldest principles of English and American law. It requires the government to show a legal basis for holding a prisoner.”

Not being fully explained to the American people, however, are that these new draconian laws do in fact have a direct impact upon each of them, and as explained by an American dissident group called The Future of Freedom Foundation, and which in their article titled “Jose Padilla and the Military Commissions Act”, states:

“Anyone who hoped that U.S. military detention of Americans accused of Terrorism expired with the transfer of American citizen Jose Padilla from military custody to Justice Department custody have seen their hopes dashed by the Military Commissions Act that the president signed into law yesterday. Although the act limits to foreign citizens the use of military tribunals and the denial of habeas corpus, any person, including American citizens, can still be labeled and treated as an “unlawful enemy combatant” in the war on Terrorism. What does that mean for the American people? It means the same thing it did for Jose Padilla. You’ll recall that Padilla was arrested in Chicago for Terrorism and transferred to military custody, where, according to Padilla, he was tortured and involuntarily injected with drugs.

The government’s position is that since the entire world is a battlefield in which the war on Terrorism is being waged, U.S. officials now have the power to arrest any American suspected of Terrorism, place him in military custody, and subject him to the same “unlawful enemy combatant” treatment that Padilla received, until the war on Terrorism has finally been won, no matter how long that takes.”

More ominously for the American people is their future culpability in these actions being done in their name by their Military Leaders, and as articulated by one of the United States most celebrated reporters, Helen Thomas, and who has said about these horrific new laws: “President Bush on Tuesday signed the law that legalizes the administration’s shameful treatment of detainees suspected of Terrorism. The same measure also empowers the president to define torture. It’s a sad legacy for America and its already-tarnished world image . . .

Helen Thomas’ reference to American Military Leaders standing in the ‘dock’, which means standing trial for war Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, rings ever truer with the decision of the International Committee of the Red Cross issuing only its second ever in history “concern” regarding the actions of a warring Nation [the first “concern” issued by the ICRC was in 1944 over the Nazi German treatment of concentration camp detainees], and which we can read as reported by the SwissInfo News Service in their article titled “ICRC “concerned” over US anti-Terrorism law”, and which says: “The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern on Thursday at the United States’ tough new anti-Terrorism law. The president of Swiss-run humanitarian body, Jakob Kellenberger, said that there were questions over its compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.”

To the second part of the USANORTH plan for the unsuspecting American people, Conduct the Army-to-Army portion of the theater cooperation mission with Canada and Mexico”, we can read from the Council on Foreign Relations report that first outlined the merger of the independent Nations of the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union, and which says: “Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales.

North America is vulnerable on several fronts: the region faces terrorist and criminal security threats, increased economic competition from abroad, and uneven economic development at home. In response to these challenges, a trinational, Independent Task Force on the Future of North America has developed a roadmap to promote North American security and advance the well-being of citizens of all three countries.

When the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States met in Texas recently they underscored the deep ties and shared principles of the three countries. The Council-sponsored Task Force applauds the announced “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” but proposes a more ambitious vision of a new community by 2010 and specific recommendations on how to achieve it.”

Also not being understood by the American people are how their young children are currently being trained to be administrators of this North American Union, and as we can read as reported by the World Net Daily News Service in their article titled “N[orth] American students trained for ‘merger’, and which says: “In another example of the way the three nations of North America are being drawn into a federation, or “merger,” students from 10 universities in the U.S., Mexico and Canada are participating annually in a simulated “model Parliament.” . . .[italics mine]

The organization referred to there is the North American Forum on Integration. On the surface, this doesn't seem all that threatening, right. Heh. Here's a statement from their website . . .

Its first conference entitled “Beyond Free Trade: Strengthening North America” was held on March 27 and 28 2003 in Montreal, and brought together 280 persons from the political, business and trade union sectors as well as academics, from the three NAFTA countries. For two days, the participants have discussed many issues related to North American integration. A main focus was brought upon the creation of a North American Investment Fund.

For its second annual conference entitled “Forging North American Energy Security”, the issues related to oil, gas and electricity in our region will be at the center of the discussions. The event will take place on April 1st and 2nd 2004 in Monterrey, with the collaboration of the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey.

In a paper entitled "Energy Security: a North-American Approach", they say . . .

The oil crisis of 1998-2000, brought into question the concept of energy security. For the first time, two North-American partners found themselves at the center of the debate. The sense of urgency heightened as an electricity crisis hit California and tensions between the U.S. and the Middle East increased. Early in their Administrations, Presidents Bush and Fox found similar answers: NAFTA partners should be North-American energy partners. This shared idea, however, came rapidly into question: it was viewed as if the U.S. wanted to ensure its supply of oil, gas and electricity at the expense of Canada’s and Mexico’s own needs.

For the United States, energy security is a priority of its trade and foreign policy; for Canada, it is a matter that directly concerns its Provinces; for Mexico, it is a sovereignty issue. After September 11th, for the three countries the concept has become broader, encompassing not only supply but also the integrity of critical infrastructure . . . [italics again mine] . . .

OK, so we got the kids involved. What, you ask, is the depth of their involvement? Try this. A post on the (right-wing) Friends of Liberty site, "FEMA Disaster Drill Set For Election Day" . . .

On Tuesday, September 28th, a new federally-funded, FEMA-directed citizen training program began in my town called CERT. CERT stands for "Community Emergency Response Team.”

A quick internet search reveals that my town isn't the only one participating. Nearly every town in America has its own CERT program, it would appear.

My neighbor's teenage son attended CERT’s initial orientation meeting and later showed me the equipment and materials he was given.

He received free of charge a backpack containing hundreds of dollars worth of gear, including a hard hat, reflective garb for checkpoint/traffic-control duty, a high beam flashlight, eye guards, etc.

In the near future, he said, he’ll also be given (again, free of charge) a special radio over which he can tap into the county's emergency communications net.

Then, he showed me his 300 page CERT training manual along with his training schedule for upcoming weeks.

The CERT training program is intensive. It’s scheduled to last for only a little over a month . . .

But what really caught my eye were the last two items on CERT's training schedule:

On Tuesday, October 25th, CERT trainees will receive training on "Terrorism and CERT.”

Then, exactly one week later, CERT’s training program will conclude with a "Disaster Simulation & Examination".

This final day for the CERT training program, the day when CERT will climax with a "disaster simulation," is none other than Election Day!

Is this mere coincidence? I can't believe that it is. CERT is a nationwide FEMA-sponsored citizen training program, after all. I assume, in every town and hamlet, fledgling CERT teams are following this exact same training schedule. And that means a nationwide "disaster simulation" is scheduled for all of them come Election Day!

As 9-11 demonstrated, federal drills and simulations can sometimes be used to provide cover for preparations for what are, in fact, premeditated events timed to coincide exactly with the drills and simulations.

Does the timetable for the CERT program portend something like a second 9-11 come Election Day?

Will the same spooks who staged the 9-11 faux-terror event perpetrate another faux-terror event come November 2nd?

The CERT training timetable parallels exactly the training timetable for the Texas State Guard leaked by a brave guardsman to talk radio host Alex Jones. He told Alex that elite units of the Texas State Guard were being intensively trained to be ready for martial-law-style deployments come the first week of November . . .

I wonder if this is all just in preparation for something more "benign" - maybe a the nationwide debut of the new fall fashions . . . brownshirts. I wonder also whether there're training modules called "Herding Cats in a Disaster Situation" and "Building a Chain Link Fence with Forest Resources"?

Please remember that FEMA is now part of DHS. The contract awarded to Halliburton/KBR to built detention camps is administered by FEMA. I did some more research on this and came up with more stuff. Here are some sites and articles you might find interesting (some with excerpts):

AFPN: "AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS"

Infowars: "Halliburton Detention Camps For Political Subversives" and "FOREIGN TROOPS OPERATING SECRET DETENTION CENTERS"

Mindfully.org: "FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders" . . .

There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft's list. The Rex 84 Program was established on the reasoning that if a "mass exodus" of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA. Rex 84 allowed many military bases to be closed down and to be turned into prisons.

Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation . . .

Rense: "State-By-State Index Of Potential US Concentration Camps"

Global Research has "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps" . . .

For those who follow covert government operations abroad and at home, the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North's controversial Rex-84 "readiness exercise" in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary "refugees," in the context of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States. North's activities raised civil liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns persist.

"Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military's account of its activities in Vietnam. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Plans for detention facilities or camps have a long history, going back to fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis Giuffrida. The order called for "suspension of the Constitution" and "declaration of martial law." The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Giuffrida's deputy, John Brinkerhoff.

Greater Things: "U.S. MILITARY CIVIL DISTURBANCE PLANNING: THE WAR AT HOME":

Ominously, many assume that the training of military and police forces to suppress "outlawed" behavior of citizens, along with the creation of extensive and sophisticated "emergency" social response networks set to spring into action in the event of "civil unrest", is prudent and acceptable in a democracy. And yet, does not this assumption beg the question as to what civil unrest is? One could argue for example, that civil disturbance is nothing less than democracy in action, a message to the powers-that-be that the people want change. In this instance "disturbing behavior" may actually be the exercising of ones' right to resist oppression. Unfortunately, the American corporate/military directorship, which has the power to enforce its' definition of "disorder", sees democracy as a threat and permanent counter-revolution as a "national security" requirement . . .

Quite possibly, stylish orange jumpsuits and ankle chains may be added to the fall fashion list.

Gulag Ameripelago Revisited

(October, 2007) Today, RINF posted "US President Orders Military To Begin Jailing All Civilian Protestors To War". I've excerpted the story at length here, without further comment. The entire article is must read:

In yet another shocking prelude towards becoming a Total Police State, Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that the American war Leaders have issued orders to the United States Military Northern Command authorizing the jailing, and military tribunals, for any American citizen critical of the ‘war effort’ . . .

Furthering the complete destruction of the rights of the American people to ‘due process’ and ‘fair trials’, the American war Leaders have passed a new law subjecting their citizens to Military, instead of Civilian trials.

According to reports from the United States, this little known law was ‘slipped into’ a large spending bill unbeknownst to US Congressional Leaders, and though ‘seemingly’ applying to American contractors in fact subjects all American citizens to Military Arrest and Trials.

The most destructive of these ‘new’ laws ‘slipped into’ much larger legislation, and bypassing the notice of US Lawmakers, has overturned over 200 years of American procedures for appointing US Federal Prosecutors, and who are, according the American Constitution, charged with being ‘politically neutral’ so as to afford the citizens of the United States protection against prosecution by a vengeful government, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled “2 U.S. Attorneys in Calif. quit, critics say Bush forced them out”, and which says:

“Two U.S. Attorneys in California announced they are stepping down, as critics alleged political pressure from the Bush administration was pushing them and others out of their jobs. Kevin Ryan, chief federal prosecutor for the state’s Northern District, and Carol Lam, who headed the state’s Southern District, both announced Tuesday they would be leaving their positions.

The two are among 11 top federal prosecutors who have resigned or announced their resignations since an obscure provision in the USA Patriot Act reauthorization last year enabled the U.S. attorney general to appoint replacements without Senate confirmation.”

Russian Legal Analysts familiar with American Law state in these reports that the significance of these actions being taking against American citizens by the US war Leaders shows the ‘complete ascendancy’ to ‘total power’ of the American President, and who now is free to rule his Nation by decree free from interference by either the US Congress, or the American people themselves.

So powerless have the US Congress and American people become, that as outrage continues to build within the United States against the expansion of the war in Iraq, and the planned US attack upon Iran, the spokesman for the American war Leader has stated in response to a US Congressional move to block further war making:

“Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said resolutions passed by Congress will not affect Bush’s decision-making. “The president has obligations as a commander in chief,” he said. “And he will go ahead and execute them.”

Russian Intelligence Analysts in these reports to President Putin have asked, “If President Bush feels that he is not constrained by either the elected representatives of the American people, or the American people themselves, we must then consider that he, and his Administration, have become powers unto themselves and that the United States should therefore be considered a dictatorship, not a democracy.”

As to the American people themselves, they remain in abject denial of the dark Fascist forces descending around them; but soon, and much sooner than they could believe, and with their families and neighbors disappearing into the vast American Gulag, what they once believed in as the American Dream, will soon be shown for what it really is, an American Nightmare.