Microchips & Cancer

French Bulldog is Catalyst for
Investigation of Microchip-Cancer Connection

French Bulldog Léon
(Léon's photograph has been reproduced with the permission of the owner)

September 8, 2007
Source
Could a microchip implant like the VeriChip cause cancer? A French Bulldog named Léon was the catalyst for new questions about the safety of RFID implants.

One year ago, Léon's owner contacted me with startling news. She believed that her dog's cancerous tumor and his untimely death might have been caused by a microchip implant.

This was not just idle talk by a grieving dog owner grasping at straws to figure out why she had been robbed of her constant companion. This was a gutsy lady who refused to allow the vet to simply cremate the evidence.

This lady prefers to be known only by her first name of "Jeanne," so the Associated Press couldn't credit her properly as the original source for some of the explosive information in its article "Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors," but I have the leeway in this forum to share the behind-the-scenes story.

Jeanne spent a small fortune trying to cure her ailing French bulldog, Léon, after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. When medical interventions failed and Léon passed away, she decided to hunt for the reason the fatal tumor in his body was attached to the glass-encapsulated microchip that had been injected into his neck for identification purposes.

Jeanne located a team of researchers in Italy who agreed to test tissue samples from a biopsy of Léon's tumor to determine if the microchip was implicated in his aggressive cancer. They documented their findings in a 2006 paper entitled, “Fibrosarcoma with Typical Features of Postinjection Sarcoma at Site of Microchip Implant in a Dog: Histologic and Immunohistochemical Study.” The full text is available online at: http://www.vetpathology.org/cgi/content/full/43/4/545.

Since Léon's suspicious cancer was not enough evidence to prove microchip implants were a threat, Jeanne decided to search for other proof of a link. She unearthed scholarly animal studies documenting a possible chip-cancer link and posted several of these at the website that she formed as a tribute to Léon:

http://www.noble-leon.com/resourcesAdvanced

Jeanne informed us of this research and even faxed us copies of these studies as they were difficult to obtain. Fortunately, my Spychips co-author Dr. Katherine Albrecht had access to the Harvard library and was able to take Jeanne's work further, analyzing additional studies that seemed to support a cancer-microchip link in animals.

Sometime later, AP Reporter Todd Lewan entered the picture, eager for an exclusive. He used his press credentials to gain further information, tie up the story with a perfect, documented bow, and broadcast it to media outlets around the world. He and Katherine tirelessly pursued the truth that you can now find published in the explosive AP story.

I promised Jeanne that Katherine and I would share the whole story, and that Léon would be remembered for his contribution. Here's to you, Jeanne and Léon! I'm so sorry it took tragedy for this information to be brought to light. I applaud your tenacity, bravery, and amazing research skills.

- Liz McIntyre

Before you consider microchipping your pet, yourself or your family, it would be wise to review the medical studies indicating the correlation between cancerous tumours and microchips here.

Microchips for bowser; Now for you

Wasn't it great when our pets could be tagged with microchips so they could always be returned to us in case they got lost? Well, now, in case we get lost, we are going to be microchipped too. This experiment in Indonesia, a country with neither the R&D or manufacturing technology to produce such an item, is now going to use AIDS patients as human guinea pigs to test human microchip implants. In case you are thinking, NO WAY!, I urge you to google or search this blog for NSPD 59 which gives the US government the right to do just that.

The most disturbing aspect of all this are the naysayers who have been denying that these plans are in the making, mostly because such information disturbed their sense of tranquility and security. Now there is little to be done about it: the laws are passed (in camera obscura), the R&D is finished and the chips have been manufactured. Only the testing is left and it begins this month.

Indonesian state to monitor
AIDS patients with microchips

24-11-2008
Source
Lawmakers in Indonesia's remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips -- part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease.

Health workers and rights activists sharply criticized the plan Monday.

But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of ''sexually aggressive'' patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.

The idea of implanting anyone with a microchip against their will is bad enough, but I can only imagine the possibilities for abuse on a government panel tasked with deciding which patients are "sexually aggressive" enough to qualify.

If you are still skeptical, as I know I would be, have a look at the University of Washingtons's test of RFID Ecosystems, reprinted below for your convenience.


The RFID Ecosystem Project

The RFID Ecosystem is a large-scale project with participants from various research groups at the University of Washington's Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The project investigates user-centered RFID systems in connection with technology, business, and society. Past research on user applications of RFID has been limited to short-term technology and user studies in restricted scenarios. In contrast, the RFID Ecosystem provides a living laboratory for long-term, in-depth research in applications, databases, privacy, security, and systems.

A central question in this research is in the balance between privacy and utility. Are there user-centered RFID applications that are truly useful? If so, how can they be designed to minimize loss of privacy? Finally, if these applications are indeed useful, does the utility outweigh the potential loss of privacy? We seek to answer these questions through careful, long-term user studies in which participation is optional and participants have control over their data and may opt out at any time.

To this end, we have deployed a permanent, building-wide RFID test-bed in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering that includes hundreds of RFID readers and thousands of tags. The overarching goal of the project is to inform the community (including businesses and policy makers) of the risks, benefits, and challenges of user-centered RFID systems while proposing technological solutions whenever possible - and to do so before such systems become commonplace.

FAQ OF THE DAY:
How will study participants carry the RFID tags, will they be implanted beneath the skin?

Those who choose to participate after the informed consent process (in which any questions will be answered as clearly and precisely as possible) will be asked to carry one or more EPC Gen 2 RFID tags. The tags to be used are paper thin and about the size of a credit card, participants will carry these tags in whatever way suits them. No tags will be implanted beneath the skin.

Please read our FAQ page for more information!

Want to know if the hardware is real and commercially available? Or how it works?

Visit Skytek

"Beyond the raw technology used in communicating between tags and readers, RFID consists of a rich ecosystem of software, hardware and services designed to manage the vast amounts of data RFID creates. The following image depicts this ecosystem in terms of how SkyeTek contributes value in addition to its partners."

Still unconvinced?

Visit You tube.

Aaron Russo
IBM Verichip 4th Reich
Verichips in soldiers
Microchips for bird flu (for you too)

And here is your new passport (and driver's licence).

Rothschilds: superior in the womb

One has only to read the history of central banking, or the writings of Smedley Butler of 1935 to be amazed at how similar the present is to the past. How can this be that the schemes of power are carried from generation to generation and visited upon each new generation anew?

If you are a Rothschild, you know: it's in the genes. The strategies, entitlements and resources to control the world are passed from generation to generation amoung the 'masters of the universe'. Don't believe it from me. Read it here from the horses mouth.

Baron David de Rothschild sees a
New World Order in global banking governance

November 7, 2008
Source
Baron David de Rothschild, the head of the Rothschild bank. The Rothschilds have helped the British government since financing Wellington’s army to fight the French in 1815.

“We provide advice on both sides of the balance sheet, and we do it globally. There is no debate that Rothschild is a Jewish family, but we are proud to be in this region. However, it takes time to develop a global footprint.“

Banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance.

UAE National | Nov 6, 2008

The first barons of banking

By Rupert Wright

Among the captains of industry, spin doctors and financial advisers accompanying British prime minister Gordon Brown on his fund-raising visit to the Gulf this week, one name was surprisingly absent. This may have had something to do with the fact that the tour kicked off in Saudi Arabia. But by the time the group reached Qatar, Baron David de Rothschild was there, too, and he was also in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Although his office denies that he was part of the official party, it is probably no coincidence that he happened to be in the same part of the world at the right time. That is how the Rothschilds have worked for centuries: quietly, without fuss, behind the scenes.

“We have had 250 years or so of family involvement in the finance business,” says Baron Rothschild. “We provide advice on both sides of the balance sheet, and we do it globally.”

The Rothschilds have been helping the British government – and many others – out of a financial hole ever since they financed Wellington’s army and thus victory against the French at Waterloo in 1815. According to a long-standing legend, the Rothschild family owed the first millions of their fortune to Nathan Rothschild’s successful speculation about the effect of the outcome of the battle on the price of British bonds. By the 19th century, they ran a financial institution with the power and influence of a combined Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and perhaps even Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China today.

In the 1820s, the Rothschilds supplied enough money to the Bank of England to avert a liquidity crisis. There is not one institution that can save the system in the same way today; not even the US Federal Reserve. However, even though the Rothschilds may have lost some of that power – just as other financial institutions on that list have been emasculated in the last few months – the Rothschild dynasty has lost none of its lustre or influence. So it was no surprise to meet Baron Rothschild at the Dubai International Financial Centre. Rothschild’s opened in Dubai in 2006 with ambitious plans to build an advisory business to complement its European operations. What took so long?

The answer, as many things connected with Rothschilds, has a lot to do with history. When Baron Rothschild began his career, he joined his father’s firm in Paris. In 1982 President Francois Mitterrand nationalised all the banks, leaving him without a bank. With just US$1 million (Dh3.67m) in capital, and five employees, he built up the business, before merging the French operations with the rest of the family’s business in the 1990s.

Gradually the firm has started expanding throughout the world, including the Gulf. “There is no debate that Rothschild is a Jewish family, but we are proud to be in this region. However, it takes time to develop a global footprint,” he says.

An urbane man in his mid-60s, he says there is no single reason why the Rothschilds have been able to keep their financial business together, but offers a couple of suggestions for their longevity. “For a family business to survive, every generation needs a leader,” he says. “Then somebody has to keep the peace. Building a global firm before globalisation meant a mindset of sharing risk and responsibility. If you look at the DNA of our family, that is perhaps an element that runs through our history. Finally, don’t be complacent about giving the family jobs.”

He stresses that the Rothschild ascent has not been linear – at times, as he did in Paris, they have had to rebuild. While he was restarting their business in France, his cousin Sir Evelyn was building a British franchise. When Sir Evelyn retired, the decision was taken to merge the businesses. They are now strong in Europe, Asia especially China, India, as well as Brazil. They also get involved in bankruptcy restructurings in the US, a franchise that will no doubt see a lot more activity in the months ahead.

Does he expect governments to play a larger role in financial markets in future? “There is a huge difference in the Soviet-style mentality that occurred in Paris in 1982, and the extraordinary achievements that politicians, led by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, have made to save the global banking system from systemic collapse,” he says. “They moved to protect the world from billions of unemployment. In five to 10 years those banking stakes will be sold – and sold at a profit.”

Baron Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a New World Order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance. “But you have to be careful of caricatures: we don’t want to go from ultra liberalism to protectionism.”

So how did the Rothschilds manage to emerge relatively unscathed from the financial meltdown? “You could say that we may have more insights than others, or you may look at the structure of our business,” he says. “As a family business, we want to limit risk. There is a natural pride in being a trusted adviser.”

It is that role as trusted adviser to both governments and companies that Rothschilds is hoping to build on in the region. “In today’s world we have a strong offering of debt and equity,” he says. “They are two arms of the same body looking for money.”

The firm has entrusted the growth of its financing advisory business in the Middle East to Paul Reynolds, a veteran of many complex corporate finance deals. “Our principal business franchise is large and mid-size companies,” says Mr Reynolds. “I have already been working in this region for two years and we offer a pretty unique proposition.

“We work in a purely advisory capacity. We don’t lend or underwrite, because that creates conflicts. We are sensitive to banking relationships. But we look to ensure financial flexibility for our clients.”

He was unwilling to discuss specific deals or clients, but says that he offers them “trusted, impartial financing advice any time day or night”. Baron Rothschilds tends to do more deals than their competitors, mainly because they are prepared to take on smaller mandates. “It’s not transactions were are interested in, it’s relationships. We are looking for good businesses and good people,” says Mr Reynolds. “Our ambition is for every company here to have a debt adviser.”

Baron Rothschild is reluctant to comment on his nephew Nat Rothschild’s public outburst against George Osborne, the British shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nat Rothschild castigated Mr Osborne for revealing certain confidences gleaned during a holiday in the summer in Corfu.

In what the British press are calling “Yachtgate”, the tale involved Russia’s richest man, Oleg Deripaska, Lord Mandelson, a controversial British politician who has just returned to government, Mr Osborne and a Rothschild. Classic tabloid fodder, but one senses that Baron Rothschild frowns on such publicity. “If you are an adviser, that imposes a certain style and culture,” he says. “You should never forget that clients want to hear more about themselves than their bankers. It demands an element of being sober.”

Even when not at work, Baron Rothschild’s tastes are sober. He lives between Paris and London, is a keen family man – he has one son who is joining the business next September and three daughters – an enthusiastic golfer, and enjoys the “odd concert”. He is also involved in various charity activities, including funding research into brain disease and bone marrow disorders.

It is part of Rothschild lore that its founder sent his sons throughout Europe to set up their own interlinked offices. So where would Baron Rothschild send his children today?

“I would send one to Asia, one to Europe and one to the United States,” he said. “And if I had more children, I would send one to the UAE.”

Related

* The Coming One-World currency
* Edmond de Rothschild to fully integrate wealth subsidiary
* That Rothschild clan in full: eccentricity, money, influence and scandal
* How Jewish is Nathaniel Rothschild?
* Rothschild criticizes City of London for lack of ethics
* Jewish power dominates at ‘Vanity Fair’
* Roots of evil in Jerusalem
* Rothschilds Move To Bankrupt European Farmers
* Chinese buying up new book about Rothschild banking conspiracy
* Rothschild Global Warming Handbook Accompanies Hyped 7/7 Live Earth Concert
* The Man Who May Become the Richest Rothschild
* Lady Rothschild invites billionaire elites to exclusive headhunting party for Tony Blair

We know who you are and what you are doing

Say 'sorry' now to all the so called conspiracy theorists who have been ridiculed and labeled 'nuts'. Unfortunately, all the 'I told you so's' of those who have been warning the general disbelieving populace of the New World Order and its methods of controlling people, will not be sufficient to gloat about the technology that is taking over our lives. The plans have been well laid and required R&D, testing and manufacturing which has been ongoing for years, in spite of the denial by well meaning, security seeking, delusional sheeple.

I will continue to post blogs here which detail the New World Order we are entering, surveillance be damned. You will not find this news in the NY Times, but you will find these RFID chips on your new drivers licenses and passports. Read and weep.

US rolls out 'Vicinity RFID'

to check IDs in moving vehicles

Published on 24-11-2008 Source: The Register

RFID technology that allows the remote identification of travellers in moving vehicles is being rolled out at US land border crossings this month. Crossing points with Canada at Blaine, and with Mexico at Nogales, came online last week, with Buffalo, Detroit and San Ysidro to follow, and a total of 39 planned.

The system uses the US PASSport (People, Access Security Service) card, which is intended to operate within the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) for US citizens entering the US via land and sea ports. Using "Vicinity RFID" it can read the cards from a healthy skimming distance of 20-30 feet, but according to the Department of Homeland Security this isn't a problem. The RFID chip on the card doesn't contain any personal information, only a unique identification number, and skimmers wouldn't have access to the data the number matches up with.

The system is intended to work like this. As a vehicle approaches the border post, the numbers of the cards inside it are read, and pictures and data on the holders are called up from a database. Then, presumably, the immigration officers check the faces of the passengers to make sure they match, and bust any who happen to be flagged as terrorists or loose criminals.

In addition to the PASSport card, some US states are beginning to issue Enhanced Driver's Licence/ID cards (EDL/ID), which have the PASSport RFID functionality added to a standard driver's license. These can also be used for land or sea entry to the US, but neither variety of card is valid elsewhere, or for WHTI air travel into the US. Obviously, they'd only be of any use at anybody else's border post if there were compatible readers there, and if the US had kindly shared its ID database with the relevant country.

So it's an internal passport system, one that's entirely incompatible with the biometric ID system that the US has gone to such pains to get the world to adopt. Were they only kidding, then?

Internet freedom: Heads up bloggers

A consistent concern in this blog is the restriction of our freedom to access information and to retain privacy as innocent citizens. Bit by bit, in front of our very eyes, as we fret about our finances, we are losing our freedoms. And I do not mean 'we' in the national sense, but rather in the global sense. This world we inhabit here, now, is very fragile and dependent upon technology and corporations none of us control.

Country by country falls to new measures to monitor and restrict its citizens movements and privacy, as 'we' are preoccupied with the media circus they wish to hypnotize us with. And it is working.

How many of you have thought how much information power you will have if your server begins restricting access to information and other bloggers? When sites disappear off the web, there is little to be done by the rest of us. Heads up bloggers. You will sorely miss what you do not pay attention to now.

How an Italian Judge
Made the Internet Illegal

November 28th, 2008
Italian bloggers are up in arms at a court ruling early this year that suggests almost all Italian blogs are illegal. This month, a senior Italian politician went one step further, warning that most web activity is likely to be against the law.

The story begins back in May, when a judge in Modica (in Sicily) found local historian and author Carlo Ruta guilty of the crime of “stampa clandestina” – or publishing a “clandestine” newspaper – in respect of his blog. The judge ruled that since the blog had a headline, that made it an online newspaper, and brought it within the law’s remit.

The penalties for this crime are not onerous: A fine of 250 Euros or a prison sentence of up to two years. Carlo Ruta was fined and ordered to take down his site, which has now been replaced by a blank page, headed “Site under construction”, and a link directing surfers to his new site. Hardly serious stuff – except that he now has a criminal record, and his original site has disappeared.

The offence has its origins in 1948, when in apparent contradiction of Article 21 of the Italian Constitution guaranteeing the right to free expression, a law was passed requiring publishers to register officially before setting up a new publication. The intention, in the immediate aftermath of Fascism, may have been to regulate partisan and extremist publications. The effect was to introduce into Italian society a highly centrist and bureaucratic approach to freedom of the Press.

A further twist to this tale took place in 2001, with the realisation that existing laws were inadequate to deal with the internet. Instead of liberalising, the Italian Government sought to bring the internet into the same framework as traditional print media. Law 62, passed in March 2001, introduces the concept of “stampa clandestina” to the internet.

The suspicion expressed by a number of commentators is that this extension of the law suited government and publishers alike. The state was able to maintain its benevolent stranglehold on the media, whilst publishers could use the system of authorisation and regulation as a means to extend state subsidies to their ventures on the internet.

What few noticed at the time was that this law had the capacity to place blogs on a par with full-blown journalism. It would only take a judge to decide that something as simple as a headline was what defined a “newspaper”.

http://cryptogon.com/

We ARE being watched

Australia:
Private Intelligence Company
Monitors Activists Online for Police

November 26th, 2008
The Australian:
A PRIVATE intelligence company has been engaged by police to secretly monitor internet and email use by activist and protest groups, a report says.

The company was hired to monitor and report on the internet activities of anti-war campaigners, animal rights activists, environmental campaigners, and other protest groups, Fairfax Media reported.

It was hired by Victorian Police, the Australian Federal Police and the federal Attorney-General’s department.

The Melbourne-based firm has for the past five years monitored websites, online chat rooms, social networking sites, email lists and bulletin boards, the report said.

It has gathered intelligence on planned protests and other activities, and many of those on the watch list have broken no laws, the report said.

It also prepared threat assessments and intelligence reports for government agencies that included material from media reports, speeches, academic journals and publicly available company data, but no private correspondence was monitored.

The company was not named at the request of its management for fear extremists may target the firm.

The news comes a month after Victorian police were found to have targeted community and activist groups in a long-running covert operation.

Related posts:
Blackwater Now in the Private Intelligence Business

News you WANT to read

Court Indicts Bush on
High Treason Charge

By Bart Garzon
Published: July 4th, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, was indicted Monday on charges of high treason. The charges, filed by Attorney General Russ Feingold late in the evening, allege that Mr. Bush, knowing full well that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, falsified information in order to pursue the disastrous Iraq War. (See “U.S. Knew No W.M.D.s in Iraq,” on Page A1, and the petition at www.democrats.com/pardon.)


Federal District Judge Michael Ratner denied Mr. Bush’s request to represent himself. Ratner is the former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

High treason is usually defined as participation in a war against one’s own country; attempting to overthrow its government; spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power; or attempting to kill its head of state.

“In this case, high treason has been interpreted to include pursuing an illegal and devastating war that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of over 4,000 Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis, for essentially insane ends,” said Vincent Bugliosi, a former federal prosecutor whom Feingold named lead special prosecutor in the case. “In effect, the Iraq War amounted to a war against America,” added Bugliosi, who is also the author of the book, The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder.

Although the treason indictment came as no surprise to most observers, what was completely unexpected was the party who brought it.

“The case is highly unusual in a number of ways,” said Bugliosi, “not the least of which is that the defendant is actually accusing himself.”

In a press conference held close to midnight yesterday at his Crawford, Texas ranch, former President Bush cited his renewed Christian faith as the catalyst for this unprecedented action. “Last month, I had a conversation with Jesus Christ. A new conversation. And I’ve been very blessed to have been born again, again. This time, for real,” Mr. Bush read in a prepared statement to half a dozen stunned reporters.

“It’s taken a lot of soul searching, or more like deep-soul diving, I think is the term. But now I see that it was wrong to lead our nation to war under false pretenses. Millions have suffered for my sins, and I see now that it is only fitting that I should suffer as well.”

Mr. Bush’s self-accusation seems largely to have been plagiarized from years of accusations made against him in the press. It refers to his “political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people,” and describes how he and his team attempted to make the “W.M.D. threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear certain, whereas in fact we knew there wasn’t one at all.”

“The death and economic collapse that resulted has been completely devastating to our nation and, most of all, to me,” read Mr. Bush’s indictment. “I want to make amends, and it is for this reason that I am requesting that I be indicted for high treason. I thank the court for allowing me to right my grave wrongs. Bring it on!”

Some analysts suggest that Mr. Bush’s self-indictment is part of a strategy to avoid the death penalty. Although treason carries a potential death sentence, Mr. Bush and his team of attorneys are seeking a triple life sentence without possibility of parole.

“We don’t want to be too cynical about Mr. Bush’s motives,” said a spokesperson for AfterDowningStreet.org, one of the main groups that had been pursuing Mr. Bush’s indictment. “But even if it doesn’t get moved to the I.C.C., requesting his own conviction is so unusual it could move some jurors, or even help with an insanity plea.”

A friend of Mr. Bush, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that Mr. Bush would attempt to move the case to the International Criminal Court, which does not have a death penalty, and was quietly pressing Secretary of State Naomi Klein to bring the U.S. under the court’s jurisdiction. In 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, saying it was “unaccountable to the American people.”

Mr. Bush maintained his characteristically jovial manner throughout the proceedings. “I could be executed, but what good would that do anybody? Especially me. I think the nation would rather I spend a good long while considering what happened — not only the tragic end of hundreds of thousands of lives, but the end of American capitalism, that I liked, I sincerely liked,” Mr. Bush said. (See also “An Exclusive Interview With George W. Bush,” on Page A9.)

The treason charge does not address compensation for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the war. It is expected that surviving family members of fallen American soldiers will file thousands of civil lawsuits alleging wrongful death.

For other news stories to brighten todays mood for tomorrow, visit here.

188 Comments so far ...Many are very interesting

Russian analyst predicts decline and breakup of U.S.

MOSCOW, November 24
(RIA Novosti)
A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily Izvestia published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history.

Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator." When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work.

Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles." He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong. He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all."

On the fate of the U.S. dollar, he said: "In 2006 a secret agreement was reached between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. on a common Amero currency as a new monetary unit. This could signal preparations to replace the dollar.

The one-hundred dollar bills that have flooded the world could be simply frozen. Under the pretext, let's say, that terrorists are forging them and they need to be checked." When asked how Russia should react to his vision of the future, Panarin said: "Develop the ruble as a regional currency.

Create a fully functioning oil exchange, trading in rubles... We must break the strings tying us to the financial Titanic, which in my view will soon sink." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.
Source

Capitalism and fishing

A Point To Ponder
by animus mundi
A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.
*
"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
*
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family. The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
*
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs . I have a full life."
*
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."
*
And after that?" asked the Mexican.
*
With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."
*
"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
*
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
*
"And after that?"
*
"Afterwards? Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"
*
"Millions? Really? And after that?" said the Mexican.
*
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."
*
And the moral is:Know where you're going in life... you may already be there.

Source

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

Anyone who doubts that the future of the USA has been hijacked by its own government is engaging in delusional thinking. The signs are everywhere. Whoever does not see them, is not looking. Best thing really for a country which has refused to admit that it cares nothing about any other country as long as its own decadent lifestyle is maintained. This article by Naomi Wolf and the following three in this blog should be very instructive to those who are interested. Those who are not interested will suffer the consequences nonetheless.

April 24 2007
Naomi Wolf
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Source

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck

All the little crazy bits and pieces of news, that by themselves seem impossible and sheer fabrications, sometimes come together with clarity from a final piece of information.

For months, I have been reading about plastic coffins, railway cars designed for people, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, the assignment of a military brigade to FEMA, the building of camps, the threat of martial law unless Congress passed a bailout for banks, the FEMA plans for economic disaster and the new surveillance laws passed in camera obscura. I have provided references for articles on each of these at the end of this blog. I encourage the reader to use them as starting points for his/her own research.

The looming conclusion I have been avoiding is this: economic meltdown is ahead for the USA and martial law will be necessary. The legislation has been passed, the action plans have been implemented and by next summer, Americans will not recognise their country. I will not detail the economic evidence here; that is beyond the scope of this blog.

The thought of American leaders planning martial law is very difficult to accept. Yet here, you may find evidence which when pieced together may suggest just that. I urge you to make your own judgement after reviewing the information.

FEMA sources confirm coming martial law

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Oct 13, 2008
(WMR) -- WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.

On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document.

The document is being called the “C & R” document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. “Conflict” is the “C word” in the document. The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. “Revolution” is the document’s “R word.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3861.shtml

Other articles from different sources which support this:

If indeed there is a chance that the materials below fit together rationally, and the conclusion is possible that martial law could be imposed, wouldn't you want to know about it. If the conclusion is wrong, then no harm has been done. At best, as medica consumers we can only come up with speculation which is informed probability as to what the truth is in any given situtation. We must be like Sherlock Holmes and detect our way to the logically supported probabilities. From my research, the probability here looks high. I hope this research will be helpful to you in making up your own mind.

Of particular interest in the new presidential executive order NSPD 59: the original article in Global research has disappeared but I have provided my blog url for this article as well as exterior sources.

Audio of Senator Inhofe warned about impending martial law
http://fiddleferme.blogspot.com/2008/11/big-brother-has-arrived-big-time.html
NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51
National Security Presidential Directive/NSPS 59

Military personnel assigned to FEMA
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/index.html

Encircling Manhattan with thousands of surveillance cameras
FEMA's Blueprint for Martial Law in America
FEMA and the RX 84 program with pix

Half a million plastic coffins. On this page are several more links which include correspondence with the manufacturers.

SHACKLED BOXCARS in OR,TX,,MT,NH, NC Many pictures here.
Bush's Secret Army of Snoops and Snitches
Posse Comitatus repealed
Soros predicts deep recession/depression
Investigation into Whether America is Still a Constitutional Government
THE END OF AMERICA: THE POLICE STATE IS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW
Massive 'Homeland Defense' Joint Exercise Is Under Way