Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps ["detention camps"], with camps in all 50 states. Wikipedia notes that [21]:
On January 24, 2006, Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build "temporary detention and processing facilities" or internment camps. According to Business Wire, this contract will be executed in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. Critics point to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a possible model. According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, "The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."
Note on incarceration of innocent Americans: We already incarcerate more people in the U.S. than any other nation on Earth, and most of those poor souls are not guilty of any real crime against anyone (pot users being the largest group); they should never have been jailed at all. The inmates at the new concentration camps won't be rapists, murderers, and actual terrorists: we have plenty of jail cells for them already. Who WILL be sent to the camps?
Our government has also already passed the Patriot Act (two senators recently reported that "Patriot Act Interpretations Would "Stun" Americans [22]" [video; 4 min 15 sec] – showing that government is continuing its long tradition of lying about how it will use new powers), the NDAA, and a host of other laws that specifically (and illegally) strip constitutional rights from American citizens, allowing for secret arrest (including by the military), indefinite detention, torture, and murder of any person, citizen or otherwise, without habeas corpus, without a warrant, and without due process of any kind. And congressional action is not necessary to initiate such horrors. Americans can also be stripped of their rights and terrorized by one man signing an executive order: see New Obama Executive Order Seizes U.S. Infrastructure and Citizens for Military Preparedness [23]. An excerpt:
"In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill 'labor requirements' for the purposes of national defense.
Not only that, but the authority claimed inside the EO does not only apply to National Emergencies and times of war. It also applies in peacetime."
[Bold added]
Continuing this partial list of what the government has already done:
Conducted repeated military exercises in cities within the United States.
Created a nationwide surveillance apparatus with scope and depth unprecedented in human history [24] (and as the linked article in Wired shows, today's already-staggering level of surveillance is about to take a leap into complete insanity).
Neither Stalin nor Hitler nor any other dictator has ever had the ability to monitor and spy upon people so completely. Every phone call, every email, every internet visit, every non-cash purchase and financial transaction, and a great deal more (video of you walking or driving in almost any urban area, for instance) is available to the State and is being tracked, catalogued, data-mined, and used in ways that are, like most of what the State now does, kept secret from the rest of us.
Officially stated or implied, in flyers [25], notices, advisories [26], and directives; in contacts with local law enforcement; and in other ways, that nearly ANY behavior (especially if related to a pro-freedom agenda) is a "potential indicator of terrorist activity" – including paying for your coffee in cash [27], shaving a beard, voicing support for the Constitution, being too relaxed, being tense or nervous, buying any of a huge list of perfectly legal and legitimate products or services, buying things in bulk, showing concern for Internet privacy or protection from identity theft, making positive statements about the Founding Fathers or the American Revolution, supporting presidential candidate Ron Paul [28], suggesting that the CIA or other Westerners had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, and many more. Recall that being labeled a terrorist can now get you arrested without a warrant and held in secret, indefinitely, and tortured or executed.
Who is being targeted in all this? As the Activist Post [29] puts it, "It appears the federal government is trying to make an enemy out of non-violent activists, especially liberty activists." Yes, that would be YOU. Also me, of course. Think I'm scared? You bet I am.
Begun to use drones for surveillance WITHIN the United States [30] and is planning to use them (a LOT of them) both for surveillance and (quite likely) for direct assault against "domestic terrorists" – meaning, as you'll recall, anyone the government wants to target.
One positive thing here: Americans will finally begin to sympathize with foreigners whose families, friends, and children have (for years) been murdered from the sky by our heroic, freedom-protecting drones.
Created and is continually tightening the physical noose around the citizens, with the TSA and its molestations now being spread [31] to bus stations, train stations, sporting events, and randomly at roadsides and other venues.
And this is only the most visible example. To even LEAVE the country now, you need permission from Homeland Security – a violation of various laws, treaties, and of common law and even common sense, but no matter: the police state has no use for such things. Americans used to laugh at the Nazi "your papers please!" Gestapo and SS; now we suffer under an even more intrusive police state.
QUESTION: Where is this all leading? What's the endgame? Your government has put in place all the elements needed to eliminate anyone who opposes this growing tyranny – by incarcerating dissidents or murdering them, and doing it all in secret (by censoring the news about such actions, eliminating the need for warrants, and denying habeas corpus, just for starters) and with the support of most law enforcement personnel and the legal system. What, exactly, do you suppose will happen next?
ANSWER: We don't have to guess where this is all going because there is ample historical precedent: The United States is on the verge of an epic government-run mass murder – a democide (i.e., a genocide not aimed at a specific ethnic or religious group).
Those FEMA camps [32] and the many other new elements of tyranny in America have only one possible use and purpose, and that is blatant political repression, leading inevitably to mass murder on a scale this country has never seen before. The phony "war on terror" – already more than a decade old – is designed to never end. There is no specific enemy – this is a "war" against a tactic. Incarcerated Japanese-Americans [33] (link: Star Trek actor George Takei talking about his experiences in the internment camps; video, 7 min 1 sec) were released when WWII ended after a mere five years – when will the detainees in the war on terror be released? How will they be treated behind that barbed wire? And how will a bankrupt-yet-aggressively-spending government feed, house, and care for hundreds of thousands (or more) of Americans who specifically oppose the police state? The government cannot even pay its bills now, clearly doesn't plan to reform itself back into a legitimate constitutional government – and those in charge really don't want people pointing out that their actions are illegal and even treasonous.
THAT is what "terrorism" is being redefined as: "terrorism" now means scaring the criminals who have taken over our government by pointing out their crimes.
The criminals in our government (not every person in government fits that description, of course) have arranged it so that standing up for constitutional restraints and for simple human decency will soon mean a death sentence – from disease, starvation, or overwork in the camps, if not by direct execution in one way or another. This WILL happen UNLESS we stop it from happening, and ONLY waking enough people up to the truth will stem the tide of evil.
These unconstitutional laws, detention camps [34], repressive agencies, constant spying on citizens [35], domestic drone use, terror plots set in motion by the FBI to be foiled for the publicity [36] (can't have a war on terror without terrorists!), refusal of due process and even of habeas corpus (NDAA being only the most blatant and recent example), and other standard police state elements have created an America all-too-similar to the likes of Hitler's Germany [37] or General Pinochet's 1970's reign of terror [38] in Chile – which the the United States tolerated and almost certainly participated in [39] by engineering the coup which installed Pinochet, by training secret police and other armed agents in Chile, and in other ways. Commentator Paul Adams connects the dots:
An abundance of evidence suggests that the globalists are planning democide for the United States. Congress and Obama passed the unconstitutional NDAA, telling Americans that they no longer have any rights and can be detained indefinitely and tortured without due process.
The planned American democide appears to be modeled after General Pinochet’s reign of terror [40], where 40,000 political prisoners were detained and thousands of others simply "disappeared." Pinochet's reign of terror was made possible after he came to rule Chile through a CIA sponsored coup.
In the United States, government whistleblowers have recently stepped forward with documents proving that FEMA detention (concentration) camps [41] are being activated. Additionally, a FEMA camp rendition site [42] was discovered at Los Angeles International Airport the week after military training exercises occurred, reminiscent of Operation Urban Warrior.
Democide Mass Murder and the New World Order [43] by Paul Adams, J.D. [Bold added in text above]
Next question – especially for journalists, police, county sheriffs, lawmakers at all levels, corporate movers and shakers, and anyone in the federal government including the military:
Will you participate in the coming democide mass-murder within the United States?
And if you do, will they want you around afterwards to talk about it?
For that matter: are you ALREADY participating, perhaps unwittingly, in preparations for the coming democide?
It is far too late in the game to keep your concerns on this topic to yourself. As Homeland Security tells us:
If You See Something, Say Something
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More people are, finally, starting to see what is going on and many are saying something about it.
Conor Friedersdorf, staff writer for The Atlantic, speaks out with an interesting question:
"How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?"
(1) Codify indefinite detention into law;
(2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process;
(3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens;
(4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers [44] for violating state secrets;
(5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible;
(6) enter and prosecute such a war;
(7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports;
(8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA [45] so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots;
(9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy;
(10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits;
(11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries;
(12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed);
(13) reauthorize the Patriot Act;
(14) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.
~ Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus on Obama's Dumbest Critics? [46] By Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic (links from David Seaman's What If Barack Obama Is A Traitor? [47] in which Seaman showcases Friedersdorf's list and apparently adds the two links shown above, which don't show in my online copy of the Atlantic piece. Also, item numbers 13 and 14 were reversed and the numbers have been put back in order here.)
Friedersdorf goes on to point out that Obama "is a lawbreaker and an advocate of radical executive power. What precedent could be more radical than insisting that the executive is empowered to draw up a kill list of American citizens in secret, without telling anyone what names are on it, or the legal justification for it, or even that it exists?"
Time to take the red pill [48], wake up, and face the truth:
If you are reading this, YOU ARE A TARGET [49] – not because I say so, but because Homeland Security, the FBI, and other federal agencies say so. Once again, a huge list of innocuous and perfectly legal behaviors, beliefs, and comments [48] are being demonized as "potential indicators of terrorist activities" – and the government now insists it can arrest any such person at will, without a warrant, without telling your friends or family or anyone else about the action, and detain that person forever or simply kill them if they wish. They insist they can use the military for all this, as well – handy, should they feel the need to round up more people than the FBI and various other alphabet agencies could deal with.
Yes, I know: that all sounds too insane to be true, but it IS true, and much as I would like to think our government will never do such things at all, much less on a massive scale, it is ALSO true that our government has prepared for exactly that and – like hundreds of other governments in history – has done such things before [50]. Ask any American Indian, or black person, or Japanese-American just for starters.
Speak out against this evil now, while you still can.
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(Bonus Chart -- parody of actual charts issued by government agencies)
Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Government Action:
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What Should I Consider Suspicious?
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What Should I Do?
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People or Groups Who:
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Be part of the solution:
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· Describe ordinary activity [51] (paying with cash, buying in bulk, etc.) as "a possible indicator of terrorism"
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Insist that government employees follow the law and protect rather than violate your constitutional rights
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· Make suspicious comments claiming the Constitution no longer applies or make vague or cryptic threats against peaceful American citizens
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Support non-corrupt public employees whose actions protect liberty rather than threaten it. Alone among presidential candidates this season, ONLY Ron Paul fits this description
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· Demonstrate interest in uses of their authority that do not seem consistent with liberty, with human rights, or with the Constitution
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Record and share evidence of terrorist threats, intentional cruelty, misuse of power, corruption, and other crime and misbehavior by government employees
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· Support harsh punishment of whistleblowers and others who expose government or corporate crime or malfeasance, while ignoring the actual crime or malfeasance being exposed
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Demand that government extremists who commit crimes against Americans be prosecuted under Title 18 [52] of the criminal code and, where applicable, under RICO (criminal conspiracy) laws and other applicable laws
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· Create a legal and physical framework that puts innocent Americans at risk of being indefinitely detained without due process, and possibly tortured or murdered in secret
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If you see something, say something – be as vocal as possible about suspicious government behavior, including attempts to terrorize citizens or threats against their lives or liberty
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[as modeled on similar charts [53] {scroll down for an example} from government agencies suggesting that everyday actions may be signs of potential terrorism]
[54]
