Once again we see one administration taking away our rights and the next expanding upon it. This time it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Bush started it in 2007 and classified it because of National Security reasons. While the trade agreement is not finalized what we know about the treaty is frightening.

It would allow border searches of laptops, phones, mp3 players; agents could even go through your luggage looking for illegal cds. Unfortunately they always could and did as we found out in August, 2008 when the Homeland Security revealed that Federal agents can search laptop computers or any other electronic device like cell phones or mp3 players. And they could take them somewhere else for however long they wanted. For no other reason but that it was their policy. The best part? The ‘policy’ was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. The Washington Post

They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement goes further yet in diminishing our rights.
From Ingram 2.0:
According to a leaked document (available at Wikileaks and also at IP Justice), Canada and a number of other countries are planning to create a NAFTA-style body that would police copyright, and would be empowered to seize and/or destroy property without a court order.

Set up an internal surveillance system
We also recommend the Generation Cobweb article: Fly Clear – Attacts on Freedom

Everything is in place now for government agencies to watch our each and every move. Some are evident – warrant less wiretapping, instituted by George W. Bush and preserved by Obama: Government opts for secrecy in wiretap suit. Then there is the Patriot Act which gives the government access to your medical records, tax records and information about the books you buy or borrow. This grossly misnamed Act also allows the government to break into your home and conduct secret searches without any notification, now or in the future.

Consider the curious case of Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby. Young Mr. Lundeby was detained for suspicion of making a bomb threat. Dan Boyce, a defense attorney and former U.S. attorney not connected to the Lundeby case stated, “They’re saying that ‘We feel this individual is a terrorist or an enemy combatant against the United States, and we’re going to suspend all of those due process rights because this person is an enemy of the United States”.

While brute force has long been a stock in trade for oppressive governments technology plays a big role in the perfection of a new big brother. Many of the techniques have been around for a long time. The British philosopher Jeremny Benthan in 1785 conceived a new type of prison he called the panopticon.

From The Impact of Video Systems on Architecture dissertation by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology:

911 Mysteries

No event in the past thirty years has altered the lives of Americans as dramatically as 911. Called a terrorist attack by the US government it has been used to attack our individual freedom and security. It has also been used to bring war upon foreign nations. Was it really a terrorist attack? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

In part one Laying the groundwork for the Fascist takeover of America, part two Creating an internal enemy and part three Creating a Gulag we saw how the government from Reagan to Obama has created internal and external enemies with several phony wars. Further we explored how the United States has prosecuted and imprisoned millions of enemy combatants aka American Citizens. In this installment we will look at the thug caste created to intimidate people and smother any protest before it even gets started.

Despots have long recognized the necessity of controlling the press. Some would argue it is not possible in a free society but not only is it possible it is an accomplished fact. Later in this series we will have a more in depth discussion of how a few companies control the press but for now be aware the two go hand in hand – control of the press and a thug caste.

Two unlikely allies, political conservatives and fundamental Christians have formed the American thug caste. Not the political conservatism championed by Barry Goldwater but Ronald Reagan’s corruption of it, nor the open forgiving religion of Billy Graham but the aberration preached by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.