Only a blind or deliberately naive man cannot see that America--the once-proud "land of the free"--is being systematically turned into a twenty-first century police state. Good grief! The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom notes that America is not even listed among the "free" countries of the earth. We are ranked in the second tier, of "mostly free" countries. Beyond that, the Heritage index ranks the US as only the 8th freest nation on the planet.
And both the Republican and Democrat parties in Washington, D.C., are equally culpable for America's slide into socialism and oppression. And so are many local and State leaders--including political, business, and law enforcement leaders. Suffice it to say that most big city governments have become almost totalitarian. Government buildings--even local ones--are sealed fortresses, not unlike the old palace-forts of antiquity.
In big and not-so-big cities, cameras monitor virtually everything we do. Even here in my hometown of Pensacola, Florida, a nearby city (Gulf Breeze) has recently installed traffic cameras, which issue automated tickets for red light runners. (How unconstitutional can one get? Surely someone will aggressively challenge the legality of these cameras in court!) What is worse is that many residents and local authorities see nothing wrong with it. These people are behaving just like those wild hogs that nonchalantly ate their food while the fence was being built all around them.
In the name of "security" or "safety" or "protection," Americans are surrendering their liberties. Ladies and gentlemen, face it: freedom is risky business! If our Founding Fathers had wanted security or safety, they would have stayed in Europe--or at least remained a compliant colony of the Crown. So, if one wants government enslavement in twenty-first century America, one should move back to Europe--or better yet, to Red China or North Korea!
Instead of demanding that government take care of us, we should be demanding that government get out of our wallets and off our backs, and let us live free, as our Creator intended we live! But how can we do that when we constantly clamor for more and more government handouts and benefits? By demanding welfare checks, food stamps, government-assisted housing and medicine, etc.,
Americans are putting the shackles around their own throats. Even churches and religious institutions are gorging themselves at the government teat. America doesn't need to worry about terrorist attacks from Baghdad or Tehran as much as we should worry about the terrorism from Big Brother--brought about with our own approbation--right here at home.
When will we recognize that the Department of Homeland Security would be more properly named the Department of Homeland Enslavement? When are we going to wake up to the fact that the Patriot Act is nothing but a tool of the federal government to usurp constitutionally protected liberties?
When are we going to realize that the federal "war on drugs" inflicts more damage on the Bill of Rights than it does any major drug dealer? When will we get fed up with these random police checkpoints (manned by agents from virtually any and every police agency, including federal agents) going up everywhere? When will we tire of our local policemen and sheriff's deputies more resembling military commandos than peace officers? When will we demand that our State and local officials stop begging the federal government for "stimulus" money? In other words, when are we going to decide that we want to live in FREEDOM? source - Chuck Balldwin
TSA Rules Are Just The Start Of Our Loss Of Freedoms Airplane Boarding Rules Are An Omen Of What's Coming
The terrorists have won. All over the world, Muslims everywhere are laughing at us and mocking the way we conduct ourselves. Why, you ask? Because when they look at us, they see the strongest nation on the face of the earth running in fear from the thought that another Muslim terrorist might blow up another airplane. And they see us so terrified that we are willing to subject our own people to harrassment, loss of personal privacy and be personally humiliated on airport boarding lines all in the name of an imagined "safety". In short, they see the once-great and mighty America on it's knees.
"It's all about security," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said. "It's all about everybody recognizing their role."
Now, ask yourself this - why all these restrictive, draconian rules? It's because as America continues down the Soclialist path to enslavement foist upon us by Barack Obama and puppet master George Soros, loss of freedoms designed for "our protection" is the tool they are using to lock us up. Think I'm exaggerating? Do this - next time you stop at a traffic light, look up on the top of the light and tell me what you see.
Don't touch my junk
At the San Diego airport, a software engineer posted an Internet blog item saying he had been ejected after being threatened with a fine and lawsuit for refusing a groin check after turning down a full-body scan. The passenger, John Tyner, said he told a federal Transportation Security Administration worker, "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested." Tyner's individual protest quickly became a web sensation, but questions also came from travel business groups, civil liberties activists and pilots, raising concerns both about the procedures themselves and about the possibility of delays caused by passengers reluctant to accept the new procedures. There are some 300 full-body scanners now operational in 60 U.S. airports. TSA is on track to deploy approximately 500 units by the end of 2010. " source - My Way News
Watch our future, America...what happened to John Tyner WILL happen to you!
TSA Naked Body Scanners
For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded." Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse. This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes."
By simply inverting the x-ray images, you can obtain a full-color, positive, naked image of the person scanned. And every one of these naked photos taken of you are stored...forever.
The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports. Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers." source - CNET
Homes of anti-war activists raided by the FBI
On September 24, Jason Ditz reported on Antiwar.com that "the FBI is confirming that this morning they began a number of raids against the homes of antiwar activists in Illinois, Minneapolis, Michigan, and North Carolina, claiming that they are 'seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.'" Now we know what Homeland Security (sic) secretary Janet Napolitano meant when she said on September 10: "The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just that - the old view." The new view, Napolitano said, is "to counter violent extremism right here at home."
"Violent extremism" is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning's FBI's foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with "the material support of terrorism," just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism. Anti-war activist Mick Kelly whose home was raided, sees the FBI raids as harassment to intimidate those who organize war protests. I wonder if Kelly is under-estimating the threat. The FBI's own words clearly indicate that the federal police agency and the judges who signed the warrants do not regard antiwar protesters as Americans exercising their Constitutional rights, but as unpatriotic elements offering material support to terrorism. "Material support" is another of those undefined police state terms. In this context the term means that Americans who fail to believe their government's lies and instead protest its policies, are supporting their government's declared enemies and, thus, are not exercising their civil liberties but committing treason."source - Foreign Policy Journal
Put down the tofu, and come out with your hands up!
"With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.
Now it's a crime to sell milk...
"I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?" Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities -- the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths. On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are " healthy food" consumers -- a faction of foodies who challenge government science and seek food in its most pure form. They want almonds cracked fresh from the shell, not those run through a federally mandated pasteurization process that uses either heat or a chemical to kill off salmonella and other possible contaminants. They hunger for meat slaughtered on the farm. And they're willing to pay a premium -- $6, $8 or more -- for a gallon of milk straight from the cow. So despite research outlining the dangers of consuming raw milk and other unprocessed foods, they're finding ways to circumnavigate federal, state and local laws that seek to control what they can serve at the dinner table. Such defiance, they said, comes from growing distrust of a food sector that has become more industrialized and consolidated -- and whose products have been at the root of some of the country's deadliest food contamination cases. "This is about control and profit, not our health," said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, co-founder of Rawesome Foods. "How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?" source - LA Times
