THE FALL

So, I took the month of January off. I sort of had to, I started a few things, finished up a few others, projects are now in the works, been under the weather…the list goes on. Speaking of lists, I have my own here for the category I like to call “Holy shit, 1984 was a blueprint.” On that list are the big four names that everyone-oops not everyone because the media doesn’t cover them- should know, these are the NDAA, The Enemy Expatriation Act, SOPA and PIPA, along with one more that people are just now figuring out is a bad thing ACTA. I will try, in my limited ability, to concisely put down why it is, exactly, that these bills begin to turn or already make the previously free United States of America into a technocratic, fascist dictatorship governed by a corrupt political elite.

Lofty goal, I know, but right now I’ve got a bit of time and a terrible bought of back pain from something I did at work, so here goes.

THE NDAA

I’ve already covered the NDAA at length in other posts, so I won’t bother going into the massive details as to how this terrible, awful bill, which was signed into law by the president on January 2nd 2012, will seemingly destroy our civil liberties. What I will do is highlight the dangerous part(s) that cause alarm and also try to figure out why the president and the rest of congress was so eager to get this thing through.

The NDAA has a few sections in it that are, or should be considered, more than alarming. Especially when you know and see what those sections can allow the president and his full on police state to do. Foremost among those provisions in the NDAA is a little thing called Section 1031 : which outlines the indefinite detention, by the military, of suspected terrorists.

Sure that all sounds fine, especially if you believe there is a real and credible threat to America from terrorists. But the section does not however differentiate the fact that suspected terrorists and American citizens have a different set of rights, as outlined by the U.S. Bill of Rights and Constitution, specifically the 4th,5th,6th, 7th and 8th amendments. The bill also outlines that the entire world, including America and it’s territories are part of the new battlefield in the “War on Terrorism,” and without any added emotional or political bias against the bill, makes it perfectly legal to detain American citizens who are considered enemy combatants by God knows who, for God knows what. The best part about that last bit, is that the bill allows the police state to never explain to you why you are being detained, allows them to transport you out of the country if they so choose, to unknown sites around the globe where, maybe, torture isn’t as frowned upon as it is here in the United States.

However the president has already had this sort of power given to him, through the wonderful invention of post 9/11 security legislation the PATRIOT ACT. Which has been renewed and expanded upon every year since it’s inception, directly after the attacks on 9/11. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not, I am a writer. I write books about zombies and monsters and devils and demons, imaginary things that should scare, shock and entertain. Or at least that’s the goal. At times I use real life events to inspire my work, so I keep up to date with a ton of sources, news feeds, article sharing sites, etc. So when I first heard about this, I thought, OK, this won’t make it through. Then it did. When I read that Sen. John McCain, a war hero who had been tortured in Viet Nam, another decade long kinetic military action that spanned several presidents terms, I thought…”Wait a minute, here’s a cat that should know this is terrible.”

Then it passed, without any coverage, really, in the media. Without much scorn from the public.

So I started to dig, read the thing for myself, and I will tell you this. i have read extensively on the supernatural, the esoteric, the arcane and many other subjects that are at times down right loony, but this bill makes them all look like child’s play in it’s horror.

So yes, the NDAA is the first component in the assembly of the police state machine, or rather the updated version of the PATRIOT ACT which actually kicked of the police state machine a decade ago. In doing some research on the thing, I then happened to come across the next piece or cog in that apparatus, the Enemy Expatriation Act.

The Enemy Expatriation Act

The Enemy Expatriation Act or H.R. 3166, introduced in October of 2011 (did anyone else know this, where’s the media?) is a simple little bookend to Section 1031 of the NDAA, which states, according to sources, that :

Enemy Expatriation Act – Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to include engaging in or purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States to the list of acts for which U.S. nationals would lose their nationality. Defines “hostilities” as any conflict subject to the laws of war.

So, that’s a bit scary when you think about what the NDAA defines as the new battlefield in the “War on Terror,” also known as the fucking world. It’s also scary when you think about the cause and effect of maybe changing the language of the NDAA to excluding “American Citizens.” But Wait, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Yes, of course it would be, but this little act would then create a nice loophole, whereby the police stat could strip you of your citizenship, which means you would then be subject to the fully outlined intent of section 1031 of the NDAA. They got you coming and going boy oh boy that they do.

It’s no surprise to me that the Enemy Expatriation Act was co sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is also on record saying that the NDAA is great and that America should have a China like national internet policy, or censorship – which is a nice little segue to the last three issues I wanted to discuss in this post.

PIPA, SOPA and ACTA…or three acronyms you really should hate, if you love the internet.

I’m going to start off with ACTA as it has had, literally, zero coverage in the media and is just as detrimental as PIPA and SOPA. I think you’ll really be shocked at what ACTA is and what it can do.

ACTA, or better yet, the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is an international treaty, signed by President Obama in October of 2011, that would or will allow companies in countries throughout the world to request or demand that internet service providers (ISP’s) remove any content on the web that might be infringing on their copyright status, in the U.S. without the need for legal oversight. Boo-yah.

Here’s the fucking terrible thing.

So what does this mean…it means that under ACTA, which is actually being called an “Executive Agreement” or as many would like to see it read “Unconstitutional,” if you ran a website, say like this one, and you had some content that a company in say, China, that great bastion of civil liberties, believes that your content in some way infringes on its status as copyright holder, imagine say A LINK or a PHOTO or what 99% of the fucking internet is comprised of, the ISP you use would be required and told to take down your site, without a court order. Or read, without any chance of due process, legal action, legal need or protection form the mega corporations. Yeah, and you thought SOPA and PIPA were bad? Well, there you have it, they are already basically in effect.

SOPA and PIPA …well there’s been a wealth of information since the blackout and the protests and everything, but I will direct you to is wonderful article : All About SOPA and PIPA

SOPA and PIPA were initially designed to do two things. The first was to make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. This would have been bad for everyone because such a measure doesn’t actually prevent piracy. The reason that blocking a domain name isn’t effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if lifehacker.com were blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to completely render this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. As a result, the IP-blocking provisions have been removed from both bills.

The other, still-active measure present in the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow rights holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed.

If you read the article there’s even more there that my puny blockquote can’t handle.

SO LET’s Put the cogs together

With the NDAA you have the detention of American citizens, defined as combatants,anywhere in the world without legal due process, even if we were to strip the NDAA of its power to do so, the Enemy Expatriation Act would circumnavigate any remaining civil liberties we have, SOPA, PIPA and ACTA all serve as a way to thwart the opposition, dissent and free exchange of ideas on the internet via the terrible idea that copyright is gospel truth. Now think about it. No rights, no freedoms, no dissent, no alternative viewpoints = complete and total police state.

I know, it seems like a grand conspiracy, nearly too loony to be true, but if there is any precedent in history it is that power given and taken is power used and abused. We have to bring awareness to these five issues, we have to write, email and call our congresspeople and representatives, we have to stand with the ACLU and other organizations that oppose these measures and lastly we all have to get involved. We can’t achieve anything by violence, we can’t achieve anything by raging against this police state machine, we can only achieve our means by peaceful demonstration, joining forces and becoming aware of these issues and letting those who we elect, pay and support to represent us that we will not stand by while our lives are taken over.

You are the resistance, now resist