Targeted Populations & Those Who Watch Them

December 4, 2006

Again & Again Americans find themselves in the crosshairs of a government that chooses to spend trillions to spy, record and stalk ordinary Americans while at the same time utterly failing to do anything about millions of people who are here illegally-to enhance the profits of a huge number of employers. Actually, this government has proposed spending billions to build an electronic fence along the border, while claiming that "government" cannot keep track of any of the twelve to fourteen million people who are here without papers. What's wrong with this equation?

911 produced a negative income stream of trillions of dollars in costs to the economy of the United States; costs that continue to soar daily. Yet trillions are simultaneously continuing to be spent to block law-abiding citizens from their right to be different, to think independently from dictators, or to travel - yet this same government cannot even keep lawful track of those "others" who are here without papers? The reason the undocumented workers are not trackable is because those who employ them, whose responsibility it is to provide that information-simply don't. Now add to this insult-the Secret Plan of ATS-the latest outrage against Americans!

"Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals. The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

The government calls the system critical to national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts. Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department's Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

The use of the program on travelers was quietly disclosed earlier this month when the department put a notice detailing ATS in the Federal Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules." (1)

The current U.S. Government is doing everything it can to destroy any certainty that might remain for Americans in any area of their lives. We have been wiretapped, spied upon, harassed, audited, challenged and threatened at every curve in the road. These government programs are also "jobs programs" that create more negative income streams for a failed government that can't evaluate the difference between real threats (bankruptcy, retirement, medical uncertainty, and governmental lies) aided and abetted in every aspect, by the subservient media that willfully avoids asking even the most basic questions about anything that this government does "to-its-people."

Using double-speak to destroy any meaning in government agencies-the US has turned our representative government, from protecting and serving those who pay for it-into something that spies, plots and schemes against its formerly legal citizens. The result has been a police state under secret martial law, a state that prosecutes and intimidates anyone that challenges this contrived authority to censor and silence any and all criticism.

However, when the Bandits laid out these plans they overlooked several key points that once guaranteed their semi-military powers over the lives of the people. Police carry life and death on their hips, in the form of tasers and guns. The use of these instruments is supposed to be governed by rationality and a measured response to those circumstances that may appear to be life threatening. This is largely disappearing in major cities, as police have begun to shoot first and ask questions later!

Civilian police were granted their authority by those they were hired to protect, and to insure that this privilege was not abused, there was something called Posse Comitatus that did NOT allow the military to be used against the citizens of this country. The Decider has now asked for and received the elimination of Posse Comitatus - supposedly to protect Americans from "terrorists." Over this curse of the last six years, during which the congress totally vacated their oversight, the public has become road-kill for those trigger-happy and often power driven people in uniform who seem to think that they are working the streets of Baghdad. To insure that this practice can be expanded-two different US Attorney Generals have overseen sweeps of "10,000 of the most wanted fugitives." This: just to familiarize local law enforcement with what it is like to "federalized." Perhaps the third such "sweep" will not be against actual fugitives, but will instead be directed at their critics throughout this society?

In the latest case in New York where undercover officers murdered a 23-year-old man who was celebrating with friends on the eve of his marriage-until the future groom became the target of 50 bullets fired by five undercover "cops" who went on a shooting spree. The "officials" muttered about investigations and the difficulty of preventing these "unfortunate incidents" from continuing to happen. The Police Commissioner of NY failed to mention that his officers were in plain clothes and were driving unmarked vehicles. The solution to this crime is not a mystery. If those who participated in this murder, that night, were immediately arrested and charged for what they did-every man or woman in uniform would begin to pay attention to circumstances and to legal "just cause" in every case-not just in those cases that might be examined. Good law enforcement was not the goal here: because Terror-of-the-Police has become yet another part of the New World Order, in the growing national-security police-state that parts of America are trying to perfect! (2)

The unspoken rules here, that have been shattered, have to do with the compact between government and its people. There are too few police to truly control any city in America, because Americans are expected to be law-abiding citizens that will be protected from the government and the police, by the laws of the nation. When laws no longer protect most people, then people may begin to challenge the authority that daily begins to act more and more like the real enemies of those that employ them. The Laws of a nation hold society together; and while these constructs are not perfect they tend to keep anarchy in check. When people begin to see that "our laws" only protect the rich and persecute the poor and unconnected, within this two-tiered system, then instead of being valued public servants the police may soon become the targets that they seem to fear they could be seen to be.

The "law" is and always has been a two-way street-those who pervert the laws for private profit and ultimate power-will one day have to face the consequences. Our laws under the Just-US-Criminal-System are a long way from perfection, but what the Decider is continuing to do hastens the day when answers must be found for this criminal impasse.

Why does the government continue to seek these draconian methods when they deal with public, and not just the flying public-but the general population-which government increasingly tends to try and hold hostage as potentially dangerous enemies of "the state"? This government, and the several before that, have outlawed public political discourse, blocked demonstrations that do not agree with their policies, and rendered the entire political process nothing but idle gestures. The longer the public turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to these people that flaunt their self-appointed powers, while continuing to openly subjugate the same people they're supposed to serve-is to court disaster for the nation and for the world that will have to deal with our policies in the real world. If this continues, then the death and dying that too many Americans chose not to know will come here with a vengeance that shall not spare the innocent.

The politicians and lobbyists here have relied on the negative to enforce their self-appointed plans. "NO," "STOP," "ZERO-TOLERANCE" - the list is very long and it's meant to grant safety and security to this very fear-filled nation! Yet: For every freedom we surrender, for every idea we refuse to ponder, there is a price that each of us will pay in blood and treasure-whether anyone ever notices or not.

"For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction." That's a law of nature that cannot be negotiated or avoided. Consign the secret ATS targeting of passengers to the trash heap along with all those who tried to slip it past the public's awareness. But also deal forcefully with those in civilian uniforms that want to live out their unbridled fantasies that are not legal!

Jim Kirwan

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NOTES:
1) U.S. Rates Travelers for Terror Riskhttp://sfgate.com/
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2) Outrage in New Yorkwww.ibctoday.com/News/ (video)
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BACKGROUND:
Few Notice - even fewer seem to carewww.prisonplanet.com/