Trained Firefighters Search for Thought Crimes

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Before you know it we'll be getting arrested for just thinking bad thoughts about our corrupt officials!


It's like a chapter out of Orwell's 1984: the New York City fire department is working closely with the Ministry of Homeland Security.

The Homeland Security Department is testing a program with the New York City fire department to share intelligence information so firefighters are better prepared when they respond to emergency calls. Homeland Security also trains the New York City fire service how to identify material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities. If it is successful, the government intends to expand the program to other major metropolitan areas reports the International Herald Tribune.

They're really doing technical inspections, and if perchance they find something like, you know, a bunch of RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) rounds in somebody's basement, I think it's a no-brainer, said Jack Tomarchio, a senior official in Homeland Security's intelligence division. The police ought to know about that; the fire service ought to know about that; and potentially maybe somebody in the intelligence community should know about that.

It's a no-brainer there is a Constitution and a Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment explicitly states: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Mr. Tomarchio, in order to make excuses for violating the Constitution, throws out a worse case scenario: RPGs stashed in somebody's basement. New York City is not Fallujah and New City fire fighters are not members of the Army Rangers. But never mind. You might be hiding Osama in the cellar.

It's not simply the remote possibility you may have a bundle of RPGs or an M240 GPMG machine gun in the closet. It's also your attitude toward the state:

Even before the federal program began, New York firefighters and inspectors had been training to recognize materials and behavior the government identifies as signs of planning and support for terrorism.

When going to private residences, for example, they are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress.

No doubt there are people who are hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States. Once upon a time, it was your right to be uncooperative, even if your house was on fire. However, since everything changed, that is to say since the false flag operation on September 11, 2001, hate or discontent with the United States has been redefined as simply disagreeing with the government.

Moreover, it is, or rather was, your right, under the Second Amendment, to keep firearms or weapons boxes, but this is now proof positive you're with al-Qaeda. As well, owning still and video cameras, especially if you have problems with the government, is now considered terrorism.

It's not simply New York where the Ministry and local firefighters and emergency workers cooperate to decimate the Bill of Rights. Separately, the fire services in Washington, the nation's capital, Phoenix, Arizona, and Atlanta, Georgia, also have received terror-related intelligence training. Los Angeles County provides intelligence training so firefighters and inspectors can spot dangerous chemicals or other materials that could be used in bombs. And the fire service is also represented in at least 13 state and regional intelligence fusion centers across the country, where local, state and federal agencies share information about terror and other crimes.

Other crimes? You know, like smoking marijuana or pirating the local cable signal. Obviously, you're with al-Qaeda.

We can walk into your house. We don't need a search warrant, said Larry Schultz, an assistant fire chief in charge of operations in the District of Criminals. If an ambulance team should show up at a house and see detailed maps of the district's public transit system on the wall, that is something the EMS provider would pass along, he said.

Can't remember where the el-stop is? Need a map? You're with al-Qaeda.

Violating the Fourth Amendment is considered evolution of the fire service, according to Bob Khan, the fire chief in Phoenix, which has created an information-sharing arrangement between the fire service and law enforcement through terrorism liaison officers­. Because firefighters are on the front lines, the fire service needs to know about intelligence that could somehow affect what they dosaid Gregory Cade, who as head of the U.S. Fire Administration is the nation's top fire chief.

Obviously, if you'e hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States, this could somehow affect what firefighters do, especially now that they are part of the new intelligence fusion centers, described as a collaborative effort of two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise, and/or information to the center with the goal of maximizing the ability to detect, prevent, apprehend, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity.

As should be expected in a police state, mundane criminal behavior or instance, watering your lawn on Tuesday instead of Thursday, or removing that tag on your mattress is considered terrorist activity. Naturally, the Ministry wants to know about this and that's hy they established the fusion centers.

I exaggerate. But only a little.

But let's get down to the nitty gritty here. Our rulers have specific concerns in mind: If, for example, Washington is hosting an International Monetary Fund meeting where there will be a large group of protesters and a truckload of gasoline has been stolen in Baltimore, firefighters need to know about intelligence from overseas that terrorists are trying to make explosive devices out of gasoline, Schultz said.

In other words, people opposed to the loan sharking of the IMF are likely to steal gas trucks and blow things up. In such an environment, the Constitution is not only irrelevant, it is dangerous.

If in the conduct of doing their jobs they come across evidence of a crime, of course they should report that to the police, said the ACLU. But you don't want them being intelligence agents.

I guess the ACLU is behind the curve.

In a police state, everybody doubles as an informer and snitch. As Winston Smith knew all too well, one is surrounded night and day by informers in a dictatorship. Your neighbors, even your own children, might tell intelligence agents at the local fusion center that you are hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States, especially if you have some Ron Paul literature about or, in a worse case scenario, an Alex Jones DVD on the coffee table when EMS responds after grandma has a heart attack.

Finally, if the Ministry has its way, your local firefighters and operatives at the local fusion center may soon be one in the same. At the height of the recent California wildfire disaster, Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff unveiled a plan to reinforce the nation's multihazard fusion centers with expert firefighters, reports Government Computer News.

Chertoff told the International Association of Fire Chiefs that in the federal government, we're trying to integrate fire operations into the very fabric of DHS. Our National Operations Center now has a Fire Desk.

Chertoff added that the center includes a fire service representative who works alongside officials from organizations such as the FBI, other law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community.

Charlie Allen, DHS assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis, is spearheading a drive to add firefighting experts to state and local fusion centers, Chertoff said.

He acknowledged in the speech that some might ask what role firefighters would play at fusion centers dominated by police and intelligence experts.

Answering his rhetorical question, Chertoff said that in many cases, the first person to arrive at the scene of an explosion or fire is a firefighter or other first responder. That person's observations and conclusions might indicate that the source of the outbreak is not an accident but a criminal or terrorist act.

Again, note the merging together of criminal and terrorist, as if the two are inseparable. Since it is now a crime to be hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States, it might be a good idea to take that Ron Paul 2008 bumper sticker off your car, lest the neighborhood cop or firefighter reports you to the local fusion center.

Remember, as the corporate media reminds us, Ron Paul supporters are no different than Timothy McVeigh and the volunteer firefighter down the street might be a Glenn Beck fan.

[sometimeman]

Thanks Short for posting this.

[taylor]

This scares me! I had no idea I was "in" with Al Queda! I do, in fact, own a digital camera, a video camera, and several firearms and the ammo that goes with them! OMG! I also have grown children that could snitch on me! Gee, I hope my house doesn't catch on fire!

Please oh please, God save the Constitution and make it a working document!

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AMEN TAYLOR! I found that article on www.blacklistednews.com. I can't remember who but I think someone here mentioned the site, some of their stuff is a little out in left field but alot of the articles there make alot of sense. I am discontented with all levels of the government to a certain extent, I have guns and ammunition in my house. Uh oh, I have a map of Union County hanging on the wall in my bedroom. I must be in with al-qaeda also!

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Fascism and the “Evolution of the Fire Service”

Published on Friday, November 30, 2007.





Source: TruthNews - Kurt Nimmo

According to a Phoenix, Arizona, fire chief quoted by David Edwards and Muriel Kane of Raw Story, firefighters snooping around inside your home, looking for suspicious material that may indicate you might be less than enthusiastic about the government, represents an “evolution of the fire service.”
Actually, what it represents is the death of the Bill of Rights, specifically the Fourth Amendment.

Like the First and Second Amendments, the Fourth is fundamental to the Bill of Rights. It arises from the old English maxim, ”Every man’s house is his castle,” and has precedent in a legal case going back to 1603.

In Semayne’s Case, it was decided that an “execution of process” had to be announced, that the King’s agents simply couldn’t break down the door or walk in unannounced. In another case, Entick v. Carrington, general warrants not showing probable cause were ruled against when agents of the crown raided homes in search of polemical pamphlets attacking not only governmental policies but the King himself. In the colonies, English authorities made use of writs of assistance, which were general warrants authorizing the bearer to enter any house or other place to search for and seize ”prohibited and uncustomed” goods, mostly smuggled and thus untaxed goods. The Fourth grew directly out of this experience.

Now, more than two hundred years later, we are so lax, so distracted, or so ignorant as to not understand that a fireman poking around in our desk as he conducts an “inspection” amounts to the same sort of abuse inflicted on colonists by agents of the King.

Of course, fire chiefs who believe they have the right to search for “material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities,” that is to say material and behavior “hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States,” likely do not consider themselves fascist in the traditional sense. If they think about it at all, no doubt the more intelligent fire chiefs among us consider “fascism” little more than an outmoded, pejorative epithet, a word that conjures up images of Hitler and maybe Mussolini. For as George Orwell said, the word is almost completely meaningless, because it is used to describe all manner of bullies and thus divorced from the political context.

However, whether they realize it or not, firemen who snoop around looking for evidence of political crimes are foot soldiers for an authoritarian political ideology, even if they do not fully comprehend this ideology. In a dictionary definition sense, fascism is typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life and this is precisely what our rulers are attempting to do.


As Mike German, a former FBI agent, told Keith Olbermann, the Department of Homeland Security — let us call this agency what it really is, the “Ministry” of Homeland Security, an apropos if not frightening reference to Orwell — is attempting to turn firefighters into government spies, or more politely “intelligence gatherers.” In response to Olbermann’s question about firefighters now tasked with the job of ferreting out materials that may express “discontent” with the government. Mr. German said: “Anytime you look at these stories, they always focus on certain reading materials, terrorist propaganda they might call it… and their focus on literature. Of course, again, there is a First Amendment in operation too, so we are concerned that is where the firefighters are turning their attention.”

However, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes so aptly noted, a “page of history is worth a volume of logic,” that is to say during “times of war” (even undeclared wars), the Constitution and the Bill of Rights become the first victims. “It is difficult to read our constitutional history,” explains Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas, “without believing that the Constitution is often reduced at best to a whisper during times of war.” Constitutional liberties were restricted during the Civil War (or more accurately, the “Northern War of Aggression”), World War I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. According to constitutional experts and commentators, however, the coming suppression of liberty may make the abuses of those past conflicts pale by way of comparison.

“Experts disagree on what effect the war on terrorism will have on First Amendment freedoms. Some constitutional experts say the most egregious affronts to the Constitution have occurred in the Fourth Amendment arena. But many believe that freedom of speech will be curtailed,” warns David Hudson, writing for the Freedom Forum.

“I am very worried that there will be more efforts to suppress speech if the war on terrorism drags on,” explains Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at the University of Southern California.

Indeed, if the neocons have their way, the “war on terrorism,” actually a war on liberty at home in the name of globalist fascism, will drag on for a hundred years or more.

It’s not called the “Long War” for nothing.

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NYPD Intelligence Division Officer: “We Are in the Business of Scaring People”

Published on Friday, December 07, 2007.






Source: Cryptogon

Seeing these fascist pigs standing around reminds me of the film, Michael Collins; where the IRA started walking up to British agents and shooting them where they slept and stood. (See: The Cairo Gang Assassinations.)
Obviously, I’m not suggesting that you should shoot these fascist pigs, because that would be a waste of your time and energy. The state will just mint more fascist pigs after it tortures and kills you for your effort.

For Americans, taking your money off the table harms the people who are behind all of this madness much more than shooting their minions.

Via: Popular Mechanics:

No one sees them coming. There are no flashing lights, no sirens. The black Suburban simply glides out of Fifth Avenue traffic and pulls into a no-parking zone in front of the Empire State Building. Moments later, four men spill out in combat helmets and heavy body armor: Two carry submachine guns; the others, snub-nosed shotguns.

Camera-toting tourists stop jabbering and stare at this intimidating new presence, their faces a mixture of curiosity and fear. Even jaded New Yorkers, many of whom work inside the midtown Manhattan landmark, look impressed.

A stone’s throw down the sidewalk, Abad Nieves watches the scene unfold. Nieves is a detective with the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Casually clad in slacks and a black leather jacket, he monitors the response of people loitering in the area. Is anyone making notes or videotaping? Does anyone seem especially startled by the out-of-the-blue appearance of a heavily armed NYPD squad?

On this day, Nieves doesn’t see anything overly suspicious, but he is pleased that the deployment created a strong impression. Known as a Hercules team, it makes multiple appearances around the city each day. The locations are chosen either in response to specific intelligence or simply to provide a show of force at high-profile sites.

“The response we usually get is, ‘Holy s—!’” Nieves says. “That’s the reaction we want. We are in the business of scaring people–we just want to scare the right people.”

…

“Clearly, New York is way in front on this,” says Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corp. “As the threat gets more diffused, we are going to have less of the kind of intelligence that can be picked up by the feds. We are dealing now with threats that are deliberately operating under the radar. Therefore, we have to aim the radar lower, to the local level.”

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Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sought to suspend habeas corpus

Published on Saturday, December 22, 2007.






Source: RawStory

According to a newly declassified document, the New York Times reports, a plan by former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sought to suspend habeas corpus during wartime, with the intention of imprisoning thousands of Americans indefinitely.
Hoover's plan was submitted to the White House twelve days after the start of the Korean War. Under the plan, approximately 12,000 people deemed as "potentially dangerous" to national security, 97% of whom were American citizens, would have been rounded up and sent to military prisons without due process.

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EXCERPTS:

The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel comprised of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” [Hoover's] letter noted.

The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”

In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal.

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The entire New York Times article can be read HERE.

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Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime

Published on Saturday, January 05, 2008.





By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush's "surge" in Iraq? The decline in the value of the US dollar? Subprime mortgages? No. The greatest failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic Congress.
The American people's attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue government, which has committed the US to costly military adventures while running roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate has made no difference.

The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as determined as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the House passed a bill sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman, chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, that overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins and apparently faces no meaningful opposition.

Harman's bill is called the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. "When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas. The commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be government agents and fellow citizens.

We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention centers being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.

Who will be on the "extremist beliefs" list? The answer is: civil libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the administration's wars and foreign policies, critics of the administration's use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration's spying on Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group--such as environmentalists opposing politically connected developers--is also a candidate for the list.

The "Extremist Beliefs Commission" is the mechanism for identifying Americans who pose "a threat to domestic security" and a threat of "homegrown terrorism" that "cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts."

This bill is a boon for nasty people. That SOB who stole your girlfriend, that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next door--just report them to Homeland Security as holders of extreme beliefs. Homeland Security needs suspects, so they are not going to check. Under the new regime, accusation is evidence. Moreover, "our" elected representatives will never admit that they voted for a bill and created an "Extremist Belief Commission" for which there is neither need nor constitutional basis.

That boss who harasses you for coming late to work--he's a good candidate to be reported; so is that minority employee that you can't fire for any normal reason. So is the husband of that good-looking woman you have been unable to seduce. Every kind of quarrel and jealousy can now be settled with a phone call to Homeland Security.

Soon Halliburton will be building more detention centers.

Americans are so far removed from the roots of their liberty that they just don't get it. Most Americans don't know what habeas corpus is or why it is important to them. But they know what they want, and Jane Harman has given them a new way to settle scores and to advance their own interests.

Even educated liberals believe that the US Constitution is a "living document" that can be changed to mean whatever it needs to mean in order to accommodate some new important cause, such as abortion and legal privileges for minorities and the handicapped. Today it is the "war on terror" that the Constitution must accommodate. Tomorrow it can be the war on whomever or whatever.

Think about it. More than six years ago the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. The US government blamed it on al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission Report has been subjected to criticism by a large number of qualified people--including the commission's chairman and co-chairman.

Since 9/11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. The FBI has tried to orchestrate a few, but the "terrorist plots" never got beyond talk organized and led by FBI agents. There are no visible extremist groups other than the neoconservatives that control the government in Washington. But somehow the House of Representatives overwhelmingly sees a need to create a commission to take testimony and search out extremist views (outside of Washington, of course).

This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the Justice (sic) Department declared that the President can ignore habeas corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these "patriotic" views are extremist.

The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts to Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of Congress or the executive branch ever explained the need for the detention centers or who the detainees would be. Of course, there is nothing extremist about building detention centers in the US for undisclosed inmates.

Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty. Thanks to 2007's greatest failure--the Democratic Congress--there is to be an "Extremist Beliefs Commission" to secure inmates for Bush's detention centers.

President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause the "untamed fire of freedom" to "reach the darkest corners of our world." Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but also is being extinguished.

The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.

Paul Craig Robertswas Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: [e-mail]