It is now time to think about the unthinkable. Americans who have been raised to love their country and trust in their leaders’ commitment to democracy need to be considering–even planning for–emigrating to escape before full-blown tyranny arrives in the United States.

You and Your Family Can Be Trapped in a Matter of Hours

Don’t be lulled into complacency because neither you nor your friends have been hauled out of bed by the Gestapo in the middle of the night. The heavy hand of an unrestrained government is already being felt among some targeted groups, and the mechanisms necessary to institute a totatlitarian state that will impact the daily lives of all Americans are already in place. Within a matter of hours, the power of the imperial federal executive can be invoked to freeze your assets and prevent you from traveling within or out of the United States.

Do you still believe that your money is your own, and that you can do with it what you want? Then you have a lot to learn about how federal control of your money has grown in the last 15 years. Many ordinary Americans, people who are far from being terrorists or even political activists, have already encountered the Bank Secrecy Act and the features of the Patriot Act that have made it even more restrictive. Benedictine sisters at the Holy Name Monastery in Florida couldn’t understand why their checks were bouncing back in 2005. A call to the bank revealed that their account had been frozen–by the bank–because one 80 year-old signatory on the account had not provided her Social Security number as required by the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act.

Federal law now requires banks to provide strict oversight of customers’ accounts, ostensibly to counter money laundering and terrorist funding. Banks must first collect extensive information about depositors so that they have clear evidence of customers’ identities, and then share this information with federal agencies. They must file Suspicious Activity Reports with FinCEN whenever there is “unusual” activity out of the customer’s normal pattern of behavior in addition to the more widely known Cash Transaction Reports filed whenever there are cash deposits or withdrawals in excess of $10,000. Finally, they must respond quickly with information and other “appropriate action” whenever a customer’s name is on the “Control List” formed from information collected from federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Banks are anxious to avoid the wrath of the federal officials who regulate them closely, and are quick to share information and even freeze accounts if there is any question about a customer. John Byrne, an official of the American Bankers’ Association, testifying before the House Financial Services Committee in February, 2002, was proud of bankers’ efforts to satisfy federal requests:

We have also been diligently responding to the various lists that the government has been distributing to either block or freeze accounts or to notify law enforcement that a particular individual has an account with a specific institution.

If a federal or local law enforcement agency decides to put you on the “Control List,” you will lose access to your bank assets within hours.

You probably already know something about the lists that can prevent you from traveling by air. The F. B. I. created the original “no-fly” list in 1990, but the Patriot Act created a new agency, the Transportation Security Administration, to implement the list after 9/11. At the beginning of September, 2001, there were 16 people on the list. Now, European airlines, who must check the list before boarding passengers bound for the U. S., report it contains over 80,000 names.

There are actually two lists. One is a strict “no-fly” list of individuals who are not allowed to board planes at all. The larger list is the “selectee” list. People who turn up on the selectee list have their boarding passes marked with an “S” which signals security personnel to pull them out of line and subject them to stricter searches and often extensive questioning. Those who have missed flights because of begin detained or prevented from flying altogether include political active individuals on the left and right and critics of the Bush administration, intelligence services and the Iraq war.

The TSA and the agency that actually compiles the list, the Transportation Security Intelligence Service, refuse to divulge the sources for the names added to the list. They do admit that the number of names increases “almost daily” as various federal and possibly local agencies submit information.

Again, if an agency decided to submit your name, this computerized system would be able to block you from being able to travel within minutes.

If you think you can evade the TSA by getting to Canada and flying from there, think again. Transport Canada expects to have a no-fly list in place by the end of the year despite the objections of Canadian civil liberties groups and the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Nations that move toward totalitarianism follow a common series of steps as they eliminate freedom. While rhetoric aimed at target groups may begin with “love it or leave it,” before long authoritarian states enact restrictions on emigrees taking assets out of the country and even on emigration itself. In the United States, those restrictions are already in place, but are currently enforced selectively against a fairly small number of people to avoid arousing too much controversy. Modern computer technology enables authorities to use the laws and systems now in place to expand the application of these restrictions far more widely to groups and individuals identified through the government’s vast, illegal data gathering effort of the past few years. Those who hear themselves targeted as “traitors,” “fifth columnists,” “degenerates,” etc.–in other words, Muslims, gays, atheists, leftists, antiwar activists, dissenters and others–should realize that they could find themselves blocked from leaving the country even before other elements of a fascist state are put in place. […]

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/emigration.php

Real Americans don’t run. They fight!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 4:30 pm and is filed under life.