President Obama’s National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular — completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of “national security.” Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency.

Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various executive orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden executive power in the “war on terror,” so the new Executive Order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by the president and his secretaries at their discretion.

The 2012 NDAA deemed the United States a “battlefield,” as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, and gave the president and his agents the right to seize and arrest any U.S. citizen, detain them indefinitely without charge or trial, and do so only on suspicion, without any judicial oversight or due process. The new Executive Order states that the president and his secretaries have the authority to commandeer all U.S. domestic resources, including food and water, as well as seize all energy and transportation infrastructure inside the borders of the United States. The Government can also forcibly draft U.S. citizens into the military and force U.S. citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of “national defense.” There is not even any Congressional oversight allowed, only briefings.

In the NDAA, only the president had the authority to abrogate legitimate freedoms of U.S. citizens. What is extraordinary in the new Executive Order is that this supreme power is designated through the president to the secretaries that run the Government itself:

• The Secretary of Defense has power over all water resources;
• The Secretary of Commerce has power over all material services and facilities, including construction materials;
• The Secretary of Transportation has power over all forms of civilian transportation;
• The Secretary of Agriculture has power over food resources and facilities, livestock plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment;
• The Secretary of Health and Human Services has power over all health resources;
• The Secretary of Energy has power over all forms of energy.

The Executive Order even stipulates that in the event of conflict between the secretaries in using these powers, the president will determine the resolution through his national security team.

The 2012 NDAA gave the Government the right to abrogate any due process against a U.S. citizen. The new Executive Order gives the government, through the Secretary of Labor, the right to proactively mobilize U.S. citizens for “labor” as the government deems necessary and to coordinate with the Secretary of Defense to maintain data to coordinate the nation’s work needs in relation to national defense.

What is extraordinary about the Executive Order is that, like the NDAA, this can all be done in peacetime without any national emergency to justify it. The language of the Order does not state that all these extraordinary measures will be done in the event of “national security” or a “national emergency.” They can simply be done for “purposes of national defense,” clearly a broader remit that allows the government to do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, to whomever it wants, all without any judicial restraint or due process. As Orwell famously said in 1984, “War is peace. Peace is war.” This is now the reality on the ground in America.

Finally, the 2012 NDAA was hurried through the House and Senate almost like a covert op with minimal public attention or debate. It was then signed by the president at 9:00 PM on New Year’s Eve while virtually nobody was paying attention to much other than the approaching new year. This new Executive Order was written and signed in complete secret and then quietly released by the White House on its website without comment. All this was done under a president who studied constitutional law at Harvard.

It is hard to know what to say in the face of such egregious disregard for the integrity of what America has stood and fought for since its founding. It is hard in part because none of us thought such encroachments would ever happen here, certainly not under the watch of a “progressive” like Obama.

At one level, the prospect for war with Iran is probably an immediate justification. But the comprehensiveness of the Executive Order, like that of the 2012 NDAA, speaks to something much deeper, more sinister. I would suggest that this Order, like the NDAA, has been in the works for some time and is simply the next step in the logic of the “global war on terror.” Our political elites have come to consider democracy an impediment to effective governance and they are slowly and painstakingly creating all the democratic legalities necessary to abridge our democratic rights with impunity, all to ensure our “security.” Of such measures do republics fall and by such measures tyrants emerge.

The only thing that really remains is the occasion to test the new rules of the game. Perhaps that will be war with Iran, perhaps some contrived emergency, or perhaps, as long as the public and media remain asleep, no occasion will be necessary at all. It will just slowly happen of its own accord and we, like the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water, will just sit there and be consumed by our own turpitude.

Michael Muracco is a Freelance Web Designer and PHP Programmer. He is the owner of Muracco Enterprises and founder of Mount Washington Valley Astronomy. His personal blog, Mike's Place, is a soundboard for environmental and political issues. He is also an avid amateur astronomer.

Michael Muracco

View all posts by Michael Muracco
Michaels website

Did you know that the federal government claims that it can take away your constitutional rights any time that it wants to?  Over the past several decades, there have been an endless parade of laws and executive orders that have been slowly and methodically carving up our rights under the U.S. Constitution.  Most Americans are not even aware of the “creeping totalitarianism” that is happening.  Most Americans just trust the “authorities” when they tell us that certain things “must be done” in order to keep us all safe.

Sadly, if we do give away our rights it will have some very serious consequences.  If we freely give away all of the rights that we have been given under the U.S. Constitution it will be incredibly difficult to ever get them back.  Giving up liberty for security never works, and if we want to be worthy of being called Americans then we need to start standing up for the republic that our forefathers worked so hard to build.

An executive order that Barack Obama signed the other day is making headlines all over the nation. The title of the executive order is “National Defense Resources Preparedness” and it is actually an update of a series of previous executive orders.

The original “National Defense Resources Preparedness” executive order (EO 8248) was issued back in 1939.  This latest version is very similar to EO 12919 that was signed by Bill Clinton in June 1994.  However, several very important changes have been made in this new version.

For example, in Section 201(b) the words “under both emergency and non-emergency conditions” have been added.

So now the federal government can take control of all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and “all other materials, services, and facilities” in the country even if the United States is not experiencing emergency conditions.

Not that the Obama administration really needed to put that in there.  After all, the U.S. government has been operating under a constant state of national emergency since September 14, 2001.

If Barack Obama woke up one day and decided to exercise the powers in this executive order, he would be able to do pretty much anything that he wanted.  This executive order would essentially allow Obama to declare a state of martial law in the United States even during a time when no emergency was happening.

Just check out what Section 201 of the executive order allows the federal government to take control of….

Sec. 201.  Priorities and Allocations Authorities.  (a)  The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:

(1)  the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;

(2)  the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;

(3)  the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;

(4)  the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;

(5)  the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and

(6)  the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

So should we be worried?

Bush and Clinton did not exercise these powers.

Perhaps Obama will not either.

But they are there.

And someday they will be used.

The Obama administration also continues to make shocking claims regarding our privacy.

According to the 4th Amendment, our homes are not supposed to be searched unless there is probably cause….

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.

But according to CIA director David Petraeus, the American people are willingly bugging their own homes by choosing to use modern gadgets, and the CIA plans to use these technologies to spy on you.  Petraeus recently said the following about the “transformational” impact these new technologies will have on the ability of the CIA to spy on the American people…

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing”

The kind of chips that Petraeus was referring to will soon be in nearly all new appliances.  As a recent Daily Mail articlenoted, we will soon see an “Internet of things” emerge where virtually every electronic device is connected to the Internet….

This week, one of the world’s biggest chip companies, ARM, has unveiled a new processor built to work inside ‘connected’ white goods.

The ARM chips are smaller, lower-powered and far cheaper than previous processors – and designed to add the internet to almost every kind of electrical appliance.

It’s a concept described as the ‘internet of things’.

Futurists think that one day ‘connected’ devices will tell the internet where they are and what they are doing at all times – and will be mapped by computers as precisely as Google Maps charts the physical landscape now.

But we are not going to have to wait for the future for the federal government to use the Internet to spy on us all.

The FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military and the Federal Reserve are all using Facebook and Twitter to monitor the American people.

If you post this article to Facebook and Twitter, multiple agencies of the federal government will have a record of it.

In fact, the truth is that every single phone call, every single email, every single Facebook post and pretty much every other kind of electronic communication that you can imagine is monitored by intelligence agencies.  Don’t ever assume that anything you say on your phone or on the Internet is private.

And now, even your ISP will be spying on you to make sure that you are not downloading any copyrighted material.

A clandestine deal coordinated by the Obama administration will go into effect on July 12th.  The following is from a recent Raw Story article….

If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.

Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.

That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.

So be careful what you are doing on the Internet.

Your ISP will be watching it all.

Even local police departments are “pushing the envelope” when it comes to surveillance technology.  For example, the NYPD is working on technology that will be able to see a gun inside your clothes from a distance of 80 feet away….

The reason that the NYPD is so interested terahertz waves is that they pass through nonconductive materials like clothes, but can’t penetrate metal — like, say, the steel in a semi-automatic pistol. That means if you scan someone, you can look for spots where a person’s natural terahertz radiation is blocked, most likely by a metal object.

The benefits for police officers are obvious. They can essentially sit back in a specially-equipped van and scan anyone they suspect of carrying a gun from a safe distance. Right now it only works from three or four feet away, but department spokesman Paul J. Browne told the New York Times that the NYPD — in coordination with the Department of Defense — hopes to increase its range to 25 meters, or 82 feet.

Unfortunately, there are dozens of other new technologies like this.  For 14 more examples of how the government is watching us, just check out this article.

Most Americans assume that these technologies will only be used against “terrorists”, but that simply is not the case.

For example, a man living in Burnsville, Minnesota was recently subjected to “electronic home monitoring” for not having the proper siding on his home….

A Burnsville man on his way to work was arrested and thrown in jail without bond, and then subjected to electronic home monitoring.

But it wasn’t for drugs or a DWI or some other major crime.

Burnsville city leaders say Mitch Faber’s dealings with the law all stem from his failure to properly put up siding on his house.

Yep, siding.

Sadly, the truth is that the United States is rapidly being turned into a high-tech Big Brother prison grid dominated by control freak bureaucrats who do not care about our liberties and freedoms.

This is not the way that America is supposed to work.

We are supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Has that dream been lost forever, or will we get it back someday?

Michael Muracco is a Freelance Web Designer and PHP Programmer. He is the owner of Muracco Enterprises and founder of Mount Washington Valley Astronomy. His personal blog, Mike's Place, is a soundboard for environmental and political issues. He is also an avid amateur astronomer.

Michael Muracco

View all posts by Michael Muracco
Michaels website