Give Me Your Papers Now!

The Watchman on the Wall is pleased to announce that my readership now reachs 115,000 people worldwide. Yeshua Akbar! 

Jeff Berwick wrote this article.

Russia began abolishing its outdated internal passport system back in 2011, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which tells us that such registration documents were created during Stalin’s time to monitor domestic migration – and people’s movements in general.

The US is traveling in exactly the opposite direction (toward fascism rather than away from it) with the recent dictate by the Department of Homeland Security that certain driving licenses contravene stronger standards demanded by 2005’s Real ID Act.

Four states plus American Samoa were deemed to be issuing insufficiently secure drivers’ licenses and thus residents in these unhappy states will have to produce passports in lieu of licenses when taking domestic flights.

Over 30 million people in New York, New Hampshire, Louisiana and Minnesota are going to be affected. They have to go out and buy expensive passports to show the TSA – one of the most ineffective bureaucracies operating in the US – that they are legit American citizens.

The irony is huge. A national “authority” that can hardly provide proof of stopping a single, definitive terrorist plot is now tasked by its boss, DHS, to ensure that millions of US citizens use “enhanced IDs.”

If there really WERE any terrorists operating in the US, federal government agencies might at least have a rational reason when it comes to implementing enhanced Real ID standards. It wouldn’t be a good or democratic argument, but at least it could provide a justification.

As it is, the only justification for Real ID is that the 9/11 Committee recommended stronger standards to ensure that terrorists would never be able to attack large US buildings with impunity again.

The trouble with the 9/11 recommendations is that the Committee`s research has basically been disavowed by participants. Here, from SalemNews.com:

In John Farmer’s book: “The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11″, the author builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version… is almost entirely untrue…  The details of this massive cover-up are carefully outlined in a book by John Farmer, who was the Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission.  Farmer, Dean of Rutger Universities’ School of Law and former Attorney General of New Jersey, was responsible for drafting the original flawed 9/11 report.  Does Farmer have cooperation and agreement from other members of the Commission? Yes. Did they say Bush ordered 9/11? No. Do they say that the 9/11 Commission was lied to by the FBI, CIA, Whitehouse and NORAD? Yes. Is there full documentary proof of this? Yes.   

Bear in mind, Farmer was Senior Counsel for the Commission – and he is claiming in his book (published in 2009) that every part of the “official version” was based on fakery.

The above excerpt points out that Farmer does not go so far as to accuse Bush or others around him of ordering 9/11. However, that accusation is now being made by another well-placed mainstream individual, the new leader of Britain’s Labor Party, arguably one of the most powerful men in his country.

Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that 9/11 was “manipulated” to make it look like Osama Bin Laden was responsible to allow the West to go to war in Afghanistan. In comments that will raise questions about his suitability to lead the Labour Party, Mr Corbyn appeared to blame George Bush and Tony Blair for using the September 11 attacks in New York to allow them to go to war. In a series of further articles, Mr Corbyn also appears to endorse controversial conspiracy theories about a “New World Order”.

Even if one doesn’t subscribe to Corbyn’s “conspiracy theory” – that millions for good reason don’t find conspiratorial at all – the idea that US Homeland Security is charging ahead with what amounts to an internal US passport system is ludicrous.

Such a system is so bad, so entirely retrograde, that we can find its roots in the Axis countries of the Second World War and of course in Communist countries of the same period. It is no accident that that system came under attack after the fall of the USSR.

The idea that leviathan has the authority to track, trace and limit one’s travel ought to frighten the living daylights out of any US citizen concerned with fundamental constitutional rights.

Homeland Security – a Bush concocted authoritarian facility – has been trying to implement “Real ID” for years and has received so much pushback that it isn’t much further along than it was when this disastrous nonsense was first passed in 2005.

Yet Real ID is making some progress. It’s unfortunate that after endless pressure many states have complied with “enhanced ID” standards. Homeland is now targeting states that are still holding out. Accompanying the latest, unfortunate ruling was the following Homeland statement:

States have made considerable progress in meeting this key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to make driver’s licences and other identification more secure and every state has a more secure driver’s licence today than before the passage of the act. We will continue to work with states ahead of phase four enforcement, which will affect identification requirements for boarding aircraft.

This statement doesn’t mention the crux of the controversy, which is that once US IDs are homogenized, the federal government will be able to easily implement a “universal ID.” This sort of ID would no doubt involve regular tracking of all US citizens and also sharply limit freedom of movement for those who were perceived of being “enemies of the state” for whatever reason.

Getting rid of internal passports is something that Russians have been fighting for. Unfortunately, we read in Wikipedia that abolishment of the system has not taken place. Instead, “universal electronic” ID cards are being rolled out this year.

No doubt Homeland Security is over in Russia taking notes.