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Court says: 'Terror Fears Can't Curb Liberty'
jettoblack writes "Finally, a glimmer of sanity... according to the AP, "Fear of a terrorist attack is not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled..." Another great quote: "We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over..." Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the panel. "Sept. 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.""
The right to assemble is the part of the first amendment most often trampled upon, and least often affirmed, but this is a victory!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
It doesn't sound to me like they were going to actually be going inside the instillation, i usually think of vigils as a bunch of people standing in the street, of course i could very well be wrong ....
In case anyone is still unaware of the School of the Americas: here is an exerpt from a website with the stated intent of closing said school (soaw.org).
SOA graduates have included many of the most notorious human rights abusers from Latin America. SOA graduates have led military coups and are responsible for massacres of hundreds of people. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. SOA graduates were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the Jesuit massacre in El Salvador, the La Cantuta massacre in Peru, the torture and murder of a UN worker in Chile, and hundreds of other human rights abuses. In September 1996, under intense pressure from religious and grassroots groups, the Pentagon released seven Spanish-language training manuals used at the SOA until 1991. The New York Times reported, "Americans can now read for themselves some of the noxious lessons the United States Army taught thousands of Latin Americans... [The SOA manuals] recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned."
In other words, SOA has long stood accused of training people in tactics which are illegal in this country, not to mention internationally, and then sending them abroad to do their dirty work. There are also accusations that the US government sends some of its prisoners to other countries to be tourtured since it's illegal here, and also that those doing the torturing are largely American-trained.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Way to go wikipedia!
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
I disagree. I think losing faith in AmericaNS is perfectly valid.
If you think America (more specifically, the United States thereof) is nothing more than the landmass covering the middle of the North American continent, then having faith in a clump of dirt is silly, anyway.
If you think that America is the SPIRIT that this nation was born with, then losing faith in America is understandable, since AmericaNS are killing that most expediently.
If you think that America IS its citizens and those chosen to "represent" (term used very loosely) them, then losing faith in them is ENTIRELY whats called for.
As one who falls somewhere between the latter two (or rather, a combination), I have to disagree with you when you think that the majority dislike the damage done to Civil Liberties. MOST of them have the "It doesn't effect me, so who cares?" attitude so common among reality-tv-watching mouthbreathers. The REALLY loud ones (currently) are the ABB crowd, and listening to them crow about 'civil rights' is laughable at best, since the vast majority of them support such freedom-loving measures as mandatory disarming of the populace, workers mandatory subsidizing of societal leeches, etc...
In other words, they aren't bitching that Civil Rights (and I use the word "rights" instead of "liberties" intentionally) are being taken away: They're bitching that the WRONG Civil Rights are being taken away.
It's clear that the patriot act could have prevented 911.
For those of you who have missed a few episodes, the Clinton administration has reported that they were aware that terrorists were planning to attack our country before before 9/11 (and hence before the Partiot Act), and that they told Bush's administration about the impending attack. It is not clear that the Patriot Act would have prevented the events of 9/11, and furthermore, it is not clear that had the act been in place prior to 9/11 that the intelligence agencies would have taken appropriate steps to stop the events if they did not act on the information the Clinton administration gave to them.
Light is filtering down from above. Would you like to use DIVE?
then claimed "nobody ever conceived that airplanes could be used as weapons."
I always thought this was a phony assertion.
Consider that it was easily within the capabilities of domestic air defense (and automatic, standard procedure) to intercept the hijacked planes, but they were instructed to stand down.
Because our history showed that if you let the hijackers land the plane in Cuba or whereever, everyone walks away alive. Or at least the innocent passengers.
By time we knew differently, it was too late. The plane that augered into Pennsylvania shows what would happen if we did know what was planned.
If the Air Force had shot down all four airplanes, regardless of what they appeared to be doing, do you think the public outcry would be anything but just short of open revolution?
Consider that...
Do you have any credible citations for any of these tinfoil hat assertions?
The 9/11 commission, many of whom hold little love for the President didn't seem to state any of these things. Contrary to popular opinion, the odds of a conspiracy succeeding fall exponentially for every additional person involved. Can anyone sane believe that Bush is powerful enough to do this and then prevent his opponents from bringing up these charges? This is complete fantasy.
Consider that there are multiple lawsuits...
And when does anything bad happen in the U.S. that is not followed by a sting of lawsuits for every conceivable reason, no matter how outrageous?
There are many more "irregularities" than those I have raised above...
Your vague uncited statements don't convince me of anything. I'm sorry, but I don't buy the stories in Weekly World News.
Half of Americans believe in horoscopes and a huge chunk of us believe in alien abductions, crystal power, Scientology, the Trilateral Commission, faked Moon landings and any number of unprovable claims. How is this any different?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
If you attack the someone supporting terrorists, of course they are going to strike back.
...
/. masses. I know what I'm talking about. Sit back and enjoy some tasty facts.
...WMDs in Iraq (overemphasized like I stated), proven out in the fact that David Kay, et al, concluded the desire was there and no one seems to mention the 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium that can be purified into enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
...enough fuel for 140+ bombs.
You must have missed what I wrote. We are losing this fight because we cannot afford the deficits and the number of attacks are increasing.
We attacked Iraq. The only terrorists that Iraq was supporting were anti-Israeli ones. We're still not under attack from those (although they seem to be willing now).
I mistyped. I meant "Screw with the U.N.".
Whatever. It still looks like we went in to control the oil. If the UN wasn't worried, why did we have to go in?
If the war was for oil, why am I paying more for gas now?!
Again, because we are losing this "war". We're making more terrorists than we're ending and those terrorists know the vulnerabilities of the oil suppliers. On terrorist can take out one pipeline for days.
Like they had prior to Saddam Hussein? (Not.)
No. Look at the current leaders over there. See how they're all directly linked to religion? Saddam was brutal in keeping them down. Which is one of the reasons given for getting rid of him. Now that he's not there
Here's where I differ from the spittle-producing bickering ideology-spewing
I've read it. And NO WHERE does it say that Iraq had the (and here I'll quote you)
Just for the record, the only relevent bit you quote is actually on page 13 of the Nuclear section.
Of course, page 14 shows just how useless most of the uranium is for nuclear bombs.
In summary, Iraq had been allowed to retain this yellowcake uranium because it wasn't seen as an "imminent" threat by the IAEA, as the refined stuff was.
Dat's da fact, jack. Now, in order for Iraq to build a nuke, the following steps need to be followed:
#1. Iraq purchases the equipment to build a reactor.
#2. Iraq builds the reactor.
#3. Iraq refines the uranium in the reactor.
#4. Iraq uses the refined uranium in a nuclear bomb research program.
#5. Iraq develops a nuclear bomb.
So there is definately no "imminent" threat about that material.
However, it is also clear that he was playing nice to get sanctioned lifted (buying off France, for one) while maintaining the bluff that he was the badass owner of WMD's, because of his perpetual pissing contest with Iran over who had the bigger, um, weapons.
And yet the sanctions still were not lifted.
He felt he could walk this thin line until sanctions were lifted ("Oil for Food" was a good start since it was really "Oil for Bribes"), at which time he wanted to reconstitute the enrichment.
Noooooo, that would be skipping over steps #1 and #2 and going directly to step #3. That's just not possible. A nuclear program require infrastructure. And Iraq did not have that infrastructure since 1991.
There was no "imminent" threat, and the entire world was duped, but Bush stated that we needed to act before there was an imminent threat otherwise it was too late.
In other words, Bush lied. Particularly because he used the fake "evidence" of those aluminum tubes to support his claim that Iraq was working on step #1.
We could act at step #1 and still there would be no problem.
We could act at step #2 and still there would be no problem.
We could act at step #3 and still there would be no problem.
That's what the Israeli air force did. And Iraq didn't get a nuke.
I'm sure this won't convince you of anything, but I was right about the yellowcake. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!
Ummm, no. There wasn't enough material there to be refined into (another quote)