Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Glad someone finally figured it out... Does this mean they'll be getting rid of the real threats to our freedom, like the Patriot Act and Bush?
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Maybe soon someone will see that this whole security thing is a farce. Saying it has prevented terrorist attacks is like Bush holding up a stick and declaring the stick repels Gorillas. -- Well you don't see any gorillas do you?? It's a farce and it's freaky that you're all falling for it!
Stop being lemmings. Question your leaders. Listen to Jon Stewart!
You put men on the moon; there has to be some smart people in the country...get them out of the closet...and make one of the president. PLEASE!
Its a logical conclusion really...I can imagine a massive crowd waiting behind two detectors for someone to find their change. Not to mention the liberty issue.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Bravo! I believe it was Ben Franklin who said "Those who would exchange liberty for security will neither get nor deserve either."
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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
...activist judges! I bet terrorists have infiltrated the judiciary - we better dissolve it!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
An judge also ruled that fear of a murder attempt is not sufficient reason to search individuals at a public place because we will never eliminate all murder.
The judge then retired to his gated community after checking in with the security guard.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
This would be one thing if the ability to use such information was strictly limited to terrorism cases, but it's not. It essentially gives government a whole new set of tools to get anyone they really want to get, and they don't even have to hide the wiretaps and other (once illegal) searches and intercepts any more.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I wish Slashdot would just report political news without the slant. Anyway, while the Summary stated that
"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...""
The article said "In the absence of some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate this protest, there is no basis for using Sept. 11 as an excuse for searching the protesters,". Which is nice and all, but I would feel a lot better if the word "international" wasn't in there. There have been Terrorists born and raised in America.
I noticed many people quoting Ben Franklin in the comments to this article. Do you realize you are quoting him out of context? He did write (and often said) "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Do you know what he was referring to? Not Al Quadia or their ilk for sure. He was talking about welfare and the welfare state. The essential liberty he spoke of was our right not to be unreasonably taxed by the government. Surely if he saw our government today with all of it's socialist programs he would roll over in his grave.
If you read some of his writing you will find many quotes to that effect. Such as
God helps them that help themselves.
It would seem that the branch of government most concerned about our civil liberties is the one that isn't directly elected. Direct elections aren't always the best way to guard our liberty.
Way to go wikipedia!
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
#1. Terrorist attacks have increased around the world since Bush took office. Far from winning the war against terror, we seem to be losing it (look at our deficit).
:)
#2. If you count attacks on US citizens, there has been a huge increase in terrorist attacks against us. Sure, they're mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the terrorists don't have to travel too far.
Destroying terrorist training camps and other operations in Iraq.
Prior to our invasion, there was only one confirmed training camp. And we were protecting it. It was in our "no fly zone".
Doing the U.N.'s work for them, despite its corruption and weakness.
Strange how the UN inspectors came to the conclusion that Iraq did not have "WMD's" before Bush did. In fact, Bush and Co. still spout off about "WMD's" that Iraq had (and moved or destroyed before we invaded or whatever).
Setting an example that if you screw with the U.S., we'll kick your ass.
Yet Iraq did not "screw with the U.S.". Rather, it appears that we did so to control their oil.
Put political pressure on Iran by surrounding it with two liberated countries with newly-created democracies.
Rather, wait until Iraq elects a Theocracy. Or will we go in and overthrow their legally elected government?
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.
No yellow cake was in Iraq. The reason no one mentions it is because it does not exist.
All of this was clearly stated before 2003, it's just that Bush made the mistake of stressing the WMD issue more.
That wasn't a "mistake". That is what regular people call a "lie".
Some stats for 2002 from Planned Parenthood:
Abortion procedures comprise less than 4% of the services Planned Parenthood provides. Consider also the fact that more than 42% of the services Planned Parenthood provides are directly geared towards preventing unplanned pregnancies. Now think about how many more unwanted children/abortions there might be if not for Planned Parenthood.
2) Even if we only look at those stats (i'll use the more recent numbers) and conclude that only 7% of the pregnant women Planned Parenthood treats choose non-abortive options, you cannot conclude that this is because of bias inherent in Planned Parenthood itself. You must take into account the fact that there are far more providers of prenatal care and adoption counseling than there are abortions. In essence, people wanting abortions often have PP as their only option, while those seeking other options have many choices. That suggests that the bias does not exist in Planned Parenthood, but in the clients who come there.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
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)