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Patriot Act to be Expanded
m4dm4n writes "It seems that the patriot act is being expanded rather than scaled back after a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee. The FBI has gained new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, as well as the ability to designate subpoenas as secret and punish disclosure of their existence with up to one year in prison."
How do...
Why is it...
Well, it might be some sort of plan. See "The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism here. Interesting note:
"As of January 2004, the United States fulfills all fourteen points of fascism and all seven warning signs are present. But we're not alone. Israel also fulfills all fourteen points and all seven warning signs as well. Welcome to the new republic, redefined, revised and spun. It is not too late to reverse this in either country, but it will be soon. The first step is realizing it. The second step is getting involved. As the propaganda slogan disguising our current war goes, "Freedom isn't free." But our war for freedom isn't abroad; it's here at home."
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Well, then things are going to happen sooner rather than later, as it was on the news today (well, at least here in Belgium) that 36 million americans live in a family where there is not enough food.
Just a bit of history
Thomas Jefferson pushed the bill of rights ever more forcefully as his french friends began to meet the french razor for their accused state in Paris etc. To be blunt, the bill of rights is not something to prevent us from handling terrorism. It is something to prevent the worst kind of terrorism. STATE TERRORISM by a government who arrests without warrant... Jails on evidence obtained by rash seizures and private secret searches... and which keeps anyone who opposes it marked as enemies of the state.
I have been at some length of effort to determine if the Patriot Act as now constituted has any functionality useful for Anti-terrorism. Bluntly it has none. It hasn't even been used for that purpose effectively. The few arrests under it resulted in charges which were so blithly messed up by the Federal agents that they were useless. If you are inclined to believe some of these arrestees were guilty, the US Attorney General and et al were practically enemy agents sabotaging the cases. If you believe the charged were innocent the Attorney General and his minions were playing Gestapo. Even more scary is the reality that both conditions are probably true!
The bottom line is that no additional powers were needed after 911. The USA was not some phlebe in the world without laws or well practiced experience handling such events. Contrary to the claims that we were, terrorism was noted in the US Declaration of Independence. It has ruled US History until about 1940. The Indian Wars and much more were halmarked by such events. The USA does not need to suspend its legal/constitutional protections in order to deal with Al Qaeda. This act and its extension are just plain wrong. The few effective enforcements we know about are even more scary when we find that they were applied to affairs having nothing to do with any acts of terrorism.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
What would you notice? Well, let's see, we directly helped kill a Red Light Camera bill (spy camera issues tickets), and we've got people doing a variety of both political and civil disobedience issues... it's still early, so we don't have tons of " 'We' did this", but we've got a voice and some momentum.
No specific towns. Manchester is the _largest_ city (100K), and one activist there told me that if he had a dozen people working together, he could work miracles there. We don't need a 'Free Town' specifically... or a Free County. NH's setup is such that we can do a lot with just a vocal activist minority.
Job prospects? NH has no income or sales tax, much of it is less than 1 hour from Boston, and it has the lowest unemployment rate around.
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
The British, for example, have a much lower threashold to search and sieze, as well as detain without trial. England is not alone however.
I guess what I'm saying, with about 5 minutes worth of research, is, it's not wise to throw stones if you live in a glass house.
A point...
Although it can be said that the Nazi's borrowed some ideas from mainstream socialist thought such as the expansion of social benifits in the form of programs such as old age pensions, they did not follow many of the core principles of socialism. They opposed the concept of class conflict that is key to most socialist thought. Moreover, their embrace of nationalism, a idealist philosophy, is in direct conflict with the materialist beliefs of most developed forms of socialism. Additionally, most of the more socialist oriented members of the nazi party were killed in the "The Night of the Long Knifes" which was a purge of the left-wing of the Nazi party that Hitler used to consolidate his power. The Nazi government should not be viewed as socialist, but rather corporatist in that Hitler utilized powerful corporations (VW, BMW, MB, etc...) in order to acheive his production goals rather than acheive them directly though the state.
There are a great many who do care, and we have been fighting for quite some time now. I used to read stuff like this on Slashdot, get all worked up, post, then do nothing and wonder why I felt so dissatisfied. Then I realized that no one else was doing anything about it, dammit, so I had to. I started a grassroots political organization here in New York that has swelled to 15,000 people.
Last election cycle we took back three state senate seats from the neo-cons, and fought really hard on two others, getting the one to within 8% of victory and the other to within a mere 18 votes! That puts us 4 seats out from regaining a majority in state senate, and in turning back the neo-con tide here in New York. We also fought really hard to remove a Bush rubber stamp Congressman called Vito Fossella from the district in Staten Island. Got our guy to within 8% again, but because of our efforts the party is now going to focus money and support on that race in 2006.
Right now we're working on NYC races for mayor, etc., but really planning for the mid-term elections in 2006. We're 15 seats out from recapturing the House of Representatives, people. What does that mean? The ability to launch congressional investigations into Cheney's deals with Big Oil, who leaked Valery Plame's name to the press, the Downing Street memo that confirmed that Bush lied to the American public to get them to invade Iraq, etc., etc. It means we can impeach, imprison (at Guantanamo!), and expunge this blight from our country and world.
So get out there and help! The neo-cons are petrified of the idea that Americans will wake up and start fighting back. It doesn't matter where you are in the country, fight back. We vastly outnumber them.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Bush is not a patriot. He is killing everything that America once stood for.
Arlen Specter
711 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-4254
Dianne Feinstein
331 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3841
Mike DeWine
140 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-231
Joe Biden
201 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-5042