With the USA Patriot Act set to expire at the end of this year, and Congress mulling around even more nefarious replacements for it, it’s time to keep in mind the major items in it that make it evil (as compiled by the ACLU):
Search your home and not even tell you… by conducting secret “sneak and peek” searches of your home or office, without informing you that a warrant was issued. (SECTION 213)
Collect information about what books you read, what you study, your purchases, your medical history and your personal finances … without probable cause. (SECTION 215)
Label you a “terrorist” if you belong to an activist group … and the USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands the official definition of terrorism, so many domestic groups that engage in certain types of civil disobedience could very well find themselves labeled as terrorists. (SECTIONS 411, 802)
Monitor your e-mails and watch what internet sites you visit … by monitoring Internet traffic and e-mail communications
on any Internet service provider — *without* probable cause. (SECTION 216)
Take away your properly without even a notice or a hearing if the government merely says a person or organization has engaged in or is planning an act of “domestic terrorism.” The government could thus effectively bankrupt an organization with which it disagrees. (SECTION 806)
Spy on innocent Americans by allowing a vast array of information on U.S. citizens to be collected and shared with the CIA (and other non-law enforcement officials) without proper judicial oversight or other safeguards. (SECTIONS 203 AND 901)
Put immigrants in jail indefinitely. The USA PATRIOT Act permits indefinite incarceration of immigrants and other non-citizens without the government having to show that they are, in fact, terrorists. (SECTION 412)
Wiretap you under a warrant that doesn’t even have your name on it. Judges are required to approve a wiretap without even knowing who is to be wiretapped or where the wiretap is to be placed. (SECTION 216)
Ron Paul appeared on Larry King Live tonight following Michael Moore to refute (and agree) with some of what Moore said. It was a very good appearance by Paul. He spoke about health care, foreign policy, and the difference between capitalism and corporatism.
Ron Paul participated in a House Committee of Foreign Affairs hearing on the U.S. policy in Afghanistan yesterday. To say he was a bit passionate and animated about his views is an understatement.
“It’s time to end the whole mess!”
When watching it one gets the impression he’s made these same arguments a few too many times. Judging from his demeanor he may be getting sick of replaying the same arguments and not have anyone really listen to him. Well, a few of us are listening, and agreeing.
A year ago when the Presidential election was in full swing the main buzzword we heard out of the Obama camp was “change”. In fact, “change you can believe in”. At the time we were pretty sure it was all hogwash and his first year in office has proven that assessment to be true.
A piece by Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com a few weeks ago points out many examples how so much of Obama’s talk of change was just that: talk.
“When it comes to uprooting (’changing’) the Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism and civil liberties — the issue which generated as much opposition to the last presidency as anything else — the Obama administration has proven rather conclusively that tiny and cosmetic adjustments are the most it is willing to do.
“They love announcing new policies that cast the appearance of change but which have no effect whatsoever on presidential powers.
“With great fanfare, they announced the closing of CIA black sites — at a time when none was operating.
“They trumpeted the President’s order that no interrogation tactics outside of the Army Field Manual could be used — at a time when approval for such tactics had been withdrawn.
“They repudiated the most extreme elements of the Bush/Addington/Yoo ‘inherent power’ theories — while maintaining alternative justifications to enable the same exact policies to proceed exactly as is.
“They flamboyantly touted the closing of Guantanamo — while aggressively defending the right to abduct people from around the world and then imprison them with no due process at Bagram.
“Their ‘changes’ exist solely in theory — which isn’t to say that they are all irrelevant, but it is to say that they change nothing in practice: i.e., in reality.”
“Isn’t it so interesting how the phrase ‘Patriot Act’ was the symbol of everything Democrats claimed to find so heinous during the Bush years, but now that there’s a Democratic President, Senate and Congress, it’s absolutely certain that the Patriot Act will continue, and civil libertarians are reduced to hoping that there may be some tiny modifications to it, and even that’s highly unlikely?”
Quote of the Day: “Stare into the abyss and the abyss stares into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been celebrating the supposed success of torture as an interrogation method to protect us from terrorism. Cheney claims that . . .
* Waterboarding and sleep deprivation turned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) into the C.I.A.’s best source on Al-Qaida.
* KSM then provided information that led to the arrest of Iyman Faris, an alleged Al-Qaida sleeper agent sent to the U.S. to plan attacks on New York landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge.
* The C.I.A. officer who interrogated KSM, Deuce Martinez, said he used traditional interrogation methods, and not the infliction of pain and panic.
* And Ali Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who oversaw the interrogation of another major terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, says that Mr. Zubaydah talked before he was subjected to waterboarding and other abuse, and that “using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions.”
Whom should we believe — Mr. Cheney, or the agents who did the interrogations? The answer seems obvious. However, we believe there’s an even greater argument from principle to be made here. Even if torture were the most effective and reliable interrogation method possible, it would still be wrong to use it, both morally and practically.
* We must not become that which we claim to oppose.
* We must set an example for the world of how people should behave.
* And we must count all the costs and risks to which we subject ourselves when we violate our own most sacred values.
The whole world now knows that the supposed “land of the free and home of the brave” . . .
* Kidnaps people and sends them abroad to be tortured
* Holds people in captivity without due process
* Practices acts of torture for which it has prosecuted others
* Does not practice what it preaches
Our hypocrisy has undoubtedly recruited far more terrorist candidates than have ever been caught by using torture. The Cheney-Bush policy was, and is, self-defeating, even if it could really be demonstrated that torture occasionally results in useful information. Sadly . . .
Kathleen Wells: What are your thoughts on President Obama’s decision to release the torture memos?
Congressman Ron Paul: I think he is purely political. I think he has backed down on what he said. He was elected for change and it is the same old stuff and he is as much of a neo-con now as Bush was with this issue and other issues. The war has been expanded. He continues with not closing down Guantanamo. There is probably, for as most [sic] as we can tell, there is still secret rendition going on. We just moved some of this process overseas. We are not going to be aware of it in detail.
Kathleen Wells: You feel President Obama is a neo-con like Bush? You don’t see a distinction between the two administrations?
Congressman Ron Paul: The tone is different, but the policies don’t change. We are spreading the war. The war is expanding. We are not prosecuting those that committed torture. Guantanamo is not going to be closed down. So, no, I don’t see [a distinction between Bush and Obama].
He [Obama] increased the DOD [Department of Defense] budget. We surely could spend some of that money at home where people are really hurting. But we increased the DOD budget, I think, by 10-percent. I can’t see any significant change in foreign policy. The pretense in leaving Iraq was a mild pretense and I’m predicting that’s not going to happen. There are going to be troops in Iraq throughout this administration, I’m convinced.
That’s right people… It’s taken Barack Obama less than 6 months as President to prove beyond any doubt that the only change he represents is rhetorical. The honeymoon is over.
“The Republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it.” – Elmer Davis
by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution Originally published on Friday, June 5, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6510.html
On June 6, 1944, a flotilla of transports set out for the coast of Normandy. They would land at five beaches codenamed Sword, Juno, Omaha, Gold, and Utah. Some beachheads were established with minimum resistance. Some beachheads were established in blood and gore, like Omaha’s. (photo)
In operational military code, the day was D-Day and the time was H-Hour. The only difference was that this was THE D-Day. My message, if you care to receive it, is that today is also D-Day, a D-Day of a different flavor.
Our overlords are operating on the economy until it collapses. They are debasing our money supply until it is worthless.
Someone, somewhere is receiving the tax money paid for the broken business of AIG and Government Motors. All we know is that the international central bankers are behind the whole charade. Our Congress still doesn’t even support auditing the central bank, the Federal Reserve, yet.
They are frittering away the very civil liberties that our veterans cherished so much and fought so hard to protect. Many of our soldiers may still believe this today, but they have been misled.
Our enemies are not to be found in the racial and religious groups clashing in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 or any other terrorist group. When we hurled our finest 150,000 troops at him, he had no air force, no navy, and pathetic shreds of an army. He had no weapons of mass destruction, although Pakistan, India, Russia, the USA, China, Israel and other obviously do.
After backtracking on a previous promise to release photos of alleged prisoner abuse, a new report casts doubt on Obama’s honesty in stating the photos were “not particularly sensational“ – a justification for his change of heart. While the photos have not been released to the public, some journalists were given access to the classified photographs – and have begun to reveal what they saw. A report claims that the photos depict instances of torture, including rape of both male and female prisoners, in addition to other forms of sexual abuse, which occurred at Abu Ghraib and several other prisons in Iraq.
The Pentagon has already quickly denied the report’s accuracy, but with the government refusing to release the photos to the public they are also denying themselves any ability to fully refute the claims made against them – assuming the claims are false. I simply don’t understand how the Obama administration can, on the one hand, attempt to downplay what is depicted in the photographs, and on the other think it too dangerous to release them to the public.
While the stated fear is consistently that releasing the photographs may “inflame anti-American opinion, and … put our troops in greater danger,” isn’t the fact that torture and prisoner abuse took place really what will inflame opinion? Covering up what happened – and ineffectively at that – simply raises more questions and keeps the issue at the forefront. While Obama rightly states the abuse to be unacceptable, without an open process – without proper transperency – it creates and fosters a culture where abuse could spring up under the protection of the government not wanting to reveal what is essentially embarassing to them.
Until the photos are fully released, the continued spectre of what they may be hiding will do noone any good – nor will the slow, inevitable drip by drip reveal of details from people who have seen them. On this one, I agree with Martin Garbus at the Huffington Post – releasing all of the photos now and coming clean is the only way to begin the process of truly moving forward. But not only that, it’s the only course which would actually save lives, not merely veil an embarassing truth.
I hope to make this a regular occurrence each Friday here at Liberty Maven. If it ends up like some of our other regular occurrences it won’t be regular at all. We’ll try though.
This post will be a hodgepodge of random thoughts I’ve had over the past week (or so) that never made it into an “official” article.
The topic of torture has been in the news and I find it fascinating because there are so many levels of arguments to the debate. No one put it more succinctly than Shepard Smith on a recent episode of Freedom Watch. The main arguments can be highlighted with a series of questions:
I used to think everyone hounding me to “get on Twitter” was torture (wow, poor segue I know). Now that I’ve done so I wouldn’t say that I’m addicted necessarily, but I’ve certainly discovered a new world (in 140 characters or less or course). Most of our articles are automatically “tweeted” right when they are published. So feel free to follow me/us at @LibertyMaven and start using this social media tool to help spread the freedom message.
Speaking of Twitter (damn I’m good at these transitions), Rand Paul is on Twitter sending his followers updates about his potential Senate run. His father Ron is not. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if someone were to ask Ron Paul if he twitters, he’d answer, “No I exercise daily and am in very good health.”
Yesterday Ron Paul aggravated Obama’s choice as “Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan” Richard Holbrooke during a Foreign Affairs hearing.
I can’t make any commentary better than the words Lew Rockwell used when he posted this:
Here he argues against intervention, mass murder, and financial disaster, and shows up one of the most sinister of Obama’s lying neocons, Richard Holbrooke. (from LewRockwell.com)
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