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. . . about Chaos,
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Fascist Police State Powers Passed by Congress
(Dan Eggen, Washington Post, December 10, 2004)
The intelligence package that Congress approved this week includes a series of little-noticed measures that would broaden the government's power to conduct terrorism investigations, including provisions to loosen standards for FBI surveillance warrants and allow the Justice Department to more easily detain suspects without bail. . . . Other law-enforcement-related measures in the bill -- expected to be signed by President Bush next week -- include an expansion of the criteria that constitute "material support" to terrorist groups [COMMENT: Don't be surprised when a contribution to an ecological cause will land your name on a list of suspected terrorists. We are about to lose many more liberties in these disUnited states of AmeriKa.] . . . But civil liberties advocates and some Democrats said the measures would do little to protect the public while further eroding constitutional protections for innocent people caught up in investigations. . . . Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said that while he voted for the bill because of its intelligence reforms, he opposed much of the expansion of law enforcement power. Most of it was not part of the Sept. 11 panel's recommendations. . . . "I am troubled by some provisions that were added in conference that have nothing to do with reforming our intelligence network," Feingold said. He later added: "This Justice Department has a record of abusing its detention powers post-9/11 and of making terrorism allegations that turn out to have no merit." . . . Charlie Mitchell, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the law enforcement measures are "most troubling in terms of the trend they represent." He added: "They keep pushing and pushing without any attempt to review what they've done." . . . One key change is a provision in the new intelligence package that targets "lone wolf" terrorists not linked with established terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. In language similar to earlier Senate legislation, the bill would allow the FBI to obtain secret surveillance and search warrants of individuals without having to show a connection between the target of the warrant and a foreign government or terrorist group. . . . Other provisions in the bill include: . . . Suspects in major terrorism crimes automatically would be denied bail . . . Penalties would be increased for such crimes as harboring illegal immigrants, perpetrating a terrorist hoax, and possessing smallpox, anti-aircraft missile systems and radiological "dirty" bombs. The measure also is more explicit than current statutes in making it illegal to attend military-style training camps run by terrorist groups. [COMMENT: Like Greenpeace summer workshops, for example. In case you don't recognize it, many of the fortunately ill-fated antiPatriot Act II's provisions have now been snuck into law.]

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 4:00 PM

 

We are marching toward totalitarianism
(Jonathan Greenberg, BuzzFlash Interview, December 9, 2004)The control of the mass media would be essential to implementing and sustaining an Orwellian world. A "Big Brother" government would want to keep all information simple, stupid and "'patriotic," circumventing any role of the media as the independent judge of the facts. Lies work best when there is no room for reason and no time for follow up questions. . . . Imagine if the parent company of Fox News acquired Clear Channel, and that this was the only company that the President and Homeland Security General deemed worthy of using the public airwaves and the internet. . . . I would say there remain pockets of independent reporting in the American media that were not allowed in the Soviet Union. But the media is certainly heading in the direction of "one big Pravda," for a number of reasons that I think are more subtle and insidious than the Soviet Union's blatant control of its media, which few Soviet citizens ever believed was objective. Many Americans, on the other hand, still believe that the media's primary role is to report the truth. . . . Simplifying all news to 30 seconds of 'he said/she said," then marrying your corporation's profits to the "goodwill" of a government to provide access to what ought to be public information, plays right into the hands of a Big Brother. Because then it's simple for a government to control the media labeling of all information, in "Time of War," into two simplistic buckets, one labeled "patriotic, the other "treasonous." It's a pretty small step, "in Time of War" (and as long as the Republican right maintains its grip on power, we will be in a time of perpetual, lobotomizing war), to go from the power to label information as "patriotic" or "treasonous," to the power to outlaw "treasonous" information. . . . If this were a totalitarian state, then the hundreds of thousands of people reading BuzzFlash would be arrested tomorrow for the simple subversive act of visiting BuzzFlash.com, and then they'd join you and me in prison. So we're not there, at least not yet. . . .
I would say we are marching slowly, deliberately and quietly in the direction of the Nazi goose step. And it troubles me to say that believe it would not take all that much to get us there. . . . I read that Fox News will be the primary news source for all Clear Channel radio stations. . . . And also, a few weeks ago I read about a Senate bill being considered that would make any federal drug offense punishable by a mandatory minimum of ten years imprisonment. Presumably this includes any quantity of marijuana possession on federal property, or at airports. In the book, I foretell the totalitarian state disenfranchising 15 million voting citizens on Election Day 2006 by applying a ten year federal mandatory minimum sentence for a positive marijuana hair snippet test at select polling places. Imagine, ten years, no judicial discretion. For any drug offense. A friend of mine read that in my book and said, "that could never happen." But the foundation of it is already there in a Senate bill. Ten years, with a felony record that never lets you vote again in many states. . . . I see a number of troubling similarities between our time and the period in which fascism rose to power. This Administration has made clear that it sees our Constitution as more of a hindrance than a foundation of nationhood. The Bush gang has denounced international institutions and international law as virtually un-American, and effectively become the first major signatory ever to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions. Bush supporters have effectively proclaimed themselves unbothered by torture at Guantanamo Bay, at Abu Ghraib, or in American prisons, while the civilian lives taken by American soldiers in Iraq are apparently inconsequential as long as we can wrap such murder in the flag. And virtually every major act Bush takes is justified by the "divine providence" that leads his holy crusade. Bush, like Hitler, answers to no one but the God that has made him infallible. . . . If you buy this package, as millions of fundamentalists have, then you either believe in Bush and everything he does, or you don't believe in God. This, in a country founded upon the separation of church and state. . . . Do I believe that this Administration would use such a tragedy, or maybe a few such tragedies, to create a Big Brother police state? Do I believe that most "Red State" Americans would support such a power grab after a major terrorist attack? Do I believe that any remaining independence among the mainstream media would fold if threatened with legal action in a time of "crisis?" Do I believe that this Supreme Court would uphold virtually any new "emergency" Executive branch powers that Bush, Cheney, Rove and Gonzales decided that it needed to "defend America"? . . . Sadly, my answer to all these questions is yes. . . . The Bush voters want to believe their leader. Many seem to think that's what patriotism is about: Support our troops, support our army, support our supreme commander. The tendency to wave the flag and support whatever they're told to support is so strong that they become willingly deceived. But they're in denial about the photos of Abu Ghraib; in denial to believe that when our government says torture is not torture then it's not torture. They're in denial that the United Nations and the international community view Iraq as an illegal war of aggression. They're in denial that as many as 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have died because of this war, and that these people are every bit as human as those who died in the World Trade Center. They're in denial that we've become the largest debtor nation in history and that the dollar is plunging. . . . So although the White House propaganda machine and a docile media make the ugly reality of our government's actions easier to overlook, I would say that a majority of Bush supporters were willingly deceived, not simply deceived. . . . I think we've got to acknowledge the sinister brilliance of Karl Rove. He is the modern heir to propagandist Joseph Goebbels, with modern technology at his fingertips and unlimited money. . . . I know that others have referred to this quote in recent months, but I think it bears repeating here. In 1946, while awaiting trial at Nuremberg, Nazi ReichsMarshall Herman Goering told an interviewer: "Of course the people don't want war...but...the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country." . . . I think this applies to the mainstream press. This Administration has used the holy war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts for the rich to evading the Geneva Conventions. Members of the media do not want to be perceived by their corporate superiors as "partisan," and certainly not perceived as treasonous. Most simply don't see it as their job to investigate or even point out the lies of the administration. They're entertainers trying to make money for their shareholders and themselves. . . . But where is the "fourth estate" on this, where is our cherished independent media, the multi-billion dollar media conglomerates with the resources, the personnel, and the clout to do the work needed to find out if this election has been rigged? . . . Not only are they refusing to independently investigate the electronic voting machine story, but they are refusing to report on those that have looked into it. Meanwhile, the literate minority, those who read journals and books and websites like this one, get pushed further beyond the fringe of what the mainstream media frames as "our national debate." If this is to change, we cannot bear this in silence. . . . For the post-literate majority, those who get their news from 30-second sound bites, minute-long TV ads and the rants of hate radio shockmeisters, there is news about the phenomenal success of the new electronic voting machines in the presidential election of 2004. So there is little pressure to change anything the next time, and certainly none whatsoever from corporate media. Which means if this election was stolen, the next one might be as well, and it will just get worse and worse as a rigged Republican majority grows, bringing us to that one party-dominated state that some Republicans envision, for the rest of our lives.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 11:30 AM