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"The Bush regime is the ultimate horror of organized political and criminal activity. The only reason it is not comparable yet to the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao is for just that reason defined by that tiny three-letter word: 'yet.'"

 
LET’S ABOLISH THE DANGEROUS PATRIOT ACT
Posted April 21, 2005 thepeoplesvoice.org

By: Ted Lang

For those who are totally comfortable letting others do battle for them, now’s an excellent time to get uncomfortable, very uncomfortable! You need to write a letter! You need to contact your Congressman or woman and let them know that its time not only to debate the expiring sections of the USA PATRIOT Act, but to abolish all of it! And don’t contact them via e-mail – they don’t read e-mails!

Nothing sets me off more than obnoxious, chip-on-their-shoulder “experts,” pundits, blab radio flapping jaws and cradle-to-grave Republicans, the latter until only recently representing my own political shortsightedness, who constantly offer: Have you lost any freedoms yet as a result of the PATRIOT Act? 

As to waiting for the FBI [United States Secret Police] to kidnap you, or a member of your family, or a loved one, or a friend or your attorney, and then not allowing one phone call, or the right to consult a lawyer, or to face your accusers, or to demand a trial by jury, or any modicum of due process, I offer as response the lament of Pastor Neimöller: “First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.” This is what Rush Limbaugh wants you to do: nothing!

William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, was a journalist on a long-term assignment in Germany. He lived through the rise and fall of Nazism on location! The book, therefore, reads like a reporter’s account of the events that led up to the rise and unbelievable power of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis. It is a very thick book, and serves to confirm the easy progression of seemingly innocuous political events that were virtually ignored by the German people until they morphed into full-blown dictatorship. 

That the German people were brutally wronged by the Versailles Treaty and idealist Woodrow Wilson was never grasped by Shirer. He refused to accept the glaring facts he so easily could have apprised himself of, even if by just reading through the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Refusing to acknowledge potential danger, when obvious and readily apparent and right in front of you, will surely guarantee disaster.

One of the more emotional moments during a presentation I was privileged to have attended, was when the speaker, former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice, Andrew P. Napolitano, started exposing the horrors of the USA PATRIOT Act. The Judge started waving his arms energetically while pointing out that the FBI has reclaimed the right British Red Coats once had in writing their own on-the-spot search warrants to ensure all documents in a colonist’s private home complied with the provisions of the Stamp Act. The FBI has reinstated the same authority that was the State’s under King George III. 

Napolitano was instrumental in virtually single-handedly stopping local, county and state police from indiscriminately throwing up road blocks whenever and wherever they felt like it to attack their most evil enemy – New Jersey motorists. Until the Judge’s involvement, roadblocks appeared all over the state, even during the Christmas holidays, causing major traffic tie-ups as far as the eye could see on many major highways. Just imagine someone with a stroke or a heart attack on his or her way to a hospital emergency room in an ambulance blocked by backed-up traffic caused by these power-inebriated police.

Whether it is town, city, county, state or federal police, Lord Acton’s admonition applies. Whether it is town, city, county, state or federal government, at all three “separated” functional segments of executive, legislative or judicial statist power and authority, as well as all their related bureaus, Lord Acton’s warning applies. And his caution applies even to the private sector, whenever increasing corporate centralization uses its wealth and power to control the “public” sector for its own self-interests: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Judge Napolitano explains that very early in his career after college, he served as a legislative page/intern in the United States House of Representatives. After revealing this, he offered this regarding Congress: “They never read the bills before them – so why should anyone be surprised that they didn’t read the PATRIOT Act?”

Last week, a two-month “in-depth” more deliberate review by Congress of PATRIOT was initiated and hopefully something constructive to salvage our dwindling freedoms will result – but frankly, I doubt it! In all likelihood, this will be yet another waste of time and taxpayer money as was the Tydings Committee, the Warren Commission, the 9-11 Commission, the Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo abuse investigations, the Army McCarthy hearings, just to mention a few among millions. At least Senator Joe McCarthy gave it a shot, but was horribly and unjustly smeared by the Communists and their supporters in government and the media.

Offering that, “[A] disclosure of a 75 percent increase in secret wiretaps and ‘sneak and peak’ searches since 2000 is likely to provide ammunition for civil liberties groups determined to modify the USA PATRIOT Act when Congress begins two months of debate on the law Tuesday,” William Fisher in his April 6th article for AntiWar.com goes on: “The USA PATRIOT Act was hurriedly enacted shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It gave federal law enforcement agencies sweeping new surveillance and detention powers,” writes Fisher in his article, “Cooler Heads Review PATRIOT Act in Congress.”

Fisher continues: “Parts of the law are due to expire at the end of this year, and President Bush has called on Congress to renew the law in its entirety. Last week, the administration reported to Congress that in 2004 the government requested and won approval for a record total of 1,754 special warrants for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies.”

Fisher reveals, “Last year’s approved warrants were only slightly higher than the 1,724 approved in 2003. In 2000, there were 1,003 warrants approved under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” But here’s the crux of the injustice and un-American illegality of this fascist police state act: “Warrants of this kind are authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act. However, the FBI also uses the warrants in ‘plain vanilla’ criminal investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism.’” [Emphasis mine.]

It’s the Lord Acton admonition of government growing itself continuously, and then using its growth and newly-established powers to force more despotism and tyranny on its subjects. And Judge Napolitano’s interpretation of “approved warrants” created on the spot by a United States government agency so fraught with fraud, corruption, political expediency and with a history of intimidation, cruelty, mass murder and the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people, making King George III’s Stamp Act searches by his “Redcoats” a hideously insignificant comparison. 

And recall the operative phrase: “suspected terrorists and spies.” Suspicion is now grounds for arrest, solitary confinement with no “Miranda rights,” or even possible “rendition” [illegal kidnapping and transport to another despotic fascist-communist police state where the victim-suspect can be brutally tortured even unto death]. 

Does this sound like the America of our fathers and mothers? Is this the “land of the free, and the home of the brave?” Is this the land of “amber waves of grain,” and “fruited plains,” and “purple mountains’ majesty,” or is it now the land of purple welts, and bruises, and gushing blood and mass murder, rendered and brutally administered by Our Majesty, George W. Bush and his Tower of Lawdom’s Torturer General, AG [American Gangster] Alberto Gonzales?

The Bush regime is the ultimate horror of organized political and criminal activity. The only reason it is not comparable yet to the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao is for just that reason defined by that tiny three-letter word: “yet.” Limbaugh wants you to be happy, and not to worry as our bloodthirsty warmongers and war criminals continue to mass murder non-combatant men, women, children and babies in the name of Israel and their desire for surrogate authority over the oil fields that are the rightful property of formerly peaceful nations. And if they weren’t peaceful or democratic, that nevertheless was, and continues to be, none of our business as long as they do not attack US.

As Judge Napolitano points out in his book, Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When The Government Breaks Its Own Laws, when speaking of the criminal activities of the FBI, offers: “Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn’t seem to have much use for the First Amendment. As he testified to the Senate, ‘To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.’ And by April 2004, Attorney General Ashcroft’s ‘phantoms’ had led us to a point where free speech almost does not exist.”

He continues: “When the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the federal government challenging a national security letter [ a secret search warrant that an FBI agent writes for himself], the Justice Department persuaded the trial judge in the case to subject the entire case file to a gag order. The government argued the gag order was justified on the ground that, under the USA PATRIOT Act, those served with national security letters are forbidden from talking about them. The logical conclusion is that a party served with a national security letter can’t even discuss the situation with his lawyer.” [Emphasis in the original.]

And Napolitano doesn’t stop there in pointing out the bloodlust and brutality of not only the FBI, but the American military as well in “just following orders.” Speaking of the FBI atrocities conducted by them during the Waco Massacre and Holocaust of 1993, he writes: “Reacting to the deaths of the four federal agents, [killed in self-defence while launching a non-warrant sneak attack on the Branch Davidian compound], President Clinton declared war on the Davidians by ordering a ‘quasi-military’ siege. As most informed Americans who get their information from the Internet as opposed to the politically correct/factually incorrect “American” media, Clinton violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the military from being used as police. 

Napolitano continues, “During the standoff that lasted fifty-one days, the FBI, the Texas National Guard, and the Army Reserves encircled the building.” Now remember, that Clinton and mass-murderer, AG [American Gangster] Janet Reno, perpetrated this totally unjust, illegal, unconstitutional sneak attack on a perfectly law-abiding and non-dangerous cult that earned part of its livelihood by dealing in firearms. They were perfectly legitimate, and frequently met with agents of the then-Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. In fact, David Koresh, the cult leader, was friendly with several of the BATF agents with whom he worked to ensure compliance with federal gun regulations, and had met with some of the BATF employees only the day before. It was the criminal Clinton regime and its hideous AG Reno, who invented fraudulent child abuse charges to launch the massacre.

Napolitano states: “In early 1993, the newly inaugurated Clinton administration was facing the possibility that Congress might scale back the [BATF], a law enforcement agency devoted to enforcing, among other things, federal gun laws. The Clinton administration, opposing any effort to reduce the size of government, decided to portray the Branch Davidians as a cult and have the BATF declare war on the group. The government hyped up media interviews with former and disgruntled members of the group – not exactly the most credible sources – who accused the Davidians of being polygamists and child abusers. But this wasn’t enough.”

Napolitano goes on: “The Clinton administration concocted an illegal weapons case in order to convince a federal judge to sign off on a warrant to search the Mount Carmel complex. The government’s case at best was that the Davidians had failed to comply with taxes on machine-guns!” Napolitano goes on to explain how the “properly-obtained” search warrant was never served, and that BATF initiated the deadly sneak attack that cost the four federal employees their lives. In other words, all the deaths at Waco were the responsibility of our brutal, criminal government!

Napolitano explains how the FBI was brought in, and how Reno “approved a 568-page final assault plan to be used against the Davidians. Armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles busted the exterior walls of the building so that the FBI could inject flammable gas grenades throughout the building. The federal agents fired bullets upon the individuals who tried to flee the complex! Wasn’t the whole purpose of the FBI presence to get the Davidians to come out?”

Napolitano continues to relate the horrors of the brutal slaughter of women, children, toddlers and babies at the hands of Reno and Clinton’s FBI butchers: “Shortly thereafter, the entire building was engulfed by an enormous fireball. It is unclear how the fire began, but a commonly accepted proposition is that a lantern was ignited due to the government unsafely injecting flammable gas into the building on a day when the wind speed exceeded thirty miles an hour. Some evidence [that which the FBI didn’t purposely destroy] also suggests that U.S. Military Special Operations detonated fifty-five gallons of petroleum jet fuel inside the compound. The FBI refused to allow the local fire departments near the complex, thereby eliminating any chance that those eighty-six innocent men, women, children, and babies could have survived.” [Emphasis mine.]

This America is “Your FBI, in Peace and War!” [Title of a 40s and 50s radio program.]

In his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Dr. Thomas Woods, Jr. describes how communist-leaning President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the FBI against the America First Committee [AFC]. Dr. Woods offers: “The [AFC] has not typically received the same kind of hearing that American historians have had no problem in giving to the New Left of the 1960s, to the American Communist Party, or to the mass-murdering Mao Tse-Tung. America Firsters wanted to avoid American involvement in another savage European war. Consider the view later taken by New York Times military expert Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in his 1949 book Great Mistakes of the War:

There is no doubt whatsoever that it would have been to the interest of Britain, the United States, and the world to have allowed – and indeed to have encouraged – the world’s two great dictatorships to fight each other to a frazzle. Such a struggle, with its resultant weakening of both Communism and Nazism, could not but have aided in the establishment of a more stable peace.”

Just consider: no Iron Curtain; no segmentation of a conquered Europe; no Cold War; no Nuclear Arms Race; no Communist China; no Vietnam. All these things were made possible and brought into existence by FDR and his legions of Communists in American government during his thirteen year reign.

Dr. Woods continues: “What hostile scholars are rarely in any hurry to point out is just how many prominent and admired Americans belonged to or sympathized with the AFC, from both the left and the right.

A young John F. Kennedy sent in a donation to the AFC with a note: ‘What you are doing is vital.’ Future president Gerald Ford was described as an ‘enthusiastic recruiter’ for the AFC while at Yale Law School. At its height, the AFC had some 850,000 members, along with millions of sympathizers.”

Then Woods describes the use by FDR of the American Secret Police [FBI] to silence those who opposed FDR’s allegiance to Communism and saving “Uncle Joe” from the Nazis: “FDR launched a vicious campaign against America Firsters, having repeated recourse to the FBI and the IRS. America Firsters found their telephones tapped, and some wound up before grand juries. No one ever found the Nazi ‘secret agents’ that FDR claimed were lurking in America, and the president’s instructions to the FBI that they comb the records for any evidence of Nazi funding of the AFC yielded nothing. Strangely, those delicate souls who are so troubled by Joe McCarthy’s campaign to expose Communists and Communist sympathizers in the 1950s fall oddly silent when it comes to the victims of FDR’s witch hunt.”

In addition to these unlawful and abusive manipulations of an unlawful and abusive American Secret Police [FBI], Judge Napolitano gives yet another example of American government terrorism perpetrated by the FBI against innocent and law-abiding Americans. Napolitano reconstructs the FBI’s abuse of justice in the illegal conviction and imprisonment of an innocent man: Joseph Salvati.

Napolitano offers, “Even in America, checks on government law breaking can be evaded. Just as a deranged Josef Stalin could put a random citizen into the Gulag and throw away the key, on occasion the law enforcement system in the United States is equally despicable.”

Napolitano states, “As a result of moral corruption in law enforcement in Boston, from local police and prosecutors all the way up to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an entirely innocent man spent thirty years of his life behind bars. Amazingly, the police and FBI arrested this man, and the prosecutors charged and prosecuted him to conviction, despite knowing that he was innocent. [Emphasis in original.] 

Only a short while ago, this horrible and deliberate crime by the FBI and its Director, J. Edgar Hoover, were exposed in the House by Congressman Dan Burton. Such examples offered by Judge Napolitano in his book are much more numerous than the scant references I’ve cited. And Dr. Woods’ efforts are also lightly referred to. But the point that should be abundantly obvious is that the American nation state and its police are anything but law-abiding, freedom-protecting bastions of morality and justice as modern day “liberals” would have US believe.

It is therefore nothing short of cruel and out-of-place humour to read the conveyance by some in the media of such titles as “The Honorable Alberto Gonzales,” or “The Honorable Robert Mueller III” on the occasion of their appearance before the House to plead and beg for the continuation of the Bill of Rights-abolishing USA PATRIOT Act. Consider the crimes and violations of morality and common human decency these gangsters and their corrupt and rotten FBI have already committed – yet they are begging for more authority?

Gonzales figured out the legalistics to nullify the Geneva Conventions in existence almost as long as our Bill of Rights, which he now seeks to also totally nullify. And Muller’s FBI had all the information it needed to stop 9-11; in fact, several agents in the lower ranks did try to stop it, but were overruled and silenced by Mueller and his criminal gang of supervisors.

When will these criminals be held accountable for the crimes they have committed? Why do they want more powers? This will be America’s last chance, so please don’t fall asleep in the couch! Get started with that letter, call their offices, and keep writing. If we fail now peaceably, the alternative will be fearsome.

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© THEODORE E. LANG 4/19/05 All rights reserved. Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.

 

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