Let me get this straight

[Ravenseye]

If these laws go through, the government is going to be able to come to my house when i'm not there, and search my computers, and everything they can find, without a warrant or even informing me. They can plant eavesdropping devices in my house and tap my phones and record everything that goes on in it, without a warrant or informing me. They can then, without notifying anyone: not a judge, lawyer, relative, or any civilian body, arrest me and detain me indefinately without trial. While i'm being held, without being allowed any contact with a lawyer or loved one, they can then torture me in various ways and methods used by such groups as the Khmer Rouge such as water boarding which simulates drowning. They can then lock me up and throw away the key, and never tell anyone that I've been detained and held. To everyone it will just seem as if I dissapeared.

Someone might say that our government would never do that to me if I were innocent. I might even agree with that. What if they have some intelligence mixed up. What if my name (an arab one) gets mentioned on some intelligence report and I just happen to share that name with a terrorist? What if someone who doesn't like me in the neighborhood who is a racist reports me? What if...What if...

The thing that scares me is that soon all that above could happen. Legally. In this country where we supposedly cherish freedom.

It just makes me scared, and very very sad. Our country is dying. No. It's being killed right before our eyes and we're not doing shit about it. We've been anesthatized. Why aren't people out in the street? Why do so many Americans apparently support these measures? This isn't the country I was raised in. This isn't the country which cherished freedom, and the bill of rights, and the fact that we didn't live in a dictatorship where people could be dissapeared. My family came over here from a country like that, partly for that reason. It wasn't safe there anymore. They were afraid of being detained indefinately, or tortured, or worse. They came to the U.S. seeking freedom. The protections of laws against indefinate detainment. Against torture. Against evil.

They came here from Iraq.

Has the day come where the United States truly isn't the land of the free anymore? Our national anthem is now a mockery. Land of the free, home of the brave. Our freedoms are being stripped from us by an authoritarian regime seeking more and more power. Our bravery is being sapped by a mainstream media too afraid to question anything and risk loss of access, or worse they are working directly with the authoritarians trying to destroy our nation.

Home of the captive. Land of the apathetic.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. I Envy Those Who Will Stay And Fight

I see myself elsewhere in the next decade. I'm single, and financially secure enough that I can possibly relocate elsewhere before it's too late. I hope, before it's too late.

But there are those who will remember Amerika for what it used to be. Kind of like Chicago Bulls fans recalling what it felt like to win a championship. They might not win another one for 100 years, but they'll still have their memories.

Soon, that will be the way Amerika is remembered.

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. I have to say, I agree with you

I am a gay atheist with a penchant for being outspoken and politically non-conformist. Once the Ruling Party has cemented it's power, I'll have no choice but to relocate.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

11. A Gay Atheist?

You'll be one of the first they'll come for.

How dare you be gay. How dare you not believe in G-d.

You won't last a week once things start to really fall apart.

[Ravenseye]

10. I just don't know

For now I'm staying and fighting, but I worry. I worry about my children and what sort of country they're going to grow up in. I have a family, and financial commitments. To just get up and move to, say, Chile would be not impossible, but very difficult. I just don't know what the breaking point will be for me, and whether that will be too late.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

14. I'm In A Unique Position

Not everyone can just leave. Even I can't just leave. But it's a lot easier. I have a practice which I would have to sell or walk away from. But other than that, no huge financial obligations. Just a mortgage that can be paid off if necessary. No offspring or a wife to make me stick around.

I still have parents, healthy thank god, but other than that, nothing in particular forcing me to stay if I'm not happy.

[Ravenseye]

16. If I were single..

I'd probably be gone. When I was 25 and could fit everything I owned into my VW Jetta would have made it easy. I'm not sure where I would have gone, but If I were that age and in that situation now...I'd probably go.

I'm honestly scared of my own government now, for not just what they can do, but what they want to do.

[lapfog_1]

2. I think you understand... but you missed one...

While they are torturing you, should you confess to some imagined crime, they can use that confession at
a secret trial to convict and execute you. A trial where there may also be presented evidence of your
"crimes" that you cannot see or question.

[Ravenseye]

12. Yeah

I thought about it and probably it'd cascade as well. They'd waterboard me for 72 hours after which I'd tell them the sky is purple if they asked. They show me a picture of some guy i've never seen before and ask me if I'm working with him. I say no and they waterboard me some more. THey show it again and I say 'yes'.

Next thing that guy knows he's being picked up and thrown in the back of a van in Cleveland, even though he too is innocent. At his trial my forced 'confession' is evidence used against him which he can't see or hear or refute.

Lovely.

[ThomCat]

3. "Home of the captive. Land of the apathetic."

:cry:

These damned traitors have destroyed what was best about the US. They are doing everything they can to gut the bill of rights, destroy the rule of law, and enshrine unchecked power about all else as the central ideal of the US.

Even if the Supreme Court shoots this down as unconstitutional, how long will that take? And what kind of precedent is left behind? What stain does this leave on our nation? What will look more reasonable in the future only because this monstrosity came first?

I truly believe we are in a similar state to pre-WWII Germany. Rights and the rule of law are being eroded quickly right before our eyes.

[mom cat]

36. And how many people will be tortured and/or dissapeared before

(or if) SCOTUS decides that the Constitution has been shredded? And unless Bushco is impeached, he might yet shift the balance on SCOTUS to the imperialist.

[uppityperson]

4. Only if the President says it is ok. Don't forget that part.

forget congress, forget the judicial branch, it all comes down to what the executive branch wants.

[tbyg52]

29. It's been that way for a long time.

They are just getting more brazen, and/or desperate.

[Kali]

5. I can't help observing that if more WERE out in the streets

we wouldn't have to examine and debate the need for some dems to vote against our rights and freedoms just as a strategy to hopefully "save" them down the road. My god.

[meganmonkey]

7. Here's our chance:

OVer 100 cities have protests planned already.

http://www.worldcantwait.org/

Announcing a Day of Mass Resistance:


OCTOBER 5, 2006


BRING THIS TO A HALT!


YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.

We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this. There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight. There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it. And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history. Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop. The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined.

The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

http://www.worldcantwait.org/


Mass Resistance
October 5th 2006
No school! No work! Be there!

[BelgianMadCow]

24. then help me keep the relevant thread kicked!

it seems DU is practically ignoring this protest

[jimshoes]

8. Yes, sadly

that is the way I see it coming down too. And there will be no more elections for president unless my crystal ball is malfunctioning. This is a very sad day for the former USA.

[peaches2003]

19. I agree

This really has nothing to do with the terrorists or the war on Iraq. Slowly but surely BushCo has gotten powers for himself to take over the country for good. It may sound like everything he has gone after was to help in the war on terrorism (whatever that means), but it all has been done for an entirely different purpose. Every power he has gained can be turned on American citizens and the possibility of dissent is just about gone. Nothing now can stop him unless some real patriots, Republicans included, step forward, say STOP, and start procedures to get our country back.

I no longer am worried about the war or the terrorists. They have been no more than tools in the real purpose of BushCo. Anyone who thinks BushCo is going to give up power in November and in 2008 has blinders on. Bush may head to the pig ranch in 2008, but the cabal will retain power through a phony election or through force.

[bdamomma]

30. I am more upset that this jerk ,this dangerous jerk, a born again

has all this power, and if anyone disagrees with him or his policies will be labelled as an enemy combatant. shit, this is not America no more, it took them 5 years to dismantle 250 of our democracy, I will not surrender no way.

[mmonk]

9. It's already been done. They are now just trying

to make it all legal. Many people have already been gathered up, some innocent. The government won't even say how many were rounded up here after 9/11.

[onenote]

13. are you a citizen?

I desperately oppose the Military Commissions Act but I don't think its helpful to misrepresent the Act either. It applies to non citizens, not citizens. Doesn't make it right, but by personalizing it, you make an argument (if you are a citizen) that is easily knocked down. Make it harder on the other side by sticking to the odiousness of the bill as written.

[Ravenseye]

15. Yes

I don't think it's misrepresenting. The bill says that any person "who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents."

Sure the people who support that bill say "oh that'd never be applied to an American Citizen." Really? Why? it's not explicitly stated that it doesn't apply to american citizens. Senator Spector, a republican, tried to get the Habeus Corpus provision in there, but they didn't allow it. That law could be defined as applying to an American citizen. To think it won't is ludicrous.

[onenote]

18. actually it is misrepresenting

You just quoted from the definition of the term "unlawful enemy combatant". What you didn't do is acknowledge that the bill defines its purpose generally as "establish the procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants". The term alien is specifically defined as a non-citizen of the US. So it does explicitly state that its not applicable to US citizens.

Again, it is no less odious to limit the rights of non-citizens, but if you were to call a congressional office and say that you oppose this bill because of what it allows to be done to US citizens, you wouldn't help the cause.

[RC]

25. "...alien unlawful enemy combatants". Could be construed as

American citizens outside the United States where they would be aliens, as an alien in a foreign country.

[onenote]

28. no it couldn't

`(3) ALIEN- The term `alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States.

That's a direct quote from the bill.

[magellan]

33. My husband is a legal resident non-citizen

Do I have your permission to be concerned?

[onenote]

34. damn straight

I hate this law. But not because it reaches citizens. Some people around here seem to be pounding on the fact it reaches them. Well, I'm concerned not for whether it reaches me (which I don't believe it does) but because even applied to non-citizens it is a horrible unjust law that denies people fundamental rights that they should have.

[davekriss]

32. Section 950

Drops any mention of "alien" or "unlawful enemy combatant" and simply uses the word "persons" instead. From that section forward it's reasonable to deduce that it applies to anyone, citizen or non-citizen. If a U.S. citizen is suspected of commiting any of the crimes enumerated -- including this, from "§ 950v. Crimes triable by military commission"...

1 (25) WRONGFULLY AIDING THE ENEMY.—
2 Any person who, in breach of an allegiance or duty
3 to the United States, knowingly and intentionally
4 aids an enemy of the United States or one its co-
5 belligerents shall be guilty of the offense of wrong-
6 fully aiding the enemy and shall be subject to
7 whatever punishment the commission may direct.

All through this section it no longer says "alien unlawful enemy combatant" or even just "enemy combatant", no, it says "person". Any person. Who are these "persons"? Who can be "in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States"? Can it pertain to a Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who "wrongfully aided the enemy" (actually several other of the crimes listed here)? So Jose Padilla could be, by the latter part of the bill, tried by military tribunal, lawfully subjected to treatment respectful of the Geneva Conventions as Bush interprets it, denied habeas corpus, and thus detained indefinately.

Slippery slope here. What if our brilliant brained and principled Attorney General declares DU, due to the many rants posted here, as aiding and abetting the enemy. Could military officers cart Skinner out of his office, render him to Egypt, where they beat out of him the names and addresses of the rest of us, then ship him to a metal container in Bagram and leave him there. Never confronting Skinner with the charges, never informing his family and friends of his detention and the charges, he just joins the "disappeared", something that seems to happen in nations where we intervene. Just ask John Negroponte, our Director of National Intelligence, he knows much about "disappeared" in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, and perhaps even briefly instructed Iraqi death squads on the Salvadorean Solution.

This bill, it is the Bush Regime's Enabling Act. We slid further down the slope to overt fascism today.

We all know the oft used quote:

The illusion of freedom in America will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
--Frank Zappa, 1977

Apparantly our plutocracy thinks free, fair elections, a free press, and that damn piece of paper, the Constitution, are just too expensive to maintain.

[Ravenseye]

35. I'm not the only one conerned

"The White House Warden
Congress may give the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat."

" The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,0,619852.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2006/09/shame_on_congress_for_passing.html#more

[bloom]

17. Jose Padilla

a citizen - went uncharged for months. http://www.chargepadilla.org/

[onenote]

20. and wouldn't be covered by this bill

[bloom]

21. Where do you get that?

That is not what this suggests.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2248028

Do you have a copy of the bill? Have you read it? Or are you trusting someone else's assessment?

[onenote]

23. yes Ii have the bill and I've read it

The bill defines the term unlawful enemy combatant. It also defines the term alien. And when it uses the term unlawful enemy combatant it always modifies it with the term "alien", as in section 948c, which states "Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by a military commission under this title." Or 948d, which describes the jurisdiction of the military commissions as "A military commission under this chapter shall have jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001.

[peaches2003]

26. Alien or citizen

Bush will strike the word 'alien' in a signing statement. Then he can judge any of us to be enemy combatants.

[onenote]

27. okay. whatever.

[bdamomma]

31. yup, and I can see him just doing this interpreting his own law

and adding his own signing statement to it.

[KansDem]

22. 70 to 90 percent of Iraqis rounded up and subjected to this were innocent

According to President Jimmy Carter in his book "Our Endangered Values." He quotes both Red Cross and US Army Intelligence statistics as his sources.

There is nothing to suggest the Bushitas would have a better track record with Americans.