www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882_pf.html Fasten your seatbelts: It gets "better" than that. The gag orders posed on recipients of National Security Letters (subpoenas issued by the unilateral whim of the FBI agent) are punishable by five years in jail to anyone who violates that gag order. With secrecy thus assured, it is virtually guaranteed that not a soul knows about the abuses of powers occurring even as we speak. No wonder the average American believes that we still live in Free Speech America! Even Congress and the ACLU, which appears at the Supreme Court second in frequency only to the US Dept of Justice, do not know the full extent of wrongful crack-downs on law-abiding Americans. Further, absent a judge's review or warrant, the judiciary has been stripped of its power to check and balance the government's activity.
Who voted this into legislative stone? I spent hours one night looking at the Congressional voting record and found that it was, overwhelmingly, the Republican Congress and Democrats alike who voted for the Patriot Act. And they voted for it not once, but twice. Only two lone Senators "Just said No" and approximately one-third the House stood by its oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution. A very few more joined the "Just Say No" ranks the second time around.
Warrantless wiretapping was legislated into the Patriot Act prior to the broadening of FISA, just after the attacks on September 11, 2001. No wonder Feingold's call for censure based on warrantless wiretapping did not go through! (God bless him, Feingold is one of the two lone Senatorial voices offering his "Noooooo!" to the Patriot Act into the eerily silent echoes of the Congressional space).
Anybody who asserts that "I have done nothing wrong so just let them wiretap me: I've got nothing to hide" may be confessing blissful innocence. Alas, this wide-spread American belief also may be what enables the take-over of authoritarian government in America. It is important that we rebut this central idea by showing people the FBI documents and links above, links showing just who is affected and how (ordinary citizens like you and me, not terrorists) and showing them Al Gore's quote below:
"Why should we be alarmed about such eavesdropping? Recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr Martin Luther King Jr was illegally wiretapped----one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by US Government during this period. The FBI privately called King "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country" and vowed to "Take him off his pedestal". The government then even attempted to destroy his marriage and allegedly tried to blackmail him into committing suicide. THis campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. In fact, it was the discovery that the FBI had conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr King's life, that helped persuade Congress to enact new statutory restrictions on wiretapping in the first place." ---Al Gore, "The Assault on Reason" . The ACLU echoes with the same example on their website, and attorneys writing in the book "Liberty Under Attack" express the concerns that the average vocal American citizen may be endangered.
What is the solution?
First of all, let's get very real here: Knowledge is power. It would seem apparent that our Congress is converting the USA to a dictatorship. Who cares whether they are being arm-twisted and bullied into it (according to the ACLU's account, they even are) or whether the act is even a deliberate one. It's a moot point: We the People are vulnerable and the Constitution is being burned to ashes. If we want to take OUR America back, we've got to unseat about 75% of our current Congress. With all that is at stake, there simply is not even the luxury of giving a great sigh of discouragement: It simply must be done. Gradually may be the only realistic way to go, but let's stress the hope here: Sometimes still waters run deep.
Note how many politicians are resigning to avoid scandal: Scandals work! This is an ugly but tool for Us, the People to use. When politicians are scandalized on a level exposed nation-wide, they resign. Period. And that is a signal of hope, since obviously and contrary to popular belief, our voice DOES count and our opinions DO matter. And last but not least, even if the votes are rigged there is still hope. Repeat: Scandals work! To purge our fascist Congress would be the most important thing we could ever do, to protect and defend our Constitution which thank God, is still in place.
As another point of hope, Qwest and Working Assets Long Distance and Wireless (now renamed Credo) have pledged in writing not to wiretap without court warrant. Sign up with them for phone service (Qwest is also an internet provider) and you will be side-stepping the wiretapping automatically. As the precursor to wrongful FBI crack-downs on American free speech, to side-step the warrantless wiretapping is strategically key.
Share this information with others and you will be helping the cause along even further. Post it to blogs, share it in letters to the editor (qualifying that you are not affiliated with either organization) and word will spread even more.
It is very heartening to see politicians reversing their positions 180 degrees when signatures by the hundreds of thousands or millions come in: Join the ACLU, Moveon.org, Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Rights and you will be part of the solution, especially as you sign their petitions. Ask three more friends to join, urging them also to ask three more friends to do the same, and the effect is exponential!
Host house parties, arrange for speaker meetings in which you show the actual declassified FBI documents and print-outs on the websites above, and people can only be convinced.
And no matter what you do, be sure to always stress the hope: Depression governs our masses and to offer the light of hope is a very important key to stimulating proactivity.
And as an ACLU attorney told me, thank goodness "there still is a mechanism of the original US Constitution in place". Better to uphold, protect and defend it now than to wait until the free speech traffic light turns from orange to red. Please spread word.
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