From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 01:28:38 MST
Lee and I were talking about Patriot Act II and he said:
>But it is *not* my own personal safety that I am concerned
>with. Suppose that anyone I knew or had heard of was
>being arrested for their opinions. That would be completely
>different!
Maybe not for their opinions, but just for a suspicion. Image you happen to
sit at the same table in a restaurant with an Al Quaida supporter who is
under surveillance - a complete stranger to you. Then he asks you if you can
change his five dollar note. You exchange some polite and friendly words and
you push five bucks over the table and he gives you something the observers
cannot identify. Next thing you see is a red suit they have put you in and
your hands tied to the back in a cage at Guantanamo Bay.
>> Just imagine a revengeful neighbor denounces you....
>> ... I can't do nothing to convince you.
>Hubert, I am very disappointed that you did not choose to discuss
>any specific with me. Evidently, you read through the entire
>ACLU criticism of the Patriot Act, and you just got a bad "feeling".
My main source was an interview, the German news magazine "Der Spiegel" did
with one ACLU activist. The URL of the ACLU I provided I ordered from this
wise old man called Mr. Google. And I read this page only cursorily and
thought it was sufficient for a first impression about Patriot Act II.
As you probably know: "I am not a lawyer", so as a layman I depend on
someone who is able to really penetrate a topic and interpret the stiff
words of a law draft, tell me the real implications. I tend to believe that
the journalists at "Spiegel" are doing a very fine job, though of course
they are biased in some way, too.
But here I can read it in German and do not have to look up every third
legal term in order to approximately understand what it is all about. So I
have to rely on the words of the ACLU people the journalists have talked to.
>Why won't you look through it again, and the first time that
>you find something *concrete*, please tell me. (Or, preferably,
>why don't you find the most alarming thing?)
As I said before. Lee, I do not have more information at hand than these
guys at ACLU can provide. So, if you have looked through the draft and did
not find anything alarming, it is fine. I can't do anything to convince you
of the dangers your country is facing if such a law should be enforced. The
lights in your tunnel are still on while the lights in my reality tunnel are
flickering violently. You still feel calm while I am alarmed. But maybe your
lights still shine brightly only because you have no chance to hear that
American citizens suspicious of supporting apparent terrorist organisations
have already secretly been captured - no misunderstandings,
please...probably
not right now but in future scenarios where PA II would be common law.
They are denied American citizenship and are thrown into some fine Cuban
cages or into Egyptian prisons where the US has deals with the Government
and therefore has no need to grant them the legal US rights. This could be
one of the main instruments of future Government terrorism. They can let you
disappear as a stateless person and you have no right to make your phone
call. And then the first steps to fascism are taken. Remember, Nazi Germany
started from a democracy where Adolf Schittelgruber was elected legally -
even with no help from some southern state where the votes had to be
recounted.
Of course I am biased just like anybody else. I grew up with loads of
stories of denunciations in the Nazi era where jealous and mean people
denounced their neighbors for virtually nothing. My mother could walk though
town with me and point at this man and that woman and say: these are
informers who are responsible of the death of innocent people
Here is a translated paragraph from the "Spiegel" article:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,238801,00.html
"What makes Patriot Act II questionable in the eyes of legal experts is the
utterly unclear definition of a terrorist organisation. If it pleases the
Government even militant animal right fighters can be defined as terrorists.
Their members could even be affected by the extension of capital
punishment. If for example during a protest march a non-participating
passer-by dies by force, capital punishment is applicable to the
demonstrants."
Have a nice day
humania
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Mar 18 2003 - 01:35:03 MST