If This Is Freedom, What Exactly Is Dictatorship?

Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2003 2:14 pm Post subject: If This Is Freedom, What Exactly Is Dictatorship?

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by Jacob G. Hornberger


Let me see if I have this right. In the United States of America:

1. The president now has the unrestricted power to declare war against a country that has not attacked the United States, wreaking death and destruction on both sides of the conflict.

2. The president now has the unrestricted power to round up unlimited numbers of American citizens within the United States and incarcerate them in military brigs or concentration camps for the rest of their lives and keep them from ever again communicating with friends, families, and attorneys, simply on the president’s certification that the incarcerated Americans are “terrorists,” as he has done with Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.

3. The president now has the unrestricted power to seize American citizens abroad and remove them to its military base in Cuba, where they can be kept for the rest of their lives and kept from ever again communicating with friends, family, and attorneys, solely on the basis of his certification that the imprisoned Americans are “terrorists,” as he initially did with Yaser Esam Hamdi.

4. The president now has the unrestricted power to kill American citizens abroad solely on the basis of his certification that the killed Americans are “terrorists,” as he did to Ahmed Hijazi, the American who was killed with a U.S.-fired missile in Yemen.

Pardon me for asking the following two indelicate questions:

First, if all this is freedom, what exactly is dictatorship?

Second, after the Iraqi people are freed from dictatorship, would it be asking too much to do the same for the American people through the adoption of the following two amendments to the U.S. Constitution:

“The Congress shall have the power to declare war, and this time we really do mean it.”

“No person shall be denied life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and this time we really do mean it.”

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.


http://forum.c0balt.com/viewtopic.php?t=552

GORG: Omen IV - American congress ;))

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=LWJFAQTRML4XACRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=3885936

ty voe.. to je z Omen IV, ne? :) kde si to vzal...co je to za typky?

here we go...

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

....

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml

JAXXE: Nevyhrabal bys plís někde odkaz na nějaký umučený vězně v Guantanamu? Mám pocit, že jsem někde něco čet a nemůžu to najít... (nacházím jen umučený na jinejch základnách v Afghanistánu, ale konkrétní případ z Guantanama nic....)

nevim

Majority believe JFK assassination a conspiracy

Poll: 57% reject government's lone-gunman explanation

Posted: November 14, 2003
3:40 p.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

With the 40th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy days away, a new poll indicates a majority of Americans don't believe the government's official version of how he was killed.

Only one in five likely voters polled by Zogby International, or 22 percent, said they believe the Warren Commission's determination that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, committed the crime.

In contrast, nearly three in five, or 57 percent, believe a conspiracy of at least two or more gunmen was responsible for the slaying. Another 10 percent had another theory, and 11 percent were not sure.

The poll involved 1,103 adults called at random across the country. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percent.

...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35618

Tesco RFID Rollout Starts in April

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/658/1/1/

Cameras Trace Students' Every Move

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/17/eveningnews/main584085.shtml

Is RFID Technology Easy to Foil?

By Mark Baard | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next »

02:00 AM Nov. 18, 2003 PT

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- You may need to read the following sentence twice: Aluminum foil hats will block the signals emitted by the radio tags that will replace bar-code labels on consumer goods.

That is, of course, if you place your tin-foil hat between the radio tag and the device trying to read its signal.

Makers of RFID (or radio frequency identification) tags, along with the retailers and suppliers who plan to use them, are saying the technology they spent millions of dollars developing is too weak to threaten consumer privacy. Metals, plastics and liquids, they say, all block radio signals before they reach RFID reader devices.

"Any conductive material can shield the radio signals," said Matt Reynolds, a principal at ThingMagic, which develops RFID systems. "There are all kinds of ways to render the tags inoperable."

That means Coca-Cola, which eventually wants to put an RFID tag on every can of soda it sells, will have a hard time getting around the metals, plastics and liquids that block the radio signals from the tags.

...

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,61264,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

How could the flag flutter when there's no wind on the moon?

During an interview with Stanley Kubrick's widow an extraordinary story came to light. She claims Kubrick and other Hollywood producers were recruited to help the U.S. win the high stakes race to the moon.

In order to finance the space program through public funds, the U.S. government needed huge popular support, and that meant they couldn't afford any expensive public relations failures. Fearing that no live pictures could be transmitted from the first moon landing, President Nixon enlisted the creative efforts of Kubrick, who produced 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968), to ensure promotional opportunities wouldn't be missed. In return, Kubrick got a special NASA lens to help him shoot Barry Lyndon (1975). A subtle blend of facts, fiction and hypothesis around the first landing on the moon, Dark Side Of The Moon illustrates how the truth can be twisted by the manipulation of images.

With use of 'hijacked' archival footage, false documents, real interviews taken out of context or transformed through voice-over or dubbing, staged interviews, as well as, interviews with astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and others, Dark Side Of The Moon navigates the viewer through lies and truth; fact and fiction. This is no ordinary documentary. Its intent is to inform and entertain the viewer, but also to shake him up - make him aware that one should always view television with a critical eye.

Dark Side Of The Moon is written and directed by William Karel and co-produced by Point du Jour Production and ARTE France.

http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeyesunday/darksideofthemoon/about.html

U.N. group seeks control of Internet

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031117-113002-7678r.htm

60 minutovy dokument o skull and bones

...

Skull And Bones

CBS News

(CBS) There are secrets that George W. Bush guards at least as carefully as any entrusted to a president.

He's forbidden to share these secrets even with the vice president -- secrets he has held ever since his days as an undergraduate at Yale.

In his senior year, Mr. Bush - like his father and his grandfather - belonged to Skull and Bones, an elite secret society that includes some of the most powerful men of the 20th century.

...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/111803skullandbones.html

U.S.'s 'Iron Hammer' code name 1st used by Nazis


REUTERS

9:17 a.m. November 18, 2003

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military's code name for a crackdown on resistance in Iraq was also used by the Nazis for an aborted operation to damage the Soviet power grid during World War Two.

"Operation Iron Hammer" this week launched the 1st Armored Division's 3rd Brigade into the roughest parts of Baghdad to ferret out the attackers who have killed scores of U.S. troops since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was ousted in April.

A Pentagon official said the name was chosen because of the "Old Ironsides" nickname of the 1st Armored Division. He was unaware of any connection to any Nazi operation.

"Eisenhammer," the German for "iron hammer," was a Luftwaffe code name for a plan to destroy Soviet generating plants in the Moscow and Gorky areas in 1943, according to Universal Lexikon on the http://www.infobitte.de Web site.

...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20031118-0917-iraq-hammer.html

More Schools Using Surveillance Cameras To Track Students

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/education/2647172/detail.html

http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=103188
nepřipadá vám to podezřelý?

President George W Bush's "democracy" speech of November 6 is still reverberating round the world. It has aroused as much puzzlement as hostility. What can he possibly mean by saying that "the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East"? Is the US preparing to administer a dose of its Iraqi medicine to other states in the area? Has the neo-con agenda of softening up the area to make it comply with US and Israeli demands been given a new lease of life? Should Damascus and Tehran, the butt of Bush's particular insults, now fear attack?

Or, as many suspect, was Bush's speech mere empty rhetoric, simply the latest illustration of his own mediocrity and of the moral and political bankruptcy of his Administration?

There is an especial irony in Bush criticising Syria and Iran as illegitimate dictatorships, seeing that it was the United States which destroyed Syria's young parliamentary democracy in 1949, when it lent a hand to Colonel Husni Al Zaim's coup d'état, and it was the US again (with help from Britain) that overthrew Iran's elected prime minister Mohammed Musaddiq in 1953 and restored the shah to power as an American puppet. "I owe my throne to God, my people, my army – and to you," sobbed the grateful potentate to Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA man who organised the coup.

...

http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/Opinion.asp?ArticleID=102893

...

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said on Thursday that its deal with the White House for access to highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports would let the White House edit the documents before they were released to the commission's representatives.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/national/14TERR.html?ex=1069390800&en=70c69c176c881b65&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE