A Police Provocateur's Dream, HR 1955
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/11/369251.shtml
author: Ross Stone
"The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act"
Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" is not written exactly like the Nazi 1933 Discriminatory Decrees that suspended the Reich Constitution, but it can bring America to the same place by trashing America's civil liberties. Harman's bill has the potential of driving lawful political and other activists underground into American cell groups. Perhaps expectantly creating the domestic terrorists the Bush Administration has said we need to be protected from.
The Nazis were dead serious when they outlawed specific types of dancing, singing, artwork; any act of expression the Government said "might" cause public unrest in the German State. German Citizens got arrested for dancing the Jitterbug. On February 28, 1933 Hitler signed the Discriminatory Decrees banning free association and speech that might cause public disturbance or adversely affect the peace and security of the German State—according to police. Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" when closely examined, defines "homegrown terrorism" as "any planned act" that might use force to coerce the U.S. Government or its people to promote or accomplish a "political or social objective." No actual force need occur. Government need only charge that an individual or group thought about doing it.
The Harman bill may extend to "planned acts" in America against foreign governments that are "U.S. alleys." See "planned acts" covered under Patriot Act. Under the Harman bill, environmental organizations in America are at risk when they coordinate activities with or support foreign activist groups in some countries. American environmental organizations can't control what might happen overseas at a "planned" environmental demonstration or control the "planned acts" of foreign activists they network with.
Under the broad language of the Harman bill, anyone attending a "planned anti war rally" could be charged with trying to coerce a government and its people. Government need only charge that an individual in a group "thought about coercing a government or its people." Labor demonstrators that block or intimidate shoppers from entering a store could be charged with "coercing people" under Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act." The Nazi's used similar provisions found in the Harman bill to charge labor leaders as communists.
Under the Harman bill, should violence breakout at a "planned" demonstration, the government can charge that everyone attending was "ideologically based toward violence." The individual activists who set up web sites promoting their "planned activities", wrote, emailed or handed out "flyers" promoting "that planned" demonstration could also be charged with Violent Radicalization or Homegrown Terrorism, depending on the violence that occurred at the demonstration. It is foreseeable that "information flyers" not intended by the author to be distributed at a particular event but were somehow distributed, could under the Harman bill open the door for government to charge the author with promoting "Violent Radicalization and/or Homegrown Terrorism, if that subsequently results. Such concerns by writers will crush free speech and written dissent.
The broad language of the Harman bill gives the government the power to bully and charge Americans with terrorism when Citizens exercise their Constitutional Right to Association. Lawful Americans that attend public meetings, demonstrations and other group public events should not be charged with Violent Radicalization, Homegrown Terrorism, or labeled "ideologically based toward violence" because of what another person said or did at a "planned" meeting. Of course, under such circumstances millions of Americans would become afraid to support or attend political and other public meetings out of concern someone might do something that violates Rep. Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act." Attendance by an American at a "political or environmentalist' meeting" could put a U.S. Citizen on the government's "no fly list."
Should the Jane Harman bill pass in its present form, the U.S. Government, federal and state police will have no difficulty legally terminating American Citizens and activist organizations that exercise their Constitutional Right to free association, free speech, expression, assembly and writings. Once the Harman bill passes, Police Provocateurs can easily destroy any anti-war group, person or organization that supports or attends a "planned" meeting or demonstration. Police Provocateurs need only join a crowd of protestors at a demonstration, then throw rocks toward uniformed police to criminalize an entire demonstration. Or covertly contact a group's participants before, at or after a "planned" demonstration, then lie and claim the person(s) the Provocateur spoke with were ideologically bent toward violence; "Violent Radicalization; or Homegrown Terrorism.
Uneducated police provocateurs and informants, which there are many, are more apt to misinterpret intellectual discussion at a political meeting as being ideologically bent toward violence, "Violent Radicalization or Homegrown Terrorism.
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Excellent. Thank you.
S 1959 "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" must be stopped at all costs.
Pick up your phone today and contact your US Senator's office to instruct them to vote "NO" on S.1959.
Click here for your Senators contact info:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Full PDF text if the bill:
http://tinyurl.com/3a3y2z
TOLL-FREE telephone numbers to contact your Senators or House of Representative member:
(800) 862-5530
(800) 833-6684
(866) 340-9281
To locate the name of your senators go to http://www.senate.gov and check for your state in the pull down "Find Your Senators" menu. To locate your local House of Representative member go to http://www.house.gov. On the top left of the page enter your 5 digit zip code.
www.cincy911.org
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" – Edward R. Murrow
Best chance we got is Sen. Bernie Sanders
Bills like this are the reason Sen. Sanders wanted to move from the House to the Senate in the first place. The ability of a Senator to gum up the works and keep a bill from passing are monstrous. Sen. Sanders is also on the Senate Budget Committee, which means he can put a hold on every dime spent by the Federal Government at the Senate Committee level if he decides to do so.
If there's anyone from Vermont around, Sen Sanders is unusually dedicated to constituent service. Someone from Vermont could probably Sen Sanders personally about this.
B. Sanders on Thom Hartmann Show Fridays
http://CallCongress.org
We need some graphics and literature to go around the web and for print.
http://9-11.Meetup.com/322
Many hands make light work!
RRREMA=research, realize, react, educate, motivate, activate
"It's been said, and I think it's accurate, that my husband was obsessed by terrorism in general and al-Qaida in particular." (Hillary
Yes, thank you very much!
I will be using excerpts from your blog in a letter I'm writing to my Congressman.
A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak By Robert Weitzel
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_robert_w_071130_the_homegrown_te...
November 30, 2007
The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act:
By Robert Weitzel
“Political language has to consist largely of euphemisms . . . and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
- George Orwell -
H.R 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 recently passed by the House—a companion bill is in the Senate—is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment:
It begins, “AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.”
Those whose pulse did not quicken at “other purposes” have probably not read George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” or they voted for the other George both times.
Orwell’s jeremiad on the corruption of the English language and its corrosive effect on a democracy was written two years before his novel 1984 spelled out in chilling detail the danger of Newspeak, which renders citizens incapable of independent thought by depriving them of the words necessary to form ideas other than those promulgated by the state.
After its opening “tribute” to Orwell, H.R 1955 is strategically peppered with Newspeak regarding the establishment of a National Commission and university-based Centers of Excellence to “examine and report upon the fact and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States” and to make legislative recommendations for combating it.
The “sheer cloudy vagueness” of H.R 1955, as well as its terror factor, may account for its bipartisan 404-6 House vote but how, in an era informed by the Bush-Cheney administration’s egregious assault on the Bill of Rights, can the phrase “other purposes” fail to raise the “National Terror Alert” from its current threat level of “elevated” to “severe.”
Future “other purposes” will undoubtedly be justified by the Act’s use of the term “violent radicalization,” which it defines as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence . . .” or by the folksy, Lake Wobegonesque “homegrown terrorism,” defined as “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born [or] raised . . . within the United States . . . to intimidate or coerce the United States, the civilian population . . . or any segment thereof . . . [italics added].”
In the service of some self-serving “other purposes,” will “extremist beliefs” become any belief the temporary occupants of the White House consider antithetical and threatening to their political agenda?
Will “ideologically based violence” or the use of “force” become little more than the mayhem resulting after a peaceful protest, daring to move beyond the barbed wire of the free speech zone, is attacked by a truncheon-wielding riot squad armed with tear gas, German Shepard dogs and water cannons?
Will the unarmed, constitutionally protected dissenters who are fending off blows or dog bites, or who are striking back in self-defense become “homegrown terrorists” and suffer draconian sentences for their attempt to “intimidate or coerce” the state with free thought and free speech?
A clue to future “other purposes” may lie in the Act’s parentage. The proud House “mother” of the Patriot Act’s evil twin is Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA), chair of the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. Rep. Harmon has admitted to a long and productive relationship with the RAND Corporation, a California based think-tank with close ties to the military-industrial-intelligence complex. RAND’s 2005 study, “Trends in Terrorism,” contains a chapter titled, “Homegrown Terrorist Threats to the United States.”
Keep in mind that the RAND Corporation was set up in 1946 by Army Air Force General Henry “Hap” Arnold as “Project RAND” sponsored by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Keep in mind also that Donald Rumsfeld was its chairman from 1981 to 1986 and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s felonious former chief of staff, and Condoleezza Rice were trustees. Enough said!
RAND maintains that “homegrown terrorism” will not be the result of jihadist sleeper cells. Rather, it will result from anti-globalists and radical environmentalists who “challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism, charging that in the insatiable quest for growth and profit, the philosophy is serving to destroy the world’s ecology, indigenous cultures, and individual welfare.”
Further, RAND claims that anti-globalists and radical environmentalists “exist in much the same operational environment as al Qaida” and pose “a clear threat to private-sector corporate interests, especially large multinational business.” Therein lies the real “other purposes.”
Predictably then, H.R. 1955 is not about protecting homegrown Americans. That protection is only incidental to its “other purposes” of protecting homegrown corporate interest and its unconscionable manipulation of the American political process to fill its coffers. Any thought or speech or action— however protected it might be by the Bill of Rights—that threatens corporate hegemony and profit will no doubt suffer the “other purposes” clause of the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.
Anyone doubting the Orwellian nature of an Act that equates anti-globalists and environmentalists with al Qaida terrorists will do well to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and to acquaint themselves with the fate of Winston Smith in 1984
Authors Bio: Robert Weitzel lives in Middleton, WI. His essays appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has also been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today and on the web sites, commondreams.org and smirkingchimp.com. He can be contacted at: rweitz@tds.net
George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language”
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit
See you at Jane Harman's 12/11
December Eleventh LA action. Details to be finalized this weekend by www.WeAreChangeLA.org and www.911TruthLA.us tentatively 11 AM to 2 PM at her El Segundo office, 2321 E Rosecrans Ave, El Segundo, CA 90245. There is a big sign with her name on the lawn. Free parking at nearby shopping centers. Lots of traffic passing by, shoppers and defense contractors. Anyone in San Pedro area want to take her office at 540 N Avalon Bl, Wilmington, CA 90744? Later in the afternoon, approx 5 PM, I believe it's off to Hollywood & Highland / Walk of Fame with Christmas-wrapped DVDs.
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
Great to hear that, Randy, well done!
Please let us know how it goes.
Keep up the great work, are you all planning a Tea Party?
I hope that you and yours are well.
The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.
Boston Tea Party West
Howdy LeftWright. Members of WeAreChangeLA and 9/11TruthLA are mostly headed to Laguna Beach on Dec 16 to support Orange County's Tea Party in return for their coming out to LA on 11/11. I just learned that there is also an event in Santa Monica (LA) which is being promoted by Ron Paul supporters. Another interesting thing I read is that the new Ron Paul Blimp should be in Boston on the 16th. Barbara Honegger, who originated this event last year invites all groups to announce their actions on http://boston911truth.org/teaparty
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
What name do these three
What name do these three webpages have in common?
http://www.rand.org/about/organization/randtrustees.html
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/lookup.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=2018955
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_52_47/ai_77615383
“On the altar of God, I swear eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson
http://www.westfield.com/corp
http://www.westfield.com/corporate/newsroom/announcements/wea_archive/20...
http://www.rand.org/news/press/2007/11/19/index1.html
"Lowy was appointed managing director of Westfield Holdings in 1997 and currently serves as group managing director of the Westfield Group. The Westfield Group is the largest publicly traded real estate company in the world. Lowy has 23 years of experience in the shopping center and real estate investment trust industry and has served on the advisory board of the RAND Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy."
http://www.rand.org/multi/ctrmp/
http://www.rand.org/multi/ctrmp/board.html
“On the altar of God, I swear eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson
Interesting
I wonder, did/do his assets include any 'real estate' at Ground Zero?
99 years in partnership with Silverstein Properties
From the top link in the post above yours:
Los Angeles, CA, July 24, 2001 - Westfield America officials today announced that the Company has executed an agreement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to lease the retail component of the World Trade Center for 99 years. Concurrently, Silverstein Properties has executed an agreement to lease portions of the World Trade Center office complex totaling nearly 10 million square feet.
The Eleventh Day of Every Month
I see
Thanks very much! I guess it only figures.