Newly Released Secret Memos Provide the Blueprint for Bush's Police State

[NicholeW.]

Newly Released Secret Memos Provide the Blueprint for Bush's Police State
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted March 4, 2009.


http://www.alternet.org/rights/129972/


Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide "legal" rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

[tekla]

Unreal stuff, they were worse then even people who thought they were really, bad thought they were.

[NicholeW.]

Let's wait and see if even more doesn't manage to get out. Perhaps we haven't yet really scratched the surface of "bad."

[tekla]

I bet not, but I'm an optimist.  I still haven't seen anything on the 'extreme rendition' program, how many people were so rendered, and into what.

[NicholeW.]

Yeah, that's a really scary kinda name for a program, eh. Like rendering hamburger or sausage, ya know?

Plus the constitutional "rendering" that was being done as well. These guys were thugs in business suits. 3-piece ones with button-down collars at that! One of Mao's old "re-education camps" might be a good tonic for a few of them.

But, I suspect that few will pay any attention at all. And should we I would imagine more "discretion' will be used in releasing such damnable stuff.

Give us Nordstrom's and Wal-mart and we don't worry so much about small things like undermining the government by the government. Ya know?

Nichole

[tekla]

These guys were thugs in business suits. 3-piece ones with button-down collars at that!

Funny, I used to describe my time with the Bechtel Corp as "the Third Reich in suits."  So I know what you mean.

[Janet_Girl]

This comes as no surprise to me.  The Patriot Act was just the start.  And Guantanamo were just the start of the "Camps"

Janet

[tekla]

oh there is a notion of camps being built in the US, see:
http://www.libertyforlife.com/jail-police/us_concentration_camps.htm

[NicholeW.]

These guys were thugs in business suits. 3-piece ones with button-down collars at that!

Funny, I used to describe my time with the Bechtel Corp as "the Third Reich in suits."  So I know what you mean.

I can only imagine. The boys at Fort Meade dressed much more casually, at least the ones I worked closely with.

The 3-piecers I only ever saw from a distance. They entered through other doors.

But, yes, the mundanity of evil and "bad" are rather commonplace. The least likely looking people tend to be the bad guys. And their evil seems generally most seen in what they write and the ways their policies affect the world. I think most folk have a difficult time getting that. Evil tends to resemble your Uncle Albert dressed for the post-Mass feast on a Sunday.

WWE prolly makes the whole evil and good thang much more easy to figure out.

Nichole



Post Merge: March 05, 2009, 11:32:42 AM

oh there is a notion of camps being built in the US, see:
http://www.libertyforlife.com/jail-police/us_concentration_camps.htm

Just curious about a very small two words in that article "potential terrorists." They were planning to get rid of all of us?

[tekla]

In perhaps one of the most radical books ever written, Hanna Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil(1963), really captures how mundane evil really is, how its not some screaming zombie or zonked out hippie, but everyday people, as the phrase goes, "just following orders."

[NicholeW.]

That woman had it all sooooo together. But yes,

Things To Do
1. Eat breakfast and read the paper (watch TV news)
2. Kiss the wife.
3. Call the office and get today's agenda
4. Memo to secretary: set up meeting with Maj. Gen. Keitel
5. Buy sausage for dinner and have it delivered home.
6. Sign release to execute 500 more of the detainees.
7. Eat lunch and get manicure.
8. Buy a new suit.
9. Sit in on torture chamber interrogation of prisoners.
10. Pick up the children from school.
11. Eat dinner and watch the evening news.
12. Listen to Siegfried on the sound-system.
12. Have newscaster detained for story about camps. Make sure we use all means to discover where he got the information.
13. Brush teeth and get into pajamas.
14. Sleep like a baby.

[imaz]

In perhaps one of the most radical books ever written, Hanna Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil(1963), really captures how mundane evil really is, how its not some screaming zombie or zonked out hippie, but everyday people, as the phrase goes, "just following orders."

That is so true, evil cannot flourish without the "silent majority" looking the other way.

People are strange as the "Milgram Experiment" clearly showed.

How many died in the last century due to man's inhumanity to man, 23,000,000 Soviets, 12,000,000 Germans, 30,000,000 Chinese, 6,000,000 Jews, 4,000,000 Indonesians in WW2 alone.

There is a reported saying:

Abd' Allah bin Amar bin al-Aas reported Allah's Messenger Muhammad (pbuh), as saying:

"My people (Ummah) will undergo and experience all those conditions which were suffered by the Children of Israel in a manner of resemblance in which a shoe of a pair resembles the other shoe."

(From Tirmidhi)

Sometimes it scares me; being TS, Muslim and on the left.

[tekla]

I don't think that the Milgram Experment, or the SPE, (Stanford Prison Experiment) showed any such thing.  What they did prove was that this was us, all of us.  We do what we're told.

For the basics, see:  (After that point, google it yourself)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

http://www.prisonexp.org/

[NicholeW.]

I have to agree that we aren't strange, just human and prone to take orders and make little protest about it.

I found the same thing true in the early 70s with protesters, few would actually stay to protest when the batons came down or the paddy wagons were drawn up. Same in Germany during the "squatters" protests in Berlin. Many were there to start, but when the cops moved forward (and this wasn't a bad idea at all, those cops were ruthless) the protesters stayed to the front and the non-protesters took to their heels and those who happened along in the area knew to get TF outta there as well.

I'd like to think, Imaz, that if due to your history, your religion and your politics you were ever hunted and threatened I'd take you in and provide what shelter I could.

Faceless on a board that's an easy wish to have. I often find that true of radicals: they do best when hidden and anonymous.

I think Milgram simply showed that where the rubber meets the road, mostly there's the sound of a rim tearing up the pavement. *sigh*

Nichole

[imaz]

I have to agree that we aren't strange, just human and prone to take orders and make little protest about it.

I found the same thing true in the early 70s with protesters, few would actually stay to protest when the batons came down or the paddy wagons were drawn up. Same in Germany during the "squatters" protests in Berlin. Many were there to start, but when the cops moved forward (and this wasn't a bad idea at all, those cops were ruthless) the protesters stayed to the front and the non-protesters took to their heels and those who happened along in the area knew to get TF outta there as well.

I'd like to think, Imaz, that if due to your history, your religion and your politics you were ever hunted and threatened I'd take you in and provide what shelter I could.

Faceless on a board that's an easy wish to have. I often find that true of radicals: they do best when hidden and anonymous.

I think Milgram simply showed that where the rubber meets the road, mostly there's the sound of a rim tearing up the pavement. *sigh*

Nichole

Thanks Nichole that touched my heart

Of course I would do the same to you and anyone who would be in that situation.

I spent the 70's in Italy (Gli anni di piombo - The years of lead) and I know what you mean about those who are prepared to make a stand when the Police/Carabinieri lose it and when the Fascists attack.

My girlfriend at the time went through Bologna Station less than an hour before the far right blew it to pieces and in just one year I managed to get arrested in Italy, Switzerland and Germany!