America is beyond salvation

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Thu Oct 25 22:05:58 PDT 2001


On Thursday, October 25, 2001, at 08:42 PM, Mark Talbot wrote:

>> Dangerous? Yes, there are dangers to a mandatory national I.D. card, 
>> but
>> there may be greater dangers without one. The fact is, to live in a 
>> society
>> as vulnerable as ours, we may have to give up something - but I 
>> disagree
>> that what's lost is freedom. Instead, it's privacy, and maybe not even 
>> that.
>
> This guy is clueless: privacy is a form of freedom.
>
> I have yet to see a post 9/11 scheme that would actually enhance my 
> safety in any significant way. Even police states have terrorists.
>

The United States Government supported the Chechen "freedom fighters" 
who blew up a couple of apartment building blocks in Moscow. Hundreds 
died.

But this was not terrorism...this was freedom fighting.

Now that the U.S. has been hit so hard, the party line in the U.S.G. is 
shifting rapidly.

As for the USA/PATRIOT law, about to be signed into law tomorrow, 
Friday, October 25, with enforcement to "begin immediately," I am not 
too worried about roving wiretaps. That's just technological evolution 
of the standard old judge-approved wiretap.

No, what worries me a great deal is the all of the language about 
terrorist organizations and what happens to those who "provide support" 
for some claimed terrorist organization (including language about 
helping them to hide communicaitons, money transfers...sounds like 
anonymous remailers face civil forfeiture of their assets, plus 
imprisonment). There is even frightening language (available by grepping 
the text) about how the asset forfeitiures, arrests, detentions, etc. 
should not be done for ordinary first amendment practitioners!

(Language like: "provided that such investigation of a United States 
person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected 
bythe first amendment to the Constitution.'';")


My translation of this language: Anyone may be arrested, held without 
charges, etc., but a positive defense, provided one can hire Gerry 
Spence, may be that the activity was a 1A activity and hence the 
Homeland Defense Troopers really should not have kicked the doors in, 
killed the wife in bed because they saw movement, stomped the cat, and 
put the anon remailer operator in a dark cell for 15 weeks without any 
charges being filed or evidence produced...

The rest of the bill is filled with equally frightening stuff. Remember, 
folks, this stuff is not just directed at "Arabic-looking Middle 
Easterners with student visas." It applies to so-called right wing 
militias, to freedom fighters against unfair taxation, to gun dealers, 
even to those transporting their own fucking money! Someone carrying his 
own money faces forfeiture of the money and imprisonment, as if it were 
the King's money, not his! This grossly surpasses _anything_ the English 
masters did to the colonies. Far surpasses. Aspects of this have been 
the law for a long time, but this formalizes the issue that people 
cannot transport their own money around without the Crown deciding to 
seize their money. Fuck them dead. Fuck Washington. I pray for a massive 
enough attack to kill hundreds of thousands of these snakes in their 
den. Praise Osama, if this is what it takes.

The USA/PATRIOT bill was hastily put together, with most 
Congresscritters have essentially no idea of its implications for 
building a police state. The U.S. Congress wastes more than a year 
debating the impeachment issue over the Lewinsky affair, blah blah blah, 
then races to construct an American Reich with barely any discussion.

Disgusting. The nation is beyond salvation. America is preterite.

--Tim May
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater





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