It was 10 years ago Wednesday that then President George H. Bush signed into law the USAPATRIOT Act, passed by the 107th U.S. Congress, titled ”Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.” All blame for the terror events of 9/11/2001 were laid on 19 Islamic terrorists, 15 of them Saudis.
Curiously, the recently assassinated Osama bin laden was named as mastermind, when previous to that he had been taken off the FBI’s most wanted list for the crime due to lack of evidence. So we can sense already how “flexible” the truth surrounding 9/11 is. Also 15 of the 19 were Saudis. At least seven of them were noted to be living and working in the Middle East at the time of the crime.
Let me remind you, too, that the PATRIOT Act was based upon Adolph Hitler’s ENABLING ACT, which was written after the burning of the Reichstag in Germany, taking away most of the civil rights of German citizens. Though the fire was blamed on Communists, the major work of creating it was accomplished by Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels with Adolph Hitler’s full knowledge.
As the History Place tells us, “By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, who had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building. Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire then went to work using it as his torch.
“The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Goering were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Goering’s residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries then hurried back through the tunnel.
“Goering and Goebbels, also with Hitler’s approval, then hatched a plan to cause panic” after burning the Reichstag building and blaming the Communists. The Reichstag was the building in Berlin where the elected members of the republic met to conduct the daily business of government.”
As for Van der Lubbe, the Communist arsonist, he was tried and convicted, then beheaded. . . . Dead men tell no tales, especially without heads. But you can read the full story at the link above.
This preamble is to remind you of the questionable foundations that the USAPATRIOT Act rests on, even though it has been renewed by President Obama, contrary to his campaign promise. The Act’s questionable powers gives the government new powers to pry and interfere in the private lives of U.S. citizens, like the squeeze of some giant octopus’s extended tentacles.
It has severely reduced restrictions on and thus added power to law enforcement agencies’ ability to search telephone, email communications, wire-tapping, plus prying into medical, financial, and other records.
It also eased the restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States, and expanded the secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, especially those involving foreign individuals and entities.
It has broadened the “discretion” of law enforcement and immigration authorities to detain and deport immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts.
The Act expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, enlarging not only the number of activities to which the USAPATRIOT Act applied but has also greatly expanded law enforcement powers, especially those of the new Department of Homeland Security, including airport body-scanning and physical pat-downs.
In short, in the murky waters of the PATRIOT Act all kinds of dark ink were squirted to obfuscate and muck up and nullify the Constitution of the United States and the personal freedoms it provides.
So we should take no joy in the anniversary of this tyrannical Act that also condones torture, rendition, military tribunals, and even provides funds for the FBI/CIA in setting up patsies to take part in would-be terrorist acts, i.e., the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square car-bomber.
The Act set the climate for the president himself to create the CIA “Kill or Capture” list, which enables him and them to assassinate any individual, foreign or American born, to be assassinated in any country in the world, as with Moammar Kaddafi, and Anwar Al-Awlaki, if they are suspected of terrorist activities or anything else.
It gave us as a country “a reason” to attack Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden, who it turned out managed to elude capture for nearly 10 years, making it the longest war in American history, and still ongoing, in which several thousand more American soldiers were lost and hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives were lost.
It has aided and abetted in the worst possible way the fears, the paranoia, and viciousness of the American public against Muslims, and led in part to our singling out Muslim nations such as Iraq for an illegal war based on the false premises of Saddam Hussein having Weapons of Mass Destruction and being ready, willing able to drop them any minute on America. This war criminal’s lies led us into the Iraq War and by now several million Iraqis have been killed and some 5,000 American soldiers. Both these wars, as with the new Libyan War, have destroyed the infrastructures of these countries.
The Act also paved the way to introduce the use of high-paid, no-bid contractors and mercenaries to the context of the Iraq War and all of the following wars, squandering American taxpayers’ money as well as blood as never before.
We are now about to build an AFRICOM air base in the newly wrecked Libya, so the Octopus can unwind its inky blood-sucking tentacles throughout the continent of Africa, colonizing and stealing a nation’s assets with force at will.
The Act has so dizzied our constitutional framework that we consider ourselves the policemen of the world, even to shoot, maim, and attempt to silence protestors on our own soil, from Occupy Wall Street across the nation to Occupy Oakland, where a three-Iraq-tour former marine was put in the hospital Tuesday night with a fractured skull and remains in critical condition. This Act has become the New War Powers Act for police, creating a new enemy of the American people: the American police who are paid purportedly to protect them.
This Act has glorified our misguided sense of American Exceptionalism into thinking and treating the rest of the human race as so many animals in our hunting compound, which has now become the world, also ringed with our military bases.
Hitler would have been stunned, amazed, perhaps even proud that the nation who defeated him and his thousand year Third Reich (which lasted little more than a decade), has now absorbed and adopted his insane and despotic thinking, and applied it so well to tyrannizing the billions of people who make up the world’s population. No congratulations, Mr. Bush Jr. and the 107th Congress et. al, for creating this monster called the USAPATRIOT Act, and all those who took part in renewing and expanding its evil powers. May you burn in hell—which in fact we may be in right now.
For all the above reasons and more too numerous to mention or remember, I believe that October 26 should be recognized as a national, even international, day of mourning for the monstrous USAPATRIOT’s Act’s birth. The American flag should hang at half-mast. All public buildings should be draped with black. And most of all, George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and all those who participated in framing this bill, should be considered war criminals and tried in the Hague, not to mention hanged by their necks until all life seeps from them. This so that others like them never again dare to dream up such Acts or acts to bring such pain and chaos to our nation, our beloved America, and the world.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
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Mourning the 10th anniversary of the PATRIOT Act
Posted on October 28, 2011 by Jerry Mazza
It was 10 years ago Wednesday that then President George H. Bush signed into law the USAPATRIOT Act, passed by the 107th U.S. Congress, titled ”Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.” All blame for the terror events of 9/11/2001 were laid on 19 Islamic terrorists, 15 of them Saudis.
Curiously, the recently assassinated Osama bin laden was named as mastermind, when previous to that he had been taken off the FBI’s most wanted list for the crime due to lack of evidence. So we can sense already how “flexible” the truth surrounding 9/11 is. Also 15 of the 19 were Saudis. At least seven of them were noted to be living and working in the Middle East at the time of the crime.
Let me remind you, too, that the PATRIOT Act was based upon Adolph Hitler’s ENABLING ACT, which was written after the burning of the Reichstag in Germany, taking away most of the civil rights of German citizens. Though the fire was blamed on Communists, the major work of creating it was accomplished by Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels with Adolph Hitler’s full knowledge.
As the History Place tells us, “By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, who had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building. Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire then went to work using it as his torch.
“The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Goering were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Goering’s residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries then hurried back through the tunnel.
“Goering and Goebbels, also with Hitler’s approval, then hatched a plan to cause panic” after burning the Reichstag building and blaming the Communists. The Reichstag was the building in Berlin where the elected members of the republic met to conduct the daily business of government.”
As for Van der Lubbe, the Communist arsonist, he was tried and convicted, then beheaded. . . . Dead men tell no tales, especially without heads. But you can read the full story at the link above.
This preamble is to remind you of the questionable foundations that the USAPATRIOT Act rests on, even though it has been renewed by President Obama, contrary to his campaign promise. The Act’s questionable powers gives the government new powers to pry and interfere in the private lives of U.S. citizens, like the squeeze of some giant octopus’s extended tentacles.
It has severely reduced restrictions on and thus added power to law enforcement agencies’ ability to search telephone, email communications, wire-tapping, plus prying into medical, financial, and other records.
It also eased the restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States, and expanded the secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, especially those involving foreign individuals and entities.
It has broadened the “discretion” of law enforcement and immigration authorities to detain and deport immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts.
The Act expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, enlarging not only the number of activities to which the USAPATRIOT Act applied but has also greatly expanded law enforcement powers, especially those of the new Department of Homeland Security, including airport body-scanning and physical pat-downs.
In short, in the murky waters of the PATRIOT Act all kinds of dark ink were squirted to obfuscate and muck up and nullify the Constitution of the United States and the personal freedoms it provides.
So we should take no joy in the anniversary of this tyrannical Act that also condones torture, rendition, military tribunals, and even provides funds for the FBI/CIA in setting up patsies to take part in would-be terrorist acts, i.e., the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square car-bomber.
The Act set the climate for the president himself to create the CIA “Kill or Capture” list, which enables him and them to assassinate any individual, foreign or American born, to be assassinated in any country in the world, as with Moammar Kaddafi, and Anwar Al-Awlaki, if they are suspected of terrorist activities or anything else.
It gave us as a country “a reason” to attack Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden, who it turned out managed to elude capture for nearly 10 years, making it the longest war in American history, and still ongoing, in which several thousand more American soldiers were lost and hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives were lost.
It has aided and abetted in the worst possible way the fears, the paranoia, and viciousness of the American public against Muslims, and led in part to our singling out Muslim nations such as Iraq for an illegal war based on the false premises of Saddam Hussein having Weapons of Mass Destruction and being ready, willing able to drop them any minute on America. This war criminal’s lies led us into the Iraq War and by now several million Iraqis have been killed and some 5,000 American soldiers. Both these wars, as with the new Libyan War, have destroyed the infrastructures of these countries.
The Act also paved the way to introduce the use of high-paid, no-bid contractors and mercenaries to the context of the Iraq War and all of the following wars, squandering American taxpayers’ money as well as blood as never before.
We are now about to build an AFRICOM air base in the newly wrecked Libya, so the Octopus can unwind its inky blood-sucking tentacles throughout the continent of Africa, colonizing and stealing a nation’s assets with force at will.
The Act has so dizzied our constitutional framework that we consider ourselves the policemen of the world, even to shoot, maim, and attempt to silence protestors on our own soil, from Occupy Wall Street across the nation to Occupy Oakland, where a three-Iraq-tour former marine was put in the hospital Tuesday night with a fractured skull and remains in critical condition. This Act has become the New War Powers Act for police, creating a new enemy of the American people: the American police who are paid purportedly to protect them.
This Act has glorified our misguided sense of American Exceptionalism into thinking and treating the rest of the human race as so many animals in our hunting compound, which has now become the world, also ringed with our military bases.
Hitler would have been stunned, amazed, perhaps even proud that the nation who defeated him and his thousand year Third Reich (which lasted little more than a decade), has now absorbed and adopted his insane and despotic thinking, and applied it so well to tyrannizing the billions of people who make up the world’s population. No congratulations, Mr. Bush Jr. and the 107th Congress et. al, for creating this monster called the USAPATRIOT Act, and all those who took part in renewing and expanding its evil powers. May you burn in hell—which in fact we may be in right now.
For all the above reasons and more too numerous to mention or remember, I believe that October 26 should be recognized as a national, even international, day of mourning for the monstrous USAPATRIOT’s Act’s birth. The American flag should hang at half-mast. All public buildings should be draped with black. And most of all, George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and all those who participated in framing this bill, should be considered war criminals and tried in the Hague, not to mention hanged by their necks until all life seeps from them. This so that others like them never again dare to dream up such Acts or acts to bring such pain and chaos to our nation, our beloved America, and the world.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.