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Banned
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
.....I oppose socialism because its fundamentally flawed. If it were not than you would see like minded socialists creating thriving socialist communities, you need not tanks and the IRS to be a socialist, and almost all have failed completely.
It doesn't even work on a small scale on a voluntary basis, yet people like you want to see it enforced under penalty of law.
It would be laughable if it wasn't so disgusting......
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Here is the tenth attempt to shift the discussion to f-a-s-c-i-s-m, on a thread titled:
"Are You Leaning Far Enough to the Right to be Considered a Fascist? "
I found this comparison extremely distrubing. Doesn't it seem to reinforce the argument about creeping and creepy fascism in the US these last several years?
I always thought that the necessary trade off of limiting the power of government via the US Constitution was an accepted inevitable increased risk to safety and security. President Bush has acted and communicated as if that premise is no longer valid, that security trumps the long held principle of the priority limiting government power:
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0061017-1.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 17, 2006
President Bush Signs Military Commissions Act of 2006
THE PRESIDENT: Welcome to the White House on an historic day. It is a rare occasion when a President can sign a bill he knows will save American lives. I have that privilege this morning.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the war on terror....
....Over the past few months the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex. <h3>Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?</h3> Every member of Congress who voted for this bill has helped our nation rise to the task that history has given us.....\
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/op...70&oref=slogin
January 28, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History
By JOSEPH J. ELLIS
Amherst, Mass.
IN recent weeks, President Bush and his administration have mounted a spirited defense of his Iraq policy, the Patriot Act and, especially, a program to wiretap civilians, often reaching back into American history for precedents to justify these actions. It is clear that the president believes that he is acting to protect the security of the American people. It is equally clear that both his belief and the executive authority he claims to justify its use derive from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
A myriad of contested questions are obviously at issue here — foreign policy questions about the danger posed by Iraq, constitutional questions about the proper limits on executive authority, even political questions about the president's motives in attacking Iraq. But all of those debates are playing out under the shadow of Sept. 11 and the tremendous changes that it prompted in both foreign and domestic policy.
Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.
My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.
Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.
Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.
My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?
My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.
In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.
What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.
Joseph J. Ellis is a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College and the author, most recently, of "His Excellency: George Washington."
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Quote:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...6/ED125108.DTL
EDITORIALS
On the Public's Right to Know
The day Ashcroft censored Freedom of Information
Sunday, January 6, 2002
THE PRESIDENT DIDN't ask the networks for television time. The attorney general didn't hold a press conference. The media didn't report any dramatic change in governmental policy. As a result, most Americans had no idea that one of their most precious freedoms disappeared on Oct. 12.
Yet it happened. In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft vigorously urged federal agencies to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American citizens.
Passed in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Freedom of Information Act has been hailed as one of our greatest democratic reforms. It allows ordinary citizens to hold the government accountable by requesting and scrutinizing public documents and records. Without it, journalists, newspapers,
historians and watchdog groups would never be able to keep the government honest. It was our post-Watergate reward, the act that allows us to know what our elected officials do, rather than what they say. It is our national sunshine law, legislation that forces agencies to disclose their public records and documents.
Yet without fanfare, the attorney general simply quashed the FOIA. The Department of Justice did not respond to numerous calls from The Chronicle to comment on the memo . click to show
So, rather than asking federal officials to pay special attention when the public's right to know might collide with the government's need to safeguard our security, Ashcroft instead asked them to consider whether "institutional, commercial and personal privacy interests could be implicated by disclosure of the information." Even more disturbing, he wrote:
"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."
Somehow, this memo never surfaced. When coupled with President Bush's Nov. 1 executive order that allows him to seal all presidential records since 1980, the effect is positively chilling.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we have witnessed a flurry of federal orders designed to beef up the nation's security. Many anti-terrorist measures have carefully balanced the public's right to know with the government's responsibility to protect its citizens.
Who, for example, would argue against taking detailed plans of nuclear reactors, oil refineries or reservoirs off the Web?
No one. Almost all Americans agree that the nation's security is our highest priority.
Yet half the country is also worried that the government might use the fear of terrorism as a pretext for protecting officials from public scrutiny.
Now we know that they have good reason to worry. For more than a quarter of a century, the Freedom of Information Act has ratified the public's right to know what the government, its agencies and its officials have done. It has substituted transparency for secrecy and we, as a democracy, have benefited from the truths that been extracted from public records.
Consider, for example, just a few of the recent revelations -- obtained through FOIA requests -- that newspapers and nonprofit watchdog groups have been able to publicize during the last few months:
-- The Washington-based Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization, has been able to publish lists of recipients who have received billions of dollars in federal farm subsidies. Their Web site, www.ewg.org, has not only embarrassed the agricultural industry, but also allowed the public to realize that federal money -- intended to support small family farmers -- has mostly enhanced the profits of large agricultural corporations.
-- The Charlotte Observer has been able to reveal how the Duke Power Co., an electric utility, cooked its books so that it avoided exceeding its profit limits. This creative accounting scheme prevented the utility from giving lower rates to 2 million customers in North Carolina and South Carolina.
-- USA Today was able to uncover and publicize a widespread pattern of misconduct among the National Guard's upper echelon that has continued for more than a decade. Among the abuses documented in public records are the inflation of troop strength, the misuse of taxpayer money, incidents of sexual harassment and the theft of life-insurance payments intended for the widows and children of Guardsmen.
-- The National Security Archive, a private Washington-based research group,
has been able to obtain records that document an unpublicized event in our history. It turns out that in 1975, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesian strongman Suharto the green light to invade East Timor, an incursion that left 200,000 people dead.
-- By examining tens of thousands of public records, the Associated Press has been able to substantiate the long-held African American allegation that white people -- through threats of violence, even murder -- cheated them out of their land. In many cases, government officials simply approved the transfer of property deeds. Valued at tens of million of dollars, some 24,000 acres of farm and timber lands, once the property of 406 black families, are now owned by whites or corporations.
These are but a sample of the revelations made possible by recent FOIA requests. None of them endanger the national security. It is important to remember that all classified documents are protected from FOIA requests and unavailable to the public.
Yet these secrets have exposed all kinds of official skullduggery, some of which even violated the law. True, such revelations may disgrace public officials or even result in criminal charges, but that is the consequence -- or shall we say, the punishment -- for violating the public trust.
No one disputes that we must safeguard our national security. All of us want to protect our nation from further acts of terrorism. But we must never allow the public's right to know, enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act, to be suppressed for the sake of official convenience.
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Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0051006-3.html
The President:...Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, <h3>Islamo-fascism</h3>. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. ....
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060807.html
The President:....We must deal with this movement with strong security measures, we must bring justice to those who would attack us, and at the same time, defeat their ideology by the spread of liberty.
And it takes a lot of work. This is the beginning of a long struggle against an ideology that is real and profound. It's <h3>Islamo-fascism</h3>. It comes in different forms.....
...And part of the challenge in the 21st century is to remind people about the stakes, and remind people that in moments of quiet, there's still an <h3>Islamic fascist</h3> group plotting, planning and trying to spread their ideology. .....
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060810-3.html
THE PRESIDENT: The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with <h3>Islamic fascists</h3> who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation. .....
.....But obviously, we're still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in. It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America.....
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Is it just a coincidence that Mr. Bush sings the same lyrics as his "Islamofascist" nemesis:
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<h3>Bush:</h3> "We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now."
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2751019.stm"><h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3></a> In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience.
I also advise myself and you to say more prayers.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "Our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy," "Hope still lights our way, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> God Almighty says: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil."
<h3>Bush:</h3> "There is power -- wonder-working power -- in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "The American people have deep and diverse religious beliefs, truly one of the great strengths of our country. And the faith of our citizens is seeing us through some demanding times. We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> God Almighty says: "Oh ye who believe! If ye will help the cause of Allah, He will help you and plant your feet firmly."
<h3>Bush:</h3> "After we were attacked on September the 11th, we carried our grief to the Lord Almighty in prayer."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> Obey Him, be thankful to Him, and remember Him always, and die not except in a state of Islam with complete submission to Allah.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "The role of government is limited, because government cannot put hope in people's hearts, or a sense of purpose in people's lives. That happens when someone puts an arm around a neighbor and says, God loves you, I love you, and you can count on us both."
The jurisdiction of the socialists and those rulers has fallen a long time ago. Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden
<h3>Bush:</h3> "I ask you to challenge your listeners to encourage your congregations to work together for the good of this nation, to work hard to break down the barriers that have divided the children of God for too long. There is no question that we can rid this nation of hopelessness and despair, because the greatest of America is the character of the American people."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution against false rumors, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "What I'm saying is, the days of discriminating against religious groups just because they're religious are coming to an end. I have issued an executive order banning discrimination against faith-based charities and social service grants by federal agencies."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "And we are a courageous country, ready when necessary to defend the peace. And today, the peace is threatened. We face a continuing threat of terrorist networks that hate the very thought of people being able to live in freedom."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> We also stress to honest Muslims that they should move, incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmosphere so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "They hate the thought of the fact that in this great country, we can worship the Almighty God the way we see fit. And what probably makes him even angrier is we're not going to change."
Muslims' doctrine and banner should be clear in fighting for the sake of God. He who fights to raise the word of God will fight for God's sake. So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan
<h3>Bush:</h3> "We face an outlaw regime in Iraq that hates our country."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "A regime that aids and harbors terrorists and is armed with weapons of mass murder. Chemical agents, lethal viruses, and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Secretly, without fingerprints, Saddam Hussein could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own. Saddam Hussein is a threat. He's a threat to the United States of America. He's a threat to some of our closest friends and allies. We don't accept this threat."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> We are following up with great interest and extreme concern the crusaders' preparations for war to occupy a former capital of Islam, loot Muslims' wealth, and install an agent government, which would be a satellite for its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv, just like all the other treasonous and agent Arab governments.
This would be in preparation for establishing the Greater Israel.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "My attitude is that we owe it to future generations of Americans and citizens in freedom-loving countries to see to it that Mr. Saddam Hussein is disarmed."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> This is a prescribed duty. God says: "[And let them pray with thee] taking all precautions and bearing arms: the unbelievers wish if ye were negligent of your arms and your baggage, to assault you in a single rush."
<h3>Bush:</h3> "It's his choice to make as to how he will be disarmed. He can either do so -- which it doesn't look like he's going to -- for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition of willing countries and disarm Saddam Hussein."
Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "But should we need to use troops, for the sake of future generations of Americans, American troops will act in the honorable traditions of our military and in the highest moral traditions of our country."
Amid this unjust war, the war of infidels and debauchees led by America along with its allies and agents, we would like to stress a number of important values
<h3>Bush:</h3> "In violation of the Geneva Conventions, Saddam Hussein is positioning his military forces within civilian populations in order to shield his military and blame coalition forces for civilian casualties that he has caused. Saddam Hussein regards the Iraqi people as human shields, entirely expendable when their suffering serves his purposes."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> ...we realized from our defense and fighting against the American enemy that, in combat, they mainly depend on psychological warfare. This is in light of the huge media machine they have. They also depend on massive air strikes so as to conceal their most prominent point of weakness, which is the fear, cowardliness, and the absence of combat spirit among US soldiers.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "America views the Iraqi people as human beings who have suffered long enough under this tyrant. And the Iraqi people can be certain of this: the United States is committed to helping them build a better future. If conflict occurs, we'll bring Iraq food and medicine and supplies and, most importantly, freedom."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. A message to our Muslim brothers in Iraq, may God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "We're called to defend our nation and to lead the world to peace, and we will meet both challenges with courage and with confidence."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world?
<h3>Bush:</h3> "Liberty is not America's gift to the world. Liberty is God's gift to every human being in the world."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> God, who sent the book unto the prophet, who drives the clouds, and who defeated the enemy parties, defeat them and make us victorious over them.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "There's an old saying, 'Let us not pray for tasks equal to our strength. Let us pray for strength equal to our tasks.' And that is our prayer today, for the strength in every task we face."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> ...we remind that victory comes only from God and all we have to do is prepare and motivate for jihad.
<h3>Bush:</h3> "I want to thank each of you for your prayers. I want to thank you for your faithfulness. I want to thank you for your good work. And I want to thank you for loving your country. May God bless you all, and may God bless America."
<h3>Islamofascist Bin Laden:</h3> O ye who believe. When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in remembrance much (and often); That ye may prosper. Our Lord. Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire. May God's peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.
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Last edited by host; 03-08-2008 at 01:11 PM..
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