My comments in RED.
"There’s A Press Blackout on S 1959, the Thought Cr..."
"December 12th, 2007 ·
As odd as it sounds, it’s true. The Mainstream News Media appears to be in a total news blackout in regard S 1959. At first, I believed it was merely the reluctance of the MSM to discuss this Bill, however, the answer may be much more sinister than that! Below is a reply I found on Ron Paul’s Campaign site which references this Bill, and I double and triple checked for ANY Mainstream News Coverage on this issue - and so far, it appears to almost be non-existent!
The Greatest Obstacle
On December 4th, 2007 hemingway811 says:
is that the MSM has had a total blackout on the House’s passage of HR 1955 on Oct. 23rd. Do a search at any major newspaper & the major television stations, including cable. I have found a few comments in Blogs at a couple of television sites, but that’s about it.
For example, at the Washington Post you get:
“No Results Found”
LATIMES.COM ARTICLES
No matches found on search for: hr 1955No matches found on search for: violent radicalization
404 members of the House voted for this “thought crime” Bill. The ACLU is working with members of the Senate to amend the language. They specifically refer to the regulation of thoughts. I don’t expect the ACLU to make much headway with the Senate. We have been bombarded with so much fear-mongering 24/7 for so long, members of Congress are too afraid of being labeled unpatriotic if they don’t vote for legislation like this.
RP did not cast a vote on HR 1955.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/32886prs20071128.html
It is time to flood Keith Olbermann, Lou Dobbs, Jack Cafferty, and anyone else speaking out of the real issues the rest of the MSM ignores, with e-mails urging them to speak out about this Legislation. I already have.
Lou Dobbs:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9
Jack Cafferty
Unfortunately, writing Lou Dobbs or Jack Cafferty is futile, as CNN refuses to publish any information in regard this assault on our Constitution, and that’s after they have received hundreds, maybe even thousands of requests to editorialize on the subject. Has the government issued “signing letters” or other orders that prevent ALL of America’s Mainstream News Media from reporting on this vital issue? Jack Cafferty is attempting to promote his so-called “Blog” on CNN, however, if you even mention S 1959 in your comment, it probably won’t be published. CNN is stonewalling their viewer-ship, and on an issue where the public is demanding that this Bill be discussed in a public forum; CNN, along with the rest of the MSM, have turned their backs on America and have shown, despite increasing public outrage that they don’t give a damn about public opinion!
[Don't I know it!! I wrote them for years!]
If you fine-tune your Internet searches, and Google S 1959, there are pages and pages of results, almost all of them Blogs and Discussion forums in the US who are discussing this matter and urging their subscribers to call, email, and write to Congress to defeat this Bill, yet it appears we are screaming into a void - and no one in the MSM has the courage to bring this odious Bill to the publics attention. In fact, there is little or nothing mentioned in the foreign press as well, and in this writer’s opinion, we must break the silence of the Mainstream News Media to bring about enough awareness where the people can protest in enough numbers to kill this Bill before free speech in America is nothing more than a fleeting memory.
To anyone that is aware of Naomi Wolf’s writing, the Guardian Unlimited published her recent essay, Fascist America, in 10 easy steps. One chilling part of that essay is published below, and we all need to take note that a Fascist America appears to be on our doorstep, and only by making the MSM report upon this attempt to silence free speech in America will we have any chance of stopping the steady march toward total fascism and dictatorship in America:
8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.
Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.
Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC’s Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN’s Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.
9. Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of “spy” and “traitor”. When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times’ leaking of classified information “disgraceful”, while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the “treason” drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.MORE
Based on all of the Blogs which are standing in solidarity against this issue, I’d bet my last dollar (If I had one to spare…) the Congress has received hundreds of thousands of phone calls and emails, yet they still remain mute and refuse to offer the public anything at all - not even an assurance they will look into our concern and outrage; instead, it appears The United States Congress is betraying their constituents, this time in an assault that could change the face of America! Based on the refusal of the MSM to publicize the issue, and Congress remaining deaf and dumb in the performance of their duties, we can only ascertain that Congress is attempting to pass this Bill while the bulk of the population isn’t even aware of its existence, and to me, that speaks of treason!
We have only one chance of defeating this Bill before it gets out of Committee, and that’s to make enough calls and send enough emails to effectively jam-up the phone systems in Congress, and only by acting in unison will we be able to save free speech in America.
[I called!]
As an alternative, I’m calling upon the foreign press to publicize this matter, especially those in England, Germany, France, and all of the countries that America gave so many lives in World War I and II to help them throw off the yolk of oppression. America was there for them when Nazi Germany was attempting to enslave all of Europe, and I believe they have a debt of honor to repay -to stand tall and write about this critical issue that affects all of America. We were there for them, and now it seems that we need their help, if it’s nothing more than embarrassing the American Mainstream News Media into covering an issue that affects each and every American alive, here and abroad, and to lend their assistance in helping to insure that the United States will remain a free and democratic nation.
William Cormier
FootNote: This morning, I noted that NBC is quietly refunding money to advertisers because their ratings have been so low. LINK NBC, if you want to jump-start your ratings and be a top network again, maybe you might try reporting the news - all of it, and if you would break this press blackout and show some courage, I’m guessing, based on the interest of the public in regard S 1959, your ratings would soar and rather than giving refunds for poor ratings, you’d see your viewer-ship increase dramatically."
"Jessica Lee
The Indypendent
December 10, 2007
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama says that he will support the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (S. 1959). According to the automatic email responses constituents are receiving from his office, Obama appears to be straddling the fence between preserving civil liberties and being tough on terrorism.
“The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe. They also insist that our responses to threats respect the constitution and do not violate the basic tenets of our democracy,” Obama’s email said. Several people who have written to Obama have posted his response on various blogs, including “Justin” who’s personal blog was picked up on diggs.com.
“I wrote Senator Obama (my senator from Illinois) about this act, which is now in a committee of his (the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs). I asked that he read the bill (not to insult his intelligence, but after the Patriot Act it appears this is a necessary request for most senators), and that he recognize the dire consequences that could result from its vague language,” Justin wrote Dec. 6 below the post of Obama’s email. “He’s quite eloquent, you’ve got to give him that. This act ‘includes provisions prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts from violating civil rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens.’ Didn’t we used to have something like that? What was it called? Oh right… The Constitution.”
The House version of the bill, H.R. 1955, passed Oct. 23 by a vote of 404-6 under the “suspension of the rules,” a provision that is available to quickly pass bills considered “non-controversial.”
Obama is on the 17-member Senate Committee for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where S. 1959 was introduced by Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) Aug. 2. “I will keep your important comments in mind as I work with my colleagues on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. I will work to ensure that this legislation helps to achieve our domestic security objectives while protecting civil liberties and constitutional rights,” Obama stated in his email to Justin.
Many scholars, historians and civil liberties experts say they fear that the proposed bill will set the stage for future criminal legislation that be used against U.S.-based groups engaged in legal but unpopular political activism, ranging from political Islamists to animal-rights and environmental campaigners to radical right-wing organizations.
“This bill fits the pattern we are seeing coming out of Congress – both Republican and Democratic – of a continued campaign of fear, which gets into heads of Americans that we now need to start criminalizing ideology,” said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. He said he is very concerned about the bill’s vague definitions of “violent radicalization,” “homegrown terrorism,” and the terms within the definitions including “extremist belief system,” “violence” and “force.”
“What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this?” Queral questioned. “Planes flying into the World Trade Center is an extremist belief, but are anti-abortion activists extremists? Are individuals who liberate mink extremists? These are broad definitions that encompass so much, which need to rather be very narrowly tailored. It is criminalizing thought and ideology, rather than criminal activity.”
Jules Boykoff, an assistant professor of politics and government at Pacific University and author of Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States, told The Indypendent said he is concerned about how the government is broadening the definition of terrorism.
“Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act is a law that created a new brand of terrorists, the ‘domestic terrorist.’ Under this definition, the civil rights work Martin Luther King, Jr. did could have been construed as an act of ‘domestic terrorism,” Boykoff said.
In a Nov. 30 Common Dreams article, ‘Homegrown’ Suppression of Dissent,’ Boykoff provided a historical-based critique of who could be included under the umbrella definition of terrorism. “Even a cursory look backward through U.S. history reveals heroic figures who could be dubbed ‘violent radicals’ or ‘homegrown terrorists’ under the proposed bill, from U.S. revolutionaries like Sam Adams to gun-toting slavery abolitionists like John Brown to militant civil-rights organizers like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Kamau Franklin, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), also expressed concern that H.R. 1955/S. 1959 will foster a legislative momentum on criminalizing a broad range of dissident voices. “The Commission’s broad mandate can lead to the ability to turn civil disobedience, a form of protest that is centuries old, into a terrorist act,” he said. “My biggest fear is that they [the commission] will call for some new criminal penalties and federal crimes,” says Franklin. “Activists are nervous about how the broad definitions could be used for criminalizing civil disobedience and squashing the momentum of the left.”
“It’s possible that someone who would have been charged with disorderly conduct or obstruction of governmental administration may soon be charged with a federal terrorist statute,” Franklin said.
Many activists and civil liberties advocates have expressed concern across the nation on blogs and radio shows about how the bill’s use of vaguely defined terms can be seen within a historical pattern of sweeping government repression of dissenting voices throughout the history of the United States where citizens have been targeted for their political beliefs. Two generations of Americans experienced first hand the two “Red Scares” (1917-1920 and 1940-50s) and the FBI’s secret Counter Intelligence Program, nicknamed COINTELPRO, which enabled the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” domestic protest groups for “subversive activities” and “potential crimes.”
To many, the similarities between COINTELPRO and the bill are unsettling. The proposed legislation calls for the National Commission to “examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism and ideologically based violence in the United States” in order to develop policy for “prevention, disruption and mitigation.” This investigation is needed, according to stated Congressional findings, due to possible threats to national security.
The secret program continued until it was discovered COINTELPRO was investigated by a U.S. Senate select committee on intelligence activities (commonly known as the Church Committee) which convened in 1975. The Church Committee found that from 1956 to 1971, “the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”
In the last 30 years, significant evidence has surfaced about how the FBI and local law enforcement disrupted non-violent social and political movements, even “neutralizing” individuals through target assassinations. The secret program was vast, with agents monitoring and agitating people involved in the “New Left,” including anti-Vietnam War efforts, the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican independence groups, popular musicians and counter-cultural and revolutionary independent newspapers.
OTHER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE VIEWS ON THE BILL
Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said that he believes the proposed bill is unconstitutional.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters in New York City Nov. 29, Kucinich took several questions from the audience, including my question asking why he voted against the bill. Kucinich was one of only six representatives to oppose the bill on Oct. 23.
“If you understand what his bill does, it really sets the stage for further criminalization of protest,” Kucinich said. “This is the way our democracy little, by little, by little, is being stripped away from us. This bill, I believe, is a clear violation of the first amendment.”
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was one of the 22 House members not present for the vote.
A small demonstration against S. 1959 took place outside Senator Hillary Clinton’s office in New York City Dec. 10. Her office did not return an Indypendent’s call for comment."
