It is the most fascistic piece of law since Hitler’s enabling act. It is the stuff of which tyranny is made. The granting of free reign to the state and its agents to spy, arrest and disappear critics and foes and to justify it all under fighting a very vaguely defined “terrorism”. In an Orwellian fashion that completely suits its name the USA PATRIOT Act was sold to fear-stricken Americans, reeling from the September 11, 2001 attacks under the guise of keeping them safe. As the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it – “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. The law is the very cornerstone of the modern fascist USA and all of the evils and abuses of the state are dependent upon it. There must be a concerted effort to repeal or otherwise nullify this abomination while the news of the NSA Stasi and its growing list of transgressions against liberty are still able to elicit outrage and protestation.
The enabling act was rammed through congress in the immortal words of General George S. Patton “like shit through a tin horn”, many didn’t even bother to read it. Some who could have opposed it, the at the time Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Judiciary Committee head Patrick Leahy were sent anthrax letters, the envelopes ridiculously and crudely made up to cast aspersions on Muslims, a national scapegoat in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. “DEATH TO AMERICA”, “DEATH TO ISRAEL” and “ALLAH IS GREAT” were among the comments contained in the letters. The message was sent that there would be no opposition to the post-9/11 transformation of The United States of America into The Homeland. The culprits behind the letters have to this day never been sufficiently identified with the exception of the official government patsy, a former Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Ivins who conveniently ended up dead while under investigation. But this is a long and complex story for another time. The point is that the message was received that the USA PATRIOT Act would be the law of the land – forever.
Times do however change and the glimpse into the darkest bowels of the national surveillance state thanks to the revelations of government contractor Booz Allen’s former employee Edward Snowden has allowed for a small window of opportunity. The chink in the juggernaut’s armor may be the last chance to exploit an opening against a hydra what will quickly reconfigure and to fight for changes that will establish accountability and shine light upon secrecy. While tea party Republicans are currently being vilified by the establishment over the government shutdown and the entrenched opposition to raising the limit on the national credit card it was one Justin Amash, a Michigan Congressman who recently gathered enough support to send the warning shot across the bow of Leviathan with his LIBERT-E act that would have effectively defunded the NSA state voyeurs. This sent the establishment hacks, in a bipartisan manner that united Pelosi and Boehner, Cantor and Hoyer, Reid and McConnell to circle the wagons to defend their financial benefactors within the police state who keep them elected.
While congress has been holding hearings and parading the heads of the NSA surveillance machine, primarily General Keith Alexander a delusional megalomaniac who is infatuated by Star Trek and serial perjurer James Clapper in front of panels it has all been lip service. Just another one of the imperial dog and pony shows scheduled to provide the sheeple with the illusion that they actually live in a functioning democracy – they don’t.
So it is encouraging when someone like Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner who was responsible for the USA PATRIOT Act to come out and try to drive a stake through the heart of the monster that he himself was instrumental in creating. According to a story in The Guardian, Sensenbrenner has had enough of the wanton abuse of what was at least in his mind intended to be a legitimate program to prevent catastrophes like the September 11, 2001 attacks from happening. He was particularly galled by reports that government goons at the NSA were using secretive and highly sophisticated surveillance tools to spy on former spouses and lovers. Sensenbrenner is working on the USA Freedom Act, a nice jab at the duplicitous newspeak of the American fascist Magna Carta. I excerpt from the Guardian piece:
Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act – or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims.
It seeks to limit the collection of phone records to known terrorist suspects; to end "secret laws" by making courts disclose surveillance policies; to create a special court advocate to represent privacy interests; and to allow companies to disclose how many requests for users' information they receive from the USA. The bill also tightens up language governing overseas surveillance to remove a loophole which it has been abused to target internet and email activities of Americans.
Many lawmakers have agreed that some new legislation is required in the wake of the collapse in public trust that followed Snowden's disclosures, which revealed how the NSA was collecting bulk records of all US phone calls in order to sift out potential terrorist targets.
In July, a temporary measure to defund the NSA bulk collection programme was narrowly defeated in a 217 to 205 vote in the House, but Sensenbrenner said the appetite for greater privacy protections had only grown since.
"Opinions have hardened with the revelations over the summer, particularly the inspector general's report that there were thousands of violations of regulations, and the disclosure that NSA employees were spying on their spouses or significant others, which was very chilling," he told the Guardian in an interview.
Instead, the main opposition to Sensenbrenner and Leahy's twin-pronged effort is likely to come from the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, who is supportive of the NSA but who has proposed separate legislation focusing on greater transparency and checks rather than an outright ban on bulk collection.
Sensenbrenner and other reformers have been scathing of this rival legislative approach, calling it a "fig leaf" and questioning the independence of the intelligence committee. "I do not want to see Congress pass a fig leaf because that would allow the NSA to say 'Well, we've cleaned up our act' until the next scandal breaks," he said.
Additionally he is calling for the prosecution of Obama’s Stasi commandant James Clapper for lying to congress about the extent of the NSA’s warrantless collection of the telephone records of millions of law abiding Americans. Again, I excerpt from the Guardian story:
"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution," said the congressman.
Clapper has apologised for the incident, but reformers expect a fierce backlash to their proposals to rein in his powers in future. "I anticipate a big fight, and Senator Feinstein has already basically declared war," said Sensenbrenner. "If they use a law like Senator Feinstein is proposing, it will just allow them to do business as usual with a little bit of a change in the optics."
He is absolutely correct, Feinstein is one of the most disgustingly corrupt and two-faced member of a loathsome congress as well as a perfect example of why the legislative branch is only slightly less popular than genital herpes. There will be fierce resistance at any attempt to derail the big money gravy train of surveillance, domestic oppression and militarism and Feinstein, the impenetrable firewall of cellulite will be a reliable bulwark for the fascist state. Any reforms or restraints of these cancerous surveillance programs will be a huge struggle and the state-corporate media along with the usual foreign lobbies will go after their opponents with extreme prejudice. There will be some cosmetic changes out of the need to preserve the smiley face of friendly fascism but any real change will be painful, slow and costly. Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com provided his usual on the mark commentary in his most recent column about the very subject of reigning in the surveillance colossus entitled NSA ‘Reform’: The Limits of Legislation. I excerpt the following from Raimondo:
“Furthermore, I would add, the success of this phony "reform" effort is virtually assured, since the conditions that led to the NSA’s usurpation of the Constitution have yet to be ameliorated, or even widely understood.
The official response to the revelations of Edward Snowden, as reported by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others has been, as Greenwald puts it: "THE TERRORISTS!!!" Twelve years have passed since the 9/11 attacks, an entire generation has grown up in the shadow of endless war, and yet waving the bloody shirt is still effective enough to ward off attempts to rein in the Surveillance State. That’s because hanging over even the most convinced civil libertarian in the Senate is the looming question of what happens if another 9/11-type attack occurs, perhaps on an even greater scale. In that event, if the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act passes – an unlikely outcome, see below – won’t its supporters be blamed for purportedly blinding the NSA to the next incoming threat?”
The establishment always holds the trump card – the control of their media to propagandize and brainwash the lemmings into submission with their never ending supply of alerts, plots, attacks and swarthy Muslim fiends. They hate us for our freedom will be the message repeatedly hammered home by the disinformation organs of the state – and few will ever stop to realize that we truly are no longer as free as it is advertised. We will never live in a free country again as long as the decidedly anti-American USAPATRIOT Act is allowed to stand and the ongoing militarization of the police permitted to continue unopposed. The deck is stacked against those who believe in the principles upon which this country was established and they are few in number compared to their fellow Americans whose idea of a crisis would be running out of cheese dip in the middle of Dancing With the Stars.
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