Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance

How about this one Brandon...... just one of the more recent in a long list.

George Bush has turned the full force of the world's most powerful spying apparatus on the citizens it was designed to protect.

Wiretapping is a serious crime, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense. It is frequently employed to gain information that can then be used to commit other crimes such as blackmail and extortion, or to gain unfair advantages over competitors. In totalitarian countries, it is used to crush dissent.

Why would anyone do something illegally when it can be accomplished, legally? Who sits at a green light, waiting for it to turn red so he can violate the law by crossing the intersection against the signal? The President directed the NSA to engage in activities the secret court would not have permitted. So, the only conclusion you can draw from this is that Bush circumvented the law in order to spy on people who he could not spy on legally.
Full & very interestin commentary at:

http://ragemaker.com/stories/2006/thotpolice.htm

Do you have a reference for the New Yorker article?

Brandon9000 wrote:

McTag wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

Can you list one, and I would prefer only one, action which has been ordered or undertaken by the government, and tell me which law it violates. I see the links, but they don't specifically answer the question. It's very easy to give a link, and make the general statement that it proves your point, but I'm not sure it does. If you can give me one example, and cite the law it violates, that would be evidence in support of your point. The abuses at Abu Ghraib, for example, are not, since they were contrary to the orders those soldiers had.

Orders schmorders. Who bought the dog leads? No senior personnel have been charged yet. Who trained in these techniques? Who indented for the hoods, gags, blindfolds? Can we see the scale of the procurement schedules? Who drew up the procedures? Who planned for dogs to be available? Whose idea was the women's underwear and the smearing of the menstrual blood? Not the clowns so far charged, obviously. Who in their right mind believes the official accounts so far given?

I must point out that you have yet to specify even one law that this administration has broken, despite being invited to give a concrete example of what you are alleging. Is it that you cannot give so much as one concrete example? If this administration is trampling all over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it seems kind of odd that you can't specifically tell me even one example. You might speculate that higher ups are involved in the Abu Ghraib abuses, but that is speculation only. Again, I invite you to tell me one and only one thing this administration has done which is illegal, and then tell me which law it violates. I am not saying that there are no such cases, only that there are very few.

I answered this in a previous post. I posted twice in answer to this, since it raises a few issues. See my previous post, the one which mentions habeas corpus, the principle by which no-one should be arrested and jailed without being informed why, and shall have the right to be charged and without undue delay to be tried before a judge. Something very like that, I think.

Can you list one, and I would prefer only one, action which has been ordered or undertaken by the government, and tell me which law it violates.

I am not saying that there are no such cases, only that there are very few.

Who was arrested without a charge?

Maher Arar is a telecommunications engineer living in Ottawa, Ontario with his young family. He arrived in Canada in 1987 from Syria, where he was born, and became a Canadian citizen in 1991.

On September 26th, 2002 Mr. Arar was taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada after visiting his wife's family in Tunisia. He was questioned about his alleged links to al-Qa'ida for 9 hours without a lawyer and then removed to the Metropolitan Detention Centre in New York. After thirteen days he "disappeared" from U.S. custody. It was later determined that he had been deported to Syria without any hearing, and without the knowledge of the Canadian consulate, his lawyer, or his family.

Deportation to Syria, where torture and incommunicado detention are commonplace for political prisoners, exposed Maher Arar to tremendous risk. Expulsion in such circumstances, without a fair hearing, violates the U.S. Government's obligations under International law, specifically the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The U.S. also violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to inform the Canadian authorities of its intention to deport Maher Arar, thereby depriving him of the assistance of his consulate.

On October 21st, 2002 Mr. Arar was handed over to Syrian authorities after being held briefly in Jordan for interrogation. He remained in custody, in an undisclosed location, for almost a year, without being charged and without being informed of the details of the case against him. Canadian consular officials visited Arar in detention, but were never allowed to speak to him alone. Between April 22 and August 14, 2003 they were not permitted to see him at all despite numerous requests.

On October 5th, 2003, the eve of his trial before the State Security Court, Mr. Arar was suddenly released to the Canadian Consulate in Damascus by Syrian authorities. The next day he was flown home to Canada to be reunited with his wife and two young children.

I am not saying that there are no such cases, only that there are very few.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

I see you have changed your statement. You went from this

Brandon9000 wrote:

Can you list one, and I would prefer only one, action which has been ordered or undertaken by the government, and tell me which law it violates.

to this:

Brandon9000 wrote:

I am not saying that there are no such cases, only that there are very few.

...But to answer your question:

Brandon9000 wrote:

Who was arrested without a charge?

Quote:

Maher Arar is a telecommunications engineer living in Ottawa, Ontario with his young family. He arrived in Canada in 1987 from Syria, where he was born, and became a Canadian citizen in 1991.

On September 26th, 2002 Mr. Arar was taken into custody by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada after visiting his wife's family in Tunisia. He was questioned about his alleged links to al-Qa'ida for 9 hours without a lawyer and then removed to the Metropolitan Detention Centre in New York. After thirteen days he "disappeared" from U.S. custody. It was later determined that he had been deported to Syria without any hearing, and without the knowledge of the Canadian consulate, his lawyer, or his family.

Deportation to Syria, where torture and incommunicado detention are commonplace for political prisoners, exposed Maher Arar to tremendous risk. Expulsion in such circumstances, without a fair hearing, violates the U.S. Government's obligations under International law, specifically the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The U.S. also violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to inform the Canadian authorities of its intention to deport Maher Arar, thereby depriving him of the assistance of his consulate.

On October 21st, 2002 Mr. Arar was handed over to Syrian authorities after being held briefly in Jordan for interrogation. He remained in custody, in an undisclosed location, for almost a year, without being charged and without being informed of the details of the case against him. Canadian consular officials visited Arar in detention, but were never allowed to speak to him alone. Between April 22 and August 14, 2003 they were not permitted to see him at all despite numerous requests.

On October 5th, 2003, the eve of his trial before the State Security Court, Mr. Arar was suddenly released to the Canadian Consulate in Damascus by Syrian authorities. The next day he was flown home to Canada to be reunited with his wife and two young children.

link

Oh, and this

Brandon9000 wrote:

I am not saying that there are no such cases, only that there are very few.

really reminded me of this here:

Quote:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Which law does this violate? Does habeas corpus under US law apply to non-citizens? Technically, was he arrested or merely picked up?

Brandon9000 wrote:

Which law does this violate? Does habeas corpus under US law apply to non-citizens? Technically, was he arrested or merely picked up?

I think I made no reference to habeas corpus. You asked for laws that were violated. Do you claim there were no laws violated? Do non-citizens not have any rights in the US?

Where policies exist, the board said, they are often focused more on restricting scientists' ability to discuss their findings than on guaranteeing a free flow of information.

Cordesman: Report to Congress on Iraq War Borders on 'Deception'
Interviewee: Anthony H. Cordesman
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

June 7, 2006

Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading military and intelligence analyst of the Iraq war, says that the Defense Department's latest report to Congress on the status of the Iraq war borders on "deception" by painting an overly upbeat picture. He has written that the report is worthy of an "F."

"You cannot have a climate where you lose this much time without seeing the situation deteriorate," says Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We need to assess these risks, and we need to assess them honestly if we are going to organize the kind of U.S. effort that has the highest possibility of preventing civil conflict" and defeating the insurgency, Cordesman says.

You've been quite critical of the latest quarterly report by the Defense Department to Congress on the situation in Iraq. Why so?

We are seeing a pattern in which we have never had realistic reporting to Congress. But this quarterly report has really failed to address the issues in ways which border on deception...

An obvious conclusion would be that the Pentagon report was done for political reasons to try to make things look better than they are in Iraq with elections coming up in November for Congress.

One wonders. It certainly spins things in a very favorable way in many areas. But the truth of the matter is that it is simply incompetent. It shows a lack of concern for detail, for the facts, [for] addressing the issues that really need to be addressed. That is one of the most discouraging aspects of it. This is a highly partisan environment. There are really bitter and increasingly polarized debates in Congress, among the American people, and in the media over what is happening there. People really need to know the facts, they need to know the risks, and they need to know what level of commitment is needed. It simply is a failure in basic analytic integrity.

We already know that this administration plants faux news stories in both domestic and foreign media, stories composed by US intelligence or by PR firms (eg Lincoln Group) working for intelligence/Pentagon programs or by political operatives seeking to forward administration domestic policies.

And when gitmo suffers three inmate suicides, the proper response is to...of course...kick out all the reporters.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002688077

Fuk reality. Fuk truth. Fuk the citizens' need or right to know what government is up to.

Earlier today, a Pentagon spokesman, J.D. Gordon, told E&P that the ejections came because other media outlets were threatening to use [legal action] to get equal access. He would not identify which media outlets threatened legal action, but said more than a dozen news outlets called to complain between Sunday and Monday.