- Just when I think I can't be more angered by the outrageous
and shameful actions of our government, up pops a new one! Not that this
one is actually new, but now they have made it a policy. This dangerous
government policy now blankets our whole country.
-
- Perhaps you have read other stories about the hundreds
of men rounded up after 9-11-01, simply because of their ethnicity, and
hauled away to .nobody knows where. But, this article should send chills
down your spine because it contains the declaration that our government
now has a blanket secrecy policy, which no citizen can challenge!
-
- I realize what I'm saying may sound unbelievable to some
of you. However, it is my belief that this news should be alarming to anyone
thinking they still live in a free society.
-
- Dear fellow citizens, do you know what this policy means?
Do you think it won't reach into your little corner of the world? I certainly
hope it won't. However, in this world, sooner or later we all get our turn
for suffering at least some of the experiences we've seen happen to others.
I understand that it's part of our human nature to close our eyes and hope
such horrors don't touch our lives, our loved one's lives, and our friends
lives.
-
- I have copied the USA TODAY article, and have included
the website address for a Reuters article on the same subject, at the bottom
of this page. I them send to you, hoping that you will realize how high
up the corruption has reached and how serious our situation is becoming.
No, make that how serious it is NOW.
-
- Already gone is our right to privacy, free speech, freedom
to associate with whomever we wish and whatever organizations we favor.
Gone is our right to call an attorney or even the once legal privilege
of the one phone call to whomever we wanted to call after being taken to
a police station.
-
- Now most of us are aware that hundreds of innocent people
have been hauled into some unknown detention center and not even told why
or if they've done anything unlawful. Gone is our freedom to travel through
out our country and beyond without being in danger of our own government's
new laws and blanket secrecy policy.
-
- If you can't get angry, if you can't believe what you
read here, or if you haven't heard about what I'm telling you, at least
get curious and check it out before you find out that it's your turn and
you have become the victim of the blanket of secrecy policy.
-
- I believe that we can stop these madmen who are destroying
over two hundred years of constitutional guarantees that once made our
country the most desirable place to live in the world. This cannot happen
with our present choice of the lesser of two evils of our present type
of the two party system of government.
-
- Many times when watching politicians talking on TV, with
whom I'm not familiar, I have to wait for the name and party to appear
on the bottom of the screen to know in which party they are members. Democrat?
or Republican? The line blurred a long time ago on many issues. But, you
may know that, too.
-
- Oh, of course the ABB Anybody But Bush is a start. However,
the corruption is so wide spread and trickles into places the average American
never hears about, that it may be hard for some of us to realize that if
we will perhaps have a new face, a new name and a new plan claimed by the
new president, if Bush is ousted, it will still be business as usual where
the decent standard of living for all Americans and the repairs to our
Constitution are concerned.
-
-
- Remember, Bush, Cheney, et al, could not have succeed
in their maniacal agenda had the congress not cooperated. We really need
to clean house come the next congressional elections. But, you probably
do know that, too.
-
- Also, not to forget that there are the Corporate Giants
to be taken down from their ivory towers. I believe it can be done. I do
realize how they have intimidated the little people, as they regard those
of us lower down on the power ladder, of their reality. You need to know
that they are counting on this fear factor to keep us from daring to revolt
ever!
-
- It saddens me to know that many of our citizens are packing
up and leaving our country before our government's control becomes total.
These fleeing Americans are also sad to be leaving, but they see no other
way, for them, to escape what they believe is certain to become of those
of us who remain in our no longer free country.
-
-
- Can you remember the time when our country was the place
to which, millions of people fled, from other countries all over the world,
to enjoy the freedoms we once had?
-
-
-
- http://www.usatoday.com /news/washington/2004-02-23-gov-secrecy_x.htm
USA TODAY
-
- High court won't hear challenge to government secrecy
in case of waiter detained after 9/11
-
-
- WASHINGTON (AP) ó
-
- The Supreme Court said Monday it will not hear a challenge
to government secrecy in the case of a former waiter who may have served
some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.The court did not comment in turning down
an appeal over public and media access to sealed court documents in the
case, which has been prosecuted in near total secrecy.
-
- Lawyers for Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel asked the justices
to consider whether lower federal courts acted improperly in keeping the
government's case against their client so secret that its mere existence
was revealed only by accident.
-
- "In an extraordinary set of secret cases, the courts
below sealed an entire habeas corpus proceeding and appeal "including
every court filing and ruling, with no public order giving any reason for
the secrecy and without making any distinction between information that
should be public and that which might justifiably be secret, the lawyers
wrote.
-
- "This petition raises the common law and First Amendment
rights of the public and the news media, who are oblivious to the proceedings
below and cannot be heard themselves," Bellahouel's lawyers wrote.
Bellahouel was one of hundreds of foreigners rounded up after the hijackings
in 2001.
-
- The government has refused to release names and information
about the detentions, arguing that a blanket secrecy policy is needed to
protect national security. Bellahouel, an Algerian who worked as a waiter
in South Florida,came under FBI scrutiny because Sept. 11 hijackers Mohamed
Atta and Marwan al Shehhi dined where he worked in the weeks before the
attacks.
-
- It is not clear whether Bellahouel knows anythingabout
the hijackers or their plans, but he was never charged with any terrorism
crime.The case does not concern Bellahouel's actual treatment at the hands
of the government, which arrested and detained him on immigration violation
charges, but ultimately released him on $10,000 bond.
-
- Bellahouel, identified in court documents only by his
initials M.K.B., is married to an American andis trying to stay in the
United States. His lawyers describe him as one of"countless innocent
Middle Eastern men" secretly detained after the attacks. Large sections
of his Supreme Court filing were edited out before the document was released
publicly at the court, but some blank sections apparently deal with Bellahouel's
interrogation by the FBI and his reported testimony before a federal grand
jury in Alexandria, Va.
-
- Bellahouel's name and some details of his case were first
reported by a Miami newspaper, the Daily Business Review. The newspaper
learned of the case because of a clerical error at the 11th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals. The case was briefly listed on the court's public docket,
but then removed.
-
- The Bush administration replied to Bellahouel's appeal
at the Supreme Court, but the filing is secret. The administration has
argued in other cases that national security justifies the policy of blanket
secrecy in post-Sept. 11 immigration cases. Release of information such
as names and details of those arrested could help terrorists track the
progress of the U.S. investigation, the government has said.
-
- The Supreme Court rejected an appeal last year from newspapers
that sought information about similar detentions. The case is M.K.B. v.
Warden, 03-6747. * Also reported by: U.S. National - Reuters By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reute rs)
- http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1896&u=/nm/20040223
/us_/nm/court_security_secrecy_dc_2&printer=1
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