-Caveat Lector-
To my mind the first freedom or right, fundamental to all
others, is the right to keep what one earns with one's
labor. (Labor is the source of all wealth/property and is
itself a form of intangible property).The Founding Fathers
seemed to be of this mind also - I have read that the
Founders originally wrote "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of property".
If one is impoverished, the other freedoms matter little -
one has no power to exercise or defend them.
Today, most people work all their lives and yet accumulate
little or no wealth. Each year, year after year, over half
of our earnings are taken by confiscatory taxation and by
inflation [central banks like the Fed being engines for the
covert transfer of wealth (primarily via inflation, which
effects not a LOSS but rather a TRANSFER of value, FROM the
sellers of labor/holders of intrinsically worthless fiat
currency TO the buyers of labor/ holders of capital
(tangible wealth)]. By increasing or decreasing the amount
of fiat money in circulation, relative to goods, the Fed
manipulates its value at will. Over time, the value of the
dollar falls. We call this inflation. (It is possible to
have an inflation free monetary unit - which is, one with
intrinsic value, such as gold or silver, or paper notes
backed by same). Wage increases do not keep up with the
rate of inflation. Over time, this means that our labor is
gradually worth less and less. (This all impacts the poorer
people/lowest wage earners the most grievously.) Hence the
falling standard of living (evidence of which are the
relatively new phenomena of homeless families and street
beggars). One goal of the globalist masters, I have read,
is to lower the standard of living in the US & other
industrialized nations. Poor people are easier to control.
Molli
-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www5.law.com/lawcom/displayid.cfm?statename=DC&docnum
=102784&ta ble=news&flag=full
}}}>Begin
January 4, 2002
Points of View
Do We Fear Freedom?
Our rights are not abstract
By Robert Corn-Revere
Legal Times
The war against terrorism is a war to preserve freedom, we
are told. The president explained that the terrorists "hate
us for our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom
of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree
with each other."
But even as he spoke, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
was rounding up an undisclosed number of people for
indeterminate periods of detention, and the attorney general
has refused to release any substantive information on the
practices. In defending these and other actions before the
Senate Judiciary Committee on Dec. 6, Attorney General John
Ashcroft claimed that those who ask whether we are
sacrificing too much freedom "only aid terrorists, for they
erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
If irony is not dead, it surely is on life support.
In a two-week period in October, the Justice Department
announced a policy authorizing the interception of
attorney-client conversations with detainees, a program of
profiling and interviewing thousands of Arab men, and t he
creation of secret military tribunals to try immigrants and
other foreigners suspected of terrorism.
More significant than these executive actions was Congress'
passage of the anti-terrorism bill -- the USA Patriot Act --
signed by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26. While some
parts of the act provided needed adjustmen ts to the law,
its far-reaching provisions affect the rights of all
citizens, and not just terrorism suspects. For example, the
act minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet
surveillance, expands the govern ment's ability to conduct
secret searches, and gives the attorney general and the
secretary of state the power to designate domestic groups as
"terrorist organizations." The law also gives the FBI broad
access to sensitiv e medical, financial, mental health, and
educational records about individuals without having to show
evidence of a crime and without a court order.
It could have been worse, and may yet be so. An initial
draft of the anti- terrorism bill would have suspended the
right of habeas corpus for all terrorist suspects. Looking
forward, Ashcroft reportedly is considering a p lan to
enable the FBI to spy on domestic religious and political
organizations if they are suspected of having ties to
terrorists. Various proponents have called for the creation
of a national ID card, and there has even been talk of
permitting torture.
Dangerous Precedent
For some, such as Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and
columnist William Safire, the response to Sept. 11 recalls
episodes in U.S. history -- Lincoln's suspension of habeas
corpus, the trampling of free speech during World
War I, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World
War II, anti- communist witch-hunts of the McCarthy period,
J. Edgar Hoover's obsession with dissident groups -- in
which the rule of constitutional law broke down
.
Others see past examples of extreme actions as supporting
precedent that allows aggressive action by the government
even if it entails a loss of civil liberties. One such
person is respected jurist Richard Posner. The 7th
Circuit judge wrote in the December issue of The Atlantic
Monthly that civil liberties "should be curtailed, to the
extent that the benefits in greater security outweigh the
costs in reduced liberty." All that can reason
ably be asked of Congress and the courts, he argued, "is
that they weigh the costs as carefully as the benefits."
Yet it is not at all clear that the benefits have been
carefully assessed. Eight former high-ranking FBI officials,
including former Director William Webster, told The
Washington Post in November that the newly adopted ta ctics,
such as rounding up large numbers of detainees, are both
ineffective and counterproductive. Noting that the bureau
prevented 131 terrorist attacks between 1981 and 2000,
Webster said, "We did it without all the sug gestions that
we are going to jump all over the people's private lives, if
that is what the current attorney general wants to do. I
don't think we need to go that direction."
Some (and not just the cynics) have suggested that part of
the demand for new anti-terrorism authority comes more from
the belief that the time is ripe to win concessions than
from a conviction that such measures will sto p terrorism. A
senior U.S. official quoted in the Post noted that "a lot of
this is not being driven by problems that prosecutors or
investigators are having. It is just a good time to get
everything. It is totally politi cally and public-
perception-driven."
And all of the polling data appear to support this political
calculus. A recent ABC News/Washington Post survey found
that 86 percent of the respondents support the post-Sept. 11
mass detentions, 79 percent support interviewing thousands
of Arab men, 73 percent approve of wiretapping
attorney-client conversations of terror suspects, and 59
percent favor the use of military tribunals.
One explanation for such results is that constitutional
rights are for most people an abstract concept, while
collapsing buildings and death are not. If people believe
they can prevent a real horror by trading away a mere
abstraction, the choice seems simple. It is easier still to
the extent that people believe they would not have to
sacrifice their own rights, but only those of "swarthy
males," as columnist Ann Coulter so memorably (and
repugnantly) put it.
When the president declared that "freedom is at war with
fear" in his Sept. 20 address to a joint session of
Congress, he may have had it backward. That is, on the home
front, it appears that fear may be winning.
Robert Corn-Revere is a partner at D.C.'s Hogan & Hartson.
Date Received: December 26, 2001
End<{{{
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of
information for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel
Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard
it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down
for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply
because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in
anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do
not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers,
elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation
and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and
is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then
accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the
Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the
reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph
Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805) + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is
preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else,
that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand
Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do
sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to
keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway
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