Yuku free message boards

This document is wildly innacurate at points, but I thought it would spark some interesting debate all the same. The author throws some interesting points into the spotlight, while he is a little on the extreme side. (lol...just a little )



NIGHT AND FOG

Back in the thirties, there were several watershed moments in the consolidation of Germany’s dictatorship. One was the ‘Enabling Act’, which transferred supreme authority to Hitler, which is a bit like Congress granting Bush the power to fight as, where and when he likes, with as much money as he wants to do this. Then, by degree, the Nazi police-state apparatus was installed, and once the omnipotence of the party was assured and the power of the people neutralised, the regime was free to pursue whatever economic or strategic aims it desired, without any significant domestic opposition.
A new low point was achieved in Germany with the legalisation of state murder and disappearance. On December 7th, 1941, as the first victims of the first death camp at Chelmno were being pulled from the gas vans, Hitler passed his ‘Nacht und Nebel Erlass’, the infamous Night and Fog Decree. Its purpose was to seize persons who are ‘endangering German security’, (which in today’s terminology just means ‘the terrorists’), and to make them vanish into the ‘night and fog’. No information was to be given to the families of those who were disappeared. On December 12th, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel expanded upon the Fuhrer’s orders:
‘In principle, the punishment for offences committed against the German state is the death penalty... ...if these offences are punished with imprisonment, even with hard labour for life, this will be looked upon as a sign of weakness. Efficient intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do not know his fate.’
Historically, strenuous efforts have been made in order to prevent such happenstances from occurring in our ‘free’ nations of today. One such check on the ambitions of power is the Constitution of the United States of America, which was put together to provide a blueprint for a free state, and to prevent any such dictatorship from seizing control in America. For two hundred years, the American people have regarded the Constitution as the most vital of the factors which make America the ‘Land Of Freedom’, but it is being gutted in leaps and bounds by the un-elected Christian fundamentalists in the White House, with potentially appalling consequences for Americans and non-Americans alike.
Shortly after September 11th, Attorney General John Ashcroft bulldozed a law through the United States, called the Patriot Act. While this sounds like an all-American law, it has nothing to do with Patriotism, and everything in common with the dictats passed by despots. Suspicious from day one, this legislation passed through Congress only due to threats from the regime in Washington - Congressmen weren’t given the opportunity to read the Act before passing it, and they were told that if they failed to sign, they would be the reason America was attacked again. Of course, this was utterly illegal, even impeachable, but so was the Supreme Court fraud which gave Bush the election, so who’s splitting hairs?
Why were the boys in Washington so dedicated to hiding the provisions of this law from America’s elected representatives? Because it demolishes the Constitution. Had Congress been able to read it without the hysteria and fear surrounding the aftermath of September 11th, there is no way this would have passed muster, since similar provisions made in 1996, in Clinton’s anti-terrorist legislation, have been thrown out by courts all over the USA as being unconstitutional. The Patriot Act got around this, cloaked in the fear and outrage of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, by transferring a huge amount of power from the courts to the government, and in the process, it gutted the right to freedom of speech (First Amendment), the right to be secure in your own home and enjoy freedom from unreasonable searches by the state, (Fourth Amendment), the right to remain silent (Fifth Amendment), the right to a speedy, public trial by jury, where one is confronted by his accusers and has the opportunity to defend oneself fairly (Sixth Amendment), and the right to remain untroubled by cruel and unusual punishments (Eighth Amendment).
This Act was spun out of all recognition by the US state and media. In the shock and trauma following 9-11, this act was presented (where it was presented at all) as an emergency measure necessary to mop up such Al Qaeda personnel who may be in the US and planning further terrorist outrages, but in actual fact, this is a decree designed to hunt down and neutralise political opponents of the fanatics in the White House. It’s a new Night and Fog Decree.
So far, the Patriot Act has been employed to excuse and provide for the United States’ detention of thousands of foreign nationals, (including many in Guantanamo Bay), under the banner of ‘war on terror’, although none have been charged or tried, and getting any information from the government is all-but impossible. According to a complaint made by the Centre for National Security Studies, in which they tried to compel the government to release details of those it was detaining, only five of the 718 detainees named in the complaint were detained with any relation to terrorism. The state has still refused to release any information.
But such complaints are immaterial because the act allows John Ashcroft to point a finger at whomever he chooses and say ‘terrorist’, since under this law, if he says this or that organisation is a terrorist group, it IS one under the law, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it! Should you disagree, then in the words of his boss, ‘you’re with the terrorists’. Better to shut up than become involved in a witch trial. He doesn’t have to give explanations, or reveal his evidence, he can just say ‘you’re a terrorist’ and you’ve vanished. It’s easy to see parallels with dictatorships, but difficult to imagine that this is happening in 21st Century America.
But what IS a terrorist under the Patriot Act? Under the law, acts committed within the US which are "dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws" are defined as terrorist acts if they "appear to be intended" to "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." How can anyone legally interpret a phrase such as ‘appear to be’? However you interpret this, protest marches are clearly within the definition. Acting in ‘support’ of a terrorist organisation is also designated a terrorist act. This can get very silly - if a group protesting the war against Iraq is labelled ‘terrorist’ (remember, all that is necessary is for Ashcroft to say ‘you’re terrorists’ and they are), then by giving money to them or by - god forbid - protesting with them, you are supporting terrorists. That makes you a terrorist, and anyone who gives you any money is supporting a terrorist, and is therefore a terrorist. Whoever gives them anything is supporting terrorism, and is therefore a terrorist and so on...
Immigrants are especially in danger of this act. They can be arrested, tried and executed in secret, without adequate legal defence, and they don’t even have to have been found to be supporting groups which are designated as ‘terrorist’. An immigrant’s wife and children can also be detained indefinitely if they fail to provide proof that they didn’t know about it - how the hell can you prove you don’t know something? Surely someone is innocent until proven guilty? A non-American ‘terrorist’ suspect is tried by a military court martial, before three army judges, only two of whom are required for a guilty verdict. The evidence is secret, which means there can be no defence. An alien can be detained for ever, or executed, on secret charges he has no opportunity to refute. That’s not in the slightest bit democratic or constitutional, and is the law of a tyrant.
From the perspective of the Bush team, the problem with the Patriot Act was that its justice measures - kangaroo courts - largely applied to non-American citizens, and there are a lot of troublesome Americans which they feel should be included in the provisions of this law. As this regime continues its rampage throughout the world, more and more Americans are becoming aware that ‘we’re not in Kansas any more’, and are beginning to vociferously oppose the cabal in Washington, so understandably, Ashcroft has to head off any threats to the regime. Currently, the Patriot Act allows the state to spy on US nationals without limit or challenge, they can violate anyone’s privacy whenever they want to, in true ‘Enemy of the State’ style, but it still doesn’t allow the state to ‘disappear’ Americans, only foreigners. If a government can’t make troublesome people vanish, then what kind of dictatorship is it? What is needed is a ‘night and fog’ order which includes Americans too, so the state can enjoy pseudo-legal security from any challenges it is likely to face.
Ashcroft’s problem now has a frightening solution.
On February 7th of this year, the Centre for Public Integrity made public a document signed by Ashcroft, and leaked to the CPI from unnamed sources at the Justice department. This document is the draft of the new Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as The Patriot Act II, which is set to be steamrollered through congress in much the same way as the Patriot Act was.
It is an altogether more draconian law than its predecessor, strengthening the powers of government and rendering it virtually unchallengeable through the law. The justice measures against foreign nationals covered by the Patriot Act are to be expanded to include American citizens - with a little bit of legal engineering. The new act will revoke the citizenship of any person ‘providing material support to ... a terrorist organization’. Since Ashcroft gets to say who is a ‘terrorist’ - and even minor acts of vandalism can be included in the definition - if he says you supported a terrorist organisation, you’re no longer a US citizen and thus you could just vanish into the night and fog; and this isn’t speculation as we have seen with the Patriot Act. Chillingly, under Patriot II, it is to be a criminal offence for any law-enforcement official to release ANY information relating to a person detained under the Act.
Within this new legislation, the FBI and CIA are to be granted huge increases in their power. After the terrorism of COINTELPRO back in the 1960s, where civil rights activists and pressure groups across the country were infiltrated, demolished and several members murdered by security forces, the FBI and CIA were forbidden from spying on the American people in the absence of any tangible evidence of a real threat to Americans and their interests. This is to be revoked, and the domestic terrorism against activists, perpetrated by these security forces is to be reinstated. More frighteningly for us outside of the US, this new act makes it legal for US security forces to kidnap people elsewhere in the world, bring them back to the US and execute them.
So in short, the state can call you a terrorist for whatever reason it wants - no evidence is necessary - and you could simply vanish, whether or not you’re an American citizen, and whether or not you’re even in the USA. At least Hitler’s ‘Nacht und Nebel’ decree was operative only in German-occupied areas. Hitler’s bestial, fanatical police state was instituted through the fabrication of a ‘war on terrorism’, and Bush is doing precisely the same things in the United States. It’s transparently obvious to any who have studied the history of such measures, because this is not a new trick by any stretch - indeed, so well known is this act of fraud that one of the framers of the Constitution, James Madison, was moved to comment: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
It is so blindingly clear that those who wrote the Constitution knew that their best efforts to protect democratic values would come to nothing if a despot was able to convince, coerce or intimidate the people into accepting the fiction of a ‘war on terrorism.’



Even with the inaccuracies and extremism, I think the more general point that the author makes about fear is something to think about.

BTW, I got this document through what I imagine is a long chain of e-mail and message boards, so unfortunately I don't have an author, but if anyone wants to know, I can try to find out.