A Blanket Secrecy Policy:
Is This Really America?
By LINDA GALE NOLEN
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?
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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) —
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, butsome blank sections apparently deal with Bellahouel's
interrogation by the FBI and his reported testimonybefore a federal
grand jury in Alexandria, Va.
Bellahouel's name and some details of his case werefirst 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
NO ONE CAN TERRORIZE A WHOLE NATION
UNLESS WE ALL ARE HIS ACCOMPLICES.
~Edward R. Murrow~
