[NYTr] Jane Harman and Liberty's Lost Light

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Sent by MichalP

[And as you read below, please recall that California Democratic 
congresswoman Jane Harman, chairwoman of a Homeland Security 
subcommittee,- sponsor of HR 1955 -- is now trying to polish her image
by informing the world HOW she warned in a 2003 letter--now
de-classified -- that destroying videotapes of terrorist interrogations
would put the CIA under a cloud of suspicion. See:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/01/cia-proposed-destruction-of.php

Pray tell what it will take to remove the CIA from under such a cloud
-- and pray tell what it will take to remove Rep Harman from under such
a cloud -- and finally what it will take to remove all/any of the
Washington hierarchy from under that same cloud?  -MP]

Counterpunch - Jan 4, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01042008.html

Jane Harman and Liberty's Lost Light

Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush's "surge" in
Iraq? The decline in the value of the US dollar? Subprime mortgages?
No. The greatest failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic
Congress.

The American people's attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue
government, which has committed the US to costly military adventures
while running roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing
Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate has made no
difference.

The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as
determined as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the
House passed a bill sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman
Jane Harman, chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, that
overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression,
association, and assembly.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is
sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins and apparently faces no
meaningful opposition.

Harman's bill is called the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown
Terrorism Prevention Act."When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a
commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas.
The commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony
and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in
short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the
perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be
government agents and fellow citizens.

We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention
centers being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.

Who will be on the "extremist beliefs" list? The answer is: civil
libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the
administration's wars and foreign policies, critics of the
administration's use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of
the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration's spying on
Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group--such as
environmentalists opposing politically connected developers--is also a
candidate for the list.

The "Extremist Beliefs Commission" is the mechanism for identifying
Americans who pose "a threat to domestic security" and a threat of
"homegrown terrorism" that "cannot be easily prevented through
traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts."

This bill is a boon for nasty people. That SOB who stole your
girlfriend, that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next
door--just report them to Homeland Security as holders of extreme
beliefs. Homeland Security needs suspects, so they are not going to
check. Under the new regime, accusation is evidence. Moreover, "our"
elected representatives will never admit that they voted for a bill and
created an "Extremist Belief Commission" for which there is neither
need nor constitutional basis.

That boss who harasses you for coming late to work--he's a good
candidate to be reported; so is that minority employee that you can't
fire for any normal reason. So is the husband of that good-looking
woman you have been unable to seduce. Every kind of quarrel and
jealousy can now be settled with a phone call to Homeland Security.

Soon Halliburton will be building more detention centers.

Americans are so far removed from the roots of their liberty that they
just don't get it. Most Americans don't know what habeas corpus is or
why it is important to them. But they know what they want, and Jane
Harman has given them a new way to settle scores and to advance their
own interests.

Even educated liberals believe that the US Constitution is a "living
document" that can be changed to mean whatever it needs to mean in
order to accommodate some new important cause, such as abortion and
legal privileges for minorities and the handicapped. Today it is the
"war on terror" that the Constitution must accommodate. Tomorrow it can
be the war on whomever or whatever.

Think about it. More than six years ago the World Trade Center and
Pentagon were attacked. The US government blamed it on al Qaeda. The
9/11 Commission Report has been subjected to criticism by a large
number of qualified people--including the commission's chairman and
co-chairman.

Since 9/11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. The FBI has
tried to orchestrate a few, but the "terrorist plots" never got beyond
talk organized and led by FBI agents. There are no visible extremist
groups other than the neoconservatives that control the government in
Washington. But somehow the House of Representatives overwhelmingly
sees a need to create a commission to take testimony and search out
extremist views (outside of Washington, of course).

This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the
Justice (sic) Department declared that the President can ignore habeas
corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence,
hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until
they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by
declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these "patriotic" views are
extremist.

The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts
to Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of
Congress or the executive branch ever explained the need for the
detention centers or who the detainees would be. Of course, there is
nothing extremist about building detention centers in the US for
undisclosed inmates.

Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty.
Thanks to 2007's greatest failure--the Democratic Congress--there is to
be an "Extremist Beliefs Commission" to secure inmates for Bush's
detention centers.

President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause the
"untamed fire of freedom" to "reach the darkest corners of our world."
Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but
also is being extinguished.

The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.


[Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com ]