Finally, Some Resistance!

With all the concerns being raised over the Patriot Act, finally a smaller community has raised their concerns and passed local legislation to do soemthing about those concerns, maybe there is hope yet. We need more folks to start pressuring local legislatures into this kind of action before the Federal Government weeds its way into their athority as well.

www.weny.com...
Elmira Becomes A Civil Liberties Safe Zone
Monday night the city of Elmira joined hundreds of communities across the country as a civil liberties safe zone. The city council unanimously approved the resolution that asks state lawmakers to evaluate any laws that would violate personal freedoms in response to the USA Patriot Act.
Concerned citizens and representatives from the New York ACLU congratulated the city council for their decision to pass the resolution.
Councilman Jim Hare (D) explains Elmira will join 358 other communities calling on represenatives in government to reevaluate laws tied into the Patriot Act. The resolution also alerts the local police department to make it known if federal authorities begin any type of investigation within the city.
Locally, Danby, Ithaca, Tompkins and Schuyler counties are already operating as safe zones.

Good post, but how does it fit into political conspiracies?

It was that or try to put it in with the War on Terror threads. I think it fits in political conspiracies because finally it would seem that we have some anti-federal conspirators rising up from local legislatures. Conspiracy is a broad term, but this is one of those MUCH NEEDED good guy conspiracies.

Something perhaps related to distraught Americans over their Government: Immigration inquiries of Americans looking for information about living and working in Canada are up over 3 times the amount, per day, that they were just 1 year ago. An article was ran in the NYT yesterday detailing one mans push to Canada. I got news for these people: we don't want you here!

On a related note, this community is just one of many cities and states, that have 'just said no' to the Patriot Act in whole or part. Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont and Maine have passed state resolutions.

www.aclu.org...

www.bordc.org...

Originally posted by freudling
we don't want you here!

Tell 'em Brother! We Don't want any rights in this Country dangit.
Down with the Free Speech!
Down with Freedom of Religion!
Down with Freedom of Unreasonable Searches and Seizures!
Down with Not Denying or Disparage Rights Retained by the People!

Get Christian or Get Out!
Your either a Right Wing Fanatical, Clinic Bombing, Republican or your an Enemy of the State.

/Sarcasm off

Phae



[edit on 2/9/2005 by Phaethor]

Finally.

Some resistance.

Alright Twitchy! Great thread. ...and thanks for the new info Jadette.

We all need to know about these things - and the mainstream media is not going to tell us.

There is hope, light. Some good news, at last.


Thanks again.



.

When did the Republicans become the party of big government? I thought the democrats were the ones who sent the KGB to burn your house down if you owned too many guns or said the wrong thing, while the liberal media clapped and referred to your house as a "compound" to make it look OK.
How was I to know that the Republicans would form a Fascisti or a Gestapo to violate your rights and possibly take you to a concentration camp in Cuba if you had the wrong connections, and it's the Neo-Con media (God who ever imagined such a thing???) that will clap their hands and lie about you!

Obviously I'm exagerating, but my point is that in years past I would have thought that conservatives would be the ones to fight something like Patriot Act to the bitter end. Now the liberals are content to just leave the country instead of changing it in most cases and rather than rallying the dissidents for a change the Republicans are yelling "we don't want you here anyway".

I noticed that the city I used to live in, Ferndale, Michigan, is a safe zone. My mom lives there still.

The next county over from me, Stark County, Ohio, is a safe zone, or at least it has cities that have safe zones.

I'm glad at least some people still have enough common sense left. Or we'd really be screwed.

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Obviously I'm exagerating, but my point is that in years past I would have thought that conservatives would be the ones to fight something like Patriot Act to the bitter end.

Yeah, I just have no words when someone can get mad about Waco in one thread then defend the Patriot Act in another. I'm sure there's some nuanced rationale, but it seems counterintuitive to me.

People get all worked up about their right to guns, but not legal counsel or due process? Woah.

But it's supossedly okay because they're terrorists and that's a special evil. They have ideologies against groups like Christians or Capitalists or just westerners in general. But then it's simultaneously not okay to pass hate crime legislation against people that commit the same ideological violence against blacks or gays.

I mean I'm not arguing either side, but the willingness to turn on a dime defending or hating the exact same principles (based on who's behind it) is astounding.

Originally posted by RANT
Yeah, I just have no words when someone can get mad about Waco in one thread then defend the Patriot Act in another. I'm sure there's some nuanced rationale, but it seems counterintuitive to me.

Some don't realize that the patriot act can hurt citizens. Others don't realize that the patriot act CAN'T hurt terrorists. They mistakenly believe that unlike Waco, the P.A. is not an attack on Americans.
Whats even more scarry is that some, including my grand parents, simply say "If you have nothing to hide there is nothing to worry about".

They never think about the eventualities. I'm a union man. Suppose that the government wants to break the unions so that it can lower production costs and export American products to Europe. Under the patriot act they can EASILY dig up dirt on union officials, or simply disappear those people, and they can see to it that the people who represent me at the bargaining table sell me out to save themselves from the Fascisti.

People get all worked up about their right to guns, but not legal counsel or due process? Woah.

The moral of that story is pretty clear. Don't waste money retaining a lawyer- spend your money on ammunition and when the feds come don't be taken alive. How stupid can people be?

I mean I'm not arguing either side, but the willingness to turn on a dime defending or hating the exact same principles (based on who's behind it) is astounding.

My opinion on this is probably going to piss people off, but this is my opinion. Deep down, everybody wants a dictator who represents their narrow interests. The right makes this extraordinarily clear. The left is a little tougher to see this in because they spend so much less time in power and because their base is more diverse. Rest assured though, BOTH sides really do have totalitarianism in their hearts and they don't give a dang about fairness or consistency.

Republicans tend to be midget hitlers because they see themselves as part of the "in" group, or quasy aristocracy- they think they have upward mobility. If I had to choose between the two parties I'd be a republican- that's the scarry part.
Democrats tend to be rebels without a clue. Their primary goal is to be anti-republican because they aren't part of that "in" group. If they were more powerful (they only spent about 1/3 as much time in office as Republicans over the last 50 years) then they would show their own totalitarian colors, but for now they are content to just not be ruled by the other side. "Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it."

Phaethor:

I meant, I, as a Canadian, do not want Americans flowing in.

Originally posted by freudling
Phaethor:

I meant, I, as a Canadian, do not want Americans flowing in.

Go ahread and let them in man, you might need to draft them if Bush decides to invade Canada. He's dang near crazy enough.

Originally posted by freudling
Phaethor:

I meant, I, as a Canadian, do not want Americans flowing in.

My apologies. I misunderstood. But it still stands for all those supporters who are telling US Citizens to get out for not agreeing with their philosophies.

Phae

The polarization of political views in this country has gotten totally out of hand when we refer to pockets of resistance and safe zones. A polarization which is being propogated by the mass media, it would seem most certainly deliberated, and prolific. What it does however is keep the people's attention focused on these trivial issues like stem cell research and budget debates, while both of them are aiding the coporate imperialists to literally rob us 'blind'. Blind with outrage, blind with patriotism, whichever side of the fence, there is no doubt that we are being blind sided. There is no difference in the two major parties in this country, and the only legitimate third parties have become a tool of the system that nessecitated them in the first place. We sat back and bickered while the democratic process in this country was handed over to an unaccountable privatised system. The only political party in this country is the capitalists, period. And trust me, they don't belong to any party. It's alot like professional wrestling, they come out and put on a ridiculous farce of a fight, then at the end of the day they all sit around the same tables, shaking the same hands, eating the same steaks and cashing the same checks from lobbyists.
We need to pressure our local legislatures to resist federalism now before it becomes too late. There were damned good reasons for the American Civil War, and no, rightwingers, I'm not talking about Slavery. The American Civil War was fought for this very same reasons we are argguing now folks, the power of State and Local Legislatures, vs. the Federal Government. What we are seeing now in the 20th and 21st century of this nation is the return of this issue, and the rising concerns of the citizenry. The Industrial Revolution was a revolution in no uncertain terms, and the American people were the loosers in that quiet war. Maybe it's time to start wondering where the hell we went wrong and try to get our media and our government back under wraps. We pay them to represent us, not dictate us. Do you think Poncho Villa would have let the Federalies tell him he couldn't wear baggy pants?

An article in the NY Times today discusses an unlikely coalition forming to fight some of the more draconian parts of the Patriot Act... You have to have a subscritpion to the NY Times to view the entire article on their site but you can find a copy of it on www.truthout.org...

Coalition Forms to Oppose Parts of Antiterrorism Law
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times

Wednesday 23 March 2005

Washington - Battle lines were drawn Tuesday in the debate over the government's counterterrorism powers, as an unlikely coalition of liberal civil-rights advocates, conservative libertarians, gun-rights supporters and medical privacy advocates voiced their objections to crucial parts of the law that expanded those powers after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Keeping the law intact "will do great and irreparable harm" to the Constitution by allowing the government to investigate people's reading habits, search their homes without notice and pry into their personal lives, said Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman who is leading the coalition.

Mr. Barr voted for the law, known as the USA Patriot Act, in the House just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks but has become one of its leading critics, a shift that reflects the growing unease among some conservative libertarians over the expansion of the government's powers in fighting terrorism.

He joined with other conservatives as well as the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday in announcing the creation of the coalition, which hopes to curtail some of the law's more sweeping law-enforcement provisions.

THis is nice, but, Give me the name of any US citizen other than "Laser Man in NJ" that has been charged or held under the Patriot Act? have any disappeared??

The safe zone is OK, but I do not see how this thread can become a political bash. Folks, the dmes, republicans, green, all of them really do not give two #s what you think. They are ALL crooked t oa point, all parties do sneaky things....

Let get back to the facts of the Patriot Act. It makes snesethat if there is a suspect linked to terror, they can simply pick them up. The safe zone is common sense, that the local authorities ar alerted to a FED presensce. I thought interdapartmental cooperation was one of highlights of the PAtirot act and such bills passed after 9/11.

This issue isn't about Republicans or Democrats, it is about the NeoCons. They simply used the conservative republican platform to give rise to their political interests. My primary concern is the NeoCon's ties to the Facists of the mid-1900's, and the similarities in their rise to power, and their militant pre-emptive, contrived militant foriegn policies. As far fetched as that sounds, the very same family names, and the very same corporations are behind this trend. And yes people have seen a sample of this new doctrine, lest you forget that people were being arrested and detained for wearing the wrong tee shirts during the elections, and protesters were being profiled, detained, and questioned. I for one am glad there is a core resistance to their schemes, the citizens of Germany did nothing to stop Hitler, even when it became clear the Nazi Party was behind the Polish Terrorists and the Burning of the Reichstag.

THis isssue isn't about the Republicans or Democrats

I understand that, but so many theads are taken down that road.....

The same companies who provided resources to the Nazi's in the earlier World Wars are still around and profitable.. However, your statment pre-emptiveness and militant foriegn policy applies to the Nazi's, not the US. We are not delaring that we will conquer the world and kill of 'racecs' of people. These same companies also provide arms to MANY countires around the world.

Find it funny that we were supplying the very steel and resources that we then destroyed in Germany in WW2? We did it in Libya when the air defense systems we sold them suddenly did not work against or F-14's when we bombed them. you could go on and on and on....

It is all about the dollar my frineds, not a NWO takeover. If you are looking for Neo-Cons, look at the CEO's of your major corporations. They are selling away your country, bit by bit. Big Businees, not our government has become a dog we need to put down like Old Yeller.

Originally posted by esdad71
Big Businees, not our government has become a dog we need to put down like Old Yeller.

I couldn't agree more, however it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two, and the NeoCon movement has become the ultimate vehicle for them to manipulate our legislature. They are no longer held accountable through perceived competitions between political parties. I still believe that the Industrial Revolution was a revolution indeed, and the capitalists seized control of our government.