Imagine a beautiful setting in Oregon

Beware America..

Imagine a beautiful setting in Oregon, An area still vibrant from old hippies,full of multiculturalism and new age thought. Ashrams...Muslim centers... Jewish centers... a town of unity and a broad tolerance of diversity and faith. Enter George Bush post 9-11 with his blunderbuss approach to all things, his black and white perception of reality.. Enter George Bush's America and beware little town in Oregon. You will start to distrust your ways, yourselves, your associations. Charities will be destroyed and good works abolished. This and more is in an article from Salon, ‘Blacklisted By The Government’.

Yes folks... Give a born-again, small thinking Doofus a law and unprincipled advisers (see Dick Cheney and the present Vice Chairman of Blackwater... and watch out America). You would think all these Republicans who voted for war and the Oedipus complexed Bush would be against all this government invasion... Hello Ron Paul, this is what he thinks. Remember when Republicans did not trust government to do anything correctly ( well they always loved it for its money if they could grab some). Odd is it not that all these Bush Boys, these Republicans of America, allow that spying and blacklisting and stripping people of their rights and property is acceptable. Isn't this the same dam government they always hated... Hypocrites all..well certainly! It is all about no new taxes.... MONEY... The good old green back and principles be damned..Phooey.. Go get your copy of the Prince again and read it.

But how does this happen? Well did you ever hear of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act...Passed by Congress to set guidelines for economic sanctions and trade embargoes. Probably not. Well this act gives the President the freedom to do all sorts of nasty things to innocent people, without charging them and without a crime. Bill Clinton was the first to use it against Palestinians and Israeli organizations who opposed the Camp David Agreements... And then along came 9-11, and a fearful public with a foolish President and The Doofus went into action.

"In the days after 9/11, Bush signed an executive order giving the Treasury Department the power to blacklist individuals and organizations believed to be supporters of or "associated with" terrorists. The order specifically gave Treasury the power to blacklist and freeze the assets of people in the United States entitled to rights under the Constitution -- even before those people are accused of any crime. The dangers of the process were noted in 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission. Using the 1977 law against domestic organizations, the commission warned in a 2004 report on terrorist financing, "raises significant civil liberty concerns because it allows the government to shut down an organization on the basis of classified evidence, subject only to a deferential after-the-fact judicial review."

God help us if we end up with Bush Two... John McCain. (see the complete Salon Article)

Clearly, the most important thing to do after the raid, was to form public opinion; to sway the community with disinformation.

The government wants,in truth, needs, to establish the legitimacy of their actions. With anti-arab sentiment rampant throughout the country, persuasion,they reason, should be a cinch,huh?! Nothing new in claiming the action was (is) to benefit the common good. If the populace is complacent, government succeeds. If others want to know the the flip side of the case, they will be not only be stymied, but seen as colluders, setting in motion the infrastucture upon which to build an accusative case.

The shadow government surely has been spying on citizens and persons abroad without authorization prior to 9/11.It's secrecy guarantees this. Who can challenge their participation,let alone indict them?

THe Patriots Act, I believe, was established a law to protect and promote all undercover investigations.It also could provide scapegoat fodder in the absence of real evidentiary information collected. This ploy is one long used by fearmongers.

We should fear. Do we call our representatives to protest? Demonstrate en mass across the nation? Riot? Editorialize about it? Complicity with both Houses was necessary for passage of such a bill. They rubber stamped it. The nation approved. Perhaps, still does, apathetic to all but the recession.

At least we know he's not a lawyer:

The Constitution protects due process For AMERICAN CITIZENS

That's just patently false. The Constitution protect due process for all "U.S. Persons," a legal term meaning all those who reside in the US legally. And most protections (not sure which exactly) are afforded to those who are here illegally as well.

I know I shouldn't keep feeding the troll, but it's just so tempting.

p.s. - no one's called it "Frisco" since about 1978.

Just how do you fight a war by democratic principles? The writer either misspoke or is naive.

You're right of course - "at times fascist and counter-productive" would have been a better wording. By the by the War On Whatever isn't a military exercise it's an ad slogan.

As to Oregon and the charity. I would not expect an enemy agent in deep cover to present himself in any other way than the accused. That does not convict him, but if there is other evidence, his pleasing demeanor is not a defense.

There is nothing to defend against. This is the problem. One might as well call them a witch or measure the shape of their nose to skull ratio.

We have a legal system already, thank you. If their allegations are so questionable that they are fearful to weigh them against the facts than it is inherently an abuse of power. McCarthy drank himself to death for good reason - I can't wait for Bush, Rove, Cheney, etc to get started.

The Saudi government is run by Wahabbi fundamentalists. That view of the Koran is radical and pro jihad.

I'm not disagreeing, but just be more precise in your use of jihad, please. You seem to be making it an epithetical slur. Go look it up to clarify the meaning if you must. Martin Luther King Jr waged a jihad. Alcoholics Anonymous is a jihad based organization.

The Saudi charities fund Wahabbi Madras all over the world. They have been funding terrorists in the hopes of keeping them from trying to dislodge the Saudi dictatorship.

I don't know what to say except, yes - yes quite obviously the Saudi government has been actively funding militant terrorist organizations that target the United States.

The "Bush people" have known this since day one, maybe even because the Saudi royal family has been such a large financial contributor to the Bush family in both their oil holdings and political aspirations. Saudi financial ties to the Bush family is a matter of well-documented public record.

We're not bringing that topic up with Saudi Arabia ... We rightly invaded Afghanistan because their black sheep relative Osama was there (yet we left him be - I guess we didn't want to hurt one of their own) and then we invaded Iraq for no sensible reason beyond the commercial or, (maybe you think ... could the administration have wanted to use it as a large distraction of some sort to terrorize the public into going along with a fire-sale on their civil liberties? ...nah), and we're acting angry at Iran for similar empire building self-interests, we're also pretty saber-rattly at North Korea.

We're not sure how we feel about Russia again this week. We hated Turkey for a minute because the PKK / Grey Wolves were using the military surplus we gave them to commit genocide against the Kurds just as Saddam had been doing, but then we decided we liked them again so we pretended the millions of dead Kurdish people never happened.

Hell - Saudi Arabia isn't even fifth on our list.

Bush doesn't care about terrorist organizations. He and his people have always had a different agenda.

The Bush people may be crude and at times annoying, but if we must fail in anything, I'd rather it be something we can argue about than be blind to a terrorist organization that will act against us,

You can't argue with the thousands of innocent people we've already killed. They're dead, they don't have a say anymore.

Considering the Bush administration's complacency in bringing the actual parties responsible for 9/11 to any kind of justice, and considering the administration's blatant attacks against American freedoms, and considering they have gone out of their way to not comply with existent laws in place designed to help them protect the country, sacrificing our national security in an effort to remove all rule of law completely in a quasi fascist power accumulation agenda... They are far past my "taking their word for it," because the more I find their actions reprehensible, the more my patriotism shows.