Posted on 12/22/2002 3:03:47 AM PST by billorites
Long Beach, Calif. — The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is the biggest threat to democracy in the United States, Muslim leaders and activists said Saturday.
The denunciation at a Muslim-American convention came days after vocal protests were held over the detention of hundreds of Middle Eastern immigrants who voluntarily registered with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service under new federal guidelines.
Speakers at the Muslim Public Affairs Council convention called on the public to challenge the Patriot Act, which they called an unconstitutional law that violates basic civil liberties.
They also urged the roughly 1,500 people attending the convention to demand the news media provide diverse perspectives on the potential war against Iraq to complement the official U.S. government stand.
"The Patriot Act is the biggest attack on democracy in America right now," council board chairman Omar Ricci said in his opening speech at the two-day annual conference.
The Patriot Act, approved in October of 2001, gave the government new powers to obtain personal information about U.S. citizens and allows the government to detain aliens deemed threats to national security and hold them without public acknowledgment.
It also has given federal law-enforcement agencies greater wiretap authority, access to student and library records and new Internet wiretap powers.
Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, defended the Patriot Act as "an incredibly valuable tool in the war on terrorism."
"Ultimately, the question of civil liberties and what infringes on the Constitution is a matter for the courts to decide," Mr. Sierra said in a telephone interview from Washington.
"But the ultimate goal here is liberty and safety and the security of Americans."
Francisco Arcaute, an INS spokesman in Los Angeles, declined comment Saturday.
Justice Department lawyer Joseph Zogby, who attended the conference, said he would relay the council's concerns about alleged civil rights abuses to the U.S. Attorney-General. He also said the department does not have control over INS policies.
Mr. Zogby, who works in the department's post-Sept. 11 hate crimes investigation division, urged people to register civil rights complaints.
Council board member Gasser Hathout compared the Patriot Act to the Sedition Act of 1789, which made it illegal to criticize president John Adams. He said civil liberties also came under attack in the 1950s from the U.S. House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee and in the 1960s when the FBI investigated civil rights activists and Vietnam War opponents.
"I'm calling on people not to surrender their civil rights," Mr. Hathout said after a morning panel discussion.
"They are not mutually exclusive things, security or civil rights."
Mr. Hathout said he has statistics showing since the Patriot Act was approved, the number of federal subpoenas of phone and Internet records have been doubling every month and have reached into the thousands.
He also urged the audience not to be cowed into silence about the potential war with Iraq or restrictions on their civil liberties.
Panelist Amy Goodman, a host of the national radio program Democracy Now!, said the public can affect the media's coverage of the war. She recalled a Sally Jessy Raphael talk-show episode she participated in during the Persian Gulf War that was nearly cancelled before callers urged the show's producer to broadcast it.
Imagine this headline:
US Patriots denounce Muslims act.
There, that's better.
I like it!
I'm so conflicted!!!
Information found in the Soviet Union files that have been published show that McCarthy was right for the most part. In fact some were exposed that he did not even find nor hint at.
Henry Wallace was Vice President just prior to Truman. If Rousevelt had died just a few months earlier he would have been President. Or if Rousevelt had kept him on the ticket he would have been president. He was a Communist as shown in the information from the Soviet Union.
The present "progressives" still lionize him.
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