Grumpasaurus.com

Proposed HSA rule will require US Citizens to have ”Clearance” in order to leave the country

Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we’ll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States.

It doesn’t matter if you have a U.S. Passport – a “travel document” that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says “no” to a clearance request, or doesn’t answer the request at all, you won’t be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States.
…
The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized there is a constitutional right to travel internationally. Indeed, it has declared that the right to travel is “a virtually unconditional personal right.” The United States has also signed treaties guaranteeing “freedom of travel.” So if these regulations do go into effect, you can expect a
lengthy court battle, both nationally and internationally.

Think this can’t happen? Think again. It’s ALREADY happening. Earlier this year, HSA forbade airlines from transporting an 18-year-old a native-born U.S. citizen, back to the United States. The prohibition lasted nearly six months until it was finally lifted a few weeks ago. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history that didn’t allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission. If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to this list.

As someone who is already on the no-fly list, I can tell you that this is not something I look forward to. Aside from the proposed rule being unconstitutional and a great example of just how authoritarian this country has become under the Busheviks of course.

Read the IDP’s comments on the proposed rule change for a fuller understanding of just what, precisely is at stake here. You may think it hyperbole when I say “nothing less than our freedoms, nothing less than our lives”… but it’s not.

It’s no small step for authoritarianism to take even more control of our society after this rule is implemented. After all, it’s not like the DHS hasn’t been used for domestic partisan purposes in contravention of its charter, the law, and the Constution before.

F those uptight cornsilks. Hell, I’ve been making Uncle Tom references about my coworkers for years, and they’re still trying to be the house slaves.

The right’s attacks are de rigueur for their hypocrisy/victimhood psychology, and the left who criticizes you needs to check what’s going on in the real world before creating artificial constructs of faux acceptance and equality. Of course, being part of the Patriarchy makes it easy for me to say that bringing racial stereotypes or language such as, oh, “nigger”, into the disinfecting light of reason. So I’m saying it: let’s talk about this shit openly, instead of dealing with media campaigns about darkies fucking the white wimmin or Whitey McWhite GOP dipshits using their idea of “ebonics” in encouraging black voters (and their ho’s) to vote GOP.

Wolf Blitzer in blackface? That’s A-OK with me. At least he’s not out trying to have sex with the white wimmin or getting high on blow and crashing weddings.

Christopher Soghoian, a computer security grad student researcher posts about how you can print a fake NWA boarding pass for the purposes of showing how our airline security is really security theatre (Chuck Shumer, D-NY did essentially the same thing in April). Edward Markey calls for the arrest of the Soghoian.

Result: two FBI raids of Soghoian’s home, including a 2AM smash and grab.

We need to support Soghoian. For his freedom and ours. He has a legal defense fund, if you can I urge you to donate. If you can’t donate, call your congressperson and make sure they know about this case.

Our security should not be a thing of press releases and propaganda. Efforts to point out bvious flaws in the theatre of the absurd should not lead to jail time, but instead thanks and efforts to fix those flaws.

After all, it only takes the President classifying him as someone who supports terrorist activities for Soghoian to find himself being tortured and denied his rights of habeas corpus down in Gitmo.

Looks like an interesting documentary re: the Dixie Chicks and the insanity fueled by the nutters when Natalie Maines said they were ashamed Bush was from Texas… which led to boycotts, protests, death threats, and “independent” radio stations refusing to play their songs.

The reaction from the jingoist nutballs was so incendiary, so ridiculous, so disproportionate to the innocuous comment by Maines, that it deserves a nice, long, objective look on the hows and the whys. I hope this documentary does that.

Note: NBC and CW Television (= UPN & WB) are refusing to air ads for the documentary. This after CNN and NPR refused to carry ads for Death of a President (the fake documentary about the assassination of W). Censorship, anyone? (and I’m being serious here, not in the fake “censorship”! way people who don’t understand censorship cry). Oh, and if you really want to get mad at the censorship in our country, observe how nearly every instance of refusal to carry ads by major media networks is for the benefit of the Bushevik administration.

I hope you’re not planning on taking many European vacations after you’re out of office, Dick.

Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding,” which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Note Warns Calif. Hispanics on Voting

The state attorney general’s office is investigating a letter received by some Southern California Hispanics that says it is a crime for immigrants to vote and tells them they could be jailed or deported if they go to the polls next month.

“It’s a very malicious and degrading letter. It’s to pull Latinos down and make them afraid,” said Benny Diaz, who is running for City Council in Garden Grove. He said his wife and five other people he knows had received the letter.

The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: “You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time.”

The truth is that immigrants who become naturalized citizens can legally register to vote.

Diebold is only a small part of the GOP disenfranchisement efforts. Things the above letter, or papering the projects with leaflets telling Democrats to vote 3 days after the actual election, or (most importantly) Voter ID laws are all working towards the same goal – keeping the brown people from voting.

Update: it turns out that the letter comes from the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican challenger to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA). Quel surprise.

It was nice knowing you. Bush Signs Bill Setting Detainee Rules

President Bush signed legislation today that created new rules for prosecuting and interrogating terror suspects, a move that Mr. Bush said would enable the Central Intelligence Agency to resume a once-secret program to question the most dangerous terrorists.

…

The new law strips the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear petitions from detainees for writs of habeas corpus, meaning that terror suspects cannot go to court to challenge the constitutionality of their confinement. As such, it has already spawned one legal challenge and both supporters and critics say it is likely to result in others.

Torture. No habeas corpus. Indefinite detention. Secret prisons. Kangaroo courts.

Oh, and the kicker? This isn’t even top-line news on the papers. No, that’s reserved for the birth of the 3 millionth person in this formerly great country. Woo. Hoo. Way to have the priorities straight, media.

Documents Reveal Scope of U.S. Database on Antiwar Protests

Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

The Defense Department acknowledged last year that its analysts had maintained records on war protests in an internal database past the 90 days its guidelines allowed, and even after it was determined there was no threat.

Not that we didn’t know they were doing this before, of course. Spying on domestic political enemies was the only logical reason to go around the FISA court and fight oversight so strongly. That and a strong love for jackboots and goosesteps.

Universities urged to spy on Muslims

Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on “Asian-looking” and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned.

They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become “fertile recruiting grounds” for extremists.

The Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centres of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to “collaborating with the ‘secret police’”. It says there will be “concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (eg Muslims)”.

Yeah, still not moving to the UK. See above.

Old media worldwide fights tooth and nail against new, enabling technology that they don’t control. See how Nine net takes on IceTV in court over their time shifting technology.

Free-to-air web the Nine Network goes to court Monday in a bid to stop startup media company IceTV from using its TiVo-style technology to block ads on free-to-air television.

IceTV uses a set-top box and weekly TV sked to allow users to record their fave skeins and skip ads for just A$3 ($2.25) a week.

Nine will argue in court that providing its schedule is a breach of copyright, although the schedule is made available to feevee customers and even to printed TV guides.

This is just an inevitable delay in the technology’s widespread availability, like it is everywhere else. Granted, in America the big media companies have been able to push back our Fair Use rights with odious technology initiatives such as DRM/”Trusted computing,” and hardware interfaces such as HDMI and non-modifiable, non-skippable DVD menus, and legal efforts such as the DMCA… but in Australia they’re apparently still a bit behind the times.

What will happen is that eventually every show will run inline advertisements (like soccer has to, with the stadium ringed with ads and small placements by the clocks) and egregious product placements (more egregious, I should say). It’s the only way for advertisers to ensure that they’re getting the eyeballs their consumerist drives require of them. Eventually, the 22 minute show in a 30 minute slot is going to go the way of the dodo.

God’s gonna get the Bush boys for making fun of him

This doesn’t surprise me. Republicans have long been hypocrites when it came to the religious right. Even Ronald Reagan, the darling of the right-wing, ridiculed the Christian conservatives.

But Bush embraced the Bible thumpers with carefully-orchestrated public enthusiasm while he cursed like a sailor and ridiculed them behind closed doors. He called the Constitution a “goddamned piece of paper,” refers to political enemies as “fucking idiots” and lies without remorse to Congress, the American people.

Kuo’s book uncovers another sham by the Bush White House, another callous use of supporters for political gain and another lie from an administration whose record is built on deception.

God’s gonna get ‘em for that.

Be good to have less lies, suffering and death!
That’s the whole problem with being a diplomatic nation, no war!

::

Putin silent as fiercest critic is murdered

A crowd of protesters gathered in central Moscow yesterday to express their anger at the assassination of the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who at the weekend became the 13th Russian journalist to be killed in a contract-style killing since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

Politkovskaya, 48, had today been due to publish an article on torture and kidnappings by pro-Moscow forces in the restless southern republic of Chechnya, her colleagues said.

That’s a nice little “free press” thing you’ve got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

That GIMP’d pic is totally © me, btw.

If you’re so fired up about the principle of freedom of speech and are outraged by the craven surrender of the German opera’s performance of Idomeneo, I fully expect to hear the same rage directed a little closer to home where the major movie distribution chains are refusing to carry Death of a President.

Newmarket Films set itself an unusual challenge when it decided to release the controversial faux investigative documentary “Death of a President” just six weeks after acquiring the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.

But it might face an even more formidable obstacle because several major theater chains are refusing to play the film, which mixes real news footage with dramatized segments depicting the fictional 2007 death of President Bush.

Newmarket, the 12-year-old Los Angeles-based film financing, production and distribution company, plans to open the film October 27, just in time for the November 7 election.

“Yes, it’s controversial,” Newmarket co-founder Chris Ball said. “It’s quite a compelling political thriller. In many ways it is sympathetic to George Bush. It talks about a rush to judgment. In no way is it a call for violence.”

Or are you really just cherry picking your moments of outrage, in the manner best fit to incite your bigoted belief system?

He must have thought he was living in a free country or something.

A Colorado man who was arrested in June on harassment charges after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney to denounce the war in Iraq filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday accusing a Secret Service agent of civil rights violations.

…

Mr. Howards, 54, said at a news conference here that he was taking his 8-year-old son to a piano lesson on June 16 at the Beaver Creek Resort about two hours west of Denver when he saw Mr. Cheney at an outdoor mall. Mr. Howards said he approached within two feet of Mr. Cheney and said in a calm voice, “I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible,” or as the lawsuit itself describes the encounter, “words to that effect.”

Mr. Howards said he then went on his way. About 10 minutes later, he said, he was walking back through the area when Agent Reichle handcuffed him and said he would be charged with assaulting the vice president. Local police officers, acting on information from the Secret Service, according to the suit, ultimately filed misdemeanor harassment charges that could have resulted in up to a year in jail.

Your papers! Show zem to us please!

The Republicans in Congress — and the White House — should be hounded from office for how they have betrayed the military. From Rumsfeld to Cheney to Rice to Bush, we have seen the arrogant abuse of power — to the detriment of the men and women in our armed services. We have seen career military brass hounded out of the service or forced into silence, because they dared to know more than the cardboard cutouts with no combat experience who are running the Bush Administration and Congress.

USA: Maj. General John Batiste’s testimony before Sen. Democratic Policy Committee

I challenge the American people to get informed and speak out. Remember that the Congress represents and works for the people. Congressional oversight committees have been strangely silent for too long, and our elected officials must step up to their responsibilities or be replaced. This is not about partisan politics, but rather what is good for our country. Our November elections are crucial. Every American needs to understand the issues and cast his or her vote. I believe that one needs to vote for the candidate who understands the issues and who has the moral courage to do the harder right rather than the easier wrong. I for one will continue to speak out until there is accountability, until the American people establish momentum, and until our Congressional oversight committees kick into action. Victory in Iraq is fundamental and we cannot move forward until accountability is achieved.

Thank you.

We’ve given you the tools to fight the War On Terror Mr. President but you’re not using them!

::