Oh joy, a Patriot Act

 

 Oh, joy, a Patriot Act for you, me and our pets: “Democrats are vowing to push through domestic terrorism legislation to improve intelligence sharing and coordination between law enforcement agencies following the mass shooting in Buffalo — despite growing Republican opposition.”

+ Remember how Bill Clinton exploited the Oklahoma City bombing to push through his Comprehensive Anti-Terrorism and “Effective Death Penalty Act”, which Biden escorted through the senate? It did nothing to suppress the growth of racist violence in the US. In fact, it seems to have fertilized it. But it did gut habeas corpus, expand the surveillance state, create joint FBI “terror” task forces that manufactured crimes which they used to entrapped unwitting, often mentally disabled, people, placed severe limits on asylum requests from refugees fleeing political repression, and expanded the death penalty to crimes not involving murder. None of this had the slightest effect on “terrorism”, as the country learned the hard way four years later…

+ The Patriot Act didn’t materialize out of Dark Lord Cheney’s head fully formed like Athena after 9/11. Most of it was already sitting on the shelf, the key provisions having been drafted by Clinton’s Justice Department…

+ Murder was a crime before the 10 Commandments. Terrorism has always been a crime. New more punitive laws will not stop murders or terrorism. What terrorist is going to think twice because they might get 3 life terms instead of 2, if they’re white & survive their mass slaughters? New laws create new crimes. But they don’t stop crimes from taking place. They will however be used to harass, surveil and disrupt any political movement (environmental, antiwar, civil rights, animal rights, Palestinian rights, abortion rights, homeless, religious minorities) that criticizes the policies of the government or the corporations that suborn the people who run the government.

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR