thought crime

http://www.lewrockwell.com/knaebel/knaebel11.html
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods


The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955, titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. It was passed with 404 votes in favor.
A close reading within an historical context — keeping especially in mind the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Presidential Executive Orders, pursuant to which the government has engaged in massive surveillance of its own citizens, as well as detentions, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, and torture — leads me to the following conclusions:

• This is a "Thought Crime" bill of the type so often discussed in an Orwellian context.
• It specifically targets the civilian population of the United States.
• It defines "Violent Radicalization" as promoting any belief system that the government considers to be extremist.
• "Homegrown Terrorism" and "Violent Radicalization" are defined as thought crimes.
• Since the bill does not provide a specific definition of extremist belief system, it will be whatever the government at any given time deems it to be.

A few extracts of the Bill are presented below to show you its tone or "flavor."
"(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system… to advance political, religious, or social change."
SECTION 899B. FINDINGS.
"(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."
"(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions."
Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. This will be an institution affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security. It will study and determine how to detain thought criminals.

THIS LEGISLATION ENDS THE POSSIBILITY OF A CULTURE OF REASON.
It is an attempt at legislative lobotomy of conscience. It aims to eviscerate ethical sensibilities of an entire culture.
Having usurped the power of war and peace, life and death, the Corporatocracy now bludgeons even the thought of speaking for conscience. This is State murder of the mind.
It is just too awesomely obscene for words. It exceeds not only the scope of my vocabulary, but my imagination as well.
The minions and hired agents of politicians are free to murder, rape and pillage on government hire using our money, but to imagine alternatives to them and the degraded, psychopathic political "leaders" who design and perpetrate these atrocities is legislated as a thought crime!
This is the legislated, politically promulgated end of man as a thinking, self-directed being. Surely this must be the outer limit of "positive law," that is, statutory laws passed by "Lawmakers."
It further entrenches the Power Elite as separate from and above their "subjects." It clearly demonstrates the paranoid delusions of the Establishment, pursuant to which it legislates a massive defense mechanism to protect itself from the populace that it subjugates.
I use these terms deliberately, because the so-called freedom of the vote has turned out to be a big con game. It is only the "freedom" to choose one set of thieves over the other. The blue suits or the red suits… all of them manufactured suits of the corporations.
Following in the train of this legislation will doubtless be internal travel documents, neighborhood snoops and spies, rewards granted for turning in politically incorrect thought criminals, mass civilian detention centers — in short, the whole totalitarian control mechanism that we associate with the SS, KGB and other code words of criminal regimes. There will be "re-programming / rehabilitation" centers to correct errant free thinkers.
Take note that the Department of Homeland Security already has more than 750,000 persons on its watch list. For a glimpse of past as prologue, read Solzhenitsyn.
Who Will Be Thought Police and Under What Standards?
Who will define radical thought, and by what standards? For example, how about the reported millions who believe that 9-11 was an inside job, citing a mass of evidence from eye witnesses, physicists, engineers, and recorded statements such as "We pulled it," essentially a confession by the building's owner of the planned demolition of Building 7?
Will the writings of John Perkins in Confessions of An Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of The American Empire be thought crimes? Will this very essay be a thought crime?