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Originally Posted by nico-t
so, whats your opinion on this "patriot act" (horrible propagandic name by the way) thing?
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Reminds me of the Executive Order #9066 in 1942 issued by the President of the US. It ordered the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese "heritage" and sent them to internment camps spread out among 8 states. About 65% of them were actual born in the US citizens. At the same time (little known fact) Canada followed suit and interred about 23,000 of their citizens. They were not charged with any crime. In Canada the men were required to work road-gangs and sugar-beet farms. In the US - pretty much not allowed to do anything.
Eventually the US citizens were allowed to leave - if - they enrolled in the US Army - 1200 of them did this. Two of the American citizens brought court cases that went to the Supreme Court - both were decided in favor of the US government. Finally in late 1944 the people were allowed to leave the camps and they were closed in 1945.
After that about 5000 of our citizens renounced their citizenship. The rest were offered no reparations until 1968 when congress tried to help them regain their houses that they owned. Finally in 1988, the still living citizens were given $20,000 each to pay them back. Canada followed suit giving each of its citizens that had been interred $21,000 (the ones that were still alive anyway)
The part that always gets left out of this story is that among those 120000 people put in the camps, there were also thousands of American citizens of European, German and italian descent that were "labelled" enemy aliens - even though they were not recent immagrants and were full American citizens - those thousands were never even apologized to and still havent been till this day.
Now lets come forward to today - yesterday the US House of Representatives passed the Patriot Act by a vote of 257-171 - and here's the kicker - they voted to keep 14 of the 16 provisions permanantly - no expiration except for the two provisions that were about privacy freedoms - those two were only extended for 10 years