Terrorist Attacks
It has been suggested that we should be careful not to go after the Patriot Act, and not to predict terrorist-type attacks, or to say anything that might be interpreted as in support of terrorism. It has been suggested that we need to watch what we say so as not to draw the attention of the authorities.
First of all, the definition of terrorism has been changed by the current government here. Previously, it was generally understood to refer to rogue, powerless criminals who used public violence as political influence. Now it refers to international, wellfinanced and highly organized quasi-governments, or governments in exile, who are attempting to actually seize power. They are like old fashioned knights errant, they are versions of Spartacus or Nat Turner.
It has become the equivalent of suspicion founded on probable cause for the government to have simple suspicion, rendering the cause for investigation and arrest to be no more than accusation, or vague suspicion. This permits the authorities to investigate and detain anyone they want to, for whatever reason, including the basest political reasons. This huge change in American criminal law has gone virtually unchallenged.
When it has become a crime (which it is most definitely not at the present time) to criticize, publish objections to, or otherwise discuss pending legislation or the laws of the United States, then it is no longer the United States. It has become something else. We should try to discover how much of the U.S. is left by freely discussing these things.
To predict terrorist attacks is an entirely different subject. As I have said many, many times, such predictions can be viewed as suspicious activity, and, under the Patriot Act and Enemy Alien Act, suspicions are enough to cause serious deprivation of liberties (whereas in the regular criminal law they are, alone, insufficient). To joke about such things put them into no better light-- governments have no sense of humor, as you can see at the airport gate if you joke about a bomb.
To call for the impeachment of the entire federal government, as I have done, might itself be the basis of an accusation of supporting terrorism, as well as to be too harshly critical of the policies of the Bush administration, prison abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo, and his hamhanded attacks on the Constitution. But we have been doing all of these on these forums for months-- at least I have-- without any negative reaction.
My measured hunch is that, if they are doing anything at all, they are at this stage simply collecting the statements made on the forums to see whether they link up to any other material they've uncovered through other sources. If things become ugly, or uglier, they will then have sufficient material to come after any of us by virtue of our association.
The government's suspicions may have been aroused because we have somehow rung a bell. The authorities may actually be looking for errant timetravelers, and going through the list of possible ones, just as we have done on the forum, tossing out the ones they find fake.
You can really get the willies, but only if Titor has some measure of authenticity about him or is an actual government project himself. In other words, they already know that Titor is genuine, or in some part genuine, so they are trying to find out whether there are others in addition to him.
If you have a claimed timetraveler from the future, then, who is willing to predict or is being asked about pending terrorist attacks, I can't imagine why the authorities would overlook it. Maybe they're busy; maybe they think we're a pack of crackpots.
We know neither of those is true, though, right?
<Terrorist Attacks
