[re-post from correntewire 11/10/2010]
The Bush and Obama regimes have made Swiss cheese out of the U.S. Constitution. Now it’s apparently time to say goodbye to the First Amendment and a big hello to the United Police States of America.
They say the final stage of the slippery slope -- the fast hardening of soft fascism -- escalates really fast. (Incidentally, Jon Stewart, why should I use my “inside voice” while I am being raped of my civil liberties?)
Ron Jacobs in CounterPunch makes the chilling comment:
“Indeed, the concern for civil liberties is usually dismissed by politicians, judges, and other people in power almost as if they were some worthless costume trinkets from grandma’s jewelry box.”
Jacobs is tragically and stunningly right. Remember when John Yoo pronounced the Articles of the Geneva Conventions “quaint”? It wasn’t just vile John Yoo who thought that way and trashed them. Ask any of the tragic victims of the evil depths to that heart of darkness decision.
As I processed this jewelry comment I segued into another image for my sense of helplessness over the sustained moral and political crisis of our country.
The too small numbers of true liberals among us who managed to clear the five stages of Manchurian President Obama grief seem like poor, overwhelmed Lucy and Ethel in that classic candy factory episode. Remember? The chocolates zooming by on a merciless assembly line belt. Lucy and Ethel frantically trying to save as many as they can, but they can’t begin to. There are too many going too fast. Madcap Lucy shoving them into the front of her uniform, even into her mouth.
Except we’re not talking chocolates here. We are talking civil liberties. And we are not madcaps. We are just mad. ENRAGED, in fact, as we watch the trashing of the precious rights of American citizens that our representatives in the administration, Congress and the SCOTUS took oaths to protect. That the “fourth estate” of press and media were supposed to watchdog. What is a citizenry to do when the defenders against treason are treasonously enabling it?
The latest precious civil right falling off the belt? Only the First Amendment. The right of free speech. The right of political dissent. The power and right of citizens to keep their government honest and just.
It dramatically fell off the belt some time around 7am CST on September 24, 2010 when the FBI and its joint task force (including ICE, Homeland Security and God knows whatever newly formed “terrorism-projecting as cash-cow created” police militias (70 plus agents it is estimated were directly involved)) raided the homes of 14 or so long-time political activists in such states as Minnesota, Illinois, North Carolina, California and Wisconsin.
Tom Eley of the World Socialist Website recorded the account of that morning for one of the “targets” Jess Sundin of Minneapolis, a clerical worker at the University of Minnesota and long time political activist. Imagine if this had happened to you.
“At 7 AM I awoke to the sound of banging at my front door,” Sundin said. “My daughter and my partner were already awake. By the time I got downstairs, there were six or seven federal agents in our house.
“When they came in and asked if we had any guns in the house, my six-year-old said, 'We don't believe in guns'. She took offense at the suggestion. We don't even allow toy guns in our house.
“The agents showed me a search warrant and proceeded to go through everything in my house, every room. Among the things they seized, they took books, they took music CD’s, photographs, computers, my cell phone, check book, papers, camera and a lot more.
“We were very clear that we were not going to talk to them. They gave both my partner and me our subpoenas for the grand jury. They told us we were not detained, we could leave, but no one else was allowed in. We couldn’t use the phone, except to call a lawyer.
“They took my phone into their possession and kept it with boxes and lists. I could hear it going off but I wasn’t allowed to answer it. Steff, my partner, kept possession of her phone but we weren't allowed to use it to make or receive phone calls.
“They took about four hours to search the house. I don't know how many boxes they carried out. They gave me a receipt, but I refused to sign it. I said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve taken.’”
This past Saturday night in a cavernous meeting room within St. Mark’s church on Manhattan’s lower east side I, along with 500 or so fellow concerned citizens, got to hear Jess Sundin -- a short, sturdy, perky, non-terrorist looking woman -- in person elaborate further along with other victims from the Minneapolis and Chicago areas of this round of FBI repression.
At first glance the panel of about 8 speakers looked like a wholesome team of energetic grade school teachers (the kind who enjoy kids and teaching, remember them?), round- and warm-faced Mid-Westerners, for the most part, in their brightly colored pullover sweaters or curious black T shirts sporting a cartoon witch on a broom stick. It took me too long to fathom that the image referred to the McCarthyism witch-hunting of the Grand Jury investigations the activists had been subpoenaed for.
Above their heads was a white cloth hanging on the wall with three spray-painted demands on it.
Stop FBI Repression
Stop the Grand Jury
Return Our Stuff
“Return our stuff”?
Jess revealed how the agents scrupulously went over EVERY scrap of paper in her home. The agents spent four to five hours in this meticulous rummaging and removed dozens of boxes of files and personal items and papers. They did that at all the houses. Everything from crayon drawings by children to, in one case, precious private photos of Martin Luther King. One of the activists was apparently the proverbial packrat (“archivist” one of the panelists supplied affectionately) and the FBI removed 80 boxes -- yes, 80 -- from her home. This is less a reflection on her and more on the lack of parameters on the search warrants, no date ranges apparently, which is unusual and troubling, the punishing, over-the-top confiscation of materials on the pre-emptive fishing expedition of long-time activists.
In Revolution Newspaper:
The searches of the activists' homes were extensive. Around 20 FBI agents searched one residence for 11 hours. According to the Chicago Tribune, agents took about 30 boxes of papers dating to the 1970s, including a postcard from an old girlfriend. The FBI also took their cell phones. The attorney for the activists told the Tribune reporter, "They (the FBI) said they would determine what was evidence later."
Agents also carted out boxes from the Chicago apartment of the executive director of the Arab American Action Network.
One of the homes raided in Minneapolis was that of Mick Kelly, described as an editor of Fight Back, the publication of FRSO. Kelly's spouse said that when she could not read the warrant fast enough through a peephole, the FBI "kicked down the door." The agents took computers, Kelly's cell phone, passport, CDs, and boxes of papers, including his spouse's personal papers although the warrant was only for Kelly's possessions. (The Uptake.org, Minneapolis)
The warrant for the raid and the subpoena to appear before the federal grand jury issued to Kelly were released to the media by his attorney. Both documents are stunning in the extensive scope of what is being sought by the government, blatantly trampling on basic constitutional rights. For instance, the search warrant weaves Kelly's affiliation to FRSO into the information sought; the warrant gives carte blanche to seize all financial records both personal and of FRSO as an organization, ostensibly to look into sources of funding for all travel to Palestine, Colombia and within the U.S. for the last 10 years! The warrant goes further, alleging that there are open-ended "potential co-conspirators" in order to justify the seizure of all address books and information regarding all contacts of Kelly (including emails, MySpace and Facebook or other social networking sites). In an extraordinary reach, the warrant authorizes seizure of materials regarding recruitment and "indoctrination" of others into FRSO, a political activity which is supposed to be completely lawful in the U.S.
(The FBI's warrant to search Mick Kelly's home is available attc.indymedia.org/files/kelly-warrant-92210.pdf. The grand jury subpoena is available at tc.indymedia.org/files/kelly-subpoena-chicago-92210.pdf.)
Minnesota attorney Peter Erlinder at a press conference explained that in his view, the ground for this escalation in government repression was cleared by the recent Supreme Court ruling in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project. (TheUptake.org)
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a free-speech challenge to the law from humanitarian aid groups that said some provisions put them at risk of being prosecuted for communicating with organizations designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. State Department about nonviolent and humanitarian activities.
Anything goes now in terms of low threshhold boundaries between us and the FBI et al.? One civil liberties attorney championing the activists’ case, Bruce Nestor, explained that the Roberts' court is steadily removing the rights and powers of lower courts, too, sabotaging their opportunities to protect citizen rights and allocating more and more power to the police and FBI, Homeland Security, et al.
One testimonial was given by Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian American from Chicago, who was finishing the overnight shift at Costco when he realized his wife had frantically texted him six times. They and their daughter live with his mom, who is in frail health. He raced home to witness 8 or 9 federal agents ripping through his home. As he watched them confiscating his books in Arabic his little daughter asked him why would the white men want to take books they couldn’t read. He encouraged her to ask them, but she understandably declined.
Cindy Sheehan on the FBI raid in Dissent in the Age of Obama:
These raids have terrifying implications for dissent here in the US.
First of all, these US citizens have been long-time and devoted anti-war activists who organised an anti-war rally that was violently suppressed by the US police state in Minneapolis-St. Paul, during the 2008 Republican National Convention. Because the Minneapolis activists have integrity, they had already announced that they would do the same if the Democrats hold their convention there in 2012.?
I have observed that it was one thing to be anti-Bush, but to be anti-war in the age of Obama is not to be tolerated by many people. If you will also notice, the only people who seem to know about the raids are those of us already in the movement. There has been no huge outcry over this fresh outrage, either by the so-called movement or the corporate media.
I submit that if George Bush were still president, or if this happened under a McCain/Palin regime, there would be tens of thousands of people in the streets to protest. This is one of the reasons an escalation in police state oppression is so much more dangerous under Obama - even now, he gets a free pass from the very same people who should be adamantly opposed to such policies.
Mary Shaw also explores the FBI sweep in an article entitled Will They Raid My Home For Writing This?
It's like McCarthyism all over again.
[snip]
But this is apparently how our tax dollars are being used.
Apparently the authorities still subscribe to the George W. Bush-style assumption that if you're not in lockstep with the government's policies, then you must be with the terrorists.
And the Bush administration's knee-jerk, fear-based policies in response to 9/11 have arguably made it legal for agencies to conduct these witch hunts.
The Patriot Act broadened the definition of domestic terrorism to an extent that it "may have a chilling effect on the U.S. and international rights to free expression and association," says Amnesty International USA.
Amnesty continues: "The law defines 'domestic terrorism' as acts committed in the United States 'dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws,' if the U.S. government determines that they 'appear to be intended' to 'influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,' or 'to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.' Such ambiguous language allows for loose interpretation that might violate civil liberties and international human rights."
As we're seeing right now.
To further complicate things, as I wrote back in June regarding Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is not unconstitutional for the government to block speech and other forms of advocacy supporting a foreign organization that has been officially (and arbitrarily) labeled as terrorist, even if the aim is to support such a group's peaceful or humanitarian actions.
Bruce Nestor explained that if the Secretary of State deems an organization “terrorist” then that organization has 30 days to legally challenge the status. The individual members of said organization don’t even have that legal recourse to object.
Meredith Aby of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, said recently:
“Our opposition to U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, our scathing criticism of U.S. government support for repressive regimes and death squads in Colombia and Israel is well known and public. This attempt to criminalize the fourteen of us in the anti-war movement must be stopped. The Grand Jury should be ended. There should be no charges.”
Tom Eley’s thorough account of Jess Sundin’s situation and her brave and inspiring openness is also worth considering. Assuredly the desire of most Americans would be to believe that, well, the FBI must have a damn good reason to believe these people are “domestic terrorists” and potentially endangering the citizenry to raid their homes and offices, to demand they appear with no legal representation before a Grand Jury subject to contempt charges if they refuse to cooperate. You would hope. But to trust that? Not so much.
Eley writes of Sundin:
Sundin said it was “immediately clear” to her that she was being targeted for her antiwar activism, and, in particular, her activity against US foreign policy in Colombia and the Middle East.
“The US is heavily involved in Colombia,” Sundin said. “They've been building military bases and they've been funding the Colombian government’s war against its own people. It's the third largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world.
“Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. And the Palestinian people have lived for generations—sixty-plus years—without an internationally recognized state. Their homes are bulldozed, they’re second-class citizens with no right to participate in the political process. And in places like Gaza bombs fall from the sky.”
Sundin said she is a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a founding member of the Anti-War Committee of the Twin Cities, and a member of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) Local 3800. She is a clerical worker at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Sundin’s opposition to US foreign policy took her to Iraq in 1998, where the sanctions regime imposed on the country by the Clinton administration and its allies had created a humanitarian disaster.
“We went to a children’s hospital where I was most struck by the empty shelves in the pharmacy and the stories that doctors shared of a health care system that had been the best in the Middle East, but had been paralyzed by the sanctions and the war,” she said. “So you had children that died because there weren't IV fluids to give them. You had people who died because they couldn’t get inhalers for asthma, antibiotics, heart medicine. These things just weren’t available there… The most striking thing I saw was Al Ameriya, which was a bomb shelter that was destroyed by two US smart bombs in 1991.”
Sundin said she does not know what sort of case the government intends to make against her. The search warrant indicates the FBI may well seek criminal prosecution based on the “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,” which, in effect, proscribes political speech in support of organizations the US president defines as “terrorist.”
The law, which prohibits “knowingly provid[ing] material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” even if that support consists of “expert advice or assistance” for “lawful, non-violent purposes,” was upheld in June by the Supreme Court in the case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.
Whatever a U.S. citizen thinks of Jess Sundin’s personal choices for political action, she has been involved in global humanitarianism for a long time. And now in this exceptionally troubled climate with our government making questionable -- a kind word -- policies so cravenly linked with corporate agendas overseas and here with a zero tolerance for dissent, she is to be harassed, intimidated and stopped? Not to mention how this anti-dissent message is going out to all other activists and potential activists to reconsider their own charitable and truth to power impulses. It is also going out to fellow oppressed humans in other countries. Particularly Latin America and Palestine. The democracy of America is no longer a democracy that encourages real democracy for others in the world.
This transition to a police state didn’t suddenly happen. But post-9/11 the pace seriously picked up. This troubling pronouncement from the new head of the FBI eight years ago. Stephan Salisbury:
“There is a continuum between those who would express dissent and those who would do a terrorist act,” Mueller said ominously in a 2002 speech. “Somewhere along that continuum we have to begin to investigate. If we do not, we are not doing our job. It is difficult for us to find a path between the two extremes.”
Say what? He sees political dissent as the launching pad for terrorism? Political dissent is the pre-stage and domestic terrorism the post-stage? This is pretty terrifying in itself.
How many millions of us saw this coming? The criminalization of political dissent. The apparently blank taxpaying check to beef up Homeland Security? Last I heard it was 800,000 employees strong, not including informants, who need to earn and justify those tax-paid paychecks. I think of that adage, when the only tool is a hammer everything ... or every one ... becomes a nail! I also think of that poem about how first they came for the trade unionists, etc.
Who is doing harm to America? The citizens of conscience? Or the ruling class trying to jail the citizens of conscience and eliminate the incredibly justified activism that should be expanding NOT shrinking.
Look at the impunity for the lawbreakers on a massive level. The corporate pirates who broke the economy and were rewarded with $12 trillion of taxpayer money. About to be rewarded with further tax breaks on their billions.
Look at the mind-numbing atrocities of the military actions -- the ones we actually know about. Over one million Middle Easterners dead, four million displaced. I just caught Bush with Matt Lauer discussing whether the American people deserve an apology from him for his being wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. No mention of whether Iraq deserves an apology? Or Afghanistan? By the way, Bush doesn’t think ANYONE deserves an apology. Ego still going strong.
Look at the rage of this Obama administration, State Department and Pentagon over the Wikileaks disclosures. Rage not ever going near the atrocities actually committed, no, that would be too sane and functional, but group-think team spirit circling the wagons, rage and punishment intended for the whistleblowers who are disclosing the truth to the citizenry, the primarily ostrich citizenry. A healthy proactive government would hasten to right wrongs. Not “kill the messengers.” Not hasten to cover up the amoral horrors and criminal activities at all costs -- including human and civil rights.
It’s open season on people of conscience. Our government is hoping the “good” people who do nothing in America will continue to do nothing. Will let the Swiss-cheesing of democracy continue. Will let these vanguard citizens defending their AND our constitutional rights twist in the wind without protest. They are hoping the entitlement of each citizen to enjoy freedom of political protest will morph into fear-motivated reluctance of being labeled a “domestic terrorist”.
You want to see justice in America? Better tune into L&O. It’s pretty scarce out of the magic box.
Ron Jacobs, again:
The PATRIOT Act was passed on October 26, 2001. Since that passage, the level of law enforcement intimidation and outright repression increased quite dramatically. From little things like protesters being forced to protest in so-called free speech zones or face arrest to the recent approval of the assassination of US citizens by federal death squads, there has been a clear progression away from any concern for protecting civil liberties.
In Surveillance, America’s Pastime Stephan Salisbury writes:
The identification of dissident political groups, the gathering of names, the manipulation of actual acts—these are the overt purposes of surveillance and informing. In reality, the goal of all this furtive, fervent activity is not to dismantle terrorist networks but to disrupt legitimate civic and political activity—and especially, in the post-9/11 world, to identify and infiltrate US Muslim and Middle Eastern congregations, civic groups, neighborhoods, and activist organizations.
Toward that end, the FBI has moved to beef up its ranks of informers. In its 2008 budget, the bureau sought more than $13 million simply to vet and track more than 15,000 working informants, and noted that new informants are signing up every day. Information provided by those informants and by other increasingly ubiquitous and sophisticated surveillance techniques is now funneled to fusion centers—making it all just a mouse-click away from public and private agencies nationwide.
In The Nazification of the United States Paul Craig Robertswrites:
Few with power can brook opposition or criticism, especially when it is a simple matter for those with power to sweep away constraints upon their power in the name of “national security.” Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan recently explained that more steps are being taken, because of the growing number of Americans who have been “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.” Notice that this phrasing goes beyond concern with Muslim terrorists.
In pursuit of hegemony over both the world and its own subjects, the US government is shutting down the First Amendment and turning criticism of the government into an act of “domestic extremism,” a capital crime punishable by execution, just as it was in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.
Initially German courts resisted Hitler’s illegal acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won’t be long before a decision of the US Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored.
We need to cover the backs of these activists who are on the line now. They refused to give testimony to the Grand Jury. REFUSED. No small act of courage. Three of them have been re-subpoenaed. What will happen to them next? They have organized a “COMMITTEE TO STOP FBI REPRESSION”. Their Manhattan gathering was to pass on information and to seek funding.
One can access their website at www.stopfbi.net and sign a petition demanding the end of the FBI and Grand Jury intimidation. The petition immediately sends out letters to 78 people, including Obama, Holder, Congresspeople, etc. Already 200,000 people have signed their support. They could use some financial support, too. Being dragged through the court system is not cheap, either.
This may not be the sexiest or trendiest topic on the progressive cyber campus this week, but I am thinking it should be. If we let this presumptuous and illegal precedent of intimidation go, it won’t be long until we are all vulnerable to FBI repression.
In the back of the St. Mark’s hall there was a large screen with hundreds of Middle Eastern names written upon it and a large title above, Pre-emptive Prosecution. Apparently, all the people represented by those names had been unfairly prosecuted in this post-9/11, scapegoating climate. When Bruce Nestor pointed out the screen I couldn’t help flashing on what it must have been like for the Jewish people in Germany becoming more and more isolated and vilified in society, at first beneath the public radar. What it was like for Japanese and German Americans in the United States during World War II.
An eloquent and elegant young Middle Eastern woman spoke, in fact, also read a moving portion of her memoir. Noor Elashi, who is the daughter of the co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation, Ghassan Elashi. She contended that her father had been wrongly convicted of donating to Hamas in 2007 and considers him a hero for his humanitarian aid to Palestinians. He is presently serving 65 years for this. Ms. Noor said the second trial conviction arose from inflammatory references to “terrorism”. Her dad is now being held in one of George Bush’s so-called “communication management unit” prisons. Apparently there is limited access of prisoners to outsiders. Ms. Noor was hoping, but not sure, to be allowed to visit her dad on Thanksgiving this year.
Finally, in Surveillance, America’s Pastime Stephan Salisbury writes of the exploitation and misuse of these anti-domestic terrorism forces for silencing legitimate civil protest against corporate profit-making that sacrifices the physical welfare of citizens or to register civic dissatisfaction against a toxic status quo.
In fact, a controversy in Pennsylvania has just erupted over secret state surveillance of legitimate political groups engaged in meetings, protests and debates involving subjects of public importance—natural gas drilling, abortion, military policy, animal mistreatment, gay rights. Such controversies over domestic political spying have surfaced remarkably regularly since September 11, 2001—police and FBI informers in mosques, Defense Department surveillance of antiwar groups and even gay organizations, National Security Agency illegal wiretapping, and surveillance of groups planning protests for the political conventions of the major parties. Revelations of such activities have become almost white noise. All were covered in the media, but cumulatively it's as though none of them ever happened.
[snip]
In Pennsylvania the continuum has meant, most recently, that the state Office of Homeland Security contracted with a small outfit, the Institute of Terrorism Response and Research, run by a couple of ex-cops, one from York, Pennsylvania, the other raised in Philadelphia and a veteran of Israeli law enforcement. For the past year, the institute has been providing secret intelligence reports via the state Homeland Security Office to Pennsylvania police departments and private companies in order, the reports say, to “support public and private sector, critical infrastructure protection initiatives and strategies.”
Many of these reports focused on groups opposed to Marcellus Shale drilling, which you may not have known was a breeding ground for terrorism. In fact, you may not even know what it is. But particularly in Pennsylvania and New York, Marcellus Shale means big bucks. The shale is part of a 600-mile-long geological formation containing a huge reservoir of natural gas. Energy companies are seeking to exploit that formation in ways that have raised serious and widespread environmental concerns.
"Domestic terrorism" as a convenient label used as justification to snuff out citizen activism against exploitive corporations, to block citizens' exercising legal rights and to criminalize global humanitarian activities.
It doesn’t get more vile and toxic than this. This is a grave situation.
Please sign the petition. Pass on this link in an email. Talk this situation up within your networks.
This deserves our outside voices!
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