Pentagon wants troops to patrol the US

By Ian Bruce

Jan. 28— Increased use of troops inside the United States is necessary as part of the Bush administration’s war against international terror, the Pentagon believes. The Department of Defese (DOD) is to seek White House approval for a controversial plan which, if approved, could require changes to the US Constitution to allow the armed forces wider powers on American soil. The move is certain to draw fierce criticism from civil rights organizations who fear erosion of individual liberties in the name of defense.

President George W. Bush set up an office of Homeland Security under Pennsylvania governor, Tom Ridge, to coordinate federal activities such as police, fire-fighting, medical, and other emergency services in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

More than 6,000 National Guard part-time soldiers were called up to guard 400 airports throughout the US. The Air Force’s rapid-reaction fighter aircraft have permission to shoot down airliners not answering air traffic control instructions. The Guard will be withdrawn in the next 60 to 90 days, when the newly-trained Transportation Security Administration takes over responsibility for enhanced airport protection.

However, Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, is now convinced an entirely new command should be set up to keep the issue of combating terrorist threats to the US clear-cut and focused.

The proposal is to promote a four-star general to the post, separate from the existing chain of authority headed by Ridge, and answerable to the president through the Pentagon and the DOD. Although the Pentagon has regional commanders in chief, known as CINCs, who are responsible for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia, none exists for US forces in the United States and Canada. The proposed change would give a single four-star officer authority over such domestic deployments as Air Force jets patrolling above US cities, Navy ships running coastal checks, and Army National Guard troops policing airports and border crossings.

“All the chiefs and CINCs have seen the plan and have signed on to it, although it has not yet been briefed to the president,” a senior military officer said this past week. “Everyone is moving down the track toward realizing it.”

Legal barriers to the deployment of US troops on the streets of American cities have existed for more than a century under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. That law was pushed through to allow the military limited monitoring status over free elections in the southern states in the bitter aftermath of the US civil war. The act forbids federal soldiers from searching, seizing or arresting people in the US, although exceptions permitting the suppression of insurrection and crimes involving nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons have been tacked in this century.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday the proposal for a military homeland command posed no threat to civil liberties, but was part of a wider scheme to adjust command structures worldwide to take into account what they consider to be new threats and challenges. The Pentagon insists that state and local civilian agencies should continue to handle the bulk of homeland security.

Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that creating the new military command would be “a good idea.”

But Cheney said law enforcement officers would not be under military authority.

“[The] Justice Department’s still going to be the lead there, and the FBI, your local first responders are going to be crucial, just as they’ve always been.”

Sources: Associated Press, Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune

Three strikes and you’re out: human rights, US style

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, Jan. 26— The scene is a battered old green and white bungalow in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, which serves as the local Quakers’ meeting house. There are around 20 people here, heads bowed and holding hands as one of their number, Carmen Ewell, prays for help in the mighty task facing them.

That task involves changing one of the most controversial statutes in the US, the three strikes law, so the people now serving prison sentences of 25 years to life for offenses including stealing four cookies, and possession of $10 worth of drugs, will be able to return to their lives.

In a week that has been dominated in Europe by debate about the way al-Qaida suspects are being treated in Guantanamo Bay, public mood in the US itself is utterly unflustered by such human rights issues. For this is the country that has jailed a higher percentage of its citizens than any other in the world. And this is the country that has embraced the three strikes law.

The law was introduced after the horrific murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. Her abductor and murderer, Richard Allen Davis, was a three-time offender who was out on parole. In the wake of the outrage over the crime, Californians voted for an initiative which called for three-time felons to be jailed for a minimum of 25 years. The initiative became law, and now more than 30 states have adopted their own versions of it.

Under the three strikes law, violent criminals like Davis have been locked up for life. But it has also been used to sweep thousands of homeless people, drug addicts, and petty offenders off the streets and into jail with sentences that bear little relationship to their crimes. Critics of the law claim it has created a Siberia of forgotten prisoners, mainly black and Latino, who are the victims of cruel and unusual punishment.

Gregory Taylor, for instance, was a homeless man who used to hang around outside St. Joseph’s church in Los Angeles and would often ask the priest for food. The priest was usually able to find him something, a did so during the nine or so years he knew him. Shortly after 4am one morning in 1997, Taylor decided he could not wait and pried open the church’s kitchen door. A security guard spotted him and the police were called. He is now serving 25 years to life because the break-in was his third felony. When he appealed unsuccessfully against his sentence last year, one of the dissenting judges said the case was “like something from Les Misérables.”

Taylor’s case is far from isolated. At this meeting of the South Central chapter of Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes (FACTS) there are mothers and fathers and girlfriends and wives of other prisoners who face dying in prison for offenses which in other parts of the world might not even merit a fine.

“The United States is a very unforgiving country at the moment,” says Gail Blackwell, who works at the FACTS office in South Central. Blackwell’s friend, Joey Buckhalter, was jailed for 75 years to life for stealing a wallet with $24 in it.

“People are more interested in punishment and revenge than in rehabilitation,” she said. "People don’t even care about the two million people in jail in their country in terrible conditions.”

Fred Zullo, another FACTS supporter, is the father of 24-year-old Philip Zullo, now facing 75 years to life for making threatening phone calls. He is mentally ill, suffering from a bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Philip Zullo telephoned an ex-girlfriend and her family, another girlfriend and her mother, and threatened them with horrific violence. He then told the police he was wearing a bulletproof vest and had an AK-47 and said they would have to shoot him in the head to kill him. He has never owned a gun. But because he made three threats, a maximum 25-year sentence for each offense is multiplied three times.

“He is mentally ill,” Fred Zullo says. “Never in his life has he harmed anyone. He didn’t even remember the calls. He just said, ‘Dad, I screwed up again.’”

The prosecution has indicated that it will seek the maximum sentence. The local district attorney has a reputation as a hard-liner; his ranch is called “Hang ‘em High.” He has already turned down a plea not to pursue the three strikes option.

Of the law, Fred Zullo says wryly: “I was in favor of it, unfortunately. A lot of people didn’t realize what it meant.” He has met Joe Klaas, the grandfather of the murdered Polly who now says the family’s intention was never that the law should be used to incarcerate minor non-violent offenders or the mentally ill.

Klaas even signed a personal ad that ran in the New York Times in which he said, “My family regrets that the law cast in [Polly’s] name has cast too wide a net.” He pointed out that 50% of three-strikers are non-violent offenders.

These are just a tiny sample of the cases. Probably the most famous is still that of Jerry Dewayne Williams, who at the age of 27 was sentenced to 25 years to life for stealing a slice of pizza. He was eventually freed on appeal after six years. Kevin Weber stole four cookies from a Santa Ana restaurant in 1995 and was jailed for 25 years. Duane Silva, a 23-year-old with manic depression and an IQ of 70, received a sentence of 30 years to life for stealing a video recorder and a coin collection from his neighbors. His previous convictions were for setting fire to rubbish bins and to the glove compartment of a car. Then there are Doug Rosh, doing 25 years for possession of $10 worth of cocaine; Mary Thompson, doing 25 years for petty theft; Joyce Demeyers, doing 25 years for $20 worth of cocaine; Constantine Aguilar, doing 25 years for receiving stolen property; Chano Orozco, doing 25 years to life for possession of about $10 worth of heroin; and Frederick Morgan, doing 25 years to life for simple possession of drugs and petty theft.

A total of 6,700 people are now serving 25 years to life under the law, and FACTS says more than 3,350 of them are non-violent offenders, with 350 serving 25 years for petty theft. Of those serving third strike sentences, 44% are Black and 26% are Latino.

One of the main arguments for the three strikes law is that it has cut crime in California. Certainly crime has dropped in the period during which it has been in place, but it has fallen further in states with no three strikes law. The San Francisco area, where prosecutors rarely use the law for non-violent offenders, has also seen a sharp drop. New York state, with no three strikes law, and California, which does, showed the same crime reduction of 41% between 1993 and 1999, according to the Sentencing Project in Washington, DC.

Those campaigning to change the law are now pinning their hopes on Jackie Goldberg, a Democratic state assemblywoman who is introducing a bill to limit the heaviest application of the law to criminals convicted of violent or serious crimes. The day she announced her bill, a survey carried out jointly by FACTS and Citizens Against Violent Crime showed that 65% of Californians believe that the law should be used only against violent felons.

Source: Guardian (UK)

Energy task force pelted with lawsuits

Washington, DC, Jan. 25 (ENS)— One day after the Department of Energy (DOE) rebuffed a lawsuit seeking release of the list of companies, individuals and other outside groups that helped develop the White House energy policy, a new lawsuit has been filed.

On Thursday, Jan. 24, the DOE told the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that the Bush administration has not refused to disclose names of outside interests working with the Vice President Richard Cheney’s energy task force — while once again refusing to provide that very information, the NRDC said.

“The American people have a right to know who is making our energy policy,” said NRDC attorney Sharon Buccino. “The government’s continued refusal to answer the question can’t help but raise the question: What are they hiding?”

In response, the Sierra Club filed suit today against the energy task force under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, asking that the White House give a full accounting of who from private industry participated in crafting the national energy policy it introduced last May.

“It’s extremely unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit to learn how much influence polluting companies had over a policy affecting all Americans. If the White House had conducted their meetings in the light of day, we wouldn’t need this lawsuit,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “The American people were shut out of this process while energy companies and oil industry were given the red carpet treatment. Americans deserve to know what happened behind those closed doors — and the law requires it.”

Congressional investigators have been told that the task force had six meetings with now bankrupt energy giant Enron, but the administration refuses to reveal who else had a hand in shaping the energy plan.

The Cheney task force drafted the administration policy proposing massive subsidies to oil, coal and nuclear power companies, and extensive regulatory changes that would benefit them. The DOE was a lead federal agency working with the energy task force.

The NRDC says it will ask the US District Court for the District of Columbia to force the DOE to release its information.

“The administration is bending over backward to avoid providing even the most basic facts on the big energy companies and other special interests that might have influenced these highly controversial policies,” said Buccino.

The NRDC lawsuit was filed in December, eight months after the environmental group filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the information. The US General Accounting Office has filed a similar request.

ACLU calls for monitoring of USA Patriot Act

Washington, DC. Jan. 24— The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today called upon Congress to establish bodies of government officials and private citizens to monitor implementation of the USA Patriot Act and criticized the Administration for providing misinformation to the public in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

“Part of what makes America unique in the world is our unwavering commitment to the idea that our liberty and freedom must be as strong in a time of crisis as in a time of peace,” said Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU, at a House forum this morning. “We urge Congress to vigorously exercise its essential oversight responsibilities to help protect our freedoms in this time of crisis.”

Strossen testified this morning in front of a special House Judiciary Committee forum called by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Joining her on the hearing’s panels were, among others, Jim Zogby of the Arab-American Institute, Morton Halperin of the National Council on Foreign Relations, and Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network.

Strossen noted repeated assurances by top government officials, including the Attorney General, that the government has honored the rights of the hundreds of Arab and Muslim individuals who have been detained since Sept. 11. However, she said, these assurances are inconsistent with information the government itself recently disclosed in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other human rights groups. For example, according to the government’s disclosures pursuant to the FOIA lawsuit, many detainees were held for weeks, sometimes months, before being charged with a crime or immigration offense, a practice completely at odds with the Constitution.

“Be it deliberate or accidental, there is no excuse for the dissemination of misinformation to the public, especially in a time such as this,” Strossen said. “It is precisely because the investigation into the monstrous attacks of Sept. 11 is of the most urgent public concern that the public must be privy to full and accurate information.”

In her testimony this morning, Strossen also called on Congress to establish bodies of government officials and private individuals to monitor the implementation of the USA Patriot Act and respond to complaints alleging civil liberties or civil rights violations in the terrorism investigation.

The ACLU has been similarly vocal over the past four months about other Administration moves, calling attention to them as part of an emerging pattern of civil liberties abuses. These include the selective enforcement of deportation orders based on national origin and ethnicity, the round-ups of Arab and Muslim non-citizens for “voluntary” interrogation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and recent proposals to relax the limitations on FBI surveillance and infiltration of religious and political groups.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union: www.aclu.org

Bush’s choice of right-winger for AIDS post angers activists

By Tanya Pampalone

San Francisco, California, Jan. 24— AIDS activists have decried the pending appointment to the presidential AIDS council of Tom Coburn, a staunch conservative who believes homosexuality is morally wrong.

Coburn was named co-chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS along with Louis Sullivan, the former secretary of Health and Human Services under former President Bush.

Many AIDS activists are concerned that Coburn was “chosen to be a fierce advocate on positions that will have a negative or little helpful impact on the epidemic.”

The former Oklahoma congressman opposes abortion, has consistently challenged the effectiveness of condoms in HIV-prevention campaigns, and supports the outing of people infected with HIV.

Wayne Turner, spokesman for ACT UP Washington, DC, said Coburn is going to “shake things up, and that’s a good thing.”

Turner said local AIDS activists are concerned because of Coburn’s work with the Ryan White Care Act, which provides $1.8 billion in funding for AIDS programs nationwide.

As co-author of the reauthorization of the Act in 2000, Coburn, an obstetrician, led the fight to cut funding to locales like San Francisco, which receive the lion’s share of AIDS funding because of the high rates of infection early on in the epidemic, Turner said.

While Turner is at odds with many of Coburn’s issues, he said AIDS activists were able to work with him while he was in Congress, and he said Coburn has “responded favorably to activists’ concerns.”

Source: San Francisco Examiner