‘Telltale signs:’ US drifts toward police state

By Mike Burke

He has not been charged with a crime. He cannot see a lawyer. He is barred from seeing or challenging incriminating evidence. And no court is allowed to hear his case.

As a result, Jose Padilla, a 31-year-old Brooklyn-born US citizen, may spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement in a military prison without trial.

The Padilla case, along with the return of COINTELPRO tactics at the FBI and the erosion of attorney-client privileges, highlights how the government’s war on civil liberties and the Constitution has escalated to a once unimaginable degree. (COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program, was a secret FBI initiative from 1956 to 1971 that allowed the surveillance and harassment of thousands of activists.)

“If present trends continue, it is likely that America will drift toward national identification cards, a national police force, and more extensive military involvement in domestic affairs,” wrote Timothy Lynch in his study, “Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism.”

“That ought to give pause to people of goodwill from all across the political spectrum — since those are the telltale signs of societies that are unfree.”

Not since the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln approved the rounding up of hundreds of Unionists who opposed the war has a president so disregarded the fundamental right of habeas corpus — the right for citizens to challenge their arrest. But under Bush’s “enemy combatant” policy, citizens such as Padilla, who was detained in Chicago for allegedly planning to build a radioactive dirty bomb, and Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana and captured in Afghanistan, simply have no rights.

The Justice Department argues that even the Supreme Court cannot question the president’s treatment of enemy combatants.

“The court may not second-guess the military’s enemy combatant determination [because it would] create ‘a conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to enemies of the United States,’” the Justice Department wrote in a brief in the Hamdi case.

Critics fear such rulings border on totalitarianism.

“It is scarier than the dirty bomb,” Hamdi’s court-appointed attorney Frank W. Dunham Jr. told the Washington Post. “Now the government can label somebody something and then throw the key away forever.”

There is also fear that the government will use fabricated or trumped-up evidence — which never has to be publicly shown — to detain citizens indefinitely.

Questions abound over the strength of the government’s case against Padilla. On June 10, in a special press conference from Moscow, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the capture of Padilla, who had already been in custody for a month.

Ashcroft claimed Padilla was the key figure in an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive ‘dirty bomb.’” But within hours top Bush administration officials began downplaying Ashcroft’s statements.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and others countered that Padilla did little more than discuss the plot and download inaccurate instructions on building a dirty bomb.

“Clearly, he is not the deadly, skilled operative Attorney General John Ashcroft seemed to be describing,” concluded Time magazine.

Nonetheless, Padilla may remain imprisoned without trial for the rest of his life.

Expanded surveillance powers

For activists involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s, it is deja vu as the Justice Department has expanded the FBI’s role in domestic surveillance, marking the return and legalization of COINTELPRO tactics.

“The new guidelines will trash a central protection against government fishing expeditions by ending the requirement that law enforcement agencies have at least a scintilla of evidence — or even a hunch — of a crime before engaging in certain investigative activities,” the ACLU reported.

As evidence continues to emerge that existing surveillance methods should have tipped off governmental officials that plans for a massive attack were in the works last summer, many have questioned the need for the FBI to return to J. Edgar Hoover-era dirty tricks. The failure was not so much in the government’s ability to collect data as in the FBI, CIA and NSA’s ability to make sense of the intelligence.

The lawyers

Lynne Stewart, a well-know radical New York lawyer, gained national headlines in April when the Justice Department charged her with conspiring with terrorists. Stewart faces 40 years in prison for allegedly allowing her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to send messages to his followers via the court-appointed translator and for her public statement communicating his views. Abdel Rahman is the blind Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up New York landmarks in 1993.

The charges stem from secret governmental monitoring of Stewart’s conversations with her clients. To bolster their case, officials also raided her office, seizing confidential files.

Out on bail, Stewart continues to publicly condemn the Bush Administration’s war on terrorism. “Angela Davis said: if they come for me in the morning, they’ll be back for you tonight,” she said recently. “And that is the way we are living now in America.”

Source: The Indypendent: www.nyc.indymedia.org

MEDIA WATCH

World’s cop needs to be above the law, unaccountable

By Sean Marquis (AGR)

In a July 15 article that may as well have been a White House press release, Time magazine gave a very pro-administration stance as to why “the US should be wary of the International Criminal Court [ICC].”

The headline of the article by Michael Elliot said it all: “In this case, might makes right.”

The crux of Elliot’s argument is that the US has the most powerful military in the world and the “ubiquity of American power has bred a natural resentment.” And in their “resentment” other, weaker nations will bring baseless ICC suits against the US, endangering the welfare of US military personnel “or Defense Secretary, for that matter.”

The problem with Time’s article is that the argument Elliot attempts to use against the ICC is one of the very reasons for the ICC.

Elliot writes: “The US is uniquely powerful, with a near monopoly on the ability to project force globally.” Elliot claims that this is one of the “sound reasons for exempting American troops and officials from the ICC’s purview.”

Elliot claims that the world’s sole superpower (or “hyperpower” as coined by French officials), with a “near monopoly” on global military power, must be exempt from global accountability of that power.

The US’s own system of government is supposedly based on “checks and balances” so that no one branch of government could gain too much power. But Elliot and Time feel it is ok that “might makes right” and the US military/policeman of the world needs no checks and balances.

In a sop to one of the three balancing branches of the US government, Elliot writes that US “Congress…is not a rubber stamp; it has a constitutional role in international affairs, and it takes it seriously.”

Elliot must not be aware that Congress takes its role so “seriously” that the Senate is currently “seriously” contemplating giving its “constitutional role” of international trade negotiations over to the president via “Fast Track” — a move already approved “seriously” by the House of Representatives.

But “seriously,” Elliot has the audacity to say that the US is not alone in its fight against the ICC -- it currently has China, India, and Russia on its side. Hardly a great team. Both China and Russia have left a long list of human rights violations in their wake and India currently has several hundred thousand of its soldiers on its border with Pakistan in a recent spark-up of its ongoing ethno-religious conflict with that country — going so far as to have both nations threaten the use of nuclear weapons in recent months.

With such a stunning team in its corner, what Elliot says the US is really concerned about is that under the ICC “the way would be open for a foreign prosecutor to frivolously accuse a US soldier…of war crimes,” and that the US would “run the risk of prosecutions in foreign courts brought by grandstanding magistrates looking for easy popularity.”

Elliot does not mention the US firebombing of Dresden in WWII, the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, NATO bombing of civilian targets in Yugoslavia, or the entire illegal invasion of Panama by then-US president George H. W. Bush. In Elliot’s article such things are not mentioned and therefore not in the realm of possible war crimes committed by US personnel and heads of state. There are only “frivolous” lawsuits brought by “grandstanding magistrates.”

The Time article also follows the government line that the US is against the ICC because “Washington wants protection for its peacekeepers.” The claim here is that the US is primarily concerned about “peacekeepers” involved in United Nations or NATO-backed interventions.

But in the second-to-last paragraph of the article the lie is given to this argument by the author’s own statement: “It often falls on the US, as the most powerful nation on the planet, to apply force so as to mitigate evil. True, the US uses its power primarily in its own interest.” The spin here is that offensive US military power is used to “mitigate evil” and therefore the unquestioned implication is that US military power is used to promote “good” — whatever that may be. To accept this is to not question Elliot’s next statement that US power is used “in its own interest.” Questions not asked are: what are US interests? and are they “good”?

Inadvertently -- or ironically -- Time magazine itself suggests some people who may question US-proposed impunity from prosecution under the ICC.

Across the bottom of two pages preceding Elliot’s article, ran a brief list of some US “friendly fire” and civilian killing incidents in its terror war on Afghanistan.

Mentioned are the recent US bombing of a wedding in Kakarak and the two separate US bombings of the same Red Cross compound last October.

Also mentioned is that on Feb. 4 “A missile kills three men; one was tall, like Osama bin Laden,” and that the “US defends the hit.” Apparently if you are a tall Afghani you are a legitimate target of “the most powerful nation on the planet.”

So when you put it all together, Time magazine is saying that if you are a tall Afghani wedding guest near a Red Cross building and the US drops a bomb on you, your family may be inclined to convince a grandstanding magistrate to bring a frivolous lawsuit against the most powerful nation on the planet.

Then again, “might makes right.”

MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS

Hackers help counter Net censorship
Some of the world’s best-known hackers unveiled a plan this weekend to offer free software to promote anonymous Web surfing in countries where the internet is censored, especially China and Middle Eastern nations.

An international hacker group calling itself Hactivismo released a program on July 13 called Camera/Shy that allows internet users to conceal messages inside photos posted on the Web, bypassing most known police monitoring methods.

In addition, “Mixter,” an internationally known German hacker, said Hactivismo was preparing in coming weeks to launch technology which, if adopted widely, could allow anyone to create grassroots, anonymous networks where internet users worldwide could access and share information without a trace. Mixter’s software — known as a “protocol” in technical terms — would allow ordinary computer users to set up a decentralized version of virtual private networks (VPNs). The software works to bypass firewalls that allow only partial access to global computer networks.

The Hactivismo announcement, the result of a two-year project among hackers worldwide, was made at H2K2, a three-day conference that ended July 14. The bi-annual event attracts an estimated 2,000 security professionals and computer activists. (Reuters)

Cable firms could squelch
internet freedom
If cable providers like AOL Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. do not allow rivals to offer high-speed internet access through their networks, they could stifle innovation and curtail the open nature of the global computer network, the American Civil Liberties Union and several other activist groups said July 10.

Thousands of Internet service providers, known as ISPs, offer standard dial-up service, but consumers typically can only choose from a handful of ISPs if they want to sign up for “broadband” access that allows them to surf the internet at much faster speeds.

While broadband technologies that use existing telephone lines or wireless links are available, roughly two-thirds of the nation’s 25 million broadband users connect through their cable-television provider, according to industry figures.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently determining what rules apply to broadband cable connections, but has already indicated that they will be subject to fewer regulations than telephone systems and other “common carriers,” meaning they may not be required to accommodate rival ISPs.

Some cable providers have allowed a few rivals like EarthLink Inc. onto their systems, but Steinhardt and other activists said the government should require cable companies to open their networks to more ISPs. (Reuters)

HIV-positive TV Muppet
worries US lawmakers
Republican lawmakers are worried about plans to introduce an HIV-positive Muppet to the “Sesame Street” gang, Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety reported in its July 15 edition.

A day after show executives announced they would develop the as-yet-unnamed character for audiences in AIDS-ravaged South Africa, five members of the House committee on energy and commerce said the Muppet would be unwelcome on American TV.

In a letter sent Friday to the president of the government-funded Public Broadcasting System, which airs “Sesame Street,” the lawmakers noted the average age of US viewers of “Sesame Street” in the US is 2 to 4 years old.

“As such, while it is important to teach children in an age-appropriate manner about compassion for those who contract certain diseases, we would like to inquire as to whether there is other PBS programming, aimed at an older age group, which may be more suitable for such sensitive messages,” Daily Variety reported the letter as saying.

The letter to PBS president Pat Mitchell was sent by committee chairman W.J. “Billy” Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, as well as by Joe Barton of Texas, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Charles “Chip” Pickering of Mississippi, Cliff Stearns of Florida, and Fred Upton of Michigan, the paper said. (Reuters)