|
   
Click for the most recently updated editions of
Oregon Coast News Signal or The Geeze.
Ed. note:
Heck, we're all Japanese if they say so. We're
in trouble if some white guy tells FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security, "Dissidents are more
dangerous than minorities."
Two articles caught my attenion that deserve temporarily "permanent" status on this webpage (below).
Shed Your Addiction: Beyond Mere Survival in the American Dystopia by Jason Miller, and
Detention Camp Jitters
by Maureen Farrell. Also see
Our Daily Bread, and learn through bribery or consideration for the vegan lifestyle, why it isn't
Our Daily Meat.
Tuesday, 14FEB2006
Nurse Investigated for 'Sedition' After Writing Letter to Editor
Editor & Publisher
NEW YORK Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has asked Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson for a thorough inquiry of his agency's investigation into whether a V.A. nurse's letter to the editor criticizing the Bush administration amounted to "sedition."
Merely opposing government policies and expressing a desire to change course "does not provide reason to believe that a person is involved in illegal subversive activity," he said. Bingaman said such investigations raise "a very real possibility of chilling legitimate political speech."
Laura Berg, a clinical nurse specialist for 15 years, wrote a letter in September to a weekly Albuquerque newspaper criticizing how the administration handled Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq Wwr. She urged people to "act forcefully" by bringing criminal charges against top administration officials, including the president, to remove them from power because they played games of "vicious deceit." She added: "This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil....Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times."
The agency seized her office computer and launched an investigation. Berg is not talking to the press, but reportedly fears losing her job.
Bingaman wrote: "In a democracy, expressing disagreement with the government's actions does not amount to sedition or insurrection. It is, and must remain, protected speech. Although it may be permissible to implement restrictions regarding a government employee's political activities during work hours or on government premises, such employees do not surrender their right to freedom of speech when they enlist in government service."
He said he wants the matter investigated so V.A. officials will have guidance about handling similar situations in the future.
Berg signed the letter as a private citizen, and the V.A. had no reason to suspect she used government resources to write it, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which last week asked the government to apologize to Berg for seizing her computer and investigating her.
V.A. human resources chief Mel Hooker had said in a Nov. 9 letter that his agency was obligated to investigate "any act which potentially represents sedition," the ACLU said.
Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico, told The Progressive magazine: "We were shocked to see the word 'sedition' used. Sedition? That's like something out of the history books."
In a press release, Simonson also said: "Is this government so jealous of its power, so fearful of dissent, that it needs to threaten people who openly oppose its policies with charges of 'sedition'?"
Shed Your Addiction: Beyond Mere Survival in the American Dystopia
By Jason Miller
1984 has come to pass, both chronologically and in the Orwellian sense. Americans are "liberators" in Iraq. Opponents of this "peace initiative" are "doubleplusungood". Unchecked by the judiciary, the NSA electronically trolls for perpetrators of "crimethink". Pundits and the "liberal media" (owned by a handful of monolithic corporations despised by people with the values which many define as liberal) have become the Ministry of Truth for the Party.
I recently witnessed Bill O'Reilly as he delivered a blistering verbal castigation to his "guest"
because the man opposed America's imperial occupations and war crimes in the Middle East. In the next
breath, O'Reilly expressed his sympathy and compassion for the victims of 9/11. Ironically, the victim of O'Reilly's abusive tirade had lost his father in the collapse of the WTC. Outfoxed, the source of this nauseating display of hatred and hypocrisy, has indeed portrayed an extremely dangerous entity. What truly scares me is that Fox News is only a symptom of a much greater malignancy.
Via Fox, the Bush Regime streams steady doses of its "opiate to the masses" via a distribution network reaching 85 million cable subscribers. Fox and most other mainstream media entities are the syringes mainlining the mind-altering, psychosis-inducing propaganda munificently showered upon Americans by the Party. Social Darwinists comprising the Party, including major corporate shareholders and executives, Israeli interests, the military industrial complex, plutocrats, the power players of the Religious Right, and intellectual elites hold the Great Beast (us "commoners") at bay with a powerfully addictive state of being called the American Dream.
It is indeed a Brave New World. As many Americans somnambulate through their existence, they are virtually oblivious and indifferent to the profound human misery which must occur in order for a tiny fraction of humanity to experience the American Dream. When (or if) their Soma fix finally wears off, I suspect they will be ready to chew off their own arms to escape the disease-ridden whores with whom they have unwittingly climbed into bed. Mirroring Hitler's Germany, this nation of "decent, God-fearing" people is pledging allegiance to a murderous regime. Are the comfort of conformity and the safety of loyalty to the Empire worth the price of one's soul?
America's ruling class has created a scintillating facade to hide its dystopia, assuring the Great Beast that we all have the right and the means to attain the looks of a Victoria's Secret model, the money of a Donald Trump, and the athletic ability of a Michael Vick. Infomercials, work from home schemes, plastic surgery, hypnosis, and myriad other avenues to instant success and immediate gratification abound amongst the virtually infinite number of hollow pursuits littering the spiritually barren landscape of the United States. Those who fall short of the "American ideal" simply need to continue upping their dose American Soma. If that fails and they fall victim to the ravages of unbridled addiction, spiritual emptiness, poverty, despair, self-hatred, or anorexia, they can simply end their misery with a drug overdose or a shotgun blast to the face. America's predator class, the pushers of the opiate of the masses, is not concerned with the suffering they inflict. In their zeal to appease the triumvirate they worship (power, money, and narcissistic desires), the "chosen ones" of our society do not hesitate to sacrifice the rights, dignity, sanity and even lives of hundreds of millions of innocent human beings. After all, if they come from amongst the rabble of the Great Beast, how can they be truly human and why would their anguish or death matter?
Huxley's Soma had "all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." The Soma
dispensed by the ruling class in the United States is a noxious concoction comprised of many
ingredients, including Christianity and alcohol. From birth, Americans begin receiving daily hits of
Ameri-Soma from their parents, teachers, Scoutmasters, pastors, and other adults who have themselves
been seduced by the alluring power of the American Illusion. Pledging allegiance to the flag, praying
to the "one true god" of Christianity, and genuflecting to embodiments of "real men" like John Wayne,
Americans are socially conditioned to believe in the righteousness of their masters' cause. Our nobles
desperately need the majority of their serfs to believe that the United States manifests the human
pinnacle of democratic ideals, morality, courage, and leadership. And to deal with external skeptics
(internal doubters will likely be in the cross-hairs soon), the power brokers of America spend $600 billion a year to maintain a military force bristling with sufficient weaponry to destroy the Earth many times over. Plutocrats and Neocons are not interested in humanitarian spending or saddling themselves with the mere mortal constraint of living within their means. Global hegemony for themselves (and their masters in Israel) is their ultimate goal, regardless of the cost in lives or public money.
Further insulating America's ruling elites from the conflagration which would ignite were the masses to awaken is the insatiable American compulsion to shop and consume conspicuously. With the advent of easy credit, ubiquitous super stores open 24 hours, and pay day loans, "buy now and pay later" has become as American as baseball and apple pie.
Alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, and pornography are but a few of the legal and readily available vehicles Americans use to self-medicate. For those wanting something more intense, a plethora of street drugs are within easy reach, providing the ruling class the opportunity to keep the black male population in check and to perpetuate their increasingly profitable prison industrial complex.
Television is the portal into which the Great Beast can gaze to experience the American Dream vicariously without lifting a finger (beyond the one changing the channels). Twenty four hour entertainment, "companionship", and "news" from the Ministry of Truth are readily at our disposal. A marvel of modern technology has become the nexus of the components of Ameri-Soma, the uber-drug that keeps the Great Beast submissive, tame, and intellectually stunted.
Perhaps it is human nature for a few to hoard power and resources to the detriment of the many. Once can witness a consistent pattern of such behavior throughout history, at least in the "more advanced" cultures. Yet as Scott Peck so aptly noted in The Road Less Traveled, defecating in one's pants and the absence of dental hygiene are aspects of human nature at birth, but most people learn the unnatural acts of utilizing toilets and toothbrushes. One of the most beautiful aspects of humanity is that unlike animals, people are not enslaved by their nature. Human beings can evolve. However, most of humanity has chosen to readily accept the shackles of the ruling class. Historically, the Great Beast has been domesticated, tamed and manipulated in a variety of ways. Brute military force, manipulation by religious entities and institutions, propaganda, and careful restriction of knowledge are but a few of the tactics employed by monarchies, tyrants, Popes, and generals throughout history.
At first blush, the United States appears to be the haven for freedom and human rights portrayed in legend, lore, and the propaganda of its school textbooks and media. However, if one can awaken from the drunken stupor induced by America-Soma, or if one happens to be a resident of another nation besides Israel or Great Britain (the only two nations still deluded enough to truly ally themselves with the United States), the many headed hydra of the American Dystopia reveals its truly abhorrent nature. Lord Acton conveyed truth when he wrote that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Despite its cleverly constructed image of a benevolent super-power, those ruling the United States are more corrupt than the power elite of any nation, including those in Bush's alleged "Axis of Evil". Due to its power, military might, and rogue leadership, the United States has also become the world's most significant threat to the perpetuation of life on Earth.
Most Americans still do not realize that they are enslaved to the ruling elite, a group with a savage, relentless devotion to avarice, the blind pursuit of money, and the domination of Earth's people and resources. Under the Bush Regime, the mask of civility, morality, and democracy has slipped to the point that the hideous visage of raw capitalism and imperialistic ambition is almost completely exposed. Yet somehow, as over a hundred thousand lie dead in Iraq, the Patriot Act strips our civil liberties, the wealth gap widens to a chasm, Big Brother has been caught watching (and is unrepentant), billions of dollars are wasted on occupations of sovereign nations, habeas corpus disappears, America engages in torture regularly, property rights precede human rights, and a major city lays in ruins due to the willful neglect of a government charged by the Constitution with promoting the general welfare, many Americans still cannot, or will not, dare to even glimpse at the lurid countenance of evil leering at them from Washington.
Like a swarm of locusts, Social Darwinists have descended upon our nation and are rapidly devouring the fruits of our labor. Resembling leeches, these parasites drain the life-blood of America and return nothing. Acting as virulent strains of previously undiscovered illnesses, these pathogens have infected a nation filled with the promise and potential envisioned by Thomas Paine. The resulting disease has reduced the United States to a wheezing, gasping tyrant nearly on economic life support. This once admirable nation flails almost blindly as it wields the only real power it has left like a bludgeon, dispatching its awesome military on imperial errands and acts of revenge (against the wrong people) under the pretense of humanitarian intervention. Employing quick sound bites, propaganda packaged as gospel, tantalizing distractions, the lure of easy money, and a highly insular environment, these sociopathic plunderers have hijacked America. Their reckless piloting is destined to result in a disaster of Biblical proportions. America¹s rulers view the world as their playground. Recess is in session and the schoolyard bullies have seized control. They kidnapped the school-yard monitor, have stolen the lunch money, are taunting and beating the weak, and are playing kickball with the class misfit¹s head.
This doesn't have to stand. America has exhibited true greatness in the past. Think of the American
Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. This is the nation that spawned the
Abolitionist Movement. The powerful Labor Movement arose in the Twentieth Century and claimed
unprecedented rights and protections for the working class. The Civil Rights Movement made powerful
gains for minorities and the oppressed. Women won the right to vote. Populists made strides for farmers
and the working class. Anti-war protestors broke the will of the military industrial complex to
continue their genocidal "pacification" of the Vietnamese. Progressives have been a significant force
for social changes to benefit humanity since the 1890's. There are still champions for the oppressed in
America and spiritually enlightened values are woven into the fabric of our culture.
We the People have a choice. We can bend to the will of the hectors who have stolen the soul of our
nation or we can follow the example of our predecessors and work vigorously to reclaim our humanity.
Borrowing the words of a blue blood of American aristocrats, Nancy Reagan, I say it is time to "just
say no" to Ameri-Soma. Actually, Lady Nancy¹s statement was grossly over-simplified. In addition to
saying no, one also needs to replace the behaviors associated with the addiction. Might I be so bold as
to make some suggestions to counter the effects of withdrawal from this powerful drug, and to propose
some means of coping with the loss of the false feeling of security it imbues?
Join or support an NGO like the Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Boycott dehumanizing
corporations like Wal-Mart. Conserve resources, recycle, and drive as economical a car as you can
afford. Support and vote for individuals who have genuine concern for humanity, like Lynn Woolsey,
John Conyers, Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich (assuming they do not die under "mysterious circumstances"
like Paul Wellstone). If you choose to support a specific political party, explore those outside the
corrupt Duopoly, both of which represent the interests of the ruling class. Refuse to enable the ruling
elite's addiction to war by declining to join the military, hence depriving them of additional cannon
fodder.
Embody the Golden Rule to the extent that it is humanly possible. Embrace cultural, racial, sexual, and religious diversity. Read some books by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn to cleanse your mind of the elite¹s polluted version of historical, social and political issues. Educate yourself and your children beyond the warped world perspective portrayed by the media and our public education system. Participate in your child¹s education by teaching them to think critically and dig far beneath the surface. Live within your means and avoid credit card debt like the plague. Demand and support justice for the oppressed; peace will follow justice. Donate your time and money to truly compassionate and humane causes (as much and as often as you are able). Take personal responsibility and act as honestly as humanly possible in your affairs. Through non-violent action, press for social justice, human rights, dignity and peace.
In the end, the prognostications of martial law, "re-education" camps for dissidents, the collapse of
the American economy triggered by crushing debt and the Iranian oil bourse, massive unemployment, the
successful elimination of the remains of our Constitutional republic, and the relegation of the Great
Beast in the United States to Third World conditions may ring true. So as you pour sugar in the tank of
the engine powering the American Empire by refusing your daily dose of Ameri-Soma, do not relinquish
your Second Amendment rights. Someday, the members of the Great Beast may need to exercise our
inalienable right to self preservation. If it comes to this, there will be activity in the streets, but
it will not be dancing.
In the future, I may be writing to you from behind concertina wire, or I might meet you there. Who can truly predict? However, if we happen to meet under those circumstances, at least our souls will be at rest knowing that we pursued social justice and human rights in the face of abject evil.
Jason Miller is a 39 year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. When he is not
spending time with his wife and three sons, researching, or writing, he is working as a loan
counselor. He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and
Human Rights Watch. He welcomes responses at
willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog,
Thomas Paine's Corner.
Detention Camp Jitters
By Maureen Farrell
"Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States."
- The Sydney Morning Herald, July 27, 2002
In 1984, the Rex-84 readiness exercise program was conducted by 34 federal departments and agencies,
reportedly as an exercise to handle an influx of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/U.S. border.
Brought to Americans' attention during the Iran-contra hearings, the exercise, which was conducted
alongside another drill,
Night Train 84, also tested military readiness to
round up and detain citizens in case of massive civil unrest.
None of that ever happened, of course, and in many respects, it seems silly to even mention it. After
all, other Reagan-era initiatives, like the
Armageddon exercises Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld
participated in, are far more interesting. Then, too, despite a brief moment of sunlight in the
1970s (when Congress, according to former President and CIA director George H.W.
Bush, "unleashed a bunch of untutored little jerks out there"), emergency detention plans had been in
place since the 1950s, without incident.
Americans have not been herded into camps since World War II, so why worry about it now?
For some, the answer comes in the form of yet another government contract awarded to Halliburton
subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root to
build "temporary detention facilities" in case of an "immigration emergency." Reminiscent of Rex 84,
which was conducted on the premise of preparing for "an influx of immigrants," there is reason to
believe that hoards of poor, tired immigrants are not the true concern. As Tom Hennessy of the
Press-Telegram recently pointed out,
"there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing
illegal immigrants." So what else might these centers be used for?
Given predictions that
another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the
centers would be used for
post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge. "Almost
certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and
possibly dissenters," Daniel Ellsberg remarked. "They've already done this on a smaller scale,
with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with
Guantanamo." As it turns out, immigrants aren't the only concern. As a news brief in the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary
immigration detention centers to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. KBR would build the
centers for the Homeland Security Department in case of an unexpected influx of immigrants or to
house people after a natural disaster or for
new programs that require additional detention space, the
company said.
Hurricane Katrina gave Americans a glimpse of how a natural disaster scenario might play out. John
Brinkerhoff, one of the FEMA officials behind the Reagan-era martial law and internment directives
who "planned for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in
assembly centers or relocation camps" began defending the Pentagon's desire to deploy troops on American streets in
2002, and sure enough, after Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater mercenaries were brought in to
police the streets of New Orleans -- as soldiers were instructed to
"shoot to kill" looters. Brinkerhoff
also told PBS that, "The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a
theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in
the United States that we apply in other theaters of war."
Which brings us to the KBR spokesman's final statement regarding
"new programs that require additional detention space." What might these new programs be? Do they have anything to do with the post-9/11 suggestions for forced quarantines or internment camps? Will America's new "secret laws" come into play? Might these "new programs" have anything to do with the contingencies Oliver North prepared for? Inquiring minds want to know.
In 1987, the Miami Herald gave us a glimpse of what the lead counsel for the Senate
Iran-contra committee called a
"secret government-within-a-government" and alerted readers to
standby legislation, which, as columnist Jack Anderson had previously warned, was meant to "suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights." Even so, when a memo from the Director of Resource Management for the Department of the Army emerged, discussing "civilian inmate labor camps" to be built on Army installations, only conspiracy buffs on the far fringes of the Internet paid it any mind.
In 1998, World Net Daily's Geoff Metcalf addressed such "classic right wing paranoia," trying not to
sound paranoid himself. "For several years now I have been getting all sorts of wild reports
about 'Government Internment Camps,' he wrote, before disclosing two reasons he began sensing substance
behind the rumors: 1) The labor camp memo was authentic, he said and 2) A U.S. congressman substantiated
such claims. "The truth is yes -- you do have these standby provisions, and the plans are here ... whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism ... evoke the military and arrest Americans and put them in detention camps," Rep. Henry Gonzalez said in an interview.
"Heck, we did it before (to Americans of Japanese descent),
we could do it again," Metcalf mused.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, it seemed that yes, we could do it again. When the Boston Herald
reported on the
Model State Emergency Health Powers Act sent to each state, it sounded sensationally
surreal. "Public health officials want to shut down roads and airports,
herd people into sports
stadiums and, if needed, quarantine entire cities in the event of a smallpox attack, according to
a plan being forwarded to all 50 governors this week," the Herald reported in Nov. 2001. By the
summer of 2002, Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said that a
second terror attack would lead to
internment camps for Arab-Americans while the Sydney Morning Herald
reported that we "could see
internment camps and martial law in the United States."
The biggest bombshell, however, came from Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose proposal to send US
citizens to
detention camps, without the benefit of trial, jury or other Constitutional protections,
was dissected by the Los Angeles Times. "The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's
small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could
become a reality," the Times reported in August, 2002. "The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi
will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and
unchecked authority of the government."
Padilla was held without charges for more than three years, and
when charges were finally filed against him, the chilling "dirty bomb" allegations made by Ashcroft
on national TV were not even mentioned. His attorneys have vowed to take the case to the Supreme
Court -- which is
expected to side with presidential decrees.
By the fall of 2005, news that the US could continue to
"confine US citizens without charges," prompted conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan to dig up the
following quote: "The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge
known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree
odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist" --
Winston Churchill, November 21, 1943, describing what is now legal and constitutional in the
United States, under president Bush."
Churchill, one supposes, did not include President Franklin Roosevelt in his condemnation, but when
Ashcroft's plans for detention camps came to light, legal analysts began comparing the Bush
administration's scheme to internment of Japanese Americans. "The main distinction is that Ashcroft's
camps are smaller in scale. The difference in magnitude should
not make the internment of U.S. citizens
any more just or palatable," columnist Anita Ramasastry explained.
And as Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe said on ABC's Nightline:
"It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that
just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but
at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a
lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way..."
Nevertheless, concerns over detention camps go hand-in-hand with jokes about black helicopters, and
rightly so. The Internet is rife with rumors on everything from the more than "800 detention
camps" already in existence to stories about Hurricane Katrina evacuees begin locked behind barbed
wire in a concentration camp in Utah, which it turns out, was actually
Camp Williams, an Army National Guard training center.
When Diane Carmen of the Denver Post reported on evacuees at the Community College of Aurora,
she wrote, "If I didn't know better, I'd have thought I was peering through
the fence at a concentration camp," which some cited as "proof" that Americans were going to be
rounded up and locked away, though the rest of the article did not substantiate such
claims. "Everybody treats you real nice," said one evacuee. "There's a lotta love up here."
The idea that dissidents could be sent to detention facilities is perhaps the most widely circulated theory, and it is as popular under President George W. Bush as it was under President Bill Clinton. And though Daniel Ellsberg has also suggested that dissidents could be targeted, most of the theories rest upon circumstantial evidence and long stretches of the imagination.
What we do know, however, thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald's investigation into Reagan-era
initiatives, alongside documents leaked to the Miami Herald in 1987, is that when Col. Oliver North
helped draft contingency plans in the early 80s, one of the reasons cited for possible martial law
and internment was
"national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad" -- a scenario which would
become
more likely with additional wars and in the event of the return of the draft.
Last year, the
Project for a New American Century, the think tank that famously advocated preemptive strikes and
wars on multiple fronts, called upon Congress to "take the steps necessary to
increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps." Such steps should be
relatively easy, given that
since PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" was first published, states have been linking driver's
license applications to selective service registration. According to the Selective Service System's
Web site, "As of August 5, 2005, 35 states, 3 territories, and the District of Columbia have enacted
driver's license laws supporting SSS registration."
With the
military stretched to the breaking point, questions of conscription and subsequent draft-dodging
are hardly far-fetched, but the very act of protesting, in and of itself, could become a federal
offense. Though conservative columnist William Safire was one of the first to warn of Mr.
Bush's "dictatorial powers," and editorials across the country have since voiced similar concerns, few
are picking up on attempts to criminalize dissent -- an observation made by former White House counsel
John Dean as early as Oct. 2001, who wrote that, thanks to the hastily passed Patriot Act, the "right to
dissent" is in jeopardy, with protesters possibly considered "terrorists."
Dean considered this an "unintended consequence" of the new anti-terror legislation, but the Oakland
Tribune later reported that California's anti-terrorism intelligence center was
already
"blurring the line between terrorism and political dissent" and National Lawyers Guild president
Michael Avery said that the Bush administration was "trying to criminalize dissent,
characterize protesters as terrorists and trying to intimidate and marginalize those opposed to its
policies." After a New York state jury refused to convict four Catholic antiwar activists for
protesting at a U.S. military recruiting office in 2005, the federal government stepped in, filing
charges including "conspiracy to impede an officer of the United States," which could
send each protester to prison for up six years.
Is this an isolated incident? It would seem not. Provisions in the new Patriot Act have also raised
concerns. The first questionable provision could make
"breaching security perimeters" at any "special
event of national significance" a felony while the second calls for the creation of a new
federalized "permanent police force" which would be given the authority to arrest citizens in violation
of the Bill of Rights. "The obvious purpose of the act is to prevent demonstrations at Bush/Cheney
events," former Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote, adding that the law
has "dire implications" for First Amendment guarantees. "We can take for granted that the new federal
police will be used to suppress dissent and to break up opposition.
The Brownshirts are now arming
themselves with a Gestapo."
Even before Sept. 11, a document entitled "Domestic Operational Law Handbook for Judge Advocates,"
reflected a movement towards a more militarized society. The JAG document, which called
for "providing military assistance for civil disturbances" cited the '60s era Operation Garden Plot,
the United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, which gave federal forces the
power to "put down" "disruptive elements" and called for
"deadly force to be used against any
extremist or dissident perpetrating any and all forms of civil disorder." As Frank Morales stated
in an
update to his 2003 Project Censored award-winning story "The Pentagon Wages War on America":
Operation Garden Plot, originating in 1968 and continually updated, is according to the JAG handbook, tasked with the mission of conducting 'civil disturbance operations throughout the United States,' providing 'wide latitude to a commander to use federal forces to assist civil law enforcement in restoring law and order.' And it's exactly this type of 'wide latitude' that we've witnessed at recent protests in NYC and Oakland.
United States Army Field Manual 19-15, entitled Civil Disturbances, issued in 1985, is designed to equip
soldiers with the 'tactics, techniques and procedures' necessary to suppress dissent. The manual
states that 'crowd control formations may be employed to disperse, contain, or block a crowd. When
employed to disperse a crowd, they are
particularly effective in urban areas because they enable the
control force to split a crowd into smaller segments.'
It should be noted that the government has traditionally tried to
curb dissent during wartime and much of what we're seeing today existed in the Vietnam era, too. In
1967, with the assistance of an Army task force, President Lyndon Johnson established the National
Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which called for the use of military force to squelch civil
disturbances. A year after four unarmed Kent State University students were gunned down by members of
the Ohio National Guard, Sen. Sam Ervin's
Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights uncovered information
regarding Operation Garden Plot and discovered a massive military surveillance program used against
citizens. The FBI's domestic counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO also came to light when the
Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI lifted documents and leaked them to the press. And, as we
later learned, from 1967 to 1971 the FBI also kept an
"agitator index" or ADEX file, which was a list
of individuals to be rounded up as subversives.
Operation Cable Splicer, a subplot of Operation Garden Plot which included plans to control
civilian populations and take over state and local governments, also appeared to be in play during
Hurricane Katrina, when President Bush announced that the Pentagon was developing plans to give the
military a larger role in responding to catastrophic events and suggested that the federal government
should override state and local authorities. "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires
greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces," Bush said in a
speech. (The president also announced that the U.S. military could enforce quarantines should there be
a bird flu outbreak, which Irwin Redlener, associate Dean of Columbia University's School of Public
Health for Disaster Preparedness, deemed an "extraordinarily draconian measure," which translates
to "martial law in the United States.")
In 2002, a New York Times editorial stated that the FBI now has "nearly unbridled power to poke
into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity"
and one year later, FBI Intelligence Bulletin no. 89 was sent to police departments, revealing that
the federal government was advocating that local authorities spy on U.S. citizens. When the Atlanta
Police Department acknowledged that it routinely places antiwar protesters under surveillance, Georgia
Rep. Nan Orrock told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This harkens back to some very dark times in
our nation's history." How dark?
NSA wiretapping aside, it's now clear that the Pentagon has been monitoring dangerous
militants such as
the Quakers while the FBI has been spying on the
Catholic Worker's Group,
Greenpeace and PETA. As Silencing Political Dissent author Nancy Chang pointed out, "With the
advent of electronic record-keeping, the FBI is likely to maintain far more dossiers on
law-abiding individuals and to disseminate the dossiers far more widely than during the
COINTELPRO era."
Where will all this
data mining lead? Who knows? From
Sedition Acts, to the
suspension of habeas corpus to the
internment of fellow Americans, we've been down rocky roads before. And in the aftermath of
Sept. 11, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Conner spelled it out: "We're likely to experience more
restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country," she said. Now that
writing letters to the editor can be
investigated as acts of "sedition" and US citizens can be held without charges for years on end,
another terror attack could send us over the edge.
Even so, detention camp jitters could prove to be nothing more than
Waitsian. After all, Kellogg Brown & Root held US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts from 2000 to 2005 without building a single camp. The truth is, we won't know the real purpose of these centers unless contingency plans are needed. And by then, it will be too late.
A frequent contributor to BuzzFlash, Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes in helping other writers get television and radio exposure.
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