|
|
AfroCubaWeb
|
|
|
Continuing Coverage -- The
Hartford 18
|
The Suppression of Dissent in the US
|
| For Immediate Release: November 15, 2001
Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative recently received a letter from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) concerning the chilling effects on booksellers of the new antiterrorism bill that President Bush just signed into law. If the bookstore were served with a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to search our business records, including the titles of books purchased by our customers, we would have no right to object in court or the court of public opinion. The new law includes a gag order that prevents us from disclosing "to any other person" the fact that we received such an order. The ABFFE says that depending on the specifics of the subpoena, the gag order could extend to contact with an attorney! No right to legal counsel is outrageous but is suddenly a very real and terrifying possibility. This terrifying encroachment on the privacy rights of citizens is itself a form of terrorism. "Terrorism", according to the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is defined as "…the systematic employment of violence and intimidation to coerce a government or community, especially, into acceding to specific political demands". President Bush’s declaration of a war on terrorism and subsequent military actions, combined with the presumption that U.S. citizens should willingly surrender our civil liberties for the good of the country certainly constitutes such a political demand. The FBI shows up at your home or workplace, demands information and refuses to let you contact legal counsel would sound like coercion and intimidation to most people. With the passage of the new antiterrorism legislation, if you don’t cooperate, if you resist, your freedom and livelihood will be in jeopardy. Ironically, the first definition of the word "terrorist" in my dictionary refers to the Jacobins, the radicals during the French Revolution who "advocated and practiced methods of partisan repression and bloodshed in the propagation of the principles of democracy and equality". The prospect of increasing "partisan repression" at home and "bloodshed" abroad, in the name of democracy, a founding principle of this country as well as in France, is our new terrifying reality. We must collectively take a stand to defend our democratic rights, which includes the right to protest our government, oppose the war, and the right to read whatever we want . The new reactionary political climate, highlighted by the passage of FISA, dangerously expands the decade long government assault on our civil liberties and democratic freedoms. The danger to booksellers is just one small part of this new landscape. What are the repercussions for anti-war groups, people of color, immigrants, WTO/World Bank/IMF protesters, anarchists and radical activists of all stripes, progressive media outlets-any person or group who challenges the status quo-under these new laws? Do we even know? The right to political dissent is at stake. Generations have struggled to expand our democratic rights at home and a new generation hopes to extend them globally. This new global justice movement is threatened by our government’s "employment of violence and intimidation" at home and abroad. We are sending this urgent appeal to our friends and allies in the media. We urge you to contact Chris Finian, President of ABFFE, at 212/587-4025, for more information. Research the implications of this law. Make public the threats to our democracy in the name of "Homeland Security". We need more information, not less, during these dangerous times. In Solidarity Marsha Rummel |
| Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001
From: Jewish Peace News plitnickm@home.com [Ronnie Gilbert, from the folk music band The Weavers and who is today an activist here in the Bay Area, pens this letter to the editor regarding our government's responding to the 9/11 attacks by assaulting our civil rights. While, to be sure, Arab and Muslim Americans are facing the worst of this, it is a matter that all Americans have a direct concern in. Ms Gilbert relates the current assault on freedoms to her experience with McCarthyism in the 1950s which was quite direct, and finds a great deal of similarity. We might take care to heed her warnings--she ought to know.] Dear Editor: By 1952 it was over. The record company dropped us, eager television producers stopped knocking on our door. The Weavers were on a private yet well-publicized roster of suspected entertainment industry reds. The FBI came a-calling. This week, I just found out that Women in Black, another group of peace activists I belong to, is the subject of an FBI investigation. Women in Black is a loosely knit international network of women who vigil against violence, often silently, each group autonomous, each group focused on the particular problems of personal and state violence in its part of the world. Because my group is composed mostly of Jewish women, we focus on the Middle East, protesting the cycle of violence and revenge in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The FBI is threatening my group with a Grand Jury investigation. Of what? That we publicly call the Israeli military's occupation of the mandated Palestine lands illegal? So does the World Court and the United Nations. That destroying hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians' olive and fruit trees, blocking roads and demolishing homes promotes hatred and terrorism in the Middle East? Even President Bush and Colin Powell have gotten around to saying so. So what is to investigate? That some of us are in contact with activist Palestinian peace groups? This is bad? The Jewish Women in Black of Jerusalem have stood vigil every Friday for 13 years in protest against the Occupation; Muslim women from Palestinian peace groups stand with them at every opportunity. We praise and honor them, these Jewish and Arab women who endure hatred and frequent abuse from extremists on both sides for what they do. We are not alone in our admiration. Jerusalem Women in Black is a nominee for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Bosnia Women in Black, now ten years old. If the FBI cannot or will not distinguish between groups who collude in hatred and terrorism, and peace activists who struggle in the full light of day against all forms of terrorism, we are in serious trouble. I have seen such trouble before in my lifetime. It was called McCarthyism. In the hysterical atmosphere of the early Cold War, anyone who had signed a peace petition, who had joined an organization opposing violence or racism or had tried to raise money for the refugee children of the Spanish Civil War, in other words who had openly advocated what was not popular at the time, was fair game. In my case, the FBI visited The Weavers' booking agent, the recording company, my neighbors, my dentist husband's patients, my friends. In the waning of our career, the Weavers were followed down the street, accosted onstage by drunken "patriots", warned by friendly hotel employees to keep the door open if we rehearsed in anyone's room so as not to become targets for the vice squad. It was nasty. Every two-bit local wannabe G-man joined the dragnet searching out and identifying "communist spies." In all those self-debasing years how many spies were pulled in by that dragnet? Nary a one. Instead it pulled down thousands of teachers, union members, scientists, journalists, actors, entertainers like us, who saw our lives disrupted, our jobs, careers go down the drain, our standing in the community lost, even our children harrassed. A scared population soon shut their mouths up tight. Thus came the silence of the 1950s and early 60s, when no notable voice of reason was heard to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Look what we're doing to ourselves, to the land of the free and the home of the brave," when not one dissenting intelligence was allowed a public voice to warn against zealous foreign policies we'd later come to regret, would be regretting now, if our leaders were honest. Today, in the wake of the worst hate crime of the millenium, a dragnet is out for "terroriststs" and we are told that certain civil liberties may have to be curtailed for our own security. Which ones? I'm curious to know. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech or of the press? The right of people peaceably to assemble? Suddenly, deja vu - haven't I been here before? Hysterical neo-McCarthyism does not equal security, never will. The bitter lesson September 11's horrific tragedy should have taught us and our government is that only an honest re-evaluation of our foreign policies and careful, focused and intelligent intelligence work can hope to combat operations like the one that robbed all of us and their families of 6,000 decent working people. We owe the dead that, at least. As for Women in Black, we intend to keep on keeping on. |
|
Consider these items in the new Senate Terrorist Bill 1510: "MONEY LAUNDERING ABATEMENT AND ANTI-TERRORIST FINANCING ACT OF 2001" Political Activists and Demonstrators should Zero in on S.1510. The bill's provisions can be used to eradicate public dissent - - and you! Under Senate Bill 1510, now being considered in the Senate as an Anti-terrorism act: a.. An entire 501C3 organization or other organization, including its members, can have their assets seized for supporting bodily acts or international causes that the U.S. Secretary of State may deem terrorist activity. Political activities that were legal prior to S.1510 may "RETROACTIVELY" be deemed terrorist activity by U.S. Government. Participants and supporters may be charged with terrorist and other offenses. (2). S.1510 "RETROACTIVELY" abolishes the "Statue of Limitations" for many past offenses where no one was injured. After passage of S.1510, any past offense that can be broadly alleged to have put someone "at risk" may be used by federal and state prosecutors to charge a citizen with a terrorist act - even 30 years after the Statute of Limitations period had already passed. Government will have no difficulty manufacturing evidence to prosecute citizens once Constitutional safeguards against passing Retroactive Laws are abolished after passage of S.1510. (3) No "innocent owner defense" allowed against Asset Forfeiture when, after passage of S 1510, U.S. Government agencies will be able to seize assets of citizens, 501C3 and other organizations and their members without ever disclosing the evidence against their property. Government need only allege that disclosing such evidence may compromise National security and/or an ongoing investigation. S 1510 provides for paying "unnamed informants huge rewards" resulting from arrests and forfeited assets. It is hard to believe any organization or citizen could ever recover their assets once they are seized by a government agency in the name of National Security. That may include a citizen's home in which an informant secretly alleges someone said the wrong thing. (4) "D Below" is from the Senate Bill 1510. So much for trusting attorneys! "(d) UNDERCOVER ACTIVITIES- Notwithstanding any provision of State law, > including disciplinary rules, statutes, regulations, constitutional provisions, or case law, a Government attorney may, for the purpose of enforcing Federal law, provide legal advice, authorization, concurrence, direction, or supervision on conducting undercover activities, and any attorney employed as an investigator or other law enforcement agent by the Department of Justice who is not authorized to represent the United States in criminal or civil law enforcement litigation or to supervise such proceedings may participate in such activities, even though such activities may require the use of deceit or misrepresentation, where such activities are consistent with Federal law. (e) ADMISSIBILITY OF EVIDENCE- "No violation of any disciplinary, ethical, or professional conduct rule shall be construed to permit the exclusion of otherwise admissible evidence in any Federal criminal proceedings". This bill is similar to the one Adolf Hitler pushed through the Reichstag after the Reichstag fire in the early 1930's. German Jews, horrified by the chaos in Germany after the fire, supported Hitler's legislation - then found he could (and planned to) use it against them. This is worse legislation than the Sedition Laws of the 1790's, later declared unconstitutional and leading to the end of John Adams' presidency. Understand! Under the law as now written, you and anyone connected with any organization - 501(c)(3), church, Rotary, any organization - can be snagged under this legislation. Lifting the Statute of Limitations means that you could have your home and other assets seized if you were a member of an organization that supported, for example, Leonard Peltier, or sent food or medicine to Cuba, or even protested against nukes in the '60s - and the U.S.G. decided that that organization was then or is now in any way associated with someone or some organization that is somehow connected to a "terrorist organization." Of course, it will be said that that is highly unlikely to happen if you keep your nose clean - and don't give financial or other support to any suspect organization. There are thousands of people in our prisons now, put there by the testimony of paid/"rewarded" informers. All it takes is for some such person to provide "testimony" that the ACLU or the Sierra Club or Pastors for Peace, or other organization is "supporting" terrorists. Or maybe some member of such an organization does provide support to a terrorist: all members are liable to imprisonment and seizure of their assets. Who, under a law like that, is going to give funding to any 501(c)(3) organization or any other actionist group - even for work with rehabilitating prisoners or drug addicts, or providing housing for the poor? If this law passes in this form, kiss protest - by letter or demonstration - and democracy goodbye! Go to www.senate.gov and send a note to your Senators and tell them to kill this bastard before it becomes law. At least to amend the damn thing! And please forward this (or your own) message to EVERYONE on your e-mail list. May God protect what democracy we have left. Charles P.S. If you want to read this bill for yourself, go to http://Thomas.loc.gov, to the 107th Congress, and Senate Bill 1510. |
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: FAIR
Politial Research Associates - watchdogging the Right
09/11/01 - Repercussions from PRA
Electronic Freedom Foundation: Chilling Effects of Anti-Terrorism - their page to track the suppression of dissent on the web
On McCarthyism and the Religious Right - some history
http://www.detnet.com/wilke/joe.htm
[AfroCubaWeb] [Site Map] [Music] [Arts] [Authors] [News] [Search this site]
