Suppressing Dissent Archives:

 7/02-11/02 

FBI says airplane doing surveillance  2/28/03 Hoosier Times: "Two FBI officials said Thursday the Cessna 182 is conducting nonelectronic visual surveillance of individuals, vehicles and gathering places such as businesses under that surveillance."

Security Threat? Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Barred Entry to the United States  2/22/03 Counterpunch: "Irish activist and former Member of Parliament, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was detained by immigration officials in Chicago, February 21, and denied entry into the United States allegedly on "national security" grounds. According to her daughter, Deidre, two INS officers threatened to arrest, jail, and even shoot the legendary civil rights campaigner when she arrived at Chicago's O'Hare airport. McAliskey (56) was then photographed, finger-printed and returned to Ireland against her will on the grounds that the State Department had declared that she "poses a serious threat to the security of the United States.""

U.S. indictment in Florida charges eight with running terrorist organization  2/20/03 AP: now if they had been Cuban American, they would have gotten a judgeship!

The Trouble With Corporate Radio: The Day the Protest Music Died  2/20/03 NYT: "Pop music played a crucial role in the national debate over the Vietnam War. By the late 1960's, radio stations across the country were crackling with blatantly political songs that became mainstream hits. After the National Guard killed four antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio in the spring of 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recorded a song, simply titled "Ohio," about the horror of the event, criticizing President Richard Nixon by name. The song was rushed onto the air while sentiment was still high, and became both an antiwar anthem and a huge moneymaker. A comparable song about George W. Bush's rush to war in Iraq would have no chance at all today. There are plenty of angry people, many with prime music-buying demographics. But independent radio stations that once would have played edgy, political music have been gobbled up by corporations that control hundreds of stations and have no wish to rock the boat."

What Happened in New York  2/19/03 Zmag: The pro-Israel mayor exerts his influence - "The denial of the march was only one feature in a campaign of harrassment, that included the circulation of a rumor on the day before the rally that the event had been cancelled, a Code Orange terrorist alert that stationed military guards in the subways armed with automatic rifles, the denial of permission to rent portable toilets for the masses expected at the rally, the mysterious rerouting of subways and busses on the morning of the rally, the cut-off of the phones in the United for Peace and Justice office during the rally, and a repressive, heavy-handed and sometimes brutal police presence that penned the official rally behind barricades and prevented thousands from even getting there."

False Alarm? Terror Alert Partly Based on Fabricated Information  2/13/03 ABC News: part of the on-going Operation Northwoods. - " A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York."

House, Senate agree to prohibit citizens' e-mail surveillance  2/12/03 NYT: "House and Senate negotiators have agreed that a Pentagon project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring e-mail and commercial databases for health, financial and travel information cannot be used against Americans."

Police terrorism on my grandparents  2/12/03 San Francisco Bay View: "I called and asked him to speak to the Black Soulbeat (local television) station. The (TV host) said, ‘Tell (the police) to speak to me.’ Then (the police officer) said, ‘We don’t speak to Black TV stations.’ "

A Material Breach of the Constitution  2/11/03 Counterpunch: "Hollywood has long pondered, through movies like Seven Days in May, what might happen to America if an extra-constitutional situation were to arise. While most of these cinematic presentations focused on power-hungry generals seizing control from democratically-elected presidents, no one in Hollywood ever really considered the possibility of generals imbued with democratic values ousting a President who was bent on seizing unconstitutional powers. However, this is exactly the nightmarish scenario that is beginning to arise in Washington… And obviously the Bush war hawks forget one very important thing: by threatening Paris, Berlin, and Brussels, the Bush clique may be the first U.S. administration to force France to think about retargeting its nuclear "force de frappe" strike force, which is complete with sea-to-ground and ground-to-ground intercontinental nuclear missiles. And with Putin now in closer consultation with France, Russia may also feel that it is past time to again focus its nuclear arsenal on a possible conflict with the United States." Actually, the French went through this under the much revered De Gaulle.

The Execution of Martin Luther King  2/11/03 Counterpunch: "Bill Pepper's book, An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King (Verso, 2003), is a book whose time has come. It is required reading for anyone interested in how they illegitimate Bush regime will wield its ill-gotten power, not against Iraq, but against dissenters here in America. An Act of State tells the story of how Martin Luther King was killed, not by James Ray, a bumbling patsy, but by a Memphis policeman in league with the Mafia, backed by soldiers -- some armed with high-powered rifles, others with cameras to film the event -- in a special Military Intelligence unit. The story is broad and deep and implicates high-ranking officers in all the American intelligence and security branches." Kind of like Operation Northwoods.

Stifling the Voice of Reason  2/10/03 Scoop: "Websites which host alternative views, and/or views that contradict U.S. foreign policy are no longer tolerated on the Internet and are systematically coming under hacker attack and political pressures to "relocate." YellowTimes.org ( http://www.yellowtimes.org) has for the past six months withstood intense hacker attacks as it publishes views that directly question, criticize, and berate the U.S. official line regarding the impending invasion of Iraq. "In addition to e-mail spoof attacks, I think they are attempting to overload our servers through denial of service attacks, forcing our website to go offline. Similar incidents happened last time we released an article from Imad Khadduri," says Erich Marquardt, YellowTimes.org publisher."

Civil rights lawyer: City cites terrorist threats to ban protest marches  2/7/03 Newsday: Interesting how the authorities allow Troskyite ANSWER to have their march in DC but not the broader based United for Peace & Justice coalition to have theirs in NY. Federal directives used as cover - "A civil rights lawyer accused the city on Friday of citing terrorist threats to ban protest marches as he urged a federal judge to permit a parade of anti-war demonstrators at the United Nations next week… "The concern we have is the security concerns since 9-11, which was heightened today," Esposito said, referring to the government decision Friday to raise its terror threat level to high. "I have received orders to do certain things concerning security as of 12 (noon) today."

U.S. Considers New Anti-Terrorism Legislation  2/7/03 Reuters: "The U.S. Justice Department, which won broad new powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to eavesdrop and detain immigrants, is drafting legislation that would authorize the creation of a terrorist identification database, department officials said on Friday. They said the proposals, which already have been criticized by civil liberties groups, also would limit the disclosure of certain information and allow pretrial detention of people suspected of terrorist activity without bail."

US courts 'ignored evidence clearing executed Briton'  2/6/03 Independent, UK: "Elliott's lawyers believe he was set up to take the fall because, as a mixed white-Hispanic man, he was considered the outsider of the group."

Report: Iraqi spies in U.S.  1/30/03 NY Daily News: "Iraq sent spies from Canada to New York and Washington this month to snoop and stir up anti-war demonstrations, according to a government report obtained by the Daily News." There is something Nazi-like about such crude propaganda.

FBI Forges Closer Ties To Campus Cops  1/28/03 WCCO, Minneapolis: "But the Post says effort has touched a nerve among some faculty and student groups, as well as Muslim activists, who fear that the government is inching toward the kind of controversial spying tactics it used in the 1950s and 1960s. With few restrictions, the FBI at the time aggressively monitored, and often harassed, political groups, student activists and dissidents."

"Yeah, and I'm Going to Help Them Fry the Nigger"  1/26/03 Memory Hole: “In 1982, a few months after I started working at the Court of Common Pleas, I was sent to a courtroom different than that I usually worked in because the judge I was assigned to was going to be doing 'VOP' [Violation of Probation] and post-verdict motion hearings there that day. I went through the anteroom on my way to that courtroom where Judge [Albert] Sabo and another person were engaged in conversation. Judge Sabo was discussing the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. During the course of that conversation, I heard Judge Sabo say, 'Yeah, and I’m going to help them fry the nigger.' There were three people present when Judge Sabo made that remark, including myself.”

US interrogators turn to 'torture lite'  1/25/03 Guardian, UK: "The United States is condoning the torture and illegal interrogation of prisoners held in the wake of September 11, in defiance of international law and its own constitution, according to lawyers, former US intelligence officers and human rights groups. They claim prisoners have been beaten, hooded and had painkillers withheld. Some prisoners inside American penal institutions and detention camps have been subjected to interrogation techniques which do not leave injuries, but which lawyers consider to be abusive. Others have been sent to countries where electric shocks and more conventional forms of torture have been used, according to the claims."

TARGET: SCOTT RITTER - The War Party gets ugly  1/22/03 Antiwar: "Since the court records have been sealed, and the case was merely "adjourned in contemplation of dismissal," the authorities will say nothing, at least in public. The entrapment was apparently so transparent, so obviously the clumsiest sort of Cointelpro-style operation badly bungled by our newly-empowered political police, that the charges were dropped to the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket. Could it be that the records were sealed not to protect Ritter, but to protect whomever tried to set him up?"

'Malicious' campaign sparks $300M suit - Web links prominent Albertan to al-Qaeda  1/22/03 Edmonton Journal, Canada: "But Ritter, the Alberta legislature's chief parliamentary counsel in 1986-93, claims SEC receiver James H. Donell then published numerous damaging statements about him on his Web site. The postings make connections between Ritter, Newport Pacific, Wallenbrock and Belize's Village Capital Trust, the lawsuit states. The Web site postings also claim the $540,000 might have come from investors in J.T. Wallenbrock. One document makes "insidious and scurrilous comments" implying Ritter and Newport Pacific are engaged in criminal conduct or illegitimate business transactions, the lawsuit says. Donell's employee, Steven Donell, claimed "Osaki and his cronies" are financing terrorists, including al-Qaeda, on another Web site called Victims of Scams, the lawsuit says."

BOSS HOGTIE  1/17/03 Washington City Paper: "Hundreds of people wandered into Pershing Park on the morning of Sept. 27—activists looking for a protest, nurses in town for a conference, lawyers headed to work, and a cyclist training for a race. And there was Chief Charles Ramsey with his troops, ready to arrest them all."

Pentagon database plan hits snag on Hill  1/15/03 Business Week: "Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., is planning to introduce a bill on Thursday to halt the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program. A representative said on Wednesday that if passed, the legislation would suspend the TIA program until Congress can "review the data-mining issues." Even if Congress never acts on Feingold's proposal, the unusual step of trying to suspend a military program may prompt the Defense Department to review the TIA program in a way few other tactics could. The bill will also provide TIA critics with a focal point for activism."

Judge Blasts Govt. Stall Tactics  1/15/03 Newsday: "On June 9, the government secretly transferred Padilla to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., and into the custody of the Department of Defense. He has been held incommunicado there while his New York lawyers, Donna Newman and Andrew Patel, have sought access to their client. Last week, government lawyers filed a brief urging Mukasey to reverse his ruling to allow Padilla to confer with his counsel. They argued that Mukasey should reverse the ruling in light of “the grave damage to national security” that they contend could result if Padilla’s ongoing interrogation by the Department of Defense is interrupted." Ongoing torture.

US prosecutors seek death penalty for former sergeant accused of spying  1/14/03 Independent, UK: "The trial began yesterday of a former US Air Force master sergeant who faces the death penalty for allegedly offering to sell secrets to Iraq and Libya for $13m (£8m). If the death penalty is eventually enforced, it would be the first time America has executed anyone for spying since the 1950s."

Attorney charged with helping client direct terrorism is being punished for speech, her lawyer says  1/10/03 AP: "The instant indictment, on its face, implicates the First Amendment and the court must therefore consider the very legitimacy of the effort to criminalize the alleged acts by which Ms. Stewart is charged. This indictment seeks to punish her for a `statement' and for being a lawyer and acting legally," it said. Stewart was charged last year with helping deliver messages from her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks and assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak."

Conflict builds over ruling on citizen's wartime detention  1/10/03 Boston Globe: "A president's power to wage war against suspected terrorists deemed to be enemies appears to be intact after the sternest legal test yet. But the issue is far from settled, legal analysts said yesterday."

Blacklist Grounds American Passengers  1/4/03 Intervention Magazine: "Under the rubric of airline security, the US government has established a No-Fly List to harass, frustrate, delay, and forbid the travel of more than 1,000 citizens. Will you be added to the List? …Questions about how one gets on a no-fly list creates questions about how to get off it. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. The TSA says it compiles the list from names provided by other agencies, but it has no procedure for correcting a problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first reported their names. But for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put someone on the no-fly list. The FBI spokesperson Bresson would not explain the criteria for classifying someone as a threat to aviation, but suggests that fliers who believe they're on the list improperly should "report to airport security and they should be able to contact the TSA or us and get it cleared up." He concedes that might mean missed flights or other inconveniences and explained, "Airline security has gotten very complicated."

The case of the five vanishing suspects  1/4/03 Toronto Globe & Mail: "But yesterday, the FBI admitted that the most important ingredient in the story -- that is, the proof -- is nowhere to be found: "There is no border-crossing information that would say they're here," FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell said. "And to say they came in from Canada is pure speculation."

US troops violated Geneva convention  1/3/03 Guardian: "US troops guarding communist captives in the Korean War violated the Geneva convention on treating prisoners of war and regarded them as "oriental cattle", a confidential British report concluded. Marked "secret and guard", the memorandum by a major in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry painted a damning picture of US military incompetence and inhumanity. Held back from public release for 50 years, the study of Koje-Do prison camp was sent to the foreign secretary in late 1952… "All US troops were apt to regard prisoners as cattle and treat them as such. They handled them, including cripples who had been badly wounded, extremely roughly. Asked about the Geneva convention, US troops said: 'Well, these people are savages'. All [US] units were inclined to fire on prisoners at the slightest provocation." " - just like the Indian Wars in the US.

Activist talks to ordinary Iraqis  1/2/03 Iowa Press Citizen: from a trip that OFAC no doubt forbade - "The mainstream journalists in Baghdad rarely speak to ordinary Iraqis. They are mostly cooped up in the Al Rashid, the fanciest hotel in town, and spend their days rushing between press briefings and chasing the weapons inspectors… "We don't even want to think about war, we don't talk about it," a graduate student at Baghdad University told me. "My husband works hard to pay our bills, and I'm working on my thesis. Our children don't know about the threat of war - we don't tell them. If the Americans bomb Baghdad, the electricity will go out, the sewer system will stop working and people will die. All we can do is pray for peace, but Americans can work to stop this war." Large numbers of civilian deaths, so-called "collateral damage," are just one likely outcome of a U.S. war on Iraq. If the 1991 Gulf War is any indication, the United States will destroy the civilian infrastructure - actions considered by many to be war crimes. The deliberate bombing of electrical facilities and water treatment plants in 1991 caused unimaginable suffering for normal citizens that continues to this day."

Another Case Of Mistaken Identity In FBI Alert  1/2/03 Jihad Unspun: "A Pakistani jeweler said Wednesday his picture is among those of five suspects who the FBI says may have entered the United States on falsified passports. The man said he has never visited the United States. An Associated Press photograph of Mohammed Asghar taken at his shop in Lahore on Wednesday was a near-perfect match for the one included on the FBI list under the name Mustafa Khan Owasi, down to the prominent mole on Asghar's left cheek. Asghar, 30, told AP that he was surprised to open a local newspaper and see his picture with another man's name beneath it." The Federal Bureau of Incompetency, again.

'Felony stop' leaves family traumatized  1/2/03 North Carolina Herald Citizen: this happened to a white family because of a wild citizen "tip," and Ashcroft wants to turn this practice into an institution.

Counting on Democracy Broadcast Schedule  12/31/02 ITVS: “This tale of race, political payback, voter fraud and justice deferred could have come out of a Hollywood thriller. But no—this is the story of the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, one of the most startling, disturbing events in recent years. Directed by investigative reporter Danny Schechter [executive editor of MediaChannel.org, and executive producer of Globalvision], Counting on Democracy is a jaw-dropping, even terrifying account of just how shallow our nation’s commitment to democracy can be” Taos Film Festival

The Fallout of War  12/30/02 Washington Post: "He is 54 and disabled by dementia. He is a casualty of the Persian Gulf War -- one of the tens of thousands of men and women who left feeling healthy but fell sick after coming home. They filed disability claims at a rate far higher than veterans of other wars. As the United States deploys troops in anticipation of another battle with Iraq, the Pentagon says it still has no answer for an enigma that has confounded experts for more than a decade: What caused all those Gulf veterans' symptoms? The memory lapses, fatigue, joint pains, rashes, headaches, dizzy spells . . . not to mention the cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease and birth defects. Many vets speculated that they were poisoned by a combination of vaccines, pesticides, oil fire pollution and other battlefield toxins, including chemical and biological weapons stockpiled by Saddam Hussein… Bracing himself on a cane, Stutts deposits a pile of medical records on the kitchen counter. One file contains images of his brain. "It's like Swiss cheese," he says. Here are notices from the Pentagon, saying he may have been exposed to the nerve gas sarin in the Persian Gulf. Here, too, is a recent determination from the Department of Veterans Affairs, ruling Stutts fully disabled and citing "neurotoxin exposure" during his deployment. Now he is a patient at a VA clinic in nearby Lexington, where 100 Gulf War vets -- most in their thirties and forties -- are being treated for symptoms of early Alzheimer's. It's all evidence of . . . something. After 11 years, the VA and Pentagon no longer dispute that troops got sick. They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying why. With his medical training, Stutts understands that good science takes time and hypotheses must be rigorously tested. But as a patient, he has reached certain conclusions. "I'm not the same person as I was when I left." And: "I would have preferred to have stepped on a land mine than to be exposed to what I was exposed to over there."

Briton tells of ordeal in Bush's torture jail  12/29/02 Mail & Guardian, South Africa: "US officials have admitted that suspects captured in the region are 'softened up' on their way to detention by brutal beatings from US military police and special forces soldiers. They are confined to tiny rooms, blindfolded and thrown into walls. They are tied up in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep by having lights shone on them all day and night. Sometimes they are forced to stand for long periods in black hoods or wearing goggles which have been spray-painted so as to render them blind. The aim is to disorientate and confuse the suspects, as they face a barrage of questions about their activities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is believed that some, who had battle wounds when captured, are denied painkillers as a further way of coaxing information from them."

An Open Letter to President Bush on the Torture of Al-Qaeda Suspects  12/27/02 Counterpunch: "The willful torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners-of-war or other detainees, including "willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health," are "grave breaches" of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, commonly known as war crimes. Grave breaches are subject to universal jurisdiction, meaning that they can be prosecuted in any national criminal court and as well as any international tribunal with appropriate jurisdiction. The Convention against Torture obligates States Parties to prosecute persons within their jurisdiction who are implicated or complicit in acts of torture. This obligation includes the prosecution of persons within their territory who committed acts of torture elsewhere and have not be extradited under procedures provided in the convention. Should senior U.S. officials become aware of acts of torture by their subordinates and fail to take immediate and effective steps to end such practices, they too could be found criminally liable under international law. The responsibility of superior officers for atrocities by their subordinates is commonly known as command responsibility. Although the concept originated in military law, it now is increasingly accepted to include the responsibility of civil authorities for abuses committed by persons under their direct authority. The doctrine of command responsibility has been upheld in recent decisions by the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. There are two forms of command responsibility: direct responsibility for orders that are unlawful and imputed responsibility, when a superior knows or should have known of crimes committed by a subordinate acting on his own initiative and fails to prevent or punish them. All states are obliged to bring such people to justice."

County agencies hit in Copwatch report  12/27/02 Houston Courrier: "Lodging a complaint about police misconduct may be tougher in Montgomery County than other areas, according to a report recently released by Copwatch, a Houston-based anti-police brutality group."

United States: Reports of Torture of Al-Qaeda Suspects  12/27/02 Human Rights Watch: "The Bush administration must promptly investigate and address allegations of torture of suspected al-Qaeda detainees or risk criminal prosecution, Human Rights Watch said today. In a letter to President George W. Bush, Human Rights Watch said it was “deeply concerned” by allegations made in the Washington Post that detainees had been subjected to torture or other forms of mistreatment while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan or while held by U.S. allies… Direct involvement or complicity in torture, as well as the failure to prevent torture by subordinates, may subject U.S. officials to prosecution under international law. Such acts are “grave breaches,” or war crimes, under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. In addition, the Convention against Torture obligates all countries to prosecute persons within their jurisdiction who are implicated or complicit in acts of torture. Any competent court anywhere in the world is required to prosecute violations of the prohibition against torture. Moreover, should senior U.S. officials become aware of acts of torture by their subordinates and fail to take immediate and effective steps to end such practices, they would be criminally liable under international law for “command responsibility.”

A Fight for Freedom of Speech  12/27/02 LA Times: "Pipes, a self-appointed arbiter of acceptable speech and founder of Campus Watch, recently included us in a list of six "Professors Who Hate America" in a New York publication. Using us as examples of professors who relentlessly oppose their own government, he called for "outsiders" (alumni, state legislators, parents of students and others) to "take steps to ... establish standards for media statements by faculty."

US turns to torture to crack prisoners of war  12/27/02 Sydney Morning Herald: "While the US Government publicly denounces the use of torture, all of the national security officials interviewed defended the use of violence against captives as "just and necessary", and they were confident the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment. "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this." The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret overseas detention centres where US due process does not apply. Another is Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean that the US leases from Britain. In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services, notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means."

FBI asks colleges to hand over files on all foreigners  12/26/02 Independent, UK: and Merry Christmas! "The FBI has asked collegesacross America to pass on personal information about foreign students and staff to help prevent terrorist attacks, infuriating civil liberties activists and liberal politicians who believe the request is illegal. The letters, sent to hundreds of universities in the past few weeks, seek the "names, addresses, telephone numbers, citizenship information, places of birth, dates of birth, and any foreign contact information" for all foreign staff and students… Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: "This law requires both a court order and a showing that the request is specifically tailored to a terrorism investigation. The FBI request does not appear to fulfil either of these requirements." A similar warning was issued by the Association of American College Registrars and Admissions Officers,which instructed 10,000 institutions not to pass on information unless served with a court order. "Non-consensual release of private student information ... could expose institutions to significant legal consequences," it said."

Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife’s Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?  12/25/02 Lew Rockwell: don't complain at airports: "Think about that for a second. Rapes, car-jackings, murders, arsons – those are felonies. So is yelling in an airport now, apparently. I hadn’t realized, though I should have. Luckily, I was getting a favor, though. I was merely going to be slapped with a misdemeanor. "Here’s your court date," he said as I was released from my cell. In addition, I was banned from Portland International for 90 days, and just in case I was thinking of coming over and hanging out around its perimeter, the officer gave me a map with the boundaries highlighted, sternly warning me against trespassing."

Doug Grow: FBI performs a nasty little sequel to whistle-blower saga  12/22/02 Minneapolis Star Tribune: or how the Federal Bureau of Incompetency stays incompetent.

Proposed Internet Monitoring Center Worries Industry  12/21/02 AP: "Some Internet industry executives and lawyers said they would raise civil liberties concerns if the U.S. government, not an industry consortium, operated such a powerful monitoring center. The proposal would require congressional approval. Under federal wiretap laws, privately operated centers can in some circumstances analyze e-mail and other data flowing across parts of the Internet without approval from a judge."

Going Electronic, Denver Reveals Long-Term Surveillance  12/21/02 NYT: "After the police decided to share the fruits of their surveillance with another local department, someone leaked a printout to an activist for social justice, who made the documents public. The mayor started an investigation. People lined up to obtain their files. Among those the police spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organizations. To make matters worse, the software called many of the groups "criminal extremists." "I wasn't threatened in any way by them watching," said Dr. Byron Plumley, who teaches religion and social values at Regis University in Denver, and discovered that the police had been keeping information about his activities against war. "But there's something different about having a file. If the police say, `Aha, he belongs to a criminal extremist organization,' who's going to know that it's the American Friends Service Committee, and we won the Nobel Peace Prize?"

Arrests show trouble in INS tracking effort  12/20/02 Boston Globe: applying the same gung-ho attitude as in Afghanistan, with similar results - ''Why would we be saying, `Come in and register,' and then turning around and whacking them with a stick when they do?'' asked Jean Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. ''It chills the entire community. It frightens people.''

Demonstrators Protest INS Registration  12/19/02 AP: "Thousands of Iranian-Americans demonstrated against the arrest of Middle Eastern immigrants who had voluntarily registered with the federal government under a new anti-terrorism program. The protest Wednesday outside a federal building snarled traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. No arrests were reported. Many demonstrators claimed their husbands, sons and brothers were victims of government entrapment, that they were forced to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and then were arrested for not having their papers in order, which in some cases were caused by government backlog. Their signs bore such sentiments as ``What Next? Concentration Camps?'' and ``Detain Terrorists Not Innocent Immigrants.''

Calif. Muslims Detained in Crowded, Cold Centers  12/19/02 Reuters: "They estimated that between 1,000 and 2,500 males, some as young as 16, were spending their fourth day locked up in what they called inhumane conditions after voluntarily presenting themselves at immigration offices to register under new anti-terrorism rules."

Bush's Fatwa -- Assassination Orders Trample American Justice  12/18/02 Black World Today: "President George W. Bush has issued orders to the CIA authorizing assassination -- without further White House approval -- of a group of individuals designated as terrorist leaders. This amounts to an American "fatwa," and should alarm the American public. In the Islamic world, a fatwa is essentially a decree from a religious authority prescribing or proscribing actions for the faithful. Because it is an individual pronouncement, it cannot be countermanded or appealed. The most famous fatwas in recent times were the order issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for the death of author Salman Rushdie, and the order by Osama bin Laden to "kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military ... in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam," issued in 1998. President Bush's orders to the CIA have an eerie similarity to the Khomeini and bin Laden decrees. Bush's orders, like those other fatwas, call for the murder of persons who have not been subject to any trial or review of their crimes."

Fear mounts as US calls on Muslim men to register  12/18/02 Sydney Morning Herald: "Lines began forming before dawn outside the federal building in Los Angeles as hundreds of men from five Muslim countries came to register with immigration authorities under a sweeping national dragnet designed to identify potential terrorists. The United States Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, issued an order last month requiring male non-citizens over the age of 16 from 18 countries, mostly Arab and Muslim, to be interviewed, photographed and fingerprinted by federal authorities… Over the past week, officials enforcing the program have handcuffed and detained hundreds of men who showed up to be fingerprinted. In some cases the men had expired student or work visas; in others they could not provide adequate documentation of their immigration status. An immigration lawyer, Ali Bolour, said that at one point on Friday, officials ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men into the basement lockup of the federal building."

If You're Black, Who's Got Your Back? Post–9-11 Civil Rights  12/18/02 Village Voice: "Since 9-11, the government has moved to revive the legal mechanisms that gave us domestic spying under COINTELPRO in the 1960s, and last month, Roy Innis, the conservative head of the Congress of Racial Equality, and one of the two men Lott thinks he needs to sit down with now, suggested that the Department of Justice needs to investigate domestic Muslim groups for terrorists looking to recruit African Americans."

Keeping Track of John Poindexter  12/14/02 Wired: "The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling. Online pranksters, taking their lead from a San Francisco journalist, are publishing John Poindexter's home phone number, photos of his house and other personal information to protest the TIA program… What Smith didn't realize was that Poindexter's phone number and other information would end up on more than 100 Web pages a week later as others took up the cause."

Homeland Security nominee's record with Hispanics is drawing fire  12/13/02 San Antonio Business Journal: "Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, has been tapped by President George W. Bush to serve as the Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security within DHS. However, a major Hispanic law-enforcement group - the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association (HAPCOA), is raising some serious concerns about Hutchinson's track record at DEA, particularly as it relates to his treatment of minorities… Among the charges made in a recent resolution adopted by HAPCOA are that Hutchinson has "been a party to continuing an insidious 'good old boy' network (in DEA) thus perpetuating an atmosphere of distrust, reprisal and retaliation against minority employees for exercising their rights. ..."

Palestinian film excluded from Zionist-dominated Oscars  12/10/02 Ummah News: 'On the grounds that Palestine is not a nation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has refused the Palestinian entry Divine Intervention, for the nomination of Best Foreign Film. The movie, which was directed by the renowned Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, recently won the Jury Award in the world famous Cannes Film Festival in France."

Man Sentenced for 'Burning Bush' Comment  12/6/02 AP: "A man who made a remark about a "burning Bush" during the president's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison."

PHOTOGRAPHER ARRESTED FOR TAKING PICTURES OF VICE PRESIDENT'S HOTEL  12/5/02 2600 News: "The agent told Maginnis that his "suspicious activities" made him a threat to national security, and that he would be charged as a terrorist under the USA-PATRIOT act. The Secret Service agent tried to make Maginnis admit that he was taking the photographs to analyze weaknesses in the Vice President's security entourage and "cause terror and mayhem." When Maginnis refused to admit to being any sort of terrorist, the Secret Service agent called him a "raghead collaborator" and a "dirty pinko faggot." OK!

FBI Awareness of National Security Issues and Response Advisory  12/4/02 AfroCubaWeb: "A loose network of antiwar groups is planning a "week of action against warmongering" to occur December 15 - 21, 2002. Organizers, who have expressed strong opposition to possible U.S. military action against Iraq, are advocating "explicit and direct attack upon the war machine," and have called for attacks on the headquarter facilities and other assets of oil companies and defense contractors, singling out Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Department of Defense (DoD) assets also represent potential targets for attack."

'Dirty' Bomb Suspect Wins In Court  12/4/02 CBS News: "A federal court has authority to decide whether Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member accused of plotting with terrorists to detonate a radioactive "dirty" bomb, was properly detained as an enemy combatant, a judge ruled Wednesday. Padilla has been barred from meeting with lawyers since his arrest May 8. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey said Wednesday that Padilla may meet with them now."

The alleged patriots who want to do a replay of the 50's need to consider that one of the roots of Al Qaeda was a Saudi dissident movement that turned violent in House Saud's torture cells in the early 90's.