By Nick Beams
31 January 2011
In 2009 they were conspicuous by their absence. The following year they were still keeping their heads down. But at this year’s just concluded annual World Economic Forum meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, it was a different story.
Two years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, having been bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, their bonuses and salary packages restored, and having taken the measure of governments around the world, the bankers were not only back in force, they were laying down the law.
In a series of speeches at open sessions and in closed-door discussions, leading bank chiefs made clear they would not tolerate restrictions on their activities and that, notwithstanding the fact that their actions had triggered the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, they would continue exactly as before.
The tone was set early in the five-day meeting by Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn. Criticising the imposition of new rules on traditional institutions, Cohn warned that the “unregulated sector will grow at an exponential rate”.
“What I most worry about is that in the next cycle, as the regulatory pendulum swings, we are going to have to use taxpayer money to bail out unregulated businesses that, unlike the banks in the last crisis, may not be able to repay them,” Cohn said.
But the so-called “unregulated sector”—comprising organisations such as hedge funds and special purpose vehicles—and the banks are not separate organisations. They are two sides of the same financial system. The “unregulated” organisations could not function for a day without the massive supply of credit from the banks.
Viewed in this context, Cohn’s “warning” was a rather thinly-veiled blackmail threat: give us what we demand or we will find another way to do what we want and set off another financial crisis.
The chief executive of Standard Chartered, Peter Sands, took a different tack, insisting that regulations could have no real impact. “The current regulatory debate,” he declared, “is a bit like discussing having better seat belts on planes. It’s hard to argue against, but when the plane crashes, it’s all a bit marginal.”
Not that Cohn and Sands and their fellow banking chiefs needed to worry about the impact of regulation. The meagre regulations put in place since 2008 have been almost completely diluted.
International regulations are embodied in the Basel III accords that have been set up over the past 18 months. However, as Liam Halligan, a columnist for the British Telegraph, noted, referring to the Basel rules: “[T]he actual document is so full of fudges and escape hatches that it amounts to very little. The only concrete policy—requiring banks to hold more capital against potential losses—doesn’t kick in until 2018. Other measures designed to prevent future crises … have been postponed, allowing banks to carry on pretty much as before. In truth, the Basel accord, amid dire warnings of lower lending and job losses, has been eviscerated by the all-powerful banking lobby.”
According to Halligan, backroom meetings at the Davos summit ensured that new Basel rules requiring regulators to impose higher capital requirements on “systemically important financial institutions” were heavily diluted and even “relatively minor regulatory changes that have been put in place since sub-prime are being gradually stripped away”.
Having begun with an attack on regulation, the banking executives stayed on the front foot throughout the summit, with executives from JP Morgan, Barclays, Credit Suisse and others calling a meeting of finance ministers and officials to demand that “bank bashing” cease. To reinforce the point, they insisted that “over-indebtedness of countries,” not just of banks, was responsible for the crisis.
The aggressive character of the bankers’ campaign came as something of a shock for the reform-minded critic Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.
Interviewed from Davos, Johnson said: “I knew it was a parallel universe, and I wanted to observe it, but I’m just shocked by the temerity of these bankers. Not only are they showing no remorse, they’re saying, ‘Oh, all that regulation you’ve infused or tried slightly to push on us is irrelevant or bad or dangerous and damaging and you should let us have our bucks now.’ And the rest of the Davos elite seems to be buying into this. It’s quite extraordinary. And rather disturbing.”
The activities of the bankers will only come as a shock to those who have failed to examine the historical evolution of the capitalist economy and the ever-increasing parasitism of its leading financial components.
The bankers’ response will only surprise those who have consoled themselves with the belief that “democratic” governments will, in the final analysis, be able to take remedial action. They are unable or unwilling to see that in every country, these governments, whatever their political colouration, do not represent “the people” and are nothing but an organising committee for carrying out the demands of the financial elite.
This year’s Davos summit, the third since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in September-October 2008, was a gathering of the ruling elites of a corrupt regime increasingly under siege. While the bankers laid down their demands, however, a more powerful social force was announcing its re-emergence on the streets of the Middle East.
In a guest post from Davos, published by Time, business author Don Tapscott pointed to the wider significance of the events in Cairo.“The world is a powder keg as a demographic tidal wave of young people enter a jobless workforce and societies that need deep political and social reform,” he wrote.
Upon entering a “world that is broken,” Tapscott commented, young people increasingly do not believe that their governments can or are willing to bring about economic, social and political reform and are “looking to various forms of mass action to bring about change”.
Events in the Middle East made it into discussions at Davos but, as Tapscott noted, behind the professions of support for reform there were deep concerns. In one session, he reported that a famous academic argued: “Sure it’s positive that a new generation wants reform but we need to consider the security consequences of a deepening wave of protests in the Mideast.” Another remarked that the youth radicalisation was not about the poor rising up: “These youth are educated people. They have high expectations that are conflicting with reality.”
On the eve of the summit, World Economic Forum founder and chief executive Klaus Schwab wrote an article in which he warned his super-rich membership that they had to set self-interest aside and “take the long-term global public interest to heart”. While that might prove difficult, he continued, “We can’t keep doing the same old thing in a new era that requires new responses.”
The Davos summit demonstrated that, like the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary France, the global ruling elite is organically incapable of making such a change. The present ruling order, in which the interests of humanity are subordinated to the dictates of a super-rich elite, cannot be “reformed” but must be swept away. The events in Tunisia and now Egypt point the way forward.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Fear Extreme Islamists in the Arab World? Blame Washington
Saturday 29 January 2011
by: Jeff Cohen, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. questioned US military interventions against progressive movements in the Third World by invoking a JFK quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Were he alive to witness the last three decades of US foreign policy, King might update that quote by noting: "Those who make secular revolution impossible will make extreme Islamist revolution inevitable."
For decades beginning during the Cold War, US policy in the Islamic world has been aimed at suppressing secular reformist and leftist movements. Beginning with the CIA-engineered coup against a secular democratic reform government in Iran in 1953 (it was about oil), Washington has propped up dictators, coaching these regimes in the black arts of torture and mayhem against secular liberals and the left.
In these dictatorships, often the only places where people had freedom to meet and organize were mosques - and out of these mosques sometimes grew extreme Islamist movements. The Shah's torture state in Iran was brilliant at cleansing and murdering the left - a process that helped the rise of the Khomeini movement and ultimately Iran's Islamic Republic.
In a pattern growing out of what King called Washington's "irrational, obsessive anti-communism," US foreign policy also backed extreme Islamists over secular movements or government that were either Soviet-allied or feared to be.
In Afghanistan, beginning BEFORE the Soviet invasion and evolving into the biggest CIA covert operation of the 1980s, the US armed and trained native mujahedeen fighters - some of whom went on to form the Taliban. To aid the mujahedeen, the US recruited and brought to Afghanistan religious fanatics from the Arab world - some of whom went on to form Al Qaeda. (Like these Washington geniuses, Israeli intelligence - in a divide-and-conquer scheme aimed at combating secular leftist Palestinians - covertly funded Islamist militants in the occupied territories who we now know as Hamas.)
This is hardly obscure history.
Except in US mainstream media.
One of the mantras on US television news all day Friday was: Be fearful of the democratic uprisings against US allies in Egypt (and Tunisia and elsewhere). After all, we were told by Fox News and CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, it could end up as bad as when "our ally" in Iran was overthrown and the extremists came to power in 1979.
Such talk comes easy in US media where Egyptian victims of rape and torture in Mubarak's jails are never seen. Where it's rarely emphasized that weapons of repression used against Egyptian demonstrators are paid for by US taxpayers. Where Mubarak is almost always called "president" and almost never "dictator" (unlike the elected president of Venezuela).
When US media glibly talk about the Egyptian and Tunisian "presidents" being valued "allies in the war on terror," it's no surprise that they offer no details about the prisoners the US has renditioned to these "pro-Western" countries for torture.
The truth is that no one knows how these uprisings will end.
But revolution of some kind, as King said, seems inevitable. Washington's corrupt Arab dictators will come down as surely (yet more organically) as that statue of Saddam, another former US ally.
If Washington took its heel off the Arab people and ended its embrace of the dictators, that could help secularists and democrats win hearts and minds against extreme Islamists.
Democracy is a great idea. Too bad it plays almost no role in US foreign policy.
by: Jeff Cohen, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. questioned US military interventions against progressive movements in the Third World by invoking a JFK quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Were he alive to witness the last three decades of US foreign policy, King might update that quote by noting: "Those who make secular revolution impossible will make extreme Islamist revolution inevitable."
For decades beginning during the Cold War, US policy in the Islamic world has been aimed at suppressing secular reformist and leftist movements. Beginning with the CIA-engineered coup against a secular democratic reform government in Iran in 1953 (it was about oil), Washington has propped up dictators, coaching these regimes in the black arts of torture and mayhem against secular liberals and the left.
In these dictatorships, often the only places where people had freedom to meet and organize were mosques - and out of these mosques sometimes grew extreme Islamist movements. The Shah's torture state in Iran was brilliant at cleansing and murdering the left - a process that helped the rise of the Khomeini movement and ultimately Iran's Islamic Republic.
In a pattern growing out of what King called Washington's "irrational, obsessive anti-communism," US foreign policy also backed extreme Islamists over secular movements or government that were either Soviet-allied or feared to be.
In Afghanistan, beginning BEFORE the Soviet invasion and evolving into the biggest CIA covert operation of the 1980s, the US armed and trained native mujahedeen fighters - some of whom went on to form the Taliban. To aid the mujahedeen, the US recruited and brought to Afghanistan religious fanatics from the Arab world - some of whom went on to form Al Qaeda. (Like these Washington geniuses, Israeli intelligence - in a divide-and-conquer scheme aimed at combating secular leftist Palestinians - covertly funded Islamist militants in the occupied territories who we now know as Hamas.)
This is hardly obscure history.
Except in US mainstream media.
One of the mantras on US television news all day Friday was: Be fearful of the democratic uprisings against US allies in Egypt (and Tunisia and elsewhere). After all, we were told by Fox News and CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, it could end up as bad as when "our ally" in Iran was overthrown and the extremists came to power in 1979.
Such talk comes easy in US media where Egyptian victims of rape and torture in Mubarak's jails are never seen. Where it's rarely emphasized that weapons of repression used against Egyptian demonstrators are paid for by US taxpayers. Where Mubarak is almost always called "president" and almost never "dictator" (unlike the elected president of Venezuela).
When US media glibly talk about the Egyptian and Tunisian "presidents" being valued "allies in the war on terror," it's no surprise that they offer no details about the prisoners the US has renditioned to these "pro-Western" countries for torture.
The truth is that no one knows how these uprisings will end.
But revolution of some kind, as King said, seems inevitable. Washington's corrupt Arab dictators will come down as surely (yet more organically) as that statue of Saddam, another former US ally.
If Washington took its heel off the Arab people and ended its embrace of the dictators, that could help secularists and democrats win hearts and minds against extreme Islamists.
Democracy is a great idea. Too bad it plays almost no role in US foreign policy.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Activism Is Not a Crime: Why I Will Not Testify Before This Federal Grand Jury
by Maureen Murphy
I have been summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago on January 25. But I will not testify, even at the risk of being put in jail for contempt of court, because I believe that our most fundamental rights as citizens are at stake.
I am one of 23 anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in Chicago and throughout the Midwest who are facing a grand jury as part of an investigation into "material support for foreign terrorist organizations." No crime has been identified. No arrests have been made. And when it raided several prominent organizers' homes and offices on Sept. 24, the FBI acknowledged that there is no immediate threat to the American public. So what is this investigation really about?
The activists who have been ensnared in this fishing net work with different groups to end the US wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end US military aid for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and US military aid to Colombia, which has a shocking record of repression and human rights abuses. All of us have publicly and peacefully dedicated our lives to social justice and advocating for more just and less deadly US foreign policy.
I spent a year and a half working for a human rights organization in the occupied West Bank, where I witnessed how Israel established "facts on the ground" at the expense of international law and Palestinian rights. I saw the wall, settlements and checkpoints and the ugly reality of life under Israeli occupation which is bankrolled by the US government on the taxpayer's dime. Many of us who are facing the grand jury have traveled to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Colombia to learn about the human rights situation and the impact of US foreign policy in those places so we may educate fellow Americans upon our return and work to build movements to end our government's harmful intervention abroad.
Travel for such purposes should be protected by the first amendment. But new legislation now allows the US government to consider such travel as probable cause for invasive investigations that disrupt our movements and our lives.
The June 2010 US Supreme Court decision Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project expanded even further the scope of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to include first amendment activity such as political speech and human rights training.
Even former President Jimmy Carter feels vulnerable under these laws because of his work doing elections training in Lebanon where one of the main political parties, until earlier this month a member of the ruling coalition, is listed as a "foreign terrorist organization" by the US State Department. "The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom," Carter has said.
Former FBI officer Mike German, who now works with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the television program Democracy Now! that the subpoenas, search warrants and materials seized from activists' homes make it clear that the government is interested in "address books, computer records, literature and advocacy materials, first amendment sort of materials." He added, "unfortunately, after 9/11, [investigation standards] have been diluted significantly to where the FBI literally requires no factual predicate to start an investigation."
The US government doesn't need to call me before a grand jury to learn my activities and my beliefs. I have often appealed to my elected representatives to take a principled stand on foreign policy issues, protested outside federal buildings and have written countless articles over the years that can be easily found through a Google search.
Witnesses called to testify to a grand jury have no right to have a lawyer in the room and the jury is hand-picked by government prosecutors with no screening for bias. It is the ultimate abuse of power for a citizen to be forced to account to the government for no other reason than her exercise of constitutionally-protected freedoms of speech and association.
This is why these grand jury proceedings are a threat to the rights of all Americans, and why those of us who have been targeted, and others in the movements we work with, call them a witch hunt. And, even though it means I risk being jailed for the life of the grand jury, I will not be appearing before it.
The grand jury has been scrapped in virtually all countries and more than half the states in this country. There is a long American history of abusing grand juries to launch inquisitions into domestic political movements, from the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement to labor activists advocating for an eight-hour work day to the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years.
We have done nothing wrong and risk being jailed because we have exercised our rights to free speech, to organize and hold our government accountable. It is a dark day for America when people face jail for exercising the rights that we hold so dear.
Maureen Murphy is a journalist and Palestine solidarity activist who lives in Chicago.
I have been summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago on January 25. But I will not testify, even at the risk of being put in jail for contempt of court, because I believe that our most fundamental rights as citizens are at stake.
I am one of 23 anti-war, labor and solidarity activists in Chicago and throughout the Midwest who are facing a grand jury as part of an investigation into "material support for foreign terrorist organizations." No crime has been identified. No arrests have been made. And when it raided several prominent organizers' homes and offices on Sept. 24, the FBI acknowledged that there is no immediate threat to the American public. So what is this investigation really about?
The activists who have been ensnared in this fishing net work with different groups to end the US wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end US military aid for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and US military aid to Colombia, which has a shocking record of repression and human rights abuses. All of us have publicly and peacefully dedicated our lives to social justice and advocating for more just and less deadly US foreign policy.
I spent a year and a half working for a human rights organization in the occupied West Bank, where I witnessed how Israel established "facts on the ground" at the expense of international law and Palestinian rights. I saw the wall, settlements and checkpoints and the ugly reality of life under Israeli occupation which is bankrolled by the US government on the taxpayer's dime. Many of us who are facing the grand jury have traveled to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Colombia to learn about the human rights situation and the impact of US foreign policy in those places so we may educate fellow Americans upon our return and work to build movements to end our government's harmful intervention abroad.
Travel for such purposes should be protected by the first amendment. But new legislation now allows the US government to consider such travel as probable cause for invasive investigations that disrupt our movements and our lives.
The June 2010 US Supreme Court decision Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project expanded even further the scope of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to include first amendment activity such as political speech and human rights training.
Even former President Jimmy Carter feels vulnerable under these laws because of his work doing elections training in Lebanon where one of the main political parties, until earlier this month a member of the ruling coalition, is listed as a "foreign terrorist organization" by the US State Department. "The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom," Carter has said.
Former FBI officer Mike German, who now works with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the television program Democracy Now! that the subpoenas, search warrants and materials seized from activists' homes make it clear that the government is interested in "address books, computer records, literature and advocacy materials, first amendment sort of materials." He added, "unfortunately, after 9/11, [investigation standards] have been diluted significantly to where the FBI literally requires no factual predicate to start an investigation."
The US government doesn't need to call me before a grand jury to learn my activities and my beliefs. I have often appealed to my elected representatives to take a principled stand on foreign policy issues, protested outside federal buildings and have written countless articles over the years that can be easily found through a Google search.
Witnesses called to testify to a grand jury have no right to have a lawyer in the room and the jury is hand-picked by government prosecutors with no screening for bias. It is the ultimate abuse of power for a citizen to be forced to account to the government for no other reason than her exercise of constitutionally-protected freedoms of speech and association.
This is why these grand jury proceedings are a threat to the rights of all Americans, and why those of us who have been targeted, and others in the movements we work with, call them a witch hunt. And, even though it means I risk being jailed for the life of the grand jury, I will not be appearing before it.
The grand jury has been scrapped in virtually all countries and more than half the states in this country. There is a long American history of abusing grand juries to launch inquisitions into domestic political movements, from the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement to labor activists advocating for an eight-hour work day to the anti-war movement during the Vietnam years.
We have done nothing wrong and risk being jailed because we have exercised our rights to free speech, to organize and hold our government accountable. It is a dark day for America when people face jail for exercising the rights that we hold so dear.
Maureen Murphy is a journalist and Palestine solidarity activist who lives in Chicago.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
US use of DU: A war crime
By Mujahid Kamran
While American scientists and scholars have played a key role in the intellectual evolution of mankind, its wealthy elite and agents - the rulers of the US - have committed the greatest crimes against humanity.
These horrific crimes continue unabated with silent intensity. With some exceptions, the “free” US media has maintained complete silence on these crimes. The reason for this silence has to do with the vested interests of media owners - their interests lie in suppressing humanity.
Many conscientious and aware Americans do raise their voice against these crimes, but the torment and agony of these American citizens does not seem to have any effect on the pet journalists of media owners. This insensitivity is drowning the United States of America and with it the rest of the world.
One of the most diabolical advances in weaponry is the use of uranium that can no longer be used in reactors.
This is known as depleted uranium. It is radioactive. After a certain processing, it can be converted into the hardest material on earth. A steel bullet will not penetrate a steel tank. However, a bullet made of depleted uranium will penetrate through the steel body of the tank and explode inside the tank. Uranium has the property that when heated it burns intensely. In powder form, uranium automatically catches fire when heated.
Nuha al-Radi, an artist and author of Baghdad Diaries, shortly before her death due to leukaemia wrote in 2004: “Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over 30 percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukaemia. The depleted uranium left by the US bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas.”
The US has used depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wherever depleted uranium is used in warfare, it generates radioactivity. Burnt uranium will keep radiating for billions of years.
Radiation emitted from uranium does not travel far from the source. But if, perchance, these radioactive particles happen to enter your body either through inhalation or through contaminated water intake, then till your dying day they will keep on disrupting basic structures in your body such as DNA, etc.
Their effect is to produce deadly disorders such as cancer, which eventually leads the exposed individual to his grave. US authorities have spread this radioactive debris in various parts of the world and concealed this fact from its people.
While American scientists and scholars have played a key role in the intellectual evolution of mankind, its wealthy elite and agents - the rulers of the US - have committed the greatest crimes against humanity.
These horrific crimes continue unabated with silent intensity. With some exceptions, the “free” US media has maintained complete silence on these crimes. The reason for this silence has to do with the vested interests of media owners - their interests lie in suppressing humanity.
Many conscientious and aware Americans do raise their voice against these crimes, but the torment and agony of these American citizens does not seem to have any effect on the pet journalists of media owners. This insensitivity is drowning the United States of America and with it the rest of the world.
One of the most diabolical advances in weaponry is the use of uranium that can no longer be used in reactors.
This is known as depleted uranium. It is radioactive. After a certain processing, it can be converted into the hardest material on earth. A steel bullet will not penetrate a steel tank. However, a bullet made of depleted uranium will penetrate through the steel body of the tank and explode inside the tank. Uranium has the property that when heated it burns intensely. In powder form, uranium automatically catches fire when heated.
Nuha al-Radi, an artist and author of Baghdad Diaries, shortly before her death due to leukaemia wrote in 2004: “Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over 30 percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukaemia. The depleted uranium left by the US bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas.”
The US has used depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wherever depleted uranium is used in warfare, it generates radioactivity. Burnt uranium will keep radiating for billions of years.
Radiation emitted from uranium does not travel far from the source. But if, perchance, these radioactive particles happen to enter your body either through inhalation or through contaminated water intake, then till your dying day they will keep on disrupting basic structures in your body such as DNA, etc.
Their effect is to produce deadly disorders such as cancer, which eventually leads the exposed individual to his grave. US authorities have spread this radioactive debris in various parts of the world and concealed this fact from its people.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Calif. Supreme Court approves warrantless data seizures by police
By Stephen C. Webster
If you're arrested in California, data stored on your mobile phone, tablet or other portable computing devices could be seized by police without so much as a search warrant.
That's thanks to a recent decision by the state's highest court, which declared on Monday that any and all expectations of privacy are lost once a defendant is in state custody.
By a vote of 5-2, the court said police may "rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer," according to the dissenting opinion of Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.
Werdegar was joined by Justice Carlos Moreno in opposing the decision.
"The majority thus sanctions a highly intrusive and unjustified type of search, one meeting neither the warrant requirement nor the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Werdegar continued. "As a commentator has noted, '[i]f courts adopted this rule, it would subject anyone who is the subject of a custodial arrest, even for a traffic violation, to a preapproved foray into a virtual warehouse of their most intimate communications and photographs without probable cause.'"
The dissenting justices suggested that before rummaging through a suspect's mobile device, police should be required to convince a judge of the likelihood that evidence of a crime would be uncovered.
The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, disagreed, arguing that decisions by the US Supreme Court in the 1970s, permitting the searches of items seized during arrests, was enough precedent to allow warrantless searches of computing devices.
The majority of justices did give credence to the argument that emerging technology amplifies the invasive nature of such a search, but the concurring voices summarized that it would be up to the nation's highest court to reevaluate its prior decisions.
Though highly disappointing to civil libertarians, the California Supreme Court's move is likely to be received with cheers of approval from software developers that specialize in mobile security. Products like Lookout Mobile Security, available for Android devices, allow remote users to wipe out all data on their smartphone simply by logging into a website.
If such software begins to pose a significant obfuscation to police efforts at probing seized devices, it could also lead to a technological arms race of sorts. Authorities could one day acquire products that can take instant snapshots of a mobile device's internal memory before they can be erased, which would be followed by private industry countermeasures to block that, and so on.
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko noted that the Ohio Supreme Court reached an opposite verdict at the end of 2009, but they were unable to secure a Supreme Court review.
"The Ohio-California split could prompt the nation's high court to take up the issue, said Deputy Attorney General Victoria Wilson, who represented the prosecution in Monday's case," he wrote.
"This has an impact on the day-to-day jobs of police officers, what kind of searches they can conduct without a warrant when they arrest someone," Wilson was quoted as saying. "It takes it into the realm of new technology."
In other significant Fourth Amendment-related decisions recently, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the Obama administration may not obtain information about a cell phone user's location without a court-issued search warrant. Similarly, Delaware Judge Jan R. Jurden ruled against the warrantless placement of a global positioning system on suspects' vehicles, warning that with the rise and spread of computing power, "an Orwellian state is now technologically feasible."
The California Supreme Court's decision in The People v. Gregory Diaz was available online (PDF).
If you're arrested in California, data stored on your mobile phone, tablet or other portable computing devices could be seized by police without so much as a search warrant.
That's thanks to a recent decision by the state's highest court, which declared on Monday that any and all expectations of privacy are lost once a defendant is in state custody.
By a vote of 5-2, the court said police may "rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer," according to the dissenting opinion of Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.
Werdegar was joined by Justice Carlos Moreno in opposing the decision.
"The majority thus sanctions a highly intrusive and unjustified type of search, one meeting neither the warrant requirement nor the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Werdegar continued. "As a commentator has noted, '[i]f courts adopted this rule, it would subject anyone who is the subject of a custodial arrest, even for a traffic violation, to a preapproved foray into a virtual warehouse of their most intimate communications and photographs without probable cause.'"
The dissenting justices suggested that before rummaging through a suspect's mobile device, police should be required to convince a judge of the likelihood that evidence of a crime would be uncovered.
The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, disagreed, arguing that decisions by the US Supreme Court in the 1970s, permitting the searches of items seized during arrests, was enough precedent to allow warrantless searches of computing devices.
The majority of justices did give credence to the argument that emerging technology amplifies the invasive nature of such a search, but the concurring voices summarized that it would be up to the nation's highest court to reevaluate its prior decisions.
Though highly disappointing to civil libertarians, the California Supreme Court's move is likely to be received with cheers of approval from software developers that specialize in mobile security. Products like Lookout Mobile Security, available for Android devices, allow remote users to wipe out all data on their smartphone simply by logging into a website.
If such software begins to pose a significant obfuscation to police efforts at probing seized devices, it could also lead to a technological arms race of sorts. Authorities could one day acquire products that can take instant snapshots of a mobile device's internal memory before they can be erased, which would be followed by private industry countermeasures to block that, and so on.
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko noted that the Ohio Supreme Court reached an opposite verdict at the end of 2009, but they were unable to secure a Supreme Court review.
"The Ohio-California split could prompt the nation's high court to take up the issue, said Deputy Attorney General Victoria Wilson, who represented the prosecution in Monday's case," he wrote.
"This has an impact on the day-to-day jobs of police officers, what kind of searches they can conduct without a warrant when they arrest someone," Wilson was quoted as saying. "It takes it into the realm of new technology."
In other significant Fourth Amendment-related decisions recently, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the Obama administration may not obtain information about a cell phone user's location without a court-issued search warrant. Similarly, Delaware Judge Jan R. Jurden ruled against the warrantless placement of a global positioning system on suspects' vehicles, warning that with the rise and spread of computing power, "an Orwellian state is now technologically feasible."
The California Supreme Court's decision in The People v. Gregory Diaz was available online (PDF).
Notions postulate of tyranny
By Dan Bluemel
In the 1960s and ’70s, and even before that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ran a counter-intelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, where federal agents spied on, infiltrated and disrupted anti-war, civil rights and social justice organizations.
In 1975, after COINTELPRO was revealed in a congressional hearing, Congressman Don Edwards of California said, in reference to the Bureau’s program, that there must be no exceptions to our constitutional safeguards, “regardless of the unattractiveness or noisy militancy of some private citizens or organizations.”
“The philosophy supporting COINTELPRO,” he said, “is the subversive notion that any public official, the President or a policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set aside the Constitution whenever he thinks the public interest, or ‘national security’ warrants it. That notion is postulate of tyranny.”
Some say, since 9/11, those notions postulate of tyranny have crept back into America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
***
Activism is terrorism
Since September 2010, 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists have been subpoenaed by the FBI as part of a growing terrorism investigation. The Bureau said it is looking for evidence concerning material support for terrorist organizations.
It started on Sept. 24, when the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted a series of raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Computers, cell phones, mailing lists, documents, videos, books and passports were seized by agents. Thirteen activists from Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan were ordered to appear before federal grand juries.
The FBI was seeking documents concerning the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah – organizations the State Department has labeled terrorist groups.
Carlos Montes was one of several people named on the FBI’s Minneapolis search warrant concerning the Anti-War Committee, a Minnesota-based peace group, and their alleged material support of terrorist organizations. Montes is an organizer for the Southern California Immigration Coalition in Los Angeles. Though named on the warrant, the FBI has not contacted him.
Montes assumes he was on the warrant for helping the Anti-War Committee organize protests for the 2008 Republican National Convention. The organization was instrumental in organizing the actions, which he endorsed and later participated in.
“Historically, the FBI has attacked and harassed progressive movements – the black civil rights movement, the peace movement,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “I see this as a continuation of that repression against people who take a strong stand against the status quo.”
Since then more have received subpoenas. Most recently, on Dec. 21, Maureen Murphy, managing editor for the website Electronic Intifada, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. Her involvement in the Chicago-based Palestine Solidarity Group appears to be the basis of the investigation.
Jim Fennerty, one of the lead attorneys who is working with the subpoenaed activists, describes the raids and subpoenas as an “attack on the solidarity movement.” He told LA Activist that the activists have refused to testify before the grand juries, though some have been called back, and none have been indicted for any crime or found in contempt.
According to Fennerty, the situation for these activists can become difficult if the government grants them immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. In these situations a witness loses their Fifth Amendment rights and not testifying could mean imprisonment for the duration of the grand jury – which could be months long.
“They say it is coercion, not punishment,” he said. “If you are sitting in jail, I still think it is punishment.”
Peter Bibring, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said constitutionally protected speech should not be the basis of an investigation – something the FBI denies doing – and fears such raids will cause people to pause before getting involved in political dissent.
“If there is no link to criminal activity, the government shouldn’t be using these kinds of aggressive investigatory powers,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “It creates an enormous chilling effect on people who want to exercise their First Amendment rights.”
The FBI’s actions may seem strange at first glance. Peace activists, for instance, do not have a reputation for international terrorism. However, it is a newly constructed legal language and a fear-infused political climate that has allowed peaceful citizens to get in the crosshairs of the Bureau.
“There is a reasonable indication that programs and investigative techniques, that have been instituted in the name of fighting terrorism, have suffered from a kind of ‘mission creep’ where they’ve been more broadly deployed against individuals who may not be involved in terrorism, but may just be involved in First Amendment activity,” said Bibring.
***
A ‘pall’ over dissent
In June 2010, the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute that bans material support of foreign terrorist organizations. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect citizens who assist terrorist groups, even if they are assisting organizations in obtaining peaceful settlements to conflicts.
Jim Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, called the Supreme Court decision a “draconian” ruling that has “cast quite a pall” over the peace movement and the First Amendment rights of Americans.
“If we really care about terrorism, we should be applauding [efforts to broker peace], not saying that it would be a crime because you would be giving material support to a terrorist organization,” he told LA Activist.
Former President Jimmy Carter said the work of his humanitarian organization, the Carter Center, is threatened by the decision. According to The Washington Post, he said the statute “inhibits the work of human rights and conflict resolution groups.”
“The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom,” he said.
Lafferty admits that politics affects the Supreme Court and that recent decisions are a product of the nation’s current political climate, one that doesn’t take kindly to dissent.
“It’s hard to believe that a lot of what we’ve seen post-9/11 we would have seen pre-9/11,” he said. “When the country is at war, the courts are going to act differently than when the country isn’t at war.”
Material support for terrorists is just one way in which activists have been swept up into the war on terror.
Ironically, just four days prior to the FBI raids in the Midwest, a Justice Department report criticized the Bureau for inappropriately targeting left-leaning activist groups between 2001 and 2006.
According to The Washington Post, the Bureau was criticized for investigating the environmental group Greenpeace. Agents monitored the organization for three years, and even put some Greenpeace members on terrorist watch lists.
The FBI also spied on PETA and a Catholic organization that advocates peace. The department report stopped short of accusing the FBI of targeting these groups because of their politics.
Similar stories have surfaced recently concerning the Department of Homeland Security.
In September 2010, it was revealed that a Pennsylvania DHS intelligence bulletin warned of environmental extremism. The report listed dates of interest that consisted of demonstrations, governmental hearings concerning environmental issues and even the screening of a documentary.
The bulletin borrows from an FBI report that warns “extremists will continue to commit criminal activity against not only the energy companies, but against secondary or tertiary targets.” However, when asked by ProPublica about extremist criminal activity, Joseph Elias, a captain with the Pennsylvania State Police Domestic Security Division, had no knowledge of such crimes.
“We haven’t had any incidents of any significance to date where we have identified a problem, or any environmental extremists,” he said.
As a result of the report being made public, the Pennsylvania Homeland Security director resigned and apologized to those who felt their rights had been violated.
In October 2010, Fox News reported that an office within the DHS, called Fraud Detection and National Security, had been encouraging its agents to befriend people on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to spy on them. Agents were also told to target websites such as NPR and the political commentary site DailyKos.
“There is a deep concern that both local and federal law enforcement are aiming their resources at innocuous activity,” said Bibring.
Behind the government targeting its civilians in the war on terror is the broad language of the PATRIOT Act. According to a 2002 ACLU statement, the law “expanded the definition of terrorism to cover ‘domestic,’ as opposed to international, terrorism.”
“The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations,” said the ACLU. “Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front have all recently engaged in activities that could subject them to being investigated as engaging in domestic terrorism.”
The effects of wide-ranging legal language manifested itself clearly in 2009 when it was discovered that the Dept. of Defense was telling its employees that protests were an example of a “low-level terrorism activity.”
It appears that activists can only expect more of the same in coming years. In September 2010, the directors of the FBI and DHS and the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center told Congress that America faced a rising threat from “homegrown terrorists.”
“What a lot of us fear,” said Lafferty, “[is that the law] isn’t going to be restricted simply to what we’ve come to think of as terrorism – people who try to bomb a bus or shopping center – that it could refer to people … who have too radical an idea about how to change America.”
***
Déjà vu all over again
Now that activists are once again being targeted, it leaves some to believe that COINTELPRO has returned.
“I think we are way past [COINTELPRO],” said Lafferty. “You have the FBI doing exactly what it did during Vietnam and, in the case of the Muslim community and the FBI infiltration of the mosques, you’ve got them doing it openly.”
“Now the government makes no secret about the fact that it’s spying on, wiretapping and infiltrating everybody,” he added. “Nobody doubts that anymore, and they have better tools to do it with. So we are way past that.”
Blase Bonpane, a long-time human rights advocate and director of Office of the Americas, an LA-based peace and international justice advocacy group, said the FBI’s behavior in recent years is “tantamount to COINTELPRO.”
“I remember it well,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “[The FBI] was very active then and we were all impacted by it. And yes, it’s back. It doesn’t make any difference what they call it.”
If COINTELPRO-style tactics are again being used against political dissent, then activists may have more to fear than their 1960s counterparts like Lafferty suggests. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the U.S. government spent billions of dollars expanding its already significant intelligence apparatus. As the war on terror began to target U.S. citizens, so followed the prying eyes of America’s numerous spy agencies.
The Washington Post reported as part of an ongoing investigation that the U.S. has “some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies” working on counterterrorism, homeland security and various intelligence-gathering projects in roughly 10,000 locations across the country. There are now nearly one million people in America that have top-secret security clearances, with intelligence analysts publishing 50,000 reports a year.
Before 9/11, there were 35 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces like the ones that raided the anti-war activists in the Midwest. Today, there are 106.
Los Angeles County is home to the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, the first regional counter-terrorism “fusion center” in the country. It houses intelligence analysts from the FBI, the LAPD, LA County Sheriffs Department and other agencies. According to the Los Angeles Times, at the facility’s opening in 2006, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said the center would focus on domestic terrorism.
There are 72 local fusion centers across the U.S. that were created after 9/11. Fusion centers now obtain “suspicious activity reports” from local authorities and feed them into national databases.
It was the LAPD that invented “suspicious activity reports” in early 2008. According to USA Today, the program provided officers with a system of reporting “the smallest levels of suspicious behavior and activities that could actually reveal terrorist ‘dry runs’ that might have previously been overlooked.”
The program, which is aimed at both criminal and non-criminal activity, includes trespassing or noticing suspicious packages.
“It includes activities such as taking photographs of no apparent aesthetic value,” said Bibring. “If that is suspicious activity, according to the judgment of an LAPD officer, then there are a lot of people in Los Angeles who are in trouble.”
The program quickly got the attention of police departments around the country. Today, the program is national. According to the Los Angeles Times, “More than two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in areas now covered by such reporting, which is designed to take note of behavior that is not illegal.”
Along with a beefed up intelligence infrastructure, critics say the FBI has little to no restrictions on its spying. According to the Attorney General’s guidelines for domestic operations, the Bureau investigates federal crimes, threats to national security and anything related to foreign intelligence.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in an recent interview with the International Socialist Review that the government has over the years steadily removed restrictions from the agency’s intelligence operations.
“After you read [the current guidelines] and you compare them to the earlier ones, you realize now the FBI can do anything it wants,” he said “It can target anyone. The FBI can be, and probably is, everywhere.”
***
Fighting back
Activists are concerned that government surveillance, infiltration and prosecution of political activities will have a negative impact on people’s willingness to dissent – a cornerstone of democracy. Since the FBI raids in September there have been demonstrations against the Bureau around the country. Also, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression was formed, which seeks to cease the government attacks on peace activists.
Despite the overwhelming shift to a police state in recent years, there is still an occasional difference of opinion still found at the highest levels of government. According to The Washington Post, after the decision was made on Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Justice Stephen G. Breyer read his summary of dissent from the bench.
“Our decisions must reflect the Constitution’s grant of foreign affairs and defense powers to the president and to Congress but without denying our own special judicial obligation to protect the constitutional rights of individuals,” he said. “That means that national security does not always win.”
In the meantime, however, national security continues to win. In early December, the DHS announced the incorporation of its “If You See Something, Say Something” program in more than 230 Walmart stores across the country. The program, which is already employed by other institutions, encourages citizens to report “indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in a news release.
The DHS intends to expand this program to help Americans “remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe.”
“The manipulation of fear, which is the lowest form of corrupt politics, has its impact,” said Bonpane. “Probably the reason for the raids is to create fear.”
“We are in a very bad situation,” he added. “We are in a situation where it seems that the only workable projects at this time are civil disobedience, mass mobilization and non-cooperation.”
Although Lafferty said there isn’t much “breathing space” anymore for citizens to exercise their rights, he still finds hope if the citizenry mobilizes in defense of itself.
“We still do have a enough room where if we had the inclination and the backbone to do it we could have a huge protest and a huge pressure being brought [upon the government],” he said. “If you really want to defend the Bill of Rights, the best way to defend it is to get out in the streets and do so, and to exercise those rights. That’s the best defense against this and that has always been true.”
In the 1960s and ’70s, and even before that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ran a counter-intelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, where federal agents spied on, infiltrated and disrupted anti-war, civil rights and social justice organizations.
In 1975, after COINTELPRO was revealed in a congressional hearing, Congressman Don Edwards of California said, in reference to the Bureau’s program, that there must be no exceptions to our constitutional safeguards, “regardless of the unattractiveness or noisy militancy of some private citizens or organizations.”
“The philosophy supporting COINTELPRO,” he said, “is the subversive notion that any public official, the President or a policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set aside the Constitution whenever he thinks the public interest, or ‘national security’ warrants it. That notion is postulate of tyranny.”
Some say, since 9/11, those notions postulate of tyranny have crept back into America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
***
Activism is terrorism
Since September 2010, 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists have been subpoenaed by the FBI as part of a growing terrorism investigation. The Bureau said it is looking for evidence concerning material support for terrorist organizations.
It started on Sept. 24, when the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted a series of raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Computers, cell phones, mailing lists, documents, videos, books and passports were seized by agents. Thirteen activists from Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan were ordered to appear before federal grand juries.
The FBI was seeking documents concerning the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah – organizations the State Department has labeled terrorist groups.
Carlos Montes was one of several people named on the FBI’s Minneapolis search warrant concerning the Anti-War Committee, a Minnesota-based peace group, and their alleged material support of terrorist organizations. Montes is an organizer for the Southern California Immigration Coalition in Los Angeles. Though named on the warrant, the FBI has not contacted him.
Montes assumes he was on the warrant for helping the Anti-War Committee organize protests for the 2008 Republican National Convention. The organization was instrumental in organizing the actions, which he endorsed and later participated in.
“Historically, the FBI has attacked and harassed progressive movements – the black civil rights movement, the peace movement,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “I see this as a continuation of that repression against people who take a strong stand against the status quo.”
Since then more have received subpoenas. Most recently, on Dec. 21, Maureen Murphy, managing editor for the website Electronic Intifada, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. Her involvement in the Chicago-based Palestine Solidarity Group appears to be the basis of the investigation.
Jim Fennerty, one of the lead attorneys who is working with the subpoenaed activists, describes the raids and subpoenas as an “attack on the solidarity movement.” He told LA Activist that the activists have refused to testify before the grand juries, though some have been called back, and none have been indicted for any crime or found in contempt.
According to Fennerty, the situation for these activists can become difficult if the government grants them immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. In these situations a witness loses their Fifth Amendment rights and not testifying could mean imprisonment for the duration of the grand jury – which could be months long.
“They say it is coercion, not punishment,” he said. “If you are sitting in jail, I still think it is punishment.”
Peter Bibring, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said constitutionally protected speech should not be the basis of an investigation – something the FBI denies doing – and fears such raids will cause people to pause before getting involved in political dissent.
“If there is no link to criminal activity, the government shouldn’t be using these kinds of aggressive investigatory powers,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “It creates an enormous chilling effect on people who want to exercise their First Amendment rights.”
The FBI’s actions may seem strange at first glance. Peace activists, for instance, do not have a reputation for international terrorism. However, it is a newly constructed legal language and a fear-infused political climate that has allowed peaceful citizens to get in the crosshairs of the Bureau.
“There is a reasonable indication that programs and investigative techniques, that have been instituted in the name of fighting terrorism, have suffered from a kind of ‘mission creep’ where they’ve been more broadly deployed against individuals who may not be involved in terrorism, but may just be involved in First Amendment activity,” said Bibring.
***
A ‘pall’ over dissent
In June 2010, the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute that bans material support of foreign terrorist organizations. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect citizens who assist terrorist groups, even if they are assisting organizations in obtaining peaceful settlements to conflicts.
Jim Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, called the Supreme Court decision a “draconian” ruling that has “cast quite a pall” over the peace movement and the First Amendment rights of Americans.
“If we really care about terrorism, we should be applauding [efforts to broker peace], not saying that it would be a crime because you would be giving material support to a terrorist organization,” he told LA Activist.
Former President Jimmy Carter said the work of his humanitarian organization, the Carter Center, is threatened by the decision. According to The Washington Post, he said the statute “inhibits the work of human rights and conflict resolution groups.”
“The vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom,” he said.
Lafferty admits that politics affects the Supreme Court and that recent decisions are a product of the nation’s current political climate, one that doesn’t take kindly to dissent.
“It’s hard to believe that a lot of what we’ve seen post-9/11 we would have seen pre-9/11,” he said. “When the country is at war, the courts are going to act differently than when the country isn’t at war.”
Material support for terrorists is just one way in which activists have been swept up into the war on terror.
Ironically, just four days prior to the FBI raids in the Midwest, a Justice Department report criticized the Bureau for inappropriately targeting left-leaning activist groups between 2001 and 2006.
According to The Washington Post, the Bureau was criticized for investigating the environmental group Greenpeace. Agents monitored the organization for three years, and even put some Greenpeace members on terrorist watch lists.
The FBI also spied on PETA and a Catholic organization that advocates peace. The department report stopped short of accusing the FBI of targeting these groups because of their politics.
Similar stories have surfaced recently concerning the Department of Homeland Security.
In September 2010, it was revealed that a Pennsylvania DHS intelligence bulletin warned of environmental extremism. The report listed dates of interest that consisted of demonstrations, governmental hearings concerning environmental issues and even the screening of a documentary.
The bulletin borrows from an FBI report that warns “extremists will continue to commit criminal activity against not only the energy companies, but against secondary or tertiary targets.” However, when asked by ProPublica about extremist criminal activity, Joseph Elias, a captain with the Pennsylvania State Police Domestic Security Division, had no knowledge of such crimes.
“We haven’t had any incidents of any significance to date where we have identified a problem, or any environmental extremists,” he said.
As a result of the report being made public, the Pennsylvania Homeland Security director resigned and apologized to those who felt their rights had been violated.
In October 2010, Fox News reported that an office within the DHS, called Fraud Detection and National Security, had been encouraging its agents to befriend people on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to spy on them. Agents were also told to target websites such as NPR and the political commentary site DailyKos.
“There is a deep concern that both local and federal law enforcement are aiming their resources at innocuous activity,” said Bibring.
Behind the government targeting its civilians in the war on terror is the broad language of the PATRIOT Act. According to a 2002 ACLU statement, the law “expanded the definition of terrorism to cover ‘domestic,’ as opposed to international, terrorism.”
“The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations,” said the ACLU. “Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front have all recently engaged in activities that could subject them to being investigated as engaging in domestic terrorism.”
The effects of wide-ranging legal language manifested itself clearly in 2009 when it was discovered that the Dept. of Defense was telling its employees that protests were an example of a “low-level terrorism activity.”
It appears that activists can only expect more of the same in coming years. In September 2010, the directors of the FBI and DHS and the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center told Congress that America faced a rising threat from “homegrown terrorists.”
“What a lot of us fear,” said Lafferty, “[is that the law] isn’t going to be restricted simply to what we’ve come to think of as terrorism – people who try to bomb a bus or shopping center – that it could refer to people … who have too radical an idea about how to change America.”
***
Déjà vu all over again
Now that activists are once again being targeted, it leaves some to believe that COINTELPRO has returned.
“I think we are way past [COINTELPRO],” said Lafferty. “You have the FBI doing exactly what it did during Vietnam and, in the case of the Muslim community and the FBI infiltration of the mosques, you’ve got them doing it openly.”
“Now the government makes no secret about the fact that it’s spying on, wiretapping and infiltrating everybody,” he added. “Nobody doubts that anymore, and they have better tools to do it with. So we are way past that.”
Blase Bonpane, a long-time human rights advocate and director of Office of the Americas, an LA-based peace and international justice advocacy group, said the FBI’s behavior in recent years is “tantamount to COINTELPRO.”
“I remember it well,” he said in an interview with LA Activist. “[The FBI] was very active then and we were all impacted by it. And yes, it’s back. It doesn’t make any difference what they call it.”
If COINTELPRO-style tactics are again being used against political dissent, then activists may have more to fear than their 1960s counterparts like Lafferty suggests. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the U.S. government spent billions of dollars expanding its already significant intelligence apparatus. As the war on terror began to target U.S. citizens, so followed the prying eyes of America’s numerous spy agencies.
The Washington Post reported as part of an ongoing investigation that the U.S. has “some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies” working on counterterrorism, homeland security and various intelligence-gathering projects in roughly 10,000 locations across the country. There are now nearly one million people in America that have top-secret security clearances, with intelligence analysts publishing 50,000 reports a year.
Before 9/11, there were 35 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces like the ones that raided the anti-war activists in the Midwest. Today, there are 106.
Los Angeles County is home to the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, the first regional counter-terrorism “fusion center” in the country. It houses intelligence analysts from the FBI, the LAPD, LA County Sheriffs Department and other agencies. According to the Los Angeles Times, at the facility’s opening in 2006, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said the center would focus on domestic terrorism.
There are 72 local fusion centers across the U.S. that were created after 9/11. Fusion centers now obtain “suspicious activity reports” from local authorities and feed them into national databases.
It was the LAPD that invented “suspicious activity reports” in early 2008. According to USA Today, the program provided officers with a system of reporting “the smallest levels of suspicious behavior and activities that could actually reveal terrorist ‘dry runs’ that might have previously been overlooked.”
The program, which is aimed at both criminal and non-criminal activity, includes trespassing or noticing suspicious packages.
“It includes activities such as taking photographs of no apparent aesthetic value,” said Bibring. “If that is suspicious activity, according to the judgment of an LAPD officer, then there are a lot of people in Los Angeles who are in trouble.”
The program quickly got the attention of police departments around the country. Today, the program is national. According to the Los Angeles Times, “More than two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in areas now covered by such reporting, which is designed to take note of behavior that is not illegal.”
Along with a beefed up intelligence infrastructure, critics say the FBI has little to no restrictions on its spying. According to the Attorney General’s guidelines for domestic operations, the Bureau investigates federal crimes, threats to national security and anything related to foreign intelligence.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in an recent interview with the International Socialist Review that the government has over the years steadily removed restrictions from the agency’s intelligence operations.
“After you read [the current guidelines] and you compare them to the earlier ones, you realize now the FBI can do anything it wants,” he said “It can target anyone. The FBI can be, and probably is, everywhere.”
***
Fighting back
Activists are concerned that government surveillance, infiltration and prosecution of political activities will have a negative impact on people’s willingness to dissent – a cornerstone of democracy. Since the FBI raids in September there have been demonstrations against the Bureau around the country. Also, the Committee to Stop FBI Repression was formed, which seeks to cease the government attacks on peace activists.
Despite the overwhelming shift to a police state in recent years, there is still an occasional difference of opinion still found at the highest levels of government. According to The Washington Post, after the decision was made on Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Justice Stephen G. Breyer read his summary of dissent from the bench.
“Our decisions must reflect the Constitution’s grant of foreign affairs and defense powers to the president and to Congress but without denying our own special judicial obligation to protect the constitutional rights of individuals,” he said. “That means that national security does not always win.”
In the meantime, however, national security continues to win. In early December, the DHS announced the incorporation of its “If You See Something, Say Something” program in more than 230 Walmart stores across the country. The program, which is already employed by other institutions, encourages citizens to report “indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in a news release.
The DHS intends to expand this program to help Americans “remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe.”
“The manipulation of fear, which is the lowest form of corrupt politics, has its impact,” said Bonpane. “Probably the reason for the raids is to create fear.”
“We are in a very bad situation,” he added. “We are in a situation where it seems that the only workable projects at this time are civil disobedience, mass mobilization and non-cooperation.”
Although Lafferty said there isn’t much “breathing space” anymore for citizens to exercise their rights, he still finds hope if the citizenry mobilizes in defense of itself.
“We still do have a enough room where if we had the inclination and the backbone to do it we could have a huge protest and a huge pressure being brought [upon the government],” he said. “If you really want to defend the Bill of Rights, the best way to defend it is to get out in the streets and do so, and to exercise those rights. That’s the best defense against this and that has always been true.”
Saturday, January 8, 2011
HONORING DR. KING MEANS SUPPORT FOR TODAY'S LABOR, PEACE ACTIVISTS
By Anthony D. Prince
January 15, 2011 marks the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Though many speeches will be made, few will address the troubling parallels between the role played by the FBI then and its current campaign to intimidate, smear and even imprison those who continue to hold aloft Dr. King's banner. Today, as federal agents continue to serve grand jury subpoenas and raid the homes of labor and peace activists in Illinois and Minnesota, some 23 people including local union officers and stewards from AFSCME, SEIU, Teamsters and other segments of organized labor find themselves in the crosshairs.
The government persecution echoes that perpetrated against Dr. King by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI which used wiretaps, tails, the planting of false stories in the press, blackmail and other sordid tactics. The harassment intensified after King publicly condemned the war in Vietnam, denouncing the U.S. involvement as irreconcilable with economic and social justice for America's poor. "There is but one way out for you," threatened the FBI in an anonymous letter suggesting suicide. Undeterred, King's last days were spent supporting the striking sanitation workers of Memphis. His assassination came on the heels of an internal FBI report that labeled King a "direct threat to American security." Today, that same false pretext -- now termed "America's war on terror" -- is being used to justify the recent FBI raids. Yet, a close examination of the items demanded from the targeted activists unmasks the government's true intent.
Included in the documents seized by federal agents, for example, are private letters to and from persons in various foreign countries, including Colombia, a South American nation where over 3,000 union leaders have been assassinated since the mid-1980s. Many of those served with the subpoenas -- such as Minneapolis Teamster Mick Kelley -- belong to unions with a history of solidarity with the embattled labor movement in Colombia. In 2002, the Teamsters, which represents thousands of Coca-Cola workers in the U.S., picketed Coke's annual stockholders meeting to protest the multinational's links to death squads responsible for the plant gate assassination of Isidro Gil, chief negotiator for Coca-Cola workers in Colombia. As recently as August of last year, 500 Teamster-represented Coke workers in Seattle went on strike, resisting widespread surveillance and intimidation in their fight for a just contract. The Teamsters is just one of dozens of U.S. trade unions that have hosted tours of persecuted Colombian workers. Aware of the company's brutal policies south of the border, the Teamsters had no intention of letting that war come home.
One can only imagine the volume of correspondence that has facilitated the solidarity movement between American unions and their embattled comrades in Colombia and other countries where repressive regimes permit U.S. multinationals to operate with impunity. Now, as a result of the recent grand jury subpoenas and FBI raids, that correspondence is now in the hands of the federal government. Lurking behind the "anti-terrorist" justification is the government's real mission: to stifle the growing international union, solidarity and peace movements of which Martin Luther King was a martyred architect.
Those who draft search warrants to silence opponents of U.S. military policy have no right to speak of a man who worked "to see the fervor of the civil rights movement imbued into the peace movement." Those who empanel grand juries to investigate critics of Haliburton, Blackwater and other war profiteers ignore King's indictment of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism" and his demand for "the reconstruction of society, itself."
On this day, we best honor King by supporting those who continue his long march to justice.
January 15, 2011 marks the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Though many speeches will be made, few will address the troubling parallels between the role played by the FBI then and its current campaign to intimidate, smear and even imprison those who continue to hold aloft Dr. King's banner. Today, as federal agents continue to serve grand jury subpoenas and raid the homes of labor and peace activists in Illinois and Minnesota, some 23 people including local union officers and stewards from AFSCME, SEIU, Teamsters and other segments of organized labor find themselves in the crosshairs.
The government persecution echoes that perpetrated against Dr. King by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI which used wiretaps, tails, the planting of false stories in the press, blackmail and other sordid tactics. The harassment intensified after King publicly condemned the war in Vietnam, denouncing the U.S. involvement as irreconcilable with economic and social justice for America's poor. "There is but one way out for you," threatened the FBI in an anonymous letter suggesting suicide. Undeterred, King's last days were spent supporting the striking sanitation workers of Memphis. His assassination came on the heels of an internal FBI report that labeled King a "direct threat to American security." Today, that same false pretext -- now termed "America's war on terror" -- is being used to justify the recent FBI raids. Yet, a close examination of the items demanded from the targeted activists unmasks the government's true intent.
Included in the documents seized by federal agents, for example, are private letters to and from persons in various foreign countries, including Colombia, a South American nation where over 3,000 union leaders have been assassinated since the mid-1980s. Many of those served with the subpoenas -- such as Minneapolis Teamster Mick Kelley -- belong to unions with a history of solidarity with the embattled labor movement in Colombia. In 2002, the Teamsters, which represents thousands of Coca-Cola workers in the U.S., picketed Coke's annual stockholders meeting to protest the multinational's links to death squads responsible for the plant gate assassination of Isidro Gil, chief negotiator for Coca-Cola workers in Colombia. As recently as August of last year, 500 Teamster-represented Coke workers in Seattle went on strike, resisting widespread surveillance and intimidation in their fight for a just contract. The Teamsters is just one of dozens of U.S. trade unions that have hosted tours of persecuted Colombian workers. Aware of the company's brutal policies south of the border, the Teamsters had no intention of letting that war come home.
One can only imagine the volume of correspondence that has facilitated the solidarity movement between American unions and their embattled comrades in Colombia and other countries where repressive regimes permit U.S. multinationals to operate with impunity. Now, as a result of the recent grand jury subpoenas and FBI raids, that correspondence is now in the hands of the federal government. Lurking behind the "anti-terrorist" justification is the government's real mission: to stifle the growing international union, solidarity and peace movements of which Martin Luther King was a martyred architect.
Those who draft search warrants to silence opponents of U.S. military policy have no right to speak of a man who worked "to see the fervor of the civil rights movement imbued into the peace movement." Those who empanel grand juries to investigate critics of Haliburton, Blackwater and other war profiteers ignore King's indictment of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism" and his demand for "the reconstruction of society, itself."
On this day, we best honor King by supporting those who continue his long march to justice.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Obama administration preparing executive order to authorize indefinite detentions
By John Burton
The Obama administration is drafting an executive order, scheduled for release early in 2011, which authorizes indefinite detention without charge of prisoners currently held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The new order means that the prison will remain open, or that these prisoners will be transferred to permanent locations in the US.
The prisoners would be given a “periodic review” of their imprisonment in a procedure that makes a mockery of due process and basic democratic rights.
According to reports first published Tuesday evening by the Washington Post and ProPublica, unnamed US officials have revealed that the executive order, which will for the first time establish indefinite detention as an Obama administration policy, has “been in the works for more than a year.”
With typical contempt for the democratic rights of the population, the announcement was released through anonymous backdoor channels on the eve of the Winter holidays. It is aimed at preparing public opinion for yet another extension of the anti-democratic policies of the Bush administration.
Guantánamo Bay has grown into an internationally despised gulag since the first jail, Camp Delta, was opened by the Bush administration in early 2002 under the pretext of jailing “enemy combatants” in the so-called “war on terror.” The “enemy combatant” category had no precedent either in domestic or international law, and was adopted solely for the purpose of placing people in legal limbo―stripped of protection under both the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.
Guantánamo Bay has become synonymous with the most flagrant attacks on core democratic rights, including denials of habeas corpus, detention without legal authority, denial of counsel, sensory deprivations, abusive interrogations and outright torture.
During his campaign for president, Obama repeatedly pledged to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camps, promising shortly after his inauguration to complete the task by January 2010. With the proposed new order, there is no closure in sight.
More Guantánamo inmates are facing lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.
Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed the reports on December 22, announcing “There are some prisoners that will require indefinite detention,” although closing the Guantánamo prisons, according to Gibbs, “remains the president’s goal.”
Some of the prisoners transferred might be transferred from Guantánamo to prisons in the United States. There is no indication that the executive order would not continue to apply―meaning that Obama would be vastly expanding the scope of indefinite detention.
“If the Obama administration succeeds in establishing indefinite detentions on US soil,” according to a statement by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization that has represented a number of Guantánamo prisoners, “it will be difficult to hold the line at the 48 men at Guantanamo.
“This proposal lays the groundwork for US prisons to become places where people from around the world are brought and imprisoned without charge or trial, eroding our Constitution and adherence to international law beyond recognition,” according to the CCR statement.
As usual, anonymous administration sources claim that Obama’s hand is being forced because the still Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a defense authorization bill that bans transferring Guantánamo prisoners to the United States for trial, a crucial component of Obama’s earlier plan to close the concentration camps. The provision was added quietly to the bill during negotiations over repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The administration, however, has never sought to overturn the content of the anti-democratic policies implemented by Bush. Sections of the political establishment have favored closing Guantánamo because of its international reputation, while keeping the essence of the policy intact.
According to reports, the new executive order directly affects 48 prisoners the Obama administration has classified as too dangerous to be released but who cannot be put on trial. According to the Washington Post, “unnamed officials” said that the prisoners cannot face trial because torture was used to obtain the evidence against them. Without the torture evidence, the cases against them “would not meet legal standards.”
There are at least 126 other prisoners incarcerated at Guantánamo whose status remains uncertain.
The anonymous administration sources claim that the executive order will expand the rights of prisoners by establishing a “detainee review process” which will allow limited access to evidence and lawyers for hearings at designated intervals, perhaps once a year. A New York Times report characterized the executive order as setting up “something like a parole board to evaluate whether each detainee poses a continued threat, or whether he can be safely transferred to another country.”
Under the Constitution, however, parole boards, which are usually stacked with political employees and give very limited consideration to the cases before them, come into play only after someone is convicted of a crime. Under the Obama administration plan, prisoners can be held for the rest of their lives without a civilian trial, or even a military commission.
There is no reason to believe that the executive order will be limited only to current Guantánamo prisoners. For more than a year the Obama administration has insisted it has the power to hold anyone it designates as a “terror suspect” indefinitely and without judicial review based on the congressional Authorization to Use Military Force that came in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. This is the same rationale used by the Bush administration.
The news of the proposed executive order has been denounced by advocates of civil liberties.
Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the executive order would “normalize and institutionalize indefinite detention and other policies,” set in place by the Bush administration. Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, added, “Our Constitution requires that we charge and prosecute people who are accused of crimes. You cannot sell an indefinite detention scheme by attaching a few due-process baubles and expect that to restore the rule of law.”
The executive order is an extension of the attack on democratic rights carried out by the Obama administration since it first came to office.
While refusing to initiate a single criminal prosecutions for any of the war crimes committed, the Obama administration has intervened in court proceedings to block civil lawsuits against Bush administration officials for torture and domestic spying. Recently released WikiLeaks documents show that the administration collaborated with governments in Spain and Germany to prevent legal challenges to these same policies.
Obama has signed a death warrant for US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki, and used Catch-22 arguments to prevent his father from challenging the extra-judicial assassination order in court.
Obama administration lawyers have authorized FBI raids of the homes and offices of antiwar activists on the basis that by opposing US imperialism they are providing “material support” for terrorist organizations.
The Obama administration is drafting an executive order, scheduled for release early in 2011, which authorizes indefinite detention without charge of prisoners currently held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The new order means that the prison will remain open, or that these prisoners will be transferred to permanent locations in the US.
The prisoners would be given a “periodic review” of their imprisonment in a procedure that makes a mockery of due process and basic democratic rights.
According to reports first published Tuesday evening by the Washington Post and ProPublica, unnamed US officials have revealed that the executive order, which will for the first time establish indefinite detention as an Obama administration policy, has “been in the works for more than a year.”
With typical contempt for the democratic rights of the population, the announcement was released through anonymous backdoor channels on the eve of the Winter holidays. It is aimed at preparing public opinion for yet another extension of the anti-democratic policies of the Bush administration.
Guantánamo Bay has grown into an internationally despised gulag since the first jail, Camp Delta, was opened by the Bush administration in early 2002 under the pretext of jailing “enemy combatants” in the so-called “war on terror.” The “enemy combatant” category had no precedent either in domestic or international law, and was adopted solely for the purpose of placing people in legal limbo―stripped of protection under both the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.
Guantánamo Bay has become synonymous with the most flagrant attacks on core democratic rights, including denials of habeas corpus, detention without legal authority, denial of counsel, sensory deprivations, abusive interrogations and outright torture.
During his campaign for president, Obama repeatedly pledged to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camps, promising shortly after his inauguration to complete the task by January 2010. With the proposed new order, there is no closure in sight.
More Guantánamo inmates are facing lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.
Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed the reports on December 22, announcing “There are some prisoners that will require indefinite detention,” although closing the Guantánamo prisons, according to Gibbs, “remains the president’s goal.”
Some of the prisoners transferred might be transferred from Guantánamo to prisons in the United States. There is no indication that the executive order would not continue to apply―meaning that Obama would be vastly expanding the scope of indefinite detention.
“If the Obama administration succeeds in establishing indefinite detentions on US soil,” according to a statement by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization that has represented a number of Guantánamo prisoners, “it will be difficult to hold the line at the 48 men at Guantanamo.
“This proposal lays the groundwork for US prisons to become places where people from around the world are brought and imprisoned without charge or trial, eroding our Constitution and adherence to international law beyond recognition,” according to the CCR statement.
As usual, anonymous administration sources claim that Obama’s hand is being forced because the still Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a defense authorization bill that bans transferring Guantánamo prisoners to the United States for trial, a crucial component of Obama’s earlier plan to close the concentration camps. The provision was added quietly to the bill during negotiations over repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The administration, however, has never sought to overturn the content of the anti-democratic policies implemented by Bush. Sections of the political establishment have favored closing Guantánamo because of its international reputation, while keeping the essence of the policy intact.
According to reports, the new executive order directly affects 48 prisoners the Obama administration has classified as too dangerous to be released but who cannot be put on trial. According to the Washington Post, “unnamed officials” said that the prisoners cannot face trial because torture was used to obtain the evidence against them. Without the torture evidence, the cases against them “would not meet legal standards.”
There are at least 126 other prisoners incarcerated at Guantánamo whose status remains uncertain.
The anonymous administration sources claim that the executive order will expand the rights of prisoners by establishing a “detainee review process” which will allow limited access to evidence and lawyers for hearings at designated intervals, perhaps once a year. A New York Times report characterized the executive order as setting up “something like a parole board to evaluate whether each detainee poses a continued threat, or whether he can be safely transferred to another country.”
Under the Constitution, however, parole boards, which are usually stacked with political employees and give very limited consideration to the cases before them, come into play only after someone is convicted of a crime. Under the Obama administration plan, prisoners can be held for the rest of their lives without a civilian trial, or even a military commission.
There is no reason to believe that the executive order will be limited only to current Guantánamo prisoners. For more than a year the Obama administration has insisted it has the power to hold anyone it designates as a “terror suspect” indefinitely and without judicial review based on the congressional Authorization to Use Military Force that came in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. This is the same rationale used by the Bush administration.
The news of the proposed executive order has been denounced by advocates of civil liberties.
Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the executive order would “normalize and institutionalize indefinite detention and other policies,” set in place by the Bush administration. Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, added, “Our Constitution requires that we charge and prosecute people who are accused of crimes. You cannot sell an indefinite detention scheme by attaching a few due-process baubles and expect that to restore the rule of law.”
The executive order is an extension of the attack on democratic rights carried out by the Obama administration since it first came to office.
While refusing to initiate a single criminal prosecutions for any of the war crimes committed, the Obama administration has intervened in court proceedings to block civil lawsuits against Bush administration officials for torture and domestic spying. Recently released WikiLeaks documents show that the administration collaborated with governments in Spain and Germany to prevent legal challenges to these same policies.
Obama has signed a death warrant for US citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki, and used Catch-22 arguments to prevent his father from challenging the extra-judicial assassination order in court.
Obama administration lawyers have authorized FBI raids of the homes and offices of antiwar activists on the basis that by opposing US imperialism they are providing “material support” for terrorist organizations.
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