Police state roundup!

Posted by Joshua Holland at 8:00 AM on November 16, 2006.

Let's see what we have in the hopper today …

Via the AP, here's our first taste of how the Bushies see the imperial powers vested in them by the Torture Bill, AKA the Military Commissions Act:

Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.

In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.

The government has always had the ability to hold foreigners suspected of crimes, including terrorism, without trial. This is about denying those prisoners the right to contest the factual basis of that detention in front of a judge -- it's court-stripping. Now, the government just needs to say you're suspected of terrorism without offering even a shred of evidence. Habeus corpus, shmabeus shmorpus; message to the world: Just trust us.

Glenn Greenwald gives us a peek at this new, improved and more Kafka-esque judicial system with the case of one Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where he lived with his wife and five children:

In December, 2001 he was detained as a "material witness" to suspected acts of terrorism and ultimately charged with various terrorism-related offenses, mostly relating to false statements the FBI claimed he made as part of its 9/11 investigation. Al-Marri vehemently denied the charges, and after lengthy pre-trial proceedings, his trial on those charges was scheduled to begin on July 21, 2003.

But his trial never took place, because in June, 2003 -- one month before the scheduled trial -- President Bush declared him to be an "enemy combatant" ... Thus, right before his trial, the Bush administration simply removed Al-Marri from the jurisdiction of the judicial system -- based solely on the unilateral order of the President -- and thus prevented him from contesting the charges against him.

Al-Marri was given the "Padilla Treatment" -- kept in solitary confinement, denied all contact with the outside world, including even his own attorneys, not charged with any crimes, and given no opportunity to prove his innocence.

That's exactly what Congress legitimized last month in the Torture Bill.

Whatever happens to detainees in the Long War Against Violent Extremism is, of course, a closely guarded matter of national secrecy (or, what happens in Gitmo stays in Gitmo):

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage."

A bit of CYA, that. After all, a Fox News "reporter" recently gave waterboarding a shot, broadcasting all the fine details to a worldwide audience.

And while outgoing RNC Chair Ken Mehlman says that Democrats have "concern for terrorist civil liberties" (despite the fact that according to all credible reports the majority of those caught up in our global network of detention centers are not actually guilty of terrorism), many of us out here in liberal-land are pretty darn frustrated that more Democrats aren't talking about doing something about this. The reason? Politics:

Most Americans do not believe the Bush administration has gone too far in restricting civil liberties as part of the war on terror, a new CNN poll released Thursday suggests.

While 39 percent of the 1,013 poll respondents said the Bush administration has gone too far, 34 percent said they believe the administration has been about right on the restrictions, according to the Opinion Research Corp. survey. Another 25 percent said the administration has not gone far enough.

According to an October Gallup poll, a slim majority (47-43) also don't want the PATRIOT Act repealed.

I blame the media, who can't seem to get it through their little heads that we have no idea whether people swept up by the Bush Administration and denied due process are "terrorists," and can't seem to grasp the concept of "Dearborn Syndrome."*

On Friday, the "Pentagon Five" go to trial. Who now?

On September 9th, 2006 four Iraq veterans and an anarchist activist were arrested whille taking a tour of the Pentagon for allegedly passing out fliers on depleted uranium. The five are being charged with "Posting of Materials" and "Disobeying a Lawful Order" and could be facing a $6,000 fine and six months in federal prison.

Elsewhere, the ACLU is asking a federal appeals court to uphold an "Eastern Michigan District Court ruling on Aug. 17 that had stated the Bush administration's warrantless National Security Agency wiretapping program was illegal." Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to get a new domestic surveillance bill through the lame-duck Congress that would legalize the whole shebang.

Speaking of terrorists, you may be one yourself if the "Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act" passes the House, as Nicole Belle explained at Crooks and Liars:

That's right, PETA is now a terrorist organization. In my college days, I protested (along with other students) the biology department of my university when some of the animal experiments they did and their treatment of lab animals came to light. By this definition-so purposefully vague, except for the use of the word "terrorist"-I would be considered a terrorist for my participation.

Conflating "vandalism" with "terrorism" is all the rage at the right-wing state advocacy group ALEC, which has developed model legislation outlawing "eco-terrorism" as well, defined, of course, broadly enough that it would "effectively ban environmental and animal rights advocacy."

Who here believes we'll see a similar redefinition of terrorism for property damage at abortion clinics?

[pause for obligatory sound of crickets chirping]

I guess vandalism is the least of their problems anyway.

Let's see …

Sara Robison notes:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a system which will in essence make it mandatory for you to have permission before leaving or entering the country, effectively putting everyone on a no-fly list unless the government says otherwise.

Go read the whole post for a troubling story of a marine who got on a no-fly list because he had explosive residue on his combat boots -- imagine that! -- and couldn't get his name off it. After he returned from a tour in Iraq, airport security kept him from flying home for hours while they tried to straighten the whole mess out.

While nothing has happened to the New Jersey public school teacher who told his kids they'd go to hell if they weren't Baptists, two Florida substitutes were banned from teaching in Lee County schools for criticizing the district at school board meetings. Both had been on the job for five years without complaint. The ACLU is looking into the case.

The New York CLU said that a review panel that monitors allegations of police brutality didn't meet for 6 months in 2005, creating a back-log of 800 cases. It then dealt with them all in a day -- a thorough case-by-case review no doubt.

The NYCLU is also offering activists training in how to request their own files from the FBI, CIA, etc. A few years ago, I asked the FBI if they had a file on me -- I wanted to see if an interview I had done with a Havana radio station was on there -- and they came up empty. Later, I was consulting with an ACLU attorney about suing the city of Miami for some very nasty stuff that went down during the FTAA meetings in 2003, and I recounted the story to her. "Well, Honey," she told me, "you sure have one now." Apparently requesting a file makes you a suspicious character and they automatically start one for you if they didn't already have one -- and I admit a certain logic exists there, even if it's perfectly circular.

We do have a few positive items …

After a suit was filed by the ACLU, the CIA acknowledged the existence of two "torture memos" -- a pair of smoking guns that tie the White House to the policy. They are, of course, "too sensitive to release to the public." Maybe the German prosecutors preparing war-crimes charges against Rummy can get their hands on them.

Also, one of those small victories in Louisana:

A court order issued Monday allows a man to protest in front of a Wal-Mart store here, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana said.

Edwin Crayton was chased away by a Natchitoches police officer from the front of the Wal-Mart store in early October when he tried to protest what he believes is the company's stand on gays, according to the ACLU, which filed a lawsuit on his behalf.

Let's go international to finish out the round-up, shall we?

From the department of So Fucking Obvious It Hurts, we get confirmation of what so many of us have been saying for so long:

Some countries try to refute criticism over their treatment of prisoners by saying they are only following the U.S. example on handling terror suspects, a U.N. human rights expert said on Monday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator on torture, told a news conference that "all too frequently" governments respond to criticism about their jails by saying they handled detainees the same way the United States did.

He said nations like Jordan tell him, "We are collaborating with the United States so it can't be wrong if it is also done by the United States."

Ugh.

That might explain why some geniuses in Queensland, Australia's Police Service got the bright idea to test the benefits of placing hoods over prisoners' heads "to protect its officers." Appropriate outrage ensued.

Meanwhile, Bush's Poodle introduced his final legislative package, which naturally included a host of new "anti-terror" laws:

Six home office bills - including new powers to combat serious and organised crime - were unveiled today.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of civil rights group Liberty, lambasted the legislative programme as "empty soundbites" which would erode civil liberties.

"Not a word about allowing fair terrorist trials with the aid of intercept evidence. Not a word about proper compensation for the victims of terrorist atrocities abroad. Just more executive power and a little more freedom ebbing away."

Richard Garside, the acting director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London, highlighted the "eye-watering" number of crime-related pieces of legislation [Blair's] governments have introduced since 1997.

All this seems to be making the Lib Dems a bit frisky. Good for them.

Which brings us to the last item on our tour. A few weeks ago, Haaretz reported on an Israeli Defense Ministry study it called "political dynamite." It found "rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties," despite a promise made that same month to Condi Rice, in writing, that Israel would make halting illegal construction of Israeli settlements a top priority.

How did our government react to this news, you ask?

According to AIPAC, on the same day as news of the study became public, the House unanimously passed a bill "opening new opportunities for the United States and Israel to strengthen their joint homeland security efforts."

The Promoting Antiterrorism Capabilities Through International Cooperation Act creates an office in the Homeland Security Department to develop and share counterterrorism technology and strategies with U.S. allies, including Israel.

The bill was led by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY) and Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Emergency Preparedness and Science and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Ranking Member Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ).

The act authorizes private American and Israeli companies to receive federal funding to jointly research and commercialize security products, offers grants to scientists from U.S. and Israeli universities known for high-tech ingenuity and provides funding for quasi-governmental collaboration between federally funded laboratories and their Israeli counterparts …

Oh what joys there are in an endless war against "extremism."

If you see stories for the next round-up, e-mail 'em to me.

*Dearborn Syndrome: "when criminal charges are portrayed as terrorism-related because of the defendants' Middle Eastern origin. Dearborn is the heart of southeastern Michigan's large Arab community."

Tagged as: war on terror, civil rights

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.