Well it certainly didn’t take long to get here. “Here” as in the moment when all the exaggerations of how oppressive and police state-like America has become, are no longer exaggeration. As Sinclair Lewis once wrote, “when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross”. Many will still see such a characterization as a major exaggeration, and they’re entitled to their opinion, but that’s only because the oppression hasn’t directly touched their personal life, yet. The scaffolding however is in place. It may still be in its infancy but baby Police State is a healthy 9-pound mammoth, and as disturbing as it is the American citizenry has nobody to blame but themselves for having unprotected sex with a culture of fear, excess, and ignorance.

Sure the officials at the top, i.e. The Bush Administration, push for the legislation and the lesser officials in the Congress and Senate and in both the Democrat and Republican parties (or party if you really look closely), who are also supposed to represent the public simply rubberstamp it, but at the end of the day it’s our collective fault. Under the guise of “protecting the Homeland” and protecting American citizens from “terror”, the citizenry mostly cowed, and living in a state of perpetual fear, historical ignorance, and disorientation fail to notice even the most obvious of patterns. 

For instance the most problematic and obvious pattern of all, that nearly every single “terror plot” that has garnered national attention has turned out to be a false flag operation, a molehill of lies and exaggerations, if not an outright government operation. Putting aside the most conspicuous and troubling events of September 11^th, 2001 that have government complicity and false flag operation written all over them, let us take a trip down memory lane, through our recent booster shots of “terror”.

A History of Lying

Of course we all remember this past summer’s “plot” by a group of African-American men in Liberty City, Florida one of the most underprivileged and poor neighborhoods in the U.S., to unleash what amounted to a full ground attack on the U.S. and the destruction of various large buildings across the U.S., including Chicago’s Sears Tower. The media initially had a field day with this one, because not only was this phony terror cell "home grown" they were Black men, and deep down in many corners of this country the only thing people fear more than Osama bin Laden himself, is a Negro. The media tried all manner of descriptive gymnastics to make the men sound as Muslim as possible. As government spokespeople announced their fantastic claims about all the damage this group of 7 disaffected and hapless men -- five U.S. citizens, one legal Haitian and one Haitian illegal – were about to inflict on the U.S. the most basic look at the facts made the state’s claims dissolve like sugar into Kool-aid.

Soon we found the men were not Muslims at all but members of a loosely organized religious sect that incorporated elements of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as well as other religious and cultural rituals. The accused had performed no reconnaissance on their alleged targets, had no explosives or any of the other means to carry out their alleged plans. The group was so destitute and completely incapable of pulling off such a plot that they had to ask the FBI informant for boots, in addition to requesting uniforms, guns, radios, vehicles and $50,000. The informant then supplied the men with 5 pairs of army boots, a cell phone, and $3,500 but no weapons or explosives. In fact it was the FBI’s informant/agent who urged the men to target FBI offices even supplying the men with a digital camera so that they could scout the targets. The entire time all this alleged plotting was going the entire group was under full FBI surveillance as the FBI informant orchestrated and directed the plots, even suggesting the group widen their attacks across states such as New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago and suggesting targeting buildings instead of airports and open spaces, unbeknownst to “the plotters”, so the FBI could keep the situation more easily under control. The accused were alleged to have “swore an oath of loyalty to al Qaeda”, administered of course, by none other than the group’s “al Qaeda representative,” AKA, the paid FBI informant.

Also this summer we had the case of Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, two Atlanta area men who were indicted on four terror-related charges related to staging attacks on the U.S. Capitol, military bases and refineries. U.S. Attorney David Nahmias would later admit that although the pair are suspected of discussing a holy war and videotaping potential targets, they had not "proceeded to the point that they posed an imminent threat to the United States", going on to state "but, in today's world we can no longer wait until a bomb is built and ready to explode to make an arrest".

Before that, in May of 2006, we had the case of Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Siraj in New York City who was accused of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in a “plot” that the evidence indicated was based entirely on suggestion and encouragement from an FBI informant. The FBI agent provocateur taunted the Siraj with photographs of Abu Ghraib torture victims and demanded to know how, as a Muslim, he Siraj could fail to take action.

In July this year New Yorkers were also treated to the terrifying claims by the FBI and Homeland Security, that U.S. authorities, with help from Lebanese security forces, had foiled a plot to blow up the Holland Tunnel and flood New York City's financial district. Later these same officials admitted “they had no indication of any imminent threat to the New York transportation system or anywhere else in the U.S.'' and “the plot” was discovered “when it was just in the talking phase''. Once again no money had changed hands, no weapons or explosives had been purchased, and no concrete plans had been made. In addition, of the alleged plotters, none were Americans and none had set foot in the US. In fact government officials speaking on condition of anonymity admitted that the alleged plot was little more than conceptualization and fantasy posted in an Internet chat room, and that “investigators pieced together code words from their conversations”.

Attempts to terrify the populace with fantastic, even if unsupported claims, of plots thwarted are not limited to the U.S. however. It seems to be a symptom of being a industrialized nation involved in America’s faux “War on Terror”. In August this year, after the U.S. hot streak of fake terror plot press conferences, Britain, made headlines with some hardly credible plot thwarting of it’s own. Only months after British police shot and killed an innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes who they suspected of being suicide bomber, without any evidence, British officials were announcing they had disrupted a plot to detonate explosives on up to ten trans-Atlantic flights departing from British airports. This claim came in the wake of a least 3 other alleged plots in Britian (one involving the chemical agent ricin, one involving the Manchester United Football Club plot, and another which lead to raids in an area known as Forest Gate involving 250 police officers, MI5 operatives and bio-chemical experts where an innocent suspect was shot. All the aforementioned “plots” turned out to be fictitious.

This is not to say that there are not groups outside and inside, the U.S. who would seek to use terror and/or acts of mass violence against the American public. In light of the role of U.S. foreign policy across the globe and the mass carnage it continues to inflict on people, Iraq and Afghanistan being some of the latest examples, can anyone really be surprised by such anger and resentment. However what the government’s alleged plots point to is a clear pattern of provocation and fabrication by the state as wild terror claims are consistently and predictably trotted out to the podium to keep the public in a confused and terrified state of paralysis, as they become subject to ever more repressive rules and legislation. No longer do we need to exaggerate to see these measures being put into effect. Before the Republican Mark Foley's scandal, yet another example of political corruption, sexual deviancy, and Republican hypocrisy, seemingly captivated all of the corporate news media, the U.S. Congress and Senate were doing things at least as repulsive even if far less sensational, than sexually harassing underage Capitol Hill interns.  

A Chilling Warning

After a string of legal defeats and challenges to the legality and constitutionality of Bush administration policies and tactics, ranging from the Supreme Court ruling that detainees could challenge aspects of their imprisonment in federal courts and overturning Bush's plans for military tribunals to several federal district judges either ordering an end to warrantless wiretapping or agreeing to hear court challenges to it. Such rulings led to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Bush appointee, making a chilling speech this past September at a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center, where he warned judges against overturning or challenging Bush’s decisions. Gonzalez went on to remark that the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and "the Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime" – a comment made even more disturbing when taking into consideration that the government says it’s “war on terror” will not end in our lifetimes.  

The Bush administration, undeterred by the concept of legal constraints and court rulings, is appealing most of the court rulings but beyond that have simply elected to rewrite the laws. Using the cowardly and impotent Congress and Senate as a rubber stamp the Bush administration put forth and passed legislation, the Military Commissions Act, that essentially repeals Habeas Corpus and sets American concepts of due process back several hundred years. For those of you not sure what the hell that little Latin term means, it essentially means the right of anyone thrown in jail to challenge their detention in court! You may have missed it watching “Flavor of Love” or maybe you were watching the corporate media’s news and just missed it since it was likely glossed over, but in case you did miss it let’s review what this nasty little piece of legislation actually does as summarized by the Human Rights organization Amnesty International:

• Strip the US courts of jurisdiction to hear or consider habeas corpus appeals challenging the lawfulness or conditions of detention of anyone held in US custody as an "enemy combatant". Judicial review of cases would be severely limited. The law would apply retroactively, and thus could result in more than 200 pending appeals filed on behalf of Guantánamo detainees being thrown out of court.
• Permit the executive (the President) to convene military commissions to try "alien unlawful enemy combatants", as determined by the executive, in trials that would provide foreign nationals so labeled with a lower standard of justice than US citizens accused of the same crimes.
• Permit the use in military commission trials of evidence extracted through torture as well as allow interrogation methods internationally recognized as torture.
• Give the military commissions the power to hand down death sentences after trials that did not meet international standards.
• Permit the executive to determine who is an "enemy combatant" under any "competent tribunal" established by the executive, and endorse the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), the wholly inadequate administrative procedure that has been employed in Guantánamo to review individual detentions.
• Prohibit any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.
• Narrow the scope of the War Crimes Act by not expressly criminalizing acts that constitute "outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment" banned under international law.
• Endorse the administration’s "war paradigm" – under which the USA has selectively applied the laws of war and rejected international human rights law. The legislation would backdate the "war on terror" to before the 11 September 2001 in order to be able to try individuals in front of military commissions for "war crimes" committed before that date.

In a nutshell based on suspicion only, anyone in the U.S. can now be designated an “enemy combatant” stripped of all their legal rights and detained indefinitely, and they would have no legal recourse! Many will try to blame just the Republicans for this heinous and unconstitutional legislation but the vote in congress was 253 to 168 mostly along party-lines and in the Senate 12 Democrats voted for the legislation.

The book on this legislation is not quite closed yet. It seems the Supreme Court is “we the people’s” last hope of fending off the U.S. becoming a complete police state, as at least two lawsuits have been filed to challenge parts of this Act with more likely to come. In light of all the failings of the Bush administration it borders on unbelievable that they would have the political capital to get such a heinous Act passed. Clearly Congress and the Senate are proving themselves currently useless or at least so consumed with partisan politics that Republicans (with a little help from Democrats) will pass ANY legislation placed before them by the Bush Administration.

More important than Congress or the Senate’s failures is the failure of a large portion of the American populace to raise so much as a whimper about the stripping of their rights. In a much different time in history this would be the type of legislation that could foment a revolution, it should at least cause a large-scale protest today.  

"Those Who Would Trade Freedom and Liberty for Some Measure of Security are Deserving of Neither"

What exactly is it that allows such laws to be passed with so little trouble from the population? Is the country that filled with terrified people? Is it ignorance? Clearly the monumental importance of this legislation has not been covered adequately in the corporate media. Or is it that so many can’t see themselves as the victims of such laws? Is it that deep down many believe this kind of repressive legislation doesn’t apply to them, only to those foreigners or “others” who don’t look or believe like “them”? “They” believe they could never be classified as “enemy combatants” or prosecuted under legislation allegedly aimed at “terrorist”… could “they”? The answer to that question is a resounding YES, as it already has and will continue to be until the population decides to resist. 

Let us remember the case of Yasir Hamdi a U.S. citizen who was designated an enemy combatant, stripped of his citizenship, held in solitary confinement for 3 years without access to legal counsel, before being deported to Saudi Arabia without ever being charged with a crime. In that case the Supreme Court ruled that the government still has the authority to detain U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants”, even if they can challenge the detentions - still believe it doesn’t apply to you?

Just last week Internal military documents released provided proof that the Defense Department's collected of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war. The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, that military officials labeled as "potential terrorist activity" events like a "Stop the War Now" rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005. The documents also disclosed that the military had maintained a database, known as Talon, containing information about more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" around the country in 2004 and 2005. Dozens of alerts on antiwar meetings and peaceful protests appear to have remained in the database even after analysts had decided that they posed no threat to military bases or personnel.

All of this brings us to one of the most important cases of our time, that of attorney Lynne Stewart who was convicted of convicted of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists for releasing a statement by her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman in a press release. Stewart, who is 68 years old and being treated for breast Cancer, is facing a jail sentence of up to 30 years, and is scheduled to be sentenced Monday October 16^th, at 10AM in New York City. Let there be no confusion about it, Stewart is a long time activist and progressive attorney who was targeted because of her political beliefs and in an attempt to strike fear in the very attorney’s who would dare defend people from charges related to terrorism. In the government’s zealous drive to prosecute Stewart they violated the principle of attorney client privilege by ease-dropping on confidential conversations between attorney and client, then went about a campaign of intimidating and prejudicing the jurors by playing tapes of Osama bin Laden who had nothing to do with the case, at her trial. This case is of monumental importance and although she has already been convicted it is of utmost importance that people turn out in the largest numbers possible to at her sentencing as a show of support for a sentence of reduced or no prison time which if at the judges discretion, and as an act of general resistance to the criminally repressive measures the state seeks to normalize.

We are already witnessing our rights being eroded as the protections believed afforded by the Constitution are now routinely disregarded. As the criminal policy of never ending wars abroad, giveaways for the wealthy, and repression and cutbacks for the working class and poor continue it is predictable that people will attempt to resist as exactly what is unfolding becomes more clear. As the struggle against a system based on war, class exploitation, racism, sexism, and xenophobia breaks down and becomes clear undoubtedly most measures of resistance whether violent or non-violent will be likened to terrorism by the state. Today’s anti-war or social justice protestor is tomorrow’s “enemy combatant”, any one of us could be next.

Released: October 15^th, 2006

The views and opinions expressed herein by the author do not necessarily represent the opinions or position of Playahata.com.