So the long summer is over, and America celebrated that dark anniversary again--9/11, five years after the towers fell in smoke and fire. I noted that there were fireworks in the Senate as well before the summer break, as the republicans introduced yet another nonsensical wedge issue debate over whether or not we should amend the constitution to prevent desecration of the flag. It got the argument over free speech protections vs Old Glory stirred up, and the same group opposing the free speech arguments in that debate will also be found calling for censure of the free press to preserve secrecy. I guess they only want to allow free speech that expresses things they agree with and does not reveal government spying on US citizens. I would be much more comfortable if they were debating things like the recent desecration of the ideals behind that flag, the constitution itself, but that would be asking Congress to actually do something that matters, and fulfill its role as the people’s voice and the overseer of our rights and liberties. Instead they choose to debate gay marriage, immigration, English only, and the flag, all wedge issues most likely originating in some republican strategist’s head as they survey the election landscape for this November; all issues designed to get conservatives fired up, just like the Ten Commandments fiasco. Politics

UPDATE: 9-15-06: Specter to sponsor sweeping changes to legal protections in new National Security Surveillance Act, (SB2453)

Yet even though the smoke and fire of politics Senator Arlen Specter, (R) of Pennsylvania, has shown amazing pluck and vigor as he convenes one hearing after another in reaction to the invasive powers of the executive branch. Specter, like a handful of other Senators, has become ever more concerned with the excesses of President Bush, and has sharply questioned the warrantless wiretapping program, the NSA databasing of all our phone records, and the cavalier signing statements Bush has used to indicate his own view of the laws congress passes, reserving the right to disregard certain provisions under perceived Article 2 powers...or so it seems. After huddling with the White House on these issues, Specter is now proposing a bill that would make dramatic and sweeping changes to the laws which presently regulate warrantless wiretapping and other NSA snooping on US citizens--and the news is not good. Major newspapers have slammed the bill all across the nation, and here’s why...

The Bill proposes to play some very dangerous word games by redefining the term “surveillance” to only include operations that collect substantial content in a phone call or e-mail message. This means that broad data sweeps like the NSA collection of phone records on all Americans, or lists of all your e-mail contacts, places you visit on the web, etc, will be exempted as not being “surveillance.” How’s that for hornswaggling its way around the constitution! As I have argued before, these broad data sweeps are aimed at creating a kind of profile or life pattern on US citizens, and then having a red flag warning system when the pattern changes. Phone numbers can be connected to people, which can be connected to bank accounts, and we all know the maxim “follow the money” brought down a president once before. Phone records, for example, create a nifty pattern of all your current social and business contacts.

The bill also allows the Attorney General, or persons he designates, to implement broad based data monitoring  (spying) on American citizens, i.e.) your e-mails, chat room talk, instant message traffic, cell phone texting etc. as long as the government deletes any non terrorist related data if they choose to store the information. ( Gee, does this mean that if you were to write an e-mail that said: “I’d like to create a big birthday cake with a bomb for Osama,” the removal of unwanted text might yield: “I’d like to create a big birthday cake with a bomb for Osama!” And I suppose the nameless, unseen “analyst” will now decide what to keep or toss, but you can bet that you will never be privy to that information, or anything that is ever stored about you in this citizen profile.) When the pattern of a person’s calls or electronic communications traffic begins to look “interesting,” as in “persons of interest,” then you could be targeted for a little more direct surveillance, like someone slipping in to search your home when you are not there, and planting a little wire or bug to see what else you might be talking about. And who do you think is more likely to have the government interested in them, a staunch conservative, who voted Bush-Cheney twice, contributes to the RNC annually, and loves big business, goes to church on Sunday or a progressive liberal who voted for Gore and Kerry, advocates social issues, opposes big corporations and runs a web site where articles highly critical of current government policy appear regularly? You get my point. Just how much trust do you place in the NSA these days? Now the whole weight of our civil rights is to be deferred to the discretion of an intelligence analyst?

If that were not shocking enough, the bill also allows the government to get one single warrant for a surveillance program, not individual warrants for each specific target of surveillance. So, for example, if the NSA or some other spying agency takes an interest in you, then they could be empowered to initiate a program of intensified surveillance on everyone that is connected to you, as seen in the patterns of your phone calls, e-mails, etc.--and this by obtaining a single warrant, even if that involves fifty or a hundred different US citizens. And of course, no one in the group will be informed they are a target of surveillance, or ever know about it--until the government picks you up, I suppose. Then you become a “detainee.” (And of course, the government never makes mistakes.) This is a staggering assault on privacy and our constitutional protections as they now stand.

And you tell me you were once worried about a president who quibbled over the definition of “is.” Now the government wants to spin the word “surveillance,” exempting a whole range of activities that any reasonable person would deem as highly intrusive “spying” from any oversight, restraint, or prohibition under law. If you thought the Patriot Act was bad, this bill is far worse. Try to challenge it, and the bill now mandates that the case must be heard by a secret court, where only the government lawyers will be allowed to appear and argue their case as to why your challenge should be thrown out. Neither you nor your attorney will be admitted to the courtroom. This is mind boggling, something one might expect on the old DC comics Bizzaro world, but not America, the land of the free.

Background on Specter’s brief revolt

Not long ago, Specter, Chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, made the news when he jousted with Vice President Cheney over his threat to subpoena communications company executives. Cheney went behind his back in an attempt to persuade other republican committee members not to support the subpoenas, prompting Specter to write an angry three page letter to the VP in protest. The Telcomm execs actually showed up at the committee for questioning and AT&T Chairman and CEO Whitacre pulled a Mark McGwire. When Specter asked him about the USA Today story revealing AT&T cooperation with the NSA to snoop on Americans, Whitacre simply stated that his company “followed the law,” and he repeated the statement over and over under increasing pressure from Specter. Fireworks ensued as Specter complained: “I’ve heard you say that and I don’t care to hear it again. That’s not an answer.” When Whitacre stonewalled, Specter said his response was “contemptuous of this committee,” and vowed that the discussion would continue. Heck, if McGwire can deftly dodge questions about his steroid use, then why shouldn’t a good old Texan from AT&T do the same? As to what law he claimed he was following, I know of nothing on the books permitting warrantless wiretapping or domestic spying. The decrees of President Bush are not laws, just the tyrant’s will. But it appears the White House “Decider” has managed to lasso the wayward bull, brand him and bring him back into the pen. Specter’s National Security Surveillance Act is a disaster. Business as usual.

I’ve watched so many of these Senate hearings now, where our Constitutional overseers supposedly probe into wrongdoing by the executive branch or corporate America, that my faith in the whole process has dimmed . Arlen Specter is no pushover. A former democrat, Specter was a prosecutor and chief counsel to the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy Assassination, the author of the “Single Bullet Theory” that still stands as the solution to that nation altering murder. The longest serving senator from Pennsylvania, Specter has been elected six times since first crossing the aisle in 1980 and running on the republican ticket. Many conservatives still question his credentials, deeming him republican in name only, but there is little doubt that the popular senator can wield real power when he sets his mind on an issue. The nickname “Snarlin Arlen” was earned by his pointed, no-nonsense questioning in committee hearings, and in April 2006, he was selected by Time Magazine as one of "America's 10 Best Senators."

When a man like Arlen Specter gets a bee in his bonnet over an issue, others take notice. He is not a man to be trifled with, but the fact remains that he still gets the runaround in committee hearings as one corporate or executive branch witness after another equivocates, dodges questions, squirms around the intent of his inquiry, or lapses into a mantra of repetitive answers that, yes, are clearly contemptuous of the whole process, as well as congress itself as an overseeing authority.

Well it looks like Snarlin’ Arlen no longer has the bite to go with his bark. But for now it seems to be business as usual, with the White House finding new and novel ways around our constitutional protections. Laws are broken, ignored, bypassed. Someone takes notice and makes a fuss. Secrecy is claimed to prevent any challenges. Then new laws are proposed to make the wrongdoing “legal.” Opposition senators ask questions that no one will answer, and nothing changes. Equivocation and procrastination prevail, things are left half-done, delayed, unresolved. The gavel sounds, the hearing adjourns, and corporate executives shuffle off to an expensive luncheon in their business suits, confident that they have weathered yet another attempt to examine their ever increasing control of this government, and the nation it supposedly serves. It is no surprise that AT&T cooperated with the NSA, when they desperately lobby the hill for their planned tiered service levels on the Internet that could result in something like a “first class” e-mail delivery service, for a price, among other things. Whitacre pleaded his case saying that the growth of the net has prompted the Telcoms to invest millions in infrastructure. “Somebody has to pay for it,” he stated. That somebody, if the Telcoms get their way, will be you and I.

The communications companies, now controlling a dizzying array of newspapers, TV stations, publishers and radio stations, want to extend their influence over the Internet by creating a system of tiered traffic speed lanes where the big players get high-speed access, and the little guys, the millions of mom & pop web sites out there, get stuck in the slow lane. It’s the same kind of economic censorship that keeps all those mom & pops off the TV and radio, and allows men like Murdoch and Rodger Aisles to turn a news station like Fox into a full time cheer leading team for the Bush Administration. We aren’t given news that matters, important information we can use to reflect on the course ahead, but rather a carefully crafted corporate agenda, with company videos posing as news, and news standing in as entertainment. The Internet has been heading in that same direction. It’s not enough that they’ve managed to litter your inbox with SPAM, crowd out all web content with flashing advertisements, and bother you with all those annoying pop-ups or pop-unders, now they want control of the content as well. Regulating speed to those who can pay for it is just the first step in gaining that control, a kind of economic censorship. It may soon get much more costly to own and maintain a web site, your very own soap box where you can shout your opinions to the world. Like radio and TV, they want you to pay for the privilege. Business as usual..but it gets worse.

Real ID - (Real Bad Idea)

Gawd, will we soon be issued Net traffic licenses to drive on the Internet superhighway? Will we have to show up and submit to a photograph and thumb print before we launch that e-commerce store of our dreams? Frankly, if the government could have things that way, they would. Just as you can’t drive anywhere without paying for the privilege and placing an alphanumeric ID plate on your car, you may soon find your movements on the Internet requiring some kind of national ID, as the nebulous IP address that gets assigned randomly when you log on doesn’t seem to serve the control freaks in government these days. People can log on to unprotected wireless networks, internet cafes, use a friend’s PC, or one of hundreds at work. In all these cases, the IP address is not sufficiently connected to a hard ID on the person using it. Perhaps the Real ID program the government is pushing will eventually solve the “problem.”

Someone will probably soon think of another nifty idea: a hard ID that must be entered into the OS registration of your computer when you first run it, or given to validate your log-in to any computer. It will, in effect, be your password, an ID that will clearly identify web page visitors, just as your driver’s license identifies you everywhere else. The Department of Homeland Security would immediately raise eyebrows to such an interesting idea. So would the NSA, CIA and FBI. Just think of the benefits! It would surely eliminate the current Department of Justice bugaboo, on-line predators. Who would cavalierly browse porno sites or start up a chat with a 14 year old if they first had to enter a hard ID that would easily identify them to get on the site? (They actually do this now when they pay by credit card, but take solace in the fact that the government doesn’t have access to those records…just like no one thought “they” had access to all your telephone records. Don’t bet on it.) Opponents (D) would rail about invasion of privacy and personal liberties. Proponents (R) will rail about crime prevention, national security and family values. You have to be brain dead if you don’t realize which side will win out in this climate of fear.

The Real ID Act was slipped through congress by deftly embedding it in an appropriations bill that was to provide money for the continuing war in Iraq and relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Isn’t that clever? If you wanted to vote yes to politically popular things like victim relief and supporting our boys, you had to swallow the poison pill of the Real ID Act in the bargain. Business as usual, and the business goes on, one little step at a time. As the wise Indian once said, “if we keep heading in this direction, we just might get where we’re going.” The legislation will require every driver to appear in person when they renew their license, and submit to an ever more stringent set of ID requirements, with data encoded in a tamper proof format. The Department of Treasury and Homeland Security may determine what data is required. It may soon be that your photo and thumbprint will not be enough. You’ll have to show up with birth certificates, passports or other forms of ID as well. There could be a mandatory background check as part of the process, and a traceable RFID chip embedded in the license. The US now has plans to issue all its citizens “papers” in the form of this digital ID card. Get ready for the phrase: “Your Real ID, please.”

At present the information required will be things like a birth certificate, verified Social Security number, picture ID, physical address, and fingerprint, but that could change if the DHS gets testy. Outside Fallujah the US Army maintains checkpoints where anyone entering or leaving the city must submit to fingerprinting, DNA sampling and retinal photography. It’s a clever field kit that could easily find its way into a bureaucracy like the DMV, and it will look just like business as usual. Want to drive? Then shut up, open your mouth, lean forward and look through the eyepiece, sir, and place your thumb here please. Good. Now pay at the next counter and move on. You just do a few more little things when you go in for your license, that’s all.

All this information goes into a national database that would be accessible at airline check-ins, hotels, schools, government buildings and god knows where else. Can you imagine the security nightmare this will create? It’s bad enough that identity theft is one of the most serious crimes on the increase these days. A huge database of verified private information, with all those access points, is a hackers dream come true. We’ve recently been treated to things like laptop theft where data on all our military veterans and active duty personnel have been stolen. This massive national database will have a huge target on it. And consider the potential for data corruption. The big credit profiling agencies routinely make egregious errors, mixing one person’s data with another’s and littering your report with bad information. Face it, Big Brother is all thumbs. He can’t get things right. He makes mistakes, lots of them, but he keeps plodding along. I have never been comfortable with the idea of an editable digital snapshot of me out there in a mainframe that the government will believe instead of me. The whole Real ID act stinks, along with the way it was slipped through the congress. Thanks Senator Sensenbrenner, (R) the bill’s chief proponent, I feel so much safer now.

Everywhere I look these days I continue to see these startling changes creeping along in the guise of business as usual, in one bit of legislation here or one new corporate idea there. Government and corporations, now virtually indistinguishable, are constantly thinking up clever new programs like DARPA’s “Total Information Awareness,” killed by congressional order in 2003 after progressive minds unleashed a storm of protest. But in his article “Big Brother, Bush and Connecting the Data Dots,” Jonathan Turley wrote: “The spawn of DARPA seem to be turning up in secret programs spread throughout agencies. The administration learned that it could not create a network of databanks in one comprehensive system, but it could achieve the same results by creating smaller systems that could be easily daisy-chained at a later date into the same kind of massive computer bank that Congress thought it had shut down.” So, in addition to monitoring your e-mail, databasing your phone records, listening to your calls, watching your money wire transfers, the government also has up to 200 more data mining projects underway now, all with the intent of eventually “connecting the dots” as Turley wrote. Your life is a crossword puzzle the government is very intent upon solving. They get a word here, a word there, and creep closer and closer to building that all encompassing real-time profile of every US citizen that they so desire.

All these convenient new services and features you’ve been buying in recent years are helping to flesh out the picture. Your new car has a GPS chip in it, and it can be tracked wherever it goes. You buy groceries and trade data on every purchase you make for a discount card, your credit card purchases have long been tracked and closely monitored, along with your entire credit history. Now the San Francisco Gate is reporting: “Within the next four months, a major Bay Area supermarket chain plans to introduce a payment system that uses biometric fingerprint authentication to verify customers' identities. Under this system, shoppers in checkout lines won't need to use cash, checks, debit cards or credit cards. Instead, they can place their fingers on scanners that read fingerprints, and once the device links to their bank or credit card accounts, they can buy groceries, get cash back and do everything else shoppers do.” Again, the intrusive technology is being promoted as a convenience feature called “Pay-By-Touch,” which means the Payee will be sucking the money directly from your bank account, (and of course they never make mistakes), while sucking the last of your privacy away in the bargain. Will it be any surprise if we should learn that the NSA has also cut a little deal with these folks, or with Visa and Mastercard to let them in on that lovely treasure trove of data, just like the deal they cut with AT&T? And if the NY Times reports it, will they be censured by congress and prosecuted by Attorney General Gonzales for revealing a state secret?

The idea here is that people are being gradually prepared for a cashless economy, where your biometric data is the key to your identity, both physical and financial. Your digital profile, (editable by others), becomes the sole way you can access goods and services. Misbehave, and your profile is edited. Your ability to shop, move about the country, even buy food, can be controlled from the central database, because now you have to place your thumb on a scanner to complete the transaction. “They” will now know that at 8:37pm on Saturday evening, you were in Safeway Supermarket purchasing a six-pack of beer and condoms. Oops... Don’t you wish you had paid cash for that now? Because believe me... someone out there is going to wonder where you went next with those two items, and the data will be available, in your cell phone beep trail, or otherwise, to find out. Pay-By-Touch? No thank you.

It’s amazing how we are so willing to trade away the most fundamental rights: privacy and the free press for a little perceived convenience and because of our fear of terrorism—all in the service of secret programs the government has spawned after 9/11 or corporate programs designed to get a clearer image of who their customers are. Most people think these programs will never affect their own little lives. After all, they’ve done nothing wrong. Think again. A retired school teacher decided it would be a good idea to pay down some of his credit card debt, and sent a large $6,000+ payment to Mastercard. On his next bill he noticed the payment had been received, but not credited. When he called to find out why, he was told that, since his payment pattern suddenly changed, it was necessary to report the matter to Homeland Security, and the money could not be credited to his account until DHS approved. Business as usual? I hardly think so. Yet for all his complaining he just had to wait until DHS freed up his money, assuring itself that he was not some nefarious terrorist paying off his debt before strapping on a suicide belt.

Incidents like this are now all too common. They are called SARs, a new disease plaguing our financial paper pushers these days. SAR stands for “Suspicious Activity Report,” now required by the Government for a range of financial activities. Anything that seems unusual or out of pattern for a given customer can trigger a SAR, and the target customer cannot be told the report was filed. Nearly a million SARs were filed in 2005, alone! Deposit that retirement check? You’ve just been written up for suspicious activity, because the amount exceeded $5000.

More and more, we are finding our presumption of innocence and our freedom called into question by some corporation cooperating with a government agency. People have put up with long delays at airports, watching elderly grandmas pulled aside because the computer has “selected them for special attention.” The very phrase itself has a chilling edge to it, doesn’t it? The Germans used it to refer to the Jews held in Auschwitz concentration camp, saying they could not be assigned to work details because they had been “selected out for special attention.” Right now that attention amounts to a few more intrusive questions about who you are, where you’re going, how long you plan to stay, who you know there, and so on. Is it just me that thinks all these things are none of the governments business? (Try telling an airport screener that, and you’ll certainly miss your flight. Better plan on driving.) Once selected out for special attention, the Jews were pacified with the lie that they would simply be going to the showers. We are told they simply want to keep us safe. The end, in both cases, sees a death. The Jews lost their lives, and we are seeing both our right to privacy and personal liberty heading for the showers in a long slow line of secret government programs aided by profit hungry corporate collusion. While we’re a long way from Auschwitz, the fact remains that something is dying in America, dying a quiet, business as usual death. And we haven’t seen the whole if it yet. Each month we learn something more, much to the President’s chagrin when it appears in the NY Times.

I sometimes wonder if I’m overreacting to these things: designated free speech zones, hidden funerals for our soldiers, military war-crime cover-ups, domestic spying and databasing redefined so as not to be considered “surveillance,” a “Department of Homeland Security” for the first time in our history, a government that has sanctioned torture and adopted a policy of aggressive pre-emptive war, the merger of virtually all media in just six large corporations, the misnamed “Patriot” Act and the Real ID Act, the proposition that we are now in an endless war on terror that will require us to surrender certain freedoms, the building of detention facilities on US soil under a FEMA contract to Kellog Brown & Root, powerful senators getting the middle finger from corporate CEOs at congressional hearings. Business as usual.

Almost every month I learn of some new outrageous event perpetrated in the name of national security and “our safety.” Any one of these stories might have served to bring down a president in days of yore, but now the news breaks in endless waves, one after another, creating a kind of numbness in the audience. In all honesty, isn’t the outrage of Abu Ghuraib something far more significant than Monica Lewinski? And a prominent neo-con conservative, Bill Bennett, had the temerity to pen a book entitled “The Death of Outrage” over the Lewinski affair.

Creeping Normalcy

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…” - Winston Churchill: 1936

There’s a kind of creeping normalcy about life these days. People pay little attention to these things, because they haven’t affected them directly yet. Yes, we’ve become so accustomed to bad news that many folks have chosen to just shunt it aside. They may feel powerless to change things, and simply go about the business of daily life, preferring to worry about putting food on the table, or gasoline in the SUV. There’s a case to be made for that. You have to take care of business at home first, before you can ever hope to go out and change the world. In spite of all these outrageous events since 9/11, we don’t see an active, visible anti-war movement in the U.S. these days. The young folks have not rallied in opposition as my generation did against Vietnam. Congress keeps signing checks to the tune of $100 billion or more each year, and quietly sneaking in legislation that poses an enormous threat to your civil liberties. Business as usual.

Kick me if I’m wrong, but I perceive that all this apparent normalcy is paper thin. It’s a bit like the disarming Pacific coast where I live. Real estate keeps humming along, the weather is fine, people keep driving. But beneath the surface the stress of two continental plates has been building and building. Experts say the old San Andreas is well overdue for a tizzy fit. Yes, we all know it will happen one day, but never think it will happen today. That’s the mentality I encounter in so many people these days. Don’t worry, settle down, it’s not that bad, it could never happen here.

I don’t buy it.

It could happen here. It is happening here. Am I the only one that sees it? No, others see it too. I read their thoughts every day, in my favorite progressive blogs. They see it, feel it. They are asking tough questions, just like Senator Diane Feinstein who opposes the Specter bill with one of her own that serves to strengthen the existing FISA laws and citizen protections, but nothing seems to change. Specter’s bill passed the committee by a 10-8 vote and may soon go to the Senate floor for a full vote. These narrow margins that determine who has the slim majority in either house are so vitally important now--which is why this election on November is crucial. It will determine the fate of legislation like the National Security Surveillance bill.

Without control of at least one branch of congress, the loyal opposition can’t seem to get an oar in the water to move this boat another direction. A news story breaks, and I think: this will finally wake people up. But then the corporate media spin machine and Carl Rove weigh in. The Democrats try to force the issue on our seemingly endless commitment of troops and dollars to Iraq. Fox news headlines: “Should politicians decide troop movements?” (Comfortably forgetting politician number 1, George W. Bush, who has been moving troops about for quite some time as “Commander in Chief.” ) Fox split their screen and showed “Our Boys”  standing the watch in Iraq on one side, and placed a live shot of Senator Kennedy, (with sound muted) holding forth on the senate floor on the other. The implication was to showcase that most liberal demon of them all in opposition to the bravery and sacrifice of our soldiers. Just for yucks I switched over to CSPAN to see what Kennedy was actually saying. He was advocating health care for children.

North Korea plans a missile launch and Fox asks: “Should we talk to a nation with a missile to our head?” The visual was a soviet style red square military parade by those godless commies in Pyongyang. By all means, let’s not talk to them. Let’s continue to threaten them instead, and keep our missiles to the heads of all the places we deem “evil.” The mindlessness of Fox drones on and on, though their audience share has taken a severe -22% hit in recent months. Because in spite of all this apparent normalcy, people are changing. Their enthusiasm for the fear-based neo-con agenda that has dragged us into two life draining wars in the Middle East has dimmed. Fox just doesn’t get it, and they never will, because the corporation is owned by men who side with the boys in power, and they seem to think they will always have things their way. They won’t. The sand in Bush’s clock is running out.

But just now, in this time of creeping normalcy, with grave stresses building up in our political system, our budget and economy, and in the minds of so many Americans, we stand at a potential tipping point. The next “breaking news” story could shift the balance. Things could break and slide away. The familiar world we have been living in, protected by wealth, affluence, endless food, continual media distraction, and the world’s best military, could give way. Because there are consequences, real and imminent, to the things that have been happening. The fault lines are clearly drawn. It is only a matter of time.

In November of 1936, another time of creeping normalcy, a man named Winston Churchill wrote: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…” He was talking about the gathering storm he perceived underway in Germany. Few had the same vision, the same sense of urgency and alarm. Surely the Germans would not press matters to war again. Settle down, Winston, it’s not all that bad, they said. Surely saner heads would prevail and we would have “Peace in Our Time.” But Churchill saw something emerging in Fascism that was profoundly disturbing, and years before his contemporaries, he was rallying strength against it.
 
While I can never measure the man, I will strive to be a Churchill in the years ahead, in our own time of creeping normalcy when I see things going on in this country that I would have never believed possible as a young man. And I perceive now that we are in a very precarious moment, where one more spectacular attack by Al Qaeda could stifle dissent and take us yet another giant leap down the road we’ve been on…and we may just get where we are going. There are whispers on the net that, again, such an attack is being planned as an “October Surprise” before the mid-term elections this November. (Who’s doing the planning, I wonder?)

The experts tell us it is only a matter of time before Osama strikes us again. Time Magazine ran an article on the planned cyanide gas attack that was called off by Al Qaeda #2 Zawahiri because it was not significant enough a blow. They wanted something that would inflict more pain and suffering than 9/11, and the NY subway attack did not seem to fill the bill. The same week we get an FBI bust in Florida of seven paramilitary types who have been accused of soliciting support from Al Qaeda and planning to levy war against the United States. FBI Director Mueller has openly stated that the emphasis of his bureau has profoundly shifted from finding criminals to finding people who might be criminals, those who have criminal intent, though they have not yet done anything wrong. Now there’s the essence of the thought criminal for you, and the reason why the government wants to fill out your crossword puzzle. We used to live in a society that had such a high standard of justice that we were willing to allow a criminal to go free if the strict threshold of evidence proving guilt was not met—all to insure that no innocent man was ever unjustly convicted. It was called “innocent until proven guilty.” Now we simply round up hundreds of innocent men, as we do in Iraq and other places, in the hopes of catching a few bad guys in the dragnet. And take no solace in the fact that these sweeps were perpetrated on non-US citizens. What the government is willing to do to any man, they will eventually be ready and willing to do to you.

Thank God that the Supreme Court finally weighed in against arbitrary military tribunals at Guantanamo. When that breaking news hit, the Fox anchor immediately asked: “I wonder what our military personnel around the world will think of this!” Pandering to its chosen conservative audience, Fox wanted to know if we should apply the Geneva Conventions, as the Supreme Court required, to “murders and terrorists?” Their assumption was that anyone rounded up by our military is immediately guilty of those crimes, though only 10 of the 400 Guantanamo detainees have been charged with anything after four years in that place. Earth to Fox News: what the Supreme Court was saying is that you must first have a legal process to determine if these men are guilty of a crime against the US. Again, it’s a principle called “presumption of innocence,” and it’s one of the things that makes America great. But the Bush Administration has refused to accord these Guantanamo detainees with any rights. In fact, they won’t even consider them Prisoners of War. They created a new nebulous category called “enemy combatant detainees” so they could disregard US law and the Geneva Conventions. It’s amazing how Bush will trumpet the fact that we’re at war to justify one set of policies, then refuse to obey the rules of war in so many other areas. The Fox news anchor concluded that “Osama will be chuckling in his cave over this Supreme Court decision,” and they comforted their viewers by reminding them that the Guantanamo 400 will remain incarcerated, in a foreign land, indefinitely, in spite of what the Supreme Court said. Business as usual in police room 619.

Moments later the news stations rushed to cover the President’s reaction to the Supreme Court decision. Bush took the podium with the Prime Minister of Japan, and made a few remarks intended to find solidarity with  the audience back in the land of the rising sun, where the kidnapping of a Japanese citizen’s daughter by North Korea made big news recently. Criticizing North Korea, Bush said: “I wonder what kind of regime would kidnap people and just take ‘em off shore like that?” I was flabbergasted! Answer: Your kind of regime, Mr. President. Word is that we’ve been kidnapping and flying people around to off shore locations for some time.

When I think about that I get a queasy, uncomfortable feeling that has been with me ever since 9/11. I knew then that America was changing, and that fear was going to ravage our society as never before now that terror had finally come to the homeland. Yet I have more fear of our reaction to the terror threat than anything else! It’s strange, but I go through my day without a second thought about Al Qaeda, while the transgressions of the government, intruding on so many areas that threaten civil liberties, weigh heavily upon me. I don’t want to feel this way about my government. I don’t want to be wondering whether my e-mails are read, or phone calls tapped, to be worried in line at the airport, to be cautious about what I buy or how I pay my bills. I don’t want the government knowing where I go, what I read, what I eat, what hotel I check into. I don’t want to live in a nation beset with fear, a nation where every aspect of our lives is analyzed for evidence of a potential criminal intent, where the sacred presumption of innocence has completely evaporated. Do you?

Yet most of us quietly acquiesce to these creeping changes, being more concerned with things like the latest American Idol than the erosion of civil liberties. It’s strange that a group like the ACLU, dedicated to challenging any law that threatens our constitutional liberties, is now branded as a left wing fringe organization, staffed by gay commies. Yet the ACLU will defend traditional conservative issues like the right to bear arms as vigorously as they will defend the NY Times free press rights, now under fire by Bush for revealing “secrets .” The Times has been reporting on government programs that infringe on the rights and privacy of US citizens . If the government is so paranoid about Osama, then they ought to go over to Afghanistan in force and sweep every last inch of that place until they find the man—and leave my telephone records alone, thank you very much.

The same rationale that has seen whole neighborhoods in Iraq rousted by US troops, with men, boys and grandfathers cuffed, hooded and trucked away in the night, only to find three suspected jihadis, has been applied to us all. “If Al Qaeda is talking to someone here,” says President Bush, “then we want to know about it.” So now they know—who you’ve been talking to, who I’ve been talking to, all of us. They swept up the data on every American citizen, and told us they were just looking for the bad guys, or perhaps for “evidence of criminal intent.” Face it. No one is presumed innocent now. You may not feel violated, nothing about your daily life may seem to have changed, but your rights just had a door kicked down, and your privacy has been cuffed, hooded and swept away in the night. You don’t feel any pain, but you’re in a detention camp data base out there somewhere, waiting your turn at interrogation. It won’t be water boarding, or snarling dogs this time. Just data mining and analysis. The dogs come later. It’s the same logic. It starts with numbers, then numbers get tattooed onto people, a hard ID that will let the government know exactly who you are, and where you are, should the computer ever single you out for “special attention.”

See how uncomfortable all this can make you feel in the land of the free? It’s a tiny step in your head from the shocking revelation that the government is spying on American citizens to the thought that the government could now be watching you. That’s not what this country was established for. In fact, the United States of America was said to be the one place on this wild, lawless earth where that oppressive little thought would never find its way into your head. This is the one place where a person was guaranteed freedom—guaranteed. This was the place where human rights would always stand untarnished, where constitutionally protected liberties would be defended by both blood, honor and the dignity and fairness of the law. This is where due process would apply to both the rich and poor alike, and every person would be entitled to equal and fair treatment. This was the place where a man was to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond any reasonable doubt; the place where government would stand in stalwart defense of these ideals, these dearly bought freedoms, so rare in the world these days. But be honest now, and ask yourself: is this government acting as the champion of your rights and liberties, your privacy? Does it live by the rules, principles and laws it so readily asks other men to die for? And for all their spying and secrecy, and war in the Middle East, do you feel safer now? Do you really feel the same way about it all when you see those fireworks go up on the 4th of July? Just what are we celebrating if we are so willing to give it all away because Osama knocked down two skyscrapers on that dark September morning in New York?

John Schettler
July, 2006 - Updated Sept 2006
 

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